A Heart Most Worthy (6 page)

Mama Rossi had determined that tonight be
the
night. It was the night that she was going to advance her cause. Little by little. Step by step. Papa still had to be persuaded, but Mama had to have her tomatoes.

She set a plate of food before her husband and then took her seat.

He narrowed his eyes. Lowered his head to sniff at it. “What is it?”

“
Parmigiana di melanzane.”

“Parmigiana di melanzane?” He took up a knife and used it to lift the heavy layer of cheese that was draped over his slice of eggplant. “Where’s the gravy?”

Mama pushed from her chair, collected a handful of chopped garlic and oregano from the sideboard, and sprinkled it on top of Papa’s cheese.

“I want the gravy. Parmigiana di melanzane has a gravy.”

Mama shrugged. “I don’t have any tomatoes.”

“And how do you make it without tomatoes?”

“I make it with the garlic and the oregano.” She gestured to the plate.

Papa frowned at her.

“What? I’m not buying tomatoes from Maglione anymore. He’s cheated me for the last time.”

Papa shook his head, put a fork to his plate. What was it to him if his wife didn’t buy tomatoes? He took up a piece of the eggplant. Tasted it. Disaster! That’s what it was. “You can’t make parmigiana di melanzane without tomatoes. There’s got to be someplace that sells good tomatoes. You could go . . . you could go up to Hull.”

Mama Rossi sniffed. Took up her own forkful of parmigiana di melanzane without tomato gravy. “I’m not going to a Hull frutta e verdura when there’s a perfectly good greengrocer across the street.”

“No wife of mine is going to cross the street for tomatoes.”

She looked over at her husband, reproach molding her brow. “I wasn’t going to. I would never do that. You know I would never do that.”

Papa looked up from his plate, suspicion sharpening his gaze. She wouldn’t? And when had she ever done as he had asked?

She smiled at him.

Well. Maybe things had changed. Maybe this time she was actually going to listen to him. “
Bene
. Fine then. There will be no more talk of tomatoes.”

Mama nodded. “I was going to have Annamaria do it.”

8

Annamaria nearly choked on her food. Mama was going to have her do it? But –

“It wouldn’t do to have Emilio Rossi’s wife buy tomatoes from a Sicilian, but if his daughter did it . . . you know how these young girls are since they’ve been living in America. They’ve gotten bold. They’ve forgotten the old ways.”

Papa was staring at his wife in horror. “You want . . . ?”

“Annamaria can do it.”

Mama was going to make
her
do it? She was going to make her own daughter cross the street and deal with Sicilians? Annamaria had always done everything and anything that her mother had ever asked, but buying tomatoes from Sicilians? Surely not even Saint Zita, with all her pious ways, would ever have allowed herself to be used so poorly. It was one thing to know that your life was destined for servitude, but quite another to be told to grovel in the doing of it. “I don’t – ”

Mama quelled Annamaria’s protest with one black look.

Papa’s fist hit the table. “No one is going to buy tomatoes from that Sicilian. And I
will
have tomatoes in my parmigiana di melanzane! Am I clear?”

Perfectly. And, surprisingly, Mama didn’t seem too upset by his decree.

Julietta, on the other hand, was extremely put out by what she was observing. She walked into the third floor workroom the next morning, only to see Luciana pulling the pink and white messaline gown from Madame’s pile.

Her
messaline gown!

The girl held it up to her shoulders and then stood on her toes, trying to get a look at herself in the mirror.

“It doesn’t suit you.”

Luciana started and spun around, clutching the gown to her waist.

“You’re too pale.”

In fact, Luciana was pale. Paler than Julietta, in any case. She held the gown out away from her and sighed. “I know. I just . . . it seemed . . . I don’t know what to do.”

Julietta raised a brow. “You don’t know what to do? With what?”

“With those.” Luciana swept her hand toward Madame’s pile. “With any of them.”

“You’re to wear them. That’s what Madame said.” Julietta wanted to add,
The sooner the better
, but she didn’t. What was it to her if the new girl got in bad with Madame?

“But first, don’t you think . . . I’d have to remake them.”

Julietta nodded. Of course she’d have to remake them. Or risk being laughed at as she walked up and down Temple Place.

Luciana raised her chin against Julietta’s impudent gaze. “I don’t know how.” She was not in the habit of asking for help and didn’t quite know how to go about doing it.

“You don’t know how.” What was the girl trying to say? It was difficult enough to understand her uppity northern accent, but the words she was saying had no sense to them. She didn’t know how to do . . . what?

“I don’t know how to sew.”

“You don’t – but – ?” What did the girl do every day but sit at the end of the table, beading?

“I know how to bead. I don’t know how to sew.”

“Like . . . like this . . .” Julietta made a motion with her hand as if she were doing just that.

Luciana, poor girl, stretched to the limits of humiliation, decided that Julietta was exactly the wrong person to ask for help. She bundled the pink and white messaline up into a ball and determined to take it home with her that night. She’d figure something out.

Julietta, seeing her dreams about to be whisked away, threw out a hand toward the girl. “I’ll help you!” She tore the gown from Luciana’s hands.

“You’ll . . . what?”

“Help. I’ll help you.” Julietta set the gown down on the table and went to Madame’s pile. Digging through the gowns, she pulled out a navy moiré, an ivory messaline, an aubergine wool challis, a dark green crepe de Chine, and a wine-colored crepe poplin. “You could fix these.”

“Don’t you think the moiré is a bit heavy?”

“It’s nearly autumn.”

“And this ivory messaline . . . ?” Luciana looked over at the table where the pink and white messaline lay, discarded. “It doesn’t seem quite so . . .”

