Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones: A Novel of Coming of Age Catholic

By Sebastian Gerard

In the years just after the end of World War II Paolo Bruni and Nicola “Nunzi” D’Annunzio are two goombahs coming of age sexually in an Italian-American neighborhood in Rochester, N.Y. They are the first in their immigrant families offered the prospect of a college education when they are both are admitted to St. Issac Jogues Jesuit High, a new school founded in their city in 1954 by the renowned teaching order of the Society of Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682220757

Book preview

One

October 1987

The phone beeped its annoying little electronic beeps. Damn, Robyn muttered, her eyes still shut in the first stages of sleep. She picked up. Hello … okay… just a sec, I’ll get him, she answered coldly.

I was in the shower and when two shouts failed she stomped into the bathroom to get me.

Hold on, he’s coming, she said flatly in the phone, tossed the receiver on my pillow, and flopped back into bed.

I sat down on the opposite edge of the bed, still toweling my hair, and wearily picked up the phone. Paul Bruni.

Good evening Mr. Bruni. Excuse the lateness of my call, but we’re conducting a very important survey and would appreciate it if you could answer one quick question. I immediately thought to slam the receiver down, then decided to look in the bed stand drawer for the whistle Robyn had bought to blow into the phone when she was receiving obscene calls a few month ago. I couldn’t find it.

Yeah, what’s the question, I said in a stony voice.

Well, sir, we’re trying to determine how many Americans are of the opinion that the Pope has a wooden ass, would you mind giving …?

Nunz?! I said loud enough to elicit a frown from Robyn, is that you, you greaseball wop?

"Mr. Bruni, there’s no need to be rude, and you yourself with an Italian surname. Surely, you must know that most of our popes have been Italian as well. Now do you …?

Is a hobby horse Catholic? I blurted between declarative and interrogative.

Congratulations Mr. Bruni. That is the correct response, and I am happy to inform you that you have won a plenary indulgence for all your past sins, of which I am sure there is a considerable number, now …

Where the hell are you anyway?

LA, he said. Now he sounded more like Nunzi. Naw.

"Yah, the city of angles and movie stars, of course Hey, there goes a little cherub by the window right now. Liz, honey, did you see the cute little angel?

"Liz? Liz who?

Liz Taylor. Who else, this is Hollywood, ain’t it? Hold on, I’m gonna put Liz on the line. The caller’s voice now sounded about a foot away from the phone. Liz, Elizabetta, bambina, put some clothes on and come over and say hello to this nice Mr. Bruni.

I was even surer it was him. You crazy bastard, where are you, really?

Like I told ya, in LA. I came out here to be Liz’s next husband, she’s gonna convert to the Church.

OK, OK, when did you get here? I interrupted, still unsure of where he was calling from.

Last night. This is the first chance I got to call. Liz has been all over me since I arrived. She can’t get enough pepperoni….

"Seriously, whereabouts in LA?

Westwood, I think. I can’t see any signs, there’s so much goddam smog. I can barely see Liz…. Oh, but I can feel her. No, Liz, no! Ya know what that does to me. Later, later, we’ll play National Velvet, again; I’ll be the horse this time ….

C’mon, Nunz, quit playing with yourself. How long are you here? We gotta get together. I looked over at Robyn; she was being kept awake and not happy about it. I tried to give her an I won’t be much longer look.

Three days.

How come?

I’m out here for a food brokers conference. Then I gotta go over to Cal Tech and help them out on some top secret nuclear stuff. Has to do with a new pizza we’re developing, so don’t breathe a word about it.

Screw the food brokers, I said, trying to keep the conversation on one track, we gotta get together! Then, still harboring some doubts, if you really are in LA.

If I wasn’t I would have called collect. Of course I’m here. You, me, Liz, we’re gonna do all the Hollywood parties, then I’ll take you to Disneyland and you can shit your pants on some scary rides.

When? I’m just over in Santa Monica, ya know.

T’morrow, the conference doesn’t start until the afternoon.

OK. It’ll be great to see you.

It’ll be great to be seen.

Christ, how long has it been, Nunz?

"I dunno, eight inches, maybe ten, al dente. Who measures anymore?

