“I swear it on their souls, and mine,” Amie said.
8
Petrina
Rye, New York, 1937
Petrina loved the terrace of the country club in the summertime. It overlooked a small, private beach. By day, the sea was dotted with sailboats, and the shore was a joyous place to frolic with children. The clubhouse had an especially festive atmosphere at night, when it was festooned with paper lanterns glowing like jars of fireflies.
So when her daughter, Pippa, turned five years old in the summer of ’37, Petrina felt lucky to secure the clubhouse during this busy season for a birthday party. Richard’s family had pulled strings, as they always did. Richard’s father, a prominent lawyer, had been nominated to be a judge, and already, people were happy to curry favor with him ahead of his expected victory this autumn. Petrina understood the power of family connections; her father’s name carried the same weight in his neighborhood. But Greenwich Village and Westchester’s suburbs were worlds apart, she thought. At least, people here acted as if they were.
And suddenly, the birthday party for Pippa had turned into something much bigger, since Richard’s parents insisted on paying for it.
“Look at all the important people who are coming,” Richard marveled as they studied his mother’s guest list. Top businessmen, a newspaper publisher here, a politician there; Petrina also recognized the name of a fantastically rich heiress who was the biggest donor to the library and the hospital, and who bossed all the other ladies around during every board meeting and each charity benefit.
“What about my family?” Petrina asked when she reached the bottom of the list and did not see their names. “Aren’t they ‘important’ people, too?”
“Would your parents even come all the way up here?” Richard asked in an evasive way that was new for him, just this year.
“How would we know unless we invited them?” Petrina said tartly. “They invited your folks to their party for us.”
Her parents had handled the elopement better than she’d expected; while they still thought of her as “Miss Independence,” they were relieved to have her married and “settled down.” So they’d thrown a party for Petrina and Richard at a good restaurant in Greenwich Village and invited their closest friends, but Richard’s family had politely declined, conveniently being at the Cape Cod seashore that month, so they’d sent a cut-glass punch bowl instead.
Petrina and Richard had been married for six years now, yet his family had never reciprocated with a party for the newlyweds; his mother acted as if Petrina were an orphan whom Richard had discovered at the club’s tennis match, which was close enough to the truth.
“She’s a Barnard girl, you know,” his parents assured their friends. That seemed to pass muster, although Petrina noted that the other girls in the suburbs, like her, had apparently hidden away their diplomas to focus solely on being well-bred wives and mothers. Only men had careers; women were allowed to have “projects” but they weren’t supposed to take them too seriously.
Petrina had discovered certain charities that allowed her to use her artistic background; it turned out that she had what they called “a good eye” for artwork, which came in handy for assessing donations for the charity auctions. Petrina was beloved by children and the elderly in hospitals, who appreciated her warmhearted efforts. So she threw her energy into making each fund-raiser not merely a social success but a financial one, too.
At home, she loved having a garden to tend, but even here, the suburban conformity surprised her. She could not understand why privileged people restricted their own lives so voluntarily. They actually gossiped about neighbors who didn’t mow their lawns exactly like everyone else or plant the same fastidious flower beds. Even wives her own age did things just the same way as the older generation, using the same beauty parlors, joining the same clubs; while their husbands made the same jokes. They all seemed terrified of anything unusual—a red flower, a lamé dress, or a meal that had a speck of spice in it. Petrina had hoped for more freedom and independence with her own generation, so she found this baffling.
“Why does everyone do only what their parents did?” she asked her husband.
Richard said, “It reminds us of when we were kids, but now we’re the grown-ups, so we get to do this grown-up stuff. Besides,” he added, “the old folks still have all the money.” The threat of being cut off, apparently, lurked under every raised eyebrow.
Whereas Petrina didn’t miss her girlhood at all, it had been so stifling. What she did miss was the energy and verve and warmth of her old neighborhood. But when she went back, everyone treated her like a stranger. She supposed she looked different to her family and their neighbors. They called her “glamorous,” a word tinged with disapproval. She managed to get into the city on other, grown-up expeditions, like visiting the museums and galleries and shops, having tea with the ladies, or having drinks with Richard and his colleagues at the Plaza.
In the suburbs, she made friends, but their time together was hardly stimulating. Petrina was invited to play bridge and tennis, which was all right, but she discovered that the real purpose of these get-togethers was to say mean things about other women who were currently being excluded from such gatherings; this was their real sport. Petrina had spent the first few years here holding her breath, wondering what they said about her when she wasn’t around. Then, suddenly, she just didn’t care anymore. And this, oddly enough, gave her status.
But as she grew to care less, Richard began to care more. Perhaps it was the constant drip of listening to his mother and sister carry on at Sunday dinner, reminding him of all his old girlfriends that he might have married instead of Petrina, deliberately reminiscing about things Petrina couldn’t possibly know about or join in on. Every so often she felt a stab of hurt whenever it looked as if Richard’s family was getting to him at last. The fact that he tried to conceal this only made it worse.
“Of course, invite your family if you want to,” Richard said awkwardly now. “How many of them do you think will come? Mother has to let the caterers know.”
