My mind began to race ahead, to scenes of disobedience and defiance. I had climbed out of windows before; I knew I’d do it again to be with Paolo, not just to dance for an evening in the moonlight, but to run away with him. A recklessness rose up inside me as I contemplated the aftermath of Paolo’s conversation with Claudio. I was ready to walk out of the house with him that evening if my family forbade me to see him.
The door to the parlor opened and a haze of cigar smoke wafted into the kitchen. Pip stopped her scrubbing and turned around, her hands dripping and red. I stood up from the table.
Paolo came out first and turned toward me, with a gentle smile and a nod. He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips.
Pip threw her dishrag in the sink.
“Are you crazy?” She directed her wrath at Claudio. “What do you think Papa would’ve said? Do you think he would have allowed this?”
“This is my house. My America. I make the rules here. If she goes back to Italy, Papa can tell her what to do, but for now, it’s my decision. Better for her to see someone I know than a stranger. Better that Paolo come to me honestly than to have her hiding.”
Claudio and Pip acted as if Paolo and I weren’t there. Let them battle with each other rather than with me, I thought. Pip’s mistake had been to call up Papa’s name.
I walked Paolo to the door, ignoring my brother and sister. He took my face in his hands and kissed me publicly for the first time. It was another turning point for us, this acknowledgment in front of others. But the recklessness I had felt while waiting for Claudio and Paolo to finish their conversation fled in the face of Pip’s animosity. I was no longer sure how wise it would be, even with Claudio’s permission, to flaunt our love.
The doubts I felt that night were accurate. The women in the family almost immediately began an assault on my relationship with Paolo. They shook their heads; they whispered knowingly to one another, mouth to ear, eyes cast quickly back at me; they clucked in disapproval or pursed their lips.
“He’s so wrong for you, Giulia. Think of what Mama will say, what she expects. A good partner for Claudio, yes, he’s good with the books. But he’d be nothing, have nothing, without Claudio carrying him along. What does he do with himself, when he isn’t doing Claudio’s business, except moon over that piano fingering tunes? It’s nice to have him around on a Saturday night, but what about the rest of the week when you need to put food on the table?”
“What kind of life can you expect from an agitator like Paolo? Somebody in the neighborhood with a cousin upstate told me Paolo was involved in that GE strike. With the life he leads, he could be thrown in prison any minute. And then where would you be?”
“You think you can eat those letters after you marry him, or use them to put clothes on the backs of your children? Do you expect Claudio to keep you, like he does now, after you marry?”
“You had a much better prospect in Roberto, Giulia. His family has a good business. He’s got the same instincts as Claudio. You’ll see. Roberto will be back, ready to step into his father’s place. I heard that the old man’s sick. Roberto’s just waiting for the right moment, a quiet moment when the cops are occupied with someone else. Then he’ll show up, looking for you. And where will you be? In some tenement with two bawling kids and not enough to feed them, with your body sagging, your fingers rough, and your husband playing the piano every night, or worse, in jail. Wait for Roberto, Giulia.”
“Paolo’s so funny-looking with that red hair. Remember how you used to swoon over Roberto’s looks? Remember how elegant he was, how everyone noticed him at the dances? All the other girls envied you, wishing he had chosen them.”
“You need to think, Giulia, instead of peeking out the curtains every five minutes. Who needs it, I ask you? It’s like you’re sick. A sickness in the head. You act like you’ll die without his love poems every day. Pretty words on a page. I can live without those, thank you very much.”
Chapter 27
Funeral
ROBERTO SCARPA’S FATHER finally died after all the murmuring speculation that he was mortally ill. Some people said he died of a broken heart; others that it was from anger over Roberto’s rash stupidity. Some, the police included, thought Roberto might come back to bury his father. The family held off putting him in the ground for a few days and the rumors that the Scarpas were waiting for Roberto could not be contained.
