Mahogany Jim and the Nightcrawlers and Other Tales

By Ralph Maltese

From the dank cafeteria of PS 28 in the Bronx to the sun-drenched crest of St. Regis Mountain in the Adirondacks, Ralph Maltese's memoir captures the joys and struggles of growing up in the 1950s and 60s. Added to the typical experiences of a baby boomer immersed in the post-war years, then caught up in the turmoil of the Age of Aquarius, are the particular pleasures…and sometimes challenges…of Ralph's extended Italian-American family. Readers will meet Jim and Lee, Ralph's parents and the foundation of his universe, along with his pesky little brother Jimmy and his revered older brother Raymond. Then there is Uncle Louie, the opera singing uncle who always makes Ralph smile; fastidious Cousin Ralph, who invites his relatives out on his boat and gets more than he bargained for; Bob Jones, Jim's hunting and fishing buddy, who becomes both a mentor and a nemesis to Ralph…and many more unforgettable characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667850849

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Copyright © 2022 Ralph Maltese. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-66785-083-2 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-66785-084-9 (eBook)

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Dedication

Life is a sequence of efforts to fashion good memories.

I thank Lee and Jim, my parents,

for the memories they shaped for me.

Lee and Jim on their Wedding Day

Table of Contents

Foreword

Being Yellow

My Mother and the Pin Man

Ash Wednesday

Mahogany Jim and Jake’s on Friday Nights

Blue Jackets and Yellow Jackets

Mahogany Jim and the Foolish One

Mahogany Jim and the Knuckle Buster

Mahogany Jim and the Barber of Seville

Mahogany Jim and the Boulder in the Basement

Mahogany Jim and the Potential Poacher

Mahogany Jim and the Nightcrawlers

Mahogany Jim and the Daredevles

Mahogany Jim and the Betrayal

Mahogany Jim and the Chipmunk Circus

The Perfect Rose

Mahogany Jim and the Halo Moon

Mahogany Jim and Cold River

Epilogue

Foreword

We make up stories all the time. We concoct stories about what we are going to do in the future, stories about what is happening in the present, and stories about the events of the past. Our behavior is often dictated by the stories going on in our heads. We buy holiday gifts based on the anticipated reaction of the receiver, attend meetings that we have already attended in our imaginations, wage war predicated on the non-fiction and fictions our brain manufactures, and share the past with our children as we remember it colored by time, experience, and, often, wishful thinking. The last five letters of history are story, and a history is one writer’s choice of facts which he uses to tell his story of what happened.

So it is with a memoir. Some scientists say that, as we age, the most recent past is not as vivid as memories of a long ago time. I have to burn some energy to recall what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I can still smell the Cream of Wheat my mother served in our Bronx apartment in the fifties. The movie title I watched last week is forgotten, along with the details of the plot, while the projector in my brain can run images of Flash Gordon battling Ming the Merciless or Captain Video blasting off to the moon, or Davy Crockett swinging Old Betsy against the enemy at the Alamo.

The past is inherently sad. It is sad for a number of reasons. First, replaying the past in our heads recalls those loved ones who are no longer with us. Second, every childhood is peppered with the skinned knees and hurt feelings that are prime ingredients of maturation. Lastly, childhood memories recall the joys of wonder, the rapture of seeing and learning about a world where everything is new and open to ideas and possibilities, and, for most of us, that wonder is lost in seas of adult experience and cynicism. Only the bravest and most imaginative among us can recapture that wonder, and, even if we do, the feeling is never quite the rush that we felt as children.

Despite the sadness, recalling the past is worth our time because the adventure also conjures up the often comic naivete that afflicts all youth. Since we did not possess a chimney in our Bronx apartment, my parents convinced me that Santa came down our dumbwaiter, which is why I stuck my head in that trash conveyance every five minutes on Christmas Eve, listening for the jingling of reindeer bells.

Tennessee Williams, in his stage directions to The Glass Menagerie, writes Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. My memoir of a boy growing up in the Bronx, fond of Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy and Ramar of the Jungle, is also dimly lit, sentimental, and as realistic as stories will allow. Mentored by a father who constantly tried to prepare me for the tyrannies of adulthood, and nourished by a mother who constantly tried to prevent me from suffering from those same tyrannies, I navigated the seas of childhood constantly falling back on my parents’ inherent wisdom, goodness, and love.

