The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

  Rocco made one more stand. “I prefer Stella. Stella is prettier.”

  “Listen to me, Rocco. You don’t choose the woman you are going to spend your whole life with by what she looks like. That’s thinking like a man.” When Barbara said “thinking like a man,” she meant “thinking with your cock,” but she would never have said the word “cock.” “Pretty girls are for running around with. Strong, hardworking girls are for marrying.” Maybe she was proud of being the marrying type herself. Or maybe some sisters set aside their female sympathies and hope for a docile caretaker wife for their baby brothers. “You’re about to go off to war,” Barbara reminded Rocco. “You want the one who is still going to be waiting for you when you get back.”

  The table was completely obscured by piles of whatever food Assunta had been able to produce on such short notice: an eighteen-inch bowl of fresh tagliatelle she and Tina had rolled out that morning; a plate of pizzelle left over from last weekend. There was an array of pickles: the last of the wood mushrooms Assunta had picked over the summer; a jar of yellow lupini; roasted peppers in garlic oil. There was a bowl of egg-size beef and pork meatballs, soaking in still-hot tomato raù. They were dense with cheese and perfectly fried. It was hard to imagine that their maker had never seen a meatball only two years earlier. How quickly and completely things change, and then change again. Later Stella would remember these as some of the last meatballs they ate, without any special appreciation, before wartime meat rationing.

  Stella was enjoying the party, but complacently. She watched Rocco across the table as Tony told him a long story. She tried to imagine whether the girls at the Italian Society would think he was a catch—she personally did not find him attractive, although he certainly was well-groomed, his clothing impeccable. His hair was clipped short on the side and tightly curled. She detected a hardness in him, a nervous energy—she guessed he would reveal himself to be a strict personality, a perfectionist. He was like her father in those ways. She wondered if her father would like Rocco for those reasons, or dislike him.

  With the men’s conversation humming around her—mostly they spoke about soldiering: the boys’ enlistment, Tony Fortuna’s time in the Alps, the strangeness of young men going to war against Italy when their fathers had fought for Italy only twenty-five years earlier—Stella made herself think about whether or not she was nervous. It was the first time someone had come to talk to Tony Fortuna about his daughters. Stella was twenty-two and Tina twenty; it was only a matter of time before this happened. She wasn’t sure what her father’s response would be, whether he would scare suitors away, or whether he would want to speed his daughters out of his house to the first respectable interested party. Maybe he would wave off courting requests in the American way and say it was up to his daughters. In which case Stella would say no, and that would be that.

  What if Rocco was here for Tina, not Stella? Would he take Tina away? Stella imagined sleeping alone in the bed they’d always shared, Assunta standing alone in the kitchen over the steaming pots. But that would happen eventually. Tina would get married; she would make her life with a man and have lots of babies. And Stella would be left behind. Because she wanted to be left behind—didn’t she?

  Having worked this through in her head, Stella ate silently, drawing herself back into the atmosphere of the party. Carmelo Maglieri, who sat next to her, was telling Louie and Joey stories about basic training. Joey was saying he was thinking about enlisting, which was the first Stella had heard of it. Her brother seemed transfixed by Carmelo’s charisma. Compared to his stiff, careful friend Rocco, Carmelo was expansive, pink-cheeked and energetic. He was handsome, indisputably; his black hair was thick and glossy, and his eyes were a brilliant light blue—the kind of blue eyes all the Italian girls talked about wistfully. Yes, he was handsome. Stella would admit that. Not that she cared; she was not interested in men. But could she like him? If there were reason to?

  She thought back, deliberately, to her first ambivalent impression of him, head, neck, and shoulders hanging out of the car window that snowy night. She let herself remember and savor her wave of distrust—there are no good good-looking men, for no good-looking man needs to be good. This old adage settled comfortably into her consciousness. He was here as part of his buddy’s game.

  “And how are you tonight, Mariastella?” Carmelo asked, turning the conversation on her.

  “Just fine,” Stella answered, sitting up straight and narrowing her eyes. She had been being too friendly before. “And call me Stella. Mariastella is my dead sister.”

