Linda Cardillo - Dancing On Sunday Afternoons (10 page)

for our wide-eyed wonder. But not without a tinge of homesickness, an evanescent longing that al of them, even Paolo, at one time or another experienced, and sometimes denied. For him, it was the memory of walking along the jetty at Santa Lucia; ahead of him was the light—lavish and prodigal upon the Bay—and to the east, over the city, the shadow of Vesuvio, hovering.

I said almost nothing as the others talked. But my eyes, glistening with interest and amusement, never left Paolo's face— a caress, I knew, that was as deft as that of my fingertips.

Not only was he unlike Claudio, there had been no one in al of Venticano to compare to him. Not even my father— the coddled brother of his widowed and never-married sisters, the successful businessman, the product of my mother's ever- intensifying drive for betterment—not even he possessed Paolo's elegance.

Claudio said that Paolo was an educated man, a man of letters, with piles of books in his rooms and the manner of a scholar. But it was more than his culture and refinement that set him apart from the life that had surrounded me in Italy. He was also different in the way he returned my gaze. Neither red-cheeked and flustered nor swaggering like the boys back home, who teased or made crude jokes when they thought you were interested in them. Paolo looked at me deeply, without embarrassment, with candor. I could tel that he admired me. I enjoyed such attention.

But what would I do with it, with him? He was older than Claudio, almost thirty, a man of the New World. Too old for me. Letitia's husband was much older than she was, and that had brought her only dissatisfaction.

I looked, but I was not ready to feel. There was too much of this new life to understand. The voices were so strange and raucous, the streets so numerous and confusing. There were so many people whose faces I didn't know, who did not even nod in greeting. I laughed in the garden with the women during the day; I poked fun at Angelina and her proprieties. But at night I was stil terrified. I missed both the stil ness and the music of Venticano; the faces of Giuseppina and my little brothers; and I missed Vito Cipriano—the roughness of his coarsely shaven cheek and the apple scent of the pomade he wore too thickly on his curly black hair.

I didn't want to be here.

The morning was passing rapidly, and the pile of eggplants had not diminished noticeably since Paolo had appeared in our midst. He could sense, once again, Angelina's slightly veiled impatience.

He knew he was going to need Angelina on his side. So he rose from his perch, ready to make his farewell, and with a grin and a flourish, invited al of us sisters for a strol and then the band concert in Hartley Park on Sunday. Pip and Til y beamed and giggled. Angelina shot a look of gratitude at Paolo for the gift of a Sunday afternoon free of her sisters-in-law. And I, a smile of acknowledgment spreading across my face, leaned my head back and laughed.

As Paolo walked away, he slipped his hand inside his pocket and clutched the handkerchief, stil damp with my laughter.

CHAPTER 10

Hartley Park

Paolo took us three sisters to Hartley Park, as he had promised. On Sunday afternoons the footpaths in the park were crowded, the crunch of leather on stone a backdrop to the German and Yiddish and Italian conversations wending their circuitous way to the band shel .

That Sunday, the musicians were performing selections from Scott Joplin and George M. Cohan. Paolo picked us up promptly at three. Angelina had not invited him to Sunday dinner, which I thought was ungracious, but I was learning after only a few weeks in America that customs were different here.

Paolo lived alone in a rooming house a few blocks from Claudio's. His married sister Flora also lived in Mount Vernon, and he'd borrowed a blanket from her that she did not object to our spreading on the grass. He had also stopped at Barletta's on the way to Claudio's and picked up three smal nosegays of lilies of the val ey and forget-me-nots—identical, except that he'd askedVinnie Barletta to put a single red rose in the middle of one.

When he got to the house, Til y and Pip were waiting, gloved and anxious. He swept off his hat and presented them with the bouquets, careful to hold back the one with the rose.

"Oh, Paolo! Grazie! How thoughtful! What a gendeman!"

A few minutes later I came down the stairs.

"Come sta, Paolo!You're here so soon!You don't give a girl a chance to take off her apron."