“Just my parents,” Petrina said. She knew that Gianni and Tessa would be more quiet and dignified than any of the other guests. “My brothers are busy with their wedding plans. And all Mario cares about these days is baseball.”
“Only two seats for your family at the party, then?” Richard asked, relieved.
Petrina nodded, wishing he’d at least asked how her brothers were these days. Anyway, she didn’t want to parade them all up here for her mother-in-law’s merciless scrutiny. Her brothers were still at an age where they resented anyone trying to rein them in. Petrina felt very old and very wise, even if she was only twenty-seven.
So she didn’t tell Richard that, according to Tessa, Johnny had fallen for “a barmaid” and Frankie was engaged to a nurse. Petrina, who’d always wistfully wanted sisters, had met them, briefly, but Lucy and Amie, already comrades, had only stared at the elegant Petrina in awe, then whispered when they thought she was out of earshot.
As for little Mario, well, he wasn’t so little anymore; at nearly twelve years old he was tall for his age, and eager to break away from the female influence of Tessa and Petrina. He worshipped Johnny and Frankie, just because they were older and exuded such confidence and seemed to know all about the world. But there were still times when he trusted Petrina to tell him the truth, about things the others preferred to brush off.
“Are we ‘racketeers’?” Mario had inquired earnestly during her recent visit home.
Petrina said, “No, but sometimes we’ve been forced to deal with them. See, when Mama and Papa first came to America, they were planning to be wine importers. But their timing was bad. Prohibition—a law against booze—started a year after they got here. Nobody in New York really wanted Prohibition, not even the cops and the judges. Papa had to keep on making a living. He and Mama saved their money and invested well, and they even loaned money to our neighbors to help them. But then the big racke
teers noticed how well Papa was doing, and they wanted a piece. They call it ‘protection’ but mostly they protect you from them. So Papa had to keep making more and more money, to stay in business and still pay off the Bosses.”
“How come nobody arrests the Bosses?” Mario inquired.
“Once in a while they do. I guess the law can’t catch them all red-handed. Maybe they don’t really want to catch them, ’cause a lot of cops and judges and lawyers get paid off,” she said. “But this family wants something better for you, Mario. We want you to be free to be your own man. Just study and keep doing well in school, like Richard and I did.”
Mario absorbed this in his usual meditative way.
“Okay,” he said. They were sitting in his room, surrounded by the records he liked to listen to and the guitar he liked to play. He had a beautiful voice, singing alone in his room when he thought nobody else was home. There were so many things Petrina wished she could tell him, but he was still too young to hear it all yet.
Mario said unexpectedly, “Does Richard like baseball? We get good seats at the stadium. How come he never comes with us to the ball games?”
“He likes golf and tennis,” Petrina said gently.
And so, on the afternoon of Pippa’s fifth-birthday party, Petrina was glad that the weather was fine. Pippa made her entrance with perfect posture learned from her ballet classes; she looked “just like her beautiful mother,” people said: tall, slender, long-legged, with pale skin and naturally rosy cheeks and lips. Pippa handled the attention with aplomb; she had a knack for making friends, so the other children happily came to her party, enjoying the beachside hamburgers and hot dogs, the pony ride, the glorious birthday cake and ice cream.
Then, after the little ones were sent home to bed in the care of their nannies, the clubhouse bar opened, the kitchen staff cooked up steak and lobster, the band began to play, and the “real fun” began as the adults kicked up their heels.
Petrina floated around in her chiffon dress, like a rose petal sailing on the soft summer night’s sea breeze. Her parents had come, and she was proud of them. Tessa looked serene in a lilac silk dress, and her father was impeccable, as always; she’d seen several of the wives gaze admiringly at Gianni’s beautiful head of hair and tall stature.
But Petrina realized that her mother-in-law, who’d insisted on supervising the seating arrangements, had placed Gianni and Tessa at an outlying table for the “odds and ends” kind of people. When Petrina indignantly pointed this out to Richard he only said wearily, “I can’t stand getting caught between you women.”
“I’m not just another woman, I’m your wife! You’re a man, you’re in the driver’s seat, your mother will respect you if you stand up for me,” she said, exasperated, and momentarily despised him for turning out to be weak, just standing there shrugging helplessly.
Well, it was no use now to make a scene. If Petrina’s parents had noticed the seating arrangements, they didn’t let on.
“Did you have a good time, Pop?” Petrina asked anxiously toward the end of the evening, when she found him standing in a corner smoking his cigar while waiting for the cloakroom girl to find her mother’s wrap.
“Very nice,” Gianni said calmly, watching the other guests drifting about. He glanced at his daughter and added softly, “I know these people.”
“You do?” Petrina asked in surprise. “Which ones?”
Her father paused, then said in his deep, rich voice, “Your father-in-law was one of my best customers, years ago, during Prohibition, when he was younger. He pretended he didn’t recognize me tonight, to be polite. He was one of those college boys who insisted that I meet him out at sea, on his boat, several miles offshore, to supply him his gin and whiskey. You see, possessing liquor was not a crime, only buying and selling it.” Petrina blushed, glancing around to make sure nobody was listening as Gianni continued, “And, that man over there?”
