The Compass (Catch and Hold)

3. May 1992“The eaglet feasts on blood.”“His giant wings keep him from walking.”“Ti vugghiu bini.”“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

MAY 1992

“THE EAGLET FEASTS ON BLOOD.”

M ay-gray had long since crouched on the Outer Sunset, swallowing the neighborhood’s sights in fog and forcing William to turn inward to amuse himself. So, as he strolled home from the bus stop after school, he thought about Charles Baudelaire. Or, more specifically, about his poem, L’Albatros.

Or – even more specifically – about the skinny redhead with the orthodontic headgear who lisped her way through her reading of L’Albatros in class.

The pricks in French class whose parents could afford to send them to Holy Cross without scholarships called her Horsey Face, and Mosquito Bites. William supposed it was because of her buck teeth and flat chest.

But if they thought they could get under her skin, she quickly disabused them of that notion. “Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” she would retort. Or, perhaps, “I hate to break your hearts, boys, but don’t start picking out curtains.” Then she would toss her copper hair and flounce right past their desks, head held high .

He had to hand it to her – she might not be much to look at, but she made them all look like punks.

She almost certainly belonged to the couple who owned Dunphy’s Restaurant, across the pier from his parents’ fish processing plant. Nonna had told him their daughter would be going to Holy Cross, and Monsieur Laurent always referred to her in class as Mademoiselle Dunphy.

What was her first name, again? Jillian? He waffled back and forth between that and Jessica as he twisted his key in the front door lock. Between that and Nonna’s stray cats, who came shooting out of the tunnel entrance at his approach, he never noticed the unfamiliar car parked in front of the house.

The voices drifting down the stairs snapped him back to the present. The first one belonged to Nonna, but it wasn’t until he reached the landing at the top of the stairs that he finally recognized the second, just as its owner’s face came into view.

William stopped short. “Andy!”

“Will,” Nonna chided gently, with an apologetic smile at the youngish man in the clerical suit and collar, sitting on their sofa. Average build, bland generic features, close-cropped medium-brown hair. “It’s Father Molloy , please.”

“Sorry,” Willam muttered.

Andy returned Nonna’s smile with a reassuring one of his own. “It’s okay, Mrs. Cardone; I told William to address me by my first name.”

“Oh,” Nonna said in breathless surprise.

A couple of years earlier, in a last-ditch attempt to persuade William to undergo Confirmation, she had connected him with Father Molloy. He was a brand-new priest in his late twenties, informal and relatable, but with a razor-sharp intellect. He eventually told William to just call him Andy. They had spent long hours debating the doctrine of original sin, theism versus deism, and the soundness of Thomas Aquinas’ Quinque viae . In the end, Andy didn’t convince William to undergo the sacrament, but he made William almost sorry not to have been convinced .

It wasn’t until Mike teased him about his relationship with the priest that William realized how it might have been construed. But Andy’s attentions had only ever been earnest and appropriate. Unlike, allegedly, his predecessor, who transferred to another parish under a cloud of rumor and suspicion.

It was Nonna who found out about the scholarship to Holy Cross, but Andy wrote the letter of recommendation that clinched it for William. So it was with genuine respect and enthusiasm that William’s face lit up in a grin. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Andy?”

“William,” Nonna said, a little firmer this time. “Ix-nay the eekiness-chay.”

This time, Andy bestowed his reassuring smile on William. “I came by to share some good news with your nonna. She thought you’d like to hear it, so she asked if I could wait until you got home.”

William’s eyes flickered to his grandmother, and he watched her struggle to compose her features. But her dark eyes sparkled, and a hint of rosiness spackled her weathered olive complexion.

His pulse quickened in suspense. “What is it?”

Andy patted the sofa cushions. “Sit.”

William obeyed, and Andy regarded him with a complacent smile. “Will, your Nonna mentioned a few months ago that she was keeping her eyes peeled for college scholarships. You know I’m teaching a Religious Studies course at USF, right?”

