Sal nodded. ‘Yeah, probably. If it’s any consolation, it’s in the blood. I’d a probably done the same thing, then got cut too. Bet that makes you feel better!’

A smile started, but went nowhere. ‘Lots. Thanks!

‘Don’t mention it. You hungry?’ He squeezed off the water again, held it with one hand, and pulled a roll of bills out of his front pocket.

Sal had a regular spot at the U.S. Restaurant, a lone table that spearheaded the sidewalk at the narrowest point in the triangular building. The place was in the heart of North Beach and had been in its location half a block from Gino & Carlo’s bar, essentially unchanged, for as long as Sal could remember. You still couldn’t spend ten bucks on a meal there if you tried.

They were on their third carafe of red wine. The wineglass was a prop and Sal had his hands wrapped around his. A foot from them both, outside the glass, the tourist night was getting into swing, the lights coming up on the street.

‘I don’t know if there is a why anymore,’ Sal was saying. ‘Maybe there never was. I don’t know.’

‘But there had to be, Sal. You don’t just…’

‘Maybe you do. Maybe one day you wake up and you’re a different person. You’re going along and something happens and the whole vision you have of who you are – suddenly that whole thing just doesn’t work anymore. So everything it was holding up comes crashing down around it.’

‘What? Did Mom have an affair?’

Sal shook his head. ‘It wasn’t your mother. This was me. Who I was.’ He lifted the prop and used it, buying some time. ‘It wasn’t anything as easy as an affair.’

‘So what was it?’ Sarah asked him.

By now it was nearly midnight, although neither of them was much aware of the time. They were facing each other, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

‘To this day I don’t know. He said I didn’t realize how insecure a person my mother was – still is, if you want to know. No one who saw her out in the world would ever see that. Though we kids had seen it, of course, after we were older. The face-lifts now, the trappings. Stuff you don’t need if you’re together with yourself.’

Graham seemed embarrassed by the cheap psychology. He looked down at his hands. ‘Anyway, she loved him. Their backgrounds might never mesh, they got uncomfortable doing each other’s things, you know?’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, Mom wouldn’t go out on the boat. Sal wouldn’t get dressed up for anything. It broke down to money – Mom was used to things you bought, Sal liked things you did. It was a pretty big difference.’

‘But they got together?’

He nodded. ‘They’d never be friends like some couples were, but he loved her and knew he could make her keep loving him.’

‘He could make her?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘And how did he do that?’

‘By being stronger than she was, having a stronger will.’

‘And that made her love him?’

‘Yeah, I think it might have.’

Sarah and Graham had never gotten around to drinking any of their wine – the glasses remained half filled on the hardwood by the couch. Graham was still trying to reason it through for himself, how it had happened with his father and mother.

So it wasn’t the hour or the alcohol. Still, with no real intention of doing so, he was becoming more aware of the planes of Sarah’s face, the soft bow of her lips, the way her hair fell across her cheek.

Sal’s eyes danced with the memory. ‘See? I knew who I was. I was happy in myself. I was a person – okay, a schlemiel like I still am, but I knew where I belonged, who I was. Your mother, she didn’t. She was looking, always looking for something solid, always unsure of where the ground was.

‘I think – no, hell, I know – that nothing in her parents’ life got inside her. She’d gone to the schools and had the clothes and the fancy friends, but you know what? They didn’t do it for her. Then when we got together, finally she was happy – not always thrilled with the way we lived, with no money, none of that society junk, but she loved you kids.’

‘And what about you? Did she still love you?’ His father leaned across the table and Graham could pick up the odor of fish, of cheap wine. But even with that, the old clothes and the stubble, the random fish scale on his skin, Sal remained a compelling figure. I told you. I made her.‘

Graham rolled his eyes and his father laughed.

‘That, too, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.’ Graham hadn’t touched his spumoni ice cream and now it had melted into a waxy, pinkish-brown liquid in its small, tarnished metal bowl. Sal pulled it over in front of him and dipped a spoon. ‘She’d get the doubts, you know. “Do we belong here?” “Maybe my parents are right.” “Where are we going?” “Did I still love her the way I did when we started?” All the time!’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘All the goddamn time, Graham’.

‘And you know what I’d do?’ He scooped up another spoonful of melted spumoni. ‘I’d tell her I was sure. That this is really what she wanted, down in her soul. That the kids, the house, the worries – this was real life. It was the only thing that had ever made her happy. She knew that. And that I loved her, not because of anything except for who she was.’

He sat back, scratched at his face, pulled at the sides of his mouth. Finally speaking about this after all these years, to his oldest son, bringing it up again – the memory seemed to be battering him. ‘It was just a constant battle, Graham. You can’t imagine – the conflict between how she was raised and how she was living. It seemed like she always had one foot out the door, ready to go back. So I couldn’t ever waver, couldn’t show any doubt of my own, or she’d lose faith. If I stopped acting like I believed, then she couldn’t go it on her own. It wasn’t her dream at all, really. It depended on who I was.’

‘And who were you?’

He sighed wearily and spoke with a huskiness that now betrayed the words. He had confidence in the memory. He knew who he ‘d been. ’I was Sal Russo. I’d never make a lot of money, never change the world, but I was as good a man as there was. I was strong, I worked hard, I didn’t cheat. I loved your mother with all my heart. Simple stuff, but it was what she needed to hear, who she needed me to be. And it was true.‘

‘So what happened?’

He searched the crowded restaurant for a minute, hiding or searching for the answer. Letting out a deep breath, he shrugged. ‘I lost my confidence, I guess. I couldn’t pretend I was anybody special anymore.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I wasn’t.’

It wasn’t really an answer, but another, more pressing, question kept Graham from pursuing it. ‘But what about us? Me? Deb? Georgie? How could you just leave us?’ He reached across the table and put a hand on his father’s arm. ‘I’m not here to bust your chops on this. I’d just like to understand it, that’s all.’

‘I would, too, Graham. I’d go back and live every minute of that time over again if I could. I don’t know how I could have done it. I want to blame your mother, but again, it was all me. I could have fought her.’

The implications here rocked Graham. The only story he’d ever heard was that his father didn’t want to see his children anymore. And, indeed – apparently – he hadn’t made any effort to. Not that Graham had heard of. ‘What do you mean,’ he asked, ‘you could have fought Mom?’

They were out of props: wineglasses, ice cream, coffee cups. At the U.S. Restaurant steady customers could sit all day and night over a demitasse if they wanted. Nobody hustled them out.

Sal had his hands folded on the table, the knuckles gnarled and white with pressure. ‘I don’t know exactly how to say this, but when we broke up, when it stopped working, your mother… it meant she’d failed. She’d gone up against everything she was raised with, because I’d convinced her it was somehow truer, or nobler, better. Then when it didn’t work, she had no choice, I think. She had to hate me. I had betrayed her. I was the devil.’