May you also never experience the pain of a daughter who thinks she can find her own way, unheeding the advice and wisdom of family in the matter of men. May you not know the ingratitude and shame of a daughter who whirls from one man to the next, not knowing what she seeks.
However, as disappointed as I am in your flightiness, I am extremely reluctant to rely upon the judgment of Yolanda. She is a fool, and you will be more of a fool if you heed the yammering around you. In this Papa and I concur—one of the few times in twenty years that we have agreed on something.
I do trust Claudio. He obviously has great respect for Paolo. It would certainly be good for the partnership to bring Paolo into the family.
We have heard through Claudio that Paolo has asked for your hand. Papa and I are prepared to accept.
I shal write to Yolanda myself. Be a good girl. Write to me. Your loving and concerned mother
CHAPTER 31
The Veil
Standing in front of the altar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I saw a flash of light, as if there were a halo around my head. Til y, at my side, screamed. And then Paolo’s hands were upon me, ripping the veil from my hair, my face. I breathed a choking smoke. My eyes fil ed with water and a searing pain. I gagged on the smel —acrid, bitter. Then I heard the wailing behind me, the mutterings of the old women. I had been too close to the candles.
I turned to where Paolo had flung the veil, where he was stamping out the flames on the marble steps by the Madonna’s altar. It was a blackened tangle of strands, like an old cobweb hanging from the rafters of a barn.
Ashes. I felt the color, the life, seep out of my face, slowly dripping into a puddle of fear at my feet. Paolo saw me, took two strides to my side and caught me as I began to sink, to crumple. He cradled me, surrounded me, whispered into my ear, kissed the singed ends of my curls. I noticed the black smudges on his fingertips, the fine, powdery soot on his white shirt cuffs.
Til y was whimpering. The priest was fumbling with his spectacles and his prayer book. He had just risen to his feet after checking the damage to the carpet.
Paolo coughed, stil holding me tightly, and said quietly to the priest, “Father, I think we can continue now.”
The words droned past me without any meaning. I felt Paolo squeeze me gently when I was supposed to answer. Til y composed herself enough to help me take off my glove and Paolo caressed the ring onto my trembling finger.
I could not think. I could not rejoice. I heard only the terrified gasp reverberating through the church, the hum of prayers trying to dispel the evil omens hovering amid the candles. I saw only the consuming flash that fol owed the thousand glimmering filaments embracing my head. I smel ed only candle wax, burning silk, charred hair. I buried my face in the white roses and lilies that I carried, but their fragrance was denied to me, overpowered by this memory that I also carried out of the church, into my life.
Somehow, Paolo propel ed me away from the priest, down the aisle, out into the fresh air. At the foot of the steps waited the carriage. Two white horses. Paolo had ordered them especial y for today, with flowers entwined in their harness. Paolo lifted me into the carriage and kissed my ankle as he settled me against the cushions. He climbed up next to me, and in this moment of repose, removed his handkerchief from his jacket to wipe first my forehead and then his own fingers. He signaled the driver to start. Behind us were the carriages of our families, other people on foot. It wasn’t far to the grand salon of the Hil crest Hotel, just across the railroad bridge on Gramatan Avenue.
We moved forward slowly. I hid my head in Paolo’s shoulder. I had no desire to rise up, to display myself to the family behind us, to the strangers who lined the road, to the children waving. Because my head was down I did not see the speeding truck that suddenly startled the horses. I only heard the frantic neighing of first one and then the other animal, the rough, angry shout of the driver, the grating of the wheels, the lurching and twisting of the carriage and then a frenzy of movement, a loss of control, the carriage hurtling, the clatter of the wooden bridge under us, the carriage lifting, straining, shouts, wood splintering. Paolo’s body was tense, once again surrounding me, protecting me.
Suddenly, we came to a jolting, thudding stil ness. There were more shouts, the shuddering, heaving sound of the horses panting. In one swift, unwavering movement, Paolo lifted me from the carriage and into the urgent arms of Claudio, who had rushed up from the carriage behind us.
