by Rosie Genova
“Of course I do,” I lied. All the dried stuff in Nonna’s pantry looked alike to me; in fact, back in May, I’d been convinced there was something more menacing than cooking herbs hanging from the rafters of that room. “Be right back,” I called, taking my purse with me. (It had my phone in it.)
Once inside, I was struck by a series of images. Tim and I as teenagers, stealing a kiss in the corner. Tim and I as adults, spending a night in here that took us both by surprise. No time for this, Vic. I slipped my phone from my purse and searched “thyme.” Once I had the image up, I studied the dried bunches of herbs and grabbed a handful of the likeliest candidate.
“Here it is,” I said, setting it down next to Tim.
He turned to face me, his hands on his hips, but smiling. “You looked it up on your phone, didn’t you?”
“I may have.” Some treacherous impulse had me smiling back, so I forced myself to ask a question to which I didn’t really want an answer. “So, how are things going with Lacey?”
“They’re movin’ along, thanks.” He crushed the thyme between his fingers and added it to the blend.
Frankly, I didn’t want to think about how far things might have moved since the day Lacey had shown up in the dining room, so a second change of subject was called for. “Has my grandmother been in yet?”
“Been and gone. Just long enough to lecture me on the perfect spice proportions for the rub, how deep a sear I should put on the ribs, and how long I should let the sauce reduce.”
“Sorry I missed it,” I said, putting on an apron. “Is Lori out front?”
“Yeah. I think she’s working on tables, so you might want to get the coffee set up.”
I sighed, wondering if filling the coffee basket was as close as I’d get to preparing a dish at the Casa Lido. “Hey, girl,” I called.
“Hi, Vic,” Lori said. She moved swiftly from table to table with place settings wrapped in linen. “You wanna do coffee?”
“I’m already on it.” But I was still holding an unopened coffee packet when my attention was drawn to a white square of paper on the floor. Nonna would go crazy if she saw trash in the dining room. But on closer inspection, the paper wasn’t trash.
It was a card rimmed in gold; on the front was an image of St. Francis with a line from his writings: Grant that I may not seek to be consoled as to console. This was a memorial card, the kind one might find at wakes; my grandmother collected these things like trading cards. Before I even turned it over, I knew whose name would be on the back. I tucked it into the pocket of my pants and hurriedly untied my apron.
“Cover for me, L. J., would you?” I called to Lori. “I have to run out for a minute.”
“Sure, Vic. Everything okay?”
“I hope so,” I muttered as I headed out the doors. I grabbed my bike from the back and got moving. My parents’ home on Seventh Street, the house where I’d grown up, was only a few blocks away. It was a classic seaside Victorian, but like so many of that era had been broken up into two large apartments. Nonna occupied the third floor, and my mom and dad lived in the first and second. I dropped my bike next to the front steps, not even stopping to admire the wraparound porch, where I’d spent many an afternoon curled up with Carolyn Keene and Agatha Christie. Instead I walked up the driveway and headed to the back stairway that led to my grandmother’s apartment. Not for the first time, I wondered how much longer she could handle these stairs.
When she saw me at her door, she frowned, but that’s how she normally greeted me. She was wearing summer slacks and a lightweight cardigan, both black. Her hair was styled and sprayed, and her lipstick was fresh. She was not dressed for a morning at home.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “You’re supposed to be at the restaurant.”
“I came to ask you something.” I followed her into the kitchen and took a seat. She tied on an apron, and without asking (“You only ask sick people”) she dropped a plate of biscotti in front of me and ran water into the base of her espresso pot. Since resistance was futile, I took one of my favorites, a chocolate cookie with hazelnuts.
“So ask me.” She kept her back to me, pressing ground espresso into the metal pot.
“Would you sit down, please?”
She set the pot over a low flame and sat down across from me, suspicion etched into every line of her face. “I’m sitting,” she said.
I took the card from my pocket and held it out to her. “Nonna, what is this?”
She snatched it back from me and slipped it into her apron pocket. “It’s mine.”
