My father died with tomato sauce on his hands and my name on his lips.
He didn’t go in a hospital bed. Not in a hospice. Not even in his sleep. He went standing, in his stained apron, in the back kitchen of Vito’s Trattoria on Bloomfield Avenue. His knees buckled just after he reached for the basil.
I was five feet away, breading chicken cutlets. My hands were slick with egg and crumbs. I didn’t even see him fall at first — just heard the sauce pot rattle like a subway train against the burner.
Then he was on the floor, eyes wide, looking right through the cracked tile ceiling like it owed him an answer. His lips moved once. “Tony.”
And then he was gone.
That was two years ago, and I still haven’t changed the calendar above the walk-in freezer. It’s frozen in June 2023, with a picture of Venice, though my father never left Essex County in his life.
I run the place now. Same red booths, same green gingham tablecloths, same linoleum floor you can’t quite mop clean. Most of the regulars are over sixty. Most of them call me “kid” even though I’m pushing forty-nine.
My name’s Anthony DeSantis. I’m the third DeSantis to run this joint, and likely the last. My grandfather opened it in 1951, when Bloomfield still smelled like cigars and sawdust and you could leave your keys in the ignition.
Now? The vape shop next door has bulletproof glass. Half the storefronts are boarded up. And Uber Eats drivers park in our handicap spot like they own it.
The morning before he died, my father called me at 6:04 a.m. sharp — like he did every day since his first mild stroke.
“Come to the kitchen,” he said. “I’m gonna show you the Parm.”
“You’ve shown me the Parm, Pop. A hundred times.”
“Not my Parm. Not the way I really do it.”
I thought he was being dramatic. He was always dramatic — like every aging Italian man who thinks the world stopped in 1986.
But something in his voice cracked that morning, like an egg you don’t mean to drop. So I came.
The kitchen was already hot when I walked in, like always. Pop had the sauce on — San Marzano tomatoes simmering with whole garlic cloves and the necks of two yellow onions, skin on. No measurements. No recipe. Just instinct and memory and a wooden spoon darkened from fifty years of stirring.
“Start slicing,” he told me, tossing me two chicken breasts. “Not too thin. Not too thick. Quarter-inch.”
He was already wheezing, but didn’t sit down.
“You ever wonder why mine always comes out better than yours?” he said.
“You use more oil,” I replied.
“Oil helps,” he said, “but it’s the cheese. Half-mozzarella, half-scandal.”
“Half what?”
“Scandal. The good stuff from Mrs. Reggio behind the bakery. She gives me off-the-books ricotta. Says it’s too wet, but it ain’t.”
I didn’t laugh. I didn’t ask why he never told me. I just nodded and kept slicing.
We didn’t talk about feelings in the kitchen. That was holy ground. You want to cry? Go to church. You want to scream? Go outside. In here, you cook. That’s it.
But that morning, Pop talked more than usual.
“You remember when you were ten?” he said. “You messed up the chicken. Forgot the flour step.”
“Yeah. You yelled at me in front of all the waitresses.”
“I didn’t yell.”
“You called me a disgrace.”
He looked down at the bubbling sauce. “Yeah,” he said. “That was too much.”
It was the closest thing to an apology I ever got. And it meant more than I wanted it to.
“I just wanted it to stay good,” he said. “The way Grandpa made it. I didn’t want to mess with the only thing that still made sense.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I just handed him the Parmesan. He grated it slow, like it hurt.
By the time the chicken hit the pan, the kitchen smelled like my childhood — olive oil, scorched breadcrumbs, the faint sharpness of Romano cheese. It was the smell that brought home the mailman, the cop, the widow, the nurse. It was the smell that filled the parking lot on Sunday afternoons. The smell that let you know Vito’s was open — no sign needed.
Pop plated it like it was church communion: one perfect cutlet, sauce ladled with care, cheese melting just enough to cover but not drown.
“Now eat it,” he said.
I did.
It was perfect.
“You remember that,” he whispered, “when I’m not around.”
I didn’t say anything. But something cold moved behind my ribs.
That night, he fell.
I called 911. I knelt beside him, cradling his head like I used to cradle fresh loaves from the oven.
He looked at me, really looked — not with fear, but with a strange calm. Like he already knew something I didn’t.
“Tony,” he said again.
Then he was gone.
At the funeral, I wore his apron. Stupid, I know. But it felt like armor. The other guys wore suits. I wore Pop’s old apron with the faded tomato stain right at the pocket seam.
We served food after the burial — because that’s what you do when you’re Italian, and grieving, and don’t know how else to say thank you.
I made the Parm.
His Parm.
I followed every step he showed me that morning. Even got the ricotta from Mrs. Reggio. Told her he passed. She gave it to me free and cried into her cardigan.
People said it was the best they’d ever had.
Then a man I didn’t recognize came up. Faded Army jacket. Boots with the soles coming loose. Maybe sixty-five, maybe older.
He had a white paper plate in one hand. One bite left.
“You’re Vito’s boy?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He looked at the Parm, then at me. His voice shook.
“Your father fed me that dish in 1975. Saved my life.”
My hand tightened around the serving spoon. I blinked.
“What?”
“He didn’t ask questions. Just put a plate in front of me. Said, ‘You look like hell. Eat first, talk after.’ I was on the edge, man. I was lost. That chicken… that meal… it reminded me I was still human.”
He took the last bite. Swallowed hard.
“I just wanted you to know,” he said. “He wasn’t just feeding people. He was saving ‘em.”
He turned and walked out.
I didn’t stop him.
I just stood there, in Pop’s apron, holding an empty tray.
And that’s when I remembered the notebook.
It was tucked behind the broken microwave in the kitchen — the one he never let me throw out. Grease-stained. Spine half-gone. Probably hadn’t been touched in years.
Inside were scribbles — cost breakdowns, old invoices, maybe a few doodles. Nothing profound.
But at the very last page, written in blue ink, just four lines:
It’s only a short trip.
Feed people.
Love them.
That’s it.
No signature. No date.
Just that.
And somehow, it felt like he was standing right behind me again, whispering over my shoulder.