“University of San Francisco?”

“That’s right. And, well… it turns out they’re offering a brand-new scholarship, starting next year. Full ride. Housing, books... the works. And I want to recommend you for it.”

William barely caught his jaw before it hit the floor. “You want to recommend... me .”

Andy chuckled. “Of course. You’re the first one I thought of.”

William had to steal another glance at his grandmother, just to reassure himself that Andy wasn’t pulling his leg. The tears shining in Nonna’s eyes and the way her lips trembled through her smile provided all the assurance he needed.

Turning back to Andy, he stammered, “But… why me? ”

Andy gave a quizzical tilt of the head. “You don’t think you deserve it?”

After yet another shifty glance at Nonna, William straightened. Cleared his throat. “I mean…”

“William,” Andy began gently, “you’re brilliant, scholarly, and gifted. I say all of this knowing it would give most kids your age an ego complex; but you’re also thoughtful, diligent, and humble. Over-confidence is the least of your vices.”

“Okay,” William said slowly, genuinely moved by Andy’s faith in him. “But surely there must be some catch to this scholarship.”

Andy tipped his hand from side-to-side. “ You might think it’s a catch. Your nonna and I don’t.”

“Let me guess,” William speculated drily. “I have to be a confirmed Catholic.”

Andy grinned. “Bingo.” In response to William’s annoyance, he quickly added, “And don’t blame your poor nonna for this – she had nothing to do with it. She’s ready to accept your decision, whatever it may be, on one condition: that you spend one afternoon in conversation with me.”

“Of course.” In spite of himself, William couldn’t suppress a smile. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nonna only wanted what was best for him. Maybe it was inconvenient that she believed what was best for him was Confirmation; but he could easily put up with that in exchange for the unwavering support, presence, and unconditional love she had always offered him.

“Will,” Nonna began, “Did I ever tell you I graduated salutatorian of my high school?”

William’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Really?”

“I was offered a full scholarship to the College of Notre Dame, in Belmont; but Papa wouldn't let me go. He said I didn’t need a college diploma to be a wife and mother.”

Outraged on her behalf, William frowned. “Nonna… why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

“Because I never wanted anyone thinking I resented this life. I haven’t; not even for a second. But ... I do wish I could have had my cake and eat it, too.”

Andy chuckled softly beside William, but William only pressed his clasped hands to his lips and frowned down at the rug.

“Will,” Nonna proceeded, more quietly this time. “You remind me so much of me at your age, and also of my brother Vincent. He went to college and eventually became a bishop, you know; and I see that same potential in you.” When William opened his mouth to argue, Nonna lifted her hand. “College, is all I mean.”

"Nonna... I’ve always wanted to be a fisherman, like Uncle Frank.”

Nonna sighed. “You may enjoy fishing with Frank, but you’ve been reading since you were three. You read The Iliad and The Odyssey when you were seven. Seven , Will. And you’ve devoured every book you could get your hands on since. You were writing sonnets when you were eight. You picked up a guitar when you were ten, and just played.”

“Actually, Mike taught me,” William balked.

“Will,” Andy admonished, “just hear her out.”

William slouched in resignation, waiting.

“Let me put it this way,” Nonna continued. “My parents came from Sicily with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and each other. They defied their families to get married, you know – my mother was Arb?resh?,” she added by way of explanation to Andy.

Andy glanced back and forth between William and Nonna. “Arb?-who?”

“Arb?resh?,” William repeated. “They’re sort of an ethnic sub-group in Sicily, descended from Albanians.”

“So when they came here,” Nonna added, “they were just completely on their own.”

“How did they manage?” Andy marveled.

“They worked nonstop their whole lives,” Nonna replied. “Besides fishing, Papa cleaned sewers, swept streets, dug graves... whatever he could get. Mamma peddled fish from a cart, up and down the hills of San Francisco, with all her babies in tow.” Turning to her grandson, Nonna added, “And to all thirteen of us kids, they said the same thing: ‘We’re doing this so you don’t have to.’”

