Petrina’s voice had an exhausted, bitter edge to it. The maid stepped forward to take the dishcloth from Filomena. The others went into the dining room, grateful for something to drink and eat from the sideboard, with its platters of sandwiches, olives, and salads, and carafes of water and wine, and coffee on the warmer. Filomena filled a plate for Mario.
“Ma looked exhausted,” Johnny said as he sat down tiredly. “She doesn’t need these clowns popping into her life. She was pretty cool about it, though.”
“You think Ma knew about this Alonza woman all along?” Frankie asked curiously.
“I couldn’t tell, from her face,” Johnny admitted.
Petrina said quickly, “Maybe she sensed it, and didn’t really want to know.”
“What does it matter, anyway?” Mario asked, looking weary, too.
“I wish I’d realized Pop needed our help. I’d have dispensed with that bitch and her bastards once and for all,” Frankie said darkly.
“Stop it, Frankie!” Petrina said. “That’s just why he didn’t discuss it with you.” She jerked her head at Filomena. “And don’t talk that way in front of Mario’s blushing bride.”
“Ma’s right, we all need sleep before we say anything stupid,” Mario said, calm as ever. “Go to bed, Petrina. It’s been a long day.”
He spoke gently; at first Petrina balked at being ordered to go to bed like a naughty child. But when Mario touched her arm with his fingertips, her expression softened immediately. Mario’s voice had taken on that resonant, caressing quality, which Filomena loved; but now it irritated her to hear him use that same tone as a tool to placate his possessive, mercurial sister.
Is that all it is? Filomena wondered. A voice meant to tame a horse or a woman?
For the first time, she wished they could get away from this lively, possibly dangerous family that had brought her to this strange new world—which, perhaps, wasn’t so very new or different from the old world, after all.
15
Greenwich Village, November–December 1943
The holiday season began with a burst of energy in New York City, for there was money to be both made and spent, in a frenzy that could not be matched at any other time of the year. Gianni’s family had to really rally to help one another cope with their loss and carry on their business. Tessa was clearly in charge now, and her sons were determined to make it as painless as possible for her. It was important, too, that the rest of the world understood that Gianni’s sons were here—ready, willing, able, and determined to protect their various enterprises.
Filomena was touched by the courage they all exhibited in spite of their palpable grief. Her loyalty deepened, and she wanted to help in every way that she could. She sensed that she must get closer to the other wives, so she got Mario to find her an English-language class, which met twice a week. It helped. And Amie advised her, “Work with Mario. It will keep you close.”
Filomena took this advice to heart. Mario’s jewelry shop on Thompson Street filled her with pride. He had some of his own designs and other exquisite pieces to sell, and he excelled at altering a setting if a customer wished it. This first year would be critical to his success. They’d opened in October and were now doing brisk business as the Christmas gift-buying spree commenced. Filomena had assisted him in all phases of the opening, including decorating the front windows with silver, gold, and red stars, and real pine boughs.
Every day Mario unlocked their shop and took the jewelry out of the safe, and Filomena arranged it all in the elegant wood-and-glass display cases. At closing time, they locked everything up again and retreated to their back room to go over the orders, invoices, payments, and profits. They sat with their heads together, tallying everything up.
Tessa let the whole neighborhood know about Mario’s new shop, which proved to be excellent publicity. One evening Tessa surprised Filomena by appearing at the store, promptly pulling up a chair in the back room, and ensconcing herself in front of the adding machine, looking ready to do serious work as she produced a brand-new ledger.
Mario said patiently, “Mama, we already have an account book. I’ll show you.”
He disappeared into a closet to get his records. Tessa turned to Filomena and hissed under her breath, “Why are you here? You should be at home. Why aren’t you pregnant yet? Your job is to have babies and keep my son out of this war.”
“Well, I can’t make babies at home alone,” Filomena responded lightly, taken aback but trying not to feel hurt. Tessa eyed her resentfully as Mario returned with his records.
