“You just summed up a degree in business school, Chiara.”
Chi Chi stood and extended her hand. “Come on, big Jim. I have to burn up these cookies.”
On the dance floor, Chi Chi leaned against Jim’s chest. His hand in hers felt just right, and as he held her close, she felt at ease. His neck had the scent of sandalwood, which she found delicious. Whenever he dropped her off from a date, she found herself missing him and wishing they had more time. Chi Chi hadn’t planned on falling in love, but she figured that’s why they called it falling; it wasn’t something she could control. And even if she could, she didn’t want to. She closed her eyes and savored the moment when a peal of screams echoed through the hall, followed by a small stampede toward the pavilion’s entrance door. The dance floor emptied out as couples left to see what the hoopla was all about.
“What’s happening?” Chi Chi asked Jim. “Are they rolling out the cake already?”
A cluster of guests moved from the entrance into the hall; at the center of the group was Tony Arma, wearing a tuxedo, his bow tie loosened, clearly enjoying the attention. A hush fell over the crowd as the group pushed him up the steps of the band box to the stage and into the spotlight where the lead singer ceded his microphone to the better known crooner. A few of the Osella nieces, bobby-soxers, ran forward and squealed, “Tony! We love you on the radio, Tony!” as he consulted with the conductor.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the conductor announced. “We have a surprise for you tonight. All the way from New York City, Mr. Tony Arma.”
The crowd whistled and applauded.
Tony came up to the microphone and leaned into it. “I want to wish my good friend Rita Milnicki, now Mrs. David Osella, my very best. David, you got a beautiful, bright girl who will make you so happy, you won’t know what to do with it. Congratulations and God bless. I’d like to sing for you tonight, but I need a little help up here from a local girl. Chi Chi Donatelli, will you please join me?”
“I’m gonna kill him,” Chi Chi whispered to Jim.
“Go ahead. You’ll be great.”
The crowd full of her friends and family applauded and whistled as Chi Chi made her way through the crowd, her blue taffeta gown rustling behind her. Tony helped her up the steps to the stage.
“You’re kidding, right? I thought you had a gig,” she said through a clenched smile.
“You know the song,” he said.
The cellist handed Tony a mandolin. Tony plucked a few notes as the crowd settled down to listen. Tony began to strum an elegant tune as the pavilion fell into silence.
“This is for Mr. and Mrs. Osella,” Tony said into the microphone.
Chi Chi closed her eyes, recognizing the tune of When I Grow Too Old to Dream, a popular hit by Oscar Hammerstein II and Sigmund Romberg. Most of the guests knew it, too, and applauded in approval.
Chi Chi had never sung this particular song with Tony, but every other girl singer from the start had, including the recently departed Delilah Entwistle, who, in Chi Chi’s opinion, had sung it best of all.
As Tony sang, Chi Chi took the part of the girl singer and came in on key. Soon the band behind them folded in; the piano, cello, and percussion created a sweet sound that filled the pavilion with the feeling of a lullaby in a music box, melodic and tender.
Tony and Chi Chi’s voices meshed like threads of gold and silver, different qualities for sure, but both rich, each with a timbre and tone that complemented the other. Tony’s mandolin was simple but it reminded the older Italians in the room of the days before they emigrated. The music brought them home to their villages, high in the rocky hills of southern Italy, or deep in the green fields of the Veneto, or along the sapphire-blue shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The guests cheered as they finished the song.
Tony instructed the conductor to underline their patter with a soft brush of the snare drum. Then Tony gave Chi Chi the cue. “That dress of yours makes a lot of noise,” Tony said.
She looked at him, irritated. “Gown. When it hits the floor, it’s a gown. Higher up, it’s a dress.”
“Forgive me.”
“You’re such a gavone,” she admonished him, pinching her fingers together. The crowd went wild. “All the girls you’ve been with, and not one ever explained the difference?” Chi Chi looked out into the crowd. “Sorry, Monsignor.”
Tony ignored her. “I want to tell you something.”
Chi Chi held her ear. “I can’t hear you over the gown.”
“I didn’t come all the way from New York City to have you give me a lesson in dress design.”
“Then why did you come all this way?”
“Well, Chi Chi, there’s a little tune that climbed the Hit Parade chart, written by a young lady from this very beach.”
“Who would that be, Tony?”
“That would be you.” Tony shielded his eyes as he too peered into the audience. “Where are Barbara and Lucille?”
The girls from the mill pushed them forward.
“Come on up,” Chi Chi implored her sisters. “Ladies and gentlemen, without any rehearsal or what they call further adieu in France, I present my family, the Donatelli Sisters.”
“With Tony Arma,” Tony added.
The crowd roared.
Tony conducted the band into an uptempo version of Mama’s Rolling Pin. The guests filled the floor. During the musical interlude, Tony put his arm around Chi Chi and turned upstage.
“They know the song,” he said.
“It’s a hometown thing.”
