The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  I allowed that I supposed that I could. “Yet what if things do work out with Bert? What then?”

  Rocco stared at the concrete floor. “If Nonno and Nonna live to see that day”—he took a deep, unhappy breath—“I suppose we’ll tell them that setting you up with Bert was my idea. That I thought you needed a husband—any husband. And since you’ll have quit school to help with the business, maybe everyone will be more forgiving.”

  Grimly, he held out his hand. “That’s the best I can do. You don’t disgrace us, you be a good Catholic, and you work for us. In turn, I’ll look out for you. Capisce?”

  What choice did I have, darlings? Something inside me whispered, This is all wrong. Yet something else inside me exploded with gratitude and relief and secret, giddy glee. I could manage it. I could keep seeing Bert yet somehow still remain in the Dinellos’ good graces. Rocco would help me. And I would help him—and everyone—as a real member of the family.

  I slipped my hand into his. “Very well, then,” I said.

  A few weeks later, when it was time to reenroll at Hunter, I told Mrs. Dinello, “I think it’s best if I skip this semester. The boys, they really need my help at the moment.”

  To my amazement, she didn’t protest. “I suppose,” she said vaguely, rubbing her leg, her gaze turning milky. “They have so much to do now.”

  Though nobody ever said it out loud, all of us knew: Mr. Dinello was dying. Like gold leaf flaking off a statue, like a cliff eroding into the sea. And then one Sunday morning that spring, as we were getting ready for church, he called to Mrs. Dinello from the bedroom. “Generosa? My tie, you have seen her?” Mrs. Dinello was in the kitchen with me, rinsing out the coffee press. A bemused, exasperated look—a look that wives everywhere get when their husbands cannot find an item that is clearly right in front of them—this look fluttered across her face. She nudged off the tap with her elbow and opened her mouth to reply. Before any sound came out of her, she went down.

  People nowadays, they want all the horrible, lingering details, every rococo scene of somebody else’s agony and pathos. So sue me: I’m not going to give them to you. Mrs. Dinello collapsed and died right there in her kitchen, leaving her half-coherent husband fumbling around in the bedroom, searching for his tie.

  And I was the one who was with her and, in a moment, on the floor beside her, wailing.

  And of course it was unspeakably terrible.

  And that is all anybody needs to know.

  After that, it was as if every remaining nerve and synapse inside Mr. Dinello disintegrated in grief. By late summer his left hand was convulsing uncontrollably and he was given to sudden fits of weeping like a child. In an odd twist, his left leg went lame, like a mirror image of my own. He stopped speaking entirely. By Thanksgiving he was refusing to eat. Lucia, Pasquale’s wife, attempted to feed him the way she did their baby, with a bib and a tiny spoon.

  In the end, he recognized none of us. His head and arms lolled like a rag doll’s, his chin was shiny with spittle. A doctor, inexplicably, shaved off his mustache. To see him so infantilized was excruciating. When he finally died, three weeks before Christmas, we buried him beside his wife, his sons, his niece, and his grandchild at Holy Cross Cemetery out in Brooklyn, not back in Napoli as he and Mrs. Dinello had once dreamed.

  And even now: I do not want to talk about that, either.

  True to Mrs. Dinello’s word, I received an unofficial inheritance of sorts—namely, all her old responsibilities. Even her apron. Nothing had been put in writing, yet by then it was a foregone conclusion. I was finally integral to Dinello & Sons. I continued keeping house for Rocco and myself on Mulberry Street and showing up for work as always in my scuffed shoes, my hair swaddled in a kerchief. When Rocco gave me a nod at the end of the evening, I slipped out and met Bert somewhere on Rivington Street or north by his garage.

  Vittorio’s wife, Carmella, began appearing at the factory more often, I noticed, looking petulant and bored, picking up utensils and setting them down mindlessly and asking what the different ingredients for ice cream were and offering inane suggestions. Sometimes Vittorio sat her down at a table and assigned her a task such as addressing envelopes or sorting napkins. Yet when the inventories needed to be recorded, the deliveries logged, and all the outlays and revenue entered into the ledger, he reflexively turned to me. “Can you take care of this?” he’d say, handing me a receipt for a delivery of vanilla extract.

