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The Lost Era of Frank Sinatra

by Rachel Guido deVries

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Chapter 2

October in northern New Jersey can be beautiful. You can almost smell the ocean coming up near Paterson from Sandy Hook, or the air off the Hudson bringing with it all the mysteries of the city, a faint beat of music, jazz or the blues. The huge maples lining the streets of all the little towns around Paterson, where the legends of the silk mills still make a magical sound in everybody’s ears, spill their leaves into colorful piles where kids loved to jump. If you were lucky you could get somebody to take you to Ramapo where you could walk all morning on paths with light so dazzling filtering through the trees that you would have to keep your eyes lowered or you would get dizzy, and along the earthy pathways you would see shadows and occasionally a snake moving slow across your way. Later you might watch a football game between Hawthorne High and Manchester Regional, or wait for the kids or the grandkids to come over and say hi, have a cup of coffee or an eggplant sandwich with you, or rake your leaves, or just keep you company.

On just that kind of New Jersey October morning, Angie Martini Romeo, Mary Martini Vitale’s only sister left living out of the six of them, was standing outside of the senior citizen housing project she had just moved into after a two year wait. The move was made on September 4th, her niece Jude’s birthday. Angie took that as a sign of luck. Jude was her favorite, she had said those novenas for months with Mary; Angie could hardly wait for Mary to get pregnant; her knees grew sore from kneeling; she really didn’t care for praying all that much, she hated going to confession and having to flirt with Father John to get absolution because Vinny used rubbers. “Rhythm, Angelina, is the only way to avoid sin,” Father intoned Saturday after Saturday, at confession at St. Victory’s in Hawthorne. Angie and Mary would later roar and make fun of the old priest, Angie’s blind left eye sparkling like a marble at a fixed angle, a wild eye of laughter and the love of absurdity.

Mary, quieter, a little ashamed of sex, not sex exactly but how much she enjoyed it, could never tell the priest anything about it. To atone for the pleasure, and then for the lie of avoidance, she doubled whatever penance she received. Her guilt was intensified because she had waited so long during the first two years of her marriage. She’d made all those novenas, visited so many doctors, and even after five kids and her and Frankie’s habits she felt there was something wrong somehow with using birth control. Yet she’d regretted each pregnancy after the first two kids—Jude, and little Frankie. She loved Philly and Tina, of course, and she would always miss Michael, her baby, but she thought two kids was enough: she was always telling Jude, “don’t have kids, Jude, you’re smart, you have choices. See the world.” To think how she’d prayed in the early years, right after the war, sure Frankie would amount to something, that she would be happy, have peace and quiet, something lovely and clean and honorable.

Angie had never worried much about honor, except in her way of thinking about it: you go to church, have sex with your husband as much as you want, you have as much fun as you can without hurting anybody, a few drinks at night at the Silver Mirror in the old days, and later at home with your husband or your sisters. Play a game of poker, eat a dish of macaroni, visit with your kids, and only tell lies, white lies, like lying about birth control to the priest or you husband, while winking into the darkness in front of both of their backs.

A month after moving into the senior project, alone—Vinny had died the year before shovelling snow from the winding driveway in Hawthorne, just keeled over and died while Angie was watching out the window, keeping the coffee warm and wishing he’d come in—Angie waited for her son Vince, his wife Jane and their three boys to come see the place for the first time. She had finally completed the finishing touches: the carpet men had installed a pale blue carpet in the living room and bedroom yesterday, and Mary had brought her a cuckoo clock to hang in the kitchen. When it struck two, Angie felt suddenly lonely, so she went outside to wait in the beautiful fall afternoon instead of hovering at the window like a loony old lady. The baked ziti was simmering in the oven near the window with the yellow curtains, and they trembled gently in the breeze.

Outside she took a breath of air and stretched her arms up; she realized she was still holding the wooden spoon, red with sauce. She grinned at herself and saw Vince’s car round the corner. Her heart fluttered at the sight of all of them. Vince had a chance to hug her hello before Angie said, “I don’t feel so good all of a sudden.” Then she fell down and she was gone, the wooden spoon still in her hand, the afternoon sun illuminating her face, the smell of the best sauce in the world, the Martini sauce, drifting out of the yellow-curtained window, already a memory.

