Kitty put her hands on her hips. “I’m not sorry I did it, Mama. They pointed at Dermot and laughed.” Maeve didn’t reprimand the girl, but when Kitty showed up at home with a bloody nose after defending Dermot, Maeve was forced to talk to her.
“People will be cruel, Kitty dear, all of Dermot’s life, I’m afraid. Some were born with perhaps more brains, but less heart. You can’t be getting hurt because they say mean things. You’ve got to be strong and walk away. Remember, the good Lord Jesus taught us when someone hurts us to turn the other cheek.”
Kitty thought over her mother’s words, especially her reminder of Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek. That may be all right for Mama, she thought, but I know that after I knocked down the last boy that made fun of Dermot, Lord or no Lord, I felt much better.
Her young life took an exciting turn the day her father announced that, with the money he had saved since coming to America, he had bought a pub.
“When can we see it?” Kitty cried, jumping up and down.
“See it, see it,” Dermot mimicked.
“We’ll go this very minute,” Liam cried, and Maeve hurried to get her shawl.
As Kitty and Dermot skipped ahead on the three blocks to the pub, Liam glowed. “Didn’t I tell ye, Maeve, that I’d be working for meself? We did right to save the way we did, building our future. In America!” He swept his arm in a grand gesture. “Ye can do anything here,” he said, then added under his breath, “No more workin’ for that I-talian, either.”
Maeve gave him a reproving look. “He was very good to us…a steady job, a fair wage.”
“He knew a good worker when he saw one,” said Liam, unwilling to give him credit.
They arrived at a wide storefront, with windows that proclaimed, “McInerney’s Ale House” in gold leaf on each side of a door whose black paint was peeling. Another door down the alley read, “Ladies’ Entrance.” The children peered in the window, Kitty bursting with curiosity. In all her eleven years, she had never been allowed in a grownup pub.
“All this will be painted,” he told the family, “and the windows will read, ‘Dwyer’s. An Eating and Drinking Establishment.’ This will be a fancy place, the best ale house from the Battery to upper Fifth Avenue.”
Kitty’s eyes widened. “Please, let’s go inside.”
He watched Kitty with her nose pressed against the glass, and he hung outside, savoring the moment, until Maeve too, urged him to take them inside.
Kitty whirled around the room. This is the most exciting, the most wonderful place I have ever seen. The whole barroom glowed with the flickering light of oil lamps on each little table and behind the long mahogany bar. The smell of tobacco hung in the air, and smoke wafted lazily from the pipe of a man at a front table. She slid across the green-and-white tile floor on sawdust, and only her father’s watchfulness kept her from seeing how far she could slide.
“Dermot,” she whispered. “When Papa’s not looking, we can slide together.”
“Liam!” The bartender greeted him as he reached across the bar to shake his hand. Kitty stood politely as she was introduced, then asked permission to explore.
The back room was small, a gem tucked away behind the bar, not visible from the street. Green-checkered tablecloths covered the tables, and each was set up with chrome-topped glass salt and pepper shakers, a glass sugar bowl, and a large green glass ash tray. A man and two women sat at a table, drinking. The women fascinated Kitty. She thought them beautiful, with rouged cheeks and hats with enormous feathers, laughing together over something Kitty could not hear.
She gave birth to a dream that day. Then and there she vowed, “One day I will be a fancy lady and own a place of my own.”
At first, Maeve feared that if Kitty spent time at the pub, she would not be attentive to her schoolwork, but it had the opposite effect. Afternoons at the pub, especially in winter when it was too cold to be outdoors, became a reward for doing well at school. School was easy for Kitty, and with little effort she was at the top of her class. She loved learning about the countries where her neighbors came from, she loved the poems and stories she read in class, and was the first to get the answers in arithmetic. School became a world just for her.
Maeve took her and Dermot to Dwyers’ in the afternoons, when she cooked the supper Liam served to his customers. If the pub was quiet, Kitty and Dermot raced a few feet, then slid across the sawdust-sprinkled tiles. She loved playing “pub,” a game she invented. Dermot was the customer, and as he sat at a table in the back, Kitty wrote his order and brought him apple or orange slices on a plate, with milk in cups. As soon as she brought the food, Kitty became a customer, joining her brother at the table, where they enjoyed the treat together.