“Mario, read me today’s numbers,” Tessa commanded. “I will add them up.” She glanced dismissively at Filomena. “Go home, and help cook your husband’s dinner.”
Seeing Filomena’s outraged expression, Mario opened the ledger and said quickly, “No, Mama, look! My wife has a gift. She can add whole columns of three-figure numbers in her head. She is better than any machine—and faster, too! She did all this.”
Now Tessa looked skeptical. “Show me,” she said.
Mario turned the page to one of today’s lists, which had not yet been added up, and handed it to Filomena. “This one needs a total,” he said, smiling.
Filomena studied the page raptly. Then, after a moment, she picked up the pencil that Mario gave her, drew a line at the bottom of the column, and wrote the total that was in her head. Numbers had individual personalities to her, and when grouped together in hundred-number combinations they seemed to dance and sing in tidy choruses, all at a glance.
“Go ahead, Mama, check it on your machine,” Mario said proudly. “It will take you three times as long as she does it! I tell you, she has a gift.” Then, sensing that diplomacy was needed, he added, “You were so smart to find me this wife!”
Tessa took the book and stolidly inputted the figures on the machine. When she reached the end, Mario peered at it. “You see?” he said triumphantly. “I told you so!”
Tessa said abruptly, “You have forgotten something, Mario.” But he’d already reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope, thick with cash.
“No, I haven’t.” He stooped down to kiss Tessa’s cheek. “How could I forget?”
Tessa took the envelope and put it in her black silk purse with the gold frame, which made a snap of satisfaction. She rose and smiled now, cupping his face in her hands before kissing him. But as soon as Mario stepped away to answer the telephone, Tessa stared hard at Filomena and said, “Remember what your real job is.”
As Tessa swept out majestically, her long black skirts and coat billowing like a regal bird’s plumage, Filomena thought of all she’d heard about the evil eye; it was the gaze of envy, when people coveted your good fortune—love or health or youth or money—and wished you harm. Such a gaze, the superstition went, could cause bodily injury unless you warded it off quickly. So Filomena crossed herself, and then did the same across her belly.
When Mario returned from the phone, Filomena said, “What was in that envelope? Did you give your mother our money?”
“I didn’t give her money,” Mario said carefully. “I repaid her.”
“What does that mean?” Filomena asked unflinchingly.
“She financed the opening of this shop,” Mario explained. “You don’t think gemstones grow on trees, do you? Or these jewelry cases? Or the shop’s rent?”
“I don’t understand. You buy gems and gold from the dealers, don’t you?”
“They sell them to my mother,” Mario said, correcting her. “Because most of them owe Ma money, so they give her a much better rate for our supplies than we’d get on the open market. You see, my family helped a lot of our neighbors start their businesses, when no bank would give them a loan. Pop was a silent partner for many of them, for years, until they were able to pay us back.”
Filomena studied his face, which was calm and unrevealing. Yet she sensed that there was more he wasn’t telling her. “And the rent?” she asked. “Does the landlord of this building owe your fami
ly money, too? Is that why we got a good price for the rent?”
“No,” he said. “That’s not why.”
Filomena felt herself growing irritated. “Then—how did we get it?” she persisted.
“She owns this building,” Mario said simply.
“Your mother is our landlady?” Filomena asked.
For the first time, Mario looked annoyed. “Why should any of this matter to you? You know nothing of the world. Do you have any idea what the rent on this place would be if our landlord were a stranger? This is New York City, my dear!”
As they locked up and went outside to walk home, Filomena thought of all the merchants who bowed and flattered and deferred to Tessa. It had made Filomena feel like an important lady, too. Now she felt like just another one of the merchants. Indebted, too!
“Mario, I thought you wanted us to be independent,” she objected.
“I do, of course.” There were dark warning clouds hovering over his expression now.
“But how can we be—?” she persisted.