When we moved from the Bronx to a New Jersey suburb, I had to relearn what I thought I knew. Stickball now became baseball, first base a piece of cardboard on the grass instead of a fire hydrant. Football in the cement movie alley became football on grass which made being tackled much more pleasant. The Bronx warnings of Car, car, C-A-R, were no longer heard or needed while new vocabularies involving terms like prom had to be learned.

I do think my personal memoir is not truly personal. For those growing up in that era, the story is more of an Everyman’s epic, the journey of a young boy whose experience is mimicked by so many like him raised on Jujubes and Spin and Marty.

Being

Yellow

You look yellow. Polley folded one of the blankets on our bed.

Nine childhood years in the Bronx and four years at an all-male university developed a hair trigger tongue. My response was in and out of its holster before a single thought traversed my brain. I am just as brave as the next guy!

No, I am serious. Your face is yellow.

The resident at the emergency room agreed. There was the usual drawing of blood, IV setup, urine culture. I lay in the emergency room bed, staring at the ceiling, when Dr. Rogini pushed aside the curtain which separated me from all the other sick people in the ward. The recounting of why I was in the hospital (I had turned yellow and there were other symptoms of liver problems), the usual schedule for more tests, the redoing of the IV since the first attempt failed, etc. After 38 years of teaching high school literature and humanities courses, I learned to read between the lines, and the subtext was not too subtle. Polley and I had lost a number of close friends to pancreatic cancer, and turning yellow with elevated liver levels and no pain on the left side was not good.

Polley, the emergency room nurse, Dr. Rogini and I were all thinking the same thing but that thing was not to be said lest we somehow, by naming it, give it power. Dr. Rogini patted my right knee. You took the right first step by seeking information. The rest of it rolls out from this first decision. Dr. Rogini disappeared behind a flourish of curtain drawing, along with the nurse and Polley. I was alone in the room, just me and my fear and the big lie. It is one thing to know, intellectually, that you are going to die. It is quite another to face your own mortality.

The big lie. I was not special. On one of those rare field trips that P.S. 28 conducted to Peter Stuyvesant’s New Amsterdam home, I stood at the gates of the estate, closed my eyes and imagined the people who lived there 300 years ago. My imagination was in full stream, flowing like dashing paint strokes over rocks and swirling in leaf strewn eddies. I felt this connection with those colonists as if my imagination embraced their memory, transcending space and certainly time. Dead in real time, they were all alive in my mind. Then a tap on the shoulder and a loud, Ralph, go back and play with the other children. The other children were chasing each other in a massive game of tag. Obviously one of the teachers thought it was too much of a strain to keep an eye on the twenty or so kids running around the green in front of her and the strange kid holding on to the gates with his eyes closed.

I was not in the majority at P.S. 28, and the daily chase home from school to my doorstep was part of the routine that included drinking stale milk in the school cafeteria and playing punch ball in the concrete-slabbed school yard. I had nothing to compare my experience with. Wasn’t all school, everywhere and at every time, a compilation of broken windows in the winter, beatings on the way home from school, humiliating verbal attacks on any answer I gave in class? That was school.

Along with the distinction of being a minority came a self-realization that I was special, though not in a superior way…not at all. My ego had been too bruised and could fit in a thimble for me to muse that I was in any way better than my classmates. What was special was that I knew I saw things differently from most of my classmates. For example, I read the entire orange collection. The orange collection was a series of biographies of famous Americans—Jim Bowie, Andrew Jackson, Sacajawea, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and, my favorite, Davy Crockett. The history connection was further strengthened by Mahogany Jim and his love of the outdoors. Our family trips to the Adirondacks to catch bass included excursions to the physical remnants of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. I closed my eyes at Fort William Henry and imagined the screams of the massacred wounded. I closed my eyes at Fort Ticonderoga and imagined the magnificent charge of the Black Watch against Montcalm’s troops. I sat on a trail that had witnessed Rogers’ Rangers as they engaged in the Battle of the Snowshoes. I saw the trees and boulders and streams as living witnesses to all these events and I listened intently to their recountings. And, in school, I could write about what I heard. That was my singularity. That was my job. I was to store all that I heard and sensed on paper, and that is how I survived P.S. 28. And if my classmates could not accept me, I could accept them, placing the entire school scene in an historical context. I saw things and sensed things that most of them could not. If they knew the rules of stickball better than I, at least I knew how to make a fire in a rainstorm. Mahogany Jim had taught me that. And I had learned, or so I thought, that if I worked hard to see and understand, the mysteries of the past, present and future would be revealed to me. I was special in that way.

