“Nurse, got a minute?” Frankie asked her. “And a room that’s private?” Against her better judgment, she let him into the doctor’s consulting room. Only then did she notice how he was holding his arm against his left side, almost cradling it.
“What’s the matter over here, now?” she asked, reaching for his arm.
“Promise to keep your mouth shut, no matter what,” Frankie said in a tense tone. He refused to take off his coat and shirt until she promised. He’d wrapped what looked like a small white tablecloth around his arm, over and over. It was drenched in blood.
“I don’t want my family to see this,” he muttered. “They’d have fits.”
It was a gunshot wound, but mercifully his coat and suit had slowed the bullet, so it hadn’t hit the bone, although his flesh needed some stitches.
“Can you make it stop bleeding?” he asked. “Maybe close it up?”
“I really should call the doctor,” Lucy answered, cleaning it carefully. She looked up at him, straight in the eye, and said, “You know I’m supposed to report all gunshot wounds to the police, don’t you?”
“But you won’t report me, right?” he said urgently, leaning closer. She could sense the heat of his body, see his beautifully sculpted chest, and she was once again amazed at the way her own flesh responded; his mere presence nearly knocked the breath out of her. She couldn’t believe that she could be so foolish over a man.
“You can stitch this one up yourself, can’t you?” he inquired.
“Yes,” Lucy responded in a low voice. “But don’t ever ask me to do this again.”
Frankie grinned. “You think I’ll be stupid enough to go out and get shot again?”
“And just what business are you in?” Lucy asked with a challenging tilt to her chin.
“Real estate,” Frankie said easily. “We invest in residential and commercial properties, we partner with the owners. Restaurants, nightclubs. You like to dance?”
From then on, Lucy shrugged off the drabness of her old life just as if she’d shrugged off an old coat. Frankie always got a good table in chic restaurants; he was never relegated to a corner near a swinging kitchen door or a drafty hallway. He seemed to know everybody, even famous people, and he took her to fancy supper clubs that she’d heard about on the radio. Only enchanted people went to such places. Now she was one of them.
“Hello there, Frankie!” a glamorous blond woman in a silver satin gown once called out to him while clinging to the arm of a rich movie producer.
And Lucy gasped, “That was Carole Lombard, the actress!”
On another occasion an enormous, powerfully built mountain of a man about six and a half feet tall looked up from the bar and said, “Frankie, whaddaya say?” slapping him on the back and nodding to Lucy. Frankie introduced him as Primo Carnera, the famous heavyweight champion who’d only recently been knocked out by Joe Louis. All kinds of celebrities—singers, socialites, news reporters, and politicians—went out of their way to say hello.
Suddenly Lucy was growing accustomed to the taste of good champagne, and steaks more tender than she’d ever eaten in her life, and lobster thermidor.
“Don’t get spoiled,” Frankie teased her one night when they were out on the town. “The truth is, I usually eat regular food at home—pasta, trout, veal stew. And lots of vegetables and beans. Pop says beans make you strong, and fat makes you lazy. He also says, ‘One meal, one glass’ of wine. So that’s what you’d really be facing if you ended up with me.”
“Then why are you ordering champagne and caviar?” Lucy teased him back.
“To impress you, of course,” he said. “To catch you and keep you all to myself.”
“Can I have chocolate cake for dessert?” Lucy replied.
“Anytime you want it.”
Frankie said he liked Lucy’s outspoken way of talking; he told her that she was so different from the girls he met. He was a decisive kind of man, but he also had a sweet, protective side. He and Johnny had a younger brother named Mario, so perhaps that was why Frankie was so patient with Lucy’s little Christopher, pushing him on the swings in the park. Lucy realized that Frankie would defend her and Chris from anyone who tried to harm them.
They courted for a year. One year of joy and almost unbearable, deliriously thrilling kissing and petting. Although it was obvious that Lucy had a child and was therefore not a virgin, Frankie never pushed her beyond the limits of propriety, indicating that he was truly serious about her. And Lucy vowed to herself to “do it right” this time, to wait.
