In our interview with her on 12/12/02, Janice Eidus says, “But there I was, years later, writing about a tough-cookie, teased-hair girl from the Bronx, modeled on the older Italian girls in my neighborhood who had seemed so exotic and fascinating to me, so far removed from my own Jewish, politically progressive household. And I found myself remembering that moment in the elevator — the girl’s fierce pride in her hairstyling regime, and her strong, startling urge to share it with me — and I was very, very grateful for the twin gifts of memory and imagination.”

In reading Janice’s short story “Vito Loves Geraldine” you’ll follow the thread spun from the moment in the elevator and others like it.

VITO LOVES GERALDINE
by Janice Eidus

Vito Venecio was after me.  He’d wanted to get into my pants ever since tenth grade.  But even though we hung around with the same crowd back at Evander Childs High School, I never gave him the time of day.  I, Geraldine Rizzoli, was the most popular girl in the crowd, I had my pick of the guys, you can ask anyone, Carmela or Pamela or Victoria, and they’ll agree.  And Vito was just a skinny little kid with a big greasy pompadour and a cowlick and acne and a big space between his front teeth.  True, he could sing, and he and Vinny Feruge and Bobby Colucci and Richie DeSoto formed a doo wop group and called themselves Vito and the Olinvilles, but lots of the boys formed doo-wop groups and stood around on street corners doo-wopping their hearts out.  Besides, I wasn’t letting any of them into my pants either.

Carmela and Pamela and Victoria and all the other girls in the crowd would say, “Geraldine Rizzoli, teach me how to tease my hair as high as yours and how to put my eyeliner on so straight and thick,” but I never gave away my secrets.  I just set my black hair on beer cans every night and in the morning I teased it and teased it with my comb until sometimes I imagined that if I kept going I could get it high enough to reach the stars, and then I would spray it with hairspray that smelled like red roses and then I’d stroke on my black eyeliner until it went way past my eyes.

The kids in my crowd were the type who cut classes, smoked in the bathroom, and cursed.  Yeah, even the girls cursed, and we weren’t the type who went to Church on Sundays, which drove our mothers crazy.  Vito was one of the worst of us all.  He just about never read a book or went to class, and I think his mother got him to set foot in the church maybe once the whole time he was growing up.  I swear, it was some sort of a holy miracle that he actually got his diploma.

Anyway, like I said, lots of the boys wanted me and I liked to make out with them and sometimes I agreed to go steady for a week or two with one of the really handsome ones, like Sally-Boy Reticliano, but I never let any get into my pants.  Because in my own way I was a good Catholic girl.  And all this time Vito was wild about me and I wouldn’t even make out with him.  But when Vito and the Olinvilles got themselves an agent and cut a record, Teenage Heartbreak, which Vito wrote, I started to see that Vito was different than I’d thought, different than the other boys. Because Vito had an artistic soul.  Then, on graduation night, just a week after Vito and the Olinvilles recorded Teenage Heartbreak, I realized that, all these years, I’d been in love with him, too, and was just too proud to admit it because he was a couple of inches shorter than me, and he had that acne and the space between his teeth.  There I was, ready for the prom, all dressed up in my bright red prom dress and my hair teased higher than ever, waiting for my date, but my date wasn’t Vito, it was Sally-Boy Reticliano, and I wanted to jump out of my skin.  About halfway through the prom, I couldn’t take it any more and I said, “Sally Boy, I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to go over and talk to Vito.”  Sally-Boy, who was even worse at school than Vito, grunted, and I could tell that it was a sad grunt.  But there was nothing I could do.  I loved Vito and that was that.  I spotted him standing alone in a corner.  He was wearing a tux and his hair was greased up into a pompadour that was almost as high as my hair.  He watched me as I walked across the auditorium to him, and even in my spiked heels, I felt as though I was floating on air.  He said, “Aay, Geraldine, how goes it?” and then he took me by the arm and we left the auditorium.  It was like he knew all along that one day I would come to him.  It was a gorgeous spring night, I could even see a few stars, and Vito put his arm around me, and he had to tiptoe a little bit to reach.  We walked over to the Gun Hill Projects, and we found a deserted bench in the project’s laundry room, and Vito said, “Aay, Geraldine Rizzoli, I’ve been crazy about you since tenth grade.  I even wrote Teenage Heartbreak for you.”

And I said, “Vito, I know, I guessed it, and I’m sorry I’ve been so dumb since tenth grade but your heart doesn’t have to break any more.  Tonight I’m yours.”

