“You don’t?”
“I wake up confused.”
“Get you.”
“Sad, isn’t it?” Saverio looked at his nails, which now were even, round, and buffed. “Nice work. Thank you. Now my hands go with my dress shirt and cuff links.”
“I’m not done.” Chi Chi gently took Saverio’s right hand into hers. She squeezed some coconut oil from a tube and massaged his hand. “This protects the cuticle.”
The warmth of Chi Chi’s hand in his relaxed him. He closed his eyes as she worked the oil into his skin.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Rita peeked under the umbrella, dripping wet. Cold droplets fell on Chi Chi and made her shiver.
“Your towel is right behind me,” Chi Chi said.
“Thanks, Cheech.” Rita grabbed the towel.
“Is that what your friends call you?” Saverio asked.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, officially.” Rita smiled as she rubbed her hair with the towel. “I’m Rita Milnicki. Or Millix, if you go by the name on my dad’s garage. They changed his name on Ellis Island.”
“We met at Cronecker’s,” Saverio said. “Right?”
“We barged in on you,” Rita admitted. “It was an accident.”
“Oh, that was you? The other one. With this one?” Saverio joked.
“Meet Saverio Armandonada,” Chi Chi introduced him. “His name was not changed on Ellis Island.”
“I figured. You give a good show,” said Rita. “How do they fit your name on a marquee?”
“They haven’t yet.”
“How did you find us?” Rita sat down on the blanket next to them.
“I was walking on the beach, and I saw Chi Chi.”
“You weren’t looking for her?”
“Gosh, Rita,” Chi Chi admonished her friend.
“I’m always looking.” Saverio grinned.
* * *
Isotta’s kitchen was run with her version of military precision. She taught her daughters how to cook simple dishes before they could read. Her garden was a source of pride, but it also sustained the family. Baskets of fresh lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers picked that morning were stacked in the window seat. A warm breeze ruffled the café curtains as the scents of fresh butter, garlic, and tomatoes filled the air as they simmered in a skillet on the stove.
The first of the tomatoes had ripened on the vines. Isotta plucked them and made fresh gravy for macaroni, or salads with herbs and mozzarella. The entire family would can the bounty of tomatoes at summer’s end to last through the winter.
Isotta lifted the pot of macaroni off the burner, carried it to the sink, and strained it in the colander. She shook it before pouring the pasta into a large bowl. She folded a cup of fresh ricotta through the macaroni before adding the pomodoro sauce from the stove. She sprinkled Parmesan cheese on top, followed by fresh basil.
The picnic table was set in the Donatellis’ backyard for lunch al fresco. The girls had dressed the table with fresh linens. Fragrant pink geraniums in a terra-cotta pot served as the centerpiece. Isotta carried the macaroni outside. Barbara added a place setting for Saverio. He stood back as Barbara made room for him at the table. “I don’t mean to be any trouble.”
“The unexpected guest is always welcome,” Isotta said as she placed the bowl of macaroni on the table.
“Told you,” Chi Chi said in passing as she went into the kitchen.
Saverio took a seat at the table and observed the Donatelli family work together to put a delicious meal on the table. This is what he imagined a happy family life to be, an abundant table with many place settings, overflowing with platters of good food, everyone pitching in, laughing together in the garden, on a lovely summer day under the sun. Even Mr. Donatelli contributed, which had never been the case in Saverio’s home when he was growing up. The men were served by the women without exception.
“Where’s your mother today?” Mariano asked him
“Her cousins took her for a drive to Spring Lake. My ma likes to look at houses.”
“That’s the town to do it,” said Mariano, as Chi Chi emerged from the kitchen carrying a jug of homemade wine. Her sisters followed with the bread and salad.
“I make the wine in New Jersey but the grapes come from California,” Mariano explained.
“A truck comes from Mendocino around Labor Day loaded with crates and crates of grapes. Dad looks for color and firmness.” Chi Chi gathered the glasses as her father poured the wine.