“I know they made a lot of sacrifices,” William replied, “but I’m sure they did that so their kids and grandkids would have choices, right?”

“Of course,” Nonna conceded.

“And I do actually enjoy fishing, you know. I’ve never felt more like myself than when I’m out there with Uncle Frank.”

“That’s great, Will; I’m not trying to disparage that,” Nonna assured him, “but right now, you’re young, with a strong back and forgiving joints. Meanwhile, you’ve seen the toll it’s taken on Frank.”

William had no rebuttal for that. Frank looked at least a decade older than his forty-one years and groaned under the burden of slipped discs, sciatica, and carpal tunnel. At sea, he subsisted on a diet of ramen noodles, Twinkies, cigarettes, and sugar with a little coffee in it. On land, he swapped out the sugar in favor of Kahlua or Bailey’s to cope with the havoc his frequent absences wrought upon his family.

“Your nonno tried to warn Frank,” Nonna continued gently, and William knew that by nonno, she meant her long-dead husband – the grandfather William had never met. “He saw what it did to his own father. It’s why Nonno invested everything he had into Cardone’s. He didn’t want that for himself or his kids.”

Stumped for a response, William slouched in his seat, glowering down at the rug.

“Will,” Andy ventured after a few moments, “it’s obvious that writing poems brings you joy. You showed me some of them, remember?”

“The few ones Jimmy didn’t get to, yeah.” There were a handful that William had scribbled on notebook paper at school, then stuffed carelessly into his backpack, only to forget about them. He rediscovered them a few days after Jimmy decimated his last composition journal, then kept them hidden there until Jimmy was arrested two weeks later for carjacking.

After a lengthy silence, William finally lifted his eyes to find both Nonna and Andy watching him with something like pity. It soured his stomach.

They both knew William hadn’t written anything since then, even though in theory, he had no one left to hide from. Jimmy had been incarcerated this whole time, and since it wasn’t his first offense, he had no hope of parole any time soon. But Jimmy’s past ridicule cast long shadows over the present.

Faggot.

Cocksucker.

Fudgepacker.

I’m gonna curb-stomp your fairy ass!

Nonna interrupted William’s rumination with, “I told you earlier you remind me of my brother Vincent. He and I were the scholars of the family, and the whole family was always very musical – you and Mike come by that honestly.” Her eyes suddenly glistened, and her chin wobbled. “Your parents and I tried to help Jimmy, and when that, um…” She glanced briefly at Andy, then seemed to choose her next words carefully. “...when that didn’t work, I did what I could to protect the rest of you, but...” To William’s dismay, a single tear spilled over onto Nonna’s cheek. “I couldn't.”

While Andy murmured reassurances to Nonna, William rushed over to sit beside her. His brows pinched with anguish as he grasped her hands. “Nonna, you’re the only one who ever really tried to help.” Despite Nonna’s protestations to the contrary, his parents had not; that was for sure. Not even when they were around and not working. Not even when his father wasn’t passed out drunk on the couch. And neither of those scenarios occurred very often.

Nonna withdrew one hand to swipe at her cheek. “And now here I am, making you comfort me.” She forced a ragged laugh. “I’m sorry. It’s just... Will, don’t let Jimmy take the you out of you. Not to fit Jimmy's twisted ideas of what it means to be a man. It would break my heart.”

William wiped his hands down his face and turned his eyes up to the ceiling. “It’s not just that, Nonna. Even if I wanted to apply for a full-ride scholarship, my grades aren’t competitive enough. ”

“Any minor blips in your grades,” Andy interjected, “are only because of how hard you work, helping your family. You can explain that in your essay, and I’ll reinforce it in my letter of recommendation.”

William stared down at the rug again and tugged at his knuckles while considering Andy’s offer. Finally, he lifted his eyes and said, “And all I have to do is undergo Confirmation, huh?”