And Vito and I made out on the bench for awhile but it didn’t feel like just making out.  I realized that Vito and I weren’t kids anymore.  It was like we had grown up all at once.  So I said, “Vito, take me,” and he said, “Aay, Geraldine Rizzoli, all right!”  He had the keys to his older brother Danny’s best friend Freddy’s car, which was a beat up old wreck, but that night it looked like a Cadillac to me.  It was parked back near the school, and we raced back along Gun Hill Road hoping that Sally Boy and the others wouldn’t see us.  Even though Vito didn’t have a license, he drove the car a few blocks away into the parking lot of the Immaculate Conception School.  We climbed into the back seat and I lifted the skirt of my red prom dress and we made love for hours.  We made sure I wouldn’t get pregnant, because we wanted to do things just right.  Like I said, I was a good Catholic girl, in my own way.  Afterwards he walked me back to Olinville Ave.  And he took out the car keys and carved “Vito Loves Geraldine” in a heart over the door of the elevator in my building, but he was careful to do it on another floor, not the floor I lived on, because we didn’t want my parents to see.  And then he said, “Aay, Geraldine Rizzoli, will you marry me?” and I said, “Yeah, Vito, I will.”  So then we went into the staircase of the building and he brushed off one of the steps for me and we sat down together and started talking seriously about our future and he said, “Aay, you know, Vinny and Bobby and Richie and me, it’s a gas being Vito and the Olinvilles and singing those doo-wop numbers, but I’m no fool, I know we’ll never be rich or famous.  So I’ll keep singing for a couple more years, and then I’ll get into some other line of work and then we’ll have kids, okay?”  And I said sure, it was okay with me if he wanted to sing for a few years until we started our family.  Then I told him that Mr. Pampino at the Evander Sweet Store had offered me a job behind the counter which meant that I could start saving money right away.  “Aay, Geraldine, you’re no fool,” he said.  He gave me the thumbs up sign and we kissed.  Then he said, “Aay, Geraldine, let’s do it again, right here in the staircase,” and he started pulling off his tux, but I said I wasn’t that kind of girl, so he just walked me to my door and we said good night.  We agreed that we wouldn’t announce our engagement until we each had a little savings account of our own.  That way our parents couldn’t say we were too young and irresponsible and try to stop the wedding, which my father, who was very hot-tempered, was likely to do.

The very next morning, Vito’s agent called him and woke him up and said that Teenage Heartbreak was actually going to get played on the radio, on WMCA by The Good Guys, at eight o’clock that night.  That afternoon, we were all hanging out with the crowd and Vito and Vinny and Bobby and Richie were going crazy and they were shouting, “Aay, everyone, WMCA, all right!” and stamping their feet and threatening to punch each other out and give each other noogies on the tops of their heads.  Soon everyone on Olinville Ave. knew, and at eight o’clock it was like another holy miracle, everyone on the block had their windows open and we all blasted our radios so that even the angels in Heaven had to have heard Vito and the Olinvilles singing Teenage Heartbreak that night, which, like I said, was written especially for me, Geraldine Rizzoli.  Vito invited me to listen with him and his mother and father and his older brother Danny in their apartment.  We hadn’t told them we were engaged, though.  Vito just said, “Aay, ma, Geraldine Rizzoli here wants to listen to Teenage Heartbreak on WMCA with us, okay?”  His mother looked at me and nodded, and I had a feeling that she guessed that Vito and I were in love and that in her own way she was saying, “Welcome, my future daughter-in-law, welcome.”  So we sat around the kitchen table with the radio set up like a centerpiece and his mother and I cried when it came on and his father and Danny kept swearing in Italian and Vito just kept combing his pompadour with this frozen grin on his face.  When it was over, everyone on the block came pounding on the door shouting, “Aay, Vito, open up, you’re a star!” and we opened the door and we had a big party and everyone danced the lindy and the cha cha all over the Venecios’ apartment.

Three days later Teenage Heartbreak made it to number one on the charts, which was just unbelievable, like twenty thousand holy miracles combined, especially considering how the guidance counselor at Evander Childs used to predict that Vito would end up in prison.  The disk jockeys kept saying things like “these four boys from the streets of the Bronx are a phenomenon, ladies and gentleman, a genuine phenomenon!”  Vito’s mother saw my mother at Mass and told her that she’d been visited by an angel in white when she was pregnant with Vito and the angel told her, “Mrs. Venecio, you will have a son and this son shall be a great man!”

A week later Vito and the Olinvilles got flown out to L.A. to appear in those beach party movies, and Vito didn’t even call me to say good bye.  So I sat in my room and cried a lot, but after a couple of weeks, I decided to chin up and accept my fate, because, like Vito said, I was no fool.  Yeah, it was true that I was a ruined woman, labeled forever as a tramp, me, Geraldine Rizzoli, who’d made out with so many of the boys at Evander Childs High School, but who’d always been so careful never to let any of them into my pants, here I’d gone and done it with Vito Venecio who’d turned out to be a two faced liar, only interested in money and fame.  Dumb, dumb, dumb, Geraldine, I thought.  And I couldn’t tell my parents because my father would have taken his life savings, I swear, and flown out to L.A. and killed Vito.  And I couldn’t even tell Pamela and Carmela and Victoria, because we’d pricked our fingers with sewing needles and made a pact sealed in blood that although we would make out with lots of boys, we would stay virgins until we got married.  So whenever I got together with them and they talked about how unbelievable it was that skinny little Vito with the acne and the greasy pompadour had become so rich and famous, I would agree and try to act just like them, like I was just so proud that Vito and Vinny and Bobby and Richie were now millionaires.  And after a month or so I started feeling pretty strong and I thought, ok, Vito, you bastard, you want to dump Geraldine Rizzoli, tough noogies to you, buddy.  I was working at the Evander Sweet Store during the day and I’d begun making out with some of the guys in the crowd in the evenings again, even though my heart wasn’t in it.  But I figured that one day someone else’s kisses might make me feel the way that Vito’s kisses had made me feel, and I’d never know who it would be unless I tried it.

