“Well, it looks like that job in Washington is off!” James announced. When I gasped, he explained, “Haven’t you heard? President Carter and his men ignored Cyrus Vance’s advice—even though he’s Secretary of State, for Chrissake—so Carter and his team went ahead and sent in helicopters to try to rescue the American hostages in Iran. What a disaster! Four choppers crashed, and eight servicemen dead!”
“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, horrified. “Those poor guys. How awful for everybody.”
“Yeah, it’s bad. Vance warned them. And now he’s furious because his rivals schemed the whole thing behind his back. So he resigned! That means my job offer is kaput, too.”
“Ohh! I’m sorry, babe,” I said, but I couldn’t help feeling secretly relieved.
“I’m not,” James said soberly. “This is no time for us to go to Washington. It looks like the beginning of the end of this administration, and anyway, Vance is out.”
After I got off the phone, I told Godmother Filomena what had happened and that the background check wouldn’t be necessary, after all. “All right, then. Let’s have our coffee,” she said briskly, rising from the table with a note of finality.
“But, Godmother, you can’t just stop there!” I objected, realizing that by now my own reason for being here had shifted to a much more personal mission. “I need to know more! Did you really get out of ‘the business’ completely like you wanted to?” I had my suspicions, and I wanted validation for these uneasy feelings that lurked in my own memories. “What happened with the mobsters—did they truly leave you alone?”
“Oh, no,” she said softly, handing me a tiny china cup of velvety espresso. “It’s never that easy for a fly to escape a spiderweb. You see, for many years, there were still politicians, police, judges, lawyers willing to look the other way, so that only gave the Bosses more power and made it hard to stand up to them. Even that Mr. Hoover of the FBI wouldn’t admit that the mob existed in this way. Many people had their reasons not to rock the boat. But little by little, the times did begin to change—and we watched for our opportunity to get out.”
“What about when your husbands came home?” I persisted. “Did they like the changes you were making? Did they let you stay in charge?”
Godmother Filomena said musingly, “It’s a strange thing, when men return from war. At first, Frankie and Mario behaved as if their authority was a hat or a coat that they’d left hanging on a peg in the closet and could just pick up and wear again. Well, the whole country was like that. Women couldn’t get a bank loan and start a business without getting a father or husband to co-sign the loan. Everyone told us to go back into our kitchens and buy washing machines, so that the returning soldiers could get jobs. Pure economics. It had nothing to do with God or biology, as the politicians, doctors, and clergy insisted it was all about.”
I couldn’t imagine living under such restrictions, just for being female. “Well—what did you Godmothers do about that?” I asked, envisioning the struggle.
“We’d already begun to put our big plans in motion. So now we had to explain to our husbands why we wanted to cut all ties with any of our businesses that allowed the Bosses to extract tribute,” she said. “I also felt, after the war, there was new danger in the air, something bad about to happen which would eventually force us to give up the old ways, anyway. Even so, we couldn’t just snip those ties with a scissors. We had to keep phasing them out, bit by bit.”
“Did Uncle Mario take over your book?” I pursued, fascinated by Tessa’s ledger.
Godmother Filomena smiled and shook her head. “No. I stayed in charge of the book. Mario only wanted to run his shop. He didn’t mind having me by his side, but he couldn’t stand the idea of working with Petrina. I had many talks with him, telling him he must be kinder to her, and I know he forgave her, but he simply would not spend entire days with her. Fortunately, Petrina was ready to put down deeper roots in the suburbs, so she opened her own shop in Mamaroneck, and Mario and I kept the one in Greenwich Village.”
Somehow, the mention of Aunt Petrina’s jewelry shop in the suburbs was, at last, luring the shadowy memories to emerge from my peripheral vision, as if they finally thought it was safe to come out into the open. I remained very still and silent, so they wouldn’t vanish.
