JUST THIS by Pamela Painter
Big Betty who lived one farm over from ours came by to tell my mom and me that Mr. Antonio was looking for a counter girl for the summer. Big Betty worked in town at Antonio’s Trattoria and she was still wearing her pink apron, though I knew she’d soon change into overalls and boots to feed her three remaining hogs. Our Pennsylvania farms weren’t farms anymore – just the remnants of tilting grain towers, empty door- less barns, and split rail fences sagging like hammocks. It was 1957 and the men who had come home from the war had gone off to the steel mills and factories that paid better than raising chickens, milking cows, or slaughtering hogs. I was 14, and my best friend, Rhonda, was 15. The previous week she’d started plucking dead headless chickens at a factory along with Grace and Lorna. I knew I’d be lucky to get the job as a counter girl. My dad had died three years ago, suddenly, a heart attack right on the factory floor. Since then, Mom’s brother off in Ohio had been doing a bit of looking out for us. Big Betty too – like family, like an aunt. “You won’t believe the food. Italian,” she told us. “Hmph. Italians,” my mother said, as if disapproving, but she thanked Betty for thinking of me. Mom worked in town, doing the books for the pharmacy, so she could set her own hours and give me rides if need be. That summer at Antonio’s Trattoria would be the beginning of my education about my body, about men, about what I was willing to do for love.
The next day was Big Betty’s day off, and she stopped by for me late in the morning, honking her horn in our driveway, applying lipstick in the rearview mirror. “Gotta look nice for the boys,” she said. Her polka dot dress hid her weight pretty well. I knew from her drinking coffee in our kitchen that she called Mr. Antonio and his brother Sal “the boys.” “And oh, can those boys cook.” Years ago, she’d worked at the Trattoria when it was Frankie’s Diner and stayed on after Frankie died, declaring that Mr. Antonio had improved the food two hundred percent. “No more tuna- noodle casseroles or chicken pot pies,” she said. My family had only eaten in Frankie’s twice, waited on by Big Betty, but never in the Trattoria. The lean, sassy high school boys who hung out in front of the fire hall, smoking and whistling at certain girls, called it the “Dago’s Diner.” They were the same boys who got detention in school, but ended up as Prom King senior year.
Betty parked behind the restaurant, next to the dumpster the Trattoria shared with Meanie’s Plumbing Supplies. Looking me over, she said, “I usually go in through the kitchen to punch the time clock, but today we’ll go in through the front door.” I’d worn a white dotted swiss blouse with puffed sleeves and pearl buttons down the front, and a new straight skirt, hoping I looked worthy of being hired.
I was amazed at how Frankie’s had been transformed into a Trattoria. The booths were a gleaming fake red leather, and the dining room’s walls had been done up with real live green vines twining above large paintings of Italian landscapes, two I recognized from history class as the Colosseum and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At the back, the counter and round stools from Frankie’s were the same, running almost the width of the dining room and ending at a swinging door that led to the kitchen. The most amazing change was the addition to the left of the tables: a huge jukebox the size of our refrigerator, a spectacle of neon blues and reds and gleaming golds.
When Big Betty called, “Hey Tony,” a man burst through the door, wrapped in a white apron and the scents of garlic and something I came to know as fennel. His dark hair was slicked back above a splotched red face and a wide smile. Big Betty called him Tony, but he would always be Mr. Antonio to me. She gave me a little push forward, saying, “This here is Annie. You’ll see she’s a good worker.” He smoothed his apron over his round stomach and bowed low, repeating my name. When Big Betty asked, “Where’s Sal?” Mr. Antonio yelled, “Salvatore, come meet Ah- nie, our new girl.” Sal – right away Salvatore was Sal – also wore a white apron, though his bib dangled down from his open shirt and narrow waist. His eyes widened at what I thought then was my young age. Later I would recall my white blouse with tiny pearl buttons down the front. “Buongiorno, Ah- nie,” Sal said, also bowing, but very low as if making fun of his gesture. “Is bene that Tony already hired you.” A pink scar under his right eye seemed to dance when he spoke. We agreed that I would start the next day. Mr. Antonio said, “Betty will show you ropes, she knows this place better than me.” She was Betty here, I realized, and I made a mental note to drop “Big.” Mr. Antonio produced a bent timecard, wrote my name on it with a flourish, saying it would be waiting for me tomorrow. Sal had gone into the kitchen to retrieve two pink aprons. As he handed them over, he winked, assuring me that he was molto bene at tying bows. “Ciao, ciao,” Betty said, rolling her eyes and leading me out the door.
