ROCCO AND TINA BOTH KEPT their promises. Rocco returned to Hartford in January 1946, once his unit had been deactivated and he’d been released from a lengthy quarantine. He arrived on a Saturday and the next afternoon, when everyone was back from church, he telephoned Tony and requested permission to visit that evening.
He arrived with his sister at six o’clock. Barbara brought a plate stacked high with mustazzoli. Rocco carried a dozen red roses. Stella, who answered the door, was grudgingly impressed.
The Fortunas gathered around the coffee table, on which Assunta arranged Barbara’s cookie platter and small glasses for wine. Stella could see Rocco was much thinner than he’d been when he left—perhaps thirty pounds thinner. He wore a black suit that must have predated the war, because it was too big on him, but otherwise he was immaculate.
Tina and Rocco greeted each other, after almost four years apart, with a handshake and shy smiles. Tina sat clumsily in a woven-backed chair near the couch, Rocco’s roses spilling off her lap. Stella stood in the doorway, listening silently as Tina and Rocco made bland, compulsory small talk. The lamp on the round table between them had a Tiffany-style stained-glass shade, gold with green and purple grapevines; in its tinted light, Tina’s complexion looked particularly tawny, Rocco’s particularly jaundiced. Stella thought of all the things that could have happened to him during the war. How lucky Tina was that none of them had.
Assunta poured wine, then announced she was going to make dinner. Tina stood and followed; Barbara stayed where she was on the couch. She would be part of the negotiations. Stella, who would hardly be expected in the kitchen, took a silent step backward so she stood in the hallway, tucked into the shadow of the doorframe, hoping no one would think to wonder where she was.
“Well, I came back alive,” Rocco said to Tony without preamble. “I would like to ask for your daughter Tina’s hand.”
It was really happening, right now. This was what a man proposing looked like.
“I’m glad to see you, Rocco,” Tony said. “I’m glad it went well for you.”
“I was lucky.”
“God watched over him,” Barbara corrected. There was a lull as they murmured thanks to God, and then as Tony lifted his glass and they drank a toast.
“I would like to marry Tina,” Rocco said again when they had swallowed. “I think she would make me an excellent wife.”
“But would you make her a good husband?” Tony shot back.
Rocco sat up even more rigidly. “I believe I would be a husband any smart, good girl would be happy to marry.”
Tony chuckled. “You would, would you?” Stella wasn’t sure whether he was teasing Rocco or not; Rocco wouldn’t know, either.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, all right, so you think you two would be a match. I think you might be right, myself, from what I’ve seen. Writing letters to each other all this time.”
“So I have your permission to marry her?” Rocco said.
“You have my permission to ask. This is—” Tony coughed into his hand. Rocco and Barbara sat at attention as Tony took a sip of wine and wiped his mustache on his wrist. “This is America, boy. I’m not just going to arrange something for her. It has to be her choice.”
One beat of silence. Stella wondered if her mother and sister in the kitchen were straining to hear; she didn’t hear any pot-banging, tap-running, or garlic-frying.
Rocco extended his hand. “Thank you, sir. It will be my honor.”
Tony hesitated, or maybe just waited, before shaking Rocco’s hand. “Well. Good luck.”
“Thank you, sir,” Rocco said again. God, he was so stiff.
Now was Barbara’s turn. “About the matter of the dowry,” she said, and that was all she had to say. She’d hit Tony’s switch.
“Dowry?” he roared. “Dowry? Is that what this is about? You think I’m going to pay you to take away my Tina, the backbone of my house? Pay you, from the scraps I’ve saved slaving away for the last twenty-five years?” He shook his head, blowing like a bull. His hair had expanded into a halo of rage. Stella felt the natural gut terror at her father’s anger—fists could very well fly—but she also recognized this as a performance. “I think you have the wrong end of the stick there, signora. How about you tell me how your brother is going to provide for my daughter?”
Barbara was tough; she’d been screamed at by men before. “Scusa, Zio, but you know very well it is the bride’s responsibility to provide a trousseau. Otherwise what are she and her husband supposed to start their lives with?”
