Neck, the ritzy town right on the Nassau County/Queens border. They might have been planning their next heist. Now and then they stared at Lynn, but she looked back without fear, the way a truly calm person can stare down a menacing dog.
I was impressed, and glad to have something to talk about besides pizza allergies.
“My fellow Italians,” I said, almost in apology.
“Oh, I think Italians are wonderful.”
“They are? I’m not so sure about that.”
As if to reinforce my point, Rico let out a long, resonant belch, to the delight of his companions. Lynn rolled her eyes.
“I don’t mean those guys,” she continued. “I mean the Italians in Italy. The world would be a lot less beautiful without the Italians.”
“It would?”
“Oh, sure! The paintings, the sculptures…it’s an unbelievably rich history. I can’t wait to see it.”
“See what?”
“Italy. I’m saving up for my trip.”
I was stunned to hear this. She was fifteen years old, and planning a trip to the other side of the world. The farthest I’d ever been on my own was Yankee Stadium, and I got lost on the way home.
“I want to see Florence, Venice, and Milan,” Lynn continued, ticking the cities off on her fingers. “And Rome, of course. The Sistine Chapel.”
“When are you going?”
“When I have enough money. I work a cash register at Pathmark on the weekends. I’ve got a pretty good fund going…. Don’t you want to see Italy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Aren’t you curious? You’re Italian, aren’t you?”
“Half.”
“Well, then, Italy is your heritage! Don’t you care about your heritage?”
“What are you gettin’ so excited about?”
“Ever heard of Venice? It’s this city the Italians built on water! People ride in boats called gondolas to get around! Wouldn’t you like to do that?”
“I guess.”
She giggled. “You guess? We’re talking about the most unique city in the world, here! Think you’re ever going to ride a gondola in Little Neck?”
“Maybe if we had a flood.”
She sat back in her booth and stared at me. “You’re smart,” she said softly, “but you don’t have to be a wise guy, Mickey. It doesn’t help anything.”
I was burning with humiliation. “How come you know so much about Italy?”
“Books.”
“But you’re not Italian.”
“That’s right. I’m Irish on both sides.”
“Well, don’t you want to go to Ireland?”
“No.”
“But that’s your heritage.”
Lynn waved me off. “Irish people drink and they sing sad songs. Who wants to go all the way across the ocean for that?”
Our voices had risen to almost argument levels. It was as if we were booking a trip abroad together and couldn’t agree on where to go, two fifteen-year-olds on their first date in Ponti’s Pizza Parlor.
Lynn was staring at me. “Listen,” she said, “are you busy tomorrow? I want to take you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Are you busy, yes or no?”
“I…no. No, I’m not busy. Except for my paper route. I can do that pretty early.”
“Well then, is it a date?”
The sparkle in her eyes was dazzling, almost dizzying.
“Yeah, okay, it’s a date,” I said at last. “What should I wear?”
“Wear your clothes.” Lynn Mahoney giggled. “Be good if you wore your clothes.”
The next day Lynn took me to Manhattan, via bus and subway, and through tunnels and transfers she still wouldn’t tell me where we were going. I just had to stay at her side until at last we stopped walking at Eighty-second Street and Fifth Avenue.
“We’re here,” Lynn announced, and then we were climbing the steps to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my first time there.
I was in Lynn’s hands, all the way. There was a Renaissance exhibition, with statues and paintings by the ancestors of me and Enrico Boccabella, long-dead Italians with the kind of talents that apparently did not survive the journey to the New World.
Lynn came all alive as she spoke about the artists, as if they were friends she’d grown up with.
“Are you an artist?” I asked.
She laughed. “God, no! My brother Brendan is the artist in the family. Eight years old, and you should see his watercolors! But I love art. I want to major in art history. I’d like to teach it some day.”
She cocked her head at me. “What do you want to do?”
“I have no idea.”
“Ever painted?”
“Not since finger paints in kindergarten. I was never much good at it.”
“Well, you might be a word person.”
A word person. What the hell was a word person?
Lynn continued the tour through the museum, with me following like a loyal puppy.
“There are Little Neckers who’ve never even been here,” she marveled. “Fifteen miles from home, and they never make the trip. I think that’s so sad.”
“Hang on a second, Lynn.”
A painting had literally stopped me in my tracks. We were in the American wing, and I was looking at a nineteenth-century work by Winslow Homer. It showed a bunch of barefooted boys in a country field playing a game called Snap the Whip, running and tumbling with joy. A perfect portrait of an idyllic childhood, the kind nobody really has. You looked at it, and you just wanted to be there.
“Incredible,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” Lynn agreed, “Winslow Homer was a good painter.”
“Is,” I gently corrected her.
She laughed. “Mickey,