“Richard says he’s the editor of some big newspaper,” she offered.
“Yes, he is. But he likes to bet on the horses and he’s rather unlucky; he now owes seven hundred thousand dollars to the Bosses.”
Petrina gasped, first at the sum, then to say quickly, “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Oh, yes,” her father replied, still careful to speak low so that no one else heard. “Now, those two over there—the judge and the politician—they always need campaign financing, no matter where it comes from. And they rely on those lawyers standing at the bar as middlemen; their job is to ‘fix’ things, especially when their clients get in trouble, with prostitutes, or unlawful stock trades, or shady real estate deals. And that lady over there?” He nodded toward the heiress whom Petrina thought of as the Queen Bee. “On her high school graduation day she was drunk and got behind the wheel of her father’s car, and killed a classmate in a crash. That required a large payoff to silence a family—and therefore a large loan.”
Petrina whispered, “Papa, why are you telling me this now, on my daughter’s birthday?”
Gianni said rather sorrowfully, “Because I can see that today is the day you need to know. Bear these people no ill will, but never let anybody make you feel as if you are not good enough for them. And remember, there are good people and bad people, honest and dishonest, everywhere, both here and at home.”
He took her mother’s cape from the cloakroom girl, to whom he gave a tip, then he draped the cape around Tessa’s shoulders as she emerged from the ladies’ room.
“Our grandchild Pippa is very beautiful,” Tessa said as they all kissed goodbye. “Please bring her to see us as often as you can. And Richard, too.”
There was a note of finality in her voice, and as their car was brought to the front door by a valet and they waved, Petrina knew that they would never come up here again.
That night, she lay in bed wide awake, fretting, while Richard snored. She missed her friends from college; there were only three girls that she’d really gotten close to, but they had been scattered like autumn leaves across the country, following their husbands’ careers to Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They’d exchanged letters, tried to keep up, but husbands and children took up time and priority, so, little by little, they’d drifted apart, until they’d become only polite strangers to one another by now, exchanging Christmas cards in the mail.
She couldn’t talk to her mother about loneliness; Tessa’s only advice was to have more children. But Petrina was exulting in the freedom of not having babies year after year until you dropped from exhaustion. She and Richard had agreed to have another child someday, but not yet.
Petrina still wished she had sisters. She thought of her brothers’ upcoming weddings, and it made her sad. She wasn’t sorry that she and Richard had evaded the whole formal wedding-and-white-dress ceremony; she was only sorry that the world didn’t give young lovers more of a fighting chance to stay sweetly in love. There was talk of another big war coming, although everyone seemed to agree that America would stay out of it this time.
Richard stirred sleepily and awoke. “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”
“I’m okay,” Petrina said. “Richard, what happened to your idea of moving to Boston to work in your father’s Massachusetts branch? You used to say it would be better for us to be away from our families, on our own.”
“Mmm, Dad wants us to stay put, at least another five or six years. More opportunities here for me.” Richard yawned. “You’re too serious, baby. Try to relax and have fun.” He took her in his arms, holding her against his chest like a boy with a teddy bear as he fell back asleep.
Petrina felt slightly better against the warmth of his body. She wished it could always be like this, just the two of them, and little Pippa, in a cozy, private world of their own. She wondered why it couldn’t be, even if they stayed here. All it would take was a firm word from Richard to his mother and sister, letting them know that his wife was to be respected, and that there would be no more talk of old girlfriends, and that from now on Petri
na would handle the seating arrangements for her daughter’s parties.
She thought of all the people at the party and their shameful secrets, which her father had revealed to her. She’d never look at them the same way again, but she would also never hold it against them. Everyone had secrets; Petrina did, too.
Five or six more years here, Richard had said. She tried to imagine where they’d all be by then. Richard had agreed that they could have another child once they were more “settled.”
The days went by more quickly than she expected. Other things changed, too.
Book Two
The 1940s
9
The Family
Greenwich Village, September 1943
Filomena’s ship arrived in New York Harbor on a bright, cloudless September day. She felt as if she’d been hurtled into not just another country but another universe. The pier and processing center were a deafening hubbub of noise and confusion. At first she stood alone with her small suitcase, anxiously peering at the long lines that were quickly forming in every direction; then she shuffled on with the others. Everyone talked so rapidly that Filomena gave up trying to follow it all; she simply went where they flagged her to go, in a blur of customs and immigration.
But soon, on the other side of the cordon, she saw two men holding up a handwritten sign with Rosamaria’s name on it. She waved to them, and the pair strode confidently toward her. They spoke in English and Italian, and introduced themselves as Johnny and Frankie, the sons of the lady who’d arranged her passage. These two cheerful, well-groomed men seemed to know how to do everything, including getting her through the throng of other new arrivals and helping her with the immigration officials.
She was already used to being called by her cousin’s name, first on the boat, and now here. It was on all her papers. So she was ready to forever call herself Rosamaria, to think of herself as Rosamaria might, and to do whatever Rosamaria would do to survive. She held her breath until she was told that her papers were in order and she was free to enter this great city.
The Godmothers Page 9