Her mama paused for a moment and stared out the window.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Mama. “Maybe this is best handled between us. We’ll think of something. We’ll put an end to this, I promise,” she wrapped her arms around her daughter and hugged her tightly.
“But for now, keep yourself clear of him as much as you can,” her mother said gravely, and then, with the sparkle suddenly back in her eyes, “and put some lye in his underwear next time you do the laundry. Then you can smile to yourself as you watch him squirm all day.”
“Mama!” Catarina laughed and gave her mother one last squeeze. It felt good to have her back on her side. She had felt alone when her mother hadn’t understood before.
“Now go.” She made a motion to push Catarina upstairs. “Rest before dinner.”
When the family was seated at the long, dark wooden dinner table, Catarina could feel her father’s eyes on her. She glanced through the window at the vine-covered hills in the twilight, then back at her father. Each time she looked up, his intent gaze was focused on her face. Had her mother said something about Signor Carlucci after all? Catarina hoped not.
Then she noticed her mother shooting her father secret looks as she passed the eggplant, and Catarina sensed a certain frisson. She gazed at a crack in the plaster on the wall while she tried to calm herself, then she gave her mama a look that said, “Why did you tell him?” but her mother had barely shaken her head when her father cleared his throat, effectively silencing the boisterous conversation going on among Mateo and Catarina’s sisters and their husbands who were trading good-natured barbs at the far end of the dining table.
“We’ve had a letter from America,” he said, puffed up and full of importance. Catarina felt her heart skip a beat. So, it was something after all. But she hardly knew the Brunellis. Why was her father acting like a simple letter was suddenly a family matter?
“And?” dared Mateo. The only one who would even think of pressing their father who usually took his sweet time to get a story out.
“As it turns out, Franco Brunelli is looking for a bride.”
“So are all the bachelors in the world,” snickered Lorena, one of Catarina’s safely married sisters. “But they don’t write letters about it. They go and pick whatever flower they like from the bouquet.”
“Lorena, don’t be sbocatta. Your smart mouth always got you into trouble,” said another sister.
“This is different,” Babbo continued, combing his fingers through his increasingly sparse hair. “The Brunellis live in America—in a place called San Francisco—but their son doesn’t want to marry una Americana, who will never know the Italian ways. He wants a woman who will remind him of his roots. Of his true home. Someone who understands Italian customs and speaks the language.”
“So, he should come to Italy. Stay a while and meet a nice Italian girl, marry her, and bring her back to San Francisco,” Catarina’s mother chimed in, a tone in her voice implying that something about Franco’s situation was ridicola. But Catarina didn’t see the problem. So, this Franco wanted to come meet an Italian woman to marry. It wasn’t uncommon. Lots of men came back to Italy to marry. What did that have to do with their family?
They all looked at Catarina’s father. A table full of questioning looks. His lined, weathered face seemed to be full of mischief.
“Is that what he wants? To stay here while he looks for a bride, Babbo?” Catarina asked.
“Well, no,” he said. “He can’t afford the time away from the family business,” her father answered. “They’re jewelers and work is busy. Signor Brunelli can’t let Franco leave the store for a few months. So they have written to us for help,” he spread his palms as if his friend was at the table with them.
“How are we supposed to help?” Mateo asked.
“Allora, they inquired after one of my beautiful and talented daughters,” explained Catarina’s father, as he looked at Catarina. Her fork stopped halfway to her mouth and looked around to see all eyes on her.
“He must be desperate!” laughed Mateo, trying to lighten the suddenly tense mood, but he shot Catarina a glance as if to say he was sorry even as the words came out of his mouth.
“Shut up, idioto!” Maddelana said, and cuffed her brother on the side of the head. “What are you talking about, Babbo?”
“Well, as you know, our family and the Brunellis go way back. Vittorio Brunelli was like a brother to me when we were young. His parents were like my second parents. We grew up together and when he moved away it almost killed me,” he added dramatically.
Catarina’s mother rolled her eyes good-naturedly at her husband’s melodrama. He felt everything so strongly.
“So now, his youngest, Franco, wants a wife. It only makes sense that he turn to me, his best friend since childhood, to find a respectable girl for him. We have five daughters. Four are married. One is not.”
At that statement all eyes again turned to Catarina. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks.
“Surely you don’t mean for me to go off and marry some boy I only met once as a child?”
“Of course not, Catarina,” said Babbo, as relief rushed over her, but then he followed with, “but, you know Franco. Don’t you remember him? And he’s not a boy anymore. He’s a grown man. He has a business. He makes a good living.”
Catarina looked at her father as if he were a stranger.
“I met him once when I was a little girl. Surely that doesn’t count as ‘knowing him.’ Not like I know the boys from our village. Are you going to make me marry him? Are you sending me away?” she asked, anger and terror simultaneously flashing in her eyes.
“Catarina, don’t listen to him!” interrupted her mother, who slapped her palm onto the table—a look of exasperation on her face. “I will not have my daughter moving to America and marrying someone we hardly know,” she turned to her husband, “even if you have known his father since you were toddlers running in diaper cloths through the orchards.”
