The Queen of the Big Time (32 page)

“Thank you,” Renato says to me as we face each other. The moon must be closer to the land in Italy, because it’s so bright outside it’s like blue daylight. I wish it weren’t so, but Renato is still as dashing and handsome as he was in his youth. How difficult it is when you’re young to think about being old. When it finally happens, you can’t believe it. But we have not changed, not really. I am still trying to let go, and Renato is as elusive a priest as he was a poet.

“You never told me …”

“What?” he says after a long pause, searching my face.

“Why you left me.”

Renato takes a moment and looks away. “I was afraid.”

“Afraid I’d gobble you up and make you work in a mill?”

“No.” Renato looks over my shoulder and off into the distance. “I left you before you could leave me.”

Renato leans down and kisses me on the cheek. He turns to go, and while I want to stop him, I don’t. Now that I understand Renato, I don’t need him to stay. He belongs out there in the world doing the thing he loves, and I have to invent a new life alone. If only I had known to treasure my moments with Franco. If only I had known the first day he loaned me his handkerchief that the clock was ticking. Alas, I didn’t hear it.

Celeste’s fingernails dig into me, making small half-moon impressions on my hands. “Push, honey, you can do it, push!” My Celeste is having her first baby in Easton Hospital. Giovanni is outside in the waiting room with the other nervous fathers. I came as soon as I heard she was in labor. As the contractions came faster and faster, my daughter grabbed my hand and said, “Stay.”

The doctor is not happy that I am here. But when I saw that my daughter wanted me, it would have taken killing me to break me away from her. No woman should be alone at this moment, and if at all possible, her mother should be with her. After Assunta died, Mama made sure she was with each of her girls when she gave birth. This modern doctor is not going to keep me from my daughter. “I’m here, honey. I’ll never leave you,” I tell her.

Celeste is a trouper; she pushes for close to an hour. Then the moment comes. Celeste pushes, then cries out; her belly ripples like the surf of the ocean, and out with another mighty push the baby appears. “It’s a girl!” I holler.

The nurses move in and take her, doing a thousand routine things in a matter of moments. “How is she?” Celeste asks.

“Perfect. Just perfect.” I hold Celeste’s hand and wipe her face with a damp cloth; for an instant, I remember Assunta and her terrible, fateful moment. Not so for my daughter; she is rosy and beaming, as though she just came back from an exhilarating hike up a mountain. The nurse gives Celeste her daughter. Celeste cries as she holds her. “She’s so beautiful. Isn’t she, Ma?”

“Like you were. Just like you were,” I tell her.

“I’m going to call her Francesca. For Papa. Okay?”

I can’t help it. I cry. Celeste looks up at me.

“I love you, Celeste,” I tell her.

“I love you too, Mama,” she whispers. “And you, Francesca.”

Who knew it would take the birth of my granddaughter for me to understand faith? I never had it, but now I see it in her. Even giving birth to my own children did not move me to this place—only the face of my granddaughter. Maybe because she is part of me without being the hardware of me; that makes me see faith in a context. All faith is a belief that life is meant to be, and that beyond it, we never die. We go on and on and on. Francesca has only been here for a moment, but she has given us all an everlasting gift.

I check my watch as I close my front door to walk up Garibaldi to Mary Bert’s, Roseto’s best and only diner. As I walk up the street, I see that little has changed since I was a girl. Our town is still mostly Italian, though we now have one Greek family of candy makers. Our Lady of Mount Carmel still sits at the top of the hill like a castle; the nearby schools give our town a youthful energy. My friend Barbara Renaldo always says, “Roseto is now for the newly wed or the nearly dead.” Sometimes I think she’s right.

“Over here, Auntie!” My niece Assunta waves from the back booth. She kisses me as I sit down.

“So, tell me about the wedding plans.”

“I know it’s corny, but I want Francesca to be my flower girl. I’m not
having any other attendants. Just her,” Assunta tells me over coffee. “For crying out loud, I’m forty-one years old, I should elope! Fanfare is for youngsters.”

