The Queen of the Big Time (27 page)

“Why?”

“It was Franco’s decision.”

“Was it because of me?”

I nod that it was.

“I was afraid of that. I should have discussed it with him. The first Sunday you weren’t in the pew.”

“No, no, that’s a bad idea.”

Renato goes behind his desk and sits down. I can’t look at him. Still. I am fine when I don’t see him, and completely at peace when I don’t think about him.

“Did I do something to offend him?”

I shake my head. “No. I did.”

“You did what? You offended him? How?”

“You know, there’s that concept in our faith …” I begin.

“Yes?”

“…  that love never dies.”

“It doesn’t,” Renato says plainly, clearly not yet understanding what I’m trying to tell him.

“That’s what my husband believes. And that’s why we go to St. Elizabeth’s.”

“Ridiculous.” Renato throws up his hands as the full meaning of my words finally sinks in. It reminds me of the day he got impatient with me when we were reading aloud and I couldn’t pronounce the Latin properly. “To change your home parish over something that happened years ago … I don’t understand.”

Now I do. Renato is completely resolved on the subject. Even though the strings to the past are delicate, I am the only one holding on to them. My husband knows me better than I know myself sometimes.

I hear a thump outside the office door. With my luck, Mrs. Stampone is listening; soon my business will be carried from house to house like a milk delivery. I stand and tuck my purse under my arm. Renato stands. I look him in the eyes, still the same intensity, the same blue, but now they hold a different regard for me. Now almost forty, Renato has the dynamic confidence that comes with experience. In a sense, it makes him more alluring. His quick temper and bombastic opinions are gone, replaced with a quiet and dignified calm that makes him a true leader. Under his leadership, the parishioners have built a primary school and a convent for the Salesian nuns who will run the school. This fall he will break ground for a Catholic high school, to be built across the street from the church plaza. He is working on building a hospital in town. He is tireless when it comes to community activisim. Like Father DeNisco before him, he has rallied the people of Roseto and brought out their ambition and their generosity. He is determined to make the town expand and grow. And yet, when I look at him, I see a poet. “This job suits you, Renato.”

“Just as yours must suit you. You are as beautiful as ever.”

His comment takes me aback. It is inappropriate, and yet I longed for it. I always want to know what he thinks of me, even if it’s years later and a lifetime ago. “Thank you,” I whisper.

I leave without saying good-bye, not to him and not to Mrs. Stampone, who dusts the windowsill outside his office. And finally, I bow my head in sincere prayer.
Please, God, bring Franco home soon
.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
o the left, Franco! To the left!” I shout from the ground to my husband on a ladder. “It’s too high.” Franco drops the sign, which swings from two chain links, about five inches lower. “Perfect!” I call up, shielding my eyes from the sun. I fish into my pocket for my sunglasses. When I put them on I look up and see
NELLA MANUFACTURING COMPANY, EST.
1945 in perfect white script on a vivid red background.

“What do you think?” Franco asks as he descends the ladder and joins me on the ground.

“I think we should have called it Zollerano’s Manufacturing Company.”

“Too cumbersome. Besides, I like to be reminded who I’m working so hard for.” Franco puts his arm around my waist and kisses my cheek.

Just as we planned, as soon as Franco got home, the First National Bank of Bangor, Pennsylvania, gave us a business loan to start our own mill. Freddie Jenkins was furious, and angrier still when nearly all the machine operators came to work for us. He ended up closing his Roseto
mill, but since he opened three more in Jersey, the Jenkins family fortune is secure.

Frankie, now twelve, and Celeste, six, are thrilled with the mill. Papa is home to greet them after school, and Franco’s mother will often make them dinner on nights when we’re late with shipping. The headaches from the new mill are the same ones we had at Jenkins’s but at least they’re
our
headaches. Our first order comes from our old friends the Rosenbergs, who have done beautifully with the Hollywood blouses. We go into production on the Jennifer Jones, a white cotton blouse with a breast pocket embossed with an embroidered horse. This one should sell like mad.