Godmother Filomena was saying, “As for Frankie, at first he resisted selling off the rest of the silent partnerships. Lucy was still working at the hospital, so I think she was just relieved not to have to do Frankie’s job anymore. But eventually she convinced Frankie to sell, and to invest the money; I think he enjoyed the gambling aspect of the stock market. We were all changing, after that war. Amie and you and your brothers were already living in Mamaroneck, and that’s why your mother opened her restaurant up here.”
“I remember. It was a big deal for Mom, that year. Let’s see. That was in 1957,” I said quietly, certain that we were getting closer to something much more important. As always with puzzles, the background pieces were falling into place first. I sensed that the more revealing ones might have something to do with my female cousins, not just me. Filomena’s daughter, Teresa, had been my best friend. We’d worshipped our older cousins, especially Petrina’s daughter, Pippa, who’d been dancing professionally for years and seemed so glamorous to us.
“In 1957, Teresa and I were twelve years old,” I said searchingly. “You and Mom took us to see Pippa in the ballet. Let’s see, Pippa would have been twenty-five, right? I hardly recognized her when she came onstage. She looked so beautiful—and scary—in all that dramatic makeup, playing the ghost of a swan princess, dancing by moonlight. And I thought it was so cool, the way men threw roses at her feet and shouted Brava! But then we went backstage, and she showed us what her toes looked like. God! Those pink ballet slippers seem so delicate, but her toes were like gnarled tree roots.”
“Yes. By then she wanted to find a nice man to share her life with,” Godmother Filomena observed. “She told me that the ballet director said, ‘Either you dance, or you have kids, but you can’t have both.’ That’s how it was, in those days.”
I soldiered on, as if I were setting the stage and knew all the players. “Vinnie and Paulie were just graduating from high school that spring. Lucy’s daughter, Gemma, was, um, nineteen. A real knockout—when she walked down the street, men stopped their cars to call out to her, just to see if she’d smile at them. Her brother, Chris, had come back from serving in the navy. He was in some kind of hot water with Uncle Frankie, and he got my brothers involved. In fact,” I said finally, “the whole family was in turmoil. Then—I saw something.”
I stopped short. It was as if my godmother and I had been groping through a thicket of deliberately buried memory but had finally reached a clearing. “Yes, something happened to us, that year,” I said slowly. “I remember the police swarming around. I never told anybody what I saw, because I never really understood why it happened. But you know, don’t you?”
And suddenly, I felt certain that, all along, I’d been trying to find my way back to this one year in our lives that had somehow determined all of our fates.
Godmother Filomena was sitting very still in her chair, as silent and watchful as a cat. Now she said gently, “What did you see, Nicole?” And I looked her straight in the eye.
“All right, Godmother. You tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.”
And that’s how she finally spoke about what happened to our family in 1957.
31
The Family
Greenwich Village, May 1957
Nearly a dozen years after the war in Europe ended, Filomena awoke at dawn in her bed in Greenwich Village, gasping from a terrible nightmare. She’d dreamed that her entire family—all the Godmothers and their husbands and children—were living in an enormous penthouse at the top of a building like the Majestic, with large rooms full of beautiful furniture and treasures, overlooking verdant fields, trees, and a lake, like Central Park.
But then came an inhuman sc
reech of airplanes, and seconds later, the bombs fell, destroying all they touched. The penthouse was shattered and everyone tumbled out, falling through the sky, that long way down. Filomena was the first to land on all the rubble, so she saw the others of her family tumbling toward her—but their bodies were in the shapes of numbers, swirling wildly, as if the wind had flung them haphazardly, like a handful of autumn leaves. She stood up and tried to catch them. But a stone-cold hand emerged from the rubble and pulled Filomena aside, and she heard the voice of Rosamaria saying, It will all fall down. Only the children matter now. You must get them out of here, before it buries them.
* * *
On that same morning in May, Lucy had the early shift at the hospital, and when she took a break, she found herself worrying about her son, Chris. At twenty-three now, he was cheerful and resilient, yet his misadventures had scarred him; there was no denying it.
When Chris had come back from Ireland, at first, he refused to discuss any of it. But gradually, he’d asked Lucy about his origins, so she told him the truth about his birth. Chris had said in awe, “Eddie’s men ordered you to kill me, but you stood up to them? And saved me from the orphanage, too. Why’d you do such a crazy thing?”