And looking up at the acoustical tile in the emergency room stall, I knew it was all a lie. I was not special. I was going to die from whatever disease was attacking my body, and my destiny, my specialness to see life differently from most, was not going to save me. I was yellow, and I was going to die, and the pain of being a statistic and no more than a two sentence obituary was upon me. My funeral could be held in a phone booth. I was to know no more about the mysteries of existence than any of the millions who went before me, maybe less. Time was not endless. Whether or not the test results were negative, I had to give serious thought about how I was to spend whatever time I had left. This book is the result of those thoughts.

My Mother

and the Pin Man

That Wednesday afternoon had been a bad afternoon, and it promised to get worse. All week at school had been devoted to preparing for Parent’s Visitation. Brooms emerged from musty closets and we set to sweeping the corners of each classroom. And then we swept the hallways and, for the week at least, we were asked to leave muddy shoes on the brick steps outside. Recesses were curtailed so that windows could be scrubbed, books aligned on shelves, desks, marred by generations of doodles spawned from boredom, polished.

When we were not cleaning and tidying the physical appearance of the school, we spent our time at the desks making signed masterpieces for the bulletin boards, pictures of forest animals or massive landscapes of surrounding areas known to us, farms and bridges that made up the world beyond the school. And there were also the artistic endeavors, which attempted to depict the landscapes unknown to us—the floors of faraway oceans, the mountains of distant lands, the celestial bodies that we read about in our primers. One of our assignments was to draw a portrait of a family member. Mrs. Hoak, our instructor, conducted a vote of which family member we would all depict. Mothers received the most support, fathers a distant second, and Mrs. Hoak vetoed siblings in the belief that the portraits would decline into caricatures. I was a fair artist, but my equipment was lacking.

My father was one of the more fortunate veterans of World War II. First, he had survived with severe wounds, but he had survived to use his skills as an electrician in his job with ADT, a burglar/fire alarm company based in Manhattan. My mother was also injured, having fallen from a ladder while washing windows. Her limp grew as her arthritis intensified. And though I was not aware of it, my parents struggled to be economically even at the end of the month. Thus the amount of money my parents had to spend on crayons and paper and notebooks lagged far behind the amounts my more fortunate classmates could spend.

In my notebook, on a rectangular sheet of paper about three inches by six inches, I had outlined my mother’s profile. Her brunette hair had yet to be colored in, but most of the features of her face were inscribed and only a rosy hue had to be added to her cheeks and the rich dark brown of newly plowed earth added to her eyes. Mrs. Hoak asked the class to hold up their works in progress. To my chagrin, every portraiture was constructed on huge white oak tag, the kind of artistic paper that would cost, for me, a month’s worth of sweeping out the stable two or three times a week after school to help my father. Sitting at our desks, we were the sea, and the portraits of mothers swaying over us were the whitecaps…except for my diminutive drawing.

Say, look at Ralph’s! And within seconds the entire class was turned toward the pitiful, small etching of my mother.

Say, Ralph, is that what you think of your mother?

Any smaller, and we would all need a microscope to see her. This latter comment, cruel unto itself, also inspired a round of giggles from a group of girls who included Gretchen, a girl with blond sausage curls whom I thought about when I was not doing homework or helping my father.

Mrs. Hoak silenced the revelry that was going on at my expense. Now, children, I will give you tomorrow in class to finish the portraits of your mothers, but they must be finished by the end of school tomorrow. Tomorrow evening, as you know, your parents will be visiting the classroom, and we want your portraits adorning the walls so that your mothers can beam with pride. Now open your math books and begin doing the multiplication problems I assigned.