“Aunt Nell, I really need your help,” Assunta says when she stops by the new mill. She looks so much like her mother at this age that often Elena and I forget it’s 1945 and think we’re back on Delabole farm. Assunta is tall and slim, with her mother’s black eyes and pale skin. She even has the same crease between her eyes. But Elena’s influence on little Assunta is apparent. She has largesse and kindness. She has her mother’s feistiness, but none of her bad temper.

“Father Lanzara asked me to run for queen of the Big Time,” she continues.

“Well, you know we already think you’re a queen,” I say.

She laughs. “I know, Aunt Nella. But this is a different thing. I get to wear a crown and put one on the Blessed Lady. It’s a big deal.”

“I know it is. And it has been since I was a little girl. Who else is running?”

“Elisabetta Sartori. Her parents are Enzo and Caterina, they have a farm in Totts Gap. And Ellie Montagano.”

“Her?” I remember the bratty little girl with the ringlets.

“She really wants to win. Mostly to beat me, I think.”

“Well, what would beating Ellie Montagano involve?” I ask.

“Raising money, lots and lots of money,” my husband says as he comes through the office door. I look up at him from my desk. He
wears a T-shirt and work pants, and his hands are covered in grease. “The Holy Roman Church Incorporated needs lots of dollars.”

“Don’t touch anything, Franco.” I hand him a rag and ignore his comments. “What do you call that tithe you put in the basket every Sunday at St. Elizabeth’s?”

“Fire insurance.” My husband shrugs. At thirty-seven, he still has the same strong arms and neck, but his hair has tiny flecks of white.

“Well, will you help me run?” Assunta asks us both.

“Absolutely. But if you’re going to run, you have to work hard. A Castelluca-Pagano cannot lose,” I tell her.

“I wouldn’t worry, Assunta.” My husband laughs. “You’d be the first Castelluca to lose. They’re a determined bunch.”

At the end of the day, when we’ve counted the tickets and posted the numbers, Franco and I go through the factory turning off the lights.

“Did you get the finishing room?” I call out to him.

“Yeah, hon.” He flips the lights and comes through the main room. I stand and look all around.

“Thank you, Franco. I love our mill.” I put my arms around his neck. “I love you more, but I love our mill.” I know he feels the same way. He loves our independence as much as I do.

Franco kisses me and reaches for the light switch of the main room. He pulls me down on a pile of silk blouses on their way to finishing. He unbuttons my work smock and finds his way to my blouse, kissing me as he goes. I laugh and pull him close. “This is against the rules.”

“It’s your mill. Change the rules,” he says as he slides on top of me.

“What about the Gene Tierneys?” I whisper.

“I don’t think she’ll mind.” He kisses my ears, then my neck.

When Franco was gone during the war, I tried to remember each and every time we’d made love. I didn’t want to forget a single detail about our life together.

“How’s this?” he says as he lifts me on top of him.

“It’s better than a hay ride.”

Franco laughs, and there is no sweeter sound in Nella Manufacturing Company.

We take my niece Assunta’s campaign for queen of the Big Time door-to-door. Once we’ve covered Roseto, we take the campaign to West Bangor, Bangor, Martins Creek, Pen Argyl, and Flicksville. Every night after work, we load up the car with my sisters, Assunta, and a stack of tickets and fan out in the neighborhoods, covering two blocks at a time. We don’t forget the farmers either, making sure we stop in Wind Gap and Stone Church. I can’t imagine that Assunta’s competition has the kind of manpower that we do. My sisters are as determined as I am to sell every ticket.

I push the kitchen screen door open, exhausted from another night of fund-raising. My dinner waits on the stove for me.

“Don’t you think you’re going a little overboard with this queen competition? I’m starting to think you want to win more than Assunta,” Franco says over his glasses as he reads the paper at our kitchen table.

“You don’t understand.” I turn the heat up on the pan of pasta fagioli on the stove.

“You’re right. I don’t understand. Why is it so important that Assunta win this thing?”

