Bridge of Sighs

on parallel tracks, having both recently moved from the West End to a better part of town? Weren’t the Lynches and the Marconis, despite our differences, both determined to take advantage of what America offered, a chance to prove our worth, to get ahead, to secure our future? Of course in Thomaston, as elsewhere, the Irish and the Italians often judged their progress against each other. So there was all of this, as well as one other potent comparison. Now that Mr. Marconi was a full-time letter carrier at the post office, they were both “route men” who owned a territory and were responsible for things getting done, for making sure people in their territory got what they needed. Men who moved throughout their world and became men of that world. This, I think, was what made my father even more interested in Mr. Marconi now than he had been before, and much more than he was in our other East End neighbors. They were both men of motion, of movement. Who would grab the brass ring?
    Mr. Marconi had some advantages—not unfair advantages, my father never went that far. But in certain respects, he had to admit, the other man had it made. For one thing, the post office paid better than the dairy, and postal workers had government benefits that wouldn’t quit. Also, letter carriers didn’t have to get up nearly as early as milkmen. Except for the long summer days in June and July, my father always rose in the dark, and in winter he’d complete half his route before sunrise. Still, he confided to me more than once that he wasn’t sure he’d have swapped jobs with Mr. Marconi even if he’d had the chance, not when you considered their respective routes. Mr. Marconi delivered his letters in the Gut, the very worst part of the West End, whereas my father worked the Borough, the plum route, proof of the high esteem in which his employers held him. He worried out loud about Mr. Macaroni’s place in the post office hierarchy if the Gut was the route they gave him.
    My father had begun referring to Bobby’s father as “Mr. Macaroni” shortly after he’d promised to leave him alone, and he always nudged me to make sure I got the joke. I don’t think he was aware of my mixed feelings. The joke was gentle enough, but since kindergarten I’d been called a name I wasn’t fond of, so I was sensitive about nicknames. Of course with my father it was different. He wasn’t calling the man a name to his face, and there was no ill will intended in any event, so I supposed it was all right for him and me to have a small private joke. My real fear was that he’d slip up someday when Bobby was around. And I suspect this was his response to the fact that my mother’s injunction not to talk to Mr. Marconi had gradually broadened. By “leave the man alone” she apparently meant not just that my father shouldn’t talk
to
the man but also that he shouldn’t talk
about
him—that is, to quit bringing his name up in conversations. This extra weight, added to his already solemn promise, must have seemed particularly unfair, so he was glad to discover that he could expect a little more latitude if he referred to Mr. Macaroni, which occasioned a more benign, pained reaction. If I reported that the Marconis had purchased a television—they had, according to Bobby—my father was able to interrogate me by making the whole thing into a joke. Mr. Macaroni bought a TV? What kind of TV did Mr. Macaroni buy, new or used? Did Mrs. Macaroni like the new Macaroni TV?
    The questions were jokes and not jokes. Back when we’d all lived in Berman Court, my father had had a pretty good idea of our relative circumstances, but what had happened since we’d been separated? What had the Marconis acquired? How big were the economic strides they’d taken? How much had those strides been offset by two more little Macaronis? They were still renting, which meant something, but maybe they were saving for a down payment on a house. Were they close or still years away? My father had an inquiring mind, which he was now cruelly prohibited from using.
    Therefore he had to rely on me for information. Did the Macaronis drink Coca-Cola or the off brands that Tommy Flynn and Ikey Lubin stocked in their coolers and sold cheap? I never went into the Marconis’ flat either, so I knew little more than my father did, and I told him so. “Ask him sometime,” he’d suggest, meaning Bobby. “He’ll do no such thing,” my mother would reply. “It’s none of