Paolo turned to me with the flowers. I noticed that my bouquet was unusual—not a match to the others now in the hands of my sisters—but I didn't react. Instead, I took it with a smile and a curtsy. Although I'd flirted with him yesterday over the eggplants, I couldn't imagine him as anything more than a simpatico friend of my brother's, a man who was showing me some kindness in this strange new land.

We walked down to the park, Paolo in the middle between my sisters, me on the periphery, laughing, almost skipping, relishing my freedom from Angelina's kitchen and laundry and damp babies.

When we got to the park, we looked for a comfortable patch of grass. I wanted to be near the music and strode toward the band shel , stepping careful y around the early arrivals sprawled around their picnic baskets.

Pip didn't want to sit on the ground, not even on Flora's blanket; she didn't want to be so close to other people

—to the smel s of their food and their unfamiliar bodies, to the sounds of their unrecognizable tongues. She hung back near a bench by the path. Til y was torn between my pleasure in the outing and Pip's fears and disdain. She was fol owing me, somewhat breathlessly and clumsily, when Pip's bony hand stretched out to hold her back.

Paolo was coming up in the rear, carrying the blanket as well as a cardboard box tied with multicolored string and fil ed with cannoli from Artuso's bakery. Pip stood in rigid exasperation; Til y in flustered confusion.

"Oh, Paolo, stop her!" I heard Pip say. "Look at her parading up there. Who does she think she is? A child at a carnival? Isn't there some quiet bench we can sit on out of the way? Look, over there under the trees."

I was up ahead, waving to indicate that I'd found a spot.

Paolo moved toward me, not seeming to care if Pip stood waiting on the path, arms crossed and foot tapping, for the entire concert.

"Paolo, Paolo, over here," I cal ed. "This is a good spot, don't you think? Let me help you with the blanket. I'm so excited! This is the first time I've heard music since I left Italy—what a wonderful idea! Claudio doesn't think of things like this. He doesn't understand that people need more than work, more than money. Did you know that he almost didn't let us come when Til y told him you'd invited us? We've been so cooped up in that house, barely al owed out to do the marketing. He's worse than my Zia Pasqualina with his worries and warnings."

I couldn't stop babbling, I was so thril ed to be away from everything that had oppressed me since coming to America. I shook out the blanket with a vigorous snap. .

"Oh, I've been longing for a day like this! To be outdoors among the trees and flowers, to smel the air, feel the sun, to put on my fine dress instead of trudging around day after day in a housedress and apron with my hair tied up in a rag. Angelina thinks we're her servants. She either doesn't know or doesn't want to know what we came from, how we lived in Venticano."

I final y noticed that my sisters were stil not as eager as I was to embrace the day in the park in the midst of strangers.

"Pip, Til y, over here!" I stood again and waved. Pip, red- faced, lips set in a taut line, came gingerly toward us.

"Giulia, this is not appropriate. I wil not stay here in front of al these strange people and I do not want to sit on the ground. And why must you always bring such attention to yourself— chattering and waving like a sil y child.

You continue to be an absolute embarrassment to me, no matter where we are."

She turned to Paolo to seek his agreement.

"Paolo, I expected you, of al people, to behave in keeping with the trust Claudio placed in you as our escort,"

she said sternly.

I was annoyed. "Oh, Mother of God, Pip, sit down and enjoy yourself and leave Paolo alone. If it real y disturbs you to sit on the blanket, go find a bench. You do manage to drain the last ounce of pleasure out of your life, don't you? Why did you even come? To torment me?"

The people seated around us were beginning to notice. Although they probably couldn't understand a word Pip and I were saying, they could surely hear the scolding in our voices. The concert was about to begin. People were coughing, resettling themselves, gathering their children into quiet heaps, and packing away the remnants of cold chicken and pickles.

Til y, an expression of hopefulness on her face, piped in blithely, "So we're sitting here after al , are we? I do think we'll hear the music better. Oh, look, there's the concert master already. We'd better al sit down or we'll block the view of the people behind us."

Paolo and I took the opportunity of Til y's timely arrival to find our places on the blanket and join in the overal hushing that whispered across the lawn. Paolo took care not to sit too close to me and made space for Til y, who seemed relieved to final y be at rest.