“And I use my nose. Scent is very important with the grape.” Mariano tapped his nose.
“I always throw Papa’s wine into the sauce,” Isotta admitted as she served Saverio the macaroni.
“Every Italian family in town is there when the truck arrives with the grapes, and they fight over the best of the lot.” Chi Chi passed the hot pepper flakes to Saverio.
“And I always win.” Mariano thumped the table.
“Dad has an eye,” Chi Chi said proudly.
“And muscles,” Lucille joked.
“Yes, I do.” Mariano laughed.
“Anyhow, with those big muscles, Dad makes enough table wine for the year.”
“And he makes vinegar and grappa, too,” Lucille added.
“We waste nothing,” Mariano said cheerfully. “Not a stem.”
Lucille walked around the outside of the table with a basket of warm, crusty rolls, delivering one to each place setting. Barbara followed with a platter of grilled shrimp, wrapped around delicate stalks of asparagus. She carefully placed a sample on every plate next to the macaroni.
Isotta sat down at the head of the table opposite her husband. “I hope you like it,” she said to Saverio.
“It looks delicious. I appreciate a home-cooked meal. Thank you for inviting me.”
“We hope we’re not taking you away from anything important.”
“Not at all. I spend my days waiting for the sun to go down so I can go to work.”
Mariano looked around the table. “Before we toast our guest, let us pray.”
As the Donatellis and Saverio made the sign of the cross in unison, they blessed the meal and, when the prayer had concluded, blessed themselves once more. Saverio took his time blessing himself at the end of the prayer before placing his napkin on his lap.
“You take longer than the priest,” Chi Chi said quietly to him.
Mariano raised his glass. “A toast to Saverio. May he sing long into every night, providing joy to audiences everywhere. Cent’Anni. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Sea Isle City!”
“Good wine, sir.” Saverio sipped Mariano’s vintage. The wine was hearty and woodsy, reminding him of his father’s homemade wine.
Chi Chi passed their guest the gravy boat. He poured extra sauce on his macaroni and ate it with gusto. He was not skinny because he wanted to look good in photographs; he was hungry for homemade macaroni. Chi Chi felt pity for him. It was obvious that Saverio needed someone to take care of him. She looked at her mother, who observed the young man as he ate. The Donatelli women wondered if there was enough in the kitchen to fill him up.
* * *
“D Studio” housed in the family garage was a simple operation but Mariano had spared no expense on the recording equipment. It was clear he was in business to make a profit. The Donatelli sisters were gathered around the turntable. Saverio sat behind the console, next to Mariano, who served as the studio’s sound engineer when he wasn’t managing the act.
The cinder-block garage was painted beige, the series of small windows along the transom door were blocked with squares of plywood covered in black velvet. The concrete floor was swept clean, and although it had been many years since the old truck the family owned was parked inside, the faint scent of motor oil lingered in the air.
Saverio listened intently to his hosts’ version of the standard Oh Marie. His hands were placed firmly on the console as he leaned forward with his eyes closed following the music. The Donatelli Sisters’ recording
, pressed into a 78 rpm vinyl record, was elegant. The package was Art Deco in design, black shellac with a silver label.
Mariano watched as the record revolved smoothly on the velvet wheel. The fine gold needle grazed the grooves, delivering a full-bodied sound through speakers rigged on a pipe he had hung from the ceiling. As the song played, Mariano adjusted the levels, gently turning the dials on the board, filling in the bass tone and modulating the treble.
In addition to the console, Mariano had built a soundproof recording booth. The simple structure, an enclosed room made of plywood with a padded door and a large glass window, took up half the space inside the garage.
The window of the booth faced the console, where Mariano had set up his two-reel taping system. Inside the booth was an upright piano, a ceiling microphone with an extension arm, and just enough space for a small combo to accompany the girls when they sang.
