The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  “There you are. Va bene. I can always count on my German friend to be right on time.”

  It was an old joke. Vera arrived five minutes early everywhere she went. Angelo would be at least ten minutes late.

  “Angelo,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t shake. She avoided looking at the woman.

  “Thanks for meeting me here today. I told you I had something important to tell you.”

  There was a look in his eyes that she didn’t recognize and couldn’t begin to interpret as he went on.

  “I want you to meet Pearl Pilkington. My fiancée.”

  Chapter Three

  Vera gathered her collection of rocks from the box underneath the sofa that served as her bed. There were twenty-nine of them, each one etched with a memory. She pulled a coat from a hook by the front door and filled its pockets with the stones, weighing her down more than she’d expected.

  Or maybe it was just her mood after meeting Angelo’s fiancée yesterday.

  How could she have gotten it all so wrong?

  Vera’s brisk steps kept her warm in weather that created icicles that dripped from the edges of the buildings. There was a time she’d thought they were magical. Crystal fingers reaching out from an unseen world. Angelo had encouraged those kinds of fantasies, telling her stories of Beppo Pipetta and Sir Fiorante, Magician. She knew them better than any of the Brothers Grimm stories from her own homeland. She’d clung to every word that Angelo had ever said to her.

  But those days were over. Vera hurried along to the fountain at Madison Square Park. She scrunched her toes, willing the blood to flow. The temperature hovered just above freezing, and she was counting on the water to have not iced over just yet.

  She reached the fountain. It was not magnificent, not like ones north of here, but it blended into the background, almost unnoticed. Just like her.

  The concrete was chilled, but she’d worn enough layers that she barely felt its wintry bite as she sat along the fountain’s edge. She opened her bag and pulled out the first stone. Round with a sharp point that jutted out as if it were pointing to something.

  Carefully scratched into its gray surface, she’d written out a simple code.

  3-20-07-39

  March 20, 1907. Thirty-Ninth Street.

  She’d been twelve years old. It was the day of her mother’s funeral. There had been few attendees at the church and then the cemetery. Not one of the foremen or the other women who worked in the factory attended. To them she was another nameless cog, collapsing from exhaustion and no doubt replaced within hours by another immigrant eager for a stipend. Mama and Papa were some of the last Germans who had not moved to the Upper East Side when the migration went that way. And it was a difficult thing for people to get away to remember the dead when it meant a day without earning much-needed wages.

  What few had been there looked upon Vera with pity that penetrated her broken heart, and she could not bear their eyes looking at her as if they thought they could read what she felt.

  When they’d returned home, Papa had retreated into the bedroom, neither knowing nor caring where she might get off to. She’d stayed in her black dress and walked by Angelo’s newsstand. He was always there, not far from their doorstep.

  “Hey, Kid,” he’d said, lowering his tone nearly an octave. Why did people change their voices when speaking to someone in sorrow? As if death were played on the left side of a piano while life was played on the right. “I’m sorry about your mother. Want to take a walk and talk about it?”

  Vera shook her head.

  “What about some cannoli? Guaranteed to put at least a tiny smile on your face. I know of a new place just a few blocks away.”

  The thought of the ricotta-filled dessert did sound good. She hadn’t eaten anything since before dawn.

  She’d walked a step behind Angelo through narrow paths made between hills of snow. For once she was grateful not to wear the long skirts of grown women. The ones she walked past struggled to avoid the growing puddles of slush. It was the first day that it wasn’t frigid, and her breath no longer crystallized in the air.

  One patch had thawed all the way down to the pavement. Angelo stooped to pick up an errant rock, a habit they’d continued. He waited until a group of top-hatted men passed them, and then he set the large pebble in front of his foot.

  “Over there. Just in front of the lamppost,” he said, pointing out his target. He waited once more, this time for a woman carrying a laundry bundle. As she left, he kicked his heel up and the rock went flying, exactly where he’d predicted.

