A Heart Most Worthy (31 page)

It was a small, intimate ceremony. The contessa, Madame, Julietta, and Annamaria sat on one side of the central aisle and Mr. and Mrs. Quinn on the other. Once the ceremony was finished, it was time for introductions. Billy did the honors. With Luciana on one arm and the contessa on the other, they walked over to where his parents were standing.

“Mother, this is Luciana.”

Mrs. Quinn speared her with her glance. “Yes. We’ve met.”

“And this is her grandmother.”

The old woman extended her hand toward Mrs. Quinn as if she were granting a very great favor.

Mrs. Quinn didn’t know what to do with it.

“Who is this woman that she will not kiss my hand?” Only Luciana and Billy knew what it was that she had said, for she had spoken the words in German.

“But – the woman’s a Hun!” Mrs. Quinn blanched white and reached out to grip the back of the pew for support.

Billy stepped closer to Luciana’s grandmother. “She holds the title of the Contessa of Roma.”

“She what?”

“Mia nonna.” Luciana tried to explain as best as she could.

“A countess.” Mrs. Quinn scoffed at the very notion. But then she noticed the woman’s ring. The ring that displayed a coat of arms, decorated with glittering diamonds and rubies. Realizing her mistake, she reached out and took up the woman’s hand, planting a hasty kiss upon it. “Why did no one tell me . . . ?”

“I tried, Mother. And you insisted that Italians were rude and filthy. ‘Peasants,’ you called them.”

Mrs. Quinn raised her chin against the accusation, though she did not deny it.

The contessa resisted the urge to wipe off the kiss as she turned away from the young people. She was old. She was tired.

Mrs. Quinn stepped closer to her son so that she could speak into his ear. “You ought to have told me.”

Billy took a step back, placing an arm around his wife. “And you ought to have let me speak.”

“Well. We’ll have to write up an announcement for the newspapers.” “For a marriage you were determined wouldn’t take place?”

“It may be, perhaps, that I was wrong.”

Annamaria and Julietta thought the gown had looked perfect, Luciana angelic. Mrs. Quinn had scowled through the ceremony – was scowling still – but she’d been born a strega and would probably never change. They saw their friend’s grandmother had been left standing alone, looking rather forlorn. So they each took up one of her hands and led her to a pew where she could sit.

“Grazie.” Such nice friends her granddaughter had. Such a nice wedding it had been. “Did you know, back when I was a newly married contessa, that I danced with King Umberto at his coronation?”

Julietta looked over at Annamaria and winked. Julietta squeezed the woman’s hand and said, “No, Nonna. Why don’t you tell us about that time?”

They stayed with the old woman until Billy and Luciana came to collect her. Luciana slipped a piece of paper into Julietta’s hand.

She glanced down and was able to decipher the words
Police
and
Report
before Luciana threw her arms around Julietta’s shoulders in an embrace.

Patrick turned, for just a moment, as he left the church.

Caught Madame’s eye. Nodded.

She returned the gesture.

There was nothing more to be said. They had loved once. They had lost each other. But they had also prevented the repetition of their doomed history in the next generation.

45

Annamaria walked home from the wedding, a thought stirring in her mind. It had to do with the Quinns’ son and Luciana. With the way they looked at each other, even as the strega had scowled. At the way they loved each other. As she crossed the street, her foot scuffed against the cobblestones, causing her to stumble. As she threw her arms out for balance, the Saint Zita medal swung free from her blouse. It swung up toward her chin, glinting in the light. After she had regained her step, she reached for the medal and drew it away from her chest. She looked down at the worn design.

Perhaps God had willed that Saint Zita’s life be given over to service, but had God willed that for her? Truly? If it had been all right to hope for more while Mama was still alive, then why wouldn’t it still be all right to hope for more now that she was dead?

She crossed herself as she remembered her mama. Fiercely loving, fiercely loyal, fiercely . . . wrong. In the end, her mama had been wrong.

What did Annamaria owe the dead? Was there anything to be gained by sacrificing herself – her hopes and dreams – on Mama’s dusty altar of tradition?

