A Heart Most Worthy

by Siri Mitchell

  Mauro and Julietta swooped together around the dance floor in a quick and graceful two-step. Hands joined together, first pointed toward the ceiling, then toward the floor. As they swung around each other, Julietta quickly became enveloped by Mauro’s scent. A hint of something . . . unpleasant. But on top of it, the smell of peppermint. Beneath it, bay rum.

  And, Madonna mia, he had some rhythm, didn’t he?

  She’d never seen him dance before, at least not that she had noticed. But he was quick and precise in his steps. And very energetic. He twirled her about the room for three dances and by then she’d had enough. She needed a break.

  “Do you think there’s any limonata?”

  “What?” He was having trouble understanding what she was saying. A flush rode her cheeks, and the effort of dancing had left her chest heaving. All he wanted to do was take her by the hand and lead her out into the alley. But, God help him, he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a grown man. And the girl standing before him was his best friend’s sister. Beside which there were things that a person – a doctor, a man – just shouldn’t do.

  She stood on her toes, put a hand to his head, and pulled it down to speak into his ear. “Do you think there’s any limonata?”

  He leaned his forehead against hers for a moment, just a moment, and inhaled the cool, exotic scent of the gardenia. The tickle of her breath against his cheek sent a snaking warmth through his chest. Limonata? There had to be some. And if there wasn’t, he would make it himself.

  The back of Mauro’s neck was damp, and the curls flopping over his collar tickled the back of Julietta’s hand. She reached up and – what was she thinking? He was Mauro. Mauro Vitali. Old Mauro Vitali. She released him, resisting the urge to run her hand along his cheek. Took a careful step backward.

  He smiled a lopsided smile. “Limonata. Right. I’ll go look.”

  Just before dinner, Mama asked Annamaria to go to Zanfini’s for some cherries. “Might be the last time we can find some this year.”

  She left the apartment so quickly that she forgot to put on her scarf. And by the time she noticed she was already down the stairs and across the street. But when she reached Zanfini’s, the awnings had been taken down and the store was dark.

  She knocked on the door. Waited a moment. Knocked harder still. She didn’t care whether Mama got her cherries, but she wanted to see the man again. The one who had sold her the tomatoes.

  As she started to rap on the door a third time, it swung open and she nearly knocked her knuckles right into that man’s chest.

  He almost caught that hand up in his and kissed those very knuckles. But he didn’t. He swung the door wide instead. “Come in.”

  She nodded. Slipped past him.

  “What do I get you?”

  She bit her lip. It was so dim without the lights. She knew they must have cherries somewhere, but she couldn’t see them.

  “Tomatoes?”

  She smiled as she shook her head. They still had three left over from her last visit. She made a gesture with her hand, forming her thumb and forefinger into a small circle.

  She wanted something small, then. He tried to think of something small. And round. “Radishes?”

  She shook her head once more.

  She didn’t want tomatoes and she didn’t want radishes. What else could she want? And why wouldn’t she just tell him? “Why don’t you tell me and then I’ll find it for you?”

  She started to shake her head, but then stopped. And she spoke. Why shouldn’t she? What was more important: observing Mama’s proprieties or getting the cherries that were needed? “Cherries.”

  He squinted. Leaned toward her. Had she spoken? It looked as if she had, but it was so dark and he hadn’t actually heard anything. “I can’t . . . I didn’t hear you.”

  She threw a nervous glance to the door behind her. Stepped closer to him. “Cherries.”

  He heard her that time. And he smelled her and felt her too. Her hair brushed as lightly as the softest of feathers against his cheek. And it smelled like . . . rosemary. “Cherries! Well, they’re just . . . here.”

  As he stretched an arm out behind her and over her head, leaning close, she held her breath. But she kept her eyes open. And she saw a tangle of hair on his chest beneath his open collar and a rash of stubble on his chin.

  “Red or white?”

  “What?”

  He pulled two baskets from the shelf and held them out in the narrow space between them. “Red or white?”

  She didn’t know. Mama hadn’t said. Confused, her eyes sought his.

  “Rafaello?” A woman’s voice floated into the store.

  He grimaced as his gaze fled from Annamaria toward the curtained doorway behind them. “Just a second, Mama!”

  He returned his attention to Annamaria. Held up first one basket and then the other with an accompanying lift of his brow.

  She put a finger up to touch one.

  He reached back behind her again, his arm brushing her as he put the other basket on the shelf. Then he scooped a good portion from the basket she’d requested out onto a piece of paper and tied it up with a string. Bowed as he offered it to her.

  “Grazie.” She said it in a whisper because her throat had gone dry.

  “Prego.” He said it in a whisper that matched her own.

  Their eyes held for what seemed like an eternity, and then she left. He watched her cross the street, then locked the door and went to see what it was his mama wanted.

  “Rafaello. Rafaello.” She repeated it like a chant as she climbed the stairs. His name was Rafaello. As she walked into the apartment, she realized she hadn’t paid him. Shame colored her face.

  What must he think of her!

