A big one. A mistake I don’t ever know if I’ll be able to fix. He wasn’t the person I thought he was. The person I hoped he’d be.
He wasn’t . . . he didn’t . . . he wasn’t you.”
He gathered her into his arms as she began to cry. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he knew for certain where she ought to be. “Let’s go home.”
Julietta arrived at the Giordano apartment just in time for dinner, with Mauro on her arm. Mama Giordano’s heart soared as she saw the two of them walk in together. “You bring Mauro, Julietta?”
She glanced at the man beside her. “No, Ma. Mauro brought me.”
“Oh.” What was the matter with the two of them? Back in Avellino, when a girl met the man she was meant to marry, then she got on with the doing of it. Why couldn’t the girl see that she was meant for him? Like bread and cheese. Onions and garlic. But it was like making custard, she supposed. If you stirred too quickly, you made all sorts of bubbles. And if you took it off the stove too soon, it didn’t set at all. She shook her head as she ladled out some minestrone.
“Tell me about this influenza, Mauro. How many people died this week?”
All he wanted was to get Julietta alone so that he could talk to her. So he could make sure he understood what it was that he thought she had said. But he could see that there would be no privacy that night. So he scooped up a spoonful of the soup. Blew on it. Tipped it into his mouth. Mama Giordano might have thought he had nowhere else to eat, but people asked Dr. Vitali to dine with them all the time. And all the time he replied, “Thank you, but no,” for he was expected at home for dinner. The Giordanos’ was as much of a home to him as his own once had been. But his parents had moved out of the North End to Rox-bury five years ago. And the Giordano brothers were his closest friends. He went to visit his parents on Sundays, but during the week, when all he wanted was some time away from his work and a good bowl of soup, the Giordanos’ was where he came to eat. So when Mama Giordano asked him about his doctoring, he responded as he would have to his own mother.
“In the neighborhood? One or two hundred. And in the city? Eight hundred? Or nine?” He couldn’t be sure. No one was sure. “It’s better than last week.”
All those poor souls. Mama Giordano crossed herself. “You’ve been working hard.”
He hadn’t been working hard enough. Hadn’t worked long enough. Hadn’t worked smart enough to be able to save even a third of his influenza patients. It had come, this sickness, with such swiftness and ferocity that he couldn’t even say that it was influenza at all.
“You need sleep, son.” Papa Giordano saluted him with his spoon from the end of the table. “That’s what you need.”
“I’ll sleep when people stop getting sick.”
“Stay here tonight and you won’t be called out.”
He took a few more spoonfuls of soup. “I would if I could – but I can’t. What would my patients think? A doctor who’s not home to take calls?”
“They’d think you were out on a call.”
His smile was wry when it came. “Be that as it may, I really should go home.” They hadn’t been, none of them, to his house since he’d moved out of the North End. If they had, they might have been embarrassed at the accommodations they had just offered him. Unlike the Giordanos, he slept on an actual bed, in a room by himself. When he woke in the morning, hot water ran through his faucets. When he stepped out of his house onto the street, it was filled not with refuse but with young mothers wheeling their babies up and down the streets. And when he walked to the curb, it was to get into his own car.
Oh yes! He had one, though none of Julietta’s family knew it. He used it for making calls in the city proper and for visiting his parents, but he’d never driven it into the North End. He was too fond of the place, of its people, to want their opinion of him to change in any way.
And so the Giordanos continued to press their hospitality upon him, and though he wouldn’t have minded sharing the floor with Salvatore and Dominic, and though he would have liked to have spent more time with Julietta, he pushed from the table to his feet around eight o’clock, bid Mama good-night with a kiss on the cheek, and walked out the door.
But before he’d made it halfway down the hall, he heard the shuffle of footsteps behind him. Heard Julietta calling out his name.
“Grazie, Mauro Vitali. For bringing me home.”
He waved off her words. “It was nothing.”
