SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED

After Helen blew town, and the authorities secular and sacred moved Frankie through their respective bureaucracies, he was adopted by the best possible family – the Kazmarek’s of Erie, Pennsylvania, as tight and crooked, though not necessarily dishonest a brood as ever lived under one roof.  The Kazmarek clan was made up of the matriarch, Victoria, a.k.a., Ma or Busia (Leon, her husband, had passed) and her children, Florence, Theresa, Irene, Andy, Louie, John, and Stevie – none of them married.  The closest to a wedding were Florence and her boyfriend, Barney Szymanoski – an event five years in the planning though still not imminent.  Florence and Barney met in the TB hospital off of Old French Road, and though I’m tempted to crack a lot of jokes, I won’t.

Frankie was at St. Joe’s,  the Catholic orphanage, Busia collected children, and one of her own, Louie – henceforth Fr. Louie – was a young priest with a facility for making things happen.  Adoption laws were much less strict in 1946, and Fr. Louie just happened to be assigned to Saturday Confession and Sunday Mass at the orphanage. The arrangements began at Sunday supper, always a sit-down with linen, silver, china – part of the Kazmarek fortune - over a bowl of czarnina, a mahogany deep sweet and sour soup thickened with duck’s blood.  Four of the kids were at table, John and Stevie were around the corner running the saloon, the Broken Inn, and Irene was out gallivanting, nobody knew where.

                Ma, St Joe’s got a new kid last week, a boy.  The cops found him at the bus station.

               

I like boys.  What’s his name?

Nobody knew, so we baptized him Francis, after the agency lady who brought him in.  You know, it’s a boy’s name, too.

Sure, after the saint.  Francis, Frank, Frankie.  A little boy named Frankie.

Yeah.  He’s got this mark on his left hand, looks like a tattoo, looks like the number one.

 Maybe his father was a sailor. 

Who knows, anyway you got room for one more?

I think so.  What’s everybody think, we got room for one more?

Sunday supper was not a democratic parliament, and disagreement was not an option.  The question was rhetorical, though only Fr. Louie and Therese would have known what that meant.  Between the passing of kluski, those great ivory colored egg noodles for the soup, and the concerto of slurping, it looked like all the heads were nodding yes, and as long as Busia said yes, Frankie would be delivered with papers that made him an immediate and bona fide Kazmarek.  The only thing left to decide was who was going to be in charge of the boy.

 Florence stepped right up:

Florence:                Ma, let me take care of him.  It might get Barney to move faster on this wedding.

Andy:                    Your Barney’s not going to move faster until he thinks he’s got enough money salted away to take care of you, and everybody else combined.  And it’s going to take even longer if he’s got a kid to worry about.

Florence:               Oh, he’s got the money, he just needs a little kick in the dupa.

Therese:              Can I be godmother?

Fr. Louie:             Well, I already baptized him, but I suppose we can do it again.  Who wants to be   godfather?

Busia:                  Andy will do it.

Andy:                   Ma, for crying out loud, I’m busy with the saloon.­

Busia:                   You’re busy with the saloon, you’re busy with the bottle, now you’ll be a little more busy.  It’s settled.  Besides, Florence and Therese will take care of him.  Men are useless.  You just stand there for a minute, and answer those questions. Sober. Louis, we need to give something?

­­

Fr. Louie:             Eh, a little something to the diocese.  I’ll take care of it.

Busia:                  You?  Where you going to get money?  Florence, tell Barney to take care of it.

Florence:             Ma, Barney’s an atheist.

Busia:                 That’s his problem, now he’s an atheist with a son.  Tell him.

Fr. Louie:             Ok, good, it’s settled.  Andy, pass the czarnina, would you?

And that was how Frankie came to be a Kazmarek; as if dropped out of the clouds wrapped in a blue ribbon, delivered to an old-country matriarch, a priest, an unmarried woman, her atheist boyfriend, and a built in family of saloon owners, factory workers, secretaries, and drunks – the salt of the earth.


photos from the archives