scenes from an italian restaurant

by Anthony Landicini

“Just a Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody” by Louis Prima

I DON’T DANCE. No, scratch that. I can’t dance. And I’m not just one of those serious types who are too self-obsessed with their own “coolness” to go out on the dance floor and bust out some righteous bops and weaves. I’ve tried, man. But no amount of booze, weed, or anything stronger can get me far enough outta my head to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be doing on the dance floor. The very idea of dancing is so alien to me that you might as well be asking me to speak a foreign language.

The nonsensical excuse I give for this crippling inability is that when I was about four or five, every ounce of dancing talent that I had was fullheartedly used up while dancing harder than anyone ever to “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody.” I vividly remember hearing the bouncy little opening beat playing over my parents’ restaurant’s speakers and immediately undulating my little ass to follow suit. Even though the rest of the world was listening to the greatest hits of the early 2000s, up until I was about ten, these 1950s songs by the golden generation of Italian Americans were the soundtrack to my life. Before I grew a boiling dislike for them in my early teens due to all the memories they’d unlock, the music of Louis Prima, Frankie Valli, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Dion were the first songs I ever truly loved. And at the ripe age of five, I had consumed so much of them that they were already second nature to me.

While everyone was still setting up to open, I bounced my baby booty down the checkered restaurant floor, hopping from black square to black square and avoiding the yellowish-white tiles like they were lava. As soon as my mother spotted me, her face erupted with joy and she started dancing too. Next came all the youthful waitresses who cheered me on and grabbed my grubby little mitts to spin and yank me around, making me burst out with gleeful laughter. My dad and the rest of the kitchen crew looked at us as if we were insane and, of course (being the self-obsessed “cool” types), never joined in on the fun. Who woulda thought that music made by a bunch of greasy wife-beating Italian assholes could create so much joy?

“I Wonder Why” by Dion and The Belmonts

Speaking of wifebeaters, what’s the deal with Italian men and those extremely thin, tight, white tank tops that always make their oily chest hairs pop outta the front? To this day, my mental image of my father is how he looked every morning when I was a child and my parents were still married: messy hair, wifebeater, boxers, and a single white sock. My dad is the type of guy who is always comfortable. He is never one to mess with the natural occurrence of things until he absolutely must.

The shower is clogged? Eh, it’s fine. I’ll just stand in a pool of my own filth.

The car smells like shit? Eh, it’s fine. It’s only a ten-minute drive to the restaurant.

Anthony wet the bed? Eh, it’s fine. He can just sleep on the couch from now on.

My right sock got caught in the bed? Eh, it’s fine. I’ll just keep the left one on.

I don’t know what the hell my dad does while he’s sleeping for him to always get one of his socks caught in the bed. But when I was a kid, I saw it happen enough times that I started intentionally wearing only one sock myself, along with the wifebeaters—which I wore not only to bed but under my t-shirts, resulting in countless remarks from kids at school who thought I was wearing a bra when they caught a glimpse of those little white straps under my collar. I did all of that and more because of some mysterious desire all young boys have to be like their fathers by any means necessary. This desire didn’t last very long for me since I soon discovered that my father didn’t only wear wifebeaters but was a wife-beater himself.

“Life Is But A Dream” by Dion

Every time I use the toaster, soft whispers of some long-standing, unresolved guilt creep their way into my brain and remind me of the time I inadvertently caused the firing of a twenty-something waitress trying her utmost to make ends meet in the very unglamorous small town of Vineland, New Jersey. I hope she’s doing well today. But when I was seven years old, due to the less-than-satisfying returns my parents were receiving from their latest attempt to run an Italian restaurant, my parents decided to start serving breakfast to increase business. Very little good came out of this decision except for the time I first tried breakfast pizza, which I’m pretty sure altered my brain chemistry.

It was during this time that I started to gain enough confidence to waltz my way into the kitchen whenever I wanted to snag some little snacks here and there throughout the workday. These snacks were usually a handful of pepperoni slices, some sliced pineapple, banana peppers, etc., but now that we were serving breakfast, I had full access to making my own little amateur toasted sandwiches. The first and last time I ever attempted this, I walked into the busy kitchen, pulled a couple of slices of wheat toast outta the bag, and popped them in the toaster. I know I’d used the toaster before, but for some reason, on this particular occasion, it was imperative that the toast for my sandwich was exceptionally crispy. So, I cranked the heat knob to the max.