  “Goal!” he shouted, waving his fist in the air. Vera felt her cheeks flush with pride.

  This was the signal that it was Vera’s turn. She ran up to the lamppost, noting its peeling green paint, and positioned herself in front of it. She looked east on Thirty-Ninth toward the opera house across the street.

  The arches of the building made a wide target she was unlikely to miss.

  “There.” She pointed, intentionally vague. She waited until there was a break in people crossing and gripped her black skirt in her hands. She gave the rock a good, hard kick. But she slipped on a patch of ice that stubbornly refused to melt with the rest of it. She lurched forward to find her balance, stepping right into a large puddle and soaking her shoes and stockings past her ankles, spraying her only coat with dirty water.

  “Goal!” shouted Angelo, who only then looked behind him to see her in this sorry state. Vera felt his pity—the same pity that she’d seen in the eyes of people at the funeral this morning—and she burned with embarrassment.

  “Aw, Kid,” he said. “That’s some bad luck right there. Here. Let me help you.”

  He took off his own jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She inhaled its warm, smoky scent, traces of tobacco tickling her nose. It smelled like Angelo’s newsstand. Like heaven.

  “Let’s get you home. We’ll buy some cannoli another time.” He put his arm around her in a gesture that she knew was only meant to extend his own heat to her shivering body.

  But it was just as lovely as she’d dreamed.

  Later, after he’d closed up his stand for the evening and Papa was deep in sleep, she’d stolen out into the night with a candle. She’d had to go through a window in the basement, as the landlord kept the front door locked according to his strict curfew. Vera walked gingerly so as not to extinguish its flame. She made her way to the opera house, peering into the dark and looking across the steps until at last she found it.

  The round stone with the edge that jutted out. She picked it up with near-frozen fingers and slipped it into her pocket. When she returned home, she would grab Papa’s razor—the one he’d always complained was duller than it should be—and scratch out the date and the street number.

  She slipped back into the building unnoticed—she hoped—and entered their rented room. It still smelled of Mama’s rosewater. Sadness stopped her momentarily as she wished that she could tell her mother all the things in her heart. Angelo’s family was very religious—Roman Catholic—and he believed that you could talk to the dead and that they could see you. Maybe Mama could see her and Vera could tell her the things that she’d never been brave enough to say in person.

  Like how being with Angelo made her feel.

  Vera held the rock in her hand, carefully carving out her code and replacing Papa’s razor next to the steel plate that served as a mirror. She crossed the room to her little basket of stones and added it to her collection.

  Mama, she whispered into the silence. I love him. I’m going to marry him someday.

  Now, just five years later, Vera the woman thought back to Vera the girl and shuddered at the thought that such innocent years were now behind her for good. She was not going to marry Angelo. She was not going to cook his supper and give him babies and kiss him and grow old with him. He’d found himself a dandy rich girl, and how could the daughter of a dead factory worker and an ailing sandhog ever measure up to a woman as elegant as Pearl
Pilkington?

  Plink.

  The stone fell to the bottom of the fountain, sending lethargic ripples across its thinly iced surface.

  Plink.

  Another one. From the day they’d kicked a stone down Thirty-Third to Penn Station to watch the opening ceremonies.

  Plink.

  From the day they’d gone down Fourteenth in Chelsea and joined the tenement children playing baseball in an alley.

  She emptied them into the water, watching them sink to the bottom along with all her hopes. She held the last one in her hand. The last, but the first. The one from the day she’d met him. The day she’d scraped her knee in front of his newsstand and first looked into his compassionate eyes and read more into them than she knew was real. They’d not kicked stones that day—it was a game they started just after that. But she’d taken a rock that was in place to keep a pile of newspapers from scattering in the wind. As a memento. He hadn’t seen her—she’d been careful about it—but that night she’d kept it balled up in her hands and slept well for the first time since she and Mama and Papa had come to the wretched boardinghouse.