And then one night I was helping my mother with the supper dishes, which I did every single night since, like I said, in my own way, I was a good Catholic girl, when the phone rang and my mother said, “Geraldine, it’s for you.  It’s Vito Venecio calling from Los Angeles,” and she looked at me like she was suspicious about why Vito, who’d been trying to get into my pants all those years when he wasn’t famous and I wouldn’t give him the time of day, would still be calling me at home now that he was famous and could have his pick of girls.  When she’d gone back into the kitchen, I picked up the phone but my hands were so wet and soapy that I could hardly hold onto the receiver.  Vito said, “Aay, Geraldine Rizzoli,” and his voice sounded like he was around the corner, but I knew he was really three thousand miles away surrounded by those silly looking bimbos from the beach party movies.  “Aay, forgive me, Geraldine,” he said, “I’ve been a creep, I know, I got carried away by all this money and fame crap but it’s you I want, you and the old gang and my old life on Olinville Ave.”

I didn’t say anything, I was so angry and confused.  And my hands were still so wet and soapy.

“Aay, Geraldine, will you wait for me?”  Vito said, and he sounded like a little lost boy.  “Please Geraldine, I’ll be back, this ain’t gonna last long, promise me, you’ll wait for me as long as it takes.”

“I don’t know, Vito,” I said, desperately trying to hold onto the phone, and now my hands were even wetter because I was crying and my tears were landing on them, “you could have called sooner.”

“Aay, I know,” he said, “this fame stuff, it’s like a drug.  But I’m coming home to you, Geraldine.  Promise me you’ll wait for me.”

And he sounded so sad, and I took a deep breath, and I said, “I promise, Vito.  I promise.”  And then the phone slipped from my grasp and hit the floor, and my mother yelled from the kitchen, “Geraldine, if you don’t know how to talk on the phone without making a mess all over the floor, then don’t talk on the phone!”  I shouted, “I’m sorry, Ma!” but when I picked it up again, Vito was gone.

So the next day behind the counter at the Evander Sweet Store, I started making plans.  I needed my independence.  I knew I’d have to get an apartment so that when Vito came back, I’d be ready for him.  But that night when I told my parents I was going to get my own apartment they raised holy hell.  My mother was so furious she didn’t even ask whether it had something to do with Vito’s call.  In fact, she never spoke to me about Vito after that, which makes me think that deep down she knew.  The thing was, whether she knew or didn’t know, seventeen year old Italian girls from the Bronx did not leave home until a wedding ring was around their finger, period.  Even girls who cut classes and smoked and cursed.  My parents sent me to talk to a priest at the Immaculate Conception Church, which was right next door to the Immaculate Conception School, the parking lot of which was where I gave myself to Vito in the back seat of his older brother Danny’s best friend Freddy’s car, and the priest said, “Geraldine Rizzoli, my child, your parents tell me that you wish to leave their home before you marry.  Child, why do you wish to do such a thing, which reeks of the desire to commit sin?”

I shrugged and looked away, trying hard not to pop my chewing gum.  I didn’t want to seem too disrespectful, but that priest got nowhere with me.  I was going to wait for Vito, and I needed to have my own apartment ready for him so the instant he got back we could start making love again and get married and start a family.  And besides, even though the priest kept calling me a child, I’d been a woman ever since I let Vito into my pants.  I ran my fingers through my hair trying to make the teased parts stand up even higher while the priest went on and on about Mary Magdalene.  But I had my own spiritual mission which had nothing to do with the Church, and finally I couldn’t help it, a big gum bubble went pop real loudly in my mouth and the priest called me a hellion and said I was beyond his help.  So I got up and left, pulling the pieces of gum off my lips.

The priest told my father that the only solution was to chain me up in my bedroom.  But my mother and father, bless their hearts, may have been Catholic and Italian and hot tempered, but they were good people, so instead they got my father’s best friend, Pop Giordano, who’d been like an uncle to me ever since I was in diapers, to rent me an apartment in the building he owned.  And the building just happened to be on Olinville Ave, right next door to my parents’ building.  So they were happy enough.  I insisted on a two bedroom right from the start so that Vito wouldn’t feel cramped when he came back, not that I told them why I needed that much room.  “A two bedroom,” my mother kept repeating.  “Suddenly my daughter is such a grown up she wants a two bedroom!”

So Pop gave me the biggest two bedroom in the building and I moved in, and Pop promised my father to let him know if I kept late hours, and my father said he’d kill me if I did, but I wasn’t worried about that.  My days of making out with the boys of Olinville Ave. were over.  I would wait for Vito, and I would live like a nun until he returned to me.

My mother even ended up helping me decorate the apartment, and to make her happy I hung a velour painting of Jesus above the sofa in the living room.  I didn’t think Vito would mind too much since his mother had one in her living room too.  I didn’t intend to call Vito or write him to give him my new address.  He’d be back soon enough and he’d figure out where I was.