“We would never force you, Catarina,” Babbo told her, “but it’s something to think about. Something for us to talk about,” his face showing her just how serious he was. “You don’t have a good opportunity here. We don’t have much to offer to you, mia cara. You live in a poor house with a small orchard and have to work as a maid. Whomever you marry here might get sent away to fight when the war breaks out—and war is coming. I wish it weren’t so,” he said, glancing around the table at his sons-in-law, “but it is. And even if it doesn’t happen, then what? You marry the son of another poor farmer and move to his house and take care of his mother while you get poorer and poorer?”
“Emiliano! Why are you saying this?” Catarina’s mother gave him a meaningful look with a nod at their other girls, sitting around the table with their husbands, who all worked on either their families’ land or their own. “These men are good, honest, hardworking men. If Catarina does so well, I, for one, will be proud.”
“Celestina,” Catarina’s father answered back. “You know I have all the respect for our sons-in-law, but in America Catarina wouldn’t have to work so hard. I’ve heard the roads there are all paved instead of made with stones, unlike most of the roads in our village. There are markets full of food, and she could go pick what she wanted off of the shelf.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Maddelana chimed in, agreeing with her father. She took her husband’s hand. “I love our life here,” she smiled at him, “but if we could go to America, we would go imediatamente.” She paused, as an idea popped into her mind. “In fact,” she looked at her youngest sister with hope in her eyes, “if Catarina goes, maybe she could sponsor us once she’s married.”
“I bet she could,” her babbo answered. “As I said, the Brunellis are jewelers,” he continued. “They live well in San Francisco. Franco makes a good living.”
“But this is my home” Catarina stammered. “I wouldn’t know anyone there. And what about Anna and Maria Nina?” Catarina thought of her two best f
riends. They knew everything about each other. They grew up together and always knew that they would marry boys from the village and raise their own children where they, themselves, grew up.
“If I left here, if I moved to America, I might not ever see you again,” she said. And then immediately regretted it when both her parents looked away from her, instead of denying that it might be the case.
“You’re going nowhere, Catarina,” her mother said, and then scraped her chair back from the table and started collecting the dishes. Catarina and her sisters dutifully followed her lead, and the conversation ceased for the moment. But Catarina knew it was something she would ponder during the long, sleepless night.
She told herself she would stay. She would refuse to leave her home to marry Franco—whom she could barely remember. She strained to pull together a vision of him. She thought she remembered brown hair and brown eyes. That could be anyone. She sighed, wishing she could picture him.
But if she wasn’t going to leave and marry Franco, she wondered whom she would marry. She hadn’t thought much about it. Anna and Maria Nina talked about the boys in the village incessantly, while the three waited in line at the pump to fill the water pitchers for their families, but there was no particular boy with whom she could picture spending her life.
Catarina visualized a few she knew. There was Dominico Pescatore—who had the most potential. He was handsome and kind, but he was the son of a fish monger, and she didn’t think she could stand to marry a man who was covered in fish blood all day.
There was Armondo Deluca, who was funny and made all the girls laugh when they were at town festivals, but his family was even poorer than Catarina’s, and his mother was difficult. She thought every girl was out to catch her perfect son, and that no one was good enough for him. She shuddered at the thought of living out her life stuck in that household under the dour eye of Signora Deluca.
Paolo Eliodoro could be a good man to marry, and Catarina liked him, but Anna had been planning to marry Paolo since they were both children, and she would never get in the way of that.
Besides the problem of marriage, she believed what Babbo had said about the war coming was true. At least that was what she kept hearing whispered in town. What if all the boys from home were sent away to fight? Who would she be left with then? That night she finally fell into a restless sleep, but when she woke up, in spite of her concerns she was resolved. She would stay. It would work out for her here. She would make it work out in order to be with her family. She didn’t care if she never married and worked as a maid her entire life. It would be better than being sent away.
Signor Carlucci’s face suddenly flashed in her mind, but she pushed that aside. She would figure that out, too.
Chapter 4
JULIETTE, THE RING, FLEEING TO A BEAUTIFUL ITALIAN CITY AND TRYING TO COOK AWAY SORROW
“She wanted you to have the ring, Juliette,” her father Alexander said, holding out the perfect diamond ring that had belonged first to her grandmother, then her mother, and now, horrifyingly too soon, to her.
Juliette looked over at Gina, sitting beside her at the table in her parents’ kitchen, who nodded, obviously already having been told this news.
“Why me?” she asked, again looking at Gina who was older. Juliette had always assumed the ring would go to her.
“Mom left her share of the business to Gina,” their father explained. “That’s her heritage and connection to your grandparents. She left the ring to you so you would have a connection as well.”
Juliette’s hand shook as she took the ring from her father.
“I can visualize it on both of their hands,” Juliette said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’m not ready for it to be mine. I want it to still be on Mom’s finger.”
“I know,” her father said, and ran his hand over Juliette’s long light-brown hair. It was shot through with gold threads and was a sharp contrast to her sister’s loose dark brown curls that were so like their mother’s. His two daughters were physically dissimilar and yet there was something that gave them away as sisters in spite of their differing looks.