Andy grinned. “Not my rules – USF’s. But you do have to actually mean it, Will.”

“Of course,” William grumbled, a bit sardonically.

“Will,” Nonna said, her tone carrying a mild warning.

But Andy chuckled. “Don’t stress about it, Will. The only thing your nonna asks of you is an afternoon’s conversation with Yours Truly. We’ve never had trouble finding stuff to talk about, have we?”

William shrugged. “Okay. When?”

“How about now?” Andy gestured toward the window. “The fog is clearing up. We can sit on the back patio.”

“I’ll turn on the patio heater and bring you some coffee,” Nonna offered.

William blew out a sigh of resignation, and a few minutes later, he sat comfortably at the long, rectangular patio table that had hosted countless Cardone and Quinn family gatherings.

After an awkward silence, William opened with, “So.”

“So,” echoed Andy with another one of his disarming grins.

Despite his best efforts, William broke into a wide grin of his own and shook his head. “Andy, we’ve been over all of this, and nothing has changed.”

Andy played coy. “Over all of what?”

“There’s no planet on which I could sincerely go through Confirmation.”

“Because you don’t believe in all that stuff,” Andy finished, succinctly summarizing what William had told him two and a half years ago.

“Exactly. ”

But Andy continued slowly nodding, as if waiting for William to elaborate.

“Do you still believe all of this is part of some grand plan?” William demanded.

“What do you mean, ‘all of this?’”

William gestured all around himself. “ This . The world. History.”

“Well, I wouldn't be a priest if I didn’t.”

William’s eyes narrowed. “So you honestly believe the Holocaust was part of God’s plan.”

"Will, did you ever read the Book of Job, like I suggested?”

William huffed. “Yeah. A few dozen chapters of Job moaning, ‘Why me?’ followed by God replying, ‘What the hell do you know?’”

To William’s surprise, Andy tossed his head back in a guffaw. “That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but actually... you’re not far off.”

“So, what? We’re just supposed to accept that we’ll never understand why God allows babies in ovens to happen?”

Andy folded his arms on the tabletop and leaned in. “What about Man’s Search for Meaning , by Viktor Frankl? I suggested that one, too. Did you ever read it?”

Blanching, William admitted he had not.

Andy sighed and sat back again in his chair. “Don’t get me wrong, Will; I’m with you. I can’t grasp how something like the Holocaust fits into the plan of any benevolent, omnipotent God. But our power lies in our response. Just because God is all-powerful doesn’t mean we’re powerless.”

“But if God really were all-powerful, He could have made a prefect world.”

“Maybe this is a perfect world,” Andy posited. “Maybe it’s the most perfect world possible.”

“That’s depressing,” grunted William.

“If you choose.” When William merely blinked, Andy added, “There’s a line in Job where God basically says, ‘The eaglet feasts on blood, and wherever the slain are, there it is.’ But you know, the same eagle that preys on livestock also keeps rodents out of fields and silos. Maybe God made a perfect world, a world of natural balance and order where we still have the power to choose; and we’re the ones who keep screwing it up with our terrible choices and our lousy attitudes.”

William leveled Andy with a dubious look, but at that moment, Nonna emerged with the coffee. After pouring a cup for both of them and leaving the cream and sugar, she didn’t linger. William supposed she didn’t want to disrupt any momentum Andy had established.

As he poured cream into his coffee, William set his jaw. “Andy... I enjoy our conversations. I’m very grateful for your friendship and your confidence in me. But if I go to college, I’ll have to find a different scholarship, because I can’t go through with Confirmation.”

“You know, Will,” Andy said tentatively while stirring his coffee, “we can make this an ongoing dialogue. We don’t have to limit it to just this afternoon.”

But William shook his head. “I won’t change my mind.”

Andy said nothing; he just peered up at William from beneath his eyelashes and continued to stir his coffee. William couldn’t get a read on his expression. Sad? Frustrated? Disappointed? Maybe all of it.

