“I can have him placed.”
“Placed?” Liam demanded.
“In an asylum, of course. He’s mentally defective.”
The words hit them like a blow, stunning them into silence.
Dr. Chauncey Pettigrew, mistaking their shock for lack of comprehension, looked at Liam. “You immigrants.” He jabbed his cigar near Liam’s chest. “Mentally defective. Let me explain in words you can understand. He’s dimwitted!”
“Dimwitted, is he!” Liam exploded, lunging at the man and lifting him by his collar. The doctor dropped his cigar and stared wide-eyed at Liam for a second before Liam lifted him higher and shoved him, sending him crashing into the examining table. He slid to the floor, legs apart like a rag doll, a corner of the examining sheet clutched in his hand.
“Watch what ye say to us immigrants, Dr. Chauncey Pettigrew. Ye won’t be the first Englishman to feel me fists.” Liam ushered Maeve out through the gaping onlookers that had gathered at the door at the sound of the crash.
“The nerve o’ him,” Liam said as they sat in their kitchen sipping tea that afternoon.
Their anger had temporarily diffused their fears in the doctor’s office. Now, as they watched Dermot on a blanket on the floor, almost two yet content to sit quietly and follow them with his eyes, their fears returned. Liam wondered what he could say to reassure Maeve, but this time it was she who offered consolation.
She smiled at him. “Liam dear, we have some good news.”
“Tell me, Maeve. I could use it.”
She moved over and put her arm around him. “We’ll be havin’ another wee one in the fall.”
Liam jumped up and hugged her. “That’s just the thing. Someone to play with Dermot. Someone near his age to show him how to do things. Good for the whole family.” He held her at arm’s length. “What will ye be askin’ the good Lord for, a boy or a girl?”
“A girl,” she said. “One with your fiery temperament, to get along in this wild land. An American.”
Chapter 15
“America! No!” Ottavia’s mother shook her head. “You are my baby. Why America? You will have no family. Stay in Argiano, your home, where Federico knows his grandmother, where he can walk into any home and find a cousin, an aunt, a welcoming smile, and a dolce to please his sweet tooth. If you must move, why not Firenze where Lucia lives?” That would still be unfathomable to her, but it was Italy at least, not the end of the world.
When her mother finally realized that Ottavia meant to go, and in a few days, she alternately wept and sat dazed, staring out the window. On her last day at home, Ottavia had come home after saying goodbye to her relatives and found her mother sitting silently on Ottavia’s bed, smoothing the already smooth blanket that lay on top, and Ottavia fell at her mother’s knees and the two women wept.
“I must do this, Mama, or I would never leave you.”
“Why? What makes you do this desperate act?”
“I will tell only you, if you promise to tell no one and to judge no one.”
Her mother nodded.
“Little Federico. He is not Federico’s child.”
“Whose then?”
“He is Vittorio’s son.”
“Vittorio?” Her face was blank.
“Father…Father Vittorio di Rienzi.”
The woman gasped and blessed herself. “No, child!”
Ottavia hung her head. “It is so, Mama. He is in Firenze, and the monsignor there saw us together, and he knew. Now you know why I have to go.”
“How will you live? Where will you work? How will you care for Federico?”
Ottavia did not know the answers. Only one thing she knew. She was going, and Federico Vittorio was going with her. She would never be parted from him, the one love no one could take away from her.
Ottavia laid her head in her mother’s lap, and the two clung to each other.
“Why is it?” her mother whispered. “Why do mother and child pay for the sins of the father?”
****
The morning they left, the entire village, many with tears in their eyes, stood on the dusty roads to say farewell. They loved the beautiful young widow who had devoted her life to the service of others.
“I will return to see you again,” she told them. But when she and Federico, their cloth bags tied behind them in the wagon, turned to wave to her parents and the whole of Argiano, she knew she would never return. Her sadness became an enduring pain that would ease in time but never go away. It returned in quiet moments when she dozed in a chair in the parlor of her new home, in her new land. It returned as she walked the crowded streets of New York or stood transfixed at a fruit vendor’s stall, when the scent of fresh-picked fruit took her back across the miles, across the years, to another life in another world.