She watched her mother boil corned beef in huge pots. Often, Kitty peeled dozens of potatoes to accompany the beef, or shelled peas and pared carrots when her mother prepared a beef stew.
Other times, Kitty and Dermot designed their own fun, as long as they did not disturb the customers, while their mother prepared most of the food. Kitty loved the conviviality of the pub, watching from a corner as men clapped one another on the back, or held chairs out for the pretty women.
After her twelfth birthday, her mother told them she was expecting another baby. Kitty hugged her mother. “I’m so glad. I’ll help take care of it,” she promised.
“Of course you will,” her mother said. “You’re my best helper.”
But as Maeve grew bigger, Kitty watched her, her mother’s cheeks drained, as she dragged herself from chore to chore. “I can cook, Mama,” she said. At first, her mother refused, but eventually she gave in. Day after day, Maeve sat next to the chopping table, at first giving Kitty instructions, later sitting there with her eyes closed, her breathing imperceptible, locked in her illness.
Kitty had never been so frightened, watching her mother fighting to stay alive, losing a little every day. “Thank you, Papa,” she said when her father took Maeve from doctor to doctor. At first, Kitty was filled with hope, but she cried herself to sleep after each doctor’s visit failed to help her mother.
Kitty prepared meals in the pub every evening. Mornings she dragged herself to school, but she did not complain. It was the only way she knew to help her mother, and the sweet smile of gratitude from her every night was enough to drive Kitty to shoulder the burden silently. When she thought she could not peel another potato or slice another roast, she told herself this was only temporary, that her mother would get better, had to get better, and life would get back to normal.
That was not to be. With the onset of winter, her mother’s illness worsened, and she was confined to bed. After Kitty prepared the meals at the saloon, she and Dermot walked the three blocks home to their mother, leaving Liam to run the pub until closing.
In those precious evening hours, Maeve would ask her children to sit on the bed by her.
“Let me hear your lessons,” she told Kitty.
Kitty read to her mother and Dermot the stories from her American literature book. “The Headless Horseman,” with its fantasy and adventure, was a favorite. Or she read about the early days, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, the Indians and the first Thanksgiving. Dermot was enthralled by the little ritual, understanding what he could. And her mother seemed most at rest with her children beside her.
The winter grew colder, and life more difficult for Kitty, more mean for Liam, more tenuous for Maeve. Two days after Christmas, it began to snow, a huge blizzard. Liam was happy he could not open the pub, and spent day and night by Maeve’s bedside. Early the next morning, Liam woke Kitty and Dermot.
“Your mother wants to see you,” he said gravely.
Kitty shivered. They put sweaters over their nightclothes, small protection against the early morning chill. She held Dermot’s hand, and they approached the bed. Their mother lay there motionless, dark circles under her eyes and her cheeks as white as the snow outside. She opened her eyes and smiled at the sight of her children. She lif
ted her hand for them, and they held it. Her hand is so cold, Kitty thought.
“I love you.” Her mother mouthed the words, unable to speak. “God bless.”
“We love you, Mama,” Kitty said, and Dermot bent to kiss her hand.
Liam asked them to go back to their bedrooms. With her eyes, Kitty pleaded with her father. He refused. She obeyed reluctantly, clinging to her mother’s hand. She bent down and kissed her mother, her throat constricted from forcing back tears.
She took Dermot into her room and asked him to kneel down. She recited the Our Father and the Hail Mary, Dermot adding his own version of the prayer with hers. After a while, her father entered the room. It was the only time she had ever seen him cry.
“Your mother is with the angels now. She passed peacefully, surrounded by those she loved most. We have to be grateful for that.”
He put his arms around Kitty and Dermot, and they sat there a while, suffering separately and together, not quite believing she was gone.