Pip remained standing, her defeat spreading up her face. She took a half turn, looking back over her shoulder at the bench, now half-occupied by an elderly couple with cane and parasol. There was room for Pip, but it was unthinkable that she'd sit alone.

From her stance of rigid refusal, Pip crumpled into an awkward pile on the blanket. She sat as far apart from us as she could, first brushing away smal flecks of dried leaves and tiny pebbles before she arranged herself, smoothing her skirt over and over. She did not speak to us for the rest of the afternoon, not even to take a cannoli when Paolo final y opened the box during intermission.

I quickly forgot about the unpleasantness and absorbed myself in the music. In contrast to my sisters, I couldn't sit stil . I was in motion even as I sat, legs tucked under me. My hands lightly tapped out a rhythm at times on my thigh, at times on the blanket beside me. I swayed, my shoulders loose, fluid, an elixir of life running beneath my clothing, animating the dress like some puppeteer bringing a costumed marionette to life.

My fingers played the blanket like a keyboard or the strings of a guitar; my body danced; I breathed the music into my lungs and exhaled it as joyous movement.

Once or twice I glanced at Paolo, acknowledging his presence and sending him a smile of appreciation. He had chosen wel : the music wafting through the early September air, the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees, the aromas of freshly mowed grass and chrysanthemums fil ing our lungs. Not Italy, no, I can't say that it resembled closely any Sunday memory that I carried. But the afternoon held some familiarity for me, some joy, some spark that reunited me with home. Paolo had given me a smal gift by bringing me here.

CHAPTER 11

The Palace

About a year before Pip and Til y and I arrived in America, Claudio and Paolo had stumbled across a building.

It was a place nobody had wanted then—filthy, abandoned, something without any value to those who saw it only with the eyes of realists, not with the eyes of dreamers. But Claudio and Paolo were dreamers. That was why they'd come to America.

Claudio's dreams were al about money and doing better than Papa. He fled across the ocean to a land where no one knew him, no one expected something from him just because he was Felice Fioril o's oldest son—and what did he do? He bought himself a bay and a black horse and started hauling goods in a wagon, just like Papa. But before you knew it, it wasn't just one wagon, it was four. And a stable on Fourth Avenue to house the horses he picked up, one or two at a time when he had the cash. Driving al over New York, bringing the stone, the wood, the bricks that were building the city, he met people, he talked them up, he imagined the possibilities. Anything with a dol ar sign in its future, Claudio latched onto, cut himself into the deal. That was why he bought the decaying place he and Paolo named the Palace of Dreams. But Claudio was shrewd. He knew he didn't have the patience to run it once he'd created it, so he made a three-way deal

—Claudio, Paolo and Wil ie Rupert, who owned a brewery.

The Palace was a dump in the beginning, but a dump in the right place, close to the factories and the rail line.

Claudio and Paolo cleaned it up, hauling away the debris in Claudio's wagons, bringing in furniture and fixtures that Claudio was able to trade for—a chandelier to hang over the bar, even an old piano. Wil ie's brewery provided the beer. Paolo did the books and managed the place. He was usual y at the Palace every evening after he finished work as a union secretary with the IWW.

Before long, they started getting customers—the men coming off their shifts at Ward Leonard and Pioneer Watch- works, the conductors and engineers from the New Haven and Hartford Railroad, Claudio's business associates from around the city. As the whistles blew, you could hear them.

"Stop by the Palace for a round."

"Meet me at the Palace."

"Comin' to the Palace tonight, lad?"

They came for a couple of drinks and a card game, just like the men in Venticano had made their way to Auteri's every night. They unwound, looking for a little time for themselves before they plodded home. They left some of their worries on the table; they left a few dol ars, too. Soon, like everything Claudio touched, it was a success.

CHAPTER 12

The Blouse Factory

Not long after we'd arrived in Mount Vernon, Claudio got us jobs at the blouse factory over on the South Side.

Claudio's businesses were expanding, but with our three additional mouths to feed, plus his own growing family, his resentment at having to support us was mounting. It had al started with Claudio's wife. I was out sweeping the front stoop when our ignorant neighbor across the street, Carmel a Polito, leaned out her window to shake her dust mop.