And I began to wait.  But a couple of weeks after I moved into the apartment I couldn’t take not telling anyone.  I felt like I’d scream or do something crazy if I didn’t confide in someone.  So I told Pop.  Pop wore shiny black suits and black shirts with white ties and a big diamond ring on his pinky finger and he didn’t have a steady job like my father who delivered hot dogs by truck to restaurants all over the Bronx, or like Vito’s father who was a construction worker.  I figured that if anyone knew the way the world worked, it was Pop.  He promised he’d never tell, and he twirled his black mustache and said, “Geraldine Rizzoli, you’re like my own daughter, like my flesh and blood, and I’m sorry you lost your cherry before you got married but if you want to wait for Vito, wait.”

So I settled in to my new life and I waited.  That was the period that Vito kept turning out hit songs and making beach party movies and I’d hear him interviewed on the radio and he never sounded like the Vito I knew.  It sounded like someone else had written his words for him.  He’d get all corny and sentimental about the Bronx, and about how his heart was still there, and he’d say all these sappy things about the fish market on the corner of Olinville Ave., but that was such crap, because Vito never shopped for food.  His mother did all the shopping, Vito wouldn’t be caught dead in the Olinville fish market, except maybe to mooch a cigarette off of Carmine Casella, who worked behind the counter.  Vito didn’t even like fish.  And I felt sad and worried for him.  He’d become a kind of doo-wop robot, he and the Olinvilles, mouthing other people’s words.  I noticed that he’d even stopped writing songs after Teenage Heartbreak. Sometimes I could hardly stand waiting for him.  But on Olinville Ave., a promise was a promise.  People had been found floating face down in the Bronx River for breaking smaller promises than that.  Besides, I still loved Vito.

Pamela married Johnny Ciccarone, Carmela married Ricky Giampino, and Victoria married Sidney Goldberg, from the Special Progress Accelerated class, which was a big surprise, and they all got apartments in the neighborhood.  But after a year or two they all moved away, either to neighborhoods where the Puerto Ricans and blacks weren’t starting to move in, or to Yonkers or Mount Vernon, and they started to have babies and I’d visit them once or twice with gifts but it was like we didn’t have much in common any more, and soon we all lost touch.

And Vito and the Olinvilles kept turning out hits, even though like I said, Vito never wrote another song after Teenage Heartbreak.  In addition to the Doo-wop numbers, Vito had begun letting loose on some slow, sexy ballads.  I bought their forty fives and I bought their albums and every night after work I would call up the radio stations and request their songs, not that I needed to, since everyone else was requesting their songs, anyway, but it made me feel closer to Vito, I guess.  And sometimes I’d look at Vito’s photograph on the album covers or in the fan magazines and I’d see how his teeth and hair and skin were perfect, there was no gap between his front teeth like there used to be, no more acne, no more cowlick.  And I kind of missed those things, because that night when I gave myself to Vito in the back seat of his older brother Danny’s best friend Freddy’s car, I’d loved feeling Vito’s rough, sandpapery skin against mine and I’d loved letting my fingers play with his cowlick and letting my tongue rest for a minute in the gap between his front teeth.

So, for the next three, four years, I kind of lost count, Vito and the Olinvilles ruled the airwaves.  And every day I worked at the Evander Sweet Store and every night I had dinner with my parents and my mother would ask whether I was ever going to get married and have babies and I’d say, “Come on, Ma, leave me alone, I’m a good Catholic girl, of course I’m gonna have babies one day,” and my father would say, “Geraldine, if Pop ever tells me you’re keeping late hours with any guys, I’ll kill you,” and I’d say, “Come on, Pa, I told you, I’m a good Catholic girl,” and then I’d help my mother with the dishes and then I’d kiss them goodnight and I’d go visit Pop for a few minutes in his apartment on the ground floor of the building and there would always be those strange men coming and going from his apartment and then I’d go upstairs to my own apartment and I’d sit in front of my mirror and I’d tease my hair up high and I’d put on my

make up and I’d put on my red prom dress and I’d listen to Vito’s songs and I’d dance the lindy and the cha cha.  And then before I went to sleep, I’d read through all the fan mags and I’d cut out every article about him and I’d paste them into my scrapbook.

Then one day, I don’t remember exactly when, a couple of more years, maybe three, maybe even four, all I remember is that Carmela and Pamela and Victoria had all sent me announcements that they were on their second kids, the fan mags started printing fewer and fewer articles about Vito.  I’d sit on my bed, thumbing through, and where before, I’d find at least one in every single mag, now I’d have to go through five, six, seven magazines and then I’d just find some real small mention of him. And the radio stations were playing Vito and the Olinvilles less and less often and I had to call in and request them more often because nobody else was doing it, and their songs weren’t going higher than numbers fifteen or twenty on the charts.  But Vito’s voice was as strong and beautiful as ever, and the Olinvilles could still do those doo-wops in the background, so at first I felt really dumb, dumb, dumb because I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

But I, Geraldine Rizzoli, am no fool, and it hit me soon enough.  It was really simple.  The girls my age were all mothers raising kids, and they didn’t have time to buy records and dance the lindy and the cha cha in front of their mirrors.  And the boys, they were out all day working and at night they sat and drank beer and watched football on t.v..  So a new generation of teenagers was buying records.  And they were buying records by those British groups, the Beatles and the rest of them, and for those kids, I guess, an Italian boy from the Bronx with a pompadour wasn’t very interesting.  And even though I didn’t look a day older than I had that night in the back seat of Vito’s older brother Danny’s best friend Freddy’s car, and even though I could still fit perfectly into my red prom dress, I had to face facts, too. I wasn’t a teenager any more.

