Frank C Modica
The Longest NightThe winter solstice
seeps into the silent house. He sits for hours outside of a darkened closet. Heat from the furnace ripples bags of immaculate dresses, rows of pressed slacks, boxes of unwrinkled blouses. He steps over a crumpled damp bathrobe, neatly hangs it next to her scarves. A ringing telephone goes straight to voicemail. At dawn sunlight struggles through gaps in the curtains. White snow shimmers in the cold. Tabula RasaKindergarteners race
across the hardtop back into the hallway. Faster children run circles around the slower children. George yells “tag, you’re it.” Little Frankie falls to the ground after Ellie pushes him. “She hit me,” he cries. He’s cheating,” she yells back. Tommy pulls Mary’s hair, Mary kicks him. Roseau and Calvin tumble into the classroom wrestling with each other. Cal mocks Rosey “Your whole nature is a seed of sin.” Rosey protests, “We are noble savages.” The teacher closes his eyes to the noise for a few seconds and shakes his head before breaking up the fights and getting the children under control “They both are wrong,” He mutters to himself. “They don’t know what they are doing. They’re children.” TransubstantiationPerfect half moon floured shapes sit
on an immaculate white sheet to dry, raviolis aligned in perfect rows and columns, their doughy edges crimped with a fork, four perfect holes poked in the top-- ready for the boiling water, ready for the red tomato sauce, ready to be consumed. But they are almost too beautiful to eat, too perfect to pass from fork to mouth. Augustine prayed before his conversion, “Make me chaste, but not yet.” In her kitchen grandma measured the flour in handfuls of this, the salt and parsley in pinches of that. working alone without a written recipe, hours of work to transform the mundane into the sacred. No one violated her sanctuary, no one decrypted the culinary secrets passed down mother to daughter for generations in Sicily and carried over to L’Merica. She hoarded this knowledge until one Saturday her daughters, unnerved by the prospect of grandma’s mortality and the possible loss of the treasury, descended on her house with measuring cups, spoons, paper and pencil to pry open her tabernacle. Grandma was loath to give up her secrets, but the daughters pinched the salt, measured her handfuls of flour. They squeezed the balls of elastic dough, trying to quantify the textures of too much, not enough, not yet, rechecking measurements, rewriting notes for this communion, this family tradition. When grandma finished her raviolis, she was done--the secrets written down for other cooks, other dinners; she never made them after that afternoon. The daughters, not yet ready in grandma’s eyes, took the recipe home. |
MatineesEvery Saturday Mike and I
walked to the Ramova, a second run movie house to watch double features, cartoons, coming attractions. We trekked down hot, gritty city streets in the summer, tramped through snow all winter, always stopping to read comic books at corner newsstands. Walking home after the shows we acted out action scenes, driving chariots around the hippodrome or chasing Japanese Zeroes across the skies of Guadalcanal. When we moved out of the city we went to Saturday matinees at two suburban theaters. The owners doubled the ticket prices, dropped the double features. In high school Mike went out for football, I joined the wrestling team. I got good grades, he got suspended for smoking in the boy’s restroom. I went to college, he barely finished high school. Sometimes we’d go to a movie and try to catch up with each other. After he died I returned to the old neighborhood. National chains had replaced most of the local stores along Halsted. The Ramova stood shuttered and shattered, its battered marquee gap-toothed and rusty. Background NoiseA garbage truck rumbles
down the street like rolling thunder. He sleepwalks out of the bedroom, stumbles into the kitchen. Half-empty wine glasses glare at him from the table. Morning shadows envelop every room—silent, accusatory. Heat shimmers from the slanted garage roof tiles like an exhausted lover. He hears a car door open, waits for a knock at the front door, doesn’t know if he’ll answer it. Blood on the WheelsHe might have seen
the cat darting across the street, or maybe it was his children crying out from the back seat, “Stop the car, stop the car.” But he felt the thump under his wheels, he heard the yowling screams. The children sobbed, “Help the kitty, Daddy.” He pulled off to the side of road, watched the cat through his open side window, saw the blood on the street. The cat writhed in pain, paws scratching the sky, but he had places to go, it was already too late, he didn’t want to mess up the car seats and mat. He put the minivan in gear, drove away, but his children’s accusations tore at his heart, “You killed the kitty.” Years later driving alone on the interstate in a different car he saw the dog, or was it a coyote? It dashed across the median on a collision course with his car. He tried to slow down but couldn’t stop in the traffic, couldn’t safely swing away. He heard the sickening thud, felt in his hands the crushed bones. He didn’t see the animal in his rearview mirror, there weren’t any children crying in the back seat of the car, but he knew there would be blood. |
The Visitation
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At my first funeral
I sat in the car with my brother while my parents took turns going to the visitation. During dad’s stint in the car he told Mike and me stories from old monster movies-- He leaned over the front bench seat extending his arms straight out like Frankenstein and the Mummy, then his hands became sharp claws for the Wolfman. Mike and I looked out of the rain shrouded windshield of the car. Flickering street lights cast shadows over the Old Mercury, our breaths condensed on the back window. We shrank from strange shapes rustling under wind-warped trees, and we pleaded with dad, “Don't leave us alone in the car.” |