Tony's Wife

by Adriana Trigiani

  Dedication

  In memory of the Perin sisters

  Viola, Edith, Helen, and

  Lavinia

  Epigraph

  My World’s Gone Topsy Turvy

  (Lyrics by C. C. Donatelli, 1938)

  You can outrun it

  Deny it or test it

  But you’ll never best it

  Baby that’s love

  You might want it,

  Crave it — even need it

  But you’ll never beat it

  Baby that’s love

  CHORUS:

  Even as I sing this song,

  My world’s gone topsy turvy

  As the notes dip and soar

  Sugar I think you’re nervy

  If you love me, you should claim me

  Stop pretending and never blame me

  Baby don’t you love me?

  Cupid stuck you and got you good

  Straight through the clouds from above

  As if you could doubt it and why wouldja

  (You big lug)

  Baby that’s love

  REPEAT CHORUS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1: Feroce

  2: Risoluto

  3: Capriccio

  4: Accelerando

  5: Volante

  6: Dolcemente

  7: Crescendo

  8: Marziale

  9: Diminuendo

  10: Pizzicato

  11: Teneramente

  12: Inquieto

  13: Calando

  14: Triste

  Discography

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Adriana Trigiani

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Feroce

  (Fierce)

  Christmas Eve 1932

  Saverio Armandonada warmed his hands underneath the tin lunch pail on his lap as he rode the trolley from the Chester Street stop to the River Rouge plant.

  The brown wool gloves his mother had knit for his sixteenth birthday and given him the week before were unlined, so the heat from the pasty, hot from her oven, wrapped in a cloth and tucked inside, was enough to keep his hands warm until he made the transfer to the flatbed truck that would take him to his place on the assembly line.

  The trolley rumbled through the snowy streets of south Detroit in the blue darkness before sunrise, making local stops until every car was filled to standing room with the men who made automobiles for Henry Ford.

  In the morning, the trolley cars held the clean scents of borax, castile soap, and bleach. The men’s denim trousers, flannel shirts, undergarments, socks, canvas coveralls, and work aprons had been scrubbed and pressed by their wives or mothers at home or by the laundress in the boardinghouse. On the return trip, the trolley would smell like a locker room.

  The mood was as solemn as high mass upon departure, but after a ten-hour day, the cars would explode in a kind of revelry, as the air filled with laughter and banter that cut through a thick haze of smoke puffed from hand-rolled cigarettes and nickel cigars.

  Saverio was a relatively new hire at the Ford plant. However, after nearly a year on the job, the kid was well on his way to being savvy. He could sort the tile makers from the steel cutters, the parts men from the iron ore miners, and the dockworkers from the electricians.

  A stoop in the posture gave away the men who stoked the coke ovens, hands stained by black metal filaments told the story of a tool and die man, while the glassmakers wore the mark of their craft on their faces with a permanent wrinkle etched on their foreheads where the rubber rim of the goggles hugged their skin. Saverio knew that particular mark well. His father, Leone, had been a glassmaker at Rouge since 1915.

  If Saverio could match the job to the man by his appearance, he could also identify their skill sets by country. German immigrants assembled engines, while Yugoslavians had an affinity for installing them. Italians leaned toward woodworking and glassworks and, along with the Czechs, tool and die. The Poles handled steel bending, stoking the furnaces, and executing any operation with fire. Albanians worked the coke ovens, the Hungarians did heavy lifting, maintaining the conveyors and bridges. The Irish were adept at the installation of electrics, transmissions, and radiators. The Scots were perfectionists at hinging, soldering, and clipping.

  Upholstery, floorboards, and running boards were the domain of the Finnish, Norwegians, and Swedes; the operation of the riverfront, including shipping, delivery, and boat launches, was handled by the Greeks. The Turks and Lebanese tailored ragtops and small-scale interior installations. Black men from the heart of the city worked in the cyanide foundry and maintained and operated the railways within the Rouge campus, an extensive system that had sixteen locomotives and one hundred miles of track. Incoming trains delivered coal and iron ore for making steel, while outgoing trains transported the finished vehicles out into the world to be sold.