  The books, they needed a proper going-over. Studying them, I saw that Dinello & Sons Fancy Italian Ices & Ice Creams had been making steadily less profits since Mr. Dinello first had a stroke. The rent at Lafayette Street had increased, and many of the Dinellos’ contracts had been poorly renegotiated over time, based more on friendship than on business savvy.

  The good news, however, I told the grandsons, was that such problems could be easily solved.

  “With a few changes in place, we can greatly increase our profit margin,” I explained one evening.

  After the machines were cleaned and shut down at the end of each day, Vittorio, Pasquale, and Rocco had gotten into the habit of lowering the shades and huddling around one of the café tables with a bottle. As the radio played late into the night, they talked quietly—or not at all—until the broadcasts stopped altogether and the three of them stumbled home. Sometimes when I came in early in the mornings to inspect the milk deliveries, I found the wireless still on, spitting static.

  “Can I show you how we can save money?” I said, opening the ledger.

  Vittorio put up his hand as if to signal, Stop.

  “Is it legal?” he said, staring at the bottle in the center of the table.

  “Of course.” I laughed.

  “Do I need to sign anything?”

  “Perhaps later.”

  “Then just let me know if I do. Leave it for me on the desk.”

  I had never had such trust, such carte blanche before, darlings, and it made me feel buoyant. In the back office of the ice cream factory, I got to work. My early days on Orchard Street stood me well. I haggled mercilessly. I haggled with all the suppliers, the delivery boys, the milkmen, the egg men. I haggled with the garbage collectors, even the “security” insurers who stopped by every month. I imagined Mrs. Dinello perched over my shoulder, coaching me on. You have a head for certain things that the boys don’t, Ninella. Had we not been good clients of theirs for twenty years? I asked our suppliers. Had we not been consistent and on time with our payments? We are buying in bulk now. Do right by us and we’ll continue to do right by you, I told them. Otherwise we can go elsewhere.

  “Look,” I announced proudly one evening, waving a revised dairy contract for Vittorio to sign. “Another fifteen dollars a week saved.”

  “Good,” he said, again without looking up. “Just leave it on the desk.”

  “Is there anything else I can do before I turn in for the evening?” I asked, removing my coat from the peg in the back.

  “Nope. Grazie.”

  Something in his tone sounded queer.

  I stopped Rocco on the way out. “Is everything all right, Rocco?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Is there anything I should know about?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ai, Horsey, what’s with the twenty questions?”

  “Something feels odd here,” I said.

  “It is odd here,” he admitted, shaking his head. “It’s all changing so quickly.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a few dollars and pressed them into my hand. “Go out with Bert tonight. Have a little fun. Somebody here should.”

  On March 19, 1929, Bert and I were finally married: a bright, chilly Tuesday with the trees just starting to bud and a brisk wind tearing in off the river. We met at City Hall on our lunch breaks. Only Rocco and Mr. Shackter served as witnesses. I wore a garnet-colored dress that Mr. Shackter had helped me purchase wholesale from a dressmaker he knew on Gra
nd Street. Bert was in his work clothes—just shirtsleeves and suspenders, though Rocco had lent him his good Sunday jacket and Mr. Shackter gave him a tie from his shop. Wine red, like my dress, dotted with tiny gold fleurs-de-lis. Bert did not have enough money for a ring, so we used a cigar band instead.

  Afterward, stepping out into the little park by the clerk’s office, we were not quite sure what to do with ourselves. The sidewalk glittered under our feet. The sky domed over us like the vaults of a cathedral, bending the office buildings to its will. I suddenly felt we were so tiny, so little in the world. “Why not some lunch?” Mr. Shackter suggested. He steered us over to a delicatessen on Broadway, where he ordered four lemonades and two kosher hot dogs apiece. “To love,” he said gravely. As the glasses clinked, I felt a shiver of joy and sadness break through me at once. I looked at Bert, at the divine sculpture of him. He squeezed my hand. He was so shining and handsome. A flower of impossible hope and terror unfurled within me. I could never be too nice to him, I decided. Even when you were married—especially when you were married—you had to protect yourself. Love, kindness: Whenever Bert decided to withdraw them—and certainly one day he would—I sensed it would likely kill me.