Why would it be an option to crank it that high if it wasn’t safe?

Since the bread takes a minute to cook and I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way just standing by the toaster, I left the kitchen and returned to the tiny office hidden in the back of the restaurant where my older sister and I spent most of our time. I cracked open an old Spider-Man comic I’d stolen from my older brother and became so engrossed in Peter Parker’s web-slingin,’ ass-kickin’ adventures that I completely forgot about my toast. I was soon jolted back to reality by the sounds of my father yelling at the top of his lungs from the kitchen (which wasn’t anything all that unfamiliar and was a typical complaint of many of our customers, as I would later discover by reading through old Yelp reviews). Being a curious little bugger, I snuck back into the kitchen and saw a mushroom cloud of chalky black smoke erupting from the toaster as my dad publicly lambasted one of the newer waitresses. Being the little teddy bear that my father is, he fired her on the spot, resulting in her rushing out of the place with a trail of tears behind her.

I, of course, never told my dad that the poor girl did nothing wrong, and that I was to blame for this incidental act of arson. If I did, then I would be the one who would have to face his wrath. After all, the damage had already been done, I thought.

Certainly, no good could possibly come out of pushing myself under the bus. It’s not like they can just hire her back.

Yes, young me, they totally could’ve.

“Bye Bye Baby” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons

Despite my father acting like a total madman to all of his employees and us living in constant fear that he would find something to yell at us for, I overall really enjoyed being at the restaurant as a kid. It was a fun, high-energy environment; I got to socialize with all of the staff as they constantly hyped me up and let me boss them around. One of the waitresses was the most beautiful human being I’d ever seen in my short life and always referred to me as her “boyfriend” (more on her later). I also discovered the endlessly entertaining activity of “people-watching” as I overheard countless weird and hilarious conversations from so many of our customers over the years. On the other hand, my sister hated every second she was forced to be there. To this day, the ace up her sleeve in any argument she has with my mother is, “You made me waste my whole childhood in that fucking restaurant!” As with most middle children, Sofia has always been the angsty, dramatic type.

One Friday night (which was always the busiest), Sofia wrote a little handwritten letter on some printer paper in our tiny office in the back of the restaurant and placed it on the desk. She told me she was going to go to the bathroom and that, while she was gone, I was not allowed to read her letter. If I did, she would pinch me. Since our parents were always too busy working to deal with us, Sofia was the leading authority figure during my childhood. If she hurt me or bossed me around, there really wasn’t anyone for me to go cry to. Therefore, I was basically Sofia’s servant, and if I disobeyed her, she would grab my arm and squeeze her sharp little nails into my skin. I honestly felt kinda cool showing the kids at school all the marks on my arms that she used to leave.

Once a significant amount of time had passed since Sofia left, I began to worry that something had happened. I went to the ladies’ room and knocked on the locked door to hear the voice of an older lady who most definitely wasn’t Sofia saying, “Someone’s in here!” This strange voice splashed me like a bucket of cold water that sank into my pores and filled my chest with icy fear.

I returned to the office, sat down, and stared at the folded letter that read, “To Mom & Dad” on the front. I was frozen, too scared to run to my parents for help, making their stressful Friday night unimaginably more stressful, and too frightened to defy Sofia’s orders and read the letter. I decided just to ignore the whole thing and open my old Fantastic Four comic (another one I had stolen from my brother) and just continue reading, hoping everything would work out and Sofia would walk back through the office door as if nothing had happened.

The door eventually did open, but it was my mom. She saw the letter on the desk, opened it, read it for a second, and left the room without saying a word. What happened next is kinda fuzzy. I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually, my mother stormed in with Sofia, slapping her across the back of the head and yelling at her to never do what she just did again. To this day, I have no idea where Sofia went for all that time. After that, Sofia just put her head on the desk and sobbed her eyes out. At that moment, I vividly remember hearing “Bye Bye Baby” playing over the restaurant speakers. Even though I was too young to know what irony was, I knew it couldn’t be denied when it came to the chorus playing at that moment.

“Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons

Unlike Sofia, who cried pretty much every week while we were stuck at the restaurant, the only time I remember crying in that place was because of some onions. One time, at the beginning of the day, eight-year-old me was doing my best to help my dad with the prep for the day. Quite irresponsibly, he entrusted me with one of the larger knives and asked me to cut a batch of onions for him. I took my time and thought I was doing a great job. However, after every onion, I kept touching and wiping my eyes for some reason. I kept feeling like I was going to sneeze, but there was no payoff. The itch in my tear ducts and sinuses just kept building and building. I lowered the knife on the counter, rushed out of the kitchen and into one of the booths, laid facedown, and proceeded to bawl my eyes out. I didn’t want my dad to see me crying, and I felt extremely embarrassed and terrified since I had no idea why I was feeling this way. My mom saw me in this condition and asked what was wrong. I told her what happened, and she began to snicker. She hugged me and said, “It’s okay, baby. It’s just the onions. Just let it all out.” She went to the kitchen and told my dad what happened, and I could hear him laugh as I continued to cry in the booth.

“Walk Like a Man” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons

I have never been more buff than I was as a kid. All my muscle was in my forearms, though. They weren’t quite Popeye-the-Sailor-big, but closer than you’d think. When I look at old pictures of myself, they honestly look way stranger than I ever thought. I’m surprised more people didn’t mention it. They looked as if I had been bitten by a radioactive bee on both arms, making them all puffy and swollen. They were only like this because my most consistent chore at the restaurant was helping my dad make the pizza dough. Once we poured the big glob of dough out of the flour mixer, my dad would take the knife he gave me to cut onions with, slice a piece of dough off the big lump, and place it on a scale. When the weight was right, he’d hand the mushy piece to me, and I began to fold it into a smooth and round ball. This folding process is quite hard to explain and is a technique I became immensely good at, but doubt I will ever use again.

Anyway, after doing this chore that works out a very specific part of your arms almost every night for all my life up to this point, my forearms were jacked. Maybe that’s why Sofia always pinched me there; they were simply the only parts of my body that had any meat on ‘em.

“You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You” by Dean Martin

The first crush I ever had was on a twenty-something waitress named Allison who had worked at this particular restaurant with my parents since it first opened. My most vivid memory of her is this one morning when I was around seven or eight, and I was looking at her from across the restaurant with sheer infatuation. She was sitting at a booth by the window with the morning sun glowing through her dirty blonde hair as she folded the newly washed and dried silverware into napkins. She was lip-syncing and bopping her head to “You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You” by Dean Martin. I sat at a booth across from her, held my Spider-Man comic close to my face, and pretended not to be looking at her. She inevitably caught me staring and proceeded to lip-sync the song with no shame right at me. At that moment, the lines were, “The world still is the same; you never change it,” which she followed with a wink at me. My heart melted.

Song Not Found

Almost every memory I have of the restaurant during closing time feels like a fever dream. Perhaps this is because, at the bewitching hour of 11:47 pm, little Anthony was always twilighting his end-of-the-day chores (such as checking all the rat traps to see if we had caught any Remys or Emiles from Ratatouille) due to exhaustion from his daytime chores (like kneading pizza dough).

During one of these surreal nights, Sofia and I overheard a rather violent cursing match going on in the kitchen while Allison was supervising us in the office at the back of the restaurant, ensuring we didn’t leave and see what was happening. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary since (as previously mentioned) Dad’s favorite pastime was ripping our employees a new asshole. However, what made this instance unique and especially alarming was that our mom seemed to be participating in much of the shouting as well. And, thanks to the speakers being turned off, no music was playing throughout the restaurant, leaving all the wailing and roaring front and center, echoing throughout the place.

It didn’t take long before all the shouting was met by thunderous banging that sounded like pots and pans being thrown across the kitchen. After jumping at the sound of this, Allison decided to leave us to see what was happening. I waited for a second after she left and then immediately chased after her. I crept my way up to the kitchen’s swinging black door with a little round window at the top and stood on my tippy toes to catch a glimpse of the action. The first thing I saw as my eyes stretched over the bottom of the window was my mom grabbing a handful of steak knives from a dishwasher crate and tossing them like snowballs at one of the chef’s heads as he stomped toward me. Luckily, my mom wasn’t all that experienced at throwing knives at people, so she seemed to hit almost everything around this guy except him. Judging by how the knives hit the walls and tables around him, even if a knife did hit this guy, it probably would’ve been the handle or side and would’ve most likely just awkwardly bounced off his head or back.

