Conversations.

Our very first conversation was terse. Words fumbled between us like bits of paper napkin being torn by a pair of hands that didn’t quite know what to do with themselves. We were seated across from one another at the local pizza joint. It was loud. The football game was playing on 4 large screen TVs mounted behind the bar, but Al Michael’s voice could only barely be heard above the diners, hurling happy insults at the quarterback or ordering another “whatever’s on tap” between bites of pizza and pierogis.

Our own table made a healthy contribution to the general fracas. Fitted with runners still flush from the finish line of a marathon early that morning, the worn wood practically shook its own legs in hearty congratulations and cheer, as “pizza and beer week” officially commenced.

I was, of course, the “outsider” of the group. Unlike everyone else at the table, I had not ever run a marathon (much less the one that morning), and, to be honest, I still truly believed that anyone who did was just a fingernail shy of mentally ill. I kept this thought to myself, though.

“So, Joanne, is it?” he asked abruptly, the fingers of his left hand drumming against the polished surface.

I smiled and nodded my head.

“I’m Robert.”

“I know,” I grinned.

A pause. He craned his neck to look up at the TVs. I studied the menu I’d already memorized.

“Do you run, too, then?” turning to face me again.

“Oh, no, not really. Not like you all, at least,” I stammered.

He nodded, as if to acknowledge that most people (most normal people) didn’t run like them. I watched his fingers as they now skimmed the top of the table, back and forth.

“So. How did you meet my son?”

Later that evening, we would stop at Robert’s house before heading home. He hugged me awkwardly when I said goodnight, and he kissed my right cheek, even though I could tell he didn’t know if he should. But some habits are stronger than uncertainties.

When I close my eyes and think of that night, the night I first met Robert, I can still see the fluorescent lights of his living room lamp glinting off the small rectangular lenses of his spectacles; I can feel the soft cotton of his cornflower blue sweatshirt as I rested my hands on his shoulders when we hugged; I can sense his hesitation as he leans in to wish me goodnight before grazing the side of my face with his lips.

It is the first time anyone’s father, including my own, had ever kissed my face.

“Did you know that the on our first date, I told Anthony that my favorite piece was Bach’s Goldberg Variations?”

We were sitting on his living room couch, his “spot,” as I liked to think it, since he would always wave “hello” from there whenever I came over.

“No….” he smiled in disbelief. “Did you Google him or something before meeting him?”

“No!” I laughed. “I didn’t internet-stalk your son before our first date.”

We were flipping through a book of photos I had made for Anthony. We had been dating for over a year, now, and we dropped by to visit Robert at least once a week, if not more. In that time, Robert and I had quickly figured out how to shed our initial diffidence — we talked about all the things we both loved: risotto balls, blueberry muffins the size of your face, a hard day’s work, pasta.

Anthony.

“Ah, this picture. This is Anthony’s favorite dress. Did you know that the first time he saw me in it, he stopped mid-sentence and said, ‘You look incredible’?”

Robert shook his head. “Did he really say that?” His smile slipped a little as he turned serious for a moment. “You know, Anthony — he’s not easy to…” he fumbled for the word. “Penetrate.”

“He’s always been like that. Even as a kid. Never know what’s going on inside his head, you know?”

I knew.

Later, I ask,

“Do you ever wish you had a daughter?”

“Yes,” he answered, without hesitation.

“Are you a singer or something?”

“No, not anymore. I used to sing a lot.”

It was winter. We had just finished up a choral performance at the university. We were waiting in the music hall for Anthony to wrap up with the students. The cold air slipped in as performers and their parents walked in and out of the building and I was humming some nameless tune that echoed down the corridor.

“Are you happy that Anthony works here?” I asked.

He nodded. “Relieved. You know, he didn’t really want to be a teacher, at first. But when he started working here — well, you know. He was able to buy a car, a condo. It was a steady job.”

I nodded in complete agreement.

“How many brothers do you have?”

“Three. John, Frank, and Tony.”

“Tony. Was Anthony named after him?”

“No, not really. Tony is my younger brother. We came over here together. John is the oldest. He and Frank, they came over here before us. Tony and I came later. It was nice having John and Frank here before us. They sort of set things up already, got jobs, bought homes. Still, those days… it wasn’t easy being an immigrant. I got a job working at the factory with John and Frank. My sister — the oldest — she stayed in Rome.”

“Ah yes, the one who never ages.” Anthony had shown me a few recent photos of his Zia Menica.

“She is an unusual woman.”

“Why do you say ‘unusual’?”

“She is always thinking of everyone else but herself.”