They were both soon to turn twenty-three, and were ready to get married. So they became secretly engaged, at first; Lucy was afraid to meet his formidable family. But then they found that they couldn’t wait, and when people saw them together, even his family, it was clear that nobody could stop Frankie. On Valentine’s Day he bought her a diamond ring to make it official, and they set their wedding date for October, that same year. Neither of them wanted to wait any longer.
Then one day, shortly after their official engagement, Frankie said, “Listen, it’s my big brother’s birthday. Do you mind if he comes skating with us?”
“Of course not,” Lucy said. She’d met Johnny and liked him.
“Let’s go by his bar and pick him up, then,” Frankie said.
And that was when Lucy met Amie.
7
Amie
Greenwich Village, 1937
“Let me tell you something, Amie Marie,” said Johnny-Boy, the tall, dark-haired man who had become Brunon’s partner at their new tavern in Greenwich Village, “if it weren’t for you, I’d give Brunon a little shaking up for his own good.”
Amie looked alarmed. “He doesn’t mean to be rude,” she said apologetically. “It’s just that things aren’t working out exactly as he’d hoped.”
“They never do.” Johnny shrugged, then paused. Amie was rubbing the counter of the bar vigorously, nervously, with a soft cloth, but Johnny reached out and grabbed her forearm with his warm, generous paw.
“Where’d you get a bruise like that?” he demanded, turning her arm upward.
Flushed, Amie pulled her sleeve back over her arm. “Oh, I’m always bumping into doorways around here,” she murmured. “I’m so nearsighted.”
“Did that fat-head hit you?” Johnny demanded. “You want me to straighten him out for you, Amie? A man who hits a woman isn’t a man at all.”
Amie shook her head mutely, embarrassed. Brunon wasn’t happy in his new surroundings and he wasn’t making any friends. Even his elegant “silent partner,” Johnny, was becoming impatient with Brunon. Johnny had frightened Amie at first, because he carried an air of danger with him. But he blew into the bar like a gust of fresh air, all male energy and the kind of confidence Brunon wished for but never had.
The deal was that Brunon’s bar functioned legitimately out in front, serving a hearty lunch and supper in the main room to the working people of Greenwich Village. But in the back room, at night, the card players showed up in their fancy cars—all well-dressed men in natty wool coats and suits, polished shoes, expensive hats, and silk ties. Lawyers, doctors, politicians, stockbrokers, assorted businessmen all came to play poker here. No one was allowed in the back room unless Johnny said it was okay.
Amie ventured there occasionally, to serve beer and whiskey and sandwiches. Sometimes the card table was piled so high with their bets that she just left the tray on a sideboard and silently hurried out. It was terrifying at times, the amount of money at stake. The air crackled with tension. “High rollers,” as Brunon enviously called them. They gambled big, so someone always won big—and someone always lost big.
These men also bet on prizefighters, football games, baseball and basketball players, even college teams. One time Amie actually saw a group of men betting thousands of dollars on which ant would cross the table first. And Johnny profited from it all.
There were other things going on in the back of the bar, in the “office” room that was
kept under lock and key, because it had a safe in it. In the daytime Johnny and his men came in and used this back office as a “policy bank” for the numbers game. Their “runners” brought in the bets that had been placed with bookies at local barber and candy shops. Brunon told her that Johnny backed these bookies in a numbers racket, where Johnny’s policy bank operated like an insurance company. Since the odds of winning this illicit lottery were so tiny, and there were few winners each time, Johnny’s “take” made for an enormous windfall.
“So Johnny cleans up, and you and I make a few dollars’ profit off the beer and tips,” Brunon said sarcastically. “But you can never tell anybody about this,” he warned Amie. “Unless you want us both to end up floating in the river.”
She knew that Brunon had imagined that being partners with a big man like Johnny would automatically make Brunon a big man, too. But when it didn’t turn out that way, Brunon, ashamed, had turned his rage onto Amie. Nothing she did could please him anymore.
