“I did. Forgive me. I don’t usually pass messages along. Most don’t receive them well, or they look at me like I’m a crazy old lady. They forget I wasn’t always old. But you are different, Benny, and he is just so charming. Oh!” Carmen’s paled. She patted her face with the tips of her fingers. “Oh, my.”
“What is it? Tell me. Please.”
“He...he shows me trees, sunshine, a road, and…I feel the engine underneath me. The wheels. The sunlight and the road. And…” Her bright eyes found Benny’s. “I am so sorry, Benedetta.”
Benny was crying now, softly and without sound. “It’s okay.”
“He wants you to know…to know…” A silent moment, then a slow smile formed on bubblegum pink lips. “He says he didn’t crash, not where he is. He rode out of this life and onto another road that goes on and on and on. He wants to see where it leads, if it’s all right with you.”
“I would never hold him back.”
“But you do, Benedetta. And only you can release him.”
“Then I release him.”
“Not with words, dear. Not with—” Tina’s footsteps coming back up the stairs startled the old woman silent. “Don’t tattle on me,” she whispered. “Tina didn’t inherit my mother’s beauty or her perception. She’s all her pig-headed father, rest his soul.”
Benny nodded, finished the water in her glass, breathed slowly and deeply until her heart stopped trying to jump out of her chest. By the time Tina trudged into the room carrying the old photo album, she was mostly in control.
“I hope this is the right one,” Tina said, “because I am not going back down there. When’s the last time anyone dusted? Or even looked at anything in the cellar? I swear, if I looked hard enough, I’d find old Aunt Paulina rattling around down there.”
“Aunt Paulina died back in the eighties, honey.”
“My point exactly.”
Carmen held out her hands for the photo album, a heavy thing with hard covers and black pages, and photos held in place with tiny triangular tabs. She flipped to the first page.
“Yes, this is the one.” She motioned Benny in, turning the album her way, and pointing to the toddler standing between a pair of somber-looking adults. “This little angel is my mother, Flora. This is her mother, Carmen, and this is her father—”
“Augie…” Every other thought left Benny’s head. She slid the photo album from Carmen’s lap to her own. The mother was indeed quite beautiful, but the child in the photo and the woman on the wall downstairs looked just like her father.
“There is a better one of him, on the next page.” Carmen tapped the album.
Benny turned the page, and gasped. Handsome didn’t even begin to cut it. Augie was a lady-killer from the waves of black hair to the sparkle in his light eyes. Blue, she imagined. Startling, because they would be like ice, yet somehow warm as sunshine. This was no somber image taken in the Old Country. By his clothes and the picture quality, Benny guessed it was taken in the 1950s, and in the restaurant downstairs at that. Its placement in the album told her much more. “She knew it was him, didn’t she.”
“She did,” Carmen said. “She brought the first photo with her when she came to America. It was one of her only possessions, and her most prized. The second one was taken by the man who raised her—Papasandro, we all called him. No sweeter man has ever lived. He recognized Flora’s natural father when he first came through the door.”
They had lived in the same small village in Campania, though Alessandro—Papasandro—had been much older. When he learned the infamously beautiful Carmen Fiore had been widowed and left to raise a little girl on her own, he courted and won her heart, despite the vast difference in their ages. Family stories passed down through the years said their marriage was a happy one right up until the war separated them. Flora was sent to live with relatives in America, Sandro was put to work for the army, and Carmen died without ever seeing her husband or daughter again.
“Papasandro didn’t know his wife lied to him about her first husband’s death,” Carmen said. “It wasn’t until the supposedly dead man walked through the door of the restaurant that he suspected the man had actually abandoned his wife and child. He wanted to be certain it was him, so he took the picture of their new friend to compare it to the one in the album. As you can see, there is no doubt.”
Older, yes, but unmistakably the same man. Benny took a deep, shuddering breath. “No, no doubt whatsoever. He was very handsome.”
“He was.” Carmen ran a finger lovingly over his photo. “Charming too. And kind. I don’t remember much about him, but he used to bring me, my sister and brother sweets whenever he came in to eat. He’d sneak them to us like it was some great secret.”
