HARVEY SACHS
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hairdresser, had a lot in common with my mother: both were short and
small-boned, full of fun, and outspoken. Her husband, like my father,
was a working man and a World War II veteran, gentle in aspect and
manner. I admired the D'Arrigo kids' talents-manual, domestic, con–
crete, and utterly unlike my sister Paula's and mine, which were abstract
and apparently useless. Mary Louise, a year younger than I, was beau–
tiful, dreamy, and mysterious; Joey, her younger brother, was wild but
warmhearted; and Laura, their little sister, was a tomboy. My family ate
sliced brisket, whereas the D'Arrigos ate a funny kind of sliced ham, dif–
ferent from the pork products that were dietary mainstays of the Mal–
ones, Brouceks, and other Catholic neighbors. The 0'Arrigos were
accustomed
to
devouring large quantities of fresh-cooked legumes and
exotic leafy vegetables, whereas we were essentially root vegetable
eaters. And for lunch, Paula and I liked nothing better than boiled pota–
toes drowned in sour cream (borscht without the borscht), the very idea
of which turned the D'Arrigos' stomachs.
But the similarities between the two families were clear to me even
then. In particular, the D'Arrigo kids' grandparents and great-aunts and
-uncles, who came from
paesini
in Sicily, spread thick layers of foreign–
ness over our neighborhood when they visited on Sundays, as did my
older relatives, who came from
shtetls
in the Minsk and Vilna districts.
The decibel level of extended-family conversations in both homes was
decidedly un-suburban and possibly downright un-American. And Mrs.
D'Arrigo-unlike all the other Catholics I knew but very much like my
grandparents and most of their siblings-spoke disparagingly of orga–
nized religion. (With few exceptions, those members of my family who
did not speak disparagingly of religion did not speak of religion at all.)
Although she attended Mass from time to time, she took pleasure in
reminding the predominantly Irish clergy at St. Henry's that their job was
to
officiate at religious functions, not to tell people how
to
live. As I think
back on her from my present perspective, Mrs. 0'Arrigo seems to have
seen the Church of Rome as a sort of global opera ensemble that repeats
the same repertoire in the same sequence, year after year. She may also
have taken it to be simply a reminder that there are things to consider in
life beyond earning one's bread and similar daily preoccupations.
Not many years later I discovered that her attitude is widespread in
Italy, and that it extends to the political system. Italy is technically a par–
liamentary republic but really an agnostic theocracy: the president is
pope, inasmuch as he enunciates unattainable principles and generic
moral outrage; the government is the college of cardinals, ultimate dis–
penser of benefices; the legislators are the lower clergy, who walk a