“For understanding, then.”
Ah, now that was something he couldn’t reply to because he didn’t understand. Not at all. He didn’t understand what a girl like her saw in a boy like Angelo Moretti. He didn’t understand why she would allow herself to be so ill-used. And he didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t have come home with her when she asked.
“I’m leaving, Julietta.” He said the words without intending to, but once he had, they felt right.
She bowed her head. Of course he was. What reason had she given him to stay?
“They’re sending all the doctors they can spare out to St. Louis and San Francisco. Seattle, even. Everywhere that’s been hit hard by the influenza.” He had meant to tell all of the Giordanos, but maybe his leaving now, at this time, meant something different than he’d thought it had. Maybe it was all for the best.
“I’ll miss you.” She stood on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, hugged him fiercely, and then she turned and ran back to the apartment.
I’ll miss you.
What did it mean? What did she mean?
He wasn’t you. I’ll miss you.
He stood there for a long moment, then sighed and walked toward the stairs. What did a girl like her see in Angelo Moretti? He worried over the question all the way home. Realized, finally, that something completely irrational and unpredictable, something outside the boundaries of science and medicine, controlled the heart.
Not for the first time in recent weeks, he thought about giving in to despair. About conceding defeat. He’d first thought about giving up during the onslaught of the influenza, when he realized that his diagnoses were nothing more than death sentences. When he was shoved out of the way at the hospitals in favor of the orderlies and nurses. He’d been tempted to take up his doctor’s bag and go home. And then that evening he had been tempted again as he stood on the sidewalk, watching Julietta with Angelo Moretti, knowing that he had nothing to offer, nothing to say that would change her mind. Knowing that he could only stand and wait.
Well, he’d stood and he’d waited, and the scourge of influenza seemed as if it might be retreating. He’d stood and he’d waited and Julietta had bid that man good-bye. But he didn’t know. He really didn’t know how much longer he could stand and wait for her to see him. To love him.
Sickness and madness.
There was so much sickness and madness in the world. Didn’t a man have to fight for what he wanted? Didn’t a man have to do something about it?
He was too tired to get ready for bed, so he simply took off his collar and tossed it onto a dresser. Unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged off his suspenders, and fell into bed. And he slept there all night, motionless. Dreamless. Alone in a bed built for two.
44
Once Julietta had slipped back into the apartment, Mama Giordano drew her away from the family, went to the bed, and pulled a package from beneath the mattress.
“There was a boy come here for you.”
“A boy?”
“He brought this.” She held the package out as if she did not want to. And indeed she didn’t. Her daughter accepting gifts from some unknown boy? And worse, him insisting that they were hers? What kind of girl would give a man something of value? For him to keep for her?
She’d always thought her Julietta good and kind. If she scolded her once in a while for her vanity or her selfishness, it was because she could see there was such goodness inside her wanting to come out. The girl was still young; that was the problem. She was still a girl. But this boy, now? S
he hadn’t liked the boy. Hadn’t liked the way he looked around the place as if he might want to belong there.
Julietta took the package from her mother. She walked over to the bed, sat on the mattress, and undid the string and the wrapper. Held up the pouch that was revealed. Loosened the ribbon and let the contents spill out. Even in that dim apartment, the jewels sparkled. They lay there like blinking stars, all of them. All of Mrs. Quinn’s jewels, along with a note.
I shouldn’t have asked for payment.
Angelo
Mama gasped at the sight of the gems. Then she crossed herself. “Julietta, what have you done!”
But Julietta was shaking her head as she trembled, tears coursing down her cheeks. “Nothing, Mama. I’ve done nothing.” Which wasn’t exactly true. And hadn’t the priest told her that she needed to confess her sins – all of them – to her parents? “But . . . no. I mean – I have done something. Some things.” She sniffed a long, loud sniff. Wiped her tears on her sleeve. “Listen, Mama. I have some things to tell you.”