Finally Andy yielded, and they spent the rest of the afternoon talking about poetry, sports, and school.

“HIS GIANT WINGS KEEP HIM FROM WALKING.”

The irony was, when William was eleven, he actually dreamed of being a monk. A life of solitude, scholarship, and quiet reflection sounded perfect to a nerdy little introvert like him.

Then, when he was twelve, puberty hit.

Not long after, Jimmy ripped up his composition notebook for the first time, and the regular brutalizations began. The random “inspections” of his bedroom for contraband “homo shit,” like poetry. Breaking the door down if William had bothered to lock it. Pinning him to the bed or the floor, just to assert his dominance, until William’s limbs went numb. Forcing him to drink until he finally pissed himself. William would have done it voluntarily just to put an end to it, but his terror was so great that he couldn't even relax his bladder. And when the pain finally overrode all bladder control, Jimmy would rub William's nose in it as if he were a dog, then hover menacingly in the doorway while he made William clean up after himself.

This particular torture only occurred when everyone else was out of the house. Perhaps Nonna was grocery shopping, or shuttling Kelly to and from her soccer games. Mike would be out somewhere, raising hell. His parents, as always, were at work.

But there were other, more brazen torments, too. Random sucker punches to the stomach or nuts as they passed each other, right outside the kitchen where Nonna was cooking. William learned to swallow his screams, or else he’d get even worse the next time. If anyone discovered him in the immediate aftermath, doubled over in pain, he blamed it on diarrhea or constipation.

He couldn't predict when it was coming, so he learned to hide. Shrink. Lock himself away.

And then, of course, when he was fourteen, Jimmy decimated his second composition notebook. That same day, William met Haze. From then on, despite all the prayers and hours spent in confession, his carnal urges remained firmly in the driver’s seat.

He had to find some way to release the tension – the relentless hypervigilance, even in his sleep. The masking; the prosaicism of his life now. He released the tension every night in the shower, since he could no longer release it in the form of poems and songs. Jimmy had irrevocably robbed that from him. So instead, he stood under the spray of hot water, screwed his eyes shut, and imagined how much better his release would feel surging into a woman’s receptive body, instead of down the drain. No amount of prayer had ever brought him that kind of relief.

But poetry once had.

Now, two and a half years on, cloistered in what had once been Jimmy’s meth den but was now his bedroom, William opened his French textbook and re-read L’Albatros .

After dissecting the poem at length and allowing its cadence to settle over his students like a warm blanket, Monsieur Laurent had lectured on how rarely translations do justice to the original. How the translator sacrifices the original beauty or meter to preserve the meaning, or vice versa. To drive home the point, M. Laurent assigned them to conduct their own translation of L’Albatros , without consulting existing ones.

The entire class groaned, except William. Sparks crackled along his skin for the first time in two and a half years.

The Poet is like the prince of the clouds,

Who haunts the storms and laughs at the archer;

Exiled on the ground amid jeers,

His giant wings keep him from walking.

“How true,” William murmured aloud to his empty bedroom after translating the final stanza. Not just true of his own experiences, but of his clunky translation, as well.

But maybe Nonna and Andy were right. Maybe it was finally time to stop limping in the shadow of a cruel tormenter who had once tried to clip his wings.

“TI VUGGHIU BINI.”

A few weeks later, as William made his usual trek home from school, the June-gloom cleared long enough for him to spot the redhead from French class.

Her name was Julia. He had finally learned it back in May, after her virtuosic reading of L’Albatros .

She was clearly oblivious to her audience as she danced down the sidewalk, headphones over her ears, singing along badly to some song. He didn’t mean to be a creeper, but his eyes couldn't help lingering. Her waist-length curtain of copper hair bounced and swayed along with her from beneath the brim of her bowler hat.

A week or two ago, she had finally shed the orthodontic headgear. She was still skinny; still flat-chested. Still wore long, baggy dresses that looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie , paired with vests and hand-crocheted cardigans and granny boots.