“Better than plucking chickens,” she said on the way home. When we arrived at my farm, she handed me a hairnet with little sparkles in it “for tomorrow.” I was already going through my summer clothes, choosing what I’d wear, maybe buying a new blouse or two. “She passed the test,” Big Betty told my mom, who that night would proudly write her brother a letter about my new job.
The next day, Mom dropped me off at the back of Mr. Antonio’s in time for Big Betty – Betty – and Marge’s weekend evening shift. The Trattoria’s tiny kitchen was crammed with stainless steel shelves and gleaming countertops. Crates of vegetables teetered along one wall. One surely held more garlic than could be found in all the kitchens of our town. In greeting, Mr. Antonio waved a wooden spoon from his place in front of a huge iron stove with six burners, flames alight under two big steaming pots. Sal abandoned scrolling out what I soon learned were delicate sheets of pale, yellow pasta, and insisted on helping with my apron – actually a half apron, no top. “Give here, Ah- nie,” he said and I handed it over. He motioned for me to turn around so my back was to him, and I felt a puff of breath on my neck as he reached to draw the apron around my waist. Behind me, the two sashes slowly tightened into what must have been a perfect bow. “Perfecto,” Betty said, appearing through the swinging door. She gave Sal a swat with her order pad saying, “Gotta watch out for Sal,” and they all laughed – Mr. Antonio, Betty and especially Sal – as she led me back through the swinging door to the first day of my first job.
My station was behind the counter. There I took care of customers seated on stools, served desserts from a circular case with shimmering glass doors. Within two weeks I was ringing up checks at the cash register. The daily special was written on a chalk board – today’s said “spaghetti with olives and tomato sauce,” which Sal told me was really spaghetti alla puttanesca – still my favorite pasta. Betty had pointed out the wine kept in its own refrigerator in the kitchen, poured by Sal and served by her or Marge in glass carafes. “We’re very fancy here,” Betty said, laughing at my surprise. Frankie had served coffee, tea and sodas. Our menu offered “Wine: White or Red.”
That night wasn’t too busy. I learned where things came from and went – glasses, plates, desserts. How to swoop down a red paper placemat in front of a customer, and offer a menu with a sprightly “good evening.” Our customers were people from town out for a night of not- cooking. The Gosses who owned Woolworth’s Five and Dime, two teachers from the county schools, our mailman who sat at my counter, the librarian wearing “Midnight in Paris” perfume.. Soon the booths and tables were full, even some of my counter stools. I wrote orders on a little green pad and walked them into the kitchen to Mr. Antonio, who patted each one as if blessing it. Sal moved between the six- burner stove, his glistening salad bar with its array of knives, and the small refrigerator storing the white wine. Not many people ordered wine. Betty stopped by the counter a couple of times to see if I needed anything. On the jukebox Johnny Mathis was. crooning “It’s Not for Me To Say” or Elvis pleading “Don’t be Cruel.” Betty grimaced when someone played The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak” or Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” Rhonda kept close track of the top 100 songs, and our jukebox would have made her green with jealousy.
Hours later, as Betty and I punched out, she told Mr. Antonio that my first night had been a success. He gave a thumbs up from where he was wiping down the six- burner stove. “So, that means Ah- nie will come back,” Sal said. He was sharpening knives at his salad counter and reached over to give my apron’s bow a tug, undoing it. I giggled and luckily caught it before it hit the floor. The small pocket was weighed down with nickels and dimes from tips. I felt grown up and rich and pretty.