Later, after Julietta had told Mama Giordano about Angelo, after she had tried to explain about the anarchists, and the jewels, and . . . everything. After all of Mama’s questions had been asked and answered, Julietta had one question of her own. “Do you hate me, Mama?”
“Hate you? Because some boy came along and turned your head?”
Julietta didn’t nod, didn’t do anything. Didn’t want to acknowledge that she’d been silly and foolish and . . . wrong. But Mama remained silent, and Julietta had no choice but to look up at her.
“How can I hate you, cara mia, when you come to me and you tell me everything?”
“Because I made the wrong choices.”
“And then you decided those choices were wrong and made the right ones.” Mama paused and frowned. “After you made some more wrong ones.”
“That’s – that’s all you’re going to say?”
Mama pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes as she thought about that. “No. No, that’s not all I’m going to say. I’m going to tell you that I’ve been worried to death this whole time that there was something wrong with you that you weren’t telling me. I’m going to tell you that you’re a foolish, stubborn girl who can be much smarter than you have been, and I’m going to tell you that Mauro loves you. So why don’t you love him back?”
“I do, Mama. I think I might have always loved him. I must have. I just didn’t realize what I . . . I mean, I mistook the one thing for the other.”
“You confused lust for love.”
Julietta flushed and then nodded.
“It’s not the mattress that makes the marriage, cara mia, it’s the man.”
“I know.” She said it in a voice so low that Mama wondered if she’d even heard it. “But I don’t deserve him anymore.”
All of Mama Giordano’s indignation evaporated. That response wasn’t one she’d expected from her Julietta. Her carefree girl had been wounded and chastened. And now all the spirit had gone out of her. She sat there looking so forlorn and pitiful and . . . young. So Mama simply kissed her on the forehead and patted her cheek. “Who has ever deserved anything they’ve been given? Love is not about deserving, cara mia. It’s about giving. And accepting. And sharing. The most worthy heart is also the most courageous. Coraggio! Don’t give up. Not just yet.” She’d leave Julietta to Mauro. He would fix her; he would know just what to do.
That evening, Luciana decided that it was time to be honest with her grandmother. With the marriage, everything would change. She knew the woman probably wouldn’t understand, but Luciana wanted to give her the chance to. It was selfish, perhaps, but she wanted her nonna to be at the wedding. Not the contessa.
Luciana helped the old woman from her chair and then guided her into the bedroom of their suite. She seated her on the bed and then knelt in front of her. “There are some things I need to tell you.”
The contessa frowned.
“I saw him, Nonna. I saw the man who killed Papa.”
The contessa blinked.
“A week ago it was. Here, in Boston. He came here looking for us.”
The woman began to tremble.
“I told people what he’d done. I told Herr Quinn and then he told the carabinieri. They’re honest here. And they’re looking for him, Nonna. They’re going to find him. And when they do, they’ll put him in prison. For a very long time.”
“The one who killed . . . my son . . . ?”
“Sì.”
“My son is dead, isn’t he?” Tears had begun streaming down her cheeks.
Luciana nodded, tears of her own blooming in her eyes. “Papa is dead.”
“My son is dead.”
Luciana threw her arms around her nonna’s waist and buried her head in the woman’s lap, finding the solace she had sought for so long.
A bomb exploded that night, in front of a city councilman’s house. But it was harmless. Its placement had been odd – underneath a bush on the front lawn – and such that it did more damage to an ornamental cypress tree than to the house itself. It was only the next morning, while the explosion was being investigated, that a human hand was found. Then a foot and a shred of an orange-colored shirt. And an observant journalist noticed a produce delivery truck that seemed to have been abandoned on the street. Once the police had pieced all the facts together, they came to a startling conclusion: It seemed the bomber had blown himself up as he was attempting to position the bomb.
The detectives wrote up a report. They sent it up to headquarters and then they sent an extra copy to Congressman Quinn as well.
