O+F Part 4

They drank wine while the flask cooled. When George could hold the flask, he pushed the investment out of the cylinder and chipped at it with a screwdriver. A hip appeared. "The Flying Lady," Oliver said.

"d.a.m.n!" George said, chipping and prying. Gobs of oatmeal colored investment fell away. "Not bad!" George held up the Lady and the heart on their bronze tree. "We cut them off and

polish. . ."

An hour later, filled with wine and a sense of accomplishment, Oliver walked up Danforth Street. The bronze heart was solid and heavy in his pocket. He warmed it in his hand, feeling the O, the plus sign, and the F over and over again, a mantra said with the ball of his thumb. When he got home, he placed the heart on one of the walnut boards, fed Verdi, and went to bed.

He lay there remembering the bronze pouring into the heart. A bit of him had poured with it, and an exchange had taken place: something bronze had entered him at the same moment.

3.

"Mythic," Oliver said to Paul Peroni, the next afternoon. They were sitting at the kitchen table with his mother. Paul was weighing the heart in his palm as Oliver described the bronze casting. Oliver's mother took another tea biscuit.

"Never too old for a valentine," she said, seeming to note the absence of a female presence in the apartment.

"Yes . . . No . . ." Paul answered them both. He was medium sized, sinewy, and graying--surprisingly light on his feet for someone who installed slabs of ornamental marble.

"It's so nice to see Verdi again. Kitty, kitty," she called. Verdi stretched and remained in the corner. "Oh well, be that way," she said, straightening. Lip gloss, touches of eye shadow, and her full wavy blonde hair broadcast femaleness like a lighthouse. The good body could be taken for granted. You might as well a.s.sume it, the message flashed, cuz you sure as h.e.l.l weren't going to be lucky enough to find out. She and Paul were well matched. "I knew I was onto something, our first date," she'd told Oliver. "I was cooing about Michelangelo and Paul said, 'yes, but he used s.h.i.+tty marble.' "

She looked pointedly at Paul. "Sun's over the yard arm," he said.

DiMillo's was uncrowded. They sat at a window table, ordered drinks, and talked as boats rocked quietly in the marina and an oil tanker worked outward around the Spring Point light. Oliver's mother bragged about his niece, Heather, and her latest swimming triumphs. She complained about the long winter and how crowded the Connecticut sh.o.r.e had become. "It may be crowded," Oliver said, "but you get daffodils three weeks before we do."

Oliver sipped his second Glenlivet and looked back from the darkening harbor. "I wish I had known my grandfather," he said to his mother. "I remember when he died. I was eight, I think."

"Yes, you were in third grade," she said. "It was sad. He was living in Paris. When he wrote, I called him at the hospital--but he didn't want me to come. He said that he wanted me to remember him as he was."

"When was the last time you saw him?" Oliver asked.

"Oh . . . I . . ." She looked at Paul. He raised his eyebrows sympathetically. "I guess I never told you that story," she said to Oliver. "It was a long time ago. My sixteenth birthday, in fact." She sighed.

"It was at Nice, on the Riviera. He arranged a party on the beach--wine, great food, fireworks . . . After the fireworks, he gave me a bamboo cage with a white dove inside.

"'This is your present, Dior,' he said. 'You must let it go, give it freedom.' I opened the cage, and the dove flew up into the dark. 'Very good,' my father said. He hugged me. Then he said, 'Now, we will say goodbye. You are grown, and I will not be seeing you and your mother any more. Be good to your mother.' He hugged me again and just walked down the beach--into the night."

Oliver watched tears slide down his mother's cheeks.

She lifted a napkin and wiped away her tears. "He was very handsome."

"No need of that s.h.i.+t," Paul said.

They were silent.

"Paul's right," Oliver said.

"My mother packed up and brought us back to New Haven. We lived with her folks for a while."

"Good old New Haven," Paul said.

"Now, _your_ father . . ." She smiled at Paul.

"He liked the ladies," Paul said.

"What did he do?" Oliver asked.

"He was a stone mason, made his own wine, raised h.e.l.l. Fought with Uncle Tony until the day he died. They were tight, though--don't let anybody else say anything against them. Bocce ball. Jesus." Paul shook his head and held up his gla.s.s. "Life," he said.

"Yes, life." Oliver's mother raised her gla.s.s.

"Coming at you," Oliver added.

"Us," Paul said.

They touched gla.s.ses and got on with a sh.o.r.e dinner of lobsters and clams.

Oliver said goodbye in DiMillo's parking lot. He walked home imagining the sixteen year old Dior Del'Unzio with her mouth open as the white dove flew upward and then with her hand to her mouth as her father walked away. "No need of that s.h.i.+t." He was glad Paul was around to take care of his mother. She was vulnerable under the big smile; Oliver often felt vaguely guilty and responsible for her.

She had done the same thing as _her_ mother: hooked up with an exotic stranger--Muni Nakano, proper son of a proper j.a.panese family in Honolulu. But, his mother hadn't stuck around for sixteen years. She'd come back from Hawaii to Connecticut, pregnant, and eventually married Owl Prescott. They raised him and Amanda, his half sister. His mother had made a go of it in New England. Only once in awhile would she show signs of her Italian childhood. "Topolino mio," she used to call him when he was little and she'd been partying.

He poured a nightcap and put on a tape--Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.

I'm wasting my life, he thought suddenly. What am I going to do? He knew that he needed to change, but it seemed hopeless. He looked at the walnut boards. Maybe a box . . .

He sketched a little chest with a hinged top. He erased the straight bottom lines and drew in long low arches. "That's better." The top should overhang. Should its edges be straight or rounded? Straight was more emphatic; he could always round them afterwards.

He could make each side from a single width of walnut. Dovetailed corners. A small bra.s.s hasp and lock. Why not? He could make the whole thing out of one eight foot piece and have two boards left over for something else or for extra if he screwed up the dovetails.

"Here you go," he said to Verdi. He replaced the offending piece of pine with the original scratched walnut. "Nothing but the best for Team Oliver." He looked at the heart. "Team O." Verdi forgave him without moving. "Bedtime," Oliver said.

On Monday, Oliver cut pieces for the sides, top, and bottom of the box.

He bought a dovetail saw and made several cardboard templates for the joints. It was a way of thinking about them. They were tricky, had to interlock perfectly, one end male, one end female.

"What have you been up to?" Jennifer Lindenthwaite asked on Tuesday morning.

"Making a box," Oliver said.

"Oh, that's exciting."

"It's harder than it looks--for me, anyway."

Jennifer wanted him to look at her and not at an imagined box. She was a solid blonde, Nordic, with broad cheeks and a big smile. "I worry about Rupert when he does things around the house. Something usually goes wrong."

"Ah . . ." Oliver said. "A minor flaw."