Rare Objects (9 page)

“Well, I'm just glad you're here now,” Angela said, in that way she had of simply closing the door on anything difficult or unpleasant. “It's good to have you back.” Then, popping a fresh loaf of bread into a paper bag and handing it across the counter to Mr. Ventadino, she flashed me a naughty smile. “
La mia bella dai capelli biondi!
”

“
Ah, bella!
” Mr. Ventadino laughed, eyeing me up and down. “
Molto
bella!
”

The old men at the tables by the window laughed too, and Mrs. Russo rolled her eyes. “Girls!
Comportatevi bene!
”

Comportatevi bene
—Italian for “behave yourself”—was the constant refrain of our childhood. When we were together, five minutes didn't go by without Mrs. Russo saying it, usually with a rolled-up newspaper in her hand, ready to whack one or both of us on the back of the head.

Mrs. Russo turned to me, her face serious. She had a way of looking straight into your eyes, as if she could see right down into your soul. “
Come stai davvero?
”

“
Bene. Meglio
,
grazie. E tu?
” I answered.

When Mrs. Russo spoke in Italian, I knew all was forgiven.

“
Bene
,
bene
.” As she counted change and handed it to Mr. Ventadino, she shook her finger at us. “You girls need to grow up. And you!” She gave Mr. Ventadino a dark look too
.
“
Dovreste vergognarvi di voi stesso!
And how is your mother, Mae? I hope she's well.”

Mrs. Russo had the knack of switching between conversations; she could reprimand Mr. Ventadino and still set an example for her daughter of civilized manners without missing a beat.

I stepped aside so Mr. Ventadino could slink past. “She's fine, thank you.”

Mrs. Russo always asked after my mother, even though she didn't entirely approve of her. After all the years they'd known each other, theirs was nonetheless a formal acquaintance, maintained by courtesy rather than affection. I suspected it had something to do with the fact that Ma had never married again, a fundamental feeling Mrs. Russo had about the wrongness of a young widow raising a child on her own when she could have easily taken another husband and had more children. In her world, independence was an extravagance, a kind of selfishness.

In truth, I'd always been torn between Ma and the formidable Maddalena Russo. I'd spent so much time in the Russos' household growing up that she was a second mother to me—only of the more traditional variety.

Small and strong, fiercely disciplined, and certain of everything, Maddalena Russo never doubted, never questioned. She
knew
. The Russo home was strict, loud, vivid, and real. Nothing else existed nor needed to exist beyond the North End. It was an entirely self-sufficient universe. When I was younger, I used to pretend that I'd been left on the Russos' doorstep one night as a baby, and they'd adopted me as their own. It was a betrayal I couldn't resist, and my affection was transparent to everyone—including my mother.

“Is that a new hat?” Mrs. Russo nodded approvingly. “
Very
handsome!”

“It used to have a net, but it was torn . . . my mother fixed it for me.” I was babbling. “Anyway, I stopped in for a
zaletti
. I'm celebrating, you see. I got a job today.”

“Congratulations!” Angela beamed.

Pina passed a tray of fresh biscotti to her mother. “What you need is a husband!”

“Maybe I'm not the marrying type.”

Mrs. Russo clucked reprovingly. “Why do you say that? Any man would be happy to have you!”

“I don't know.”

“Of course you know!” Pina and her mother looked at each other and laughed. “Don't talk crazy!”

Reaching over, Angela handed a
zaletti
wrapped in waxed paper across to me. “I'll stop by later.”

“I'd like that.”

I tried to give her a nickel for the
zaletti
, but she wouldn't take it. “Go on, now. Tell your mother the good news.”

I lowered my voice. “I really am sorry, Ange. About missing your wedding.” I knew I'd hurt her, and I knew too that she had too much pride to let me see how much. “How was it?”

“It was lovely.”

“You should've been there.” Pina wouldn't leave us alone for a minute. “Oh, that's right! You were too busy taking notation for millionaires. One of these days, Jean Harlow, you're going to have to wake up and realize you're just like the rest of us.”