She wrenched the medal from her neck, wincing as she felt the clasp give, and dropped it into the gutter. Winking, it rested for a moment atop a pile of rotting garbage, and then it disappeared as it sank into the morass.

She worked that afternoon in the Rossi apartment, thinking of burdens lifted and dreams renewed, and how exactly to go about the doing of what it was she was about to do. Simply. Honestly. Wasn’t that the only way that it could be done?

“Papa?”

He looked up from the table. He’d been sitting a lot at the table since he’d recovered from the influenza. Sitting at the table, doing nothing, staring at something only he could see.

“Papa, I want to go get some turnips.”

He nodded.

“And when I do it, I’m going to speak to the Zanfinis.”

The Zanfinis? Who were the Zanfinis? He looked up at her, a blank look in his eyes.

“To the people who own the store.”

“The Sicilians?”

Annamaria nodded.

What was it about those Sicilians? Papa Rossi was trying to remember exactly what it was about them that had caused such great problems. “And why wouldn’t you?”

“Mama . . .” Annamaria crossed herself as she spoke the word.

“She had forbidden me to. Told me she wished her name to be lost in my home.” She stood before her father, head bowed, waiting for his judgment.

“Your mama said that?”

She nodded again.

“Before she . . . well, now. Let me think.”

Annamaria’s heart sank to her toes. For when had Papa Rossi asked to be given time to think when he had not, after great deliberation, repeated Mama’s words exactly? And why should anything be different now that she had gone?

“Your mama said, ‘May my name be lost in your home’?”

“Sì.” There was no point in trying to deny what had taken place between them. Better for it all to be spoken, all the words to be said now.

“She didn’t want you speaking to those Sicilians.”

“No, Papa.”

“But she didn’t know them, did she?”

“No, Papa.”

He thought on that for a minute. His beloved wife hadn’t really known them. She hadn’t ever met that nice boy. And she hadn’t realized what kind of people they were. They were Sicilians, that was certain. But it seemed there were Sicilians . . . and then there were Sicilians. “I’m sure she didn’t mean those words, Annamaria. She was dying, you know.”

Annamaria looked up into her father’s eyes, not certain that she understood. “But she did know, Papa. She refused their help. Rafaello came to help us, and she refused to even look at him.”

Papa smiled, a faint smile that hardly turned his lips. “She was always a stubborn one, wasn’t she? Once she got a thought stuck in her head . . .” He shrugged.

“So . . . can I go, Papa?”

“Sì, sì.” He waved his hand toward the door.

She could go!

“And when you see them, Annamaria, don’t forget to thank them.”

And so Annamaria Rossi crossed the street once more. She crossed without worrying who was watching, without hiding her intentions. She crossed it smiling.

When she opened the door and walked in, Rafaello’s face glowed like the sunrise. “Annamaria.” He drew out the syllables of her name and savored them as he spoke each one. Che bella. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered.

“Rafaello.”

An exchange of names. A meeting of souls. Two hearts united once more.

He came around from behind the crates of onions to take her hands in his. Bent down to press his lips against hers. They were warm enough to banish the chills of a thousand influenzas. Gentle enough to assuage her grieving spirit. And strong enough to unite them together. For good.

He turned around, placing an arm around her shoulders, sheltering her in his embrace. “Mama! Papa!”

His parents hurried to the shop floor.

“You know Annamaria.”

Of course they knew Annamaria! Hadn’t they been praying for her and her family?

He looked down at her.

She put an arm around his waist and nodded up at him.

“She is going to be my wife.”

When Julietta came to work the next day, instead of trudging up the back stairs, she went to Madame’s office and knocked on the door.

“Enter.”

Julietta walked up to Madame’s desk, reached into her lunch bag, and pulled out a bundle. She placed it atop a stack of papers.

Madame laid a hand atop it. “What is this?”

“The jewels.”