“Explain Bristol, Virginia. It was huge there, too.”
Tony and Chi Chi returned to the microphones to bring the song in. The quartet ended the song live as they had on the record, with a melodic four-part harmony that blew big. The crowd cheered as they took a bow.
Keeping the momentum going, the band segued into a lively polka. The pavilion came alive once more with the exuberance of the traditional Polish dance. Chi Chi, Lucille, Barbara, and Tony slipped off the stage and joined the Italians at their table.
“That was beautiful, Tony,” Isotta said. “Chi Chi, bella!”
Jim kissed Chi Chi lightly on the lips. “That was swell.”
“Thanks. Tony, this is Jim LaMarca,” Chi Chi introduced them.
Jim shook Tony’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“I didn’t know we made ’em this tall,” Tony joked.
“Well, now you know,” Jim said politely.
“May I have this dance, Mrs. Donatelli?” Tony extended his hand to Isotta.
“Of course.” She smiled and took Tony’s hand and followed him to the dance floor.
“Look at that,” Lucille commented as they watched their mother dance for the first time since their father had died. “He’s so smooth.”
“If you only knew,” Chi Chi said as she took Jim’s arm and headed back to the dance floor.
* * *
Chi Chi moved through the tables at the reception with Jim, greeting the guests as if it were her own wedding. She left him with the Osella boys to enjoy a cigar.
Tony was kept busy as he danced with every woman at the reception. It turned out he had more than a few fans in attendance, and even when they weren’t, he was polite and obliged the ladies who were widows or had already sent their husbands off to war and were in need of a dance partner.
Chi Chi poured herself a birch beer.
“Can you pour me one too, Cheech?” Tony said from behind her, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.
“I should take you outside and hose you down.” She handed him her cup of birch beer and poured herself another.
“I’m dying out there. I need reinforcements. The women of this town are dance deprived.”
“Tonight, you are the most popular guy in town.”
“Only because there’s a war on.”
“Nah. It’s you. Your savoir faire is built in like a rumble seat.”
“I try to be a nice guy.”
“You are a ni
ce guy.”
“Then why did you let me have it in Chicago?”
“You deserved it.”
“Fair enough. But give me some credit. I’m working off my penance tonight.”
“How are things going in New York?”
“I’m lonely. But you’re not.”
Chi Chi watched Jim LaMarca laugh with the Osella brothers across the dance floor. “He’s a doll, isn’t he?”
“Whatever you say.”
“What’s the matter? You jealous? You shouldn’t be. I figured you were fed up with me by now.” Chi Chi offered Tony a slice of pizza with alige. He ate it hungrily. She offered him a napkin.
“You’re the best friend I have, Cheech. I know that girls don’t want to hear that—somehow the word friend is reserved for the ladies you laugh with at the mill. But for a man, it’s a word that carries the highest esteem, it comes with the deepest respect.”
Chi Chi put her hand on Tony’s forehead. “Nope, no fever. You’re not dying.”
“Cut it out. I’m serious.” Tony got a funny look on his face.
“What’s with the look?”
“You’re a little thick sometimes,” Tony said quietly.
“Isn’t everybody?”
“Sure, but you’re only thick when it comes to being a woman.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m flirting with you, and you act like I’m fooling around.”
“Isn’t that what flirting is?”
“Chi Chi, I took what you said to heart. About Delilah. About what I did to her.”
“You ran around on her.”
“It was more complicated than that.”
“Complicated is a fancy word you hide behind, when in fact it was simple. You told Delilah you loved her, then you made love to other girls while you were loving Delilah. So who made it complicated?”
“Now you’re my priest.”
“I don’t want to be your priest. Go see a priest if you need a priest. Monsignor Nibbio is at Table Four.”
“The fellas in the band wonder why you don’t have a boyfriend. I guess I can tell them about Stretch over there.”
“You tell them nothing. No, you tell them this: that I am there to work. To do a job. To get paid. To get better at the job. To get better pay on the next job. And so on.”
“Take a breath, wouldja?”
“Ever notice it’s the girls who pack up and leave the band when the love affairs go south? Every contract a woman signs should come with a rider: ‘Don’t fall for him, sister. When it ends, and it will, you’ll lose your heart and your job.’ The man? He stays on the tour like nothing happened. Gets a raise and climbs ever higher. You tell the boys that I will never be some man’s nothing happened.”
“I can do that.”
“I’m twenty-four years old. I don’t want to fritter away my time playing footsie with a drummer. Or a horn player. Or a crooner, for that matter.”
“Nobody said you should.”
“Then why are they asking? They’re like a bunch of washerwomen. That’s disparaging washerwomen in laundry rooms everywhere, by the way. They should demand an apology.”
“The boys like to talk.”
“Ugh.”
“They think you like me.”
Chi Chi got angry. “They think because we work together, there’s some monkey business going on?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“You guess what? A girl and a fella can’t be in a room with a paper piano and come out with a song, there has to be more to it?”