“I know it’s yours. It’s from Elizabeth Merriman’s wake.” I gestured to her clothes. “And you’re in your funeral clothes. What were you doing there?”
“What was I doing there?” She threw her hands up at the foolishness of such a question. “Paying my respects. That’s what you do when someone dies.”
“Right,” I said. “When you know the deceased. And I heard you call her Elisabetta, so I think you must have known her. Did you, Nonna?”
Saved from answering by the boiling espresso pot, she rose quickly, took a potholder, and removed the pot from the stove. She poured us each a cup, went to the refrigerator, took out a quart of milk, and set the sugar bowl on the table, all with maddening slowness. When she finally sat, she shifted her eyes from me and she fumbled in her apron pocket, no doubt holding on to that card for dear life. “Please answer me,” I said softly.
“Here’s your answer: You should pay attention in the kitchen the way you pay attention to things that are not your business.” She stirred sugar into her cup, took a sip, and nodded. Her coffee was always perfect.
I finished my cookie and drank my coffee slowly, hoping the silence would pressure her to talk. But of course, I was the one who caved. “If you know something important about Elizabeth Merriman, Nonna, I wish you’d tell me about it.”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
I took a gamble. “Well, you can tell me or you can tell Prosecutor Sutton.”
Though her look was skeptical, my nonna is not one to take chances. “All right,” she said with resignation. “I guess it’s time.” She took the card from her pocket and set it down in front of her, pointing to Merriman’s name. “Her real name was Elisabetta Caprio. We grew up in the old neighborhood together.”
“She was Italian?” I remembered Merriman’s words when we were introduced: So you’re a Rienzi. She was connecting me to my family—and to Nonna.
My grandmother nodded, and when she spoke, her words were as bitter as the greens in her garden. “But she hid it. Like something she was ashamed of. She wanted to make herself into somebody else.”
“I think she succeeded,” I said. “I thought she was old money, maybe English or Dutch background. I mean, she used her married name, and her coloring is fair.” I remembered her cloudy blue eyes.
Nonna nodded. “She was blond when she was young. But she was embarrassed of her parents. Their dark skin. Their accents.”
“So she turned herself into the country-club lady,” I said.
“She didn’t start out that way,” she said. “When I knew her, she was the only child in a strict Catholic family. Her father kept her under lock and key. But she was stubborn, headstrong.”
“Not surprised,” I said.
But my grandmother didn’t appear to be listening to me. Her face was thoughtful, looking back to a past I knew little about. “And she wanted what she wanted,” Nonna said.
“What did she want, Nonna?”
My grandmother’s face cracked in what might have been a smile. “His name was Tommy Romano. He was in my year in school; Elisabetta was younger.”
I couldn’t resist the next question. “Did you have a crush on him, too?”
She frowned and waved me away like a bothersome sand fly. “No. I was already going with your grandfather.”
Which would not necessarily preclude a crush on another boy. But I wisely kept that thought to myself. “Tell m
e about Tommy.”
She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and this time smiled for real. Just for a second, I had a glimpse of the younger Giulietta. “All the girls were crazy about him,” she said. “He was tall, with curly black hair and blue eyes.” She shook her head. “Those eyes were the most beautiful blue. My mama, your great-grandma Ida, used to say they were come il cielo veneziano—like the Venetian sky.”
I rested my chin in my hands, watching Nonna’s face as she talked about Tommy, who sounded a bit like Tim in looks, though Tim’s eyes were gray. “So, he was the neighborhood heartthrob?” I asked.
Nonna nodded. “Yes, but he only had eyes for Elisabetta. And she for him. She was sixteen; he was three years older, already out of high school. She would sneak out of her house to see him.” She shook her head. “It was . . . sad.”
“Sad? It sounds romantic.” I put my hand on her arm. “What happened with the two of them?”
“Well, he left for the war in Korea, December of 1951.” She paused in the story and looked briefly out the window.