But that smile...

Despite the orthodontic treatment, her smile still betrayed a hint of an overbite. Even so, there was something about it. Luminous. Irrepressible. A bit mischievous. As if sharing some private joke with herself, it often warmed her features while she daydreamed in class, wrapped up in her own private Idaho.

She clearly didn’t require anyone’s approval. She seemed not exactly oblivious, but actually impervious to the taunts of their peers.

Watching her skip and twirl ahead of him, William couldn’t help wondering where people found that kind of confidence. A poignant ache squeezed his chest, but before he could analyze it, she turned down a street three blocks from his own and vanished back into the fog.

He was still thinking of her when he unlocked the front door to his house, shooing away one of the more domesticated of Nonna’s strays, who tried to dart past his ankles into the house.

Once William made it inside, he kept the front door open a crack to peer back out at the orange tabby, who protested with a plaintive mewl. But William good-naturedly said, “Better luck next time, buddy.”

He still felt a little guilty, even though he knew Nonna's feline street urchins suffered not at all under her attentions. But then a warm, spicy aroma, redolent of the ocean, drove all thought of cats, Julia, or anything else from his mind.

Cioppino.

After dropping his backpack in the in-law unit, he made a beeline upstairs to the kitchen. Sure enough, he found Nonna in her well-loved, green-and-white-checked apron, stirring something in a pot over the stove. She had tamed her unruly salt-and-pepper coils of hair beneath a matching green-and-white-checked kerchief. As he approached, she greeted him with a smile, her glasses fogged up a bit from the steam .

“Surprise!” she sang out. “Happy last day of sophomore year!”

“You made cioppino for me?” He came closer and peered into the pot at the beginnings of the luscious seafood stew. His favorite.

“You bet I did.”

William made a tsk sound. “That’s too bad. I was going to McDonald’s for dinner. Guess you’ll have to feed my share to your freeloading strays.”

Laughing, William tried to dodge the clean wooden spoon she snatched from the countertop, but as usual, she was too quick – it swatted him on his backside. It was a playful, affectionate little gesture she had administered for as long as he could remember. That was also about how long he had been cooking with her – as long as he could remember. And despite her age and the plump build of a grandmother whose love language was food, she was still spry and feisty.

Once his laughter subsided, he inquired, “Where did you get Dungeness crab at this time of year?”

“Oh, I have connections,” Nonna replied with a cheesy grin and a wink.

William supposed she was referring to Uncle Frank. As she got back to work, he told her about his plans to spend three weeks this summer albacore tuna-fishing with Frank – until he spotted the tight line of her mouth.

Tentatively, he ventured, “I’ll make a ton of money from that trip, you know. I can put it in my college savings account. The one you opened for me.”

With a nearly inaudible gasp, Nonna turned to gape up at him. “Does that mean you’re considering it? Going to college?”

William nodded, smiling faintly, and watched her eyes suddenly glint with moisture. She set the spoon on her favorite eggplant-shaped spoon rest and turned to grasp William’s hands in her own spotty, wrinkled ones. The strength of her grip belied her four-foot-ten-inch stature.

“I am so proud of you,” she said, craning her neck far back to see him, her voice cracking a bit as she enunciated each word. “You’ll be the first person on both sides of your family to go to college, besides my brother. Did you know that?”

A strange chokehold suddenly gripped William’s throat, and all he could do was nod.

“You’ll have a great life, Will.” She squeezed his hands, her watery eyes flitting back and forth between his. “The sky is the limit for you. I have no doubt.”

“Only thanks to you,” he managed to choke out. “I mean, it’s not like anyone else in this family would have given me a writing journal, or entrusted me with a Nikon camera when I was only six, or found me a scholarship to the best high school in the city.”

“Will, a nonna isn’t supposed to play favorites, so I’ll just say this – I always knew you were different, in the best possible way. All I did was plant a few seeds, but you are the one who tended them into a bountiful harvest.”