Paolo stepped down and together the two men flanked me, walked me around the carriage to the other side of the bridge. I turned and looked back. The bridge was beginning to swarm with people—the families who had fol owed us, the onlookers along the road. The driver unhitched the horses. The carriage was tilted against the shattered railing of the bridge, halted in its plunge by a single metal post.
I turned away from this vision of what might have been, from the erupting hysteria of my sisters and aunt, from the horror of my uncle. Up ahead, through the windows of the Hil crest Hotel, wafted the music of a piano.
My wedding day.
From the very first days of our marriage, Paolo brought us out of the shadows where we had been hiding our love for one another. On Sunday afternoons I’d put on my red dress and take his arm as we walked down the hil to Hartley Park, retracing our steps on that Sunday long before when he had escorted Pip and Til y and me to the band concert for the first time.
Paolo usual y couldn’t wait to get to the park, his exuberance infectious and childlike. He’d clipped the concert schedule out of the Daily Argus and always knew exactly what band would be playing. Often, as we walked, he’d be whistling songs he knew to be on the program, entertaining us with a prelude before we even arrived at the park gate. One Sunday he told me he had a surprise for me, a discovery he’d made. I was eager to know what it was and cajoled and pleaded with him al the way down the hil , but he insisted that I had to wait until we were inside the park. Once there, instead of heading toward the band shel , he led me away toward a grove of arborvitae growing in a semicircle. Within the grove he stopped and put his finger to his lips as I started to question him.
“Wait and listen,” he said.
Within a few minutes, I heard the tap of the bandleader’s baton on the wooden podium and then the opening notes of the tune Paolo had been whistling. The music was as clear as if we had been sitting in front of the bandstand. But instead of being in the midst of a hundred others, we were alone in the grove.
He bowed deeply and said to me, “Signora Serafini, may I have this dance?”
And then he took me in his arms and swept me over the grass in time with the music. I felt his arm around my waist, his hand caressing the smal of my back and sometimes wandering lower. His other hand was tightly entwined with mine, as if he never wanted to let go of me.
We danced that Sunday through the entire concert, until we were breathless and a little dizzy from the warmth generated between us. For the rest of the summer we danced to the concerts from within the grove, alone with each other and the music.
CHAPTER 32
The Strike
Above the Palace were two apartments. Claudio gave Paolo and me one as a wedding gift. We had three rooms—a kitchen in the middle with a room in front that we used as a parlor and one in back that was our bedroom. The toilet was out in the hal between the two apartments. Paolo and I had fixed up the rooms since we’d been there, but they were narrow and dark. I could not see any trees when I looked out the windows. In the summer, I put some pots of begonias on the fire escape.
One morning, I had just returned from the market, my basket heavy with onions and broccoli rabe and peppers, when I found Paolo in the kitchen. We were four months married, my breasts already tender, my bel y slightly swelled with the baby that had taken hold inside me that first time, at Flora’s.
I remembered the morning he’d come to Flora’s, seeking his sister but finding me, my longing, my readiness.
Was this the reason for his unexpect
ed appearance—was he looking for the same thing now? I put my basket down and went to him. He was seated at the kitchen table, a cigarette in one hand, his pen in the other, a loose sheaf of papers spread across the tablecloth— columns of figures, cryptic words. No poetry this morning.
I put my arms around him, kissing the part of his neck that was exposed above his col ar.
“Buon giorno, Signore Serajini. Come sta?”
He patted my hand and kissed it absentmindedly. This was not a man hungry for his wife’s body. His face was pinched and furrowed, and I could detect the signs of an oncoming headache. He crushed the cigarette in a coffee saucer, threw down the pen and pushed back his chair. The pen scattered drops of blue ink across the cloth. I picked up the saucer and brought it to the sink. He knew I hated the stench and the dirt when he brought cigarettes into the apartment.
He paced the floor, moving from the kitchen to the front room and back. He stopped at the windows that overlooked the street, but stood to the side, by the curtains, so that someone looking up couldn’t see him.