Chapter 3

She remembered with a sudden start, the kind of observation that feels at once like a memory until you realize it’s something that you just realized, not remembered, even though it feels like a memory. All at once she knew that time had changed, and she knew it first by thinking about her father, when she had the most incredible sensation, like a cloud suddenly embracing the sun, that he was gone, off the planet in a wisp of smoke, the smoke curling up into a gray sky from the pile of ashes. How small the pile looked. The smoke was a sad and fragile thing somehow, and this struck Jude as kind of funny. She didn’t for a second think that Frankie had died. She felt instead that something vital in him had given up or given in, and become flat as bread without yeast.

Jude Vitale knew that right at that moment both she and Frankie, her father, had become older, had turned rather like a ferris wheel turns, riding in separate cars. Frankie, Frank, Big Frank up top near the sun. Its brightness gleamed on his bald head, and Jude, in a blue car midway between the bottom and Frankie’s perch, in the middle, facing out, looking over the ocean late August from the boardwalk, at Seaside Heights, seeing everything as sad, like not just she and Frankie but the ocean itself was in mourning, hazy, partly from the heat of the mid-day sun, partly from the angle of her life now, when she realized her father’s holding on to something old and precious had loosened and entered the sky where it could live like a star, or maybe like the idea of a saint or a demon, and in its place was something soft and gaping, a need so huge at last in its acknowledgement, not child-like, but ancient, poking out of Frankie’s eyes with a desperation, while Jude moved into her own change. A kind of sad wisdom and a little bit of calm where before there had been wildness or the desire for wildness settled into the place around her heart where her youth had once lived too. Jude bade a part of her life farewell, and opened her arms to embrace whatever was replacing it.

Chapter 4

Mary Vitale lived back behind her eyes, smoky and dark, and full of secrets. Daily she got up, lit a pall mall, had her coffee and waited for Frankie to stop snoring, rouse himself off to the john for a quarter of an hour, pull on his work clothes and leave to open the store. The five kids would wait until he left to come out into the kitchen. All winter long, the kitchen would be steamy from the heat and the coffee and the hot bowls of minute rice with butter and sugar and milk. Sometimes they’d all gather around the open oven door, close together and warm. Other time they’d gather around the table and slurp rice and whisper stories like they were in church, and those morning whispers filled the kitchen with the steam and the smoke from Mary’s cigarettes. Just before they left for school, Mary would line them up at the back door and check their ears, their fingernails, their hair, and she would brush each of their cheeks with her soft lips, ending at each one’s ear, where she would whisper like a conspirator the same secret phrase to each one, “I love you best, you’re my favorite,” so that they trotted from the house like little ponies, frisky and proud and ready for life.

Then Mary would light another pall mall and read a few pages of a popular novel before she left to work with Frankie at the store. All day she did what she had to—get the kids ready, serve coffee and eggs and Taylor ham or sausage, sometimes going into a daydream that made her burn her hand on the hot grill—and all the time she was living and planning and dreaming, far away from all of them, Frankie, the kids, Benny Alioti, the coffee salesman with his Roman hands and Russian fingers and those awful pop eyes waiting for the end of the day or week, the end of the month, the end, when she would do something, anything. In the meantime, there were her dreams.

***

“Didja ever want to be anything else, Mama?” Jude wanted to know. She was eleven, with her father’s intensity clear in her dark brown eyes, her mother’s secrets in her heart, and, lately, with her breasts growing and soft pubic hair beginning to come in, she had a deep and new feeling whenever she took a bath, the hot water making her feel excited and mysterious to herself. Jude and Mary were playing hang- the-man at the kitchen table, Friday night. Little Frankie, Philly, and Michael watched the Yankee’s game; Tina was already asleep for the night. Frankie was making a few extra bucks, tending bar at the Lanza Avenue Grill in Paterson. It was Jude’s turn to guess. The clues were “T_ _ e_.” Jude already had a head and a body, and she was losing interest in guessing letters. “H?” She guessed, half-heartedly.

Mary nodded, and filled in the h after the t.

“Anything else like what”

“Oh, you know, like anything. Like in the olden days. When you were my age. Is there an i?”

“Yup. C’mon, guess, honey. T-h-i-e what? Figure it out yet?”

“F,” announced Jude. “T-h-i-e-f. Right, Mama? Thief.”

“Right, Jude. Thief. I used to want to travel, thought about joining the army, or later, I wished I could of been an airline stewardess, see things.”

“How come you didn’t?”

Mary leaned across the kitchen table toward her daughter. “’Cause I had you, then Frankie, Philly, Tina, then Michael. Who had time?” She pushed the hang-the-man pad to Jude. The word thief was all filled in in Mary’s dark printing. You get a word for me to guess now,” she said to Jude, and Jude felt a funny catch in her throat. Thief. One, two, three, four, five. JudelittleFrankiePhillyTinaMichael.