So more time went by, again I lost count, but Pop’s hair was

beginning to turn grey and my father was beginning to have a hard time lifting those crates of hot dogs and my mother seemed to be getting shorter day by day, and Vito and the Olinvilles never got played on the radio at all, period.  And I felt bad for Vito, but mostly I was relieved, since I was sure then that he would come home.  I bought new furniture, Pop put in new windows.  I found a hairspray that made my hair stay higher even longer.

But I was wrong.  Vito didn’t come home.  Instead, according to the few fan mags that ran the story, his manager tried to make him into a clean cut type, the type who appeals to the older Las Vegas set.  And Vito left the Olinvilles, which, the fan mags said, was like Vito had put a knife through their hearts.  One mag said that Vinny had even punched Vito out.  Anyway, it was a mistake on Vito’s part not to have just come home right then.  He made two albums and he sang all these silly love songs from the twenties and thirties, and he sounded really off-key and miserable.  After that, whenever I called the disk jockeys they just laughed at me and wouldn’t even play his records.  I’d have to go through ten or fifteen fan mags to find even a small mention of Vito at all.  So I felt even worse for him, but I definitely figured he had to come home then.  Where else could he go?  So I bought a new rug and Pop painted the wall.  And I sat in front of my mirror at night and I teased my hair and I applied my make up and I put on my red prom dress and I danced the lindy and the cha cha and I played Vito’s albums and I’d still cut out the small article here and there and place it in my scrapbook.  And I hadn’t aged a day.  No lines, no wrinkles, no flab, no grey hair.  Vito was going to be pleased when he came home.

But I was wrong again.  Vito didn’t come home.  He went and got married to someone else, a skinny flatchested blonde model from somewhere like Iowa or Idaho. A couple of the fan mags ran little pieces, and they said she was the best thing that had ever happened to Vito.  Because of his love for her he wasn’t depressed any more about not having any more number one hits.  “Aay,” he was quoted, “love is worth more than all of the gold records in the world.”  At first I cried.  I kicked the walls.  I tore some of the articles from my scrapbook and ripped them to shreds.  I smashed some of his albums to pieces.  I was really really angry, because I knew that it was me, Geraldine Rizzoli, who was the best thing that had ever happened to him!  That blonde model had probably been a real goody-goody when she was growing up, the type who didn’t cut classes or smoke or tease her hair or make out with lots of guys.  No passion in her skinny bones, I figured.  And then I calmed down.  Because Vito would still be back.  This model, whose name was Muffin Potts, was no threat at all.  Vito would be back, a little ashamed of himself, but he’d be back.

Soon after that, Vito’s mother and father died.  A couple of fan mags carried the story.  They died in a plane crash on their way to visit Vito and Muffin Potts in Iowa or Idaho or wherever she was from.  I didn’t get invited to the funeral, which was in Palm Beach.  Vito’s parents had moved there only six months after Teenage Heartbreak became number one.  Five big moving vans had parked on Olinville Ave., and Vito’s mother stood there in a fur coat telling everybody about the angel who’d visited her when she was pregnant with Vito.  And I’d gone up to her and kissed her and said, “Good bye, Mrs. Venecio, I’m going to miss you,” and she said, “Good bye, Carmela,” like she was trying to pretend that she didn’t remember that I was Geraldine Rizzoli, her future daughter in law.  The fan mags had a picture of Vito at the funeral in a three piece suit, and the articles said he cried on the shoulder of his older brother Danny, who was now a distributor of automobile parts.  There were also a couple of photos of Muffin Potts looking very bored.

Then I started to read little rumors, small items, in a few of the magazines.  First, that Vito’s marriage was on the rocks.  No surprise to me there.  I was surprised that it lasted an hour. Second, that Vito was heavy into dugs and that his addiction was breaking Muffin’s heart.  Really hard dugs, the mags said.  The vary worst stuff.  One of the mags said it was because of his mother’s death and they called him a “Mama’s Boy.”  One said he was heartbroken because of his break-up with the Olinvilles and because Vinny had punched him out.  And one said he’d been doing drugs ever since Evander Childs High School, and they had the nerve to call the school a “zoo,” which I resented.  But I knew a few things.  One, Vito was no Mama’s Boy.  Two, Vito and the Olinvilles still all loved each other.  And, three, Vito had never touched drugs in school.  And if it were true that he was drowning his sorrows in drugs and breaking Muffin Pott’s heart, it was because he missed me and regretted like hell not coming home earlier!