“And Papasandro?” Benny asked. “Did he tell Flora who Augie—August was?”
“At first, I am certain he was quite angry, but my grandfather didn’t have it in him to sustain such a thing. I can’t be certain, but I believe he might have come to feel sorry for August, having given up such a treasure as his beloved Florina, but Papasandro’s loyalty was to her. He took his secret to the grave, to shield her from the truth that her father had not died, but chosen to disappear.”
“And that’s where it gets Shakespearean,” Tina drawled. “Papasandro was protecting her, and she was protecting him.”
Benny’s scalp prickled. “She already knew?”
“She did,” Carmen answered. “I am named for my grandmother. By all accounts, a harder woman has never lived, but she loved her child. My mother always told me that my grandmother never spoke badly of Augusto, but honored him as any woman would honor her dead husband. She is the one who gave my mother the first photo, before putting her on the ship bound for America. Like Papasandro, Flora recognized her father the moment he walked in.”
“And she never confronted him?”
“It wasn’t her way.”
“But wasn’t she angry? Or sad? For all she knew, her father abandoned her.” Benny swallowed hard, but failed to swallow the truth. “Even in the best case scenario, he did abandon her. He let his wife’s lie stand, even after finding her again.”
“Oh, dear, I can’t say what her secret thoughts and sorrows were,” Carmen said. “I can only tell you my mother was an extraordinary woman, Benny. She loved. Everyone and everything got the benefit of the doubt, and most had no choice but to live up to her faith in them. She told the story of her life without shame or grief. I have always known she had a papa who raised her, and one who fathered her. She loved them both for what they gave to her.”
“She told me,” Tina added, “she believed August loved her very much. He used to come to the restaurant, and she would catch him looking at her with such love in his eyes. After a while, she figured there was a reason he kept quiet, and she respected it. Love doesn’t always have to be shouted, she said. Sometimes, it could just be.”
Just be. The words echoed ear to ear. Benny let them fade.
“Augie regrets…regretted what he did, but he did love Flora very much. By what I learned, he was afraid of losing his wife and children and his place in the world. It sounds so terrible,” Benny confessed, “so selfish.”
“Those were different times.” Carmen tsked. “Propriety would have made things very difficult for everyone involved. My mother was a happy woman, Benny, and it was because she would not hold onto the anger and grief she had every right to. If not for the lie her mother told, she wouldn’t have been raised by Papasandro, and she loved him at least as much as he loved her. If not for Papasandro, she probably would have died in the war with her mother and grandmothers. Because he sent her to America, she met her husband, my father. A better man has never lived, and he adored her too. Without him, she would not have had her children, or opened the restaurant that has brought us all prosperity and happiness. There is no room for regret in a life well lived. It’s what she always told me, and what I believe I have passed on to my children.”
; “You do?”
“Christina Marie!”
“I’m just kidding, Mama.” Tina kissed her mother’s cheek, then turned to Benny. “I’m different,” she said. “I loved my Nona Florina, but I never understood how she was able to just let stuff go. No matter who wronged her. No matter what she lost. ‘Eez okay,’ was her favorite thing to say, and when she said it”—Tina shrugged—“it was.”
“What good is holding it tight?” Carmen asked. “Would it have changed anything?”
“Maybe not.” Tina grinned. “But we Italians are wired for vengeance.”
“Not all of us, dear.”
“Well, I am. If I found out you had a husband before Daddy, and he abandoned me to live another life, I’d hunt him down and gut him.”
Carmen leaned toward Benny, whispering dramatically, “See? She is all her father, just like I told you.”
“Is that so bad?” Tina asked.
“You are the perfect you, Christina. I wouldn’t have you any other way.” The old woman rose to her feet, signaling the discussion was at an end. Benny and Tina followed suit.
“If you would put the album away for me, honey,” Carmen said, “Benny can help me bring the cannoli downstairs.”
“You made cannoli?”