The Donatelli Sisters preferred to record in the fall; the booth could get very warm in the spring and hot in the summer months, and was too cold in the winter. But it would not have mattered to Chi Chi which season Saverio had chosen to show up. He was a professional singer, and it was rare that a front man for a traveling orchestra touring through was willing to visit the D Studio, much less lay down tracks for a song by an unknown writer credited as C. C. Donatelli.
Saverio turned to Mariano. “You made that record here? The vocals, instruments, levels, the mix, everything?”
“Right here,” Mariano assured him. “I make the tapes here and run them in to Newark, to Magennis, where they press the vinyl for us.”
“Pretty ambitious.” Saverio seemed impressed.
“Everybody’s got a recording studio in their garage now,” said Mariano.
“Not like yours, Dad,” said Chi Chi.
“I have pretty good microphones, and I figured out how to soundproof the booth.”
“How did you do it?” Saverio was curious.
“I swept up the slag off the floor of the blouse mill and the cutting room. You know, all the strips of fabric and odd bits of thread that nobody wants—well, there’s quite a bit of it each day. I’d gather it up, bring it home, and Isotta would stuff muslin bags she made out of old feed sacks with it. I took those bags and layered them between the interior wall and exterior wall—about six inches deep. That did the trick.”
“You want to record something? For fun?” Chi Chi asked him. “A nice solo?”
“I don’t have my charts.”
“You don’t need charts.”
“You want me to sing a cappella?”
“I thought I’d accompany you on the piano. I wrote a song—”
“Here she goes,” Lucille said, sotto voce, to her sister Barbara. “She’s got him in her web.”
“You can sight-read, can’t you?” Chi Chi asked him.
“Yeah.”
“So let’s try it.” Chi Chi handed Saverio the sheet music she had handwritten carefully on paper. “Just have fun.” She pulled Saverio into the booth, closed the door behind them, and sat down at the piano.
“You can play?” he asked.
“I’m not sitting here because I look cute.”
“But you do look cute.”
“Beside the point. Here.” Chi Chi opened the sheet music on the piano.
Saverio leaned in. “What is this?”
“It’s a song.”
“Has anybody recorded it?”
“No one. Yet.”
“You wrote it?”
“We can’t just sing standards.”
“Why would you do that?” Saverio was amused. “I only make a living singing them.”
Chi Chi played the tune on the piano. It had a swing feel. “What do you think? It’s called Mama’s Rolling Pin.”
“A novelty.”
“Humoresque,” Chi Chi corrected him.
“Fancy,” he replied.
“Of a stripe,” she shot back. “The writer is in the booth, so be kind.”
“There ain’t no room in show biz for a sensitive artist.”
She laughed. “I’ll be the first.”
“Nope. You’d be the second.”
* * *
Outside the booth, Mariano listened as Saverio and Chi Chi bantered back and forth and teased one another. Barbara flipped through the pages of the Bergen County Record, while Lucille arranged the reel boxes on the shelf behind her father in alphabetical order.
“Dad, she’s up to something,” Lucille said.
“I’m keeping an eye on her. Nothing wrong with being ambitious.”
“She’s an opportunist,” Barbara corrected him without looking up from the newspaper.
“She’s smart,” Mariano countered. “Nothing wrong with that, either. It’s who you know.”
“He’s paying for his lunch,” Lucille said dryly. “The hard way.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mariano said.
* * *
Inside the booth, Chi Chi gently played the tune. “Okay, you be husband.” She pointed to the sheet music.
“And you’re wife?”
“Well, it would stand to reason.”
“Don’t get snippy,” Saverio chided her. “Just play it, wouldja?”
Chi Chi rolled her fingers down the piano keys and cued Saverio.
Wife sang:
He stays true or I beat him blue / With Mama’s Rolling Pin
Husband sang:
I don’t stray because she’s mastered flambé / With her Mama’s Rolling Pin
“Okay, here’s the chorus,” Chi Chi explained.