Soon after that I read that Muffin had left him for good and had taken their child with her.  Child?  I stared at the print. Ashley, the article said.  Their child’s name was Ashley.  There was no photo, and since Ashley was a name with zero personality, I wasn’t sure whether Ashley was a girl or boy.  I decided it was a girl, and I figured she looked just like her mother, with pale skin and a snub nose and milky-colored hair, and I wasn’t even slightly jealous of that child or her mother because they were just mistakes.  True, Vito kept acting dumb, dumb, dumb, and making some big fat mistakes, but I didn’t love him any less.  A promise was a promise.  And I, Geraldine Rizzoli, knew enough to forgive him.  Because the truth was that even I had once made a mistake.  The way it happened was this.  One day out of the blue, who should come into the Evander Sweet Store to buy some cigarettes but Petey Cioffi, who’d been one of the guys in our crowd in the old days.  A couple of years after graduation he married some girl from the Grand Concourse and we all lost touch.  But here he was in the old neighborhood, visiting some cousins and he needed some cigarettes.  Anyway, when he walked in, he stopped dead in his tracks.  I could tell he was a little drunk, and he said, “Aay, Geraldine Rizzoli, I can’t believe my eyes, you’re still here, and you’re gorgeous, I’ m growing old and fat, look at this belly, but not you, you’re like a Princess or something.”  And it was so good to be spoken to like that, and I let him come home with me.  We made out in my elevator, and I felt like a kid again.  I couldn’t pretend he was Vito, but I could pretend it was the old days, when Vito was still chasing me and trying to get into my pants.  In the morning, Petey said goodbye, looked at me one last time, shook his head and said, “Geraldine Rizzoli, what a blast from the past!” and he slipped out of the building before Pop woke up.  He probably caught holy hell from his wife and I swear I got my first and only grey hair the next morning.  But my night with Petey Cioffi made it easier to forgive Vito, since I’d made my mistake too.  And I kept waiting.  The neighborhood changed around me.  The Italians left, and more and more Puerto Ricans and blacks moved in, but I didn’t mind.  Because everyone has to live somewhere, I figured, and I had more important things on my mind than being prejudiced.

Then I pretty much stopped hearing about Vito altogether.  And that was around when my father, bless his heart, had the heart attack on the hot dog truck and by the time they found him it was too late to save him, and my mother, bless her heart, followed soon after.  I missed them so much, and every night I came home from work and I teased my hair at the mirror, I put on my make up, I put on my red prom dress, I played Vito’s songs, I danced the lindy and the cha cha, and I read through the fan mags looking for some mention of him, but there wasn’t any.  It was like he had vanished from the face of the earth.  And then one day I came across a small item in the newspaper.  It was about how Vito had just gotten arrested on Sunset Strip for possession of hard drugs, and how he was bailed out by Vinny of the Olinvilles, who was now a real estate salesman in Santa Monica. “I did it for old times sake,” Vinny said, “for the crowd on Olinville Ave.”

The next morning, Pop called me to his apartment.  He had the beginnings of cataracts by then and he hardly ever looked at the newspaper anymore, but of course, he’d spotted the article about Vito.  His face was red.  He was furious.  He shouted, “Geraldine Rizzoli, you’re like my own daughter, my own flesh and blood, and I never wanted to have to say this to you, but,” he waved the newspaper ferociously, which was impressive, since his hands shook, and he weighed all of ninety pounds at this point, although he still dressed in his shiny black suits and those strange men still came and went from his apartment, “the time has come for you to forget Vito.  If he was here I’d beat the living hell out of him.”  He flung the paper across the room and sat in his chair breathing heavily.

I waited a minute before I spoke just to make sure he was going to be okay.  When his color returned to normal, I said, “Never, Pop.  I promised Vito I’d wait.”

“You should marry Ralphie.”

“Ralphie?” I asked.  Ralphie Pampino, who was part of the old crowd, too, had inherited the Evander Sweet Store from his father when Ralphie Sr. died the year before.  It turns out that Ralphie Jr., who’d never married, was in love with me, and had been for years.  Poor Ralphie.  He’d been the kind of guy who never got to make out a whole lot.  I’d always thought he looked at me so funny because he was constipated or had sinuses or something.  But Pop told me that years ago Ralphie had poured out his heart to him.  Although Pop had promised Ralphie that he’d never betray his confidence, the time had come.  It seemed that Ralphie had his own spiritual mission: he was waiting for me. I was touched.  Ralphie was such a sweet guy.  I promised myself to start being nicer to him.  I asked Pop to tell him about me and Vito, and I kissed Pop on the nose and I went back upstairs to my apartment and I sat in front of my mirror and I teased my hair and I put on my makeup and I put on my red prom dress and I listened to Vito’s songs and I danced the lindy and the cha cha.

The next day, Ralphie came over to me and said, “Geraldine Rizzoli, I had no idea that you and Vito. . .” and he got all choked up and couldn’t finish.  Finally, he swallowed and said, “Aay, Geraldine, I’m on your side.  I really am.  Vito’s coming back!” and he gave me the thumbs up sign and he and I did the lindy together right there in the Evander Sweet Store and we sang Teenage Heartbreak at the top of our lungs and we didn’t care if any customers came in and saw us.