I tried to make myself invisible, or, at the very least, infinitesimal in size. My head could barely be seen above the desk. As children are wont to do, my classmates soon forgot about me, and I began to forget my humiliation as well, until, with a half-hour or so to go in the school day, the door opened and many of the mothers of the children in the class entered the room. We looked up from our multipliers and multiplicands and watched in surprise as each mother unveiled a specialty bought from the local bakery.

Mrs. Hoak took center stage. Children. In recognition of your hard work in preparing the school for visitation, your mothers have conspired to bring you some treats for today’s tea. Make certain you thank each and every mother for their kindness and thoughtfulness.

And so the mothers walked up and down the rows of children, dispensing eclairs and crullers and rogue cookies each cradled in colorful wrappings of bakery paper. Every mother had dressed for the occasion, wearing freshly pressed dresses; some had the latest fashioned hat, and those that did not flaunted hair permed and preened to perfection. It was as if the town’s finest ladies had detoured from their walk to Sunday church to stop by the school and deliver edible presents. And the edible presents were not of the homemade variety. Every student knew the familiar treats from spending hours after school staring through the window of Loew’s bakery. These were bought baked goods.

I was in the process of choosing between a chocolate éclair and a rogue cookie when another woman entering the room caught my eye. For a fraction of a moment I thought it was the school maid, bringing up another basket for us to deposit wrappers and anything else that was not edible. But then, to my horror, I recognized the limp, and my mother came into focus. She was carrying a tray of homemade biscotti, yeastless and fatless quarter moons of dry cookie, a rough cookie my mother would make from leftover bread flour. When I was younger I considered it a delight to place my chin on the edge of the flour board and watch my mother shape and make biscotti, and I paced back and forth before the oven waiting for them to them to be born and then devoured. But on that day those same tasty treats looked like small misshapen dry boomerangs, and I noticed that most of my classmates waved a hand and passed on the biscotti as my mother tried to distribute them.

To add to my distress, my mother had not had much time to change her clothes. On Wednesdays after lunch my mother would interrupt her conventional responsibilities and go up on the roof to hang the week’s wash, and to help my Aunt Marge, who lived in the apartment above us. She had obviously just arrived from that task, her dress being her normal housecoat. She had attempted to spruce up a bit by adding her favorite Sunday sweater, but the sweater was old and even to my untrained fashion eye my mother’s apparel stood in stark and embarrassing contrast to the clothing of the other mothers. A few strands of hair slipped loose from her hasty attempt to manage it, and, as she limped down the aisles, they flopped in front of her face. My heart twisted in anguish as I saw Gretchen politely refuse a biscotti from my mother, and, in the same painful moment, Gretchen turned and looked at me. Her eyes fired arrows of pity that burned as they passed through my soul.

As my mother neared my seat, I tried to find somewhere to hide, some small niche of the world that would seal me from further humiliation. Finally my mother was in front of my desk, holding a dish I knew too well piled high with untouched biscotti. My mother was smiling when she presented the dish to me, but when I shook my head in disapproval, the smile contracted into pursed lips of puzzlement. She tilted her head, and I saw at once the surprise and hurt in her eyes. In some small valley of my brain, that look still burns and sears the avenues of memory that surround it. My mother limped on past me to my classmates.

Centuries seemed to pass before all the mothers left. We cleaned up, received Ms. Hoak’s final instructions, and started to pack our school bags. Stephen, the resident intimidator and the only other boy, to my knowledge, who saw Gretchen as I did, walked over to me as I stuffed an uneaten rogue cookie in my bag. He put his hand, in mock-serious fashion, on my shoulder. I see why the picture of your mother is so small and drawn on scrap paper.

I lurched my shoulder away from his tag and turned to face him. My cheeks grew red hot like the blacksmith’s iron when he pulls it from the fire. I wanted to leap onto Stephen and pummel him with all the pain that was within me. I wanted the dam holding back all my embarrassment to break and wash over him, flooding his eyes and ears and nose, and I wanted to see him drown in my hurt. But, instead, I simply stood there, hating him and my mother and most of all myself. From the corner of my eye I saw Gretchen watching us both, and when I looked in her direction she turned away and focused her attention on preparing her school bag.

I was the first to leave school that day.