“When we make our profits, we’ll be able to open more stores, maybe even buy our own buildings,” Mario explained with more than a trace of impatience. “Really, you don’t need to think about these things. I will take care of all of this.” Then he said more gently, “Let’s go home now. I’m hungry!”
A week later, Tessa called Filomena into her inner sanctum—her little study at the back of the house—where she sat at a rolltop desk. Filomena had never been in this room before. She took the chair beside the desk. For a moment, Tessa said nothing as she sorted some papers.
Then she rose and stepped inside a closet. Filomena happened to glance up at the window, which at this hour was shaded by a tree outside, so it acted as a mirror reflecting Tessa in her closet. Fascinated, Filomena watched as Tessa extracted a key from the pocket of an apron that hung in the closet and used it to unlock a drawer in her desk. She reached in and took out a book. It was a thick, red-and-black ledger.
“Mario and I have had a little talk,” Tessa said in a slightly guarded tone. “He explained that you are a lot like me, in the way that you work to protect your husband. When I was a young wife, I, too, worked by my husband’s side. In work and at home, a good wife should know what her husband’s needs are, even before he knows.”
Filomena remained silent, waiting to see if, indeed, Mario had charmed his mother into accepting his wife’s work. Tessa opened the ledger, but then she put another book on top of the left-side page of the ledger to obscure it. She pointed only to the right-side page and said, “Go ahead. Add up these numbers, and write down your total.”
Filomena took a deep breath and did as she was told.
“Very good.” Tessa wrote it down, then turned the page, again covering the left pages and revealing only the right. “Add these now.” They continued for a couple of pages. When they were done, Tessa closed the book and locked it away.
She had timed it perfectly, because now they could hear Frankie and Sal the chauffeur arriving via a side door that opened into the large kitchen, where most supplies were carried in. Sal was evidently making multiple trips to unload the car with crates of supplies for the cook. But Frankie came into Tessa’s study.
Casually he placed on the desk a rubber-banded wad of envelopes that looked like the one Mario had given Tessa, so Filomena understood that these, too, were stuffed with cash payments.
“It’s all there,” Frankie said briefly, waiting.
“You may go,” Tessa said to Filomena. As soon as she rose from the chair, Frankie sat there. On her way out the door, Filomena saw that Frankie was reporting each total that was written on each envelope so that Tessa could record it in her ledger.
Filomena heard Tessa ask her son, “Any problems?”
Frankie said, “No, Ma. I’ve been collecting our rent ever since I could walk. But, we must make extra cash payouts this week—holiday ‘gifts’ to the cops, you know?”
As Filomena passed the kitchen, Johnny and Amie arrived. Johnny was nonchalantly carrying canvas sacks that he, too, brought into Tessa’s study.
Amie saw Filomena’s gaze following Johnny. All month, the gamblers in the back room of the bar had been roaring loudly with special holiday cheer, so jocular that they didn’t care who heard them—for the pot of money that they bet was terrifyingly high at this time of year. All of this was written on Amie’s face, and Filomena sensed it.
“People will bet on anything,” Amie said quietly. “Especially around Christmastime. Even the little old ladies. They love their lottery numbers, and their saints’ days, and they believe in the big score just as much as the high rollers do.”
As the year drew even closer to its festive end, with frost on the windowpanes and wisps of snowflakes in the air, the city became even more aglow and lively, humming like a beehive in anticipation of Christmas. Men dressed as Santa Claus rang loud bells, asking for contributions; pushcart peddlers madly and perilously trundled their wares while dodging the overwhelming, honking traffic; and the brisk wind made pedestrians shriek and scurry.
Filomena had never known such cold weather before, and yet, she’d never had such luxurious clothes to keep her warm: skirts of fine wool lined with silk; soft cashmere sweaters and wool stockings; sumptuously shaped coats and hats trimmed with real fur. Even her feet and fingers were kept snuggly in wool-lined, butter-soft leather. Such high-quality goods were all the more precious in wartime.
“We have partners in the garment district,” Mario said laconically when Filomena asked how all this was possible.