At eleven o’clock the next day, Luciana stood in the narthex of Saint Leonard’s Church. Her gown, cunningly altered by Julietta, was stunning and the veil only added to her ethereal glow. Her nonna had already been helped into a pew in front. Luciana stood alone.
And that’s where Billy found her. “I have something for you.”
Something more? On this day? Something more than himself? He placed a telegram into her hands.
She slit the envelope. Slid the message out. Read it, lips moving. How he wished he knew Italian! “It’s from my cousin.”
“Ja. I know. I sent him a telegram. Last week.”
“Last week?” But . . . that was . . . she’d only told him about what had happened in Roma a few weeks before. “How did you know? How did you know how to find him?”
He winked at her and caught up her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I have friends in helpful places.” Granted, a few of those friends had been his father’s, down in Washington, but they had been helpful indeed. “So what does he say?”
“He says . . .” She looked from the telegram up into his eyes.
“I’ve been wrong. About everything. It’s not that he didn’t want to help us, Nonna and me, he didn’t know what had happened.”
How could he have? He’d been at the front, commanding his troops. “He’s working with the carabinieri. He says . . . I’m to come home. And he’s wiring money for the trip.”
Billy was smiling. He’d hoped it would say something like that.
“But I can’t go! Not now. I’ll have to tell him.”
“We’ll go together. After.”
After. After the wedding. After the war. Together.
“And another present.” He took the telegram from her and replaced it with a different piece of paper.
“What is it?” She’d been getting better at English, but she knew she couldn’t decipher the page’s miniscule, cramped writing.
“It’s a police report. It seems that Angelo Moretti has blown himself up.”
She held the paper to her face with trembling hands. Kissed it through her veil. The perfect wedding present.
A man walked up and touched Billy on the elbow. “You should probably . . . ” He inclined his head toward the altar.
“Luciana, this is my father.”
“Patrick Quinn.” He held out his hand.
She looked up into eyes that
were just like Billy’s and placed her hand into his.
He grasped it and then covered it with his own. “I’m delighted to welcome you to my family.”
Tears flooded her eyes as she realized just how mixed up everything had been. She was marrying Billy, and she had just now met his father. Maybe things were happening too fast. Maybe they should wait. Maybe . . . but no. What was it the priest had said? Maybe what God had done was give her a great gift. She’d come to this country helpless and friendless. She had been given both friends and a family.
“May I have the pleasure of walking you down the aisle?”
Patrick crooked his arm so that she wouldn’t have to guess at his intent.
She slipped her arm through his. “Sì. Grazie.”
That walk seemed to last an eternity, but at last they reached the front of the church. Billy took her hand in his as they faced each other.
The priest had been warned that the couple spoke different languages, so as he read Luciana’s vows, he recited them in Italian.
“Io, Luciana Conti, prendo te, William Howell Quinn – ”
She interrupted him. “Please. I say.” She looked up into Billy’s eyes. “Me, Luciana Conti, take you, Billy Quinn, as my husband and promise to be faith to you always.”
He couldn’t have been prouder or more pleased to hear her speak those words.
Once she had said her vows, the priest turned to Billy. “I, William Howell Quinn, take you, Luciana – ”
Billy held up a hand to stop him. “Please. Allow me. Io, William Howell Quinn, prendo te, Luciana Conti, come mia sposa e prometto di esserti fedele sempre . . .”
Luciana burst into tears as she heard those precious words spoken in her own language. Billy finished his vows, one arm around her shoulder, supporting her as he searched in his pocket for a handkerchief.
It was a small, intimate ceremony. The contessa, Madame, Julietta, and Annamaria sat on one side of the central aisle and Mr. and Mrs. Quinn on the other. Once the ceremony was finished, it was time for introductions. Billy did the honors. With Luciana on one arm and the contessa on the other, they walked over to where his parents were standing.
A Heart Most Worthy Page 30