Basta with the vaudeville? I was almost shouting from excitement. Robyn was glaring fiercely when I glanced over my shoulder at her again.

She hissed: It’s LATE, that’s what it is!

I held up a supplicating index finger to indicate I was trying to finish the conversation. Years, ragazzo, how many years has it been?

I can’t remember. Who was pope at the time? Roncalli maybe?

I couldn’t keep from smiling. I had all but forgotten over the years that we used to refer to the popes by their family names and had completely forgotten how we had gotten into this pope business in the first place. Probably Pacelli was still around, but it seems long enough ago to have been Borgia, I answered, unable to resist.

Borgia, now there was a pontiff for ya. Betcha ole Borgia had a wooden …

Can we get back on track here. What time?

Hell, Borgia must’ve been around the 16th cent…

Tomorrow, strunz, what time tomorrow?

"Sorry, you know me and the Holy Father. How about prima colazione, say around ten-thirty. Liz likes to romp a little in the morning. She puts on that Eddie Fisher recording of ‘Oh Mine Papa’ and goes wild. She likes to…"

What’s your hotel?

We’re at the Westwood Mar Vista, but don’t try to come by boat, it’s miles from the ocean."

I’ll find it. I’ll see you in the lobby at ten-thirty.

"Just look for the Italian with Liz Taylor. Hey, how will I recognize you. You must be old now, huh?

Older. See ya tomorrow, goombah. We got a lot to catch up on. I hadn’t used corrupted Italian for decades. I also realized that I was looking forward to tomorrow with apprehension as well as excitement.

Domani, he replied. As I was putting the phone down I could still hear my boyhood friend, now holding the phone away from his mouth: "Coming Liz darling, coming cara mia …"

I pulled the towel from around my neck, hung up the phone and muttered to myself, Christ, he’s as crazy as ever.

I looked over at Robyn. She was still awake. What the hell was that about? she asked combatively. I never heard such a stupid conversation; popes, hobby horses, ‘goofatz’ and ‘goombah’. And who in hell is this Nunz person? Whatever. I’m glad that guy didn’t call when we were doing it.

She was referring obliquely to the fact that she usually liked to keep making love when a call from someone for me interrupted us. She would even insist that I answer the phone at those times, and admitted that she liked to watch the consternation on my face as I tried to do two incongruous things at the same time. It excited her, like doing something behind people’s backs. Robyn seemed to particularly enjoy it if it was a woman calling me, especially a former girlfriend. I always found it embarrassing, but her ardor seemed so increased by it that I reluctantly went along. It sounded like some sort of prank call.

No, just an old buddy who is rather … ah, eccentric. That description was a poor fit.

Crazy, you mean?

No, he’s always been different; it’s just his way of looking at things. I haven’t heard from him in a very long time. We were like brothers when we were growing up back in Rochester, and it’s really strange to talk to him again, like…, I wanted to find an appropriate word because I was still trying to sort out my feelings, like half of me is sixteen years old and the other half is… a… kind’ve old. I put my hand over on Robyn’s naked thigh as if I wanted some reassurance that I wasn’t old. She picked up the cue, patting my hand with hers.

You were about sixteen-years-old about an hour ago, she said, smiling. I liked that.

Reassurance appreciated. But I wondered if there was any significance to the fact that, at twenty-nine, she had chosen exactly the age differential between us.

What was it that you told me the first time we made love, something in Latin? ’De gustibus’ something?"

I suppressed the urge to laugh at how inappropriate that phrase would have been in that circumstance. "No, I said, ‘Tu laetificas juventutem meam’. It was probably a bit sacrilegious because it’s from the Roman Catholic Mass. In the Mass it’s actually addressed to God." I decided to leave out of the explanation that when I said it I might also have been thanking God at the same time; it had been my first intimacy in a long time.

Oh, I thought you made it up just for me. What’s it mean again? she asked.

Well, somewhat loosely, it means that you made me feel young.

Robyn moved closer and rubbed her hand over my chest. Because I made you feel good?

More than just physically. Sort of …

It feels a little weird to think that you were using a prayer to tell me how you felt—especially about that.