It wasn’t. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as Madame’s design. The ivory messaline had been ordered readymade from a dressmaker in New York City for a client. “The color is better, though. For you.”

Luciana sighed. She supposed that it was. “But what would I do with it?”

Do with it? Why, Julietta could imagine a dozen things! “You’ll 64 want to clip the collar away from that rosette at the bustline and let it hang down a bit at the corners. And lower the inset at the neckline.”

Sì. Of course. Luciana could begin to see it. Much better.

“And then shorten the hem of the tunic. And cut away the bottom of the skirt.”

Luciana nodded.

“And you could use those pieces to lengthen the sleeves.

See?”

“You don’t think the pink and white messaline would be better?”

“For you? No.” Julietta shook her head with all the confidence she had acquired in her eighteen years.

“I see what can be done, but . . . I still lack the skills.”

“I could do it. I could do them all for you.”

“You would?”

“I
could
. . . for the right price.”

The right price. That’s what Mama Rossi had had to calculate. What was the right price? What would make Papa change his mind, yet spare him complete humiliation? A man had a reputation to uphold, after all. As she set his dinner before him that night, she prayed that she’d made the right choice. That she’d done the right underhanded thing.

He smiled. “That looks like parmigiana di melanzane.”

“It is.”

“Made with tomatoes.”

“Indeed.”

Papa sniffed at it with all of the delicacy of a connoisseur. This now – this! – was what a parmigiana di melanzane was supposed to look like. And smell like. He wasted no time in tucking into the eggplant, scooping some tomato gravy onto it, and putting it into his mouth. But just as promptly, he spit it out. “What kind of garbage is this?!”

“The kind made with rotten tomatoes from Maglione’s frutta e verdura.”

He picked up his glass of wine and poured the remainder down his throat. “No more tomatoes from Maglione’s. Do you hear?”

Mama folded her hands beneath her apron. Nodded as demurely as she was able to. “I could get them from Zanfini’s. Annamaria could get them for me.” She slid a look at her daughter as she said the words. She knew that she was asking the girl to sacrifice her virtue for the family. But hadn’t her family been sacrificing their reputation to the Magliones for generations? They’d been played for fools long enough. Wasn’t the sacrifice of a daughter a small price to pay for shaming the man? For letting all the neighborhood know that the greengrocer was so detestable that the Rossis preferred to buy their tomatoes from a Sicilian instead? It was the Magliones’ turn to be shamed.

Had she been less stubborn, had she not already committed to her course, she might have realized that the disturbance she felt in her stomach was not indigestion but rather the pricking of her conscience. But Mama had long treated her conscience the same way she treated Papa. And over time they had both decided it was much easier to simply acquiesce than to try and argue with her. Besides, it was the family’s honor at stake, and sometimes honor had the habit of masquerading as righteous indignation.

Papa sighed. “If the Sicilians are the only ones who sell good tomatoes, then buy your tomatoes from the Sicilians.” A man couldn’t eat his pride, after all. And it made him want to weep, thinking of all that good parmigiana di melanzane gone to waste.

Julietta fairly wept herself the next morning. She was late. If she didn’t reach Zanfini’s frutta e verdura in time, she wouldn’t be able to see the man. And if she didn’t see him today, then she wouldn’t see him again until Monday.

Dio ce ne scampi!
God forbid!

In her haste she stepped right out of her shoe. Shoving it back on to her foot, she started up once more. She rounded the corner onto North Street and then stopped. He wasn’t there. He’d already gone. A wave of disappointment and regret swirled through her stomach.

He was gone.

“Buon giorno.”

She nearly jumped right out of her flimsy shoes. The voice was male, so she fixed a smile to her face before she turned.

It was
him
!

In all his handsome glory. Dark, curling hair. Thick, dramatic brows. He was perfect. Bold and daring. She knew he had to be. He wore colored shirts, didn’t he? Instead of the boring white ones propriety always demanded? And what he didn’t wear was a hat. Or a tie. She flipped a look toward him that was both bold in its directness and demure in its brevity. “Where’s your truck?” A strange question to ask, perhaps, but Julietta had always been one for going directly after what she wanted, and the truck was part of the man’s great appeal. She’d never been in a truck before. Or a car, for that matter. And she wanted to go for a ride.

He smiled. “I gave it to my friend.”

She couldn’t know it, but her face had fallen.

“For the day. I gave it to him for the day.” He shrugged. “And night.” And now that he was finally standing here, talking to this girl that he’d been watching, he began to wish that he’d kept it. There were such wonderful discoveries to be made at the end of dark alleys, in the cab of a truck.

“Oh. Well . . .” She looked up at him once more. Smiled. “Arrivederci.”

Good-bye? “But – ” He was already talking to her back. “Wait!” Wait? Did he have to sound so desperate?

She turned on her heel. Stood there, hand on her hip. “Do you have a name?”

“It’s Angelo. Angelo Moretti. But – ”

“Then good-bye, Angelo Moretti.”

“But I don’t – hey! – what’s
your
name?”

He was speaking to a phantom. She had already turned the corner. She was gone.

Laughter erupted behind him as a second man emerged from the alley. “But, but, but – ” He snorted. “You sounded just like your backfiring truck.”

Angelo shoved a fist into the man’s chest and a sheaf of pink papers into his hand. “Shut up, Armando. And go distribute these.”

“Sure. Anything you say.”

“And be on the lookout.”

They always were. They may have kidded around while they went about their business of distributing produce, but they were dead serious about their true calling. And as they made their way through the North End distributing leaflets, they left a pink blizzard of terror in their wake.