When I entered our apartment, my mother was cutting a carrot for our stew pot. As I did every day I went up to her and placed a kiss on each cheek, but unlike every day she did little to acknowledge my greeting. She just nodded her head, gave a weak smile, and continued to slice the carrot into the pot. I did not know whether I merely imagined her understanding of what had transpired at school, or if she truly had recognized the depth of my shame at her appearance. I prefer to think that my mind conjured up her epiphany, that she had no knowledge of my feelings toward her that day, that she was not hurt by my rejection of her being as well as her biscotti. However, that desire on my part is most likely the wishful thinking of a child.

My mother picked up an onion and began carving it into the stew pot as I went around to the other end of the kitchen table and unloaded my school bag. I know she glanced at the rogue cookie I absentmindedly and stupidly placed on the table, but she quickly looked back at her rapidly shrinking onion. I pulled up a chair to my end of the table, opened up my math book, and started to scroll in my notebook the products of eight columns. Eight times one is eight. Eight times two is sixteen. Eight times three is twenty-four…My eyes soon drifted to the window to my left, soon drifted from the multipliers and multiplicands of the number eight to the numbers that were living on the main street of my neighborhood.

There were two men seated in chairs in the barbershop across the street. They were attended to by the two barbers that worked there, making a total of four. Three swallows perched on the roof edge as they looked down on two gentlemen puffing on cigars as they strolled down the sidewalk. Four of my classmates stood with their faces pressed against the window of Loew’s bakery, but I quickly turned from counting them to the lone man working the buildings opposite mine. He was of medium height, with broad but slightly slumped shoulders. His dark brown pants seemed too large for his frame, and certainly too light for this time of year. I could not see his shirt beneath his tweed jacket, also too light for this time of year, but it was his gray felt hat, large brimmed and sloping to the side that gave him away as the pin man. Slowly he crossed the street and entered our building.

I listened carefully until I heard his familiar footsteps on our floor, followed by a knock on the Hummel’s door. Quietly I dragged the footstool over to the door so I could watch through the peep hole. When Mrs. Hummel answered, partially opening her large mahogany door, the pin man politely tipped his hat, reached into a satchel draped over his shoulder, and produced a tiny tin. Mrs. Hummel waved her hand, shook her head, and abruptly closed the door. The pin man returned the tin to his satchel and shuffled to Mrs. Hummel’s neighbor, Mrs. Franze, where the ritual was repeated almost exactly. The pin man’s walk was slow but deliberate, and it appeared that no amount of refusals would bend his straightened body as he moved from door to door. I returned to my times tables and stared out the window. The sun seemed to dip another few degrees each time the pin man was turned away, so that it appeared that he was responsible for the increasing grayness of dusk and the chill that accompanies twilight. My mother was working on the first of five potatoes intended for the stew pot.

I had reached eight times five is forty, when there occurred a knock upon our door. My mother and I looked up simultaneously, but I was the only one who had a fair idea of who was responsible for the knock.

My mother put down the second potato, and soon the pin man stood in our doorway. He had a rounded face with a slight stubble of beard. It was a pleasant face, a calm face, a face in which every human being could recognize his own doomed dreams and frailty. His clothing was neat but frayed, one or two top buttons missing from his pale gray shirt, his tweed jacket sprouting loose threads at the shoulder seams. But it was his shoes which gave away his plight. They were scuffed almost to the point where I could not discern their original color, and the left shoe was coming apart, the sole slightly detached.

Good afternoon, or should I say, good evening, Madam. The pin man reached into his satchel. I have some quality pins and other sewing apparatus here in my tin that you might consider purchasing. May I show you?

My mother stood with both hands holding the door, the pin man with his hand holding the tin outstretched toward her.

The pin man’s formal demeanor and speech seemed to be contagious. My mother responded in kind.

To my surprise, and even more to the surprise of the pin man, my mother said, Yes, I believe I could use some sewing tools. Would you like to step inside?

In the next instant, the pin man was standing in our kitchen.

My surprise was predicated on my observations. I had watched the pattern of refusals that the pin man had experienced going from door to door in my neighborhood, and so I was not prepared for the breaking of that routine by his acceptance anywhere, including my own home. But there he was, standing at the other end of the table, and I could see his muscles relax as the warmth of our home seeped into them.

Would you like to sit down? My mother pulled the chair opposite me out from under the table.