“Franco, you didn’t grow up on the farm. You grew up on Garibaldi Avenue,
in town
. When I came to Roseto to visit, I never felt a part of it. When I went to school it began to change, but then I had to quit and go to work. I remember when I was a girl, and I’d stand outside Marcella’s, and in my head I’d do the math, figuring out how much I’d have to save up to buy my family a box of cream puffs.”

“I didn’t grow up with money either.”

“It’s not about the money, it’s about being recognized. When I was a girl, my sisters and I never thought we’d be a part of the Big Time celebration. We walked in the back of the procession with everyone
else to say the rosary; we were never invited to be on the court or carry the banner for the sodality or march with the schoolkids.”

“So you have something to prove?”

“To myself. I want a Castelluca to go from Delabole farm to Roseto’s queen of the Big Time in one generation. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

My husband smiles and goes back to his paper. I spoon the pasta fagioli into a dish and sit down and eat. The Castellucas may have come a long way in a short amount of time, but we still eat pasta and beans on Friday night.

Assunta puts her heart into the final week of fund-raising. The competition is so fierce this year, I take a stack of tickets to our buyers in New York. Franco can’t believe that I’d cross the state line to raise money for Assunta’s campaign. The Rosenbergs are happy to help and sell them in the Garment District to their vendors and friends. They have no problem supporting our cause, even though the proceeds will go to our Catholic church. “Good deeds are good deeds,” Sid Rosenberg tells me when he takes the tickets. We’re sure their efforts will help put Assunta over the top.

I’m too nervous to go to the church hall for the counting of the proceeds, so I stay home and wait for a call. How thrilled I am when Assunta calls to tell me that she has won.

The only awkward part of winning queen is that the girls you competed against become your princesses. Elisabetta Sartori, a beautiful girl with long blond hair and deep brown eyes, was a good sport, though her mother, having been denied that front-row seat, was not. Ellie Montagano, small and round like her mother, was very polite on the surface, while her mother had dredged up stories about our family in order to derail Assunta’s campaign. Franco encouraged me to let it go (after all, the Rosenbergs put Assunta in the black and in the big crown, so why quibble?). The rest of Assunta’s court includes Rosemary Filingo, Angela Martocci, Grace DelGrosso, Mary Jo Martino, Giuseppina Bozelli, Lucy Communale, Monica Spadoni, Laura
Viglione, Helen Bartron, Violet Stampone, Kitty Romano, Rosina Roma, Rosemarie Gigliotti, and Eva and Angela Palermo.

“Mama?” Celeste comes into my room.

“Honey, hurry. We have to take Assunta’s gown to her.” I look up from my sewing; the final fitting required two additional darts in the waist.

“Is this right?” Celeste turns around in her costume. She is one of Assunta’s flower girls.

“Where are your leotards?”

“I don’t have any. I’m gonna wear anklets.”

“You can’t wear anklets.”

“That’s all I have.”

“Oh, Celeste.” I put the gown on the bed and go into Celeste’s room. I rifle through her drawer until I find the package of white leotards. “Here. Hurry.”

I go back into my room and cover Assunta’s gown with a sheet. Franco and Frankie wait outside. Frankie, against his will, is a page. He wears satin knickers and a hat with a plume.

“Where’s Celeste?” Franco asks.

I turn around, but she’s not behind me. “That girl.” I hand over Assunta’s dress and go back in the house. “Celeste?” I call up impatiently. She doesn’t answer. I go up the stairs. “Celeste, what is the problem?” I push her door open. She is struggling with the leotards. “Here, let me,” I tell her, yanking them up over her knees and up to her waist.

We take Chestnut Street over to Dewey, as Garibaldi Avenue has been sealed off for the parade.

“There’s gonna be a big crowd,” Frankie says as he looks out the window. “And I have to wear this stupid hat.”

“It’s very regal,” I tell him. “Be a good sport.”

When we get to Dewey Street, we jump out of the car with the dress. Assunta is inside, waiting in her slip.