Every year since they’d been here, she’d tried to make a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas for them, as if they were a real family, even if there were only the two of them. She’d decorated a small tree in the bar for the customers, and another one in their tiny apartment upstairs. She only wanted to believe that they were happy and normal people, like everyone else milling around this great city.
But Brunon ridiculed her pitiful attempts to put some beauty in their lives, as if it only served to remind him of what a small man he was in a big town. Whether it was a homemade silver ornament for the tree or a little costume jewelry to brighten herself up, Brunon despised these things for their cheapness. What embarrassed Amie was that other people could see how miserably Brunon treated her. The toughest of men who came into the bar were oddly gentle with her, filled with pity.
Especially Johnny. But he never made her feel pitiful. Every time he saw Amie he had a big smile for her and treated her as if she were one of the glamorous women she sometimes saw on the street, their gloved hands proudly tucked under the elbows of successful men.
Amie loved New York City. “Don’t you miss Troy?” her new neighbors asked her. She shook her head. Here she was, in a tiny apartment over the family tavern, just like in Troy. But back there, she’d lived among struggling workers’ wives, and their outlook, even on a good day, was soured by the defeat of an old industrial area whose best days were long gone.
By comparison, New York seemed like a young city to Amie, not just because of the modern skyscrapers but because of its people, who had so many interesting things to do that they did not waste time with petty details. Yes, the ladies gossiped here, but they did it with a certain lightness that came from the joy of enterprise and profits. And while Manhattan had slums more terrifying than anything she’d ever seen—and you had to always look over your shoulder no matter what neighborhood you were in—still, so much money was circulating, and there were tantalizing rewards that could make one’s efforts worthwhile: restaurants with the country’s best food; shops that had the world’s best clothes; new buildings with lobbies of marble and gilt. Manhattan was full of energy, a magical promise that if you learned how to navigate around the tricksters and pitfalls, you just might forge your own path toward success.
Today was Sunday, and the bar was closed. Amie had already been to church. Johnny had stopped in to make a few phone calls from the back office. Brunon was out on some errand that he hadn’t bothered to explain to her.
Johnny said easily, “Amie, I tell you what. Why don’t you come to the ice-skating rink tonight? My brother Frankie and his fiancée and their friends will be there. Bring Brunon if you must. Just come. We’ll have fun.”
Amie looked up with a smile but said quickly, “I don’t think Brunon skates.”
“But you do, right? C’mon, it’s my birthday,” he confided, “and I don’t want to spend it with married couples or out drinking with the guys. I gotta have dinner with my family at home, so they can have a birthday cake for me. But after that, I’m going skating just to exercise off the cake!” He patted his stomach, which was flat and firm. “To my folks, I’m still Johnny-Boy, even though, you know how old I am today? Twenty-five!”
Amie smiled. “That’s not so old.”
He took a cigarette from a silver case embossed with his initials, picked up a matchbook from the bar, lighted his cigarette, and drew on it thoughtfully.
“Yeah? Well, it’s too old to be called Johnny-Boy. Know why they call me that? Because my father’s name is Gianni. Here’s how they spell it in Italy.” He wrote it down on a paper coaster on the bar. “See? But in America they spell Johnny this way.” He wrote that underneath. “It’s all pronounced the same way. How old are you, Buttercup?”
“Twenty-one.” When Amie said it, she almost cried; she felt so much older. Especially this winter; she’d had a chest cold since Christmas that she couldn’t seem to shake, which made her feel weak and even older.
“Your hair looks like gold in this light,” Johnny said gallantly. “You always remind me of an angel at the top of a Christmas tree.” Amie smiled, feeling momentarily better, as she always did whenever Johnny looked her way.
“Here comes my brother Frankie,” he said as a well-dressed man with a woman at his side peered in the plate-glass window. Ignoring the closed sign, they pushed the door open.
The man who entered the bar looked only a couple of years younger than Johnny; but Johnny was tall and wiry, whereas Franco, as he was properly introduced, was more athletic looking. Both men had beautiful dark hair and eyes, pale skin, and sensuous mouths. When they were in a room together, it was like being around two elegant, healthy stallions.