Ottavia and Federico Vittorio stayed overnight in a hotel in Naples, waiting until they could board the Cristoforo Columbo the next day. She had never stayed in a hotel and was afraid to venture down to dinner that evening, but her son’s hunger forced her to take him into the little dining room. It was crowded with others, also waiting until they could board. She kept her eyes down, but the child, sensing that his mother was unhappy, began his friendly chatter. Excitement bristled in the air, and Federico Vittorio caught it, talking and laughing, looking up at his mother with his enormous brown eyes that showed an understanding beyond his years. He could sense her moods, and though she tried to hide it from him, he recognized a sadness about her. All his life he would try to cheer her when he saw that sadness drop like a veil between them.
They wound up laughing together, and she got up the courage to look around. Many of the people had young families; others were single men, headed to America to make enough money to send for their families. They looked like peasants, the women, like herself, in homespun skirts and blouses, the men often wearing the only suit they owned.
She noticed a woman her own age at the next table, with a son perhaps a year younger than Federico. The woman’s dark hair wound in thick braids around her head. Her ample body and pleasant face showed a love of life, and when Ottavia looked her way, she smiled. She sent her son over with an anise cookie for Federico Vittorio, and soon the boys had their heads together, playing a game they had just invented. Before long, the woman invited Ottavia to join her. Pleased that her son had someone to play with and happy to have another young woman to talk to, Ottavia sat down next to her.
She pushed a bunch of grapes in front of Ottavia. “Eat!” she invited. “We do not know what kind of food we will get once we are aboard ship. I have brought as much as I can, so we will eat well.” She pulled a covered basket from under the table and opened it. It was brimming with bread, meat, and fruit.
“How heavy for you to carry,” Ottavia said.
“Two will make it lighter every day.” She pointed to Ottavia and her son. “Now four.”
Ottavia was touched by the young woman’s kindness, and thankful that she and her son would not be taking their long journey to the unknown all alone. Her new friend extended her hand. “I’m Antonia Crespi. I do not speak English yet, but I will learn.” She waved in the direction of her son. “This is Paolo. We are going to join my husband. I have not seen him in two years.”
When Ottavia told her that she had booked passage in first class, Antonia shook her head. “Too much money,” she said, and suggested that she turn in those tickets for berths in steerage, so Ottavia would have more money to start her life in America.
She and Antonia went to the ship’s office, which was crowded with people making last-minute arrangements, and she exchanged her first-class passage for steerage and fifteen dollars, a sum which would see her through her first few weeks in America.
As the four of them walked back to the hotel, Ottavia was grateful for the second time to a woman she had known for barely three hours.
Chapter 16
Ottavia was shocked by the numbers of people in steerage’s small quarters. Antonia apologized for suggesting
that she give up the comfort of first class, but Ottavia shook her head. She was not bothered by the masses of humanity, even though more people were crowded on the ship than lived in the entire village of Argiano. She was upset, however, by the discomfort that the tight quarters caused her fellow passengers. As was her nature, she helped minister to a child with fever, and wrapped the arm of a woman who broke it when she was knocked to the deck by a sudden roll of the ship. She sat with the elderly, listening as they shook their heads, bewildered over leaving their country and friends to travel with sons and daughters-in-law across the wild sea to an unknown land.
Federico Vittorio and Paolo played together constantly, and the women comforted each other as they crossed the capricious ocean. They laughed together in calm sunshine and licked their lips at the salty spray, and wrung out wet cloths for each other’s foreheads when an angry sea laid them low. Fortunately, the boys were impervious to seasickness and played quietly below deck when their mothers were too ill to move off their bunks.
Although the four grew closer each day as they shared bread, laughter, and dreams, Ottavia’s heart ached at the difference in their lives. After two years, Antonia and Paolo were going to be reunited with Tomasso, their husband and father. They grew impatient as the time grew closer, and Antonia spoke often of him.