  She watched as his face softened in compassion. “Your sister died? I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said after a moment, relenting under Joey’s critical gaze. “And I never knew her.” As she said the words, denying her little ghost, cold air rippled up the skin of her burnt arm. But she was sitting by the window, and it was likely just the January night air.

  “Stella almost died, too,” Louie told Carmelo. “Five different times.” Joey snorted.

  “What? Five times?” Carmelo raised his bushy black eyebrows to prompt the boy to tell more.

  Stella listened as her kid brother bragged about her bad luck—the favorite family story. Attacked by an eggplant! Pigs, intestines . . . Lying there like she was dead for four days . . . We all could have drowned, actually . . . Didn’t even know she was about to jump . . . Louie was able to dwell on the grossness and the danger, the most entertaining pieces, without any concern for his listeners’ discomfort. Carmelo made the expected horrified faces and Stella waved it all off, smiling. Louie’s accent had lost most of its Calabrese inflection as he spoke to Carmelo, as though he had picked up the young man’s neutral accent over the last hour.

  “What do you expect?” Joey said to help Louie wind it all up. “What do you expect, with a name like Stella Fortuna?”

  “Stella Fortuna,” Carmelo repeated. “What a name.”

  Now that Stella had been drawn into the conversation, Carmelo focused his attention on her. He asked her about her work at the laundry, about whether she and Tina ever went to the Saturday dances at the Italian Society. She couldn’t decide if he was being courteous or flirtatious, so she leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms on top of her belly, and answered coolly.

  Joey enjoyed this less than when he had been the center of attention. “What about your buddy, eh?” he said. “Kissing up to my father over there. Did he come to try to court my sisters or only my father?”

  “You know the rules, Joey. If your father doesn’t like him, it doesn’t matter if your sister likes him.” Carmelo shrugged. “Rocco is a serious guy. He does things the Italian way. His family, they try to keep traditions.”

  Stella wondered about Carmelo’s family. Young men on their own were dangerous because they had no fear of consequences, no family pressure to do the right thing. It was so easy for them to prefer the “American way” with the girls and then move on to another job in another city if things got too hot; everyone said that was what happened with Adelina Rossi, who got sent back to her father’s village in Vibo Valentia last year. Stella watched Carmelo Maglieri break a meatball in half with his fork and push it onto a heel of bread. Can you tell a playboy by looking?

  “Well, which sister is he even here for?” Joey was saying. “I haven’t seen him talk to either one.”

  “I don’t know. But,” Carmelo added gallantly, “either one is such a catch, when he chooses, I will ask your father if I can court the other one.”

  “Hmph,” Stella said.

  Joey was incredulous. “He didn’t even tell you before you came over?”

  “Well, maybe it’s hard for him to decide. You have two very pretty sisters.” This time it was Louie who snorted. Eleven-year-olds disparage that sort of observation.

  Joey lifted his wineglass, a warning little toast in Carmelo’s direction. “Don’t say that where they can hear you. They’re already stuck-up.”

  Ste
lla gave Joey a demure nod. She was happy to be called stuck-up.

  Carmelo, of course, protested. “They’re not stuck-up at all.”

  “They sure are,” Joey said. “Don’t go wasting your time being nice to them. They think they’re too good for any of the guys around here.”

  “That’s a really rude thing to say about your sisters,” Stella said.

  “Well, why don’t you ever have boyfriends then?”

  “I do so have a boyfriend,” Stella said.

  “No, she does not,” Joey told Carmelo.

  “Yes, I do.” She was calm now, her position unimpeachable. “You know I am engaged to Stefano Morello.” She turned to Carmelo and smiled. “He’s away at war in Africa now, but he writes me letters.” It had only just occurred to Stella that if she fudged some of the details of her tenuous and halfhearted courtship with faraway Stefano it might protect her from the more aggressive intentions of any Hartford skirt-chasers. “We have an arrangement to get married,” she said. “After the war.”

  “After the war—that could be a long way away,” Carmelo said. Did he look disappointed? She thought he did. Well, good. Better disappointed now than later.