“Oh, please. Go for the trumpets and the rose petals and the rice. You deserve a beautiful wedding. And take it from your old aunt who’s fifty-six: forty-one is damn young.”

Assunta throws her head back and laughs. “It took Michael eleven years to pop the question. Schoolteachers, and I include myself in this generalization, are slow learners.”

“But eventually you get it right. That’s why God invented erasers, don’t forget it.”

“Sorry I’m late.” Elena joins us at the table. My sister is heavier than she was when she got married, but she still has the same sweet countenance. “Did you tell Aunt Nella about the Hotel Bethlehem?”

Assunta turns to me. “We booked it. Ma, you got the small room, right?”

“The President’s whatever it’s called …” Elena hands her the brochure. How natural it is to hear Assunta call Elena “Ma.”

“I want everybody there, Aunt Dianna, Aunt Roma, all the cousins. I want to do something special to honor Nonna and Grandpop.”

On a bright and perfect morning, April 26, 1966, Assunta Maria Pagano marries Michael Castigliano at Our Lady of Mount Carmel before a small but happy group of family and friends. She asked my parents to precede her and Alessandro down the aisle. They were so honored to be a part of the wedding processional.

How proud I am of my niece, a schoolteacher at our parish high school, Pius X, and now a new bride. My four-year-old granddaughter, Francesca, drops her rose petals on cue, and watches the service with rapt attention.

Papa and Mama dance at the Hotel Bethlehem until the orchestra calls it quits. They are back in Roseto for the summer, splitting their time between Italy and Pennsylvania, as they have done since Papa
retired. They would not think of missing the annual Big Time at the end of July.

“Papa, I have an idea,” I tell him over breakfast the next morning. “Your tenants are leaving Delabole farm.”

“We can’t keep anybody out there. What’s the matter with people? I’ll tell you what. Nobody wants to work like that anymore,” Papa grouses.

“I’d like to move out there.”

“What? All your life you wanted to live in town.”

“I know, but I’ve had enough. I miss the quiet,” I say.

“What about the mill?” he asks.

“The Menecolas made me an offer.”

“A good one?”

“The best I’ll get. I want to take it. I want to sell this house and move back home to Delabole farm. I’d like you and Mama to live out there with me, too, if you’d like. What do you think?”

Papa smiles. I can see that he wants to go home. “It’s what Mama thinks that counts.”

The farmhouse needs an overhaul, so I take a little money and have the wiring redone and the whole place painted. It needs a new furnace, so I put that in too. The bathroom was never big enough, so we renovate and put in one of those deep, four-legged tubs like Uncle Domenico had in Italy. My parents are so happy to move back in. We put everything where it used to be, and we laugh about where the television set should go. We never had those worries when I was a girl.

The creek by the front gate still gurgles; it’s not as deep as it once was, but the stones in the water still glitter like coins. When I walk the fields collecting dandelion leaves for salad, and yank Queen Anne’s lace to fill the vases, I think of Assunta and how she loved nice things. The old barn needs some shoring up, but with the cows gone, it’s just an old red monument to what we used to be around here.

With a nice cushion in the bank, I can be a full-time grandmother,
running to Allentown whenever I wish to be with Francesca. Sometimes I go to Jersey and spend the night with Frankie and his wife, Patricia (they have two sons, Frankie the Third and Salvatore, for Papa). Patricia is of Welsh descent, and I couldn’t ask for a better daughter-in-law. When my son gives her trouble, she teases him and lets him know that she’s a Johnny Bull.

I am so happy that my parents have a secure old age. They have Italy in the winter and their girls back home the rest of the year. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have brought them pride and peace, both of which they richly deserve after a lifetime of hard work and caring for their daughters.

I had new soil brought in to cover the strawberry field where Mama and my sisters and I used to pick berries. I’ve made a garden of tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, and basil; when the fall comes, I grow pumpkins. I love getting up early in the morning like I used to when I ran the mill. I make my
gabagule
, eat a crusty slice of bread with butter, and head out to weed and hoe and water as the sun comes up.