With that, she tugged him into one of her signature bear hugs, and a tear escaped from him unbidden when she whispered, “Ti vugghiu bini, niputeddu miu.”

“Love you, too, Nonna,” he whispered in return.

When she finally released him, she held him by his elbows a moment and smiled, her lips still trembling, eyes still shimmering up at him. “Now come on – it’s time for you to learn my secret.”

“What secret?”

“The secret of what turns a good cioppino into a great cioppino, of course!”

A rare, wide grin snaked its way across his features. “You mean you’re finally going to divulge the top-secret classified ingredient? The one you’ve been holding out on me all these years?”

“The very one,” she chirped, giving his elbows a final squeeze before turning back to the stove. “You're ready.”

That night, his belly and heart both full, he picked up the phone on his bedside table and dialed Andy’s number.

“Will,” Andy greeted. “This is a surprise. I thought you’d be celebrating your last day of school. ”

“I already did.”

“Well, then. Quoting you, ‘to what do I owe the pleasure?’”

William chuckled, emboldened by the warmth seeping through his veins from the rare glass of wine Nonna had poured him at dinner. A peppery Zinfandel to complement her zesty cioppino.

“Is it too late to start Confirmation classes?”

“NEVER LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH.”

June-gloom melded seamlessly into no-sky-July, and William spent his days either working at Cardone’s for his parents, or on Uncle Frank’s boat. Sometimes, while hoisting totes of fish or crabs to the pier, he spotted Julia Dunphy. She would emerge from her parents’ restaurant and linger for about fifteen minutes, contemplating the boats, the bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Other times, she would read books he couldn’t make out the titles of, her lips moving silently along with the words. It made him smile, for some reason.

She was still all sharp cheekbones and elbows. She still dressed like Mimi from La Bohème . Of course, he wasn’t much to look at, either. Over the past couple of years, he had grown so much and so fast that his bones ached constantly. These days, when he looked in the mirror, an unrecognizable stick insect stared back at him through disproportionately large eyes.

With a sigh, he tore his gaze from Julia and re-focused on the job at hand. Nonna had asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday, and he had told her, “Go fishing with Uncle Frank.”

With a tight smile, Nonna had replied, “I think it might be good for you to spend a couple of weeks out there with him. See what it’s really like on that side of the hoist.” But William knew his ongoing fascination with fishing worried Nonna a bit less, now that he was actively contributing to his college savings account and talking to Andy about Confirmation.

If he was being honest, he still didn’t buy this stuff, but he claimed he did. It made it all worthwhile when William saw the tears of pride shimmering in Nonna’s eyes each time she caught sight of him and Andy, seated in conversation at the dining table. He adored his grandmother and would do anything to make her happy. If that meant undergoing Confirmation, then lying to do so was a small price to pay.

After all, he didn’t really believe in hell.

As he accompanied Frank back to the slip and tied the boat to the pile, he remembered that Nonna had called that morning to say she had another one of her headaches. She insisted they were migraines because she got blurry vision; though admittedly she hadn’t had migraines since menopause. But clearly they were back now, and they troubled her more and more; so she had stayed home today to rest.

William decided to help his parents by cooking dinner. After ducking into the processing plant to inform them, he walked all the way to the Italian grocer in North Beach, gathered the ingredients for chicken marsala, then caught the next bus home with his haul.

But to his surprise, when he unlocked the front door, heavenly aromas wafted downstairs to greet him. He stopped short, the grocery bag still in his arms.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” Nonna called from upstairs.

With his long legs, William scaled the stairs two at a time and hurried into the kitchen. Sure enough, Nonna sliced eggplant at the counter.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, setting the groceries on the kitchen table and coming to inspect her.

She turned to lift an eyebrow. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Not resting at home,” he retorted.

She pointed to her head and grinned. “Not suffering from a migraine.”

“That was fast,” he observed. “Don’t they usually last longer?”

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” She nodded over to the bag on the table. “What’s that?”