  Mr. Shackter insisted on paying for our wedding lunch, such as it was. “Save your pennies, newlyweds.” He chuckled. After we ate, the four of us bowed into the wind and walked north to Canal Street, debris tumbling around our ankles. Bert gave me a quick, embarrassed peck on the cheek, and he and Mr. Shackter continued north on foot while Rocco and I headed west toward Lafayette Street. Not fifteen minutes later, I found myself back in my apron at Dinello & Sons, helping to mix a great vat of pistachio ice cream, a married lady now with a cigar band on her left hand, the damp imprint of Bert’s lips still lingering on my jawline.

  Bert had found us a room to rent up on Thompson Street with a little kitchenette and a light fixture overhead that you pulled on with a chain. In Greenwich Village nobody cared much if he was a Jewish Communist and I a lapsed Catholic.

  That evening my new husband came to call for me at work. “H-h-hello.” He smiled as he stepped politely into the shop, the little bell over the door tinkling tinnily. “Is the new Mrs. D-Dunkle here?”

  Since our engagement, he had only come around to Dinello & Sons a few times. The other grandsons had learned our secret after the New Year. Yet they seemed more bemused than upset. “You don’t say?” Vittorio had chuckled. “Rocco has been playing Cupid? Finally that cazzo succeeds at something.” Yet out of respect, Bert and I continued to avoid the neighborhood.

  When Bert arrived that evening, the grandsons were in the process of pulling down the shades and setting the glasses on the table. “Come in, amico,” Rocco said, motioning Bert toward the café table. “Horsey!” he called out. “Bring two more in, will you?”

  Vittorio poured three fingers of bootleg whiskey for each of us. “To amore. To the newlyweds!” he bellowed. “Okay,” he ordered. “Everyone drink.”

  We drank once, coughing and pounding on our chests. Then again.

  “Okay, now,” Vittorio said, setting his glass behind him on the counter. “The wedding gift.”

  I glanced at Bert, who looked at me with equal confusion.

  “What?” Vittorio said. “You don’t think we have any manners?”

  He leaned back in his chair and knitted his fingers across his chest. He was past thirty now. Time had broadened him, and he was beginning to lose his hair. For the first time, I could see echoes of Mr. Dinello’s avuncular face in his own, though Vittorio’s eyes were smaller and perpetually bloodshot, and his jaw appeared peppered no matter how often he shaved. “You know from doing the books yourself,” he said to me, “that we do not have much money to spare.”

  “And for obvious reasons, we could not throw you a wedding party,” Rocco added quietly.

  “But we can give you a little honeymoon,” Vittorio said. “Rocco, he knows some people in Atlantic City. He made a few deals.”

  Both Bert and I looked at Rocco, stunned. His shiny black head bobbed; he seemed almost embarrassed. “Well, one of the bus drivers, he used to drive a Dinello’s Ices wagon before the war—”

  “And another guy we know, his sister-in-law in New Jersey, she runs a boardinghouse there,” said Vittorio. “She can put you up for three nights, midweek. As a favor to us.”

  Bert and I glanced at each other incredulously again, then at the Dinello brothers. “She has a room for you starting next Wednesday,” Rocco said. “Today, at the courthouse, I spoke to Mr. Shackter, Bert. He says he’ll give you the time.”

  “It’s early in the season,” Pasquale said softly, “but it should be nice. Lucia herself has always wanted to go.”

  “I d-d-don’t know how to thank you all,” Bert stammered. This time it was pure emotion in his voice. Me, I was blinking back tears. “Mio fratelli,” I said. “Molto grazie.”

  “Let’s all have another drink,” said Rocco, reaching for the bottle.

  A few years ago, there was an ice cream manufacturers’ trade show out in Atlantic City. My God, darlings: The town looked like a place you would go only if you wanted to commit suicide. Buildings moldered like war ruins, awash with salt and crime and decay. Clock hands stuck at the hour they’d broken years before. The only people I saw were Negroes slumped in doorways like discarded packages. Even the boardwalk appeared to be disintegrating. For three days I mostly drank bourbon in my hotel suite. Isaac went crazy when he found out, but what else was I supposed to do? Besides, have you ever been to a convention of ice cream makers? Trust me, darlings—between the ridiculous balloon hats and the idiotic gimmicks and the competing xylophone jingles and the blinding bubblegum colors and all those cloyingly sunshiny salesmen with their murderous, bone-crushing handshakes—and some shmendrik they always hire to stand at the reception area dressed up like a cartoon ice cream man shrieking, “I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM!”—it’s nothing you could ever possibly want to experience sober.