I rinsed the saucer and pul ed the tablecloth off the table, first gathering his papers together in a pile.
He jumped at me. “What are you doing? Don’t touch them. It’s business.” He grabbed the loose papers from my hand. “They are none of your concern.” He stuffed the papers into his pocket.
Tears stung my eyes and I pressed them back with the palm of my hand. His words had been like a slap across my face.
“I’m a businesswoman. I understand business. How can you not talk to me about business, especial y if it affects you? Don’t you trust me to understand?”
I saw the pains shoot across his face, the color drain from his skin. Even his copper hair looked dul , leaden.
“Are you in trouble? Do you owe someone? Tel me. Tel me.”
I went to him, held his face in my hands. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to caress him. Take away his pain. Take away his false pride. If I could help him, he had to let me.
He took my hands and pul ed them away.
“I shouldn’t have come home. I’m going out.”
He left the apartment. But when he left the building, he didn’t use the street entrance. Instead, he went through the Palace and out through the al ey.
He didn’t come home for supper that evening. I put a covered plate in the icebox and climbed into bed with one of the books my mother had sent. Around ten, I heard the piano downstairs in the Palace and knew it was Paolo. I was able then to sleep, listening to his melancholy music.
Sometime around three, I heard him on the stairs and then in the kitchen. He ate the pasta efagioli I had made for him, cold and in the dark, his spoon grazing the bottom of the bowl with every stroke. When he was finished, he put his dishes in the sink and left his shoes by the door.
I waited, my back turned away from him, my breathing steady. I wanted no more words that night. He undressed slowly, placing his watch and cuff links in their box on the dresser, hanging his shirt and trousers methodical y. When he lifted the covers to climb into bed, I could smel the wine, the homemade Chianti he and Claudio sold by the gal on downstairs. His body, normal y so taut and strong, was slack and heavy as he settled beside me. He muttered my name as he buried his face in my hair. Within minutes, he was asleep. He slept fitful y, cal ing out unintel igible sounds and moving his legs uncontrol ably. At five, as a gray light filtered over our bed, I could see that he was soaked in sweat, his face the same color as the early morning sky.
I got up and took a soft towel from my linen cupboard. I fil ed the washbasin with water and brought it to his bedside. I washed his body. Although he stirred at first in protest, he subsided and submitted, final y drifting into a less troubled sleep.
I dressed and made a pot of coffee. In the pocket of his jacket, hanging on the kitchen hook, I could see the papers, stil there, crammed as they had been earlier.
My mother would’ve taken those papers, studied them, deciphered them. She would have confronted Papa and then presented a solution. She was often furious with Papa, but they were always united. More than once, she’d accused him of generating disasters and then reached into her reserves of cunning and intel igence and will to rebuild from the ashes of my father’s failures.
What failure was Paolo hiding? What loss could he not share with his wife? I believed he stil saw me as a spoiled child, a privileged daughter, unused to financial uncertainty. I was determined to show him I was not fragile. That I could shoulder his pain, not just wipe the sweat from his troubled face.
I could hear his breathing in the next room, the sounds of the street coming alive below us, the factory whistles starting their round, the trains heading for New York with New Rochel e businessmen aboard on their way to banks and shipping firms and law offices.
I left the papers in his jacket. I didn’t need to spy to know it had to do with money. Money he didn’t have—that we didn’t have. I got dressed, not in my marketing clothes, but in my shop clothes. Clothes I hadn’t worn since my marriage and the family’s decision to sel the store. Pip had left to marry and move to New York, and Til y’s husband, Gaetano, whom she had married a month after my wedding, made enough to relieve her as well.
Whatever profit Claudio had realized when the final papers had been signed he had kept for himself.
Between Paolo’s salary from the union and his share of the profits from the Palace, we had thought there would be enough for us. But now I understood from Paolo’s fear that there wasn’t.
I went downstairs and left word at the Palace that I wanted to speak with Claudio. Then I walked over to his stables and found him in his office. We spoke. I made my offer; he accepted.