Ottavia’s reluctance to speak of her son’s father made Antonia believe that he was dead, an impression confirmed when Ottavia told her of her marriage to Federico Gibelli and his accidental death on their wedding night. Out of sympathy for her friend’s loss, Antonia asked no more questions. She was impressed with Ottavia’s courage to leave Argiano to seek a better life for her fatherless son. She believed she understood her friend’s moments of sadness, when her eyes shadowed with a visible pain, a deep hurt that took her to a place where Antonia dared not intrude.
Antonia looked after Ottavia with motherly concern. She saw many of the single men on board stare at her friend, and a few attempted to start a conversation, but Ottavia was politely uninterested.
“You need a nice man to marry you, to take care of you and Federico Vittorio. Then you can live in a tenement near us and we will be family.”
Ottavia laughed and shook her head. “You are such a dreamer, Antonia.”
One evening when Antonia was up on deck, Ottavia stayed below, sitting on her bunk, watching the boys playing nearby. A swaggering young man approached her and, though she didn’t encourage it, began a conversation. When he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a flask, she became apprehensive. He took a long, gurgling swig, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and leered at her. She shrank away from him. Federico Vittorio abruptly stopped playing and stood by her side, his arm around her neck. He chattered away, and she gave him her full attention. The man tried to interrupt, but the two paid him no attention. Finally he struggled up, mumbling, and moved away.
“I don’t like that man,” Federico said.
She hugged her son. “My dear one,” she said, “you are growing up.”
The final three days of the voyage were marked by a driving rain that followed the ship’s westward course. Going on deck for only a few minutes meant being drenched to the skin. The soaked passengers crowded together in musty sleeping quarters that overpowered the senses.
Despite the rain, word spread that they were entering New York Harbor, and the passengers swarmed on deck. The torrents had softened to a drizzle, and the cool rain falling upon the warm September water brought mist that rose in eerie curls. Ottavia breathed the early autumn air, clean and sweetly salty. She held on to Federico Vittorio’s hand as the four of them stood at the rail.
In the morning mist, the immigrants caught sight of Lady Liberty, a graceful beacon through the veil of gray, her dimensions so perfect in relation to the harbor that her size was not apparent from afar. Excitement built as they came closer, and passengers gave a collective gasp as the ship passed its massive base.
Someone on the ship held a paper and read aloud the same inscription as on the base. A man read it aloud in English, and another translated it into Italian.
The words passed from group to group, a phrase at a time, to the wet, exhilarated mass of humanity that gaped at the mighty creation of freedom. Antonia hugged Paolo to her as they heard the words: “Give me your poor, your wretched, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” Ottavia, deeply moved, recited each phrase to her son, whose eyes were wide with excitement. Some of the crowd cheered as they passed, some blessed themselves, and others gazed reverently, their eyes drawn from the base up to the torch, believing the words they had not heard before but knew in their hearts.
Vittorio put his arms around his mother. “Mama, I think I am going to like this America.”
Chapter 17
November 10, 1889
“Fetch the midwife, Liam. It’s time.”
Maeve eased her swollen body into a parlor chair she had covered with towels in case her water broke. Little Dermot, unconcerned, amused himself quietly with a piece of clothesline and a rag doll, endlessly placing the rope, then the doll on the floor, then picking up each one to start the process again. Maeve put her head back and closed her eyes, only to lurch forward, her hands on her stomach, as the labor pains quickened. She concentrated on the Celtic cross in its place of honor on the table, and tried to imagine herself a young girl, the cross the only adornment on the mantel in her parents’ cottage.
“Glory be to God,” she cried, and half rose from her chair. The water broke and heat seared her body. She could feel the baby coming, and she had to get to the bed. It became her mission, something to focus on as the leaping pain threatened to rise to her brain.
