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The Time Left Between Us - Hardcover

Defonzo, Alicia

 
9781640125131: The Time Left Between Us
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1640125132 ISBN 13: 9781640125131
Verlag: Potomac Books Inc, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A blend of memoir, history, and oral storytelling, The Time Left between Us bridges the gap between the generation who fought World War II and the generation who has forgotten it. Alicia DeFonzo takes an unplanned visit to the Normandy beaches while staying in Paris. Her grandfather “Del” (Anthony DelRossi) had fought in World War II, and she becomes distraught after realizing how little she knows about the war and his experiences, which until then had remained largely unspoken.

Across landscapes and lifetimes DeFonzo retraces her beloved grandfather’s tour through World War II Europe. The eighty-four-year-old DelRossi recounts stories as an army combat engineer surviving major campaigns, including Normandy, St. Lo, the Bulge, Hürtgenwald, and Remagen, then liberating concentration camps. In this braided narrative, we see DeFonzo’s childhood in a traditional Italian American family with an erratic Marine Corps father and a beloved grandfather. Spanning ten years, DeFonzo’s travels and research take an unexpected detour after she inherits a Nazi Waffen-SS diary from her grandfather, and, in her final trip, returns to Germany to confront the diary owner’s family. DeFonzo’s and her grandfather’s stories merge when Del undergoes open-heart surgery and Alicia must be the one to safeguard the past.

Both nostalgic and gripping, The Time Left between Us is a meditation on how deeply connected the past is to the present and how the truth—and what we remember of it—are fragmented.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alicia DeFonzo is a senior lecturer of English and a Fulbright Specialist in the Department of English at Old Dominion University. She is a frequent literary guest and contributing writer for local and national NPR.
 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1
A Visit

I always time the drives to my grandfather’s house to arrive by five
o’clock: happy hour. He retired on the Eastern Shore of Virginia to get
away from city life, and the house rests on the Chesapeake Bay bordered
by thick woods and silence. The closest neighbor is a hundred yards away,
just the way he likes it, on a road named Assawoman Drive—he
always appreciated Native American culture. A year after he moved, a community
petitioner came to the door seeking a more “appropriate” street title.
My grandfather told him, “How ’bout we change it to ‘Big Assawoman’?”
and slammed the door on the guy.
I knock while entering the house and yell, “Helllooooooo!” so the high
ceilings boom my voice, indicating someone is here. He slowly reaches for
the pause button of his Library of Congress books-on-tape and removes
his headphones. “Hey, it must be Alicia,” he tells Linda, his second wife,
twenty-five years his junior, who is already greeting me at the door. He
takes his time walking over from his spot on the couch. Every step is
mapped out, remembered. At eighty-four he has only ten percent of his
vision left due to macular degeneration.
I give him a hug and detect the same aftershave he wore when I was a
kid. Old Spice. His large hands, which I’ve seen crack walnuts, grasp my
shoulders softly. “So, you’re back from Paris. How was it?” I had returned
a month ago. Funny how he can sense it. Why I’m really here.
I hesitate to discuss my trip just yet when he remembers, “Hey, should
be happy hour about now,” and smiles. “What are you drinking?”
“Water first, then vodka-soda. Just let me put my stuff up.”
Though they moved here ten years ago, nothing ever changes. The place
mirrors an eccentric antique shop where all the contents grow old but stay
the same. He has kept many of the same fixtures from the South Phila-
delphia row home he shared with my late grandmother. A dark portrait
of a Quaker man and his wife in a winter forest; three-foot tall wooden
gargoyles protect the fireplace (they once guarded the bathroom, terrifying
my brothers and me from using the toilet); an old Victrola player
with big band vinyls; a glass cabinet of memorabilia including the trinity
of Italian American icons—Frank Sinatra, the Statue of Liberty, the
pope; and an antique chestnut armoire displaying his World War II medals,
photographs, and artifacts, including the diary of a young Waffen-ss
soldier he found dead in the winter of 1944.
By the time I return, Linda is setting out his favorites: chips and salsa
and wasabi peanuts. My grandfather is on a strict low-sodium diet due
to his heart condition, but Linda lets him indulge when I visit. After his
defibrillator install last year, she reads the scale every morning to measure
his water weight; any gain means flooding in the heart or lungs. I
go to help her in the kitchen and grab some water when she whispers to
me, “You know he’s still trying to drive that tractor? I wouldn’t mind so
much if it was a riding mower, somethin’ that could cut the engine off if
he fell, but the tractor?” She swiftly waves her palm in front of her face
and looks down shaking her wavy gray curls. “No. No. I don’t feel good
about it,” raising her right arm to God.
“I hear you,” Grandpop interjects. I shouldn’t be surprised. His expensive
hearing aids distinguish hummingbirds at the porch feeder. “I see the
shadow of the tree line in the grass.” He slices the air with his hand. “I
follow the line. That’s how I cut!”
I turn back to Linda and tease, “It’s a sin,” a common Philadelphia-Italian
phrase used to imply sympathy.
“It’s a sin,” Linda giggles.
My grandfather slowly opens the freezer door to rummage for the Stoli.
Linda’s petite frame stretches like a child’s, and she pulls two short glasses
from the cupboard. She sets them on the wooden island. He grazes the
countertop with his fingers to find the first glass, feels for the rim, and
drops the ice. Spreading his fingers over the opening, he patiently lowers
the bottle of vodka. Linda tells him when to stop, though he knows
a good pour. He then reaches for the Jack Daniel’s: Sinatra Select, and
does the same.

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Verlag
Potomac Books Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1640125132
ISBN 13 
9781640125131
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
209
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
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