Literal Latte

She made us go to bed while it was still light out, when there was life yet
in the wide street below our pent-up apartment and we could hear Mr. and Mrs.
Soleni argue about money as they sponge-washed their new Pontiac and the
Donatelli twins smacked a tennis ball against their ramshackle garage door:
thwack-bip, thwack-bip, thwack-bip, thwack-bip, and even Mr. Frostie's tinkly
bell still charmed children luckier than us out onto the hot pavement. They held
sweaty dimes to exchange for chocolate chip ice cream and raspberry snow cones.
The unfairness of it all lodged in our throats like clumps of worms as we tossed like
three minnows wrapped in clean cotton pajamas while the sun's last rays taunted
us from the sides and slats of a single venetian blind that had seen better days.

And so, our delight when — one deep, sweltering night — she whispered us awake
with an invitation to hush, hurry, to stay in pajamas but get our sneakers on and
step out into the pitch that had washed our neighborhood in shadows; to walk
between the wink of fireflies, coding messages we could not decipher, navigating
narrow cindered alleys between the fenced backyards of the Soleni's, the Rubino's,
the Bonanno's, the Franco's, the Donatelli's, and then the fences of those we never
knew. The blacktop parking lot of St. Martha's Church intimidated and expanded its
boundaries in the land past dark, where the hum and throb of distant traffic crescendoed
into the chirrs of well-groomed hotrods and the hiccups and growls of stray motorcycles
unzipping the sky and we learned fast that night is a velvet beast of a thing whose purr

made our hearts tick faster, like the pulse of heat still beating in the pavement under
our feet. The measured lamplights along Tallmadge Road, reflecting against lit glass
of late shops and the hundreds of flickering headlights, became the carnival of Paris,
the circus of London, torches at the Parthenon and we were gods floating breathless
in clouds of car exhaust and diesel fuel, interspersed with the aromas of baking garlic
bread, black coffee, and red geraniums planted in wine barrels sawed in half. The peck-
smack of billiard balls chimed from the wide open doors of the Sons of Italy Lodge and
men laughed low, slowly exhaled plumes of smoke, and in three different picture windows
twirled flying saucers of pizza dough above floured hands. The men all smiled, the last
one waved us in, but Mom rushed us past his door and into DeViti's Family Store

where we lined up for lemon ice. Nothing ever tasted as clean, sweet, and cold as that citrus
frost dripping from the short wooden paddles we scraped across it. And she looked suddenly
younger, but sad, smaller, when she fluffed up my hair and said, "Wasn't much older than you
when Jimmy, Jack, Patsy, and I ordered ten pizzas from Emidio's. Sat right outside their window,
sipping Cherry-Cokes and watching them sweat over ten pizzas. Never did pick them up, or pay.
We were so bad." She whispered to no one, "I miss us." I knew then the gift confession could be,
as we paused on the cold marble steps of St. Martha's, on our way home, on our way home. But
only now do I recognize the melancholy catalyst for such a confidence: the loneliness of young
mothers whose husbands work two jobs and go to night school; the persistence of old neighborhood
ghosts; and the seductive memories that simmer between midsummer sunset and steamy sunrise.