“Sweet Lord Jesus. Holy Mother Mary. Blessed St. Patrick,” she whispered in litany as, grasping on to furniture, she dragged herself across the room. She had reached the bedroom when she felt the baby ready to present its head. “Oh, God! Oh, God, please wait!” She sucked in her breath, hoping to slow the birth. The baby was moving, fighting her. Where was Liam?
In answer, Liam and the midwife burst in. “Holy Mother!” Liam cried, and swept her onto the bed. The midwife shouted a stream of orders, and Liam was glad to do rather than think.
“The baby is almost here,” the midwife assured Maeve, who clutched at the brass bedpost. Besides the pressure, Maeve felt the baby thrashing around inside her. It wasn’t like that with Dermot. When the pain became this intense, he was thrusting his way into the world.
The midwife whispered something to Liam. Maeve heard no words through her haze of pain, but she understood their urgency. “What’s wrong?” she wheezed.
Liam took her hand. “Bridget thinks there may be a problem, nothing that can’t be fixed. This one is just taking his sweet time about coming out.” He stroked her hand and tried to smile, hiding the fear that pounded in his head.
“I’m going in all the way to find the problem.” The midwife reached in, feeling the baby with an expert hand. She grimaced at Liam and wound her hand around her neck. With sinking heart, he understood. The umbilical cord had wrapped around the baby’s neck, making it almost impossible to deliver without strangling it. Maeve was in too much pain to notice Bridget’s gesture, and Liam kept up a steady stream of reassurances as Bridget tried to ease the struggling baby out of the birth canal. She pulled slowly until the head emerged. Then, knowing that each inch would wrap the cord tighter, she worked with incredible speed.
Liam’s heart knocked against his chest as he watched the baby emerge, gasping for air. A deadly blue began to suffuse her face.
“The scissors!” Bridget commanded, and swiftly cut the cord, unwrapping it from the baby’s neck. She held the little girl up, then turned her upside down and gave her a spank. She was soundless, and the trio held their breath.
The baby cried.
“ ’Tis the sweetest, lustiest yell ever to come from a baby’s mouth,” Liam said.
She cried a long time as Bridget cleaned her and wrapped her in a warm blanket, but
once in her mother’s arms, she curled up like a kitten, soft, round, and pink, topped by a shock of auburn hair, and fell asleep.
Liam considered his new daughter. “I favor Maureen.”
Maeve shook her head. “This is a wild land, Liam. God forbid anything should happen to us, but she will have to be strong. Catherine is a strong name.”
Looking down at his wife, exhausted from childbirth, he was not about to deny her anything. “Catherine it is, and we can call her Kitty.”
Maeve smiled and drifted off to sleep.
Liam stood there a long time, looking down at his beautiful wife and new daughter. In agreeing to the name Catherine, he had humored her. He thought her concern about this so-called “wild” country was unwarranted. And her idea that Catherine would have to survive without them was absurd. No doubt Kitty Dwyer will have us for a long time, probably into old age. Survive without us? He shook his head. The very idea.
****
Growing up, Kitty was bright and quick, learning to cook with her mother and watching her father as he made repairs to their home. She knew early in her life that she was more capable than her big brother, and looked out for him. Dermot followed Kitty adoringly, happy whenever she played with him, which she did often, and content to watch wordlessly as she performed tumbles and somersaults for him. In tomboy fashion, she’d hitch up her skirts and race the neighborhood boys, her auburn hair flying straight out behind her as she invariably came in first.
Dermot was small, and by age ten, Kitty was as tall as her brother. Maeve depended on her. “Roll the ball to Dermot, will you, Kitty, so I can finish making this pie.” Or “Help your brother wash his hands for dinner. Don’t make a game of it, now, or we’ll never sit down to eat.” Kitty was happy to teach him.
She had her father’s temper, especially when anyone dared to make fun of Dermot. As the two walked along the street with their mother, Maeve noticed with horror that Kitty had stuck her tongue out at two teenage boys. “What do you have to say for yourself?” Maeve asked.
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