On the way home, Betty told me how Mr. Antonio and his brother had come to live in our Western Pennsylvania town. She said their parents had been killed in Mussolini’s terrible war. He’d deserted the army to care for his brother, who was almost starving. Mr. Antonio had been 23 and Sal 16 when they survived by hiding in the forests above Naples, foraging for food, trapping rabbits, before they became refugees. “Most of the time he don’t talk about it,” Betty said. “He said Sal don’t like him to bring back those days. They came to live with a cousin two towns over in that big Italian community. No money, looking for work and that’s how they came to cook for Old Frankie. They learned English fast, and cooked what he told them to. Occasionally Frankie would let them do what he called ‘an I- tal- yun night’ but mostly it was his recipes. He didn’t have any kids, and when he died five years ago he left them the restaurant. They got families now. Kids,” Betty said. “Hard workers. But we have our fun. Tony likes to sing. And Sal, he’s a joker and a genius with desserts. Wait till you get a taste of his cannoli.”
Several weeks later, on a slow, rainy night Mr. Antonio came out of the kitchen, a towel thrown over his shoulder. He turned the Open sign on the door to Closed and dinged the register to slide out a handful of dimes. “Is time for real music,” he told me as he crossed the room to stand in front of the gaudy jukebox. I was marrying the ketchup bottles like Betty taught me. She said it sounds sexy but it’s just a matter of carefully balancing one upended ketchup bottle on top of another, both standing straight up. Married. Rhonda howled when I told her about marrying the ketchup bottles at the end of shift. She said, “You don’t want to know about dead chickens.”
Mr. Antonio was slapping through the jukebox’s metal pages, punching buttons, and suddenly, a different sort of music filled the trattoria. I abandoned my eight ketchup bottles and listened in surprise to the music coming out of our jukebox. It was a woman’s voice unlike any I’d ever heard before.
Mr. Antonio noticed me just standing there and gave a little wave with his towel.
Feeling caught out, I immediately went back to work, uncoupling my ketchup bottles, wiping their red necks, screwing on their tops. “No, no, Ah- nie,” he said frowning, and waving his towel again. “No more – ferma – with the ketchup sauce. Just listen.” I heard soaring notes rising to a great height and falling, falling. Round trembling notes. Notes rippling here and there. Behind the woman’s voice was the largesse of what I later learned was a full orchestra, housed in an orchestra pit below stage, and led by the precise baton movements of a conductor in tails.
When it ended, Mr. Antonio said “It is ‘Sempre libera’ by Giuseppe Verdi. Will play again for you. Listen,” and he put more dimes in the jukebox and after checking to see that I was listening, he stood there with his eyes closed, his hands folded on his aproned paunch. Twice, from the kitchen Sal’s voice joined that of the singer, and each time Mr. Antonio called out “Sal, Sal. Silenzio.” At the end of the song, he said to me, dabbing at his eyes with his towel, that those songs were called arias, and they were telling the most important parts of the story. “Violetta is in love, but torn between two men. She must choose. Oh that Verdi, he can break your heart.”
I was alone the next day before I started work so I clinked through the jukebox’s metal pages looking for last night’s magic. I went past “Maybelline” and all the Johnny Mathis and The Shirelles, and came to Giuseppe Verdi’s “Sempre Libera” in something called La Traviata. Almost disbelieving, I put a dime into the slot and pushed Y- 4, then I backed up to one of my counter stools to sit and take it in. What was it? What did I feel? I only had my life so far – Rhonda, school, giggling at boys pushing each other in the halls to show off, home, a one- time farm in thrall to weather. But here this music was my weather – a mist, a downpour, a sleet- storm, a hurricane of sound. From that day on, when I was alone and cleaning up, I changed my nickel tips to dimes, and wove past the six tables to where the jukebox stood, waiting. Mr. Antonio would knock on the little window to the kitchen and grin approval of me and my music, sometimes slipping more dimes into my tips cup. Sal would often sing along, or do a drum roll with wooden spoons, or clang pot lids together like cymbals with Mr. Antonio shushing him. And so began my education.