“Are you sorry, Mama?”

“Of course not. But wait to have kids, Jude. See the world.” Mary grinned and started singing: ” See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet, da da da da da da da da da DAH!”

“But I thought your prayed to St. Jude for me.” Jude felt afraid.

“I did, baby. I was dying for a daughter first off. And I waited so long and then Bam! Five in a row! But who else would I play hang-the-man with, or watch American Bandstand with, if I didn’t have you? For that matter,” Mary pinched her daughter’s pink cheek, “who would you play with? C’mon, Little Miss Serious, think up a word. I want to guess now.

“Okay.” Jude thought a minute. Her mother wrote thief. Thieves should go to confession, do their penance, and then what? She shrugged. “Okay. Her it is.” She wrote: --t---. “Your clue is one letter, a ‘t’. Ready?” Father, she thought to herself. Confession. Penance. Freedom. “Guess, Mama, and make it good, if you don’t want to hang yourself.” Thief, thought Jude. Father. Church. Music. Frankie. Frank Sinatra. Someone To Watch Over Me. “What time is it anyway,” she said, “maybe the Yankee game is almost over.”

***

Mary was singing on stage, singing “Over the Rainbow” better than Judy Garland: she was the first Italian girl from New Jersey ever to sing at Carnegie Hall. Steven Holt was in the audience, blond hair combed and shining, the blue-gray of his eyes gleaming in pride. Afterwards he stood, all six strong feet of him, and walked confidently backstage to meet his bride-to-be. His parents waited nervously, a little humbled by Mary’s performance, and she had decided to be nice to them, despite the way they had first treated her. “No I- talian, Steven. She’s not for you. Her father—oh, Steven, think of your future.” But tall, blonde Steven persisted and once his parents saw the depths of Mary’s talents, they decided to accept her. First, Mary played it slow, remembering her mother’s words: “Be careful, Mary, he’s not like us. He’ll hurt you.” No, Mama, we’ll be fine, you’ll see. And now they were. No more Italian slurs to put up with, only the future, with a path of lilies and small children with pale hair and gray eyes like northern Italians, and the singing, always the singing. Mary was humming softly now, her head resting on Steven’s strong shoulder.

“Mary contrary, wake up, yer dreamin’ again, who is he this time?” Benny came in, with his loud tie and his samples of coffee, leaning across the marble counter to pinch her cheek between his thumb and forefinger. Mary called out to Frankie, “Honey, Benny the coffee man’s here,” and poured Benny a cup, smiled at him and backed away at the same time, still humming and daydreaming.

She used to love to go dancing, Mary and her sister Angie. In those days, right after the war, Angie worked as a sewing machine operator at Botany Mills. Mary worked with another Martini sister, Lena, the bigmouth, as a banquet waitress. Mary and Angie would go out, have a beer, get tipsy, look at the boys just home from the war and happy with it. Angie fell for Vinny Romeo the same night Mary met Frankie. They were a club where Frank Sinatra was singing, The Silver Mirror. The boys came over to save them from a couple of guys who were lit and coming on too strong. Even though they paired off that very night, Mary harbored a sneaking suspicion that Frankie had had his eye on Angie first, but Angie only had eyes for Vinny, God know why, and Frankie always denied it.

In the olden days that Jude would later ask her mother about, Mary and Angie were a couple of hot tickets, dressed sharp and smoking cigarettes, their red lipstick and Evening in Paris seductive, and when they danced together, everybody watched.

Years later, Frankie would tell the story of how they met: “There they were, a couple of dopey broads,” he’d wink at Mary conspiratorially, “me and Vinny hadda save ’em. You and Angie,” he’d say, grinning and shaking his head, “what a team.”

“You liked her first,” Mary would say.

Frankie would pretend to be shocked. “I did not. She was always Vinny’s girl.”

“She loves Vinny, Frankie.”

“Yeh, but she hems him in, she should leave him alone a little, she’s like a leech.”

“Yeah, but she always loved him, Frankie. And you liked her first. Admit it.”

“No,” and Frankie would laugh. “I liked you. You were such a skinny little thing. ’Member the night I stood waiting for you outside the Silver Mirror in the pouring rain? I was worried about you, Mary.”

But back then, they would dance and dance and the nights flew by or seemed to never end, and worrying didn’t come until years later, when everything started to change.