  Vera considered dropping that one, too, into the water. She felt heat in her hand pulsing to her heart as she held it. She placed her hand over the fountain, spreading her fingers slowly.

  She heard footsteps and then her name.

  “Vera?”

  She gripped the rock before it could slip out and hastily shoved it onto her lap, covering it with her coat.

  The sun obscured the face of the person in front of her, but she noticed the expensive boots.

  “Vera, correct?”

  She’d hoped it couldn’t be true, but strangely it was. Bad luck, Angelo might have said.

  “We met yesterday. I’m Pearl Pilkington.”

  Chapter Four

  Never had Vera thought that she would find herself sitting at a restaurant like Maioglio Brothers. But she’d discovered within minutes of her second encounter with Miss Pilkington that the woman had a beguiling air about her from which emanated an invitation to agree to anything she might suggest. She was alarmingly beautiful yet somehow approachable. Wealthy yet somehow common. No, not common. But she made Vera feel as if they were equals, though nothing could have been further from the truth.

  So when the woman who had captured Angelo’s heart invited her to lunch, Vera heard a yes escape from her mouth, despite every other part of her being saying the opposite.

  The disparity between the two became even more pronounced when Miss Pilkington extended a graceful, gloved hand and led Vera to one of the many mansions that lined Madison Avenue. Miss Pilkington stopped in front of one made of white stone. Light gleamed from a three-story turret, creating tiny beams of rainbows that leaped from leaded-glass windows. It didn’t flicker, though, with the dance of candles that kept Vera company at night. It was steady. No doubt from bulbs that were only now becoming commonplace in public buildings.

  What a luxury to cast away darkness with a mere touch. To avoid the danger of fire if one fell asleep before snuffing it out. The rich didn’t know difficulty. Miss Pilkington would never know hardship.

  Would Angelo be living in this palace once they were married?

  Vera shuddered. She could not imagine him leaving behind his beloved newsstand for gilded rooms and crystal doorknobs.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket and rubbed the cold stone that had not been drowned in the icy waters of the fountain.

  “Here we are,” said Miss Pilkington as they approached a sleek black automobile parked in front of them. A short-statured chauffeur smiled and tipped his hat before opening the door.

  Vera let out a gasp that she hoped was inaudible. She’d sworn to herself years ago at the advent of the automobile that she would never step foot into one of the contraptions. Her father had nearly given his life for the tunnels that crisscrossed the city deep below them. The least the residents of Manhattan could do was use them as they were intended. Or maybe that was another hallmark of the Pilkingtons of the world: never to be one of the moles who burrowed into darkness and shot across the terrain in metal compartments purchased by the blood of sandhogs like her father.

  Their loss. Vera found such beauty underground in the stations lined with tiles of all colors. Art for the everyday man. She imagined herself to be a great mosaic artist—or any kind of artist—and kept under the sofa a box of drawings in which she’d penciled miniature rectangles that came together to form scenes.

  “Miss?” the chauffeur asked, interrupting her silent soliloquy. Miss Pilkington had already seated herself inside the automobile and gestured for Vera to join her.

  Maybe one ride wouldn’t do any harm. She was still a subway girl.

  She slid into the seat next to Miss Pilkington and couldn’t help but run her hands along the supple leather. Her fingers explored the embroidered grooves that seemed to serve no purpose other than beautifying the compartment.

  The chauffeur shut the door behind her and walked to the front of the car. His seat was on the exterior, exposed to the elements. He rubbed his hands and blew into them before placing them on the polished wood steering wheel. Vera wondered if Miss Pilkington noticed such things.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said in the lyrical voice that matched everything else about her. “I prefer to walk, as it isn’t such a long way. But Maioglio’s closes in just over an hour, and I thought that this might save us some time.”

  Vera could have told her which line would take them there quite quickly, but she had to admit some respect for a woman who openly eschewed the casual use of the vehicle.

