The Proper Words for Sin

The Fierceness of Need

37 THE FIERCENESS OF NEED “This Khomeni fellow, what do those people over there see in him?” Sal Morrelli asked. For five minutes he’d been complaining to Ed Frank about his daughter Maria’s music—“All that what they call disco. Like dancing to a song makes it something special”—but suddenly he’d switched to politics as if the late March improving weather reminded him of bad news likely to come soon from the Middle East. “From what I’ve heard,” Ed said, “the Shah was nasty.” Morrelli shook his head. “I don’t like the looks of this guy. No matter what’s happened, you can’t have a church in charge of a country. There’s too much hate in the people who run churches, and that one doesn’t even have Jesus to calm things down.” Although he’d never been inside the place, Ed knew Morrelli ran his own restaurant. He’d passed by it a hundred times, and from the outside it looked to Ed as if Maria’s hadn’t changed since Morrelli opened it in 1957, six years before the daughter he’d given the same name to had been born. Ed and his wife, Dana, had lived near Middletown, where Maria ’s was located, for three years without more than “Hello” from Morrelli over the fence that divided their yards. Morrelli had put 38 THE FIERCENESS OF NEED the fence up years ago to keep Maria in when she was young, and now, he said, he’d gotten used to it, and maybe Ed and Dana would appreciate a fence at the end of their yard someday when they had the little ones around. But ever since Morrelli’s daughter had started in Ed’s class at the high school, Morrelli called him over to talk whenever he saw Ed in the yard. Maria was in tenth grade, the Julius Caesar year in English. She’d finished the Romeo and Juliet year and had Hamlet and Macbeth to go before graduation. During Ed’s three years at that high school just outside of Harrisburg, he’d taught all of those plays, and he knew it was hard doing Shakespeare in any of those years. He’d told Dana that Maria sat behind a boy who said he didn’t understand anything in Julius Caesar, not even the lines in prose spoken by the guards. “Why?” Ed had asked him, and he’d said, “Because it’s Shakespeare.” “You thinking about starting a family?” Morrelli said now, leaving the Middle East behind, abandoned like the merits of disco music, jittery, Ed thought, from the coffee he always carried into the yard in a twenty-ounce “double cup” from the local doughnut shop. “You two aren’t babies anymore.” “I’m thirty,” Ed said. “Dana’s a few months younger.” “You don’t want to be an old man when your kids need a firm hand,” he said. “One of these days soon,” Ed said. He didn’t want Morrelli to be the first person he told that Dana was pregnant, news she’d given him the night before, telling him to wait a few days to spread the news. “It’ll be like a birthday present,” she’d said, since hers was April 1st, less than a week away, but she’d looked upset, even when he hugged her. “I had two glasses of wine last night,” she’d said. “I knew I shouldn’t because I was late.” THE FIERCENESS OF NEED 39 “It’s nothing to worry about.” “Yes it is. I knew I had an appointment this afternoon. Everything matters now.” Morrelli looked across Ed’s yard as if he was imagining children playing. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m forty-four, and Maria’s my only and about all I have the energy for.” Morrelli’s daughter had dark red hair, the most beautiful hair of any girl in the school. Ed had mentioned that to Dana once, and she’d said, “That’s the sort of thing you’d better keep to yourself.” “Who would I tell besides you?” “Why am I the exception?” “If you told me one of your fourth graders was cute,” he’d said, “I wouldn’t tell you to keep that to yourself,” and she’d glared like her mother did every time Ed criticized Republicans. He’d...