It wasn’t really a religious thing. I didn’t want to get into a subject that I was still so confused about. Furthermore, Robyn had no formal religious background of any kind, and I knew from previous discussions that we simply were not on the same level about religion. It was more like an utterance. Like sometimes you say ‘oh my God’ during lovemaking, to mean it’s wonderful, the feeling, the pleasure, like ‘heavenly’.

I say that!

Sometimes.

I don’t remember ever saying that.

I do. You don’t say it much, but I remember you said it a couple times. I instantly regretted the reference to her silence during lovemaking. It was a sore point between us. I had stopped mentioning that I liked to talk with her during lovemaking because it made me feel like we were even closer, and it prolonged it. The last time it ended in an argument and two weeks of abstinence. That was months ago, but I still retained some hurt and anger over her statement during the argument that I was the only guy she ever met who asked her to do verbal sex. Maybe that was why she preferred I was talking to someone else on the phone.

A frown came over her face. Now you’re making fun of me. She withdrew her hand from my chest. Now maybe you can understand why I don’t like talking during our lovemaking.

C’mon, give me a break, I pleaded. I didn’t mean anything critical by it. There wouldn’t be anything unusual about a religious feeling during sex. But I stopped, fearing another period of abstinence.

Well it would be unusual for me. You make things too complicated, Paul, she said, yawning the last words. I knew that when Robyn got sleepy it came over her with the suddenness of a West Coast sunset. But I love you, she added reflexively, giving me a peck on the cheek and flipping over on her other side. She didn’t like sleeping on bad feelings.

I love you, too, I replied, copying her flat tone. She caught the tone.

Do you? Really? She twisted her head back over her shoulder. There was a glint of concern in her sleepy eyes.

Does a hobby horse have a wooden ass? What? I don’t get it.

It means ‘yes’ I do love you.

I’ll have to take your word for it for now. She turned her head back over and bounced it on the pillow a couple of times.

OK, g’night. I looked at her for a minute. It pleased me to look at her when she was sleeping, at the lovely form her wellproportioned body gave to the sheets, at her light-brown hair caressing her neck and shoulders. She seemed so innocent when she was sleeping. I often awakened earlier than her in the morning and would softly slide over to smell her hair and the moist, musky odor of sleep that clung to her young body.

I forced my gaze away from her and reached for the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini on the nightstand that I had been slowly making my way through for months with the idea of maybe doing a docudrama on the artist’s life. By the time I located the place on the page where he had left off my eyes were half shut. I replaced the book on the nightstand, switched off the lamp, and settled my head straight back on the pillow.

My mind was drifting when an olfactory memory came to me—the combined smell of hot naugahyde and motor oil from the seat of an old car that had been parked in a sweltering garage for months. After more than three decades the odors were as identifiable and powerful as that momentous day.

Nunzi and I had shot baskets with great anticipation in the alley that day, hardly making a shot with the knowledge that Matteo would be letting us hold the candle that afternoon. At sixteen Matteo was four years older than Nunzi and me, but the age difference might as well have been a generation. Matteo, in addition to having his pubic hair had been laid and had his driver’s license. By the masculine standards of the guys in the neighborhood he was a made guy. At least he claimed that he had been laid, and it was Nunzi’s mocking refusal to believe him that had led to this particular afternoon’s promised demonstration.

Nunzi and I were near to believing that it wouldn’t come off when we heard the signal rapping on the wall of Krause’s garage abutting the alley two doors down from where the basketball hoop had been affixed to a lamppost. Matteo opened the side door just wide enough for us to squeeze in, our hearts pounding with anticipation and already a tight feeling overtaking our loins. Matteo was naked except for his athletic socks. He pulled the door carefully closed behind us and slipped a piece of wood through the hasp on the inside, turning the inside of the garage pitch dark except for a small stream of sunlight that made a thin wedge of light zigzag across the tools hanging on the opposite wall. There was a strong odor of motor oil mixed with sawdust made extra thick in the air by the mid-Summer heat.

No noise or talking, Matteo whispered as he struck a match and handed the candle to Nunzi.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I got my first glimpse of Heidi Krause though the open suicide door of the 1942 Ford sedan. She was naked! The tightening increased. I had seen her around the neighborhood for years but had never spoken to her; now I was about to say hi when I remembered Matteo’s warning. I felt silly when I lifted my hand in a feeble wave. She just looked back, smiling. I was amazed at her lack of self-consciousness.