When I got home, Ma was scraping carrots in the kitchen. “Is that you, Maeve?” she called when she heard me come in.

“Who else would it be, Ma?”

“There's no need to be sarcastic. Where have you been?”

I paused in the doorway. Potatoes, onion, celery . . . she was making a stew again. There was only ever the smallest bit of beef, a cheap cut softened with the hours of slow braising. She made it last through the week, adding extra potatoes to cheat it out.

“I got the job, actually,” I told her, setting the
zaletti
down on the table with a flourish.

She stared at it; I think she'd half hoped I wouldn't get the position and then would dye my hair back. But of course work was always better than no work. “Good,” she said finally. “So, what's it like?”

“Fancy. Very posh.” I hung up my coat on the hook in the hallway, pulled off my gloves. “You know, they have a silver service there that costs as much as a house! I showed it to a woman this afternoon.”

“Did she buy it?”

“No. But only because apparently it was missing lobster tongs. Have you ever even heard of lobster tongs?”

She frowned, began paring the potatoes into quarters. “Do you get commission?”

I checked the coffeepot on the stove. “I only just got the job, Ma!”

“You should ask for commission.”

“It's just me and the old man.” I poured a cup. It had been too long brewing and was bitter and strong. I drank it anyway.

“What difference does that make?” She tossed the potatoes in the cooking pot. “A sale is a sale!”

“Yeah, well, I haven't made a sale yet.”

“And they're not going to fall into your lap!” she warned, pointing the paring knife at me. “You need to be friendly. Outgoing.”

“I
am
friendly!”

“But you're not outgoing, Maeve!” She scraped the carrots so hard one snapped in two. “You're an introvert. Even as a baby you were quiet. All that time spent in your room reading!” She shook her head. “Too much time daydreaming—that's always been your trouble! You have to make a concerted effort. You need to act like you're the hostess at a party!”

What had gotten into her today? “Didn't you hear me? I got the job!”

She stopped, wiped her hands on her apron. “Mrs. Shaw's retiring next week.”

“Does that mean . . .”

“It means they've hired a new saleswoman in Ladies Wear. And it isn't me,” she added bitterly.

Here was the crux of the matter. Unfortunately we'd been here before, and I'd exhausted my repertoire of conciliatory clichés.

“I'm sorry, Ma. You're too good at your job, that's the problem.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I had nothing left.

She stirred the stew on the stove, staring fixedly into the pot. “You're lucky. You don't realize it, but you are. You can really make something of yourself. It's too late for me. But you can be somebody.”

I didn't know what to say.

“You mustn't waste your opportunities. Do you understand?” She turned. “You can be anything you want, anything you set your mind to, Maeve. You're so clever, so much more capable than I ever was.”

“That's not true.”

But she was serious. “You mustn't fail yourself. Do you understand, Maeve? You mustn't settle.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Who's that?”

“Angela said she would stop by.”

“Angela?” Suddenly she seemed small and forlorn, caught off guard. “Tonight?”

I got up. “I'll tell her I'll see her another time.”

“No.” Yanking the strings of her apron, she pulled it off, handed it to me. “Keep an eye on dinner. I'm going to lie down.”

I poured some fresh coffee into one of my mother's Staffordshire willow-pattern teacups and passed it to Angela. “Sugar?”

“Yes, please. These are nice.” She held up her cup, admiring the delicate blue-and-white oriental design. “I've never seen these before. Where did they come from?”

“They're my mother's. A wedding gift.” I smiled. “But we only use them on special occasions.” I wanted to make things up to her.

“I'm honored!”

I sat down across from her at the kitchen table. “I'm sorry we don't have any cream.”

(In truth we never had it.)

We divided the
zaletti
in half on a plate.

“Here's to you and your new job!” Angela raised her cup.

“Here's to you and your new husband!” We took a drink, and then I asked, “So, what's it like, being married? I want to hear everything!”