  They turned onto Sixth Avenue, bypassing the always-busy Broadway. The driver made a left at Herald Square. Buttoned-up shoppers carried packages as they walked out of Macy’s. Remnants of snow lingered on the awnings, creating sagging pools. Vera had once seen one rip after a rainstorm, drenching a passerby just in front of her. She watched to see if it might happen again, but everyone escaped intact.

  Penn Station arose in her view just a moment later, making her heart skip as it always did. Its majestic columns. The twenty-two stone eagles. Angelo’s newspaper stand.

  It wasn’t visible from this side, and even if it had been, they were moving at a pace many times faster than her normal walk. But he was surely there.

  And no longer hers to hope for.

  “I’m terribly glad I found you today. Angelo told me that you often walk in that park, and there you were on my first try. Have you ever taken a drive in an automobile?” asked Miss Pilkington, breaking the lullaby of street sounds that were muffled by the glass.

  Vera looked down at her hands. Her chewed nails, bitten last night as she cried herself to sleep over this unexpected turn of events. If she had elegant gloves like the lady next to her, she could have hidden them. Just as she wanted to hide all of herself in this moment. She still didn’t know what she was doing here or why the lady would have wanted to seek her out.

  “No, Miss Pilkington. This is my first time.” Nein, she thought. Her native German had largely been forgotten. But she felt like a child after weeks of believing she was a woman. What did putting her hair up in a bun signify except the pretense of something hoped for?

  “Never mind the ‘Miss Pilkington’ bit. If we are to be friends, you must call me Pearl.”

  “Pearl,” whispered Vera.

  “Yes. And may I call you Vera? I have only known you through Angelo as ‘Kid,’ but a young woman such as yourself deserves to be addressed by her name.”

  Vera looked away from the window for the first time, expecting to find a condescending look on her companion’s face. But instead Miss Pilkington was the epitome of sincerity.

  A wellspring of pride rose in Vera’s heart at the notion that such a stylish person had just called her a young woman. Miss Pilkington’s—Pearl’s—eyes seemed earnest.

  “Of course.”

  “And what is your surname?”

  “Keller.”


  “Vera Keller. What a lovely name for an equally lovely woman.”

  Had she read the words on the page, Vera would have been convinced that she was now being patronized, but still no such hint appeared on Pearl’s face.

  Pearl placed her hands on Vera’s, warming them in an instant.

  “I do hope that you will consider me a friend. You mean a great deal to Angelo, so naturally you mean a great deal to me.”

  Vera felt the first tingle of tears but held them back. “Yes, Miss Pilkington.”

  “Pearl.”

  “Yes, Pearl. I do hope that we can become friends.”

  “Excellent. And what perfect timing. Here we are coming up to Maioglio’s now.”

  The row of brownstones seemed ordinary enough. Eight steps to the landing. But the stoops were vacant. They looked different from the ones on her street. Where she lived, there was almost always a crowd of people spilling out from the inside. Children playing jumping games. Adults playing cards. And when all the room was taken up, they would sit on orange crates or any other container that could be found, smoking cigarettes and complaining about politics or the weather.

  These stoops were gloriously silent. Enough that she could feel the stillness of the snow that was expected this evening.

  “Come, my dear,” said Pearl. She placed her hand on Vera’s back as they started up to the restaurant. “Let’s get inside. I have something to ask you.”

  Chapter Five

  “Miss Pilkington, hello. Welcome again to Maioglio’s. Such a delight to see you.”

  A thin, mustached man took Pearl’s hands in his and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Sebastiano,” she said. “This is my friend Miss Vera Keller.”

  The man greeted Vera in the same way. The stubble on his face felt coarse against her skin but not unpleasant. It must be how fashionable people greeted one another.

  “Miss Keller. You are most welcome here.”

  The man spoke with an accent that reminded her of Angelo’s, though it had a slightly different lilt.