The first time I played “Un bel di vedremo,” Mr. Antonio emerged from the kitchen, his forehead glistening from the steam of the discarded pasta water. “Do not drown the pasta, cushion it with water,” he would say. “You Americans, you drown your pasta.” We listened to “Un bel di vedromo” together until the end. “That one, that aria is from Madame Butterfly,” he said, his eyes dewy and sad, his mouth downturned. “Ah, poor Butterfly. Her name is Cio- Cio San and Pinkerton is no good to her. It’s a long, tragic story. Sometime, I tell you.” But it wasn’t until years later that I came to know and hear the full story of each opera. I would learn that Cio- Cio San is betrayed by Pinkerton, gives up her child, and kills herself, but by then I was hopelessly in love with opera, betrayed by opera, maybe. But back then, at 14, I wasn’t looking for love that I could trust.
In the next weeks, I marveled at the tastes and smells of Mr. Antonio’s food. I learned that roasted garlic is far different from raw garlic and a cold- pressed virgin olive oil is more important than butter. His noodles were pasta, different shapes, not just thin strands of spaghetti, and had names like tortellini, penne, fusilli, rigatoni, orzo, farfalle. Our menu said “ribbons of pasta in red sauce” next to tagliatelle, but Sal insisted I learn to say “tagliatelle.” Chin up, his pink scar glistening, his tongue plying the word, he would demonstrate how the “g” makes no sound. Mr. Antonio would stop and nod his approval as I repeated after Sal “tagliatelle. Far- fal- le. Tagliatelle.”
Sometimes on Sundays after Mass, their Italian wives came in trailing kids who went to Catholic school two towns over. Mr. Antonio had four kids and Sal two. They pulled two tables together in the middle of the restaurant and ordered plate after plate of food, all in musical Italian– pollo alla cacciatore for a dish that on the menu said “chicken in red sauce,” and braciola for “rolls of beef in red sauce.” You could tell the wives were friends, as they leaned toward each other, their expressive hands accompanying the gossip and stories they were surely telling. They dressed in stern dark suits and white blouses, but their elaborate hairdos were soft and elegant, upswept with combs and sparkling pins. Mr. Antonio and Sal took turns sitting at the head of the table. Each would whip off his apron, pull up a chair, and immediately begin to argue with his distracted wife, or it sounded like arguing at first. To this day, I like to linger in cafes in Bologna or Naples to overhear the musical back and forth of Italian bickering though I suspect it never settles anything.
Toward the end of each famiglia Sunday lunch, Sal would show up with barrels of gelato, a specialty our customers adored. Betty said gelato was the first Italian word that made it onto our menus. Sal would wink at me as he doled out scoops of chocolate and strawberry, feigning amazement that no one wanted plain old vanilla. One time, I was setting up a table nearby when he offered a spoonful to a little girl in a frilly white dress, telling her it matched her dress. She drew back, shaking her head, so he held the spoon out to me saying, “This is Ah- nie’s favorite.” Surprised, I reached for the spoon, but he brought it to my lips, and dutifully I took it in. Then I closed my eyes, pretending to swoon at how delicious it was. “More?” Sal asked, and he dug the spoon in again and handed it to me, full and glowing. The younger kids giggled and the little girl in her frilly white go- to-Mass dress said okay she’d try it. Her mother thanked me with a smiling “bene, bene.” Townspeople in the surrounding booths watched and listened in to these family tableaus and mostly smiled. No one ever played the jukebox on the Sundays Mr. Antonio and Sal’s families noisily took over the tables at center stage.
I didn’t see much of Rhonda, who was hoping we’d need another counter girl so she could leave off plucking dead chickens. Betty said, “if business picks up” to humor me, but the slow afternoons only brought in boys who joked and pouted over Cokes, sometimes with their skinny girlfriends. They played Elvis and Chuck Berry until Betty shooed them out to make way for what she called the dinner crowd. I never spent my hard- earned tips on Elvis or Connie Francis plaintively crying “Who’s Sorry Now?” And I never told Rhonda or my mother about the arias on the jukebox, though I don’t know why.
In a month I had memorized the numbers of 12 songs – to myself I practiced calling them “arias.” They were all at the end of the jukebox’s alphabet. V-6 was from Puccini’s La Boheme, W- 4 from Verdi’s Otello, X-7 from Donizetti’s Lucia Di Lammermoor. Soon I knew every note, every sound of anguish or sorrow or love melting through the words. If it registered at all, customers were probably baffled by my music. One slow evening after I played three arias in a row, Mr. Antonio suggested that when we have customers, I should only play one aria at a time. “Only one is still molto forte,” he said, his hand over his heart.