“My daughter has an excellent trousseau, don’t you worry.” Stella could hear him fuming so hard he was gasping for breath. “Not that that’s any of your brother’s business, if you’re asking me for money here. Where I come from, a man proposing marriage to a woman has a home to take her to live in. Does your brother have a house for my daughter to live in?” And to Rocco, “Well? Do you have a house?”
A hesitation. “Not yet, sir.”
Barbara said bravely, “It is custom for the bride’s father to help a groom buy—”
“Custom!” Tony was roaring again. “Custom where I come from is for a man to be a man. It seems to me in your family men count on their women to take care of them.”
Stella had leaned forward, dangerously out of the shadows, to see the expressions on the siblings’ faces. Barbara had crossed her arms and her legs tightly. Rocco was still sitting in an attitude of military attention. His mouth was a dark yellow line.
Barbara’s voice was even, but angry. “Custom is that a man supports his daughters when it is time for them to wed.”
Tony was silent for a moment. “It sounds to me like you’re not ready to make a serious offer here.”
Stella felt her heart pounding at the suspense. Was Tony backpedaling on his permission? Would he really give Tina nothing for her new house? Or was this just bluster? Stella tried to imagine how her sister, listening in the kitchen, must be feeling.
“If—” Barbara began, but Rocco lifted a hand and she fell silent. He’d sat so still for so long his movement surprised Stella.
“I am quite serious,” Rocco said. Stella realized he was radiating anger, as well. What kind of person did he become, she wondered, if things didn’t go his way? “I will buy your daughter a house. I have all of my combat pay saved. In another two or three years I will have enough.”
“What kind of house?” Tony asked. He gestured broadly, taking in his own castle. “My daughter’s children will grow up better than this, if their father is a retired American soldier. It will need to have at least three bedrooms.”
Rocco blinked. Stella waited, too tense even to take a breath. “I will promise her a house with at least two bedrooms.” Rocco was negotiating, Stella realized. It was just like buying a donkey at the animal fair.
This seemed to satisfy Tony. “All right,” he said. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, poured them all refills. “Well, in that case—”
Rocco raised a hand again, this time silencing his future father-in-law. “And,” he said. “And you will buy all of the furniture. All of it.” He ticked off items on his fingers. “Two beds, one for each bedroom. Two dressers for clothes. A sofa for the living room, and a coffee table. A kitchen table, a dining room set.” Tony had been laughing scornfully through the list. Rocco, waiting for a response, added, “And a refrigerator.”
At this Tony stopped laughing. “A refrigerator? In the house?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea how much a refrigerator costs?”
“Soon every house will have one,” Rocco said. “Your daughter will need one to run her kitchen.”
There was silence for what felt to Stella like a long time. Finally Tony said, “Once you have bought the house, I will buy two beds and one sofa. I will buy your dining room set, but how my daughter furnishes her kitchen is her business, so you will buy your own refrigerator. That is my whole wedding gift to you, two beds, one sofa, an
d the dining room set.”
Rocco said, “All right, Tina will pick out her own kitchen things and I will buy them for her when we move in. And I will not ask you for a coffee table. But you will provide the dressers, one for each bedroom.” Stella felt a wash of relief; they were reaching a denouement. But then Rocco added, “And you will buy two lamps for each room in the house. Good lamps.” Stella heard a thread of vitriol. “And you will buy the lightbulbs to put in the lamps.”
He was making a joke, she thought. It must be a joke.
Tony laughed again, this time with what sounded like genuine joy. “No, boy, you can buy your own lightbulbs.” Still chuckling, he extended his hand. “I think we are done here. You may go speak to her now if you’d like.”
Rocco stood, ignoring the offered handshake. “You will buy the lightbulbs, or you can keep your daughter.”
There was a moment of shocked silence. Barbara’s eyes were wide; she liked Tina, Stella knew, and probably wasn’t sure if she should say something or let her brother fight his own battle.
“That’s it, Signor Fortuna,” Rocco said. “I am done here. If you think your daughter can do better, then I wish you both the best.” He wiped his hands on his pants; perhaps they were sweating. “I know plenty of good girls who would be happy for any husband right now, never mind a U.S. Army combat vet with a good service record. I don’t need to settle.”