“That’s what they think.”
“I hope you straightened them out.”
“Of course I did.”
“It’s the height of unprofessionalism to assume a man and a woman can’t work together without getting involved. I wonder where they get that idea? Oh, that’s right. You.”
“Why are you rankled?” Tony said calmly.
“Because you don’t listen.”
“Then listen to this: I signed up.”
“You did what?”
“I signed up.”
“For the service?”
“The priesthood wouldn’t take me.” He shrugged. “I want to do my bit, and pull my weight. It’s time I got off this hamster wheel and did something with my life that matters.”
“You joined the Army.” Chi Chi was impressed.
“Nope. The Navy. You used to say, there’s something about the ocean. And I think you’re right. I think the answers are out there.” Tony whispered in her ear, “I think I need the ocean.”
“Chiara?” Jim placed his hands on Chi Chi’s shoulders.
“You call her Chiara? Fancy.”
“It’s a lovely name.” Jim smiled.
“Of course it is,” Tony said as he picked the crumbs off Jim’s lapel.
Chi Chi looked up at Jim. “Tony just told me he joined the Navy.”
“Is that right?” Jim extended his hand. “I’m in the Air Force.”
“I think we can win this thing, don’t you?”
“We have to.”
“True. Or the world as we know it will no longer exist. Tell me, Jim, what do you do for a living?”
“My family is in the trucking business.”
“Where do your trucks go? California? Texas?”
“No, we stay on the East Coast. New York, Pennsylvania. Connecticut.”
“Nice areas. Sung in the Poconos. Fine hotels up there in the woods. Mount Airy Lodge.”
“Very fine.”
Cousin Joozy barreled through a group and joined them. She had freshly powdered her face and reapplied her blood-orange lipstick, the combination of which gave her portraiture the effect of a gouache, dry yet bright. “Saverio, you’ve danced with every lady at the wedding except for me.”
“My pleasure, Cousin Joozy. Excuse me, Chiara. Jim.”
Tony led Joozy to the dance floor. The Sea Isle Garden Club gathered around them. As a member, Joozy shared her cousin as they embarked on a kind of group dance, where every member took a spin with the crooner.
Chi Chi followed Jim to the dance floor. He took her in his arms. Soon, they were sailing around the pavilion, moving with the beat, in that moment outrunning time, or it surely felt like it.
* * *
Jim draped Chi Chi’s taffeta stole around her shoulders as they stepped out into the night air. The last revelers from the wedding reception were getting into their cars. The ladies juggled napkins filled with slices of wedding cake; others carried flower arrangements from the dais, while others held bundles of cookies in doilies, the final remnants of the cookie trays for snacking on the ride home.
A small group of ladies had gathered outside Tony Arma’s town car for hire, which would take him back to New York City. The black four-door Buick was waxed like a patent leather shoe. It shimmered under the streetlights as though it were wet. Tony had one arm propped on the open car door and one foot inside the car. His homburg was tilted slyly over his left eye as he regaled the ladies with one final story about life on the road. He rolled his bow tie into a coil, placed it in his pocket, and undid the top button of his dress shirt.
Chi Chi and Jim stopped on their way to Jim’s car. “Good night, Tony,” she called out.
“Good night, Cheech. I mean Chiara,” Tony said. “Nice to meet you, Don.”
Chi Chi was about to correct him when Jim stopped her. “Not important,” he said quietly.
* * *
Jim walked Chi Chi up the front porch steps of her home. A moth danced around the porch light in figure eights.
“Thank you for another wonderful night.” Chi Chi looked up at Jim.
“It was fun.”
“I hope so.”
“You couldn’t tell?”
Chi Chi slipped her arm through his. “It was a little awkward with Tony.”
“He’s a little awkward, Chiara.”
“I think he was intimidated by you.”
“Why?
He’d have no reason to be—unless, of course, he was interested in you.”
“We’re just friends. We work together.”
“I think he wants something more.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Are you sure?”
“I feel sorry for him.”
Jim took Chi Chi’s hand as they sat down on the glider on the porch. “That’s a dangerous thing. When you feel sorry for a man, it puts him in charge. He knows you have a soft spot for him, so you’ll let him get away with things he shouldn’t.”
“He’s my friend, not my boyfriend. He’s always got a woman in his life.”
“But they don’t last.”
“No, but that’s because he doesn’t commit to them.”
“Be careful. You’re the smartest girl I know. Don’t let him make a fool out of you.”
“I won’t.”
“If this were a different time, and I had something to offer you right now, I would. But I don’t. I’m going into the service, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I see lots of my friends rushing into marriage, but that’s not something I want to do to a woman I would profess to love. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I think that’s wrong. If it’s right, it will be there on the other side of all this.” Jim stood and lifted Chi Chi to stand next to him. He kissed her. “Chiara is your name, and it’s really who you are. Chi Chi is the name of a spice, something you add at the end. To me, you’re the everything.”
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