As this man walked toward me, smoke practically erupting from his ears, my first instinct was to jump outta this guy’s way and open the door for him as he was storming out.

“Here ya go,” I said.

He glanced over at me with his eyebrow lowered and then proceeded to strut his way outta the restaurant, never to be seen again.

Some Bullshit Song I Refuse to Acknowledge

Even though my father is far from perfect, I’ll always be thankful to him for teaching me a very valuable lesson regarding modern romance that has served me pretty well. That lesson is this: If your significant other is the anxious, controlling type who is in constant fear that you might cheat on them, it’s most likely because they’re the ones who struggle with infidelity and, therefore, believe everyone is like them (especially you). So here is what you should do: Get the fuck outta that person’s life as soon as you can because, if they’re anything like my father, they will inject you and your family with this poison of distrust and fear that will spread and erupt like a wildfire and be damn near impossible to put out. I first tasted this poison when I was ten years old, and at this point in my family restaurant’s lifespan, we had just expanded the place to be a half-bar/half-restaurant in a desperate effort to increase our profit, similar to our choice to start serving breakfast.

Late one St. Patrick’s Day night, when the bar was packed with sad, horny, and drunk adults, some of the waitresses, along with my mother, were having quite an annoying time with the karaoke machine we had just installed. As my mom and our super-tan British bartender haphazardly hit their marks to the “Cha Cha Slide,” my father and I were sitting at a booth toward the back of the restaurant, watching her from a distance.

“Your mother is ridiculous,” he said.

My father never used to start many conversations with me, so when he said this, it made me quite excited.

“Ha, yeah.” Some moments went by. “Why does she always dance to this song? It’s so annoying,” I said.

He gave me a shrug. “She’s fucking ridiculous,” he said.

That’s when it clicked. Some fella who was a bar regular kept calling out at my mom and the bartender with little teases as they danced, causing her to respond with,

“Oh my gawd, stawwwpp it.”

At the end of the night, once the whole staff and bar took a group picture together and went their separate ways, my mother and father were taking turns biting each other’s heads off over said picture. You see, in the picture, my mom was standing next to the guy who was teasing her throughout the night.

“Here, tell me. Tell me, you don’t see anything wrong here!” he said to me as he shoved the group photo in my face.

“I-I don’t know,” I said.

“Anthony, will you please just tell him that you don’t see anything? Like, I’m seriously just standing next to the guy, Tony!” she said.

I don’t remember how that night ended. In retrospect, I think my dad might’ve been onto something. Hey, a broken clock is right twice a day. All I know for certain is that now I get unjustifiably angry every time I hear the “Cha Cha Slide.”

“That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra

I wish I had some overarching message or theme to tie all of these stories together. I wish I had some grand takeaway to gift you, dear reader, regarding this unique childhood I was forced to experience. I wish I could tie them all together in a big bow for you. But I can’t. For the decade of my life that has followed my parents’ divorce (which coincided with the closing of their last restaurant together), I have shared these stories (and many others that I have now forgotten) with numerous people who have all come and gone. But now, when these stories come up, I’m not even sure what I’m sharing: the actual memory of these occurrences or just the narrative I have slightly refined with every subsequent retelling.

With every passing year, this first chapter of my life slowly becomes a smaller portion of who I am. My parents still live nearby, and when I visit them, I sometimes drive by the plaza where our last restaurant was and see that it is now a massage parlor. I’m scared to look through the window and see a place that doesn’t at all resemble what I can still imagine so vividly when I close my eyes. This mediocre restaurant now exists only in my unreliable memories. A place that most of my family has tried to forget and a place that all of our customers have actually forgotten, is still the place I half-expect we’ll all meet at some impossible reunion someday.

About the author:

Anthony Landicini is a writer who holds a BA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. You can find his previously published work in the online literary magazines BULL, JAKE, and Cacti Fur. You can also find him on Instagram.