When Leo Sveltivonio stepped off the senior high campus spring of 1975, he hadn't a care in the world. His old man drove a garbage truck for the city with a big fat pension waiting and the best route with the easiest pickin's. And Leo drove a brand new silver Pontiac, with a scoop in the hood and a fiery bird tattooed there, whose wingspan covered the glittering paint job from one fender to the other.
Mr. Pavoni hired him the same night, while he was swilling beers with his buddies in Jack Canohi's Olympic size swimming pool. Leo was eying Hannah Fishilberg whose bikini strap kept slipping, when Mr. Pavoni pulled him from the water with one arm and hustled him onto the upper porch. Jack Canohi, senior, was sitting behind the azaleas sipping something dark from a glass and he motioned Leo over. “Do you want a drink, lad?” asked Jack, and the deed was done.
It was a good career move for Leo. His father turned out to be a good investment, moving money for the Canohis – retrieving bags of it from trash cans along Silver Tree lane and dropping them at a counting room in the city dump. Jack Canohi figured the son would be just as trustworthy. There a was a big contract coming up for installing sidewalks throughout the city, and Canohi was all over it. The mayor got a vacation home in Boca Raton and the mob got the contract. They had the equipment and tons of substandard materials. Migrant labor was plentiful and after taking out their share of the wages, it was cheap. Now they had a crew leader, Leo and some of his buddies. Everybody has to start somewhere. And Leo was promised big things if he could manage this job.
He ended up managing the job, maybe a little too well. There was a pretty little neighborhood, off of Linden Esplanade, and Leo decided it would be a good place for his mom and pop to retire to. And the sidewalk on the street, well it would make a nice place for a sweet-ass retirement account. Who needs banks? One or two garbage bags of cash come up missing here and there, it's been known to happen before, voila: there's a white bungalow with gingerbread trim. Leo got his sidewalk crew to lay off pouring two days to slop paint on it and plant a vegetable garden. Another couple months go by, some more trash money disappears and Leo is pouring cement over a metal box in front of the shiny new home.
Jack Canohi wasn't a stupid man. When a couple hundred thousand comes up missing, he wants to know why. Sometimes it's an honest mistake; believe me, Jack gets the irony, but he also has a temper. Mr. Pavoni is the answer getter, and Pavoni has his spies everywhere. It doesn't take long before Leo Sveltivonio and his old man are standing in buckets on a fishing boat. Jack Canohi wasn't a cruel man. He let Leo's sweet old mother keep the bungalow, in exchange for the location of the major loot, then he lit up a cigar and tossed his hand in the air, turning to enjoy the taste of the salt spray that landed on his face. Father and son tasted it too, all the way down to the bottom.
The front sidewalk at 237 W. Elm was as good a place as any to stash ill begotten funds, and Jack Canohi decided to leave it there, just for the time being. Mrs. Sveltivonio never knew exactly what happened to her husband and son and they had assured Canohi that she had no idea there was a goldmine in her front yard. She lived off a sizable pension from her husband, eventually declared dead, and her vegetable garden. Some city workers came by later in the summer, and asked everyone on the street if they would like a free tree in their median strip, between the fresh new sidewalk and the street. Mrs. Sveltivonio was delighted, in fact she sprung for a second and now had twin maples. They would grow fast and compliment her home well. Every morning she would sit on her front porch with a cup of coffee and look down on her yard, out to the growing trees and think of her lost son and husband. These would be a testament to them, as they had left behind no bodies to be buried in the catholic cemetery.
A butterfly had landed on the old cracked cement walk in front of 237 W. Elm, and it wasn't likely to fly away. The insect had a long green body, and exaggerated antennae. It's wings were enormous, boarded in blue with big pink and purple spots. Sarah was filling in the dots on one wing, Ruth the other. They were six years old, all two of them; twins. Two large maples shaded the girls and their chalk drawing, and the roots had pushed under the cement and lifted slabs of the sidewalk at odd angles to each other. The neighborhood children and mothers with their strollers were careful not to trip on the uneven walkways.
“Ruth, Sarah,” called their mother from the house, “It's time for lunch.” Leah Fishilberg poured a cup of tea for old Mrs. Sveltivonio. When Leah had moved into the tiny little house, aided by an anonymous grant, the old lady was rocking on her front porch. She waved politely when Leah and her girls fell out of the rented van and began hauling boxes up to the house. In and out for the rest of the day. There was no man, just a mother and her two small girls. The twins carried small things, like a suitcase, or a folded blanket. Finally, when the sun began to set and Leah came up from the bus top after dropping the U-Haul off, old Mrs. Sveltivonio showed up on their doorstep with a pitcher of lemonade and a big plate of cookies. It was a fine treat alongside the peanut butter sandwiches mom let them make for themselves while she was gone. Leah dropped off to sleep in the worn, coffee stained chair, and the old lady tucked the sleepy girls together into the sofa and left them to sleep in their new home. She locked the door on her way out.
