More often then not, the dead were still alive to her: his great uncle, his long dead cousin, both of Tony’s parents.  Who knew what they whispered to her when no one else could hear.

She’d been pestering him for weeks now.  Months even.  Every time when he walked in it was, “Where is it?  Where is your hard hat?”  And then, after he kissed her good-bye, she’d call as he passed out the door, “Antonio!  Wear your hard hat!”

No one had called him Antonio since he was five.  Everyone called him Tony.  Everyone, that is, but her.  She had always called him Antonio, so there was nothing strange about it now.  And when you’re eighty-six, you can call people what you like.

But this business with the hard hat – what was that about?  Tony wondered if his grandmother was confusing him with his brother, Mariano, who worked in construction.  She didn’t seem to know who most people were these days.  Or anything else, for that matter.  Still, she always called him by his given name: Antonio.

“Nonna, what do you mean?  Why should I wear a hard hat?” he asked the first time she scolded him about it.

“You need to wear your hard hat, Antonio!” she insisted.

“But I don’t have a hard hat, Nonna.”

“You must wear it!”  There was that crease in her forehead – the one she got when she was not to be crossed.

“I work in an office where it’s nice and safe.  I don’t need to wear a hard hat.  I’m an accountant.”

 

When he had told his father he was going to college to become an accountant, his father had said, “A what?”

“An accountant,” he repeated.

“So… you want to do accounts?  You can do the books here.  At the restaurant.”

Tony loved spreadsheets and numbers, and spreadsheets full of numbers.  He loved neat rows and columns that added and subtracted and divided and compounded.  There was something soothing and beautiful in a perfectly balanced financial report.

There was nothing soothing or beautiful about the books at his father’s restaurant.

“Why would you go to college unless you’re going to be a doctor?” his mother had said.  “Are you sure you don’t want to be a doctor?”

“I’m sure, Mama,” he said.

But even as he worked nights at the restaurant to pay for his classes in Financial Statement Analysis and Corporate Taxation, his mother would introduce him to the customers as: “my college son, Tony, who is maybe going to be a doctor”.

Then his father died one morning, collapsing over a giant vat of Bolognese sauce, and his mother stopped asking if he’d changed his mind about becoming a doctor.  Tony was afraid he would be pressured to help with the restaurant, but his mother had Robbie and Lucia.  It was Lucia who took over the books.  Not only was Tony grateful to his sister, he was more than a little impressed.  Lucia had talked her mother into investing in a computer where she kept the accounts in neat rows and columns on spreadsheets.

But Tony’s grandmother didn’t remember her son had died over the Bolognese sauce.  She had also forgotten her daughter-in-law, Tony’s mother, had gone three years later from cancer.  With no one to take care of Nonna, they had found this place.  She had her own room with a view of the street below, a dining room that provided all her meals, and a 24 hour care staff.  It wasn’t cheap, but they had money from selling the house.

 

After scolding him again about the hard hat, Nonna asked, “Where is Roberto?  How come he never comes?”

He used to gently remind her.  “Papa’s dead.  The heart attack, remember?”

He’d watch the emotions—denial, confusion—wash over her face, making her gaze turn hazy, her brows and mouth pull down.  She would argue, or worse yet, turn toward the window in quiet resignation.  Eventually, this got to be too hard.

“He couldn’t come today,” Tony said.  Which had been the truth these past seven years.

“He works too hard.  That place is going too kill him one day like it did his father.”

Tony only nodded.

“Do you know what Enzo said to me today?”

He’d gotten used to the way she switched between past and present.  He had only vague memories of his grandfather, Enzo, who died when Tony was very young.

“What did he say?” he asked.

“He said Roberto only spends all that time in the kitchen because the good smells soak into his skin and attract the pretty girls.”  His grandmother laughed.  “Like that one, Eva.  If she’s anything like her sister, Rosa, Roberto better stay away!  She is wild! Half the boys are chasing after her.  And she is far too easy to catch, from what I hear.”