For three days, Maeve was waked at home, her coffin in the middle of the parlor. She wore a blue dress that Liam had bought for her the year before, paid for by his construction work on a large bank on Wall Street. He had worked practically round the clock, and considered its price a king’s ransom.
The dress for Maeve was the one extravagance he permitted himself. It was a symbol of what he had accomplished in only a short time in America and an unspoken promise to her that there would be much more in the years to come.
That was not to be.
The dress had to be cut down the back because Maeve was large with child. A double loss, Liam thought, and poured himself a huge tumbler of whiskey, hoping for forgetfulness.
As people came and went, dressed in their best dark dresses and suits, Kitty and Dermot watched on the fringes of the crowd. Children were to be seen and not heard, Liam had told them. And what could they have said? Dermot was listless, clinging to her. Kitty knew he understood, more with his heart than his head, that their mother was lost to them forever.
Now that he had the pub, Papa was away most of the day and half the night. Losing Mama meant losing everything that meant home. It was Mama who woke them in the morning and sent Kitty off to school after hot cereal, bread, and tea. It was Mama who said, “Kitty, you’re growing so, we’d better buy a bit of fabric to sew you a new frock.” It was Mama who waited at the door with a hug and freshly baked soda bread when Kitty came home from school. It was always Mama.
Consumed with her own grief, Kitty could not understand the chatter and the laughter of friends and relatives in the very room where her mother lay. Didn’t they know that the sun had gone out of their lives? She thought them callous for not hurting the way she did, and couldn’t wait until the last of them left in the evening.
It snowed again on New Year’s Eve, the day her mother was buried. The steel gray sky sent down a dusting of fine flakes that covered the grime of the earlier snow, which had turned slushy and black.
The three huddled together in the cemetery, seeking comfort as well as refuge from the December wind that whipped through their winter coats as though they were gauze. At the graveside, Kitty, who had cried each night and wept through the funeral Mass, felt she could cry no more.
They rode the trolley back to the bar, where Liam served a hearty meal to the funeral guests. When the last guest left in the late afternoon, they washed and dried glasses and plates, put out garbage, and Liam wrapped up half a ham that was left over and would do them for the next few meals.
They locked up the pub at dusk. Liam saw that the hand-lettered sign, “Closed due to a death in the family,” was turned to the street, and they started home through the snow.
New Year’s revelers crowded the streets, people in a festive mood despite the cold. Some hurried home from work, eager to be with friends and family. Some wove unsteadily after an afternoon of toasting the New Year; others greeted one another with hearty slaps on the back. Customers crowded the shops to buy pies and pastries, whiskey, and herring for luck in the year to come.
The Dwyer trio shouldered their way through the boisterous throngs, hands in their pockets, chins deep in their coat collars. The world celebrated while they grieved. The world would go home to the warm glow of gas lamps, laughter, and welcoming arms, while they would feel their way in the dark to light a lamp and stare at barren rooms. She wanted to shout, “You are happy and I am in pain. You are all much younger than I; though I did not want it, these past few months I grew up. My heart is old.”
Liam left her no time to worry about what lay ahead. When they got home, he told her, “You’ll have to be the woman of the house now. I’ll need you to cook and clean, and care for Dermot.”
She held her breath, hoping he would spare her the final blow, but he did not.
“There’ll be no time for school. Ye’ve had enough anyway, for a girl. There’s no need for more.”
Kitty burst into tears and ran from the room. Her fear had turned to anger, anger that her mother had died, and fury that her father had taken away her school and replaced it with a burden she did not want. There had to be another way, but as time went on and she was trapped in the tedium of an adult life she had not chosen, her resentment toward her father loomed as large as the list of chores she had to perform every day without respite.
Chapter 18
America was a mystery to Ottavia. The Lower East Side, which was all she knew of the country, was too crowded, too gritty, too hectic. Why did families jam together in one tenement, and why did they build tenement upon tenement, until the sky was barely visible when she looked out the window? And the language. With none of the lyricism of Italian, English sounded harsh and incomprehensible. That was just one of the languages she heard. People here spoke German and Yiddish and Polish and God knew what else. Where were the dirt roads and the verdant countryside, the whitewashed homes nestled into rolling hills? Where was the sense of history, as in Firenze, where buildings and customs and ceremonies were older than America itself?