No fragment, no matter how absurd, escaped my sisters or Yolanda, who sat every afternoon with the grieving widow. In the evenings at dinner, each scrap of information was dutifully brought to our table for discussion and, of course, for my continued indoctrination in the wisdom of waiting for Roberto and abandoning Paolo.
“Zi’Yolanda says she and Signora Scarpa are saying the rosary twice every afternoon at four o’clock. Once for the soul of the father, that he’ll make a good journey home to God, and once for the heart of the son, that he’ll make a good journey home to his mother who needs him,” Tilly reported earnestly.
“I heard that one of the brothers sent a telegram to Italy even before they had the priest in to hear their father’s last confession,” said Pip.
Even Angelina had news. “One of the boys said the cops have been watching the house ever since the old man died. They got a tip that Roberto was already on his way.”
Everyone had an opinion, a theory. How quickly had Roberto’s family gotten word to him? When was the next ship leaving Napoli? How would Roberto disguise himself to thwart the police?
Zi’Yolanda’s prayers were as fervent as those of the distraught Signora Scarpa, abandoned by her husband in death and by her oldest son in his flight from the law. Zi’Yolanda held out hope of Roberto’s return, convinced that I would leave Paolo and fly willingly into Roberto’s arms over the coffin of his father.
What did they feed each other, Signora Scarpa and my aunt, as they bent and muttered over their clacking beads? Two crazy old women concocting a frothy zabaglione of despair and fantasy that was all air—no eggs.
And my sisters? How they ate it up every evening when Yolanda made her daily report. They concocted fantasies themselves, remembered swirling dances and whispered intimacies in the parlor of the Hillcrest Hotel. They weren’t there at the christening. They didn’t have the memories I did, of swirling snow flecked with blood and screamed obscenities. They heard the music of the piano on Saturday nights. I heard the silence in the hall on Sunday afternoon: a suddenly emptied room encircled by sirens, shouts, the crack of baton upon head. A suddenly emptied life, adrift and cut off from the dreams and illusions that had fled through the crack forced open by my lover’s brutality.
They all prodded me, wondering if—hoping that—I had doubts about my fledgling love for Paolo, faced with the prospect of Roberto’s return.
I went to the Scarpa funeral. Antonietta was my friend, after all, before her brother had become my dance partner. She was pregnant again. Natale was a robust little baby despite the difficult omens at his christening, and he appeared to resemble his father more and more with every passing day, putting to rest—or at least putting behind closed doors—whatever wild accusations had ignited the events at the christening.
Antonietta did not look well. I think it was more than burying her father and holding up her desolate mother. She was not the girl who’d giggled and daydreamed with me behind John Molloy’s back. But then, neither was I.
The Scarpas had waited a week before asking the priest to say the Mass of the Dead. Not enough time for Roberto to travel from Italy. Roberto’s younger brothers, convinced of the futility of waiting, finally extracted permission from their grief-crazed mother to lay their father to rest without Roberto as witness. Antonietta, who seemed so weakened by her situation in life, missed Roberto terribly and blamed herself for his forced disappearance. She’d probably been right there with Signora Scarpa and Yolanda praying for Roberto’s secret return.
During all the heated speculation before the funeral, Paolo said nothing to me. If
he burned with the same question as my sisters—“If Roberto comes back, Giulia, whom will you choose?”—he kept those fires to himself. Paolo did not go to the funeral. He made some excuse about needing to be in the city that morning, leaving me to go with my sisters. Leaving me to make my choice, if I had to, without his presence.
The Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel was full, and I took a seat toward the back with Zi’Yolanda and my sisters. Claudio had paid his respects at the house. He spent as little time inside a church as possible.
The priest droned, banks of candles blazed—all lit by the obsessive grief of Signora Scarpa—and a pungent incense wafted from the nave, attempting to mask the odor of the decaying body.
More than once, Antonietta and her brothers searched the congregation, only to whisper with shaking heads to their bent and wailing mother, “No, Mama. He’s not here.”