“I got it,” said Saverio.
Wife sang:
I make dough
Husband sang:
She makes dough
Wife sang:
He makes dough
Together they sang:
We make dough—with Mama’s Rolling Pin
Wife sang:
We got married, the church was nice
Husband sang:
She wore a veil and a chunk of ice
Wife sang:
Preacher said are you out or are you in
Together they sang:
She said yes and I said yes—to Mama’s Rolling Pin
Wife and husband sang together:
If you want your love to be true
Don’t hesitate to follow our rule
Once you marry and become kin
Keep him on a short leash
With Mama’s Rolling Pin!
Chi Chi spun around and looked out the window of the booth. “Dad? How was that?”
Before her father could answer, Saverio cut in. “Barbara? Lucille? We need you in here.”
“But it’s a duet,” Chi Chi said.
“It will pack a bigger wallop if they harmonize on the chorus. Like you girls are ganging up on me. Musically speaking, I mean.”
“Let’s try it.” Chi Chi shrugged.
Lucille and Barbara joined them inside the booth. Saverio instructed the girls where to come in during the song, and set the tempo with Chi Chi.
* * *
As the girls rehearsed and Saverio conducted their vocals, Mariano leaned back in his chair, put his hands on his head, and observed the process.
“We’re ready to go, Mr. Donatelli,” Saverio said. “Let’s tape this one.”
“Take one. Mama’s Rolling Pin,” Mariano said into the microphone at the console as he spun the tape reels into position and hit the dial.
As Saverio sang with the sisters inside the booth, Mariano marveled at the ease of the performance as he adjusted the levels on the console. As they stopped and started, refined and perfected their harmonies, the song emerged. They recorded the third, fourth, and fifth takes without stopping. Each version grew in personality, vocal heft, and eventually meaning.
Mariano was pleased. He chuckled with the kind of glee a prospector feels when he finds gold nuggets at the bottom of a tin pan, or the thrill an oilman knows when he recognizes the squish of black goo
under his feet in a barren field before a geyser is about to blow, or the zeal of the scientist who combines two formulas in a beaker during an experiment and, surprising himself, creates a serum that becomes the cure.
Mariano could see the future, an endgame to their efforts. So what if the neighbors thought he was stunod when he took a perfectly decent garage and turned it into a recording studio? His wife didn’t like the truck parked on the street but he told her to think big. Naysayers pummeled him: “What good could come of making records, anyhow?” Even his priest thought it was a scheme. He wished they could hear this track being cut! He had a hook now, a path to the prize: three pretty girl singers backing a handsome crooner on a song about love and marriage.
He could feel it: something in Mariano’s bones told him that a song with humor in the midst of the Great Depression would be a balm, and if that song was also personal and specific to the immigrant experience—in this case Italian, but surely the Jewish, Polish, Greek, or Irish who populated the shore towns and cities a train ride away could relate to it, too, as long as the song’s sentiment was true to their particular culture’s traditional view, that tune would hit. If the song was also catchy, surely there would be a big audience for it.
There was no denying the sound. As the sisters’ rich harmonies supported Saverio’s strong lead vocals, Mariano imagined success. After all, it took only one song to launch a group from obscurity to fame. Through the window in the booth, anyone could see it. Engagement rings, Lucille’s dream of secretarial school, and their union cards were no match for this magic. The Donatelli Sisters and that kid Saverio were on their way to the big time.
* * *
Saverio handed Lucille his empty soda bottle as Chi Chi held the door of the garage open for them.
“Would you like another one for the road?”
“No, thanks, Lucille. I have to get back to the hotel.”
“Don’t let Chi Chi work you over,” she told him as she went to the backyard.
“She plays it sketchy,” Barbara warned him as she followed Lucille.
“Ignore my sisters, they have absolutely no acumen for show business.” Chi Chi ran ahead and opened the garden gate to the street.
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