The jewels! Madame’s brow rose. In the rush of Luciana’s wedding, she’d forgotten about them entirely. You had probably forgotten about them as well. But Julietta hadn’t. She’d spent all day and half the night thinking of what needed to be said. And still her knees were shaking.

Madame turned her attention from her astonishing lapse in memory back to Julietta. “Perhaps we should talk.”

Julietta remembered the last time that she had been invited to talk to Madame. It had been three short months before. Julietta had been offered Madame’s trust. And in return she had promised to learn English. But, in the interim, she hadn’t proved that trust, neither had she bothered to polish her language skills.

Madame drew the package toward herself and unwrapped it. “Tell me how you came by these.”

“I didn’t . . . It wasn’t – ” Julietta took a deep breath and decided to try again. “There was a boy.” There was pain in the words she spoke; it was the pain of self-knowledge and bitter regret. “There was a boy I . . . knew. Used to know. I told him, once, about the jewels. I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying. If I had been . . . well . . . I wouldn’t have said it. But he came here and stole them.” She waited in silence for the punishment, the diatribe that she was certain would come.

Madame, looking at the girl, recognized the regret in her expression. “Grazie.”

Grazie?
Julietta lifted her gaze, not quite daring to believe that this was the only thing Madame would say. “They are all there.” At least she hoped they were.

“I am certain that they are.” Madame pushed the bundle to the side, if not entirely out of the conversation. And then she stood. Julietta was being dismissed.

The girl contained her sigh with the realization that she didn’t deserve Madame’s trust. But she would. If she worked hard enough, if she showed herself worthy of that high regard, then maybe someday she would.

A week later, Mrs. Quinn turned her attention from her work to the noise in the hall. It was truly and terribly annoying! That girl. Walking around the house conversing with servants, coming and going with Billy and her grandmother. Down to the Settlement House, over to The Tennis and Racquet Club, up to the United Bank Building. She had no sense of dignity. No propriety. Laughing and chattering. When they were all just waiting for Billy to be shipped out to the war! It was grating, that’s what it was. It was as if she didn’t understand that everything was being taken away.

And her accent was indecipherable!

But Mrs. Quinn wasn’t planning on saying anything. Nothing at all. Because she knew that her son and her husband expected it of her. And she wasn’t going to oblige them.

The butler came in with an envelope.

She was tempted to simply throw it on top of her stack of correspondence. To open it later. But the truth was she had lost her train of thought. She was trying to decide what to do about Madame Fortier. An entire season’s worth of gowns were still on order and all of her jewels were still at the shop. She sighed and put a hand to her throbbing temple. She fingered the envelope. Why not open it? What kind of work was she going to get done anyway?
The draft has been postponed. Due to the influenza –
She blinked. Stood up. “The draft has been postponed! Billy! You don’t have to go!”

The epidemic of influenza retreated and then faded away by the end of October.

The armistice was signed. Madame gave all her girls the day off. The city went wild with frenzied flag-waving and parade after parade marched up and down the streets. In his fifteenth-floor office at the United Bank Building, Patrick Quinn began dictating telegrams to send to his contacts in Europe. Up on Beacon Hill at the Quinn mansion, the strega was busy in her sitting room drafting letters, while upstairs in a second-floor bedroom, Billy and Luciana had a private celebration of their own.

Mauro was tending to influenza victims in San Francisco, and though he heard church bells ringing, he wasn’t told until the next day what the celebration had been about.

The next week, Annamaria got married. In Madame’s gown. And Rafaello, beaming at her as she walked down the aisle of St. Leonard’s Church, knew she was the most beautiful woman the world had ever known. She found a way to keep her promise to Stefano. She didn’t go away, she didn’t leave; she simply kept crossing the street from the other direction. And soon no one in the neighborhood seemed to recall that there had ever been two sides to North Street.

As winter edged toward spring, Madame began to make plans for a trip to Paris. She seemed almost . . .
cheerful
about the whole thing. Annamaria and Julietta didn’t know what to make of it. And adding to the odd state of affairs was the fact that Madame was wearing a new gown. And not just any gown. It was a decidedly vivid shade of green. It was emerald.