The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  Washing myself, I put on my garnet-colored dress again, fixed my hair and face, and waited for this handsome new husband of mine.

  And waited.

  An hour went by.

  Then two.

  By the third hour, I was sick. My own naïveté, it stunned me. That merry glint in Bert’s eyes whenever a woman swished by. The way he’d bloomed when those showgirls had planted themselves on his lap. Who had I been kidding? Even here in Atlantic City, people squinted at me and Bert when they saw us together, as if they were computing long division in their heads.

  I had been such a fool! Sensing what was about to unfold, I stumbled across the room and yanked open the wardrobe. I grabbed my other dress from its hanger and scooped up my underthings. I was just pulling out the suitcase when Bert returned.

  “Lil, look!” he cried, tossing a fistful of dollar bills in the air like confetti. “I did it!” Twenty-three dollars he’d won. More than a week’s wages. “What’s wrong, doll?” He stopped suddenly. “Why are you c-crying?”

  I turned away, shaking. I could not bear to let him see my relief. “You mamzer. Already you’re thinking of leaving me? On our honeymoon?”

  “What? Oh, L-Lil. Oh, doll. No, no. Why would you even think that? Please. Come.” He opened his arms.

  “An hour! You said you’d be only an hour!”

  “I am s-so s-sorry. I just got on a roll, is all.” He touched my cheek with the back of his hand.

  I slapped it away. “Don’t you dare leave me waiting for you like that ever again.”

  “L-L-L-Lil. Oh, my love,” he said woefully, drawing me toward him. Oddly, he never seemed more beholden to me, more adoring or close to me, than when I was yelling at him. A peculiar bolt of elation shot through me, coiled with the satisfaction of punishing him. Slowly, I gave in to his embrace.

  “All the m-m-money, it’s for us,” Bert said, stroking my hair. “I thought we’d have a grand night on the town. Please, Lil. Will you forgive me?”

  That evening he took me to a show. Ethel Waters, we saw! Oh, she was magnificent. And afterward Bert pulled out my chair for me in the first proper restaurant we’d ever eaten in, with white tablecloths and a waiter standing by with a pitcher of ice water. Tomato consommé. Boiled beef tips with noodles. Roasted chicken with lima beans and carrots. Cream pie for dessert. All the butter you could eat, pressed into the shape of roses on a little porcelain dish. “Oh, my,” we marveled, over and over.

  The next day when Bert went back to the gambling room, I went with him. Since women were not allowed inside, I sat in the vestibule quietly reading a penny novel. After an anxious hour, Bert added twelve dollars to our cache. Grabbing me around the waist, he lifted me into the air and spun me around. “I t-told you that you were my lucky charm,” he declared. “Let’s buy you a proper ring.”

  Mrs. Trevi said we’d get the best deal at a pawnshop on Pacific Avenue near the train station. Bert, he was willing to be extravagant, he was willing to spend everything we had. The salt air, the gambling—they’d gone to his head like champagne. Yet I said, “Let’s save some money for a rainy day, eh? I’m certainly not going to wear a diamond ring while I scrub down a batch freezer.”

  I chose a modest white-gold band etched with designs like stalks of wheat. But then, looking at all those luxurious objects winking in their glass cases—the filigreed opera glasses, the mother-of-pearl cigarette case, the engraved pocketwatch hanging from its fob like a gold plum—and hearing the faint fwip-fwip of the dollar bills as Bert thumbed them out onto the countertop—I suppose the thrill of acquisition came over us like a fever. Surely, we agreed, we needed to buy the Dinellos and Mr. Shackter some tokens of our appreciation as well. Surely that was only fair. From shop to shop we went, almost giddy. For Vittorio we bought a brass cigar cutter, for Pasquale a bright green bottle of men’s eau de cologne. For Carmella and Lucia identical cut-glass ashtrays with hand-painted pictures of the boardwalk. For Mr. Shackter a fancy letter opener with ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 1929 embossed on the tip. And for Rocco, Bert purchased a crystal paperweight with a picture of the new Miss America embedded in it. We bought boxes of striped saltwater taffy, too. Raspberry. Lemon. With their juicy, marshmallowy zest—perhaps, I thought, we could adapt some of the different flavors for Dinello & Sons—a “Daffy Taffy” ice cream, even?