A nervous thrill ran through Stella, a thrill at the viciousness of it. Was this really the man Tina wanted to marry? Would he really have exchanged her for eight or ten lightbulbs? Even after four years of letters and care packages? Or was this bluster, too?
Tony stood, too. He said soberly, “All right. I will buy the lightbulbs. Two for each room.”
“The lightbulbs, and the lamps,” Rocco said.
“Yes,” Tony said quietly. “Lightbulbs and lamps.”
Rocco and Barbara did not stay for dinner. It would have been excruciating to have to sit through a meal after that, and for the girls not to be able to rehash. And Joey might have emerged stinking from the boys’ bedroom at any time; Stella was relieved he hadn’t chosen to do so during the shouting earlier, since he was sometimes drawn out for drama. Instead, Rocco asked Tina to join him in the hallway for a private conversation. They had to pass Stella in the hallway, but Rocco didn’t seem to notice her.
Still not sure how much Tina had heard, Stella decided she didn’t want to hear the proposal itself, so she walked through the living room, nodding coolly at her father, who looked irritated and confused, and joined her mother in the kitchen, where the women silently poured, toasted, and each drank down a tall glass of wine.
* * *
THE WEDDING WOULD BE ON AUGUST 17, 1946, a ceremony at Sacred Heart and a reception at the Italian American Home on Platt Street. Tony Fortuna paid for everything, as the father of the bride should. He accompanied Tina to the G. Fox bridal boutique to pick out the dress and the veil. They were one hundred dollars and twenty-five dollars, respectively. The dress was made of stiff white linen; although silk wasn’t rationed anymore, it was still expensive, so Tina hadn’t even tried on any silk dresses. Stella would have at least tried one on.
Stella would be the maid of honor, of course. She swam through a strange mix of emotions, heart-twisting pride and excitement to help her baby sister in this wedding, even though Stella had private misgivings about the marriage Tina was making. It was the second time Stella would be maid of honor, after Franceschina Perri’s wedding to Frank Carapellucci last fall, so Stella had some good ideas about how to celebrate her sister. She spent fifteen dollars, carefully saved from her factory pay and hidden from her father in a pink sock she kept in her underwear drawer, to throw Tina a beautiful shower luncheon. She bought pastries from Federal Bakery on State Street and even made tiny “tea” sandwiches like the ones they sold at the café at G. Fox, triangles of American bread with cheese or jam inside. It was the closest Stella had ever come to cooking anything; she wouldn’t have done it for anyone but Tina. All the ladies who attended cooed over their daintiness. Stella had spent a month of evenings making party favors—a handkerchief with a multicolor crocheted lace edge. She bought herself and Tina both new summer dresses, as well as new shoes, to wear to the party. And finally, Stella got Joey to buy her a bottle of anisette, which the ladies passed around after their tea. Everyone was laughing as they kissed Tina good-bye, and everyone left a cash-stuffed envelope in a pile on the table. A grand success of a shower; Stella was satisfied she wouldn’t be shown up as an East Side hostess for a long time.
Stella’s maid of honor dress was yellow and mimicked Tina’s in its puffed shoulders and sweetheart neckline. The other bridesmaids would wear an identical dress but in baby blue. For the bridesmaids, Tina had Fiorella Mulino, Carolina Nicotera, Franceschina’s younger sister Loretta, and a girl named Josie Brandolino, who was the daughter of Tony’s new Abruzzese boss. Tony had been laid off from his factory job in March—they had to make room for the boys coming home—and he was working odd jobs for a construction company. He wanted to make a good impression on his new boss there and made Tina invite Josie to be a bridesmaid even though the Fortuna girls barely knew her.
Tony booked a band and arranged the catering, sandwiches and pizza. Stella would have wanted to weigh in on her own wedding menu, but Tina didn’t complain. Tony was paying, and he could choose whatever food he wanted.
Good for him, Stella reminded herself. This was the only wedding he’d get to host.