“Oh, Mae!” She blushed, gave me a slightly embarrassed grin. “I don't know! It's different. I mean, from what I thought it would be like.”

“How?”

Cupping her cheek in her hand, she pretended to concentrate on stirring the sugar into her coffee. “Faster!” she whispered back with a giggle. “Seems no sooner do we close the bedroom door than . . . you know, he's on top of me!”

“Well, men are like that. You have to slow them down.”

“Mae!” She gave me a stab in the ribs. “You shouldn't know these things! And it hurt.” Her face flushed pink again. “He kept apologizing!”

“What about the rest of it? You know, the bits that happen
outside
the bedroom.”

She rolled her eyes. “I hate living at his mother's house. It's like being a bug in a glass jar; everyone knows everything you're doing all the time. But we haven't the money to move yet.”

I lit two cigarettes on the stove and passed one to her. “No one's got any money. At least he has a job.”

“Oh, he'll have more than that when he graduates from pharmacy school—he'll have his own business. We've got our eye on that corner shop on Salem Street. It would make a perfect drugstore.” She tilted her head, looking at me sideways. “What about you? How was New York?”

“Fine. Good to be home.”

Her eyes met mine. “Really?”

She could always see right through me.

I felt an awkward flush of shame, took a long drag. “Well, maybe it didn't go quite the way I planned.”

“You never answered my letters.”

“No . . . I'm really sorry about that.”

“Are you upset at me?”

The hurt in her voice pricked my conscience. “No, Angie. Not at all. I wanted to write, really I did.”

“So why didn't you?”

“I didn't want you to worry, that's all. It was hard.” I shrugged, tried to smile. “I had troubles.”

“What kind of troubles?” Her voice became stern, maternal. “What happened, Maeve?”

I wanted to tell her; I wanted to
be able
to tell her. But it was all so far away from anything she was used to, and it had been so long since we'd really spoken. Instead I grabbed at a half-truth, hoping that any confession might draw us closer again.

I inhaled. “I got in the habit of going out after work, hanging out in clubs. I guess I started to drink too much, Ange.”

“Oh, Mae!” The shock and disappointment in her face surprised me. “You mean bootleg gin?”

I knew Angela didn't approve of drinking. In fact, I'd always hidden how much I'd drunk from her, knowing she thought of it as something only men did and distinctly unladylike. Wine was the exception, but like most Italians we knew, she didn't count wine as alcohol. The homemade version her father and brothers made in the summer and kept stored in wooden barrels in the basement of the shop was sweet, fruity, and mild. Not even the police bothered to confiscate it. But still, I'd expected her to be more worldly and understanding.

“I wasn't the only one! Everyone drinks in New York,” I said,
“men, women, young, old, Park Avenue right down to a bench in Central Park! But it sort of sneaks up on you. And it does make everything messier . . .”

“Then just don't drink.”

Nothing was complicated for Angela. It was one of the things about her that I loved but also resented. Everything that was black and white for her was gray for me.

“Well, I didn't want to, not really,” I tried to explain.

“Then just don't! Honestly, Mae!” She'd run out of patience. “They put anything in that stuff! You should hear the stories Carlo tells me!” Brushing some loose crumbs off the table into her hand, she shook her head. “You really need to settle down. You're too old for that sort of foolishness.”

That was always the answer, no matter the question. If only I would settle down, behave myself. When we were younger, it was a reprimand leveled at both of us. But Angela had since become the model daughter, sister, and now wife. I was alone in my delinquency.

Tears welled up in my eyes. She was right, of course, and I suppose exhaustion and the stress of the day had gotten to me.

I started to cry, something I hadn't done in almost a year. “I'm so sorry about the wedding! About everything! I'm really sorry I let you down.”

I hate crying; I'd rather be caught naked than with tears on my face.

Angela put her hand over mine. “I just think if you stopped running around and got married you'd be better off,” she said gently.

I wanted to laugh, but couldn't muster it. “Believe me, no one wants to marry me now!”

“Mickey did. Remember? Probably still does,” she added hopefully.