It took a few seconds for the pin man to recognize the invitation. Yes, Madam, thank you, Madam. Yes. That is so kind of you.

The pin man was sitting there for a minute or so when, to his embarrassment, he remembered his hat and dutifully removed it, placing it on the table away from the vegetables and spices lined up for use in the stew.

My mother returned to the slicing of the potatoes into the pot, and waited for our visitor to get warm and comfortable. I could see the transformation of his human form take place, from the chilled and lonely wanderer to the man who seemed to belong at the head of a table in a warm kitchen. He removed the satchel from his shoulder, placed it on top of his hat, and, with warming fingers, began to open the tin.

Yes, Madam, thank you again for being so kind. Well, do you do a great deal of sewing, Madam?

My mother picked up the second potato and went to work on it. My husband and I have to be very self-sufficient, so, yes, I need to complete much sewing for my family. Would you like something to eat, Mr…?

The pin man seemed to search his brain for the memory of his own name. He had obviously not used it for a while. Oh, Madam, Arthur, I am so sorry. Arthur is my name. Jonathan Arthur.

Mr. Arthur, the fare is rather poor for our house, I am afraid, but would you like something to eat while I look at your merchandise?

The pin man seemed embarrassed and genuinely grateful at the same time. Oh, no Madam, oh no thank you. Sitting down is just fine. It is so kind of you to let me in.

As if this entire scene were constructed by a playwright with a good sense of timing, the pin man’s stomach growled loudly.

Pardon me, Madam. I am so sorry. I do not want to trouble you. He rose to leave.

Please stay, Mr. Arthur. It is no trouble at all. I have some leftover baked ziti from Sunday’s meal that I can easily warm up. It is not good baked ziti, I am sorry to say, but I have some Italian bread to go with it. Would that be suitable, Mr. Arthur?

The pin man sat down. Are you sure, Madam? I really do not want to tread on your kindness. I saw the pin man’s lips say those words, but I also saw his tongue slightly wet those lips in anticipation of something to eat.

No problem at all, Mr. Arthur. I beg your patience.

My mother scooped baked ziti from a plastic Polly-O container into another pot on the stove, pulled a half loaf of Italian bread from the bread basket, and placed a butter dish with a fresh stick of Land O’Lakes on the table in front of the pin man.

Madam, would you like to see the sewing tools, now? The pin man opened his small tin filled with pins and needles and thread and a small awl.

Mr. Arthur, let us wait until you have something to eat first. Then I would certainly like to view your merchandise. The pin man nodded understanding, and folded his hands on the table.

When I realized that the pin man saw me staring at him, I looked down at my notebook, and returned to the eight’s table. Eight times six is forty-eight. This dance continued for a while, my mother adding things to the stew, the pin man’s body, and perhaps his mind, relaxing into comfort, and I reciting the eight table to myself.

I could smell the baked ziti warming on the stove as I reached eight times eight is sixty-four. Eight times nine is seventy-two, eight times ten is eighty (that was easy), eight times eleven is eighty-eight (the elevens were easy also), eight times twelve is…

In my attempt to find an answer to eight times twelve, I had almost forgotten my mother and the kitchen and the pin man.

Ninety-six.

Startled I looked up. The pin man repeated. Ninety-six.

He read my eyes, my wonderment that he knew what problem I was trying to solve. I could see your lips moving. Eight times twelve is ninety-six.

As if to explain how he came to know that solution, the pin man looked at my mother. I was not always a seller of pins, before the bad times came along.

My mother nodded in understanding. Whatever the bad times meant and why they explained the pin man’s current situation was a secret bond between the pin man and my mother. I was not in on that secret.

The pin man looked back at me. You seem like a smart young boy. Are you good at math?

I shrugged my shoulders.

"How many fingers do I have?’

I knew there was a game somewhere in his question, but I was too timid to play at first.

Come on, lad. How many fingers do I have?

I shrugged my shoulders again. Ten.

No, eleven.

I smiled and squirmed in my seat at the absurdity of that.

Look, see, watch me. The pin man held up both hands in the air. He looked at his right hand and, as he counted down, he placed one finger into his fist. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six. All the fingers of his right hand were now in a ball. Then he held his left hand higher in the air. Six holding his right fist, Plus five waving his left hand, Equal eleven. See?