Rocco’s sister Barbara volunteered to make the cake, a four-tier fruitcake dense with raisins, figs, prunes, and honey, sweet work-arounds to the ongoing sugar rationing. Barbara needed all the sugar she could get her hands on to frost the three-foot-tall sixty-pound behemoth a suitably angelic bridal white. This was not Barbara’s first wedding cake—it was a gift worth at least thirty-five dollars, and she’d become a specialist over her years in Hartford. But decorating, she felt, was not her forte, and she conscripted Stella to help. Two Thursdays before the wedding, Barbara and Stella walked down to State Street and stood on the sidewalk outside of Federal Bakery for two hours, watching the white-aproned professionals decorate a wedding cake in the front bay window for everyone to see, as they did each morning. Stella shifted on her sore feet—she’d worn her nice shoes so they might convincingly pass as actual shoppers, not just snoopers—while Barbara stared, unabashed, and murmured things like “Aha! Did you see what she just did with the knife?” and “Well, we’re not going to be able to make flowers like that at home, are we, Stella?”
The week after he proposed, Rocco had bought Tina an American-style engagement ring, a band of yellow gold with a half-carat diamond in the middle. She wore it everywhere, even to work at the coffeepot factory, every day for the rest of her life, until the day she was washing dishes and the diamond dropped out of the setting and down her sink. She had her nephew Artie take the pipe out, but they never found the diamond. This happened in April 2006, months shy of her sixtieth anniversary, and two weeks after Rocco had died.
THE WEEK BEFORE TINA GOT MARRIED, Louie, who had just turned sixteen, went into the woods by Keney Park with two of his friends from school, Bobby Minghella and Danny Peach. Danny’s father, a Hartford police officer, had either given Danny his handgun to try out or had left the gun unattended where Danny could find it—this part of the story fluctuated—and the boys were going to practice firing at squirrels. They didn’t even get off a single practice shot before the gun misfired—either Danny or Bobby had been trying to load it—and the bullet lodged in Louie’s heart, in the muscle wall between his left and right ventricles.
It was a precision accident; a quarter of an inch in any direction and the bullet would have stopped his heart. Bobby and Danny panicked at the sight of the gushing heart’s blood, a surprisingly dark maroon color. They dropped the gun and ran, assuming Louie was as good as dead, although they did stop the first person they met in the park—a middle-aged man who was walking his
German shepherd—and pointed him toward the clearing where they’d left the body.
The dog walker rushed back to his house and called an ambulance in time to save Louie’s life. He was pumped full of other people’s blood, sedated and bandaged, but there was nothing else that could be done. The doctor explained that if he tried to take the bullet out, the surgery had a 50 percent chance of killing the boy. They could only wait and pray. The heart with the bullet in it would probably never work quite right, but it might heal over with careful convalescence. Forty-three years later, Louie would undergo a triple bypass during which his cardiac surgeon would pull out the old bullet, no problem. In the end, it wouldn’t be Louie’s heart but his kidneys that would kill him.
So, although the Fortuna-Caramanico wedding had been much anticipated, in the making for four years, in the end it was just one confusing day in a stressful week. Tina thought maybe they should cancel the wedding, but everything had been paid for and Tony wouldn’t hear of it.
Assunta refused to leave Louie’s side. She slept in a chair that was terrible for her circulation and she kept a vase of mint on the bedside table—she performed countless incantations every day; this was a fairly classic example of the Evil Eye at work. After a week in the hospital ward, she hadn’t even been home to change her clothes. The night before the wedding, Stella, who had spent the whole day helping Barbara embed a lace pattern of tiny silver balls in the cake frosting using a pair of tweezers and whose hair still smelled like confectioner’s sugar, came to collect her mother and sister at the hospital, but Assunta wouldn’t leave. Louie’s doctor tried to step in helpfully, to reassure Assunta everything would be fine while she was gone. The scene escalated quickly, Assunta weeping and the doctor yelling. It was plain to Stella, watching with the dawning embarrassment of the newly bilingual, that Louie’s doctor thought her mother was crazy, an insane and dirty peasant with childish ideas about witchcraft who rejected his commonsense medical advice. Tina, who should not have been allowed to come to the hospital on the eve of her own wedding, realized her mother would not be attending and collapsed on the floor, which must have been covered in who knows what kinds of diseases. Tony brought an end to the spectacle by saying to his wife, “It’s fine. You stay here with Louie. Tina doesn’t need you.” Assunta quieted down right away, cowed into hiccups.
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna Page 26