She confessed her confusion to Antonia, who with Paolo and Tomasso lived in the tenement next door, but it was Vittorio, as she now freely called her son in public as well as in private, it was Vittorio whom she turned to for help in the boisterous new land. To her delight, Vittorio did well at school, picked up English easily, and patiently taught her to speak it. He knew his way around their section of the city. When they traveled to visit Antonia’s relatives halfway across the city, Vittorio could read the signs, take the trolley, and lead his mother without hesitation.
His easy adaptation to America was also a source of concern to her. He developed a passion for baseball, and every spare moment, he raced to the lot down the street, throwing and hitting and running bases. He tried to explain the game to her, and she listened patiently.
“I step up to the plate to bat, like this.” Vittorio assumed the batting stance.
“You stand on a plate?”
“Mama, it’s really a bag.”
“Then why do you not call it that?”
His brown eyes sparkled with amusement. “I don’t know. But you hit the ball and run the bases.”
“I’ve seen you. You run in a circle, then you slide in the dirt and get your pants dirty. That’s good, right?”
When he laughed, she cupped his chin in her hand, and said, “Why don’t you like to play bocce?”
She cried the day he came home and told her that in school they called him Victor. “Vittorio! You are my Vittorio! They can’t take my Vittorio from me!” She was inconsolable the whole afternoon.
Vittorio understood that his new name meant he was American, removed from the old ways his mother clung to. But her reaction meant more. He suspected it had to do with the loss of his father. How he wished his mother would talk about him. The mystery of his father was a smile that vanished, an unwritten letter, an emptiness in the heart. Whatever hidden pain he touched, he knew he should never bring up the subject again, but it haunted him.
When Vittorio went off to school, Ottavia went to work in a blouse factory, a job that Antonia’s husband had heard about from his padrone, a fellow countryman who got jobs for newly arrived immigrants. Antonia worked with her at first, until she became pregnant and stayed at home. While Ottavia missed her company at work, she was glad that Vittorio had a place to go after school. Antonia made sure he and Paolo did their homework before they could play.
Ottavia worked from seven a.m. until six p.m. The workroom was large, under a cavernous tin ceiling that reverberated all day with the hum of sewing machines lined up in rows almost as far as the eye could see. Ottavia and the other workers spent their days bent over yards of fabric, pushing it through machines, each woman like the other—wearing white cotton shirtwaist blouses and dreaming dreams that tired by six p.m. Windows were scarce, and leaving work some evenings, Ottavia was surprised that the weather had changed, that it had rained or cleared in the hours she was imprisoned with nothing to look at but a needle making stitches in garment after garment.
Ottavia lived for Sundays. They would go next door to Antonia’s for dinner, or, wrapped against the cold in winter or perspiring from the heat in summer, they rode the trolley to Antonia’s Aunt Concetta and Uncle Vincenzo’s, an outing that Vittorio particularly loved.
Ten years earlier, the couple had come to America, where Vincenzo established a thriving fruit-and-vegetable business that grew from pushcart to wagon to large store. The fruit bowl in their kitchen was three times the size of Ottavia’s, a plum or an orange invariably rested on the table, having toppled off its perch atop a mountain of fruit. Vittorio never left their home without a bag of apricots and peaches in summer or bananas and apples in winter. Concetta pressed it into the child’s hand. “Mangia, Vittorio. Grow big and strong,” she said as she hugged him to her breasts and showered him with kisses.
Antonia and Concetta constantly tried to arrange meetings between Concetta’s single son, Franco, and young women who, like them, had come from Tuscany. When Concetta first met Ottavia, she loved her sweet face and gentle disposition, and tried many times to interest her in Franco, but Ottavia shyly demurred. Antonia tried to talk to her, worried that her friend and young Vittorio would never have a man to take care of them.
Choices of the Heart Page 11