Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (25 page)

Some minutes later, he opened his eyes, stood, and straightened his collar. “I think I’ll go home to Olivia,” he announced. “Do you think she’ll be pleased to see me in the middle of the day, Miss D’Angelo?” I nodded, perplexed by the sudden bustle. “If you have questions, Mr. Wells is quite capable. You know the poem by Robert Burns: ‘My Luve’s like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June’?”

“Yes, sir, we learned it in school.” Years ago, it seemed, my work was books and poems. Now it was ledgers and numbers and worry for the workers whose children would never go to school.

“A lovely poem. I believe I’ll bring my Olivia a red rose. Good day to you, Miss D’Angelo.” I could barely fix on my work then, thinking of Olivia, who had been loved so well and for so long.

A week later, as we were closing, Mr. Kinney called the staff together. The store was ending, he said simply, as if announcing a new line of shirtwaists. The inventory would be sold to Higbee’s, which had also bought the building. We stared at him, stiff as statues. What about us?

Mr. Kinney smiled, even rubbed his hands. “I’ve arranged posts in other establishments for every one of you, similar to those you now hold so capably. When Mr. Wells hands out your pay envelopes, you’ll find two weeks’ salary in lieu of notice as well as your new position, should you choose to accept it. Mrs. Kinney and I will be moving to our lake house in Ashtabula, where we’ll be happy to receive you as visitors. Now I must go home. Good evening. I thank you all for your faithful service and wish you well.” And then he was gone, never looking back. Even Mr. Wells was stunned as he handed out our envelopes.

“I didn’t know anything,” he answered each query. “The old man never said a word. But look in your envelopes. I’m sure he told us the truth.”

“Miss D’Angelo,” said a note in Mr. Kinney’s elegant hand, “Your position is in the accounts department of Printz-Biederman. In light of your high school diploma and other estimable qualities, Mr. Printz has agreed to pay a dollar above your present salary. Please give my best regards to your mother. Yours respectfully, Herman Kinney.”

We lingered in the stockroom, comparing notes in our envelopes until four gentlemen from Higbee’s came to take inventory with a small army of clerks and hurried us out of the building. The door was locked behind us.

In the days
before my new job began, I decided to spend a Sunday by Lake Erie and managed to persuade Mamma to come with me. She leaned against a tree, wrapped in the burgundy coat. Her face mirrored the water’s heavy calm. “Are you tired?” I asked. She shook her head, never turning her gaze from the lake. At least she nearly smiled as I set out our lunch from Catalano’s: provolone and salami, crusty bread, paper cones of fava beans, and the salty black olives she loved. When an afternoon chill skimmed over the water and I was packing our basket to leave, my mother walked along to the water’s edge, trailing a murmured wisp of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

I stopped, so happy to hear her voice again, but when I turned, she fell silent. Still, she
had
been singing.

I visited Dr. Ricci, who agreed that her willingness to go to the lake, the almost-smile, and the bit of song were positive signs, but not, alas, indicative of significant healing. Another matter troubled him. “Lucia, there is much bitter talk now in newspapers and Congress and even great universities of ‘deficients’ arriving from Southern Europe.”

“Deficients, sir?”

“Immigrants such as ourselves.” Dr. Ricci adjusted the drape of his fine wool trousers across his knee. “Apparently we bear ‘germ plasma’ which might infect pure American stock. ‘Scientific study’ shows us disposed to insanity. Many insist the condition is hereditary, even if there is little evidence for this claim. There is talk that this germ plasma must be removed from the healthy population.”

His words rang in my head like a leaden gong. “Removed—”

“We must do what is necessary to keep your mother at home.”

Fear churned through me. “How? What else can I do?”

“Talk to her as you have been, even if she makes no response. Treat her as one who
could
be healed. Encourage useful work.” Feeble counters to the threats around us.

Dr. Ricci asked about her color and appetite, hygiene, the few words she said, what she cooked, and how she behaved around Giovanna. “Her condition has not worsened,” he concluded. “We should be grateful for this. More I can’t say.”

Discouraged and anxious, I made my way home. Mamma was staring out the window. In a pale rose shawl, she seemed to fade into the wallpaper. “Mamma, can we talk?” I pleaded, but she pushed me away like a bothersome cat. “You
must
get better, Mamma. I can’t afford a sanitarium.” No response. I recited a happy sonnet, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Nothing. I talked about the union: “You remember how factory work made you feel like a machine? How bad the pay was?” Nothing. I mentioned the “services” Mr. Stingler demanded. She glared and then looked away. Finally: “I want to help the workers. And I want to go to college when you’re better. I want you to sing again, Mamma, and smile and hold me.”