  Mayflower Americans of English descent were management. The men who worked the line called them college boys no matter how many decades had passed since their bosses had sat in a classroom. One hundred thousand men entered the iron gates of the River Rouge campus every morning, six days a week for workmen, five for management.

  The gates rolled open as the lead trolley, carrying laborers including Leone and Saverio, pulled inside, followed by the caravan behind it. As a whistle blew, the trolley doors parted on the platform and men poured out of them, hastily crossed to the other side, and jammed onto open flatbed trucks to be shuttled to their stations.

  Leone was the next to the last man to leap off the platform and onto the ramp of a crowded flatbed truck. Saverio’s father had the strong, broad shoulders of a finisher, and the brute strength to lift a car carriage without assistance. Leone turned and lifted his son effortlessly from the throng on the platform into the flatbed truck as though his son were a sack of apples.

  “You wait,” Leone said to the remaining men on the platform, before he hoisted the grill shut and flipped the latch, closing off the full car to further riders. The workers who remained behind grumbled, though not one dared defy Leone directly.

  Saverio was embarrassed that his father had favored him, making room for his son over the others. After all, when an operator reached his station, he punched his time card, and once he was on the clock, Mr. Ford was obliged to pay him. Every minute mattered.

  As the open cattle car lumbered slowly toward the plant, it hit a pothole, jostling the men. Saverio gripped the grill to steady himself. He was not at ease with the factory life. Sometimes he struggled with the competitive nature of the place, the fight to get where he was going, the incessant grind of the workload. He wasn’t comfortable in crowds, or hustling to grab a better position in line in order to seize a better opportunity for himself over another fellow. He wondered if he ever would. Being part of a pack did not come naturally to him.

  Gusts of freezing cold wind blew off the river and swirled around them as snow began to fall. Saverio looked up at the thick white clouds as the bright red sun pushed through the folds at daybreak. The colors of the sky reminded him of his mother’s ciambella, fluffy Italian biscuits doused in a compote of fresh Michigan cherries soaked in sugar, which made him long for the warmth of summer.

  The cattle car stopped at the loading dock of the glassworks. As the men filed off, Leone dug into his lunch pail, removed a bundle of small ginger cookies his wife had placed there, and tucked them into Saverio’s pail before jumping off the ramp. Leone did not say goodbye to his only child, and the son did not wish his father a good day.

  Saverio watched his father walk through the doors, gently swinging his tin pail
like a lantern. It was a carefree gesture from a man who rarely was.

  * * *

  The snow came down hard by midmorning, melting instantly into silver rivulets as it hit the glass ceiling of the plant, warmed by the intense heat of the electrics below. Overhead, through the glass, the white sky illuminated the machinations of the assembly line inside in crystalline clarity. Saverio quickly mopped his brow with the red bandana his mother had pressed and placed in his pocket.

  Saverio stood on the line, without bending, turning, arching his back, or lifting his shoulders to do his job. He bolted the driver’s-side door handle onto a 1932 Ford Model V8 at waist level as it passed before him on the conveyor.

  There was no time to marvel at the machine itself, though it was a beauty. The carriage, molded of Michigan steel, was painted midnight blue. The black leather interior with its curved seat and covered buttons on the upholstery was, in his opinion, the height of swank. He could see himself behind the wheel, wearing a Homburg and a Chesterfield coat, driving the girl of his dreams through the woods of Grosse Pointe.

  Saverio’s equipment, a Ford-designed wrench, was evenly weighted, with a rubber-coated handle. The jaw was locked in place, measured to the exact specifications of the bolt. He wore a fingerless glove on his right hand to control the tool’s movement.