  By the time we returned to the boardinghouse, we’d spent most of Bert’s winnings. Dizzily, we set the treasures out on the bed and watched them gleam beneath the fringed, rose-colored light, feeling sated and rich and proud, as if the gifts were accomplishments, as if they were things we had wrought ourselves.

  Once we arrived back in New York that Saturday afternoon, awash with love and effusiveness, I simply could not wait until work on Monday to distribute the presents. “Look at you, Lil.” Bert chuckled. “You’re bouncing around like a little girl. Go. Take them over today if you want.” While he napped, I set off for the ice cream factory. Carrying our gifts through the streets of New York, while the city buzzed with all its magnificent traffic and construction and promise, my feet one pair in a sea of hundreds hurrying over the pavement—with my handsome new husband prone in our marital bed, my skin still flushed from his fingertips—I felt triumphant, darlings. Utterly jubilant. It was the best, perhaps, that I had ever felt in my life. I was nearly airborne: “Addio Napoli!” I sang aloud as I stepped into Houston Street. “Addio! Addio!”

  At Dinello & Sons Fancy Italian Ices & Ice Creams, the door was propped open with a brick. I stepped inside. “Buona sera,” I sang.

  The café tables and delicate wire chairs were gone. A boxy outline remained where the cash register had been. The two big, gleaming, gravity-fed continuous-batch freezers had vanished.

  “Rocco? Vittorio? Pasquale?” I called.

  I limped over to the pay telephone to dial the police. Yet all that remained of the phone were frayed copper wires spraying out of the holes in the plaster.

  “Oh, it’s you,” a voice said mildly. Behind me, Carmella appeared holding a washrag. Her hair was tied back in a kerchief.

  “What happened?” I said. “Where is everybody?”

  “Canal Street.” She shrugged. And she did not say anything more. She just stood there squinting at me with her narrow, dark eyes. Her forearms were wet, I noticed, glinting with soap. “Oh,” she said, as if she had only just remembered. “Did you have a nice honeymoon?”

  “Carmella?” I gestured around. “Where did everything go?”

  “We sold it.” She said this as if it were the most natural response in the world. “Well, actually, we’ve joined forces.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “With the Cannolettis.” Noticing a line of dust on the tiled wainscoting, she frowned and wiped it off with her rag. “Two are better than one, Vito says.”

  I hobbled past her into the kitchen. A mop stood propped up in a bucket of soapy water in one corner. On the counter sat a pile of wet rags and a half-eaten sandwich on a chipped plate. Otherwise it was bare. The pantry door gaped open, all the inventory gone except for a jar with a few maraschino cherries bobbing at the bottom and a rusty mousetrap on the floor. In the little office in the back, there was just the lamp, unplugged, and a crate with papers dumped in it haphazardly. The desk was gone, the clock taken from the wall, even the crucifix removed. I snatched up the papers.

  “I really don’t think those are of any concern anymore,” Carmella said, standing in the doorway.

  Riffling through the piles of discarded receipts, lists, calendar pages, labels, and invoices, I saw the contracts I had renegotiated for Dinello & Sons Fancy Italian Ices & Ice Creams, securing better deals for milk, for gelatin, for flavorings, for garbage collection. Vittorio had never signed any of them.

  When I reached Canal Street, I heard it before I saw it: the frantic sounds of hammering, the sickening splintering of wood coming from Cannoletti’s Ice Cream Company. Inside, it appeared to be in the process of demolition, though a bright sign, f
orgotten on the sidewalk, still read #1 ICE CREAM IN AMERICA! 8 GREAT FLAVORS!

  “What was supposed to happen?” I cried as Vittorio hustled me out onto the street to talk. “Was I just supposed to show up for work on Monday and find everyone gone?”

  “What? No. Of course not,” he said with irritation, as if I were being irrational. “We were going to pay you a visit tomorrow when we finished. Both shops have to be cleared out by the thirty-first or we get stuck with the leases for another month. Besides”—he frowned—“aren’t you still on your honeymoon?”

  “Where is everything?”

  “Brooklyn.” Looking over my head, back into the shop, he signaled to someone. “We got twice the space at half the price. We can triple our production.”

  “You sold us to the Cannolettis?”