“You remember what month he left?” I was having a hard time believing that Nonna’s feelings for the dashing Tommy were purely platonic.
“I remember because the boardwalk was decorated for Christmas. We had holly and greens all over the restaurant.” As she spoke, I was imagining the Casa Lido in the 1950s, with its dark wood paneling and exposed brick, thinking it probably looked much the same as it did today. “So, we said good-bye to Tommy. Then a month later I said good-bye to your grandpa.” She stopped again, shook her head slowly. “Men and their wars,” she said quietly.
“What happened after that, Nonna?” I was hanging onto each word, imagining it all, and wishing I had some paper to take notes for my own story about Isabella.
She turned the memorial card and looked at the image of St. Francis. “She came to see my mama. Your great-grandma was a kind of nurse, and even a midwife sometimes for people in the neighborhood who couldn’t afford the doctor. Anyway, Elisabetta knew she was pregnant and came to her for help. I think she came to her hoping that my mama would give her something.” She stopped speaking and looked down at the table.
“You mean to end the pregnancy,” I prompted.
She nodded. “There were women in those days that would do that, before it was legal. But not my mama. Instead she counseled her to tell her parents. She offered to go with her, even. But Elisabetta refused, said that if my mother wouldn’t help her, she would find someone who would.” Nonna stood suddenly. “Would you like some water? Even with the coffee, I’m dry from talking.”
And it was no wonder. In my entire life, I’d never had such a long—or personal—conversation with my prickly grandmother. “Yes, thanks,” I said.
She brought us our water and sat down, still with that faraway look on her face. She took an absent sip and then turned the glass in her hand. “Two months later, we heard Tommy was killed. His mother and father and little sister were devastated. The whole town mourned him. And not long after that, the Romanos moved away.”
“What about Elisabetta?” Funny how the iron-willed Elizabeth Merriman, even in death, commanded less sympathy than the frightened, pregnant girl who had so loved Tommy Romano. They were two different women and I couldn’t reconcile them.
She lifted one thin shoulder. “People said she took it hard. For a long time I didn’t see her. Until—”
“Until when, Nonna?”
She put her glasses back on and looked at me. “Until the night she tried to kill herself.”
Chapter Thirteen
“She tried to kill herself?” And if she tried it then, might she have tried it now?
My grandmother nodded. “One night, not long after we got the news about Tommy, I was walking home from the restaurant, on the boardwalk side.” She shook her head. “It was May, but still windy and chilly. And you know the rock jetty down by the fishermen’s beach?”
My head moved in a mechanical nod. I knew what she was about to say. “You saw her standing out there, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She took another sip of water. “At first I couldn’t tell who it was, but I could see her blond hair. I ran out on to the beach and climbed the jetty. I could tell she was thinking about jumping.”
My grandmother’s words were like tiny lights illuminating my dark, cluttered brain. If Merriman had been murdered, did the killer know about her past? Was it poetic irony or coincidence that Merriman met her end, more than sixty years later, on a beach? I imagined the young Elizabeth poised to jump into the sea. How terrified—and how desperate—she must have been. “And you stopped her.”
“I grabbed her by the arm. I told her what she was doing was a sin. Taking two lives.” She stopped, shook her head, and stood up abruptly. She cleared our coffee cups and water glasses, pausing at the sink. I sat tensely, waiting for her to finish.
“By then Elisabetta was showing, but to most people she just looked like she had gained weight. But it wouldn’t be long before everybody knew.” She looked at me, her eyes sad and serious behind her glasses. “It was different in those days.”
“I know. What did you do?”
“I talked her out of it and dragged her home with me. Mama called her parents, said she was staying with us for the night. And that’s when your great-grandmother came up with a plan.” Her voice hardened, and she moved her water glass to one side, studied the pattern in the tablecloth. This part of the story was clearly troubling to her. I took a chance and spoke.
“What was the plan, Nonna?”
My grandmother, who is not the dramatic type, released a sigh worthy of my mother. “Your great-grandma told Elisabetta’s mother that our cousin in Atlantic City needed help running her boardinghouse for the summer season. This cousin was looking for reliable girls to clean the rooms.”