  The boy relied on the operator behind him to place the bolt and ring. He attached his wrench on the bolt and, with one smooth motion, spun the wrench around it until he felt the click that meant the bolt had fastened. By the time Saverio lifted the wrench off the locked bolt, he was ready to attach the tool to the bolt on the next car, and so it went, bolt by bolt, minute by minute, hour by hour, 978 cars a day, ten hours a day, six days a week.

  His operation seemed simple to him now, but at first the line had terrified him. During his first week on the job, Saverio remembered that he had been secretly thrilled each time the conveyor stopped, overwhelmed by his role and certain he couldn’t keep up. There were taunts and jeers from the other men whenever an operator made a mistake. But soon, with determination and pluck, he had mastered the technique of the wrench, and now he resented any glitches on the conveyor, or any work stops for any reason whatsoever. He was on the line to do the job and do it well.

  * * *

  The operators took lunch in the break room filled with rows of picnic-style tables topped with smooth aluminum. Saverio squeezed in at the end of a bench next to the finishers. It always felt good to sit for the thirty-minute lunch break. He laid out the contents of his lunch pail: the pasty, ginger cookies, a thermos of hot cider, and, surprise, a fresh apple turnover.

  He bit into the pasty. The crust was soft, and the filling was hearty, finely chopped rump roast with slivers of buttery onions, diced carrots, and minced potatoes, cooked until it was tender. He chewed slowly, savoring his mother’s cooking, because he was hungry, and whenever he rushed a meal, it never satisfied.

  As he sipped the warm cider, he observed a group of men gathered around an old Lebanese peddler at the next table. During the holidays, the management allowed peddlers to come through and sell their wares during the breaks. Saverio had purchased a linen handkerchief set for his mother the week before from a nice Romanian couple. He’d also bought his father a new pipe and a bag of Blackjack tobacco from a peddler out of Lexington, Kentucky.

  “What’s he selling?” Saverio asked the man next to him.

  “Gold. You got a girl?”

  “I don’t have her yet,” Saverio admitted.

  “You will if you buy her something.”

  Finished with his lunch, Saverio wiped his mouth, folded the cloth, and placed it back in the pail before stacking it on the shelf with the others. He joined the men as they examined all manner of gold jewelry displayed in a black leather case that folded out flat like a chessboard.

  Delicate gold chains shimmered in neat rows on flat velvet pads. There were various styles of links: some loose like lace, others hammered like the rim of a chalice, another with fragile intersecting circles like the chain between the beads on his mother’s rosary. Smooth wooden dowels were stacked with rings. The peddler offered a variety of polished gold bands for brides and grooms, and other kinds, fancy rings that sparkled with jewels set in glittering filigree, all kinds of small agates, shiny gemstones in ovals, squares, and chips. It was a gypsy’s treasure trove, but there were elegant selections, too.

  In the center of the board, in the first box lined in black velvet, was a platinum ring with a circle of bright-blue sapphires. The light danced upon the blue like the sun on the tips of the waves on Lake Huron. Next to it was another eye-popping ring, sea-green emeralds clustered on a chiseled band. The third made Saverio long to have been born a prince. A dazzling ring in the shape of a heart made of pavé diamond chips seemed to catch every bit of light in the room.

  “You like the heart?” the peddler asked him.

  Saverio liked it very much. He was mesmerized by the simplicity of the shape and the sparkle of the stones. “If I worked here a thousand years I couldn’t afford it.”

  “You’re right. So. A pin for your mother?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So you’re looking for someone else.” He grinned. “Your girl?”

  “Yes.” Saverio sighed. “For my girl.” Saverio felt guilty claiming a young woman who wasn’t his yet, but maybe if he admitted his feelings, they would somehow make them true, and Cheryl Dombroski would be his at long last.

  “What does she like?”

