“I figured it out the other night, Rose. Cooking in a restaurant kitchen and building bridges on a South Pacific island in the middle of conflict are a lot alike.”
The business grew. At the end of our first year we’d more than kept up with our loan payments. When I finished doing the books in November 1946, just before Thanksgiving and Al Jr.’s fourth birthday, I got up from the kitchen table and found Al downstairs in the cellar taking inventory. He was counting jars of tomatoes that Mama and I had put up in August.
I leaned against the shelf and studied him. He wasn’t as washed out and scrawny as he’d been the summer before, and the haunted look that had been his constant expression only broke through now and then when he wasn’t busy. When you saw him from his left side, as I was doing, you didn’t notice how withered his right arm was. It was more than having filled out on good Italian cooking. He looked sturdy and purposeful, a man who knew he was doing useful work. The more confident he became, the more he’d taken on in the kitchen. Pretty soon he’d moved from being Mama’s apprentice to becoming our primary chef. I smiled to myself. He was still handsome.
“What?” He’d finished counting, wrote the total on his clipboard, then glanced at me with curiosity.
“Can’t a girl admire her man once in a while, especially in a dark corner when no one else is watching?”
“You didn’t come down here to flirt. What’s up? Did you find a problem with the books?”
“Just the opposite. We’ve cleared enough in the past three months to cover my salary at the bank. I wanted to talk to you about my quitting and working full-time at the restaurant.”
“You sure that’s what you want? Your job at the bank’s important to you. You’re so smart. Is this going to be enough?”
He was really asking, Am I going to be enough? Sometimes the man could be so blind to how much I loved him and it drove me crazy that he thought my job was more important than him and our life together…. So I played it out a little to show him how ridiculous that was.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should forget about the restaurant altogether and stick with banking. I’ll become a businesswoman and give up everything—my child, the man I love—for my almighty career. On my deathbed I’ll pat the pile of money I’ve accumulated, ’cause that’ll be all I’ve got, and tell myself it was worth it.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Jeez, Al. I don’t know where you get these ideas.”
He put down the clipboard and took me in his arms.
“If you want to quit the bank and you think we can manage, then go ahead.”
ROSE
1947–55
Miami
I HANDED IN my resignation on the Monday after Thanksgiving and by Christmas had packed up my desk in a Hood milk crate and headed out the door. Mr. Coffin was a gentleman about it, but we both knew there were five guys back from the war waiting in line to take my job.
I was also two months pregnant, which I found out on New Year’s Eve. I hadn’t experienced any of the throwing up or exhaustion I’d had with Al Jr., so it was a surprise. But not an “Oh, no, what am I going to do now?” surprise. I’d seen some women react like that, women with too many mouths to feed and a husband still trying to put the war behind him and get on with life.
Ours was a joyful surprise. You’d have thought Al had played the numbers and won big when I told him. He whooped and danced me around the restaurant. Later that night in bed, he lifted my nightgown and kissed my belly.
Our son Michael was born in July of 1947 and spent his infancy in a bassinet in the restaurant kitchen, falling asleep to the Frank Sinatra records we played and the sizzle of bracciola frying in olive oil. Our daughter was born in 1950. We followed tradition and named her after Al’s mother, Antonella, but like many things my generation was doing differently from our parents, we called her Toni. That wasn’t on her baptismal certificate, of course, but I don’t think I ever called her Antonella. Even when I was yelling at her and stringing together all her names for effect, I always said, “Toni Marie Dante! You stop that right now.”
My generation was different from our parents when it came to having kids. I don’t know how my mother managed with seven. Yes, I do. She depended on the older ones to watch out for the younger ones; she laid down the law, expecting us to abide by it, and she pretty much left us to amuse ourselves while she cooked, cleaned, washed clothes and did piecework. She didn’t worry the way I did about my kids.
By the time I had three, I was done in. One Saturday night in 1952, right after I’d nursed all three kids through two weeks of the measles, we cooked for a private party for an engaged couple—five courses, one hundred people and enough wine to give them all headaches the next day. I finished up in the kitchen, sent the extra help home with their pay and their tips and locked up. I crawled upstairs, checked on the kids asleep in their beds and collapsed in my own. It was more than physical fatigue. I was over the edge. I’d yelled all day: “Where was the extra wine we’d ordered?” “Who took delivery on the veal, because there wasn’t enough?” “Why aren’t the tables set?” “Do I have to do everything myself?” You get the idea. I’d been so wrapped up in making sure my kids didn’t go blind from the measles or—God forbid—die from it, that I’d neglected the details downstairs and paid for it in a massive case of agita.
I must have slept for almost twenty hours after that. We closed the restaurant on Sundays back then, so my mind simply shut down. Al made the kids some pastina with beaten egg and let them play. They were just well enough to feel bored with being cooped up in dark rooms for two weeks and were getting on one another’s nerves. How Al kept them away from me, I don’t know, but he did.
When I finally woke up on Sunday evening, groggy and with my mouth as dry as my aunt Zita’s almond cookies, Al already had the kids bathed and in bed.