***

“Who’s this Mama?” Jude had been in the cellar of the old house, looking in her mother’s cedar chest. When she saw the picture of her mother with a blond man in a sailor suit she got confused. She sat on the cool, damp floor of the musty cellar thinking. Who was that man? Her mother smiled broadly, looking happy and calm. The blond smiled too, and he had his arms around her. Jude felt sorry for Frankie and thought her mother hid the picture in the cellar so Frankie wouldn’t see it. Then she started wondering: who would she be if Mama had married the sailor? Would she still be herself, or was that impossible? Looking at the photograph made her realize how close she had come to not existing, not being able to sit right here on the cellar floor. She suddenly loved the cold cellar floor intensely, the feeling of it coursed through her eleven year old body like the beginning of a sexual thing, and she also felt confused.

Finally she took the picture upstairs, guiltily, as though she had done something wrong by finding it.

“What are you sneaking around for, honey?” Mary had her shoes off and was drinking a Ballantine. “Don’t you want to watch Bandstand?”

“Who is this, Mama?”

“Where’d you get that, snooping around in the cellar, Jude? What’s the matter with you? You look scared to death, baby. That’s Steven Holt, I almost married him. Wasn’t he a doll?” Mary’s eyes sparkled for a minute. “I just went out with him to make your father jealous. It worked: Ta Dah!” And she went into the parlor to watch Justine and Eddie dance to “At the Hop,” humming as she went, “why or why can’t I?”

***

Jude was having her tires changed just outside of Castile, not far from the salt mines, way upstate New York. She was on her way home from a class, had a flat on Route 5 and stopped at a Goodrich store owned by Johnny Simonetti. They started talking because behind the counter he had photographs of Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, and Chubby Checker. “You know those guys?” Jude looked at the mechanic with his jet black hair, eyes like coal. He was short and energetic.

“Definitely. I used to play. Tried out for Chubby Checker’s band once, but wasn’t cut out for it. Got too nervous. He’s the nicest guy you ever met. He comes up here a lot, then I call and say, Ma, guess what, Chubby’s here, I’m bringing him home for dinner. Simple people. Never know he’s a star.”

“It must have been exciting trying out for his band. In those days! Jeez.” Jude could see him playing with any of the guys he had pictures of: he still wore pegged pants, and had his hair slicked back in a modified D.A.

“It was. I knew a lot of those guys then—Joey Dee, remember him, the Starlight Lounge?”

“Yeah, wow, this is a trip. I used to go there, to dance. I saw them perform there.”

“Yup, those were good times. Remember Danny and the Juniors? Did you know he got killed, sort of the same way as what’s his name, Sal Mineo? You know, a gay thing.”

“No, really?”

“Yup, it’s a shame, remember that song? ‘At The Hop?’ Great tune.” “Yeah, I do. My mother used to love it.”

***

Jude is the name for lost causes. Pray a lot. Pray to Jude for a girl. Then print it in the paper to show gratitude, the whole prayer. Somebody to trust. Somebody who will remember the beginnings of things, all the steps, the words to songs. Jude.

Chapter 5

Michael’s death had come fast and without much warning. The Vitale kids were close—there was only a year between them, and beyond their closeness in age was a genuine bond. They liked one another. Jude was the oldest, then came little Frankie, then Philly, Tina, and last of all, Michael.

Michael was the baby boy, everyone’s favorite; he followed them with his dark eyes from his bassinet in the kitchen; he crooned rather than cried, right from the start. Frankie hoped this one would sing as he did, maybe he could help Michael the way Dolly Sinatra had helped Frank. Frankie would give Michael singing lessons, maybe figure a way to get him on Arthur Godfrey. Michael became their hope, their dream, and because each of the Vitales had the same feeling about Michael, the baby, he became a symbol of their love for each other, of all that was right about it.

Michael had round and wondering eyes, nearly black in color, the dimples and cleft chin of his father, and his gently curly jet black hair. From Mary Vitale he took his disposition, affectionate and gentle, yet strong and not at all passive. Mary taught them all a little love game, which especially delighted Michael. Holding one of the kids on her lap, facing her, she’d take their hands in her own and stroke first her cheeks, then theirs, saying “Nicie, Nicie, Nicie,” the last word said loudest, the stroke a firm little pat, a love pat, she called it. Even at his sickest, Michael loved the game, and Jude would always remember the feel of Michael’s hands on her cheeks and within her own palms, soft as spring grass, and later, drier, like fields during drought. In the middle of his eighth year, Michael suddenly started sprouting tiny little black and blue marks.

“What are you doing, Mikey, fighting in school? Bunking into things?”