  “Annamaria!” Mama had raised her voice so she could be heard above the shrieks of the baby in the neighboring apartment. She inclined her head toward the door. “Go over to Josie’s and see if you can help her with the baby.”

  Annamaria put the cherries on the table and then gladly obeyed. Mama couldn’t know that comforting a wailing baby was no work at all to Annamaria. That she would gladly set aside a hundred shirts and a thousand English lessons to take Josie’s baby up in her arms.

  She pushed the door open as she stuck her head into the apartment. “Josie?” She saw the baby, but she didn’t see its mother. “Josie?” She pushed the door further open. Now she saw her neighbor. The girl was trying to dress her two-year-old at the same time she was trying to chase down her three-year-old. The baby lay in the middle of the floor, wailing.

  “Can I help?” Annamaria crossed the floor, picked up the baby, and cuddled it to her chest. “Where are his clothes?”

  “He soiled them.”

  “Where are his others?”

  “Somewhere out there.” She gestured toward the window, where Annamaria could see a line of clothes fluttering in the evening’s breeze.

  The baby lifted his head and shrieked in Annamaria’s ear.

  “There now. Of course you’re mad. You’ve got no clothes!”

  Not being able to bring in the wash with the baby in her arms, she concentrated on soothing it while Josie finished with the other children. She pressed kisses to his warm, fuzzy head as she rocked from side to side.

  Once the other two children went to play underneath the bed, Josie pulled in the clothes and took the baby from Annamaria, putting him on top of the table for changing.

  “Mille grazie. Someday I’ll return the favor. When you have children of your own.”

  A sudden, fierce pain stole Annamaria’s breath and brought tears to her eyes. One of them splashed onto the baby’s chest as Josie struggled with the diaper. She looked up. “Annamaria?”

  Annamaria put a hand to her mouth, shaking her head.

  “What did I – ?”

  “Nothing.” She backed away from the table and fled the apartment.

  18

  There had to be someplace where Annamaria could go. Someplace where she could mourn. “Ch
ildren of your own.” The echo of Josie’s words rang in Annamaria’s ears long after she left her neighbor’s apartment. Long after she had run down the stairs into the basement. That dark, dank pit where she could rail against her fate. Where she could sink down to her heels on the damp, worm-eaten floor and cry out her misery.

  Why, God?

  Why does it have to be this way? Why do you demand this from me? Why would you give me a desire for children, for a family, if you never meant for me to have them? It’s too cruel! Is this really what you want? Is this what you want from me? You want everything? You want everything I dream of and all I have to give? That’s what they say. That’s what Father Antonio says. He says this is what I have to do. He and Aunt Rosina both.

  But I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to pour out my life for my mama and my papa, my brothers and my sister. I want to give it to my own family. For myself. What’s so wrong with that?

  No answer came back to her through the cobweb-ridden darkness.

  “What’s so wrong with that!” She startled herself by saying the words aloud.

  Was there anything wrong with it? When such things were commended to others? Like her sister? Why would it be honorable for Theresa and a sin for Annamaria to want the very same things? Why was she the one who had to look after everybody? Why couldn’t they all – all of her brothers and sisters – join in the caring for Mama and Papa? And for each other? Surely no one would begrudge her what they themselves wanted – and expected – from life.

  She dried her tears on a sleeve as she contemplated that thought.

  Maybe . . . maybe this wasn’t what God required at all. Maybe it was as simple as that! Perhaps all she had to do was figure out how to ask the others for help.

  As Mauro walked Julietta home from the dance, there was something new, a growing awareness that hung suspended in the night air between them.

  Julietta slid a look up at him from beneath her eyelashes. He looked almost . . . handsome, walking right there beside her. Didn’t he? She blinked. Looked again. Sì. Handsome. Definitely so. And she couldn’t quite understand it. Decided that it must have something to do with the light of the moon.

  For his part, Mauro could hardly believe his good fortune. Walking Julietta Giordano home. After a dance. To which he had been her escort! They reached her building. He opened the door for her.

  She walked through.

  He followed her up the stairs to the Giordano apartment.

  How many times had he climbed those stairs? How many times had he traversed that long hall? All those times before, he had done it as family, walking through the door, knowing he would be greeted by the Giordanos as both son and brother. But this time? This night? He did it with fear and trembling, if not a bit of euphoria. He walked those steps as a stranger. One hoping to establish a new relationship. He did it as a – dare he even think it! – suitor. Filled with a surge of confidence that being with her had given him, he decided to take the third great risk he had taken in less than a month.

  She put her hand to the doorknob.

  He saw it turn, knew he had little time left to speak to her. In private. “I was hoping to see you again. Soon. At the festa?”

  The festa. Saint Marciano’s festa, the weekend next. With her cheeks still flushed from dancing and the memory of the mattchiche still swirling through her mind, she said yes.

  Yes. Yes!

  But was it the sort of yes that Mauro was hoping to hear? The sort of yes that meant Julietta would have eyes only for him?

  It might have been. It was possible that she meant it to be. For something had happened between them at that dance. But Julietta being who she was and Mauro being someone that she had always known . . . it was difficult for her to focus clearly on a person who had always been – so obviously – there.