Juliette was tall for the family—more lanky to Gina’s petite frame that was like their mother’s and grandmother’s. Juliette took after the Brice side, whereas Gina looked like a Pensebene through and through. Except for their eyes, which they had each gotten from the opposite sides, to complete their heritage. Juliette’s were the same as her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, whereas Gina inherited her father’s hazel eyes. The sisters were an interesting contrast, yet both beautiful in their own ways.
She had been feeling detached and numb since the accident. Sitting next to her father and holding hands with her sister Gina during her mother’s memorial had felt surreal. The sorting and cleaning out of her belongings was even worse. It made the loss jaggedly permanent. Choosing some of her favorite things to keep seemed wrong, but her dad and Gina insisted so that there would be no regrets later about things lost or given away hastily in a moment of rash grief.
It had felt almost businesslike yet Juliette had felt like she was drowning.
During the weeks following Amilia’s death, Juliette’s mind often drifted towards the box of letters her mother had given to her. She had tucked the plane tickets inside the box with the letters when she had gotten home from the hospital after the accident, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to open the lid since. The box sat on her bedside table, under a stack of novels, and she invariably found herself glancing over at it every night before she clicked off her light until finally one night she reached for it and slipped off the lid.
Juliette scooted herself up until she was leaning against the pillows by the headboard, took the tickets out, and ran her fingers over them, thinking about her mom’s beautiful face when she had given her the early birthday present. They had both been so excited to go and had talked through travel ideas while they had eaten.
It felt like the world had tilted on its axis since that warm moment in the restaurant. Juliette took out the same letter she had looked at when her mother had given her the letters to read. It was from her grandfather to her grandmother when she still lived in Italy before they married. She gently slid the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it, looking at the words written in Italian. She lifted the letter to her face and inhaled, but she only smelled paper and ink—all traces of her grandmothers’ scent long gone.
Juliette had been fairly fluent in Italian when she was younger and her grandparents had spoken to her in the language. She had loved the sound of it and had taken it in college as well, but hadn’t said a peep in Italian for years. Nonetheless, she was pleased to see that she could make out most of the words in the letter, even though the language style was from another era.
That night, Juliette only got through the first few paragraphs before the tears blurring her vision became too much to continue. She carefully replaced the letter in its envelope, making sure not to get the paper wet from her tears, and then turned out the light. A huge, full moon shined through the window and she wondered what life had been like for Nonna Catarina when she received the letter from her grandfather.
The door chimed as Juliette walked into the Pensebene jewelry store and waved to Gina.
“What a nice surprise,” her sister said, and came to give her a hug. “Come in and sit down.”
“I brought us coffee,” Juliette said, handing her sister a latte from their favorite indie coffee place.
“Yum, thanks,” she said and took a sip. “Mmmm, perfect.”
Juliette set her bag down and plopped onto one of the stools at the counter while she looked around.
“The place looks great, Gina.”
“Thanks, but I haven’t changed anything.”
“That’s part of what looks great. I love the fact that I can come here and besides a few updates over the years, it always looks the same. How many times have I sat in this chair, for instance? I can’t even count the number.”
Gina looked at Juliette with a mixture of curiosity and concern.
“I used to love sitting here, watching Mom and Granddad working on designs. And now I can come and watch you, too. It’s nice. Unusual in this day and age.”
“Are you OK, Juliette?”
“What do you mean? I’m fine. I just stopped by because I met a friend for lunch at the Ferry Building and had some extra time to come by and say hello.”
“Oh, nice,” she smiled. “Have you been sleeping any better?”
“No,” Juliette said, looking away. “The moon was really beautiful last night, though. I must have stared at it for hours.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Gina gave her sister a sympathetic look.
“Do you remember the box of letters I told you about? The ones Mom gave me the day of the accident?”
“Yeah.”
“I read part of the first one last night. It was amazing reading words written from Papa to Nonna, knowing it was from such a long time ago. How much life happens and then. . . gone.”
Gina glanced at Juliette again, not at all sure her sister was coping. She sometimes worried that Juliette’s neck and shoulder muscles had become completely rigid from the tension in her body since the accident.
“Do you mind if I keep them?” Juliette asked.
“The letters? Not at all. My Italian’s horrible anyway, but let me know if you discover anything juicy,” she smiled, thinking of their grandparents.
“Mom said it’s mostly between Nonna and a friend of hers.”
“Maybe Nonna was leading a double life. Or was a spy during World War I.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Juliette said.
Gina frowned again at Juliette’s lost look and asked, “Why are you biting your thumbnail and staring into space?”
“I’m just having a thought,” she answered, thinking about the plane ticket tucked inside the box of letters.
Before Juliette told her family about her plans, she enrolled in the Italian cooking class she’d been coveting for ages so she had a justifiable reason to leave. She knew that would help convince her dad and sister that she would be all right and that she wasn’t truly going off the deep end. It would give her days an anchor. She knew they’d been worried about her. They were convinced she was still in shock and Juliette guessed they were right, but whether she was or wasn’t didn’t make a difference as far as she could tell. It was simply a label; but what did it mean from a practical standpoint? It’s not like she could jumpstart herself into feeling normal again. Nothing could bring her mother back.
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