William took that as his cue to start putting away the groceries. “Dinner tomorrow. Chicken marsala. You’re invited. ”

She gaped at him a moment. “You were going to make that tonight, weren’t you?”

He shrugged. "I’ll make it tomorrow, instead.”

“I’m sorry, Will. If I had known–”

“It’s fine,” he chuckled. “I’m glad you’re better.”

Smiling warmly, she wiped her hands on her checked apron and came to meet him at the refrigerator. “You’re such a good boy, but you had better quit growing, or I won’t be able to do this anymore.” Standing on her tiptoes and reaching as high as possible, she managed to give his cheek an affectionate pinch.

Warmth flooded his chest, and he stooped to kiss her cheek. “I make no promises, Nonna.”

She laughed. “Let me help you put those groceries away. Then I’ll show you how to sweat the eggplant so it doesn’t get soggy.”

Over the next few minutes, they salted and pressed the eggplant slices, leaching the excess moisture. As they worked, William’s mind drifted back to a certain girl on the pier.

“Nonna, does the Dunphys’ daughter work at their restaurant now? Because I keep seeing her over there.”

“Which daughter?”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “There’s more than one?”

“There’s two, actually.”

“Oh... well, I’m talking about the redhead. Julia.”

Nonna gave him a sidelong smirk. “Has she caught your eye?”

His neck suddenly felt hot, and his scoff of denial was too vehement. “She seems... a little quirky.”

She hummed. “Well, I have no idea if Julia works there now. That would be a better question for your parents.” Shooting him another impish grin, she added, “Or for her .”

He shuddered at the thought of actually speaking to Julia – not because she repulsed him, but because he shuddered at the thought of speaking to anyone outside the family. It’s why he had no real friends to speak of.

Their conversation paused as they flipped the eggplant slices, placed them between two clean dry dish towels, and re-stacked the heavy books on top. But afterward, while they waited, Nonna seemed preoccupied.

“Is your headache coming back?” William speculated.

The furrow between her brows smoothed out, and she smiled gently. “Thank heaven, no.”

Another few minutes of silence followed while William used Nonna’s rolling pin to crumble stale bread. Then he watched as Nonna mixed the crumbs with dried herbs and spices.

“Will...” she began tentatively. “If you ever fall in love with a woman, don’t degrade her by living in sin.”

William’s entire head and neck flooded with heat, and an involuntary guffaw escaped his throat. “Wha...?”

She peered up at him again, even as she continued sprinkling oregano into the crumbs. She didn’t need to measure – she knew how much to add by instinct. “I mean it, Will. You have a big heart, and one day you’re going to fall in love. You feel things deeply, even if you don’t wear your heart on your sleeve; so when you fall, you’ll fall hard. You'll be tempted to move quickly, but there’s no need to rush.”

“Nonna...” Mortified, William coughed out a laugh. “If this is because of me asking about Julia–”

Nonna cut him off with a dismissive wave. “It’s just... you’re nearly a man now, and you’re also on the path to Confirmation. I want you to be happy, and sticking closely to what you’re learning from Andy will serve you well in all areas – including romance.”

His cheeks still radiated heat, and he couldn’t look her in the eye. The only response he could offer was an awkward, “Um... okay. I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Good. I said my piece,” she declared, whisking the dish towel from the eggplant slices with a flourish. “Now, grab the flour and the eggs – it’s time to get messy.”

Chuckling, he shrugged off the last of his embarrassment and happily complied. Ever since he could remember, he had loved getting his hands messy with food. He had never outgrown the fun of breading eggplant. That’s when it dawned on him – cooking brought him the same contentment he had only ever known from fishing and poetry. Especially cooking with his feisty, hopelessly behind-the-times nonna. And as with his poetry and songwriting, his family ribbed him endlessly about it.

But maybe the joke was on them. Maybe one day, the skills Nonna had passed down to him would pay dividends. It was one more gift he could never repay, even if he had forty lifetimes.