“And your mother? Didn’t she live here in the States, too?”

“Yes.”

“What was she like?”

“She loved Anthony.”

The morning I left to meet Anthony in Rome, Anthony’s mother, Judy, called me to wish me well. She wanted to make sure that I had everything ready to go, that there weren’t any last minute items with which I needed help. I reassured her that everything was in order (though, truth be told, everything was chaos). We hung up and as I was about to throw my last tray of scones in the oven (I like to bake my own airplane food), the phone rang again. It was Robert, this time. It was the most animated I’d heard him sound in a long time–

“I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” he said.

The night before, he and Judy had taken me out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.

Afterwards, we had gone back to their place. On the living room couch, flanked by each of them, I placed on my lap a massive book of panoramic photographs of Rome. We spent the next hour going through each and every photograph in that book.

“You see this, right there?” he pointed to a tiny spot on a fold-out picture overlooking the expanse of the entire city. “That’s where I grew up.”

“And over here,” he said, turning the page. “This is St. Peter’s.”

“We used to go there every weekend. Spend the entire day there. Now, you can’t even see anything with all the crowds and tourists.”

It occurs to me, now, as I write this, that perhaps Robert was excited not so much at the prospect of me seeing Rome, but of me seeing a part of him.

I had never talked to Robert on the phone before. I told him I was excited to see where he grew up.

Right before hanging up, he said “I love you.”

I didn’t say it back.

My own father has never said those three words aloud to me in my entire life, and I was afraid that if I said it back, it would sound out of tune.

“Sometimes I worry.”

“Worry about what?”

“That I was too hard on him.”

“Hard on whom?”

Robert was lying in the hospital bed of the ICU, his left leg uncovered. He was supposed to be sleeping, but he couldn’t. Anthony, his brother, and his mom had left for dinner an hour ago, and I offered to stay behind in case Robert wanted company.

I leaned in, dug my elbows into the side of the bed and rested my chin against my hands, as he shut his eyes for a moment, thinking.

“Hard on whom, Robert?”

“David.”

We were silent for awhile, then. He stared past my shoulder at one of those generic paintings that they tend to hang in hospital rooms. It was a scene out of somewhere in Europe — rolling green hills, a squat little home with a bright orange roof. Maybe it reminded him of home.

“It was because you loved him, though. That’s why you were hard on him.” I said.

“Yes.”

“But you know…”

“What’s that?” I asked, taking his hand in mine. He had been dozing for a few minutes. His throat was still so dry from last night’s surgery, he could barely manage enough sound for me to hear him above the incessant beeping and whizzing coming from all the machines that were monitoring his vitals.

“He would make the best dad. Anthony. Everyone’s always going on about his music and piano. But I know — Jude and I — we both know, he would be amazing with kids. We’ve always known.”

I know this, too!, I wanted to yell. I’ve known this about him from the beginning!, I was dying to say. Because I wanted to prove to this man, this fearsome extraordinary boundless man lying in a hospital bed that I could see his son as well as he could, that I was worthy of his first-born’s impenetrable heart.

But I didn’t. Instead, he whispered,

“I’m so sad… that I won’t be around to see him do that.”

And I laughed. Hard and forced, until my entire chest shook from the effort, to rebuff the tears that threatened to close my throat.

“Don’t be silly!” I answered. “Of course you’ll be around to see that!” I leaned in and winked conspiratorially. “In fact, you have my personal guarantee that you will be around to see that. Two,” I said, raising two fingers. “One boy and one girl.”

Robert smiled.

“Did you know? He already has her name picked out.”

“Magdalena Molinaro.”

I honestly cannot remember the specifics of this conversation, in what context it arose. It was a few months before Robert went in for surgery, and we were, once more, sitting on his couch.

“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to him,” he said. “I just — I can’t believe how well you understand him.”

“You make each other so happy.”

We talked so much. Only because it was so easy. But, in retrospect, I feel I hardly spoke to him at all, that the words were spread out loosely and without any purpose, instead of being properly packed in and organized. It’s hard for me to recall, sometimes, even some of the most important things Robert said to me in the short time I spent with him. I told Anthony, once, that I was so afraid that if I didn’t write everything down, I’d eventually lose them all, that I’d inevitably lose even the small shards of Robert I had left to me.

These little exchanges of ours — they thread together, form a warm blanket to drape around my shoulders when I am feeling cold or unsure. Sometimes, they light the way, when it gets too dark to find any answers in Anthony’s hazel eyes. Mostly, though, they remind me that I am lucky.

So fucking lucky.