“Of course I did. It is not a family gathering without my cannoli.”
“I can send one of the kids up.”
“No need. Benedetta’s here. You don’t mind, do you, dear?”
“Not at all.”
Tina gathered up the album. “You’re up to something, Mama.”
“Me? What can I possibly be up to? Benny, ignore her and come with me to the kitchen.”
Carmen started for the kitchen, Benny on her heels. When the door to her apartment whispered open and clicked closed, the old woman, paused in her steps, but only a moment, and moved to the refrigerator.
“He was my grandfather. August was.” She opened the refrigerator door. “My biological grandfather, and the man responsible for so many of those downstairs, but I know almost nothing about him. Can you share anything with me?”
“Oh, of course.” Benny took the tray of cannoli and set them down on the counter indicated. The shells were the perfect gold, dusted with powdered sugar. It took all her willpower not to stick her finger—accidentally, of course—into the smooth and decadent ricotta-cream filling. Benny’s mouth watered just a little. “Well, he had a wife named Katherine, and three children—Philip, Victor, and Adrianna. He was a builder, and lived in Bitterly from about 1935 until he died in 1980. My friend lives in the house he built—”
“The friend who found the letters that brought you here.”
“Y-yes.” Benny cleared her throat. “In the cellar.”
Carmen only nodded and retrieved another tray. When she handed it to Benny, her pink lips pursed as if she were trying not to smile, and did not let go. Cold heat rushed to Benny’s face. She stammered words she didn’t recognize, sounds that didn’t even seem quite human. The more uncomfortable she got, the more pursed became Carmen’s lips, until she burst out laughing. “There were no letters, were there, Benedetta.”
“No.” The word came out in a rush of breath. “I…he…it’s just he…”
“You need not explain, dear. Least of all to me. It is a kind thing you do. That’s all that matters.”
Benny threw what little caution she had left—along with all sense and reason—to the wind. “He can’t move on,” she confessed. “He is stuck between here and there, because he made a promise to his daughter he didn’t keep. I don’t know how to help him, even now.”
“August is going to have to help himself,” Carmen said. “There is no ill-will toward him by those he left behind. He is not held, but holding. But perhaps…” She paused, a finger tapping at her chin. “Yes, that might help.”
“What?”
“Wait here.” Carmen led her back to the parlor and left her there. She returned a moment later with a wooden box the size of a cigarette case. “Come with me.”
Instead of going to the stairs Tina brought her up by, the old woman led her to a covered staircase zigzagging down two stories to the back yard. Once again Benny was surprised by the size of it, and the grace. It wasn’t the sweeping lawn and gardens of Bitterly, but there was a concrete patio, a grape arbor burgeoning with green leaves, and a vegetable patch of neat rows. Eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, herbs and herbs and herbs. It was to this patch Carmen led her, letting go of Benny and scooping a tiny handful of dirt from it.
“My mother grew all the vegetables and herbs she used in the restaurant, right in this very same patch,” she said. “On the Fire was half the size then. Now, this is mostly for the family. Here, take this and open it.”
She handed Benny the wooden box. The faded picture on the lid had once been of a buxom, black-haired woman dressed in slinky red. Black letters rubbed mostly to the wood spelled out—Escarlata. All four sides showed the words Cigarros Cubanos. Benny flipped the tiny brass catch and opened the box.
“Soil from Italy,” Carmen told her. “Mama brought it with her when she came to America. She didn’t want to leave her home, her mother. Nona Carmen filled this box so she would always have a little bit of home wherever she went.”
“Did she ever go back to Italy?”
“Sadly, no. The restaurant didn’t allow for vacations, even when there was enough money for one. I remember, she used to take the box out every once in a while and just smell it.” Carmen tipped the American soil from her hand into the Italian soil, re-latched the lid and closed Benny’s hand on the old cigar box. “Take it to him,” she said. “Tell him Flora knew him, and she loved him. See if it helps.”