  Saverio tried to think because he didn’t know. Cheryl was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and had the most glorious soprano voice in the choir at the Church of the Holy Family. She was seventeen, the second eldest in a big Polish Catholic family. Her father was an electrician. Her brothers played football. She had auburn hair, a long neck, and blue eyes that were the exact color of the sapphires in the case.

  “If she’s blond, yellow-gold,” said the peddler. “Brunette: platinum. Italian girls like all manners of gold, yellow or white gold as long as it’s not plate.”

  “I don’t think I have enough money for anything you’re selling, sir.”

  The older men looked at one another and laughed.

  “Abel will work with you,” a man around his father’s age assured him.

  “You will?” Saverio looked at Abel, who nodded in agreement.

  “How much do you have?”

  “I can spend three dollars,” Saverio said firmly.

  “Five will get you this.” Abel lifted a delicate gold chain that sparkled when it twisted in the light, like one of Cheryl’s curls.

  “Take it,” another man advised. “Do you have another? For my daughter.”

  Abel nodded. “I do. Gold is the best gift you can bestow upon a young lady. It tells her that she is valued, treasured, cherished,” he singsonged as he boxed the chain in velvet. The man gave the peddler a five-dollar bill before tucking the box into his pocket.

  “I’ll take one too.” Saverio pulled his money clip from his back pocket.

  Abel held a different gold chain up to the light. “Eighteen-karat gold. From the mountains of Lebanon, where I was born. This gold crossed two continents and an ocean to find its way to you. It has properties.” Abel took Saverio’s money before placing the necklace in a box. “Do you understand what I mean by that?”

  “Nope,” Saverio admitted.

  “It means that this chain isn’t just made of the earth’s most precious metal. It means that it has powers. It will bring you and the young lady that wears it happiness. Are you pleased?”

  “If she’s pleased, then I’m happy.”

  The peddler grinned. “Everything on the earth that was ever made by man was created to impress a woman.”

  “Everything?”

  “All of it. Every work of art, jewel, song, poem, or painting.”

  “Diego Rivera didn’t impress anyone but Edsel Ford when he painted the murals,” Saverio countered.

/>   “Mr. Ford may have hired him to create the murals, but Rivera wasn’t thinking of his benefactor when he went to work. There was a woman on his mind every time he dipped the brush in paint. You see, no statue, bridge, or building constructed of stone or automobile made of steel was ever built to glorify man. No, it was built to show a woman what a man could do. Never forget that man was born to serve her. If you remember this and trust this wisdom, you will live and die a happy man.”

  “I just want to get through Christmas,” Saverio said before tucking the velvet box deep into the utility pocket of his work pants. But he had to wonder, as he made his way back to the line, how the old man knew he saw Cheryl Dombroski sitting in the carriage of every car he bolted.

  * * *

  “Hey, Piccolo,” a workman shouted from the back of the trolley—“little one,” the workers’ nickname for Saverio. “Sing something.”

  Saverio acknowledged the request, but declined. “I gotta save my voice for midnight mass.”

  “Some of us ain’t making it to church,” a steel cutter from Building 3 admitted. “Some of us have a card game tonight. So sing, boy.”

  “Hush, boys. Leone’s kid is gonna make some noise,” another hollered.

  “Quiet! Shut up!” The tile maker banged his lunch pail on the trolley pole until the car full of men came to attention. “Go ahead, Pic.”

  Leone Armandonada closed his eyes and leaned against the back wall of the trolley. He was used to his son performing in public. The boy had a voice like velvet, and whether it was a wedding, funeral, or trolley ride, someone always wanted to hear Saverio sing. The men settled down. The clack of the wheels against the track and the intermittent wheeze of the wood as the men shifted their weight in the swaying trolley car gave Saverio all the accompaniment he needed.

  The Italian boy closed his eyes and began to sing Silent Night.

  As his son sang the old Christmas carol, Leone removed his hat and ran his hand through the thinning scruff of black hair that remained on his head, keeping his eyes on the floorboards.