C’mon, you guys can watch through the window, Matteo whispered, walking over to the car. I noticed that Matteo was fully stiff, which caused him to walk funny. Nunzi and I pressed our faces up against the side window, Nunzi adjusting the candle for the maximum illumination. Now we could clearly see her breasts, slightly flattened because she was leaning back against the seat, but I thought they looked larger than when I had leered at her in a tight sweater.

Really nice tits, Nunzi whispered just before Matteo took them in his hands. Then she opened her legs, but before we could get a good look at that shadowed area Matteo was over her, already thrusting. Heidi’s mouth and eyes opened wide simultaneously and she emitted little moans and squeaks as Matteo increased the pace of his thrusts. The car swayed and our noses smeared sweat and grease on the windows. Heidi’s head swung from side to side and she looked blankly at, almost through, her spectators. She didn’t seem to care who was watching. She tugged at Matteo’s sweaty shoulders, pulling him toward her. I reflexively pulled at my pants to make more room in them. Nunzi took no notice of the hot wax running down the candle onto the back of his hand.

Then Matteo convulsed and grunted, thrusting wildly and rapidly, his face contorted in an expression I later came to feel made men seem silliest in such an intimate situation.

Ahhh, that was terrific, Matteo exulted with a self-congratulatory grin, pulling himself back off Heidi.

Not for me, Heidi snapped, I need more.

Gotta wait awhile, he answered.

No, now, you selfish bastard? she demanded. A scowl overtook her broad, Germanic face. Now! she insisted.

Quiet! he shot back in a loud whisper. Then, more quietly, Ya want the whole neighborhood in here?

But Heidi was too aroused. She turned toward us. You want to have a good look, do ya, c’mon, come in here and look, she said, opening her legs wider.

Yah, take a look, Matteo said, moving closer to the opposite door so he wouldn’t create a shadow.

Nunzi and I forced ourselves onto the floor of the back seat and Nunzi moved the candle closer, erasing the shadows between her legs. Then Heidi said, You’ve seen mine, now show me yours … fair’s fair.

OK, Nunzi quickly responded, handing me the candle and reaching for his belt buckle. I was seized with the urge to run out of the garage; Heidi suddenly seemed threatening. At seventeen she was older than Matteo, and fully developed. More woman than he was man. It seemed odd to me that she could be so demanding, sitting there naked with her legs apart. A panicky apprehension set in, something like what I felt when I and a few of the guys had sneaked into that synagogue last year, like there were strange gods in that place that might snatch my soul.

The waxy odor of the candle, mingled with that of the heated naugahyde seat, the smell of the oil and the heated, exotic fragrance of the aroused Heidi formed an incense fit for some forbidden, soul-altering ceremony. I wanted to run, but I also wanted to know the mysteries.

You, too, Heidi said reaching for my belt buckle, you have to show yours too, Pauly. She said my name! I couldn’t resist. I submitted. I would have done anything she asked.

Later that day, when I was staring at the ceiling in my room, models of my P-51 Mustang and B-17 hanging down, I felt somehow transformed, unable to sort out which feeling was the strongest, the sense of manhood attained, the dangers of mortal sin, the shame, or the bravery at not having panicked. My sense of accomplishment was mixed with one of vulnerability. How irresistible urges so primal and powerful asserted themselves, flinging aside so easily every moral admonition I had theretofore supposed would guide me safely though a world of temptations. The moment I touched her I knew that all the catechistic conditioning was a flimsy barricade against what this pagan Aphrodite had unleashed in me. The gift that I had been told to preserve for the one and only woman of my life had been squandered on the neighborhood slut. You got sloppy seconds, Pauly, Matteo had laughed afterwards.