“You need a rest, Rose. And I mean more than a long sleep like you just had. Why don’t we close the restaurant for a couple of weeks after Christmas, ask Carmine and Cookie to watch the kids, and you and I drive to Miami?”
“How can I do that? What if they get sick again?”
“Then we come back. But you should’ve seen them today. They’re full of energy. If you don’t take some time off, you’ll be the one to get sick, and then where’ll we be?”
And that’s how we started going to Florida every winter. It was a mixed blessing. Something I don’t talk about, because Florida was how Al met Estella.
Despite my reluctance and reservations about leaving the kids, Florida was just what I needed that year. We stayed in Miami Beach at the Casablanca; after 1954, it was always the Fontainebleau, which was right on the ocean. Al, who always had a good eye for what looked good on me, had put a stack of boxes under the tree at Christmas, each one holding a beautiful outfit for me to wear in Miami: cocktail dresses in aqua-blue lace and wine-red satin; jersey halter dresses with plunging necklines and cinched waists to show off the figure I’d gotten back after Toni’s birth; two Jantzen bathing suits, one a maillot and one a two-piece floral print that reminded me of the suit I’d worn years before on the beach at Marblehead; silk and cashmere wraps for the evenings. At the top of the stack was a tiny box with a pair of diamond earrings.
We had a ball. We went out dancing every evening, at the Copa or the Napoleon Ballroom at the Deauville Beach. Then we slept till noon, ate lunch on the pool patio and walked on the beach in the afternoon. I swam laps in the pool or body-surfed in the waves.
One afternoon at lunch Al slipped an envelope across the table.
“What’s this?”
“Two Pan Am tickets.”
“Are we going to fly home? Has something happened to one of the kids?” I could feel my heart start to race.
Al grinned. “Everybody’s fine, Rose. This is a little surprise. One of the guys I played cards with the other afternoon recommended a side trip to Havana—the casino, the nightlife. I thought we should give it a try, spend a night. It’ll be like the
old days, the island life.”
So the next day we flew on a little puddle jumper to Havana, along with men my banking experience told me had a lot of cash to throw around. I made Al promise me he’d only take one hundred dollars in chips at the casino, and when that was gone, we’d spend the rest of the time dancing.
Havana was really something in those days, at least the Havana that we saw. Cadillac convertibles cruising the streets, pastel buildings filled with shops and restaurants, the casino ablaze with crystal chandeliers and open all night long. If Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were up in the hills then, nobody at the roulette table was giving it a second thought. Like most gamblers, they assumed their winning streak would last forever.
And the women at the casino were gorgeous. Elegant and sophisticated. You could tell that most of them were mistresses, not wives. The jewelry was too ostentatious—the consolation prizes for not having the diamond and the wedding band the wives back in the States were wearing. And I imagine that some of those beautiful women were sitting by the sides of men they might not have come with but hoped to leave with.
It was an experience. I wore the burgundy strapless number Al had given me for Christmas and I’d had my hair and nails done in the hotel salon. I’d pulled my hair back from my face so you could see the diamonds in my ears.
While I was getting dressed, Al kissed my neck.
“If I win big tonight, I’ll buy you a necklace to match the earrings.”
“If you win big tonight, we’re putting the money in the bank for the kids, but I’ll always remember you wanted to give me a necklace,” I told him with a kiss.
I knew Al was proud of me when we walked into the casino. He had his arm around my waist like a caress. I spent the evening perched on a stool next to him at the blackjack table, my leg pressed against his through the satin. Every now and then he’d gently squeeze my thigh.
“You bring me luck, Rose. Throughout my life.”
When he hit a thousand dollars, I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Let’s finish this stroke of good fortune in the bedroom.”
With a smile, he gathered up his chips, cashed them in and followed me to our hotel room. Through the louvered shutters on the windows I could hear the waves and the music of Sinatra wafting from somebody’s radio.
Two winters later, Al’s cousin Mario and his wife, Vera, were down in Miami at the same time. Mario had heard Al go on about Havana and wanted to fly over for a couple of days at the casino. Vera didn’t want to go. She was deathly afraid of flying and begged me to stay with her and keep her company while Al and Mario went. Against my better instincts, I agreed.
Al and Mario were gone longer than they planned. Like a fool, I initially assumed it was because they were winning. Al wasn’t much of a gambler, but he liked to go to the track now and then. He must’ve been winning big. I pictured him tapping the cards with his good left hand and keeping his right arm resting on his lap. I’d tailored the white jacket of his tux to fit him. By the time he and Mario went to Havana he already had a nice tan. I could understand that in Havana’s high-stakes, booming culture, a guy could get caught up in the excitement. With his slicked-back dark hair and penetrating eyes, I’m sure he was on every unattached woman’s radar the minute he strolled into the casino.
There’s a heat to the Caribbean that we both knew—a heat that has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s in the music, the dancing, the way people—especially women—just walk down the street. When you’re near someone, you see the sweat glistening on her skin and you smell her perfume mingled with her own distinctive fragrance.
My imagination was taking me places I really didn’t want to go. By the end of three days of playing canasta with Vera and drinking too many daiquiris at the bar before dinner, I was ready to get on a plane myself and drag Al back. He hadn’t even called.