“Was that true? Did you have a cousin with a boardinghouse in Atlantic City?”
“Yes, my mother’s cousin Antoinette; she asked every summer for me to come. But they could never spare me at the restaurant.”
“Until that summer.”
“Yes.” She smoothed out a spot on the tablecloth. “I didn’t want to go, but it would work only if I went along. I would go to the boardinghouse, and Elisabetta would go to a charity home for pregnant girls. She would learn some skills there, and when the time came, have her baby.”
“And Elisabetta’s parents let her go? Even the father?”
“Like so many families in that neighborhood, Elisabetta’s parents were poor. They saw a chance to have some money come in.”
“But she wasn’t working.”
“No, she wasn’t. But I was.” She looked out the window again.
“Oh, Nonna—did your money go to her family? That’s so unfair.”
In a rare gesture of affection, she put her hand over mine. “Victoria, it was different then. It was, I guess, like a duty to help your paesani, those who came from your country. My family was doing well. We had the restaurant; her family had nothing. Those people would never have let her go to Atlantic City alone. It was the only way.”
I tried to imagine myself at nineteen, away from home, away from my friends, working a whole summer for somebody else. “Still, Nonna, it was a lot to ask of a young girl.”
She nodded. “It was, but my mama felt strongly that this baby deserved a chance at life, and, for that matter, so did Elisabetta.”
“You saved her life twice, you know.” I felt a sudden surge of anger at Elizabeth Merriman. Had she understood what my grandmother had done for her? What my great-grandmother had done? Had she known what she owed my family? The life she ended up with—a life of privilege and power—was in no small measure due to the sacrifice of these two women. “So, you went there together,” I said. “And she had her baby?”
She nodded. “That August. The charity home arranged for an adoption.”
“She gave the baby up?” As I spoke, my anger at Elizabeth faded.
“Yes. But of course she didn’t know where the baby ended up. It was all a secret in those days.”
But it’s not secret now, I thought. “What about Tommy’s family? Did they know they had a grandchild?”
“I don’t know. When Elisabetta got back on that bus with me to come home, she was dead silent. I tried to ask her questions, but she wouldn’t answer me.”
“Do you know if the baby was a boy or a girl? Did it have a name?”
Nonna shook her head. “She said only one thing about the child: that it had Tommy’s beautiful blue eyes. And then she cried. But once she wiped her eyes, I never saw her cry again.”
“Did you stay in touch?”
My grandmother snorted. “She avoided me like the plague. Once she was working for her husband, she pretended she didn’t know me.”
“How awful.”
“Not really, Victoria. I knew her secret. In her mind, that gave me power to hurt her.” She pushed away from the table and brought her glass to the sink. “I’ve kept this secret for more than sixty years,” she said. “And now she’s dead, it’s a relief to tell it.”
“Thank you for trusting me with this.”
“So now I’ve told you, and I hope it wasn’t a mistake. I don’t see how what happened all those years ago will make a difference or help Chickie Natale. As far as I’m concerned, that one caused his own problems.” She fixed her eyes on mine. “Did someone kill Elisabetta?”
“I think so, Nonna. And I think that’s what the police believe, too.”
She nodded, crossed herself, and slipped the memorial card back into her apron pocket.
I left my grandmother with the promise that I would tell Elizabeth’s story only if I had to. On the way back to the restaurant, my mind spun faster than the wheels of my bike. What my grandmother said was true—in the 1950s, Elizabeth would have no way of knowing who had adopted her child. But things had changed in the intervening years. I knew little about adoption laws (note to self: put Sofia on this one) but it was much easier now for adopted children to find their birth parents. Elisabetta’s baby would be about sixty years old now. And if it could be proven that he or she was her natural child, that person would stand to inherit a fortune. And that raised a question so obvious it should have been framed in blinking neon lights: Was Jack Toscano Elizabeth Merriman’s long lost son?