“This is my gal, Lucy Marie,” Frankie said, his arm around the redheaded girl.
“These two are getting married in October,” Johnny proclaimed.
Lucy blushed. She was thinking that if a Gypsy had read her palm and predicted this, she never would have believed it. Yet, here she was, a bride-to-be.
“I’m trying to talk Amie into coming out with us tonight,” Johnny was telling them now. “You talk to her, Lucy. Tell her it’s my birthday.”
“You big baby,” Lucy teased him. Amie laughed, but this caused her to cough in a way that Lucy, her nursing skills always alert, recognized. She didn’t say anything at first, but when Amie coughed again, Lucy looked at her more keenly.
“I think you should see a doctor,” she said briskly. “You want to get rid of that cough before it gets the better of you. Pneumonia is no joke. I know some good doctors who are on call today. We work together. Why don’t you and I stop by the hospital?”
When Amie protested, Frankie said, “Better listen to Lucy! She can out-argue anybody.”
“Which is saying something, for a hothead like Frankie,” Johnny replied. “Amie, go with Lucy,” he said, looking concerned now. “I’ll watch the bar till Brunon gets here. I’ve got some business to discuss with him anyway. I’ll tell him where you are.”
Amie couldn’t resist being taken care of. Lucy had such a comforting, nurturing way about her. So Amie put on her coat and they went. The day was sunny and windless. Perhaps spring wasn’t too far off.
“So,” Lucy said conversationally. “Do you have any children?” It was usually a safe question with married women to break the ice. But to her surprise, Amie burst into tears. Lucy handed her a handkerchief, and Amie apologized, saying that she was sure there was something wrong with her, for she and her husband, Brunon, had relations every night, and yet she could not get pregnant.
“Come now, dry your eyes,” Lucy said gently. In any crisis, her take-charge attitude kicked in. “What you need is for the doctor to examine you and see if there is a difficulty.”
When Amie looked horrified, Lucy said, “It’s the only way to know what to do. You do want to have a child of your own, don’t you, now?”
“More than anything in the world,” Amie whispered.
“Then don’t worry. Dr. Arnold is very gentl
e and very wise. He will know if there’s something to be done.”
“Will you come with me?” Amie pleaded. Lucy nodded.
After the doctor examined Amie, he summoned Lucy alone into his office. “Your friend is getting dressed,” he said. “And now I think you’d better have a little talk with her yourself.”
“What’s the matter?” Lucy asked, alarmed for the first time. “Is it her chest?”
“What? Oh, no. That’s just an infection; she’s a bit run-down. I gave her some medicine. What she really needs is rest, and sleep. And probably a different husband.”
Lucy said quickly, “Why? Can’t they have children?”
In a sudden, embarrassed burst, the doctor said, “I have no business with sodomites, Lucy. You tell her that for me, and explain the facts of life to your friend!”
Still looking both embarrassed and furious, he walked out, leaving Lucy to grasp what he meant. When Amie emerged from the examining room, Lucy at first did not quite know what to say. Then she saw the medical books behind the doctor’s desk, and she reached for one, saying nothing until she found the proper page.
“Amie,” she said as delicately as possible, “didn’t your mama ever tell you the facts of life?”
Amie felt the pang of a lost memory. She could barely remember her mother—just a vague sensation of some softness, some nice warm female scent was all she could recall. She told Lucy this, as if admitting to yet another personal failing.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said gently. “Look at this book, Amie. This is a picture of the inside of a woman. Here is where the baby grows inside you. And here is where a man is supposed to enter you. This is the vagina. It’s a lovely thing. It’s able to stretch to let a man in, and even to let a baby come out. So, that’s where a man is supposed to put his penis. Here. Not here. This other place, well, that’s for your body to use for waste. And you see, if a man puts his penis there, you can’t possibly get pregnant. That place isn’t where you make babies. It can’t stretch as much, so it must hurt, if that is what your husband has been doing to you all this time.”
The Godmothers Page 7