Enormous, beribboned gift baskets and wrapped packages began to appear at the house, sometimes delivered personally by the tradesmen who were paying special holiday tribute to Tessa and her family. Often, Sal and the “boys”—Johnny, Frankie, and Mario—received these gifts at work, enough to fill up the backseat and trunk of the car, which had to be unloaded at the house. The packages were deposited inside the kitchen pantry or placed under the enormous Christmas tree in the parlor, which wasn’t even decorated yet.
“The whole family must wait until Christmas Eve to trim the tree together,” Lucy explained. “It’s a sacred tradition, like everything else around here!”
Indeed, this was the season when Johnny and Frankie made the rounds of giving generous donations to the family’s charities—the church, the school, a ladies’ club that fed the elderly, a war-widows-and-orphans’ fund.
Meanwhile, Filomena and Mario continued to do a very brisk business at the jewelry store, staying open late even on Christmas Eve, when last-minute shoppers rushed in, made quick purchases, and happily departed with their shiny wrapped parcels, which Filomena had tied with ribbons of red and blue and gold and silver.
“That’s the last customer!” she gasped finally, after the front door closed with a jingle behind the departing shopper.
“Good!” said Mario, pulling her close to kiss her. Filomena hugged him, wishing that she could give him one special gift—the child that he and his family desired. And yet, not yet. But soon, it must come! She buried her face in his neck.
Mario, with his uncanny way of sensing exactly what she was thinking, said, “I know my mother’s been pressing you about babies. You’ve been so patient with her.”
“Every week, when I go to help her with her ‘book,’ she asks me if I have any ‘news,’” Filomena confessed. “Oh, how I wish I did!”
“What a world we live in, eh? Everyone thinks they can talk out loud about something we must do so privately in our bedroom! Very well,” Mario said teasingly, “we’ll just have to spend a lot more time in bed together, è vero?” He kissed her again.
Filomena sighed contentedly and glanced out the plate-glass window, just in time to see two stout figures emerging from a café across the street, and, even before she figured out who they were, she felt a cold shudder ripple through her, beneath her warm wool clothing.
“It’s the Pericolo brothers,” Mario said, following her gaze.
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“I thought you said they went to Florida,” Filomena said in a low voice.
“They did. We set them up nicely.”
“Quick, lock the door before they see us!” she whispered.
“No, you never hide,” Mario said abruptly, straightening up. His jaw tightened as the bell on the front door jingled when the men entered the shop.
“Ciao, Mario!” said the older one, Sergio, in an insultingly familiar tone.
“Ciao!” echoed the younger one, Ruffio, jutting out his chin.
Filomena could not help noticing Sergio’s shirt cuffs, sticking out from his coat sleeves with the buttons in the wrong holes. Both men smelled of coffee, hair oil, and cologne.
Disgusted, she busied herself by getting her coat and hat off the hooks and handing Mario his, as an obvious hint that the store was closed and she wanted to go home. But she kept her eyes averted. She was remembering what she’d overheard Johnny telling the family, about how Sergio in particular was a violent man.
Sergio was gesturing at the nearly empty jewelry cases. “Only a few pieces left! Do you make all that jewelry yourself? Bella!” he said in an ugly tone.
“Nah, I wish I could,” Mario said modestly.
Ruffio’s gaze traveled around the shop as if lusting after the space, the fixtures, the holiday decor. “We saw from our table in the window that you had so many customers in this candy shop of yours,” he said with a smirk. “You must be making a nice profit! Ti saluto!”
“I’m sure you are also doing well in Florida,” Mario said indifferently.
“Ah, not as well as you, my friend!” Sergio said, spreading his palms.
“Nice and warm there this season,” Mario replied. “You’ll have better luck in the New Year.” The brothers had wandered to the back room, where customers weren’t allowed.
“No. Things didn’t work out too good for us there. We can’t go back,” Sergio said firmly, somewhat threateningly. “But we got something that should interest you.”
The Godmothers Page 16