A Heart Most Worthy (2 page)

She crossed it.

And then walked west, eventually consigning her person to that bane of modern existence, the close, cramped quarters of an electric car. But still, as she squeezed herself onto the bench, a smile curled the very tips of her lips. How easy, how delightful it had been to be disagreeable.

You might have thought that Julietta, having left several minutes earlier and intent upon arriving at the same place, would have reached Madame’s gown shop in advance of Annamaria. But you would have been wrong. Other people, other more experienced, more knowledgeable people than you, had also been known to be wrong about Julietta. She was a sly and evasive one. Though kindhearted and loyal, she was just a bit . . . well, more than a bit, stubborn. On this point and at this moment you’ll find yourself having to trust me, but I think that I’ll be proved right before long. Suffice to say that in this case, on this morning, she stopped along her way to work.

She hadn’t stopped to talk. Not necessarily. Although she would have been quite willing had the opportunity presented itself. No. She stopped mostly to see. And to be seen. Which are the two main objectives in the lives of most eighteen-year-old girls, be they from America or Italy or from any other place in between.

She was really quite extraordinary, and she knew it. You might have taken offense at such extreme vanity except that she made such a picture that morning, standing in a patch of early morning sunlight, across from Zanfini’s
frutta e verdura
. At least that’s what Rafaello Zanfini thought. He paused in his labors when he saw her, breathed in a sigh, and immediately dropped a crate of cucumbers onto his foot.

Which caused his father, Mr. Zanfini, to swear, and his mother, Mrs. Zanfini, to berate his father, and the deliveryman, Angelo Moretti, to look up at Julietta over the flatbed of his truck. She only stayed a moment more, but that one moment was long enough for Rafaello to forget his pain and Angelo to lose sight, for just one second, of all his mad schemes.

But perhaps, in fact, it was one moment too long. Before she continued on her way, Julietta saw a flash in Angelo’s eyes that made her wonder, for just an instant, if he was what she wanted after all. She pondered that thought as she walked along, finally deciding that of course he was what she wanted. Why wouldn’t he be what she wanted? He was entirely and absolutely what she wanted by virtue of her wanting him.

And so they went to work, those two girls from the North End, separated by several blocks and the inseparable gulf of two differing perspectives. The one planning to escape her family just as soon as she could, and the other resigned to stay.

2

Later that afternoon, as Julietta and Annamaria were working on the third floor of Madame Fortier’s Gown Shop, Luciana Conti ventured from the shadowed entrance of a North Bennet Street tenement building. Looking first up the street and then down, she took a cautious step off the stoop.

To her left, three women had blocked the sidewalk with their chairs. Gesticulating wildly, revealing large gaps between their teeth as they grinned at each other, they spoke in a dialect that Luciana didn’t even try to decipher. To her right, a group of young girls was playing hopscotch. But it wasn’t old women and children that worried her.

Luciana lifted her chin, eyes traveling the length of the rows of windows in the tenements across the street. If it weren’t for the laundry hanging slack in the still summer air, she might have been able to see who sat in the windows behind them. She knew they were there, those faceless people whose laughter and banter bounced between the buildings and echoed down the street.

They had to be women, didn’t they? At this time in the afternoon?

She put a hand to her scarf, reassuring herself that no one would recognize her. She didn’t look at all like the heiress she’d been three short months before. That’s when her father had been blown up by an anarchist’s bomb . . . and all her prospects of a brilliant future with him. What is an heiress without money but a girl in search of means? And what is a girl with no means but destitute? Destitute is doubtless what she was, the family estate having been entailed to a man – a cousin – she’d never met. A cousin who hadn’t even bothered to come to Roma after her father was murdered. Abandoned and penniless, a stranger in a strange land, she had no doubt she was being hunted by the man who had killed her father. She’d seen him. Once. Right there on that North End street.

She pulled her scarf down over her eyes with a trembling hand and started away from the steps. As long as she didn’t go out to the corner, she wouldn’t encounter any men. She shouldn’t. None but the shopkeepers. And those she could not avoid.

Not if she wanted to eat.

She took hesitant, measured steps, pausing to look up and down the street between each one. Two storefronts down, she paused in front of a window. A
macelleria
, it dangled a few rabbits from its ceiling, skinned but for their round, fuzzy tails. An enticing chain of salami hung beside them, caught up in a snare of twine. There were roasts displayed on a shelf behind the window, encased in white marbled fat. But the glass also reflected back a pair of men, sauntering down the street.

Luciana bolted toward the door. Opened it and fled inside.

The man behind the counter smiled as she entered. “
Buon giorno, Signorina
. What do I get for you?”

At least that’s what she thought he must have said. She wasn’t certain. She couldn’t make sense of his accent.

He raised his brows, opened his hands behind the glass of the case. “What do I get for you?”

She shook her head.

“
Inglese?
”

English? Is that what he was asking her? She scarcely knew a word.

He shrugged. Decided to help the girl settle on what it was that she wanted. “
Insaccati?
”

Ah. Now there was a word she understood. But no. No preserved meats for her. The contessa wouldn’t know a salame from a
cotechino
. She’d think for certain someone was trying to poison her.

Luciana took a step farther into the shop so that she could peer out the window. Those men were still there. They’d stopped in the middle of the street. The reason they’d stopped, of course, is that they’d seen one of their friends. But Luciana didn’t know that. And when she saw the dawn of recognition light their faces, she feared the worst.

“
Prosciutto?
”

She jumped.

The butcher was holding up a hunk of aged ham.