Behind Mr. Antonio’s back, Sal winked at me and said, “Our diners cannot be sobbing within their osso buco.” He liked to tease his brother, drawing me in with a smirk. I was seated on a stool at his salad station, eating a cannoli he’d put aside for me. At least once a week, he had something for me to try, usually a dessert like this luscious cannoli. “Is Sicilian specialti,” he’d said earlier, beaming at my appetite for sweets.
“No. No hearts to be broken here,” Mr. Antonio said emphatically. It was also the way he scrubbed his pots.
“But what about our Ah- nie? Your arias sometimes make her cry,” Sal said.
“You two back to work,” Mr. Antonio said. “Ah- nie must learn opera means work, from Latin. In Latin is plural opus.” I swallowed the last bite of cannoli, slid off my stool, and assured Mr. Antonio that I would hold back any future tears.
Sometimes Betty and I had the same shift, and once after I played the soulful “Sempre Libera” she said she liked the change in atmosphere, that she got tired of Elvis and Peggy Lee real fast. Another time, she stopped wiping down a booth to say, “You know, as pretty as that song is, I suspect the woman singing it isn’t very happy.” This startled me. How did she know? It took several years for me to accept this mystery, how something so beautiful, something I came to love so deeply, was often about anguish and sorrow and despair.
One night in early July when Sal and I were alone and closing up, he came out of the kitchen, and said, “Play ‘O Soave fanciulla’ from La Boheme. That aria, it is the most beautiful love duet.” He unwound his apron and tossed it onto the counter, telling me to stop working. Then he patted the stool next to him. “Sit here.” Like always, as if to signal the end of that evening’s work, he tugged on my apron’s sash. “Oh, Sal,” I said, laughing, and caught it before it tumbled to the floor. He shushed me, and in a rough low voice he sang along with the music, swaying back and forth, his shoulder touching my shoulder. I later realized I was seeing him anew at that moment: a handsome man, with expressive eyebrows above dark eyes and a sliver of scar, a solid chest, his round shoulder dipping against mine. His eyes were closed as the music swelled, and his voice followed it word for word, and at the end his shoulder remained against my shoulder for seconds past the final note. Eyes still closed, he held his hand on his heart just like Mr. Antonio, but with an intensity I didn’t understand.
And then I did. A week later, Mr. Antonio again left early, apologizing for the extra work. He gave me four dimes saying, “Tonight begin with Verdi.” When I thanked him he clasped his hands, like the tenor preparing to sing, and then he left with a reminder for Sal to turn the flame under the stockpot to low. I pushed W- 4, waiting for the first astonishing notes of “Si un Jour” before I went back to filling salt and pepper shakers. A few minutes into the aria, Sal pushed through the swinging door, crooning “Ah- nie, Ah- nie.” Then he fiddled with the jukebox and suddenly music flooded the room as if the singers, the orchestra, and the audience had entered this very space. “Come on, Sal,” I shouted. “I won’t hear my customers’ orders.” Then we both laughed, because it was now past closing time.
“Stop that,” Sal said, pushing aside my tray of salt shakers. Then taking my hand, he led me from behind the counter and through the swinging door into the kitchen. The lights were turned down low and two simmering stock pots on the stove added to the evening’s humidity. At his stainless steel salad counter he motioned for me to sit on what I’d come to think of as my dessert stool. But tonight no dessert was waiting.
Tonight he stood in front of me, and said that he had a favor to ask. Un favore. Then he leaned against my knees and lowering his gaze he said, “Ahnie, just this.” Slowly he unbuttoned the first button of my blouse. I don’t know why I sat there.– my arms hanging straight down, limp, my knees pressed together – but I did. Maybe it was the music. I knew every note and every note to come. I knew when the music would stop. Maybe that is why I wasn’t afraid. I don’t remember being afraid. I might even have been curious.