I still analyze the sun just as Papa taught me to do when I was girl, taking every hue and slight change as a signal: pink sun for planting, yellow sun for picking, always trusting it, as all good farmers do, to bring the right amount of light and warmth to the garden. It is a wonder to me as I grow older that living things, small living things like the plants I grow, and the stray mutt that came to stay (we named him Rex), show me how to live. Like Rex, I rest a lot, and like the plants in my garden, I press on.

I miss my husband more as the years go by, not less. It’s a secret we widows share. I still pat his side of the bed expecting to find him there, and imagine what his kisses would feel like now. In memory they are so sweet, I can taste them. I miss his skin, especially when I buried my head in his neck, which smelled of vanilla and thyme. I never forget how lucky I was to be his wife, and how hopeful I am that I will see him again. I try not to be greedy. I had him for twenty-seven years, and that’s a nice stretch of road.

S
unlight streams into Our Lady of Mount Carmel through the stained-glass windows, throwing a gold hue over the Communion railing. Four altar boys prepare the church for the funeral Mass. It is a warm April day, so they prop open the windows, stack the prayer books, and place programs on the end of each pew.

Two ladies from the sodality lift starched white linens out of a long dress box and carefully place them on the altar. The florist arrives from the back of the church carrying a large crystal vase of three dozen long-stemmed white roses. The arrangement is so lush, he has to peek through the bouquet to see where he is going. Two of his workers follow with identical vases overflowing with roses. The sodality ladies take the flowers, placing two vases behind the altar and one at the foot of it.

“Somebody should ask Father about the candles,” an altar boy says to the sodality volunteer.

“I’ll take care of it.” The woman goes behind the altar to the sacristy, where she finds the priest sitting in his vestments, with his face in his hands. “Excuse me, Father?”

The priest looks up. “Yes?”

“The altar boys want to know about the candles.”

“They can go ahead and light them,” he tells her.

Father Lanzara looks in the small mirror on the wall and shakes his head. He is close to seventy, but his blue eyes still have the sparkle of a much younger man. He looks around the sacristy he knows so well: the closet with the crisply pressed vestments, the wooden bench under the window, the statue of the Blessed Lady on the sill. He opens his well-worn leather prayer book and reads. He can hear the shuffle of the mourners as they take their seats in the church. They are expecting a standing-room-only service. He hears the sweet strains of a violin and smiles sadly. There is a knock at the door.

“Father, I don’t know if you remember me …” Celeste Zollerano Melfi extends her hand. Tall and slim, the brunette has familiar brown eyes, large and almond-shaped.

“You’re Nella’s daughter.” Father looks at Celeste and sees Nella in her countenance and expression. He has to look away.

“I found something I think Mama would want you to have.” Celeste gives Father Lanzara a letter. He looks down at it and recognizes his own handwriting. “It was in her jewelry box.”

Father nods his head and puts the letter in his prayer book.

“There was one other thing in the jewelry box … this poem.” She gives him the faded folded paper. “I don’t remember Mama ever reading it to me, but it was there, alongside your letter, so I was hoping you would know what it meant.”

“I’ll look at it,” he promises.

The altar boy pushes the door open. “Father, Mr. Fiori sent me. The hearse is outside.” Father takes a moment to remember that time has passed. The John Fiori he knew as a boy is long gone. The current one is his grandson.

The mention of the hearse makes Celeste cry. She buries her face in her hands. Father Lanzara comforts her. “She loved you with all her heart,” he tells her.

“I know,” Celeste says, and, pulling herself together, she goes.

Father Lanzara opens the letter. When he reads the words, his words, written in his own hand, telling Nella that he could no longer see her, he cries. He tucks it in his prayer book. Then he unfolds the poem, in a handwriting he does not recognize. The familiar words of a Yeats poem—“When you are old …”—are written in perfect Palmer penmanship. He never read this poem to Nella, but it must have had some significance to her. He puts on his sash over his robe, picks up his prayer book, and goes, closing the door of the sacristy behind him. He follows the altar boy, who waits for him, out the back of the church and to the street.