“Because you smiled at me, and it was one of the most joyful moments in my life, laddie,” she’d said honestly. Then Lucy had burst into tears, and Chris hugged her.
“Don’t worry, Ma,” he’d whispered, “we’re both free now.”
But she could tell, from the look on his face, that Chris had learned something about life, which was that nothing was really permanent and that things could change so drastically that you might be left never truly knowing who you really were.
Also, upon his arrival home, Chris hadn’t done particularly well scholastically, although he at least managed to graduate from high school. From there, on Frankie and Mario’s advice, Chris had gone into the U.S. Navy, even though Lucy wasn’t keen on this idea.
“Must I give him up to the dangerous world again?” she’d whispered to Frankie.
“Show that you trust him. Let him go,” Frankie advised. “He’ll come back.”
And he did; Chris returned looking bigger, tougher, with his muscular arms covered in tattoos. Furthermore, he’d found a marketable skill he excelled at, because they’d put him on kitchen duty, cooking for the officers. So, once back in New York, he’d enrolled in a fancy cooking school. That had been Petrina’s idea. Then Chris had gone to work in a couple of popular restaurants. Now he and Gemma shared the downstairs apartment in Lucy’s town house, where Amie and Johnny had once lived with their twins. Lucy and Frankie still lived upstairs, able to keep an eye on their kids.
And everything had seemed fine, it truly did, until today, just as Lucy was about to take her lunch break. Gemma telephoned Lucy at the hospital.
“Chris got into trouble, and Daddy is yelling and hitting him!” Gemma reported. “You’d better come help me break it up, before Daddy kills him.”
* * *
Early that same afternoon, Petrina, seated in the front row among a poshly dressed audience, watched closely as an auctioneer raised his gavel threateningly. “Last call,” he warned, “for this excellent Jackson Pollock painting! A great and rare early find, from a star of our twentieth century, shining in the firmament with Picasso and Diego Rivera.”
“Sure, everybody says that now,” whispered Petrina’s escort. “Ever since Life magazine picked Pollock as the greatest thing since sliced bread. But you were onto him decades ago, when nobody knew nor cared about him!”
“Doug, be quiet,” Petrina whispered, pinching his arm.
“Going once . . . ,” the auctioneer intoned. “Going twice . . .”
But the painting didn’t go just yet. Two other bidders decided to jump in, so now there were three people vying for it—an older lady in furs, a man with a pipe, and a chilly young woman in a severe black suit and veiled hat. They batted around the bids like people playing badminton, Petrina thought in awe. As the price climbed higher and higher, she caught her breath. The room was astir now; even the doormen and security guards had peered in to watch, as if they were all in a casino.
“Lotta money on the floor tonight,” the guard commented sagely.
“Fair warning! Once, twice, three times—sold to the foxy lady!” the auctioneer sang out triumphantly, nodding to the older woman in furs.
Petrina exhaled in relief. It was over. She’d finally sold it. “But now that it’s done,” she admitted, “I’m sorry to say goodbye to it. That painting got me through some rough times.” She remembered her brother Johnny staring at it on her wall at the house in Mamaroneck.
Her handsome escort kissed her. “Let it go,” Doug advised. “You won’t have any more rough times ahead.” He looked at her tenderly, very serious about protecting her.
Petrina hoped he was right. She’d decided to sell this painting because here she was, in her mid-forties, on the brink of massively changing her life, which meant getting rid of things that reminded her of past sorrows. Resolutely, she took Doug’s arm and they navigated past others from the audience who were chattering excitedly as they streamed out onto the sidewalk. Several women glanced admiringly at Doug, so tall and striking; then they eyed Petrina enviously, for snagging him.