Benny looked at the box in her hand, mouth agape and eyes staring. She held something sacred in her hand—a gift of love, a piece of home. Solace in sad times and comfort a life long. She held the history of the Cuban cigars smoked, maybe by Augie himself, and soil tended when the world was still at peace. Soil from a New World garden that fed the same family all their lives. Now she would bring it to Augie. She would close the circle left open too long. Maybe, indeed, it would help.
“Thank you, Carmen.” She kissed the old woman’s soft cheek. “You are your mother’s daughter. I can tell.”
“The highest compliment I can ever hope for. Thank you, Benedetta. I barely knew him, but I always loved him. I hope he finds peace. And, perhaps, if you wouldn’t mind, pass his story along to the children he had with Katherine, if they still live. They have family they never knew existed, and so do we. If they have any interest, they can contact me here.”
“I will find them,” Benny promised. “There has to be some record in town. My mom has spent decades doing our family genealogy. She knows how to find people.”
“That would be lovely. Now then”—Carmen took her arm—“be a good girl and go fetch those cannoli I promised Tina before she goes looking for them herself. Bulldog of a woman, she is. Just like her father, rest his soul.”
Chapter 21
The Wind's Dim Words
Benny drove home. All the way. Aside from some traffic again on Kosciuszko Bridge, she did okay. Summer was high and sunlight lingered long. By the time she reached the rural highways closer to home, the sky was still evening-pink.
Clarice—no longer Clara—Grady mostly dozed while the radio played softly. Benny was content to let her bask in the old memories lingering along with the sunshine, grateful her mother had been satisfied with, “Oh, right. Sadly, she died years ago,” after she asked Benny about the old man’s daughter they went all the way to Brooklyn to find.
“Too bad,” she’d said. “Oh, that’s a shame. But we had a good day, didn’t we honey?”
“A really good day, Ma.”
Clarice had already promised her old friends she would return in September for the Feast of San Gennaro. Benny would be recruited, along with her father and Peter, and couldn’t be happier to oblige.<
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“Stop at Teddy’s,” her mother’s dreamy voice said. “I want to get your father one of those toffee bars he loves so much. I don’t get down here much.”
“Oh, so you still remember him then?” Benny teased. “I thought Tony Pagano might have swept him right out of your mind.”
Clarice smiled without opening her eyes. “Tony’d have grown out his hair and worn a dress if I asked him to, back in the day,” she said. “Handsome as he was, I didn’t want to marry an Italian man.”
“Really? Why?”
“Maybe I should say, I didn’t want to marry any Italian man of my acquaintance.” Clarice picked up her head. “I wanted an educated man, someone not so set on tradition.”
“And you married Daddy?”
“Oh, goodness, Benny. Where do you think you get your rebellious nature from? Me? Your father was as close to an anarchist as anyone I’ve ever known. He’s mellowed, but he was a wild one, my Peadar, always stirring up trouble, handing out pamphlets and flyers. He was so blonde, back then, like Timmy was, remember? There were no boys like him back home in Brooklyn. Still, we dated, but I wouldn’t get serious about him, no matter how I felt. Not for a long time.”
“Why not?”
“I was always well aware of how lucky I was, Benny. Brooklyn may be New York City, but there were, and still are, pockets that seem to exist twenty years behind the times. I lived in one of them. A young woman going to college wasn’t exactly the norm. I didn’t want to go from high school to engaged to married and pregnant all before the age of twenty.”
“Ma, you married Daddy right after college.”
“Not right after. I was twenty-four, and had been out on my own for two full years before I finally agreed to marry him. He’d been asking for years, my poor man. It seems close to traditional, from your standpoint. But from mine, it was a huge step out of what was, and into a bigger world. There’s Teddy’s.” Clarice pointed. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Her mother hurried into the roadside shop, no longer the same Ma Benny had always known. Until today, Clarice Irene Grady had always been, in her daughter’s eyes, a housewife and mother too wrapped up in her children’s lives to have one of her own. But she’d been a young woman living in Brooklyn once, in New York City. She went to college and got her degree in history. She worked and lived on her own for two years, and Benny had no idea where she’d done either.
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