  But she had a flash of pity for him, now that he was no longer any risk to her, this very good-looking man all alone in this country and maybe just on the hunt for a family to be part of. She looked him in the eye and gave him her best, happiest smile. His cherry-round cheeks were pink as he smiled back.

  AFTER DINNER, as the two young men collected their coats, Rocco Caramanico asked Tony if he could speak to him alone. Tony led him to the kitchen.

  “I’d like to marry your daughter Concettina,” Rocco told him. Everyone in the hallway could hear every word.

  Antonio had been waiting all night to deliver his line.

  “If you come back alive,” he said, “you can ask me again.”

  * * *

  THE FIRST SATURDAY OF MAY 1942, Joey escorted Stella, Tina, and Fiorella to the Italian Society spring ball. There were fresh bouquets of carnations on every table and the crowd was both celebratory and jittery. The roar of conversation was so loud that Stella wasn’t always sure what song the band was playing.

  Boys had come in their new uniforms, because everyone was enlisting. Opinions about homeland, duty, and opportunity were strong and contagious and became more so with the distribution of alcohol. Joey had been bragging about thinking about enlisting for months now, and had plenty to talk about with the khaki evangelists. Stella knew Joey was especially attracted to the uniform itself, the effect he’d seen it have on women.

  There was a separate sense of urgency among the ladies. Now that so many of the Hartford boys were going off to war, the screws were tightening on relationships and engagements. Some girls had sweethearts or approved family matches back in the villages; others were hunting with fresh voracity, collectively agitated by the feeling that something needed to be set into action with some young man before they all shipped out.

  The Fortuna girls were above it, Tina armed with her standing promise from Rocco Caramanico, Stella with her artfully embellished half-imaginary fiancé in Africa. She was amused by the romantic fervor infecting the Italian girls. What sense did it make to put yourself in a position to be widowed by a man you barely knew? Better a widow than a spinster, apparently. That had always been the way of the world, hadn’t it? Well, let them all prance around like fluffy roosters in their spring dresses. It was pure joy to be the only two people in the crowd with no agenda.

  Stella and Tina were themselves celebrating: the Fortunas had bought the house on Bedford Street. The old Napolitano had decided to move back to Italy and had sped up the deed transfer. He had been angry, or maybe scared, when the FBI agents had come to his home and confiscated his radio. He accepted $1,860 from Antonio in cash for the house, together with the promise that Antonio would send along the rest to an address the Napolitano would forward. In fact he would never send Antonio his address, and so the balance of $140 would sit untouched in the Fortunas’ bank for five years. They assumed he must have been killed in the bombings.

  In any case, they had a house now. As a reward for their accomplishment, the girls had new three-dollar dresses from Sears with capped sleeves and large buttons up the front. Stella felt extremely American in her dress, which was watermelon-red. Her forearms were bare, but she didn’t feel self-conscious about her scars, which seemed to match her dress, pinkly unobtrusive.

  Fiorella had brought them congratulation presents: enamel brooches shaped like little butterflies. “After all your hard work!” Her long, gentle face was bright with her smile. “I have so much respect for you girls. Tanti auguri!”

  Carmelo Maglieri strolled up as Stella and Tina were pinning their butterflies on their dresses. At first Stella didn’t recognize him in his plain gray suit. Her brain turned over on the flash of familiarity—this good-looking blue-eyed man, who was he? Oh yes. But what was he doing here, and without his uniform? He bowed to them, pressing his fedora to his chest. “Good evening, beautiful ladies.”

  “Carmelo!” Tina almost shrieked.

  Carmelo kissed Tina’s cheeks warmly but did not try to kiss Stella. “What are we congratulating you on, Stella?”

  “Stella bought us a house,” Tina said, a little giddy at seeing him. “Three stories, on Bedford Street!”

  “I didn’t buy it, we bought it together.” Stella was irritated with herself for not recognizing Carmelo immediately, and for having found him attractive.

  “Oh, Stella, give yourself some credit,” Tina said. “You were so smart with the bank, and the savings . . .”

  “Our Stella, the smartest girl on Front Street,” Fiorella said, squeezing Stella’s arm.