He and Mario finally showed up on the fourth day, rumpled, unshaven, but with wide grins, big cigars and a lot of cash. Vera and I were on the patio having coffee and Danishes, so I wasn’t going to make a scene in public, but I was seething.
They went upstairs to shower and sleep.
Vera shrugged. “Boys will be boys.”
“Al’s not a boy,” I said sharply. “He’s got three kids and a wife who loves him. He should know better.”
I let Al sleep it off for a few hours. I considered going through his pockets, but decided not to stoop so low. Instead, I took a long walk on the beach without Vera, who was really annoying me. In my head I enumerated all the reasons I should give Al the benefit of the doubt. He’d always been faithful, never even looked at another woman. He took tender care of me; suggesting that we spend time in Florida at all had been for my benefit. He adored the kids. He worked hard. So what if he spent an extra couple of days throwing money around? He’d come back, hadn’t he? I thought I could forgive him. But I promised myself I’d go to Havana with him from now on.
When I got back to the hotel room Al was getting dressed. You could see why a woman would be drawn to him.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “You want to talk about why you stayed in Havana so long without even a phone call? For all I knew, someone had rolled you and left you in an alley somewhere.”
“I’m sorry, Rose. We were playing so hard we lost track of time. We got into a card game—you don’t just walk away down there.”
“Since when do you gamble like that, Al? I’ve never known you to be so obsessed.” Maybe it wasn’t a woman.
“I’m not. But Mario, he’s reckless. I felt I needed to keep an eye on him. My mother and my aunt Philomena would never forgive me if I let him get in over his head. Like I said, I’m sorry.”
I stared hard at him, trying to see the truth in his eyes. It scared me that I doubted him. He’d never let me down. I decided I needed to give him this one. And I didn’t ask him if he’d been with a woman.
“Okay,” I said.
He lifted me from the bed and kissed me. He smelled of the hotel’s fancy soap, Prell shampoo and his Old Spice after-shave.
But Cuba still clung to him.
I tried to shake the scent—and the suspicion. I didn’t want to be weighed down with it. I didn’t want to ruin our last night in Florida.
I put a smile on my face, changed into my sexiest dress and went down to dinner with Al. But it was still there in the far-off look in his eyes every now and then, as if he’d remembered something. It was still there in my own watchfulness.
That night in bed we didn’t reach out for one another—me because I couldn’t bring myself to touch him, Al because he fell into a profound sleep minutes after hitting the pillow.
A Piece Missing
WE STARTED THE DRIVE back to Boston the next day and didn’t speak about Havana again. By the time we arrived in the North End, to kids who’d missed us despite having a ball with their cousins, and a restaurant stove that needed to be fired up again, I was too busy to deal with whatever Al had done in Cuba.
Oh, my wariness was still there. I felt like I had antennae constantly rotating, trying to pick up a signal: an unexplained phone call, a letter with a Havana postmark, a receipt for a piece of jewelry that wasn’t sitting in my jewelry box or a dress that wasn’t hanging in my closet. I was on pins and needles. I didn’t know what I’d do if I found any of those signs—after crying my eyes out, that is. I didn’t find anything, nor did I want to. But I realized that didn’t prove that nothing had happened.
As you can imagine, I was on edge those first weeks back. Florida was supposed to be our R & R, and instead, it had turned me into a bundle of nerves. On top of that, Al Jr. was having trouble in school. There was a note from Reverend Mother, asking me to come in for a meeting as soon as we were back.
I’ve never done well with nuns. The ones I’d had to deal with growing up always made me feel like a tramp. My skirt was too short or my sweater was too tight or I had on too much makeup. I took pains when I kept my appointment with Reverend Mother to wear a suit and n
ot one of the outfits Al had bought for me. But I was still nervous.
When I walked into the school I could feel my stomach churn. The smell of whatever they used on the floors—disinfectant, wax—lurched me right back to when I’d been in seventh grade at St. John’s, heading down the hall to be chastised for talking back to Sister Alphonsus when she’d wrongly accused Vinny Tosi, an immigrant boy who’d arrived from Avellino only a few months before. She always assumed the worst of the Italian kids, especially the boys.
Reverend Mother’s office was stuffy and dark, with the blinds drawn instead of open to the playground where the children were at recess. Hanging behind her desk was a large crucifix with Christ in agony.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Dante. I was surprised when you didn’t respond to my note, but Albert told me you and your husband were in Miami. We don’t see many parents taking a vacation in the wintertime and leaving their children.”
“My children were with their aunt and uncle while we were away.” This woman was already making me bristle.
“Yes, well. Perhaps it was because you were gone that Albert thought he could get away with his behavior.”
“Exactly what did he do?”
“He’s disrespectful, Mrs. Dante. A back talker. We also have reason to believe he’s being influenced by older, public-school boys. I brought you in to let you know that we don’t tolerate insolence at St. John’s. If you don’t put a tighter rein on him, we may ask him to leave.”
“I’ll talk to him about his mouth and what he’s picking up from the older boys. I don’t expect to have to come back.”
Across the Table Page 6