But after that there wasn’t any more news about Vito, period.  Most everyone on the block who’d known Vito and the Olinvilles was gone, and I just kept waiting.  Just around that time an oldies radio station, WAAY, started up and it was pretty weird at first to think that Vito and the Olinvilles and all the other groups I had spent my life listening to were considered “oldies” and I’d look at myself in the mirror and I’d think, “Geraldine Rizzoli, you’re nobody’s oldie, you’ve got the same skin and figure you had the night that you gave yourself to Vito.”  But after awhile I got used to the idea of the oldies and I listened to WAAY as often as I could.  I played it every morning first thing when I woke up and then Ralphie and I listened to it together at the Evander Sweet Store, even though most of the kids who came in were carrying those big radio boxes turned to salsa or rap songs or punk and didn’t seem to have any idea that there was already music on.  Sometimes when nobody was in the store, Ralphie and I would just sing Vito’s songs together.  There was one d.j. on the station, Goldie George, who was on from nine in the morning until noon and he was a real fan of Vito and the Olinvilles.  The other d.j.’s had their favorites too.  Doo Wop Dick liked the Five Satins, Surfer Sammy liked the Beach Boys, but Goldie George said he’d grown up in the Bronx just two subway stops away from Olinville Ave. and that he and his friends had all felt as close to Vito as if they’d lived on Olinville Ave. themselves, even though they’d never met Vito or Vinny or Bobby or Richie.  I liked Goldie George, and I wished he’d been brave enough to have taken the subway the two stops over so that he could have hung around with us.  He might have been fun to make out with.  One day Goldie George played thirty minutes straight of Vito and the Olinvilles, with no commercial interruptions, and then some listener called in and said “Aay, whatever happened to Vito anyway, Goldie George, he was some sort of junkie, right?”

“Yeah,” Goldie George said, “but I’m Vito’s biggest fan, like you all know, because I grew up only two subway stops away from Olinville Ave. and I used to feel like I was a close buddy of Vito’s even though I never met him, and I happen to know that he’s quit doing drugs and that he’s found peace and happiness through the Chinese practice of Tai Chi and he helps run a mission in Bakersfield, California.

“Aay,” the caller said, “Goldie George, you tell Vito for me that Bobby MacNamara from Woodside says, ‘Aay, Vito, keep it up, man!'”

“I will,” Goldie George said, “I will.  I’ll tell him about you, Bobby, because, being so close to Vito in my soul when I was growing up, I happen to know that Vito still cares about his loyal fans.  In fact, I know that one of the things that helped Vito to get through the hard times was knowing how much his loyal fans cared.  And, aay, Bobby, what’s your favorite radio station?”

“AAY!” Bobby shouted.

And then Goldie George played another uninterrupted thirty minutes of Vito and the Olinvilles.  But I could hardly hear the music this time.  I was sick to my stomach.  What the hell was Vito doing in Bakersfield, California running a mission?  I was glad he wasn’t into drugs any more, but Bakersfield, California? A mission?  And what the hell was Tai Chi?  I was so pissed off.  For the first time I wondered whether he’d forgotten my promise.  I was ready to fly down to Bakersfield and tell him a thing or two, but I didn’t.  I went home, played my albums, danced, teased my hair, frowned at the one grey hair I’d gotten the night I was with Petey Cioffi, and I closed my eyes and leaned my head on my arms.  Vito was coming back.  He just wasn’t ready yet.

About two weeks later I was behind the counter at the Evander Sweet Store and Ralphie was arranging some Chunkies into a pyramid when Goldie George said, “Guess what, everyone, all of us here at the station, but mostly Vito’s biggest fan, me, Goldie George, have arranged for Vito to come back to his home town! This is Big Big Big Big News!  I called him the other day and I said, `Vito, I grew up two subway stops from you, and like you know, I’m your biggest fan, and you owe it to me and your other loyal fans from the Bronx and all the other boroughs to come back and visit and sing Teenage Heartbreak for us one more time,’ and I swear Vito got choked up over the phone and he agreed to do it, even though he said that he usually doesn’t sing any more because it interferes with his Tai Chi, but I said, `Vito, we love you here at AAY, man, and wait’ll you hear this, we’re going to book Carnegie Hall for you, Vito, not your grandmother’s attic, but Carnegie Hall!’  How about that, everyone.  And just so you all know, the Olinvilles are all doing their own things now, so it’ll just be Vito alone, but hey, that’s okay, that’s great, Vito will sing the oldies and tickets go on sale next week!”

And I stood there frozen and Ralphie and I stared at each other across the counter, and I could see a look in his eyes that told me that he knew he’d finally lost me for good this time.

Because Vito was coming back.  He may have told Goldie George that he was coming home to sing to his fans, but Ralphie and I both knew that it was really me, Geraldine Rizzoli, that he was finally ready to come back to.  Vito worked in mysterious ways, and I figured that he finally felt free of the bad things, the drugs and that boring Muffin Potts and his own arrogance and excessive pride, and now he was pure enough to return to me.  I wasn’t wild about this Tai Chi stuff, whatever it was, but I could get used to it if it had helped Vito to get better so he could come home to me.