The next day, the Palace would begin serving lunch and dinner. I was to give Claudio twenty-five percent of the profits and keep the rest for my family.
It had been easier to talk to Claudio than to Paolo. By the time I’d gotten back from the stables, Paolo was already gone, the bed a damp and rumpled pile of sheets. I changed out of my street clothes and stripped and scrubbed the bedding. Better to begin the evening with fresh linens, a fresh heart. I hung the sheets on the line above the al ey, ironed the tablecloth that I’d soaked in bleach the day before. The ink spots had disappeared as if they had never marred it.
In the afternoon, I made lists of provisions I would need for the Palace, rol ed up the sleeves of my housedress and began to scrub the unused kitchen behind the bar. When Paolo stayed away again at dinnertime, I put his plate in the icebox and sat at the kitchen table writing menu cards in the hand the nuns had taught me at Santa Margareta.
I heard no piano playing downstairs that night, so I was startled when the doorknob turned shortly after ten. I’d just spread the cards out to dry.
“What’s this?” He thrust his chin at the table.
“My answer,” I replied.
“To what question?”
“My own. How can I be a good wife, a woman, not a child? I don’t want to be your burden.”
“You’re not a burden.”
“I made you angry yesterday with my fears.”
“I was angry with myself, not you.”
“Do you think I can’t understand your problems?”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“You admire Flora, don’t you?”
“I love her. She’s my sister.”
“But you approve of her, how she handles herself, her affairs?”
“Yes, always. I have great respect for Flora.”
“I want you to have respect for me as wel .”
“I adore you, Giulia. That’s why I anger myself. That I can’t provide for you, for the baby—what you deserve.
There. I’ve said it. I can’t provide.”
He sat with his head in his hands.
“The union is going out on strike again. We only organized the workers a few months ago, and the leadership is cal ing for a strike at the clockworks. What little steady income I brought in from the
IWW will be wiped out.”
“Paolo, look at me. Take your hands away from your eyes. Look at me. I am no precious china dol , with feet good only for dancing and hands made only for holding sweets. These feet are planted firmly on the ground.
These hips have balanced laundry baskets and bolts of fabric and Claudio’s sons—and, soon, God willing, our own. These hands have harvested my grandmother’s garden and counted the til at the shop at the end of the day and kept the books. We’re going to survive, Paolo. Strike or no strike. The women in my family don’t sit fanning themselves while their men sweat.
“Do you think I married you because of your job? Do you think I defied al the curses and the advice of my sisters and my aunts because of money? Do you think I gave you my heart and my soul because you bring home a steady paycheck?
“You provide, Paolo. You provide nourishment for my soul. You provide music that makes me soar. You provide a joy in my life I did not know existed. Never, never tel me again that you can’t provide. We provide.
For each other.”
I was kneeling in front of him, holding his face in my hands. Praying silently to every saint I could remember to help me rescue him, rescue us. And I cal ed upon my mother for her strength of purpose. Her stubbornness.
Her unwil ingness to accept defeat.
That night I felt a shift take place between Paolo and me. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be a woman. It had nothing to do with the power I had discovered as a young girl in Italy—the hunger I could elicit in Vito’s eyes with a bared shoulder or a quickening castanet. Nor was it the satisfaction I had gained in Paolo’s arms, from those first precious moments on Flora’s carpet of many flowers to our own marriage bed. It was not even my changing body as the child inside me grew and took shape.
It was something entirely apart from my physical self. It was a recognition of my own serieta—my solidity, my strength, when confronted with the doubt-ridden soul whose face I held in my hands, whose future rested in my arms. Up until that moment, it was Paolo who’d been strong—Paolo who had caught me in my fal from my own family, Paolo who had snatched the burning veil from my head, Paolo who had lifted me from the carriage run amok. But Paolo’s courage—the courage of men—seemed limited to the physical dangers of the world.
Linda Cardillo - Dancing On Sunday Afternoons Page 16