I didn’t move. I watched six pearl buttons come undone. He looked up at me when he undid the last button. “Yes?” he said. “Ahnie?” I could have said no. But this was Sal. The same Sal who pulled the sashes of my apron every night and taught me tagliatelle and far- fal- le. I could have pushed him away and stood up, saying, “Are you crazy?” But I didn’t stop him – maybe because I was still wearing my pink apron.
One at a time, he slipped the two straps of my cotton bra off my shoulders, slid them down my arms. When I still didn’t move, he slowly pulled my bra down to where it rested on the waistband of my apron, my apron spread across my lap. Gently, he cupped my breasts in his two hands, saying again, “Just this.” His face was inches from mine, and above his scar, his eyes were hooded, downcast. I knew what he was seeing because I’d done the same thing in my bedroom, in front of the mirror, my curved palms filled with breasts I knew were large for my age, my thumbs brushing my nipples. As his thumbs were doing now. Was this so different? My own hands felt full in this moment. I watched his hands. I didn’t close my eyes. I don’t know why but I stayed there – my arms motionless, my knees pressed together – stayed there till the last note, but I did.
In the sudden silence, he moved first. Breathing deeply, he slid my bra straps up each arm and over each shoulder, then carefully he pulled my bra up to cradle my breasts. He buttoned one button then stepped back, and I knew I was left to do the other buttons. We both watched my shaking fingers. Finally he looked up at me and I remember that we both seemed surprised. “Please,” he said, his dark eyes unsure, perplexed. “Ahnie, you must not tell.”
“I’m fourteen,” I said. It seemed unattached to anything.
“I know, Ah- nie,” he said. “It will never be more.” At the time, I didn’t wonder what that meant.
I slid off the stool and then like always, Sal suddenly tugged on my apron’s sash, and just like always my apron dipped from the weight of my tips. And just like always I caught it before it hit the floor. We both laughed, perhaps relieved to fall back on the endof- the- night’s usual playfulness. Then I punched my timecard, and called a breathless “good night” as Sal bent down to adjust the flame under Mr. Antonio’s simmering stock pots to as low as it would go.
My mother was waiting to drive me home. My bedroom mirror was waiting to show me what had happened. I stood in front of it and slipped my bra down to my waist, then I held my breasts. I squeezed my nipples, something Sal had not done. In bed, I hoped for a dream or nightmare to tell me what had happened. Would I tell an astonished Rhonda, who even though she swore to secrecy would certainly tell our friends; my mother who would regret allowing me work at the Trattoria; Betty who might feel responsible for putting me in Sal’s way, knowing what a flirt he was I think she would believe me. These scenarios conjured up by my 14-year- old self made a chastised or repentant Sal seem superfluous, almost an afterthought. Most of all, I couldn’t bear that it might have been my last evening at Mr. Antonio’s Trattoria. The last aria for how long. Mr. Antonio had ordered more recordings of “our music.” He said the jukebox man was coming by any day now for their installation. I said nothing.
The next day, Mr. Antonio admired our closing up. Lights off. Freezer door latched tight. “And the stock is perfetto,” he said sipping from a spoon, praising Sal’s calibration of the flame. Sal greeted me with his usual “Ciao, Ah- nie,” as if only the music had happened.
The following week, the jukebox man came, rolling his eyes over Mr. Antonio’s requests, as if certain I was the Elvis or Little Richard type. The jukebox was shut down, pulled out and restocked. Then once again its lights were turned on as if preparing a stage. Mr. Antonio had requested “Mira, o Norma” from Bellini’s Norma; “La ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot. Soon, I knew them all, note for note.
Sometimes late at night Mr. Antonio gave me extra dimes to see what I would play, always approving of my choice. One night as I was in the kitchen, eating a slice of tiramisu and following the last notes of a Puccini aria, he said, “Someday, Ah- nie, when you are much older, you must go to the grand opera halls with crystal chandeliers and three or four balconies and a whole orchestra playing below the stage.” With sweeping gestures above his stove, the burners off for the night, he described the opulent opera house in Naples where he and Sal visited their one surviving uncle every other year. “Right, Salvatore. We must go next summer.” Sal nodded, a faraway look in his eyes I knew well. Mr. Antonio went on, saying, “Someday you will know each opera’s story – La Traviata, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Norma, and mio dio, Wagner’s The Ring Cycle,” and here he closed his eyes and shook his head with an angry sadness. “Yes, even the Germans,” he said. “Even the Germans.”