Ralphie sort of shook himself like he was coming out of some long sleep or trance.  Then he came around the counter and put his arm around me in this brotherly way.  “Geraldine Rizzoli,” he said really softly, “my treat.  A first row seat at Carnegie Hall.”

But I wouldn’t accept, even though it was such a beautiful thing for Ralphie to offer to do, considering how he’d felt about me all those years.  I got teary-eyed.  But I didn’t need a ticket, not me, not Geraldine Rizzolli.  Vito would find out where I lived and he’d come and pick me up and take me himself to Carnegie Hall.  He’d probably come in a limo paid for by the station, I figured.  Because the only way I was going to the concert was with Vito.  I went home after work and I plucked the one grey hair from my scalp and then I teased my hair and I put on my make up and I put on my red prom dress and I danced and sang.

All week Goldie George kept saying, “It’s unbelievable, tickets were sold out within an hour!  The calls don’t stop coming, you all remember Vito, you all love him!”

On the night of the concert Pop came by.  He had to use a walker to get around by then and he was nearly blind and lots of things were wrong.  His liver, gall bladder, stomach, you name it.  He weighed around seventy-five pounds.  But he still wore his shiny black suits and the men kept coming in and out of his apartment.  And he sat across from me on my sofa, beneath the velour painting of Jesus, and he said in a raspy voice, “Geraldine Rizzolli, I didn’t ever want to have to say this, but you’re like my own daughter, my own flesh and blood, and as long as Vito wasn’t around, I figured, okay you can dance to his albums and tease your hair and wear the same clothes all the time and you’re none the worse for it, but now that he’s coming home I’ve got to tell you he won’t be coming for you, Geraldine, if he cared a twit about you he would have flown you out to L.A. way back when and I’m sorry you let him into your pants and lost your cherry to him, but you’re a middle-aged lady now and you’re gonna get hurt real bad and I’m glad your mother and father, bless their souls, aren’t around to see you suffer the way you’re gonna suffer tonight, Geraldine, and I don’t wanna see it either, what I want is for you to drive down to Maryland tonight real fast, right now, and marry Ralphie, before Vito breaks your heart so bad nothing will ever put it together again!”

I’d never seen Pop so riled up.  I kissed him on the nose and I told him he was sweet, but that Vito was coming.  And Pop left, shaking his head and walking slowly, moving the walker ahead of him, step by step, and after he left, I played my albums and I teased my hair and I applied my lipstick and I danced the lindy and the cha cha and I waited.  I figured that everyone from the old crowd would be at the concert.  They’d come in from the suburbs with their husbands and their wives and their children, and even, I had to face facts, in some cases, their grandchildren.  And just then there was a knock on my door and I opened it and there he was.  He’d put on some weight, but not much, and although he’d lost some hair he still had a pompadour and he was holding some flowers for me, and I noticed that they were red roses, which I knew he’d chosen to match my prom dress.  And he said, “Aay, Geraldine Rizzoli, thanks for waiting.”  Then he looked at his watch.  “All right, let’s get a move on!  Concert starts at nine.”  And I looked in the mirror one last time, sprayed on a little more hairspray and that was it.  Vito took my arm just the way he took it the night I gave myself to him in the back seat of his older brother Danny’s best friend Freddy’s car, and we went downtown by limo to Carnegie Hall, which was a real treat because I didn’t get to go into Manhattan very often.  And Carnegie Hall was packed, standing room only, and the crowd was yelling, “Aay, Vito!  Aay, Vito!  Aay, Vito!” and Pamela and Carmela and Victoria were there, and all the Olinvilles came and they hugged Vito and said there were no hard feelings, and Vinny and Vito even gave each other noogies on the tops of their heads, and everyone said, “Geraldine Rizzoli, you haven’t aged a day.”  Then Goldie George introduced Vito, and Vito just got right up there on the stage and he belted out those songs, and at the end of the concert, for his finale, he sang Teenage Heartbreak and he called me up on stage with him and he held my hand and looked into my eyes while he sang.  I even sang along on a few of the verses and I danced the lindy and the cha cha right there on stage in front of all those people.  The crowd went wild, stamping their feet and shouting for more, and Goldie George was crying, and after the concert Vito and I went back by limo to Olinville Ave. and Vito gave the limo driver a big tip and the driver said, “Aay, Vito, welcome home,” and then he drove away.

And ever since then Vito has been here with me in the two bedroom apartment.  He still does Tai Chi, but it’s really no big thing, an hour or two in the morning at most.  Pop died last year and Vito and I were with him at the end and his last words were, “you two kids, you’re like my own son and daughter.”  Vito works in the Evander Sweet Store now instead of me because I’ve got to stay home to take care of Vito Jr. and Little Pop, who have a terrific godfather in Ralphie and a great uncle in Vito’s older brother, Danny.  And, if I’m allowed to do a little bragging, which seems only fair after all this time, Vito Jr. and Little Pop are very good kids.  They go to Church on Sundays and they’re doing real well in school because they never cut classes or smoke in the bathroom or curse, and Vito and I are as proud as we can be.

****

To learn more about aspects of Janice Eidus’ fiction, read her interview in Margin for an introduction to magic realism in her work.