the last days of Frankie Macciota

We all have shoeboxes crammed with old photos, a pen from a hotel, a trinket, a plastic souvenir we just had to hold on to. There may be a stack of letters, stamped and tattered, gathered with string. A shot glass, a magnet, a toy, some Mardi Gras beads, all precious, all mile markers from a former life.

Last week, in the middle of a fever I found myself poking through old things - fighting the tedious naps and exhaustion that come with being sick. I found a baby picture I had almost forgotten about. I also found an old story, printed on dog-eared pages. And there I sat and read it on a sunny afternoon, sweating out the virus, lightheaded and aching from every bone. It is a strange lens we look down, when we look back this way. There is that former self held up to the light, grabbing at the humor, doubling down on the drama. Oh, we all wanted to entertain when we were young.

But there are also odd little predictions that came true. Some twenty odd years after I wrote this I am still talking about a Davy Crockett glass.

A long time ago, there were literary journals you submitted your work to, cramming pages into envelopes, taking trips to the post office to send them in waves, with a pre stamped self-addressed envelope inside for the inevitable rejection letter, typically a little photocopied sentence tucked inside. But not always, sometimes a cheery “attaboy” from a salty editor that decided to include you. I had a wild streak of success at one point, published in twenty different places. Then the journals all went out of business, and things went online. The argument was that online, thousands would see you work, not dozens. But as the barriers lowered, it created a swamp of mediocrity I wanted no part of. In the old, analog system you plunked down your money at the post office, but first you read something from the journal you were applying to - and decided if they were worth the stamps. Often, they did and you waited patiently for their reply. It quickly shifted to anything being published on a screen, now somehow asking for a reading fee half of the time (something no print journal was doing before things went online). It all left a terrible taste in my mouth and as tantalizing it was to have an ocean of potential readers, I walked away from that vanity racket and just wrote books.

This imaginary first person, off the cuff story below is one I never sent out, and I do not mind sharing it here so many years later. As you read it, and you do imagine it being published in some scrappy little journal, with crooked pages, odd and rare and DIY, clumsy and well-intended, that would be wonderful.

photo by the author : Lawn Madonna in Red Hook, Brooklyn

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THE LAST DAYS OF FRANKIE MACCIOTA

A man gets to a certain point in his life – he starts seeing things. And when I say that, I mean the things he has royally screwed up. Eventually, you can’t pretend about the mistakes in your past. For instance - I always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Forty-four years old, I never seen the Grand Canyon.

And, I never ate caviar.

I never been to the emergency room. All I been to are a lot of Mets games.

You know, when I was kid I wanted to be one of the Beatles - or write a novel. Not even a great novel. Just an OK one. Who the hell was I kidding? I’m not the kind of guy that would come up with something brilliant. No, the kind of guy that could do that, he doesn’t come from Red Hook. That kind of guy would come from someplace like San Francisco.

Guys that can write live in Chinatown.

They live alone with a dog. An old dog with a skin condition.

And they are ex-cops. A night security guy in some big building. Always alone. Plenty of time in the dark, to write the book. It could be one of the greatest books ever written. The kind that makes you miss your stop when you’re reading it on the subway.

He would have habits, like eating the same thing every day. Black coffee and half a grapefruit for breakfast. Egg salad on rye and a root beer for lunch. Maybe some licorice in the afternoon. For dinner - meatloaf, spaghetti and meatballs, some cheap as hell Dinty Moore Beef stew - stuff like that. And whiskey. A lot of whiskey. Always in the same glass. The one he’s had since he was a kid.

The Davy Crockett glass.

Things in the world would inspire him. Things like the faces of strangers, the people in the street. And there would be a girl. A real skinny girl with big blue eyes. She would live right upstairs. And, just before dawn - when he got home from work, he would hear a strange noise coming from her apartment – like pigeons or something, only it would really be her - crying. He would stand on the stairs, listening to her. He would tiptoe into his kitchen, never knowing why she was so sad.

He would only know that on Wednesdays she would have her trapeze lesson.

He knew her wish. To run away to the circus.

Frankie - (Frankie Macciota, that’s his name) he would spend a lot of time watching day go into night. He would see a cat walking down the sidewalk with nowhere to go. This guy would memorize things to use later in the book, like how people talk or move their hands around.

Then, one day Frankie would dream he was dying.

What would things seem like to a dying man? Would he care about anything more than his own dying? For instance – this girl upstairs and her crying – would he stop thinking about her?

Maybe he would just walk the streets, trying to forget his own life that would be ending soon. Maybe he would drink in bars all the time and play love songs on the jukebox. He could buy drinks for strangers until he didn’t have any money left.

And then he would wake up and get so scared that he would go to the doctor – and the doctor would be a very quiet man, with very large hands, and he would say.

“Mr. Macciota – you have a terminal condition. You have a few months to live - maybe weeks….” And Frankie would walk out of the hospital and right into traffic only no cars would hit him. Just like a Twilight Zone episode.

He would go home and take a bath and just lie there in the dark, and then the girl upstairs would start crying again and he would cry a little too in the bathtub. Then he would try to wash the death off of him, but of course he couldn’t.

He would stay in his apartment with no furniture in it and just look out the window at the street. Or, watch soap operas on a tiny black and white tv and order shrimp fried rice and egg drop soup. He would leave all the takeout containers on the living room floor.

The phone would ring sometimes – twenty or thirty times. He would never pick it up.

Then one day he would know that the end was near. He’d get to work then – writing this great story about a fireman, or some jazz musician. The book would make you think about things. It would make you think about all the tiny people on the earth that spins so fast and how we don’t fall off. And there would be surprises – like the main character showing up in the funniest places.

Frankie – he’d be thinking about this girl he should have married. Maybe somebody asked her first, or something like that.

Maybe he even bought her a ring and never gave it to her. And, he’s still got it – in the bottom of an old drawer in the kitchen, behind an old spatula.

One afternoon, he would finish the book at the kitchen table. He’d smoke a cigarette and pet the dog on the head a little.

He would get a lucky pen from that kitchen drawer with the ring in the back and he would write the end.

Frankie would feel very tired and sleepy.

The sun would come out from behind some clouds.

And then he would die.

The dog would just sit there, licking his hand.

The girl would come home from her trapeze lesson and she would get into her tiny bed.