At the final blessing, the five boys took their positions at their father’s casket, leaving an empty place where Roberto should have stood to shoulder the weight. At the sight of her sons, Signora Scarpa accelerated her keening, and Antonietta, awkward and heavy, struggled to support her mother as they followed the casket out of the church. Zi’Yolanda cast a meaningful glance at me as the brothers marched past us, but I focused on the eyes of my friend and offered her my blessing.
Zi’Yolanda was determined to accompany the body to its final resting place, not out of respect for the ritual but in anticipation of the drama that would still, she was convinced, play itself out. She had talked Claudio into providing us with a carriage for the trip to the cemetery in Riverdale, so we joined the cortege threading its way through the Bronx.
By the time we arrived at the grave site, the tension that had filled the church had lessened. Only a small group of family and friends had made the trip, and if the police were watching, they were well hidden. The grave was a short walk uphill from the drive where we left the carriages. The flowers had arrived ahead of us and were piled around the recently dug hole. Mountains of flowers, wreaths, hearts, sprays of lilies and carnations, ribbons printed with endearments or prayers, a profusion of familial grief and community solidarity. Somewhere in the masses of blooms was one with the Fiorillo name attached. Up close, one could see that the edges of the flowers were already tinged with brown.
We clustered around the grave. The Scarpa boys, their father’s coffin safely positioned at the side of the hole, gathered around their mother. My sisters and I and Yolanda were opposite them and to the rear.
The priest intoned the Latin prayers for the dead. Then the grave diggers, who had been standing at the periphery, leaning on their shovels, moved forward, slipped two canvas straps under the coffin and lowered it. Michele, the second-oldest son, held his mother back as she attempted to throw herself across the polished wood of her husband’s coffin. The grave diggers, used to the hysteria of widows, continued methodically. Shovelful by shovelful, they began to fill the grave. The rest of us began the final procession, grabbing a handful of dirt and tossing it into the hole. As I reached the edge, I looked across at one of the grave diggers, at his long, muscled forearms and powerful hands gripping the wooden shaft of his shovel. I held my breath as I raised my eyes to his face, obscured by beard and visored cap pulled well over his brow. For an instant, he lifted his head and looked directly into my eyes without breaking the rhythm of his shoveling. In his gaze was recognition and defiance, pride, cunning, warning.
I saw new lines around familiar eyes, pressed into flesh that had become reacquainted with the sun. I saw, still smoldering, the glint of desire that had once pulled me into feverish dances and intimate conversations. I saw the man I had lost, not only to Italy but also to violence. I knelt to fill my hand with earth, my lungs with air. The movement brought me close enough to see the hairs on his long fingers bleached even lighter now; close enough to remember my hand enclosed within those fingers. This was no apparition. No figment conjured up by the crude chants of my aunt. No dim memory that I could conveniently wipe away or easily put aside with false assuredness.
This was flesh and bone and breath, inches away from mine. Defying me to reveal him, daring me to leap across his father’s grave, full of a man’s confidence that I would do as he demanded—stay or come, be silent or profess my desire.
I stood again to steady myself, to hear my own thoughts instead of his. And as I slowly sprinkled the earth over his father’s coffin, I let him slip through my fingers as well, brushing the last bits of dust from my palms.
Chapter 28
Flora’s House
FLORA CAME TO THE store to ask me a favor. She had become a friend to me, offering me welcome and kindness. I found myself so lonely at home, no one taking my side, no one wishing me well. I was so exhausted by the voices battering at me every day—my aunt and my sisters, harpies who conducted my life like an orchestra leader with his baton; the neighbors, who watched every step I took, whether alone or accompanied. My own voice, that used to sing, chant, cast simple spells, spin funny stories, was now stilled, dumbstruck, seeking words that did not want to be found.