“No, Mama, they just come. My shirt hurts.”

“Too small already, too tight?” But it wasn’t. If anything, the shirt seemed at once too large, the white Catholic school shirt, bought six months earlier.

“Anything else hurt Michael?”

“My knees hurt like a headache in them.”

“Growing pains, Mikey, your legs are growing.” But a worry crossed Mary’s forehead. “Go lie down, I’ll make you some soup. Want some escarole soup?”

“I’m not hungry, Mama. Tea like you make it, with lemon and honey?”

“Okay, Michael.”

And then he grew pale and tired and ran a fever. Mary took him to Doc Varga, who did a blood test. “Is he anemic, Doc?”

“Could be. Won’t know until the test comes back, couple of days, Mary. In the meantime, give him cod liver oil and let him rest. I’ll call you soon as I get the results.” Three days later he came to the house after supper. “Have to talk with you both,” he said to Frankie and Mary. They looked at each other, one of those looks that often passed between them when something was serious and a little out of their realm. In the dining room, they sat at the old mahogany table, drinking expresso. Doc Varga, who had delivered all of the Vitale’s, sipped his coffee slowly. “This is hard. This is bad news I have to tell you.”

Again, that look passed between Frankie and Mary. Mary’s hand went to her throat; Frankie leaned back, as though trying to get away from the words that were coming. He put his arm around the back of Mary’s chair, touched her shoulder.

“Michael has leukemia. Acute leukemia. It doesn’t look good. He’s dying.”

“Holy Mother,” Mary breathed.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Frankie said. Then, “No hope?”

“Very little, Frankie. We should put him in St. Joe’s, give him some blood, try a new drug, Methotrexate. If we’re lucky, he’ll have a remission. The symptoms might go away, but the leukemia won’t.”

It was spring. A soft breeze stirred the lace curtains. The street was eerily quiet. Mary leaned into Frankie and he put his face in her thick dark hair and they both cried. Doc Varga reached his arm across the table and touched them both. “I’m so sorry.”

“We know, Doc,” Mary said.

“Does he have to go in the hospital? Can’t we take care of him here, get one of those beds you can rent?” Frankie hated the idea of any of his brood being away from him. And the hospital, in the middle of Paterson, that big, stone building where everyone seemed to be dying, terrified him.

“He has to be there for the blood transfusion, and the drug has to go through the intravenous. We’ll get him home as fast as we can,” Doc answered.

“I’ll stay with him. Or Frankie will. Or little Frankie. Even Jude can stay so he won’t be alone. I’ll bring him his meals, he’s a little fussy. Okay? And then we’ll bring him home. If he has to die, he’ll die here, with us.”

Mary had to plan, to get some control over a horrible situation. “I’ll arrange it,” said Doc, already wondering how he was going to convince Sister Mary Agnes, the pediatrics floor sergeant, to bend the rules. He’d find a way. He could offer the Vitale’s little other comfort.

Frankie and Mary told the kids, including Michael, all together. They left out the dying part, but let them know it was serious, they’d have to pull together now even closer, it was going to be hard, maybe Aunt Lena would come to help until Michael came home. Frankie and Mary sat on the mohair couch in the parlor, the kids on the floor at their feet, but as the kids heard the sound of their parents’ voices, a tone they had never heard before, they grew closer and closer to them, until all five were on the couch in their mother and father’s arms, all crying, and Michael touching first one and then the other with love pats.

Michael was in the hospital for two weeks, in a small, private room off of the nurse’s station where the staff could keep a close eye on him. The methotrexate made him sick to his stomach. His veins were hard to find, and the IV kept infiltrating so he had to be stuck over and over again. The family, true to Mary’s words, kept an around the clock vigil despite the frowning countenance of Sister Mary Agnes. Then he went into a remission, went home, and on the third night at home he sat up in the middle of the night and called for his parents. He had a look of fright and wonder on his face. The other four kids had awakened and came into the parlor where his bed had been moved so he could watch TV and be in the middle of things. Jude felt rather than saw the moon light; the petals of a yellow rose she’d brought Michael quivered almost imperceptibly. Michael, very pale and very slender, smiled at them. His eyelids fluttered. He sighed once, and then he died. A soft glow they all saw, though no one mentioned it, rose from him, hovered a second, and vanished. Frankie saw it and it scared him. He wanted to hold onto it, to his last son with the golden voice, but it was gone, like the final note of a song from a melancholy sax, drifting over a smoke-filled room and into the air, invisible, like memory.