She didn’t move, and I couldn’t be still, head-clogged with all that I wanted. That evening, when the frantic cleaning began, Giovanna said she’d be up late making hats and could watch Mamma. So I became the nightwalker, trying to beat out dark fears with the tread of my shoes. I passed families sitting outside in the spring air and boys playing marbles by streetlight. What did they know of germ plasma or deficients? I came home near midnight and sat on our front steps as a half-moon rose and the last streetcars rattled off. A couple passed, laughing, turned a corner, and disappeared. In that warm spring night with maple leaves unfurled against a violet sky, blood pounded in my head and I vowed to make my place in America, even while I kept my mother safe.

“W
HAT’S WRONG WITH ME?
”

Yolanda arranged for
her second child to be baptized in May, just after Giovanna and Frank’s wedding, so guests from Cleveland could attend both ceremonies. If we wanted to come early, Yolanda’s letter said, she’d find a friend to host us. “It would be like a vacation.”

Vacanza.
I stared at Yolanda’s rolling script. “We can’t even go for the ceremonies,” I told Roseanne. “It’s impossible. Yolanda and Giovanna will understand.”

Roseanne shook her head. “No they won’t. They’re your friends. You can’t give them up just because your mother’s sick.”
Just because!
Did Roseanne live in this house and not know how much I was already giving up?

Still, I asked Dr. Ricci for his advice. “It is a risk,” he agreed. “However, these would be pleasant occasions with no demands on her.” In the end, he said I should try. We would go and return on Sunday; Mamma should take a stronger dose of laudanum, and I’d have the name of a Youngstown doctor in case of “disturbance.” I must choose front seats on the train and aisle seats in church so she didn’t feel surrounded by strangers. “You both deserve a happy day,” he said earnestly. Yes, I determined. I would somehow
make
us a happy day.

The morning started badly. I had chosen a plaid shirtwaist from Kinney’s and had laid out for my mother a navy blue walking suit she wore in Chicago. Instead, she rummaged through her trunk for a flounced crimson gown from the stage, gaudy and low-cut, ripped in the back, with a rim of grime at the hem.

“You can’t wear this; it’s dirty and not right for a wedding,” I protested.

“Nobody sees!”

“It’s a
church,
Mamma, not a show! People will talk.”

She stomped on the floor until Roseanne came.

“Lucia, let her wear what she wants. If people don’t know she’s not right, they will soon enough.” Roseanne and I sewed up the rips and arranged a shawl to cover the gown’s worst indiscretions.

At least our train was nearly empty. In the foggy cool of the Youngstown station, Mamma seemed calm enough. She carried our presents: a linen tablecloth for Giovanna’s new home, a stuffed Teddy Roosevelt bear for little Charlie, and
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
for Maria Margaret, so she wouldn’t feel neglected in the celebrations.

At the baptism, guests studiously ignored Mamma’s gown. Even Mrs. Reilly said politely: “Good day to you, Mrs. D’Angelo,” gathering from Mamma’s clenched fists that she would shake no hands. The kindly circumspection brought me to tears.

“I know just how you feel, dear,” Frank’s mother whispered. “I always cry at baptisms and even more at weddings. See?” She opened her purse, filled with snowy handkerchiefs.

The priest made much of the confluence of sacraments, the purpose of holy matrimony being the creation of Catholic children to be raised in the loving cradle of sanctified union. Little Charlie squalled. When ripples of laughter passed through our crowd, Mamma gripped my arm. Was she overcome with emotion like Frank’s mother, grieving that a sanctified union was so far from her life, or simply afraid of the crowd? “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I’m right here.”

Frank and Charlie had arranged for lunch in a dining hall overlooking the Mahoning River, strangely colored from the mills and stinking slightly, but moving water at least. I settled my mother in a chair by the window, where she sat immobile for so long that when she finally stood up, Frank’s little niece shrieked.

Someone calmed the child, and I brought Mamma to the table, talking softly in a way that sometimes calmed her. “Let’s eat,” I urged. “See? It’s an Italian-American feast.” The pairings were Yolanda’s gift to Charlie’s parents: pasta, chipped beef, eggplant Parmesan, and boiled potatoes. Giovanna was beautiful that day, beaming with happiness.

