Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 19 of 32
Chapter 19: The Gardener
I woke Santo with the phone in my hand.
He read it lying on the towels, and read it again, and sat up.
"Eighty-six," he said.
"He was old when I was ten."
"He was old when I was born." He rubbed his face. "He used to give me tomatoes off the vine. Warm. With salt from his pocket."
"He asks if you learned to swim."
Santo looked at the pool for a long moment.
"Then let's go tell him," he said.
We climbed back over the Torrisi fence at seven in the morning.
A man walking a pit bull watched us do it.
Santo, in torn trousers and yesterday's shirt, nodded at him.
The man nodded back and kept walking. It was Red Hook.
The nursing home was a low brick building in Great Kills with a flag out front and a view of the marina.
The nurse at the desk looked at Santo's face and then at the big driver, waiting by the car, and sat up very straight.
"He's in the sunroom," she said. "He's always in the sunroom. He likes to see the boats."
He was in a wheelchair by the window, in a brown cardigan buttoned wrong.
There were three tomato plants in coffee cans on the sill in front of him.
His hands were the same. I knew them before I knew his face.
Huge hands, spotted and bent, resting on his knees.
The last time I'd seen them, one was knotted in the collar of my yellow dress, dragging me up into the air.
He looked up when we came in.
He looked at Santo first and nodded, slow.
Then he looked at me.
His whole face changed.
"The little one," he said. His voice was thick with Staten Island. "The little one who came up swinging."
"Swinging?" Santo said.
"She hit me." The old man laughed, a wet crackle. "I pulled her out and she came up punching. Got me right in the eye. I said, this one's going to be fine."
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