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all to hear,” Carmelo said. He inclined his head toward Fiorella. “Stella, would you do me the honor of introducing me to your friend? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” It felt so staged, Stella was certain he was acting out some scene he’d liked in a film.

  “This is Fiorella Mulino,” Stella said, keeping her voice dry. “Her family is from Puglia.” Carmelo bowed again and Fiorella, blushing, replied, “Piaccere.”

  “May I bring you ladies something to drink?” Carmelo said. “Have you tried the punch?” They shook their heads. “Stay right here.” His voice was as warm and animated as she remembered it. “I’ll bring you some from the bar.” With a third bow, he turned and stepped into the mass of frocks and suits.

  “What a kind man he is,” Tina said. Stella had nothing to say in response, and neither did Fiorella, who seemed a little starstruck. The girls pretended to listen to the band until Carmelo returned, four glasses of red punch clutched together between his large hands. He distributed them carefully and the four young people clinked, wishing one another health. The punch tasted like red wine but fizzed with carbonation. Stella felt a happy ripple through her nerves—they were toasting like adults, drinking alcohol with a strange man.

  Her cheeks warm, Stella asked, “Carmelo, where is your uniform?”

  Carmelo smiled that big, friendly smile. “Oh, didn’t you hear? The army kicked me out. I’m unfit for service.” His blue eyes were shining; even his bad news was something he’d admit good-naturedly. “Flat feet.”

  “Flat feet?” Tina said. “What does that mean?”

  “Flat feet, just what it sounds like.” Carmelo lifted his hand level with his nose, curling his fingers into a dome. “The middle part of your foot is supposed to arch like this. If it doesn’t, it makes problems when you have to walk or run for a long time, like soldiers do. Now, God gave me feet like this.” He splayed his hand flat and peered, smiling, across it at Tina, who smiled back. “Flat as a pancake,” he said in English, and Tina and Fiorella giggled. “So much for me as a soldier.”

  “So much for your papers,” Stella put in, then felt her face heat up—that had been aggressive, undignified.

  But Carmelo shook his finger. “Aha, no, no,
signorina. I served thirty days in the U.S. Army. I’m a naturalized citizen of the United States now. No going back.”

  “Really?” Stella couldn’t believe it. “Why didn’t they check your feet at the beginning?”

  Carmelo shrugged. “It’s just my luck. I’m a very lucky man,” he said. “Even when I’m born with bad feet it turns out bad feet are good.”

  “Truffatore,” she said, con artist, and she meant it, but she smiled to take the edge off.

  “That’s what Rocco said,” Carmelo replied, rueful. “Oh, he was mad. It was my idea to enlist in the first place, and here he is going off to war on his own.”

  Stella watched Tina’s expression, waiting to see this all come together for her sister. “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He tried to get out, too,” Carmelo said. “But he’s got perfectly good feet. Nice arches, Tina,” he said, as though complimenting her on her choice of man.

  They chatted for another ten minutes or so, Carmelo asking Fiorella about her family. As they were almost done with their punch, Carmelo bowed and took his leave. Stella felt a pang of jealousy as he left; he had not, then, come over to try to flirt with them, he had only been paying his respects. Well, his respect was all she wanted. It was just that she had enjoyed thinking that he liked her and could not have her.

  STELLA SAW CARMELO ONE MORE TIME that summer, when Joey invited him over for his enlistment party at their new house on Bedford Street. It was the second Saturday in June, and the weather was beautiful. All of the Fortunas’ friends—the Nicoteras; the Perris, whose boys Mario and Mikey were also enlisting this summer; the Mulinos; the Cardamones; Zu Vito Aiello—packed into the freshly painted rooms and spilled out into the backyard, where they could admire the tomato garden Assunta had planted the week before.

  Into this mix came Carmelo Maglieri, for all the world like he was already part of the group. He had brought with him a bulky black box, which he left by the coatrack. Joey strolled Carmelo through the aunties and uncles, introducing him, and Stella eavesdropped on their friends’ reactions to the Abruzzese boy’s handsome smile and sparkling blue eyes. The mothers with daughters were practically squealing in delight to find this shiny fish swimming in the pool.