  He might have stood a better chance at Julietta’s heart if there hadn’t been an Angelo. For not long after, as Julietta was walking down North Street that Monday on her way to work, an arm linked through hers as a pleasingly baritone voice said, “Buon giorno.”

  Buon giorno.

  What was it about that phrase that sent such a thrill of delight through Julietta’s soul? We can’t fault the man for lack of imagination. In fact, he had plenty of imagination. It’s just that he squandered it on things like treatises and speeches, which left very little imagination left to think of anything better to say to Julietta. And in any case, he hadn’t ever, not once in his young life, had to think of anything different to say in order to beckon a girl to his side. What worked for Bianca and Alessandra, Mimi and Carmela, worked for Julietta as well.

  Would she have cared? If she had known about the others?

  It’s difficult to say. She had kissed other boys herself and she understood the yearnings of a restless heart. But she also longed to be The One for someone’s heart in a way that no one else ever had or ever would be. But caring and being seen to care were two different things, so Julietta simply smiled and said, “Buon giorno, Angelo,” as if he walked her to work every day of the week.

  He winked down at her. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to work. Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to amuse myself.”

  “Amuse yourself!” She wondered what exactly he had in mind to do.

  “Just so. Why don’t you come with me?” He tightened the loop of his arm enough to stop her. And then he threaded that arm back around her waist and turned her toward him.

  “And what would we do?”

  Catching up her free hand with his, he spun her beneath his arm right there on the sidewalk. “Whatever we wanted to.”

  She dropped a playful curtsy. “How I’d like to, Signore, but I’m afraid I’d lose my job.”

  He scowled. “Who needs one anyway?”

  “I do.” She smiled as she said it to try and assuage his frown.

  “Why? To bow and scrape to someone? To serve as a pawn for the capitalists until you’re old and gray? What good does that do anyone?”

  Capitalists? Pawns? She didn’t know what he was talking about. But since he had mentioned it, she wondered what good work did do anyone? Anyone but Papa to whom she always handed over her paychecks just as soon as she got them. How she wished she could do as Angelo did and just walk through the streets as though she owned them, as though the city had been made for her pleasure alone. But she couldn’t. “I can’t.”

  He dropped her hand. “I thought you were more modern than that.”

  She shrugged. “I guess I’m not.” She walked off down the street without a wave. Without one look back. And oh, what it cost her! It wasn’t a strategy she was sure of. She hadn’t had to use it much before. Only with him, in fact. And so, she worried. And she would have worried even more if she had seen how his face darkened as he watched her walk away.

  Once Julietta got to work, she stewed.

  All morning long, while Madame was up and down the stairs, asking for Luciana to do this and that, Julietta relived her conversation with Angelo. It was the second time she had refused to accompany him. And it was the second time she had turned her back on him and walked away. She went over each word she had said and each word that he had spoken in reply.

  Dozens and dozens of times.

  Would she ever see him again?

  Because there was no way to know and because she had never before cared so much what any man thought, she let fear and doubt worry away at her. They gnawed at her self-confidence until she could think of a hundred reasons why Angelo Moretti was lost to her forever. And because she couldn’t bear to think that she had failed, she found an alternate person to blame for all her problems. It wasn’t so difficult a thing to do. As she emerged from her remembered conversations and self-recrimination, there was one name that rang constant in her ears.

  Luciana.

  Luciana, do this. Luciana, do that.

  Luciana, come take the car and go up to Beacon Hill.

  Julietta was the one who des
erved to take the car! She’d worked for Madame longest. Julietta was sick to death of Luciana! Hadn’t everything been just fine before the girl had started working? And hadn’t Julietta been the one Madame had always favored? If there was any tribulation in Julietta’s world, it had to do with Luciana.

  When Annamaria left early for confession that afternoon, Julietta’s pent-up anxiety, her imagined inadequacies, and her jealousy exploded into a rage. “You think you can just come in here and take over the shop? Well, you can’t. I’m the one who’s worked here longest. I’m the one Madame’s chosen to replace her.”

  “I don’t – ”

  Julietta came at the girl, eyes blazing, finger pointing. “I don’t care what you say. I don’t care where you’re from. You and your northern accent. I’d take bets you’re no more than a fisherman’s daughter.”

  “I’m not – ”

  “I’m the one who knows how things work here. I’m the one that Madame asks to – ”

  Luciana had put up her hands, hoping to deflect Julietta’s wrath. At the very least to stop the blows she was quite certain were going to come. “I don’t want the shop.”

  “It’s me that Madame trusts. Me that she’s chosen.”

  “I don’t want your shop!”

  19

  Luciana’s words reverberated in the sudden stillness.

  Julietta looked at Luciana through the fog of her resentment and jealousy.

  “I don’t want the shop.” At least – she hadn’t. Not until then. But the more Julietta insisted she couldn’t have it, the more it seemed to make sense that she should. Why shouldn’t she? She couldn’t spend the rest of her life sewing beads onto gowns. If that was to be her fate, she would dig her grave herself. Right now. This minute.