  Rocco emerged from the storefront. As soon as he saw me, he crossed his arms and stared at the ground.

  “It’s a partnership. We’re renaming ourselves the ‘Candie Ice Cream Company.’ For Cannoletti and Dinello,” Vittorio said.

  “I thought they were the ‘enemy.’ The mezza negri!”

  “Be reasonable. You know how it’s been. We’ve been working ourselves to death. And so have the Cannolettis. And for what? To see who can sell ten gallons more banana ice cream? The big money is in volume. Places in New Jersey, now that they have refrigerated shipping, they’re going to put us out of business if we don’t—”

  “But you didn’t even try!” I cried. “I renegotiated all those contracts. We could have been making a much bigger profit if—”

  “The Cannolettis have a lawyer. We’re getting incorporated, we’re setting up a payroll,” Vittorio said. “No more nickel-and-dime stuff. No more scrambling around like crazy people sixteen hours a day.”

  “But, but—” And suddenly I felt like Bert, unable to get the words out. “But why didn’t anyone ever say anything to me?”

  Vittorio gave me a freighted look. “Because it’s not your business. And the Cannolettis”—he looked at the ground—“they have a bookkeeper already. A professional. So I’m sorry.”

  A tremendous boom erupted from inside the storefront. A large shelf had fallen like a tree, sending up clouds of dust. Inside, men started yelling at each other in Italian.

  “I have to get back to work.” Vittorio hastened toward the doorstep.

  I felt so queasy I could barely breathe, yet I planted myself before him, blocking his path. Give such a geschrei—I recalled Mama saying it—as they have never heard. And so I hollered.

  “Please,” Vittorio whispered fiercely.

  “Your grandmother, she promised me— I’ve worked my whole life—”

  He looked at me beseechingly. “Everything you’ve done for us, Lillian, we appreciate it. But you can’t say you haven’t gotten anything in return. My grandparents fed you, and clothed you, and housed you. Heck, they even sent you to college. And of course, as the Candie Company grows, if we ever find we have some money to hire you and you still want a job with us—”

  When he saw I would not budge, he dug into his pocket, pulled out a roll of bills, and pressed them in my hand. I didn’t want to take it, of course. I should have thrown it back in his face and spit at him. Yet I was simply in too much shock, I suppose.

  “But where am I to work?” I said desperately. “I’m lame.” As soon as these words were out of my mouth, I hated myself almost as much as I hated him. I never wanted to give anyone the satisfaction of hearing such words from my lips, to cast myself before them so pathetically. Yet I did.

  Vittorio shifted uncomfortably. “You’re a married lady now, yes? It’s Bert’s job to provide for you, not ours. Besides, look around.” Vittorio swept his arm grandly across Canal Street. “We’re in America. It’s good times. You’re smart. You’ll land on your feet.”

  He walked swiftly back inside and was instantly enveloped by Italian workingmen, by chalky clouds of dust and plaster. I stared at the wad of money in my hand, then looked at Rocco, who stood there uneasily, unsure whether to slink back inside as well.

  “Horsey. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You sent me away! You sent me away on a honeymoon just to get rid of me!”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.”

  “I trusted you!” I cried. “I trusted you with everything!—and you cook up this scheme—”

  “Horsey, I didn’t intend it like that. I just— It was going to happen anyway. I wanted to make sure that at least, you and Bert, you had—”

  “All three of you! You sat there and you looked us in the eye—‘To the newlyweds,’ you toasted. While all along, you knew!”

  “I couldn’t stop it, Horsey.”

  “I gave up college. We made a deal. And behind my back, you—”

  “Horsey!” he shouted. “What did you expect me to do? They’re my brothers. They’re family.”

  In a flash I pulled out the crystal paperweight we’d bought for him and hurled it at his head. He ducked, and it smashed against the door. I threw the glass Atlantic City ashtray. It landed at his feet in an explosion of shards.

  “Ai, ai, ai!” he said.

  I hurled the bottle of aftershave as hard as I could, too. It hit the front window and cracked it, jagged fractures radiating out like a cobweb. All the men inside began hollering. Greenish, mentholated liquid slid down the glass.

  “Crazy puttana!” someone shouted.