Leah felt a little protective of the old woman. She wouldn't say how old she was, but Leah suspected Mrs. Sveltivonio was in her nineties. She had no children around to watch after her, or a husband. The women were kind of in the same boat. They were alone, and fending for themselves. So naturally they gravitated together, and became a family. Mrs. Sveltivonio came over any time she pleased, usually to clean up the kitchen and fuss over the children after they walked home from school. And the twins were known to check up on the old lady quite often. If she wasn't out on the porch, or they couldn't see her tottering around the kitchen in an apron, then the girls became worried and needed to see if she was still breathing.
“That is a pretty butterfly, Sarah,” said Mrs. Sveltivonio to Ruth.
“I'm Ruth, and I colored in the purple wing,” mumbled the twin through a bologna sandwich. Sarah was munching on a handful of chips, leaving chalk smudges on the plate and table top.
Mrs. Sveltivonio smiled, and the creases on her old white face deepened. Her lenses were so thick that the glass obscured her eyes, and in any case, they were hiding behind droopy eyelids already. A snow white curl fell out of her red bandana and the old lady smacked herself in the nose with a slice of bread tucking it away. Sarah giggled.
“Well, young ladies, I'll have you know that it is a magic sidewalk you are painting on.”
“Oh!” the twins perked up. Leah left the table and started to clear up the counters. The girls loved it when their “granna” told stories.
But the old lady didn't tell them a fairy tale. She stood up with a groan, then pinched their cheeks and said, “Remember, about the treasure...” Then she said good afternoon and shuffled home to doze in her chair.
“What was that all about,” asked the twin's mom, as she dried the clean dishes with a towel and placed them into the cabinet.
“Oh, nothing!” squealed the girls together and laughed. They bounced off of their stools and ran out to the front yard where they could finish their beautiful butterfly.
Leah was thirty years old. When she was in her middle twenties, working in a diner, she had fallen in love with a common laborer who told her stories, and swept her off her feet. He used her and left, and she was alone, again. She had always been alone in this world; her mother had died when she was young and she never knew her father. There wasn't much she remembered of her mom, except that she hated men, and would repeatably warn Leah to stay away from them, all. She also remembered her mother's face and the crooked way she walked. Her mother, Hannah Fishilberg, had curly black hair. She wore it long to hide the scars that covered most of her face. Hannah walked with a cane because she had a leg that never healed correctly from a bad accident. Leah never knew the pain her mother had gone through, or the story of her birth.
But the old lady knew the whole story, every sordid detail. Mrs. Sveltivonio loved her husband, and she loved her son. That didn't mean she condoned their behavior. They were long gone, deep beneath the surface of the lake and eaten away flesh and bone for thirty years gone by now. They left her with a secret, the secret of the sidewalk, but she discovered the other secret by herself. Hannah – how she was cornered and raped by her son and his friends after their boozy celebration. The girl was beaten and left for dead. Boys will be boys, and the mob boss Jack Canohi easily covered it up. He owned half of the police department and the mayors office. The boys got a good whipping from their fathers for their trouble, but then they dutifully got up and went to work like nothing had happened. The old lady cursed her son and crossed herself whenever she saw the poor, sad girl on the street. She wanted to help her, but she didn't have much of her own. There was the hidden money under the sidewalk, but she was afraid to look for that. She knew what it would get her.
It wasn't long before Hannah's belly started to grow. Then she had a baby, a girl and she named her Leah, after her mother. Mrs. Sveltivonio shook with anger, knowing the child was probably her grandchild, and she vowed that someday she would help her.
The girls were in their room, giggling and playing with their dolls. Leah stood outside of the door and smiled, listening to them play. “Oh, you are an ogre, you hurt my mommy!” “I will save you!” The dolls wrestled with each other and a stuffed bear. “Here, I will give you all this shiny gold and you can move into this house with your pretty little children.” “Thank you, granna fairy!” They laughed and shouted and fell on the floor with their toys.
“What are you girls going on about?” asked Leah, entering the room. “Did that old lady next door tell you these stories?” She felt odd hearing them talking. Especially after the conversation earlier in the day.
“Yes mommy.” “She tells us lots of stories.”
Leah sat down on the edge of a bed. “I want to hear them all.”
Old Mrs. Sveltivonio was sitting in her rocking chair when Leah rapped on her front door and let herself in. It was late and the only light came from the porch lamp. There was an old tire jack laying on the stoop and fresh soil on the walk. “Mrs. Sveltivonio, are you awake? I was talking with the girls, and I want to ask you something.” She came into the living room and saw the old lady in her chair. A rusty old metal box sat by her feet. She wasn't moving, the chair was still. “Oh my God,” Leah cried out and knelt to her side.
The girls were up in their bedroom, still playing with their toys after their mother had dressed them in their pj's. “Now, you mean old man, you eat up all your porridge, and you will feel so yummy.” “And sleepy!” “Go to sleep!” “Yes, and don't you worry about your fine treasure, we will take good care of it.” “Yes we will, all of it!” The wooly stuffed dinosaur laid down and the dolls danced around it. The twins laughed and fell asleep even before the ambulance came down the street to take their granna to her castle in the clouds.
I believe at some point I heard there was yurt around the premises, but in my wanderings I only managed to get one pant leg soaked from wading drunkenly in the Scioto and possibly I hugged a Ginkgo tree. Don't tell anyone. Dinosaur hand must have come to the rescue and found us a nice dry spot to lay down beside the porch.