So Flora was a relief—like a sensible, solid hearth. She baked me delicious coconut cakes and listened to me. It was automatic for me to agree to the favor. She and her husband had to go to New York City, something legal they had to attend to. She wanted me to come and stay with the baby. Nino was in school most of the day, so it was only the baby who needed tending. I told Tilly and Pip I wouldn’t be in the store and steeled myself against their complaints.
“She has no sister to help her,” I told them. “If you want, I’ll take the accounts with me and work on them while the baby sleeps.”
I got to Flora’s apartment early enough to catch a smile from Nino as he left for school. I slipped him the sour ball I had waiting for him in my pocket. I winked as he shoved it into his mouth, shifting it with his tongue to hide it from his mother as she kissed him goodbye.
“God bless you for doing this, Giulia. There isn’t anyone else I’d trust with Rosina. Is there anything I should explain to you?”
“I don’t think so, Flora. I’ve taken care of my share of babies, from my little brothers to Claudio’s boys. I don’t expect any surprises. And Rosina knows me. She’ll be fine. Go, go. Look after your business and don’t worry about us. That’s my girl!”
I took Rosina into my arms and sang her one of our childhood rhymes. Then I swept her into the kitchen for her porridge while Flora and her husband quietly left.
Rosina scooped up tiny fistfuls of oatmeal and licked it from her fingers as I assisted her with a slender silver spoon—a christening gift from Paolo, Flora had told me. She was hungry and abandoned herself to the milky pleasure, humming softly as she sucked on her fingers, leaning eagerly forward every time I approached her with the spoon. She laughed and opened her mouth.
When she was full, she turned her head in distraction toward the window, the light and shadow, the sounds of the street below: the screech of the trolley, the clatter of horse and wagon, the urgency of voices greeting, bargaining, arguing. Food no longer held her interest. The life all around was calling to her.
I took my cue, and wiped up the remnants of her oatmeal, playing the finger games Giuseppina had sung to me. Then I lifted her from her chair and carried her over to the window so that she could see what had so attracted her.
Rosina slapped her hand against the glass, making her own music, trying to get the attention of those in the street below. The avenue was just coming to life. Mercurio the butcher was rolling out the awning over his shop window to shade the rabbits hanging from metal hooks, the tripe mounded in bowls over ice. Ferruzzi the greengrocer was filling his sidewalk bins with potatoes and onions. Tilly was removing her key from her bag and about to open the door of the shop.
Rosina was growing tired of the display of sunlight and street life at the window and began to tug on my right earring. I carried her to the corner where Flora had a small box of amusements for the children—a rag doll
and a cigar box filled with wooden blocks. I sat cross-legged and stacked the blocks for her to tumble with a gleeful swipe—a game I’d seen her play with Nino more than once. But Nino had far more patience than I, far more playfulness. In time, however, Rosina knocked over her last column of blocks, crawled to her doll and, clutching it, climbed into my lap with drooping eyes.
I crooned no more than a few minutes before her head fell heavy against my breast. I sat still, accepting the stillness, enjoying the moment of doing absolutely nothing except feeling this baby sleep contentedly in my arms.
As I sat, I heard a knock, a man’s voice, Flora’s name called from the other side of the apartment door.
I rose carefully, shifted Rosina’s weight to my shoulder and went to answer the door.
“Who is it?” Flora had not told me to expect anyone. What man would visit her during the day?
“It’s Paolo.”
I opened the door immediately.
“Giulia! I didn’t see you this morning on your way to the store and I thought that I’d missed you—that I’d been too lazy to get up as early as you and was being punished for my laziness. But here you are! What brings you here? Is Flora ill? Is that why you’re holding the baby?”
“Oh, Paolo. What a surprise! A wonderful surprise! No, no. Flora’s not ill. She and Giorgio had an appointment in the city. She asked me to take care of Rosina for a few hours and I knew Tilly and Pip could spare me at the store for a day.”
Paolo took off his hat and entered the apartment, giving me a tentative and awkward kiss on the cheek as he reached around the sleeping Rosina. It was not our usual embrace.
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