He was an architect she’d met in Westchester a year ago, tall, lean, with intelligent grey eyes. A friend had recommended him to Petrina because she’d bought more houses to fix up and resell. Doug lived in Westchester but came from an illustrious old family in Virginia, and he had the modest Southern manners of a man confident of his place in the world. His first wife had died of a pulmonary infection and left him without children. He was the kind of man who moved quietly through life, keeping his troubles to himself. But something about Petrina had reawakened his hope.
They’d danced around each other awhile, meeting at the same parties, until finally they began dating and surrendered to the force that seemed to want them to be together. When he’d proposed to her, just last week, he presented her with his grandmother’s beautiful sapphire ring. It was sparkling on her hand right now, in the lovely spring sunlight.
“I have to wait here to pick up my check from the auction house,” Petrina said.
“I’ve got to catch the train back to Mamaroneck,” Doug said regretfully as he flagged down a cab. “You coming up this weekend?”
She nodded. “I’m just staying overnight here with my family. I’ll head out tomorrow morning.”
He kissed her again, long, lingering, and delicious. “Love you,” he said. Petrina whispered it back to him as he climbed into the taxi.
Now a tall, sandy-haired man was heading purposefully in her direction. He probably wanted to nab the next cab, ahead of the jostling crowd. Petrina thought nothing of it until the man deliberately planted himself in front of her. Then she recognized him.
The first thing her ex-husband said was, “Fine-looking man, your escort,” as he gazed in the direction of Doug’s retreating cab. “And you—you’re glamorous as ever.”
“Richard,” Petrina said, astounded. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t add what she was thinking, which was, You look much older, Stranger. But he seemed to guess her thoughts, because he smiled ruefully. She knew that, after the war, he’d finally made that move to Boston, where he’d run for office in some primary but lost the nomination. He rarely saw Pippa; he’d attended her performance when she was in Boston, but not much else. Since the divorce, the proud Pippa had wanted little to do with him. So Petrina hadn’t seen Richard in years. His face was puffier, his hair thinning a bit, his mouth turned down at the corners.
“Doris and I just moved back to Manhattan,” Richard said in a mild tone. “Had to take over the firm, when Dad died.” So, he was still married to that homewrecker. But clearly, life had disappointed him, as if he’d realized with a shock that he would never be quite as exalted and admired as he’d been in his dazzling youth, running around winning tennis tournaments.
“One of the partners at my firm is a collector, and he had a brochure for this auction,” Richard was saying. “When I saw your painting in it I said, ‘Holy God, is that up for sale? The one I ridiculed my wife for buying, back in the forties?’ Well, Petrina, what did you get today, like, twenty times what you paid for it? I should have known. You always had a good eye.”
“True, you never did realize the value of what we had,” Petrina agreed pertly. “When you and your lawyer were divvying up our possessions and you chucked that painting into my meager pile, you gave away our most valuable treasure!”
Richard looked at her deeply and said, “It wasn’t the painting that was the most valuable treasure. It was you.”
Startled, Petrina recovered quickly enough to gently laugh it off. But she thought to herself, You still don’t have it right. The most valuable treasure we ever had was Pippa. But she didn’t say it aloud. Even though Pippa was a young woman now, independent and free, Petrina could still feel the old fear of Richard’s threatening to take her daughter away.
* * *
That afternoon, Amie brought her children to Greenwich Village to stay for the weekend, at Filomena’s request. “I’m so glad you came,” Filomena said, giving Amie a hug as they entered Tessa’s study. Their daughters had already scurried off together. “I wanted to talk to you before the rest of the family gets here,” Filomena confided. “It’s about Nicole’s future.”
“Her future?” Amie echoed, dropping into a chair. “She’s only twelve. She hasn’t even had a date yet! She still thinks of boys as chums. It’ll be years before she marries.”
“I’m not talking about boys,” Filomena said a bit tartly. “My Teresa says that all the teachers are raving about what a remarkable, gifted girl your daughter is.”
“Yes, Nicole always gets straight A’s,” Amie muttered. She herself had been a terrible student. So she could not help feeling a swift dart of envy on every parents’ night, when all the instructors rhapsodized that her girl was “a delight” in the classroom.
The Godmothers Page 33