I knew that day I would never be the same. In that crude, aboriginal way I had become a man, but it brought with it none of the assurances I had expected. I could wear with pride the mantle of neighborhood manhood that separated the laid from the un-laid, the men from the boys. Like those natives I had read about I had risked great danger, not the goring of a lion or some other peril; I had risked getting caught in flagrante in that steamy garage, I had risked failure to perform. I recollected Nunzi, failing to remain al dente at the crucial moment, cursing his cock like some disloyal friend. And he had risked his immortal soul until Saturday and confessed to Fr. Cicerone that he had committed adultery, providing the priest with an amusing respite from the droning litanies of venial sins of the legions of Italian widows.

Over and over again the refrain of my rite of manhood replayed itself wherever I was, at the dinner table, in class, even in church: Let me, Pauly, let me put it in for you … let me, Heidi had insisted; how I didn’t resist; how the feeling of power overwhelmed me when her grin turned into an expression of ecstasy; how her mouth opened to emit soft moans mixed with a slightly stale breath; how her eyelids fluttered and then opened wide with the look of some frightened antelope about to be sacrificed, driving me to heights of my own that made me feel dizzy. Paradoxically, I hadn’t felt this emotionally moved since the day of my first communion, filing out of the church in my pure white communion suit to the exultant strains of Holy God We Praise Thy Name, the pungent incense strong in my nostrils, my whole body hot and prickly. How like a sacrament my sexual ecstasy had seemed, how like a sacrifice, how, for a moment, her frightened animal eyes had made me, thirteen-year-old Paolo Bruni, seem like some sacrificing high priest, some god-like being in which all the creative-destructive powers of the universe were momentarily poised for release from my instrument.

The dualities swirled in my mind: how could the sacrifice seem like a sacrament, something unholy seem holy? There were no crisp moral boundaries between sacred and profane after that; now it was all confused.

I opened my eyes in the shadowy room. For a brief moment I imagined seeing shadows on the ceiling from my long gone P-51 and B-17. I smiled in the dark and then put the memory aside like some little memento I might place in a drawer for safekeeping. Does the Pope have a wooden ass? I mumbled, before dropping off to sleep, smiling.

Two

Nicola D’ Annunzio

Go to the finocchio bar first, Nunzi’s mother used to tell us, they give lots of tips because they got no children to feed, … and they all going to Hell anyway."

Sitting there, waiting for Nunzi to show up for our breakfast and reunion after four decades, I had plenty of time to reflect back on our childhood adventures. When we were kids back in Rochester, Nunzi’s mother, Mrs. D, made pizza that the gods would kill each other over. Even though she wasn’t from Naples, from which the gods of pizza hail, it was pizza the way Neapolitans made it, the right way, the traditional way, the Italian way, and what should be the only way.

Mr. D built the oven for her in the garage on the alley. It was very traditional Neapolitan oven made of brick, the type of oven that gave her pizza that authentic Neapolitan flavor, that crispy, thin crust, which she adorned it with some olive oil, oregano, her own roasted tomatoes, and a mere sprinkling of Romano. That was it—ambrosia. I loved that pizza, and I’ve never had any as good since those days when Nunzi and I would go off selling it in the bars at the edges and beyond our neighborhood.

Originally, Mr. D built the oven for her to make pizza for the family and to take to the annual Columbus Day picnics at the park. But after he took some to the local B & O bar where he played cards with his goombahs from the old country word got around that this was the best pizza in the entire Italian-American community. Not long after, we were filling peach basket after peach basket with slices of her pizza in wax paper sandwich bags and peddling them to the various bars in our immediate universe: the B&O railroad workers bar up the street, the Irish bar a few blocks away, the finocchio bar and, of course, the Italian bar where the local cosa nostra guys hung out. She didn’t want us going into the Black or Puerto Rican bars which were a little further on, but sometimes we peddled slices to Blacks and Puerto Ricans off the street.

It was 1949, and there were no pizza franchises and Mrs. D’s pizza was a nickel a slice. Nunzi and I were nine years old, and our delivery service consisted of a peach basket on each arm full of pizza slices in wax bags under a small cloth to keep them warm. Often we would sell out completely in a matter of minutes. Not only were we earning the money that would be the tuition for Nunzi’s education, but we were getting an education in the sociology the inner-city that some might argue was perhaps a little too mature for boys of such a tender age. We heard the foulest language, witnessed bar fights, prostitutes in action and, at the finocchio bar, homosexual escapades and the antics of drag queens. The homos called us putti or alter boys, but they never gave us any trouble. Sometimes we witnessed enough in that bar that we didn’t have to rely upon our imaginations to answer the wonder of what homosexuals engaged in. Not only were they heavy tippers, but we also never walked out of that bar with a single slice of pizza left in our baskets.