  “Stop, Horsey, please.” Grabbing me by the wrists, Rocco jerked me to him and pinned me. “Just stop.” He stayed me fiercely.

  I shouted and flailed.

  “All right,” Rocco breathed, clutching me. “It’s all right.” His grip loosened, and he took a step back. “It’s all right,” he said again. “We all have tempers.”

  I glared at him, panting.

  “No hard feelings,” he said carefully. “Just go. Okay?”

  “Yes,” I said viciously. “Yes, hard feelings.”

  “Horsey—”

  “Let go of me!” I yanked my arm away from him. I wanted to whirl around and punch him hard in the stomach, hard in his weasel face. Right-left-right, just as Papa had taught me. Yet by then Vittorio was standing in the doorway furiously surveying the damage I’d caused, and one of the Cannolettis was behind him, eyeing me with the crowbar in his hands. They had all stopped what they were doing to regard me, the Cannolettis and the Dinellos, this small army of men with their tools. They did not appear alarmed, however, so much as bemused. In the cracked plate-glass window, I saw myself reflected back as they saw me: a crippled, craggy girl, hair awry, her mouth a smear of anger. Negligible. Unlovely. Shrewish. A white-hot spasm of pain shot down my leg.

  I turned and hobbled away, trying to keep my gaze straight ahead, even as my jaw twitched. I could feel their stares boring into my back; I could imagine the hooting and wisecracks that would erupt as soon as I turned the corner.

  Pivoting around, I hollered venomously, “You’re all idiots! Idiots and cowards with no brains for business, you understand? You are nothing! You are worse than nothing! And your ice cream is garbage, you pezzo di merda.”

  From inside the store, someone shouted, “You owe us for the window you just broke, you crazy bitch!”

  “I owe you nothing, stronzo!”

  Rocco looked aghast.

  “Oh, so now you’re shocked? The little Horse Girl knows how to curse? Vaffanculo. All of you.”

  Whirling around, I hurried off as quickly as I could manage, dissolving into the crowds of Canal Street before they could hear my humiliated sobs, before they could see my leg buckle, before my true aloneness in this world hit me like a shock wave.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 8

  Apparently it’s not enough that there are two separate trials pending against me—one federal, no less. While I am feeding Petunia bits of bacon from the breakfast table, my publicist, Sheila, calls. “Bad news,” she says in her gritty, stuccoed voice. Two packs a day she smokes. If she can taste our ice c
ream at all, I’m Gina Lollobrigida.

  “It looks like we may have another problem on our hands. Spreckles the Clown.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Harvey Ballentine.”

  “Harvey?” I say. “He’s been off the show since 1980.” The most recent actor to play Spreckles was hired by NBC directly. Some nudnik named Jared.

  “Yeah, well, Harvey Ballentine hasn’t left the limelight,” Sheila says. “There’s a Q&A with him in New York magazine this week.”

  I get a queasy feeling. Harvey Ballentine had been my sidekick for seventeen years. I’d hired him personally, in fact, right after the first Spreckles the Clown suffered a nervous breakdown. Harvey, he quickly proved to be a pain in the ass, too, yet in a whole new way. He was a germophobe, for starters. Had to wash his hands three times in a row before donning his puffy pink gloves. And he drove the producers crazy with his showbiz nonsense: What was his best camera angle? Was the lighting making his greasepaint melt? For a while, convinced he was gaining weight, he even refused to eat ice cream. He would lick his cone, then wipe his tongue off on a napkin as soon as we cut to a commercial.

  “You’re a goddamn ice cream clown in pink satin fat pants!” I once barked at him. “Eat your goddamn ice cream cone like everyone else!”

  Oh, but the mouth on him! The wit! Harvey Ballentine could make me laugh like no one else. Darlings, do I even need to tell you how unfunny most clowns are? If I’d had my way, a bunny or even a goddamn donkey would’ve been Dunkle’s trademark. But our admen at Promovox outvoted me. Clowns—feh! All that ghastly, forced gaiety, worse than New Year’s Eve. And the moment they’re out of their makeup: If only you could’ve seen me perform Waiting for Godot in summer stock! they moan. Please. Spare me the existential kvetching. Be a clown or be quiet. Harvey, when he wasn’t fussing, he was marvelous, wicked fun.