“Are you next to marry, Lucia? Do you have a fella?” many women asked, although some, watching Mamma rearrange her food in angry jerks, put on sympathetic smiles and swerved the talk to Yolanda’s good fortune in having two healthy children, one of them a boy. Yes, I agreed, she was indeed fortunate. When jealousy washed over me, I reminded myself of even worse cases that Dr. Ricci described: the violent, cruel, or depraved afflicted. This wasn’t a Greek tragedy, I reminded myself, only a common case of insanity.

“Oh dear,” someone said. I spun my head toward Mamma. The waiter was collecting plates. She had jerked hers from his hand, scattering food on the tablecloth. When he edged away, she folded her arms in apparent triumph. There were small children who behaved better, I thought grimly as I gathered scraps while she stared out the window.

Before the wedding cake, talk turned to work: the long factory hours and how fines and rising costs of thread and renting their machines ate away at women’s salaries. There was whispered mention of “services” bosses demanded of pretty girls.

“My wife will
never
work for strangers,” announced Frank, draping his arm around Giovanna. Her face lit with relief. After the Lentz fire, the heaped bodies and burned flesh, why would she want to work?

“Strikes only bring strikebreakers, and then the workers always lose,” Frank’s brother announced.

“That’s not true!” I said loudly. “After the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union struck last year, the workers have a shorter week, more pay,
and
better conditions.” Charlie repeated this loudly to his father, who swiveled his heavy head toward me and seemed to smile.

“
I
heard,” Yolanda interrupted, “that Little Stingler’s marrying into the Union Salt Company. Her daddy’s men mine salt, and he grinds it into gold. She and Little Stingler can eat chocolates while they’re counting money.” Everyone laughed. Mamma scowled and stamped her feet. I glanced a warning at Yolanda, who deftly brought the conversation to the kindness of Mrs. Halle and the funny hats that little Maria Margaret made from scraps around the house.

All talk of strikes and bosses ceased when the cake arrived. Now came toasts, cheers, and songs in Irish, Italian, and American. “You could sing, Mamma,” I whispered. Wasn’t it still possible that
somewhere,
perhaps in this dining hall by the Mahoning, was a bridge back to her other life? Wine must have gone to my head, for I kept pressing, even using her gown as a prop: “See, Mamma, you’re dressed for the stage. Sing whatever you want, English or Italian. People will love it.” She looked at me as if I’d unaccountably spoken a foreign tongue. And I had: the language of those who believe in magical cures.

Mamma didn’t sing. She did eat the cake. Hunched over, she crammed it into her mouth as if to punish me. Icing smeared her face and fell into the folds of her shawl. “Mamma! Stop it!” I whispered. When I tried to ease the plate away, she snatched it back.

“Mine!” she snarled. By now the room was watching us.

“Look how that lady eats!” Frank’s niece demanded shrilly. “Like a monkey in the zoo.”

“Hush,” her mother hissed. “She’s sick.” In the silence someone started “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” and at last the many eyes swung away from us.

Mamma stopped eating and began winding a napkin between her fingers, making intricate loops. “You could have her knit,” said Yolanda behind me. “She might enjoy it.” Mamma “enjoying” something seemed far-fetched. “Try,” she persisted. “Yarn doesn’t cost much.”

Frank stood up. “For my beautiful new wife,” he announced. The swinging melody of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” Giovanna’s blushing pleasure, and the smiles around the table could have made a nickelodeon show: “The Wedding Dinner.” But I wasn’t an actor in that show.

Suddenly Mamma scraped back her chair and stood facing Frank, who affably ceded the floor. “Ladies and gentlemen, I bow to the Naples Nightingale.” The room fell silent as Mamma’s shoulders drooped and her arms unbent. The modest black shawl slithered to the floor, revealing her gaudy dress. Rips and stains I hadn’t seen in the morning dimness of my room were now in glaring evidence. She didn’t sing “Harvest Moon” or any Italian song or tune from her vaudeville repertoire. Horrified, I recognized “The Bee That Gets the Honey Doesn’t Hang Around the Hive.” Parents moved uncomfortably, trying to distract their children as she pointed in apparent warning to Yolanda and Giovanna. Then her arms bent, and the fingers, spread wide, cupped her breasts.