Tony raised his eyebrows.  This was new information.  He tried to picture his stodgy, frizzy-haired, Aunt Rosa as the neighborhood vixen, but failed.  The last time he’d seen her was last month at his cousin’s house.  She was standing in front of a hallway mirror, pressing a damp cloth to the spot of spaghetti sauce on her blouse, when she paused to pluck a hair from her chin.

This is what he loved about his visits with Nonna.  It was like an ongoing family reunion that transcended time and place.  Ever since his parents died and Robbie and Lucia took over the restaurant and all of his siblings started families of their own, everybody had gotten too busy.  No one had time to get together and just tell stories.  But here, in this fourth story room with the pictures of his family lined up along the windowsill, they were always together, reliving every memory.

 

With his corporate accounting job, Tony had escaped the restaurant.  His work day was done at five o’clock and he had no other family or outside responsibilities.  So it fell to him to visit Nonna, which he did three times a week.

“She’s still after me about the hard hat,” he told his sister, Lucia, the next morning when she called him at work.

“Yeah, well, she says a lot of strange things.”

“But this has been going on a long time,” he said.  “I wonder what it’s about.”

“Who knows.  I’ve got to take Emma to preschool now.  I just wanted to call and thank you for visiting her.  I’ll bring her something from the restaurant on Monday.”

That night, Mariano showed up at his door.

“Here,” he said, handing Tony a yellow hard hat.

“What’s this?”

“What does it look like?  It’s a hard hat.”

“I know.  But why?”

“For Nonna.  Lucia told me how she wants you to wear one.  Just do it, make her happy.  I need it back by Sunday night.”

Tony shook his head, but didn’t argue.  When Mariano left, he set it on the counter and didn’t think about it again until Friday.

On Friday, he got home from work, checked his mail and watered the plants on the kitchen counter, splashing a little on the yellow hard hat.  He had no intention of taking it with him, but at the last minute, grabbed it off the counter as he left to catch the bus.  Exiting onto her street, he laughed at the thought of walking into Nonna’s room wearing the hard hat.  What would she say?  What the hell, he thought, and set the thing on top of his head.

The next thing he knew, he was on the ground.

Loose debris was what the EMT guy said.  By loose debris, he meant a brick from a third floor balcony that had come loose and landed squarely on his head.

“If you hadn’t been wearing that hard hat, you might have been dead,” he added.  He asked Tony what his name was, what year it was, and the name of the current president.  Everything, but the obvious question: Why had he been wearing a hard hat?

He never made it to see Nonna that day.  After the hospital, he spent the weekend at Lucia’s house because the doctor said someone should keep an eye on him.

“How did she know?” he asked his sister.  But she only shook her head.

He thought of his grandmother, in her room with all the family photos, people both living and dead, lined up along the window.  More often then not, the dead were still alive to her: his great uncle, his long dead cousin, both of Tony’s parents.  Who knew what they whispered to her when no one else could hear.  We are here.  We haven’t forgotten you.  Tell Antonio to wear a hard hat.

“How did you know?” he asked his grandmother on Monday.  He hadn’t gone to work that day and took the bus straight to her apartment after breakfast.

“How did I know what?” she said.

“About the hard hat?  You told me to wear a hard hat.”

“Why would I say that?” she said.  “You’re an accountant.  You don’t need to wear a hard hat.”

“Yes, but…”

“My brother, he should have worn a hard hat.”

“What?”

“It might have saved his life, when he fell.  He broke his skull, you know.”

He knew little about his great uncle.  Only that he was his grandmother’s only sibling and had died young in a work accident.  Also, Tony was named after him.

“Did you know that when we lost him last week, he had only been hiding in the linen chest?  Papa wanted to spank him for scaring us, but Mama was just so relieved to find him she wouldn’t let him and even gave him sweets.  Antonio is so spoiled,” she laughed.

Tony spent the rest of the morning learning about his namesake and the strange incident of the hard hat began to make some kind of sense.

When it was time to go, he kissed his grandmother on the check.

“Good-bye Nonna.  I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

“Antonio!” she called as he passed through the doorway.  “Don’t forget your galoshes!”