The next time Sal and I were left to close up I imagined Sal watching Mr. Antonio leave, perhaps trying to resist what he would ask me to do. An hour later, the jukebox on high, he again took my hand and led me through the swinging door to the stool. The lights in the kitchen were low but soon Sal and I could both see that my blouse was open, the buttons undone, my breasts bare to his gaze and mine, bare to his cupped hands, his touch. But this time he stepped forward slightly and tucked two fingers under my chin, tilting my face up to his, bending toward me. Our lips were inches apart. His scar nearer still. “No,” I said, my hands against his chest, pushing. I leaned back so far he caught my wrists to keep me from falling.
“No,” I said, panting, regaining my balance, my will. I said, “Just this.” Freeing myself from his grasp, I looked down at my open blouse, my breasts. “Only this.” He nodded, and filled his hands once more till the music ended. And just like that, the night was over. I went home and slowly undressed in front of my mirror. This time, it never occurred to me to tell.
It happened several more times before the summer was over but it was never again more than “just this,” though in my heart I knew I could have made it even less. I imagined saying “no” when Sal came to lead me into the kitchen. I imagined Sal saying, “Oh Ah- nie, you are make me sad.” But I said nothing, told no one. I never said “no.” By summer’s end, I knew the notes and words of every aria by heart, and though I’d learned the stories of the sad, ill- treated women in Turondot, La Traviata, Madame Butterfly, somehow they gave me courage to shape my own story.
That fall my mother’s brother said he needed Mom to do the bookkeeping for his growing hardware business, so we sold what was left of the farm and moved to Ohio. I, too, was needed in the family business. So together with Wade, my 13-year- old cousin, I stocked shelves with nuts and bolts and nails, with fans and toasters, and mops and brooms, and learned how to mix paint. A boombox playing the top 100 kept us company and made me miss Rhonda, miss the arias and their beautiful sad stories. I was 15 when I had my first boyfriend, who sang with me in the school’s chorus. He was 16. We started at the beginning. It was my first kiss.
Before we left Pennsylvania, Mr. Antonio and Sal had prepared a goodbye dinner for Mom and me and Betty and Rhonda, who was promised my job next summer. She told Mr. Antonio that she’d never eat chicken again in her life. “Ah, but you do not know the chicken cacciatore,” Sal chided her. He served us two of my favorite desserts, saying he would miss my appetites. I didn’t ever say anything to Rhonda about Sal. And I could tell he knew this. It might be my one regret, but everyone has their own story. I even imagined Rhonda laughing and swatting Sal away with her order pad. Or maybe not. The jukebox was never silent, its arias a backdrop to this dinner. My mother was alert to these new sounds, and would come to love opera as much as I did. But I could tell the music puzzled Rhonda, till between courses she perused the metal pages, and was reassured by the Elvis, and Johnny Mathis, and Connie Francis records that occupied the alphabet all the way to the letter V. At the end of the evening, Mr. Antonio gave me a gleaming red record player and my first complete opera, three LPs of Renata Tibaldi in La Boheme. Tonight, thirty years later, Un Ballo in Maschera is playing. La Boheme will be later in the spring. My husband and I sit in the first row of the first balcony at the Met, a seat we’ve held for many seasons. The orchestra tunes up, a glorious cacophony of sound, violins, cellos, a penetrating bassoon. Programs stop fluttering and fall to silk or serge or linen laps. House lights dim. My husband of twenty years knows my secret and reaches for my hand. I close my eyes and I am listening again with Mr. Antonio, and yes, also with Sal. I’m a young girl with her pocket full of dimes – a young girl marrying ketchup bottles, carrying orders to Mr. Antonio and to Sal in the kitchen, a young girl sitting on the stool for just this, for love.
Pamela Painter’s most recent book is Fabrications: New and Selected Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2020). Her stories have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Five Points, and Image, and have been produced by Word Theatre in Los Angeles, New York City, and London.