  The day Bert and I arrived for our honeymoon, however, oh, Atlantic City was the most glamorous place on earth! Fancy motorcars in the streets. Women in furs. Baroque hotel palaces rising up out of the mist! Bert called it “Vienna on the sea.” Even the long bus ride there was marvelous. I had traveled across the ocean, you see, but never across the Hudson.

  “Oh, you are the Dinellos’ girl! The newlyweds. Come in, come in!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevi, motioning us inside. Her boardinghouse was two blocks from the beach. She gave us her best room in the back, with a washstand and hand-crocheted doilies draped on all the furniture. A crucifix hung over the bed. Bert went to take it down, but I stayed his hand and told him that if he didn’t believe in religion, what did it matter? Besides, perhaps it was placed there to exorcise us, two outlaws such as we were. He started laughing, then I did, and then neither of us could stop until he lowered me onto the bed.

  Afterward we were like little children, fidgety. Eager to go out. We’d never had a day’s vacation in our lives!

  “Come, Lil, Let’s see every sight there possibly is,” Bert said, grabbing my hand.

  The wind whipped in fiercely from the Atlantic. We huddled together and made our way along the boardwalk. The hotels rose above us majestically, heralded by gulls. Enormous signs advertised “spectacular” revues. A Dixieland band—its trombone player bundled in a raccoon coat—played atop a small bandstand. We stuck our faces through a pair of cutouts and had a novelty photo taken of ourselves. Bert was a muscleman in a striped bathing costume, me a sprightly acrobat in a tutu balanced on a unicycle beside him. Our first official portrait as man and wife! For the first time in our lives, we felt truly a part of America.

  The next day Bert found a gambling house in a basement. “There’s no n-need for you to come, Lil,” he said as he pulled on his shirt after our “nap,” as we called them. “I’ll only be an hour, I promise. Y-you should rest.”

  I had never slept in the middle of the day before. Once Bert left,
however, I tugged at the thin coverlet and pummeled the stale bed pillows until I finally gave up entirely and just lay there, blinking at the crucifix and the chipped ceiling rose. My thoughts suddenly strayed back to Mama and Papa, to a story Mama had once told me about her own wedding day, when Papa got drunk on plum wine and attempted to dance with Zeyde. What would they think of Bert? I wondered. What would they think of me now?

  For years I used to try to recall their faces one by one just before I fell asleep—Mama, Papa, Bella, Rose, and Flora—inscribing them in my memory. Yet now I found that I could recall Papa’s close-clipped beard though not his nose, Mama’s large, flat hands but not her arms. Rose’s delicate complexion and her kvetching, but not her features. Of Bella I could picture her thick, dark hair and the fact that she was tall, and that her bony wrists seemed to pivot on their own accord whenever she spoke, but her face, it was a blur to me. Only Flora remained clear, and yet, I realized, my image of her was as an eight-year-old in a threadbare dress and shoes held together with string. It had been fifteen years since I’d seen her.

  I limped over to the mirror above the washstand and studied myself. Certainly I was no great beauty, yet, as the magazines might have phrased it, I seemed to have developed a particular “look” that was “striking” if not quite attractive. At twenty-one I had grown into my features some. My nose no longer appeared so prominent, my cheekbones so severe. Yet as I stared at myself, I saw Mama.

  In Vishnev I had once overheard a neighbor say that I looked most like my mother. I had her same dark, feverish eyes, set slightly too close together and deep in her face. Her thin, serious lips. Her austere brow and chin. Every time she looked at me, Mama must have seen her face reflected straight back at her, as I saw it mirrored at me right now.

  Where was she? I wondered. Was it even possible she was still alive? Oh, Mama! I felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to scour the countryside to find her. How I longed to show her that—even with a punim like mine—someone had married me after all.