Luciana shook her head. She was getting hungry now. She took another step farther in, toward the case, to hide herself in the relative recesses of the room.

“
Agnello?
”

Her mouth began to water. She hadn’t had lamb in . . . far too long. If only they had some
casoeula
. That would be worth the money. Tender meat stewed with sausage and bacon. Served with white cabbage and polenta. What she wouldn’t give for a taste of that once more. But it was so very difficult for Luciana to know what to ask for when she had never cooked before.

“
Coniglio? Polpette?
” Rabbit. Meatballs.

The contessa had grown tired of watered wine and cheese and bread. Luciana had too. “
Bistecca?
”

“Bistecca?” The man raised a brow.

Beefsteak. That sounded like what she had asked for, didn’t it? Enough like it that she nodded. And then hoped. And prayed. Maybe if the contessa had a real meal, she would sleep through the night. And then Luciana could too.

“
Una?
”

She nodded, knowing she only had enough money for a single steak.

“Una bistecca.” She watched as the butcher picked up a large thick steak, wrapped it in paper, and tied it up with a string. “Something else?”

Something else. Did he have a
Carabiniere
or an arrest warrant hidden behind his counter? Could he buy her passage back to Italy or breathe her father back to life? A beefsteak would have to do. She counted out the precious coins as if they were her last. Laid them on the counter, fingers lingering atop their warm, shiny surfaces.

The butcher wiped his hands on his apron and then swept the coins into his palm with a deft hand. “
Arrivederci
.”

Luciana paused at the window. Looked past the salami in their string cages to the street outside. The men were no longer there.

She drew open the door.

The women were still on the sidewalk, sitting in their chairs, sighing over a shared memory. Looking beyond the crumbling sidewalks, gazing past the tenements, back through the years into the golden age of their youth. To the days when Tommasina still had all of her hair and Generosa had all of her teeth. Hadn’t the boys come sniffing around? And hadn’t they been the talk of the village back then?

Luciana didn’t care about old women. Her thoughts were on things more basic. More immediate. She cared about life. Or if not about life, then she cared about death. And she didn’t want to bring it to her door. Not again.

Sì
. The men had gone from the street.

She slipped away from the butcher’s door and out into the day. Bolted for her tenement building. She couldn’t do it without skirting those old
nonne
and stepping into the street, but she did it quickly and then she was back up the stoop and into the building.

She was safe.

As safe as she could be in a falling-down tenement, filled with the poorest of immigrant classes. She was, perhaps, as safe as she would ever be again.

Slender and light as she was on her feet, she ran straight up the stairs. All four flights of them. As she twisted up their heights, the air grew hotter. Closer. More stale. At the top, she felt more than saw her way down the gloomy tunnel of a hall. Passing a cluster of giggling girls and a rack of
maccheroni
set in front of an open doorway to dry, she reached the door of her apartment.

She closed and locked the door behind her – testing it – before she placed her package of meat on a narrow shelf. Then she unknotted her scarf as she walked toward the window and the straight-backed old woman who sat before it, hands folded within each other on her lap.

At least they had a window.

Others on the floor, a dozen in the building, had no such luxury. And though the glass itself could have used a good cleaning, it was open this afternoon. No rays of light came through it just now, but across the street, windows glowed where the sun still touched them. And sometimes when light itself cannot be had, then a glimpse of it will suffice.

“Contessa?”

The woman raised her head, turned just an inch, as if to summon Luciana closer.

The girl obliged. And when she entered the old woman’s peripheral vision, the contessa offered up a hand. Luciana took it, curtsied, and then kissed it.

“Sì?”

“I have come to prepare your dinner.”

“
Grazie, ragazza
.” The old woman withdrew her hand before Luciana could think to hold on to it.

Ragazza
. Girl.

Luciana would have given her own heart to have heard the words
mia bambina
fall from the old woman’s lips. My little girl. For when a child of any age has been orphaned, all she longs for is to find a safe place, a firm lap to climb into, and be comforted. But the contessa would comfort no one. She simply sat in front of the window all day long, back straight as a rod, never touching the slats of the chair, speaking to no one, requiring nothing, treating Luciana like a servant girl.

While Luciana spent her days in the shadows, pacing the length of their sad set of rooms, using the window at periodic intervals to scout the neighborhood, the contessa sat and gazed out, impervious to shadow or light. Sometimes the strained notes of a song came out in a feeble hum. Once or twice, Luciana thought she had heard the woman speak, and several times when she looked into the contessa’s eyes, she thought she’d seen her
nonna
looking back. But most of the time the old woman was silent.

Luciana had given up hope. It was no use calling her “nonna” any longer. That engaging, warm, vital woman was lost in the far reaches of a grief-stricken mind. Gone was the proud mother, the doting grandmother, the competent administrator of the estates of the conte di Roma. The woman all Roma had once referred to as
Contessa Formidabile
had disappeared.

Luciana would have kissed the top of her head had the woman displayed any sign at all of her former person. But she did not, and so the girl went to the shelf, took the steak from the wrapper, and prepared it as best as she could. Which I must say, if truth be important, was not so very good at all. After wasting three matches trying to light the stove, she cooked the steak at too high a temperature. So when the contessa sat down to her dinner, the beefsteak was burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. But the butcher was an honest man if he was a clean one, and neither Luciana nor her grandmother got sick that night.

The contessa slept without waking, but Luciana could not sleep at all. Aside from a trip down the hall to the communal toilet, she did not leave their rooms. But she knew the next morning that she would have to. It was unavoidable. The beefsteak had taken the last of their money. The next day she would have to find a job.