I squirmed again in my seat and smiled more broadly at the trick. My mother smiled as well.

Math problems are fascinating problems. It is all on how you look at them. The pin man was comfortable now, warming to the kitchen, to the smell of reheated baked ziti, to my mother and to me. And I was beginning to enjoy his sitting at the end of the table.

For example, answer this problem, lad. If there are three flies on this kitchen table, picture them now, three flies on this kitchen table, can you see them in your mind?

I nodded.

And if I swat one of them, how many are left?

I sat upright. Two. And I waited for the trick.

No. Not two. The pin man waited for me to absorb this.

I shook my head.

Think again, lad.

Two.

No, lad. One. The dead one.

I squiggled in my seat and my smile was broader. I thought that would be a good puzzle to tell Gretchen tomorrow at school, and at that thought the whole day’s proceedings came back to me in a large wave of angst but for some reason it felt less painful and less important.

My mother placed a bowl of baked ziti filled to the brim in front of the pin man, and slid two slices of Italian bread on either side. I could see the pin man’s face grow larger through the steam of the baked ziti. Thank you, Madam. This looks delicious.

My mother patted the shoulder of the pin man’s worn jacket. Enjoy, Mr. Arthur. I hope it is to your liking.

The pin man picked up the large spoon my mother placed next to the bowl and fell to the baked ziti. He ate fast, as if he had never eaten and would never be allowed to eat again, but he was polite. My mother and I understood the impoliteness of watching him, so she returned to the stew and I to the times table. The ziti disappeared quickly. I had gone on to the nine’s table, when I looked up and noticed the bowl was nearly empty. My mother noticed as well, and, without saying anything or making any grandiose gestures, she slipped another slice of Italian bread by the pin man’s bowl so that he could politely soak up the remnants of the sauce.

Madam. Thank you very much. That was delicious. I have never tasted a finer baked ziti. And I am much traveled. We all smiled at that last sentence. Well, my dining experiences of the last few years might not be so elegant, but in times past I dined in some fine establishments, and in none did I ever eat baked ziti as good as what I have eaten today.

My mother smiled and removed his bowl. Thank you, Mr. Arthur. Would you like something sweet?

Oh, no, Madam. You have already been too kind. No thank you.

Mr. Arthur, they are not the best of pastries, my mother, involuntarily glanced at me quickly, and I am embarrassed to offer them, but these biscotti are all I have to follow the baked ziti.

The pin man out of more than simple courtesy choose a biscotti from the pile on the dish my mother presented to him.

Thank you, madam. They look delicious.

My mother placed a second biscotti in front of the pin man. With one bite half of the first biscotti disappeared.

Oh, madam. These are delicious. As he ate the biscotti, my mother poured him a cup of coffee from the pot that perpetually perked on our stove.

The pin man went to work on the second biscotti. How about you, lad? Would you like to join me in feasting on one of these excellent biscotti?

I froze, and, as the pin man noticed my indecision, he looked at my mother. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to tempt the boy. I suppose that would ruin his dinner. Please forgive my stupidity.

Oh, no. That is quite all right, Mr. Arthur. My mother avoided looking at me.

When the coffee cup was cleared, my mother sat down next to the pin man as he brought out his wares. She seemed to listen intently as he explained the qualities of his merchandise, how the items could be used in ways that most people did not think of, and what a value they were. All this he told to my mother as she sat patiently with her chin nestled in her hand, in apparent rapt attention.

Well, Madam. That is all I have. I would like you to kindly accept this tin as payment for that wonderful meal.

Oh, no, Mr. Arthur, I cannot do that. This is your merchandise, and fine products require sufficient payment.

I insist, Madam.

No, Mr. Arthur. You did not request a meal. The ziti, poor as it was, was not business.

The pin man nodded his head in understanding. Thank you, Madam.

I would like to buy, if you don’t mind, one of those tins of pins, Mr. Arthur. And may I purchase one of those bobbins, please?

The pin man seemed to spring into the role of salesman. Yes, Madam, certainly. This is one of the finest bobbins you can buy today.

The pin man reached into his satchel, put a new bobbin on the table next to the tin. As he stood up, he pulled something else from the satchel.

Madam, I would like you to take these rings of thread. You might find them useful. He placed three or four rings of colorful thread on the table next to the other items he sold to my mother.

