Blue valentines . . . like half-forgotten dreams,like a pebble in my shoe . . .” ? Tom Waits
Did you get any candy hearts Thursday, the kind that say “Be Mine” and taste like chalk?
Hope so.
And if you received a diamond, even one as big as the Ritz, may it never shine brighter than the twinkle in the eye of the one who found it for you.
My Valentine surprise was bumping into my summer-after-the-sixth-grade girlfriend, whom I had not seen in nearly 40 years, while buying cannoli in Linthicum.
(You can keep the diamonds, doll baby. Like Clemenza in “The Godfather,” I?ll take the cannoli.).
So there I am last Saturday night, waiting on a half-dozen, $3-a-piece cannoli at the Italia Corner on Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard near Furnace Branch Road. Restaurants like this didn?t exist in Linthicum back in 1970 when this story began across the street at St. Philip Neri grade school.
Sipping espresso, I glimpsed the image of a girl I once knew in the outline of a face as old as the 49-year-old mug that has taken up residence in my mirror.
I won’t give away which of the plaid-skirted Neri girls itwas. Let?s just say it wasn?t Kathy Konopik, who I once took to see Bachman-Turner Overdrive at the Civic Center; nor Sandy Baker, a precocious reader who turned me on to “The Sun Also Rises” in the seventh grade.
It wasn?t even Rozzie Noonan, who caught my adolescent eye not only for her dark Irish beauty but because she and Pam Tindall folded their hands to say grace and then made the sign of the cross before eating their lunch.
It was someone I remembered as very funny and a good athlete when I looked her in the eye and said, “Are you . . . ?”
She said yes, with that classic “Who the hell are you?” look people get when you jump out from behind the curtain of their past. I said I was her boyfriend from the summer of 1970.
Nothing. Maybe it was the mostly gray, three-and-a-half-month beard I began growing after going on strike with the Writers Guild of America, shorn the other day after we ratified a new contract.
Or maybe the summer of 70 was busier than I knew. After a few moments of torturing her with information only I could know, I said, “It?s Ralph.”
She squealed and we hugged while pizza dough twirled in the air, and folks around us smiled as we laughed and began telling stories.
Here?s what I remember, both better and in more detail than so much of what has happened since those days.
“Let It Be” ? both the single and the LP ? was at the top of the charts all summer long, and nine of the New World Alvarezes went to Galicia in Spain to visit Old World relatives.
(The Americans were coming, so the Gallegos bought a refrigerator for our drinks, even though they didn?t keep anything in it.)
A couple hours before the plane took off from Friendship Airport, I took off on bike, pedaling the mile to my girlfriend’s house like the apprentice madman that I was.
In her basement, we said goodbye ? the Iberian vacation would last six weeks ? and we kissed. It was one of those fabulous, I?m-only-12-years-old-and-I-really-don?t-know-what-I?m-doing-but-I-want-to-do-more-of-it kisses.
And then I rode my bike home, got scolded for being late (small price to pay, Mom, small price) and we flew to Spain.
By the time we reached my grandfather?s village outside of the port city of Vigo by train, it was the middle of the following night. Rafael, born in San Vincente 104 years ago this month, hadn?t seen his brother Basilio in two decades.
And in the middle of all this ? teary reunions, broken English on their side and worse Spanish on ours, the table being set for 2 a.m. coffee ? for what do I bother my Great-aunt Dolores, a woman I?ve known for five minutes?
A pencil and a piece of paper.
I had to write my girlfriend and tell her everything. Mom gave me an elbow, but Tia Dolores found me papel y lapis and pencil.
When I asked my old-time-used-to-be if she still had it ? I?d give anything to read it now ? she shook her head sadly and said no.
Rafael Alvarez is an author and screenwriter based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. His books ? fiction, journalism and essays ? include “The Fountain of Highlandtown” and “Storyteller.” He can be reached at [email protected].