Eventually, Mrs. D was supplying several restaurants with her pizza, having built another oven, and enlisted the next-door Polish lady as an assistant. I suppose it was a classic example of an immigrant group coming to the United States and exploiting something from its own culture as a means of getting an economic foothold in the new country. Later, her pizza would be delivered in boxes with the name Pizza D’Annunzio’s and an illustration of the Annunciation by a Leonardo DaVinci.

I tried to summon the exquisite flavor of Mrs. D’s pizza as I sat there waiting for Nunzi to show up. It gave me time to reflect further on the pedigree of my first best friend.

Benedetto Benny D’Annunzio, Nunzi’s father, was Americanized in only one respect—he loved to watch the game of basketball. For all other intents and purposes he remained Italian through and through. Arriving in steerage in his early twenties, like thousands of others, did his stint with pick and shovel in the streets of New York City, and sent most of the money back home to a modest village in the Appenines for safe-keeping by his brother. There had been no doubt in his mind that he would return there, marry Cecelia Ricci, and settle down to wine-making, wine-drinking, and bambino-making.

He didn’t count on the streets of New York not being paved with gold— they were not even paved, and I was the one who paved them, he liked to say, repeating the oft-told story—nor did he count on falling in love with Simonetta Baldessare on the ship on the way over, although she was in a higher passenger class.

Somebody had plans for me, he told me one Summer day on the porch glider, using as close a reference to God as he would allow himself, and betraying the fatalism that afflicts those whose lives seem not to have conformed to their own designs. "Not important plans, capisce; I wasn’t supposed to become president of America. But things happen to you in life that make you feel … como? … like a marionetta. Here I was writing my brother in Italy asking him to apologize to Cecelia for me and all the while he’s got one hand up her skirt and gambling away my money with the other. They married … probably had to. For a long time I wanted to go back there and settle up with them. Italian honor, you know? But why? I was off the hook with Cecelia and had to pay for it with a little pride and some money. So I never go back to live in Italia. Anyway, I thought I would lose Simonetta if I went back. I would have lost the best thing in my life. What she saw in me I don’t ever know. She was religious; I just went through the motions like most Italian men. She was ah … ah … serenissima; and me, I was always getting into fights. She was patient, not me. I didn’t like to work. The only thing I could do good was screw all night. But she was a virgin when I married her. And I got the sheets to prove it. No, I shouldn’t make jokes, she was … you know. And only one sweet-name I called her, Dea, my goddess. Not like the BVM, you know, I mean like a real Latin goddess, I worshipped her and desired her at the same time. But I never felt worthy of her." I remember him taking a deep draft of wine after this long emotionalreverie, adjusting himself for his bad back and a middle distance gaze coming to his eyes.

Other parts of the story I received at different times from Nunzi. The day after Benedetto found out about his brother and Cecelia he headed for Grand Central Station to by a ticket to Rochester, where Simonetta was living with her uncle, Angelo Baldessare, the part owner of a modestly-successful shoe company. Angelo was patient and generous with Benedetto in spite of his frequent fist fights that Angelo felt worsened the reputation of Italian’s already smeared by the Cosa Nostra. He got in fights because in those days the Americans regarded any Italian as a crook; it was always the prejudice that most stirred his blood. Despite his eventual naturalization he always referred to those Americans. Those Americans, they think who they are, he often said ambiguously.

Since Simonetta loved him Angelo endeavored to make Benedetto into something. But despite his sending his bellicose countryman to school to learn to read and write English, Benny never showed much ambition to move up in the shoe company. Angelo had tried to coax him into the office many times after he learned to read and write, but for Benny literacy was for reading about Italian history, not something to be misspent on accounts and ledgers. He preferred staying on at the loading dock. Benny didn’t share his benefactor’s zeal to make it in America and prove that Italian immigrants could