Why, thank you so kindly, Mr. Arthur. My mother went to the shelf where we kept the tin of household funds and withdrew some bills. She placed them in the pin man’s hands.

Thank you, Madam. Thank you. As the pin man replaced his hat and slung the satchel over his shoulder, I could see his eyes were moist. He bowed to my mother and then looked over at me. You take good care of your mother, lad. She is rarer than diamonds, and more beautiful. You take good care of her, yes? My mother blushed, looked away, and brushed her hands on her worn dress that she had worn to my school.

I nodded.

Mr. Arthur, my mother said as she escorted him to the door. If you come our way again, please be certain to stop by. I might need some sewing materials. My son is growing, and my husband works hard. Their clothes need tending. And perhaps I will have some better fare than baked ziti to offer.

Yes, Madam. I will be sure to stop by. Thank you kindly, again. My mother stuffed two biscotti in his jacket pocket as he tipped his hat and left, my mother closing the door behind him.

She returned to the stew, including the last few ingredients. I watched her the whole time.

On my way to school the next morning, I stopped at the local market that carried drawing materials, and I purchased the largest square of oak tag on which to draw my mother’s portrait. I worked on it all day.

I remembered the pin man in years after that, knocking at our door, sitting at our table, but not as clearly as on that first visit. After my mother died, I went through the house, finding items associated with her that I could keep, threads of love attached to the beloved dead. In a closet, next to the kitchen, I found a group of tins sold by the pin man. They were in a neat stack, all arranged one on top of the other, and all unopened.

Ash

Wednesday

My mother and I had to walk the long block down Burnside Avenue and make a left at the corner to go to St. Simon Stock Roman Catholic Church. When we reached the corner, I took a step to the right hoping to go to Echo Park and feed the squirrels, but my mother tugged at the bill of my tweed cap, handed down to me from my cousin Artie, and I followed her up the side street and into St. Simon Stock. The dark interior of the empty church was a stark contrast to the crispness of the February air outside, and it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust.

My mother led me to a side alcove which harbored a bank of candles flickering in chianti-red glass candle holders. She kneeled at the first row of candles and I followed her lead, feeling the wet spot on my right knee that had materialized when I tripped on the front steps of the stoop leading to our apartment house a few minutes earlier. My mother put a quarter in the metal slot below the candles, slowly lit a candle and bowed her head for a few moments. She repeated this routine three more times. As my mother worked this ritual, I panned the church slowly, looking first at the altar behind which stood a large, shiny crucifix on which was impaled a shinier but emaciated wooden Christ. To the right were the carved confessional doors that gave access to a chamber still unknown to me. At the back of the church was the entrance lobby guarded by two marble holy water ponds, more like two smoothly carved bird baths. Finally my visual tour came back to our side of the church with the alcove of candles and two more confessional booths to the left.

My mother’s voice startled me. Would you like to light a candle?

Why did you light a candle?

I lit four candles.

I know. I watched you.

I lit one for my mother, your grandmother. I had never known my grandmother. Nor, really, had my mother. My grandmother died of the great influenza epidemic of 1916 while my mother, age six, was in the same hospital almost dying of diphtheria.

I lit another one to remember my sister Helen. Aunt Helen had died the year before of some disease that attacked her brain. Right before she died we made visits every Saturday to the hospital in New Jersey. I was not allowed inside Aunt Helen’s room, so I would sit on a wooden bench in the hallway and watch doctors and nurses and people who looked awful and who had things stuck in them and on them being moved around on wheeled beds and the noises all of them made echoed in the cold hallway. The people on the gurneys never noticed me, and as they passed by me and disappeared through some double doors at the end of the hallway, I would feel very small and alone and sometimes frightened. And when my mother and my father came out of Aunt Helen’s room one of them would always take my hand without saying anything and my mother would start to cry, and it was always very quiet in the car on the long ride home except for my mom’s sobs. The church was not like that. It was cool and lit by the flickering candles and the wood of the pews and the benches were smooth and shiny and even the stone walls were friendly. The church was a second womb.

I lit a third candle for Mrs. Protsky. She’s in the hospital. Mrs. Protsky lived on the same floor of our apartment building, a