I sit down at my desk and begin to sort through Delmarr’s sketches. We’ll build some dresses for the fall; the rest of the sketches, never realized, will be filed. As I lay out his work, I see themes emerge. Delmarr is easing fashion from Dior’s New Look, with its tight waists and opulent skirts, into what will surely come next: very feminine, unstructured dresses in fabrics that women can care for with ease. The structure—the pleats, tucks, and padding—is gone, to be replaced with simple lines. Delmarr is offering convenience for the postwar career girl as well as the busy housewife. In the margins he has written words like “easy,” “low-maintenance,” and “washable.” He understands the needs of career girls and homemakers better than we do ourselves. Time is the new luxury, and Delmarr knows it.
Sometimes, if I have a couple of hours before a date, I pull my sewing chair out onto my tiny terrace, put my feet up, and let the fresh air put pink on my cheeks instead of Max Factor. The view is one of my favorite things about my room. When I look across the way at the backyards of our neighbors, separated by fences and the occasional low tree, I see every interpretation and style of garden, from an ornate rococo sculpture garden of marble angels to a rustic country bench under a lone oak tree. Life on Commerce Street is as layered as one of Rosemary’s napoleon pastries.
Delmarr says the longest wait in life is when you’re waiting for someone to die, but I disagree: it’s when you’re waiting for a man to ask you to marry him. Since the night of Ruth’s seder, when John told me he loved me, I have been waiting for a proposal. What else do we need to know about each other?
With John there’s never any talk of me quitting my job, no assumptions like Harvey has about Ruth’s career, only ideas about how he and I can work in tandem, partners in all things. I would make him a beautiful home. We could summer in Huntington Bay, and for the rest of the year I picture a penthouse on Fifth Avenue with a wraparound terrace where I can grow roses. I imagine dinner parties by candlelight and long, lazy Sunday afternoons reading on our chaise longues until the sun begins its descent over Central Park. I thought I would never leave Greenwich Village, but now I want to live uptown.
I don’t think our future will include children. Maria Grace’s passing changed my perspective on that forever, and John doesn’t show much interest in child rearing, either. I can see him taking my nieces and nephews for ice-cream sundaes at Rumpelmayer’s and carriage rides in Central Park. Our lives will be filled with socializing and careers. Where would children fit in that picture?
While John is attentive and warm and kind, our conversations about the future end abruptly when we get beyond the summer of 1951. Surely John knows that if we were engaged, I would have invited him to Italy. But he hasn’t asked me, so he’ll stay behind and work while I see the Veneto for the first time. As of tomorrow, June 30, I am still unmarried and unintended. John has business in Chicago during the month of July, and my family and I leave on the first of August, so I won’t see him for two whole months. He must realize I’m disappointed, but I am determined not to bring up the subject. There’s nothing worse than a woman who has to pry a marriage proposal out of a man.
The aspect of his Italian upbringing that my father holds on to most is the holiday, the month of vacation he takes each August without fail. Every year since Roberto was born, Papa has closed the Groceria and taken our family out of the city. We’ve rented a lakeside cottage in Maine, a house on the Jersey shore, and a bungalow on Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. Once we arrive at our destination, work is never mentioned. We swim, eat, laugh, and play board games. I’ve never seen Papa as excited as he is this year, knowing that he’ll be returning to his boyhood home with his entire family.
To make our last day together special, John is taking me all the way to the beach on the eastern tip of Long Island. I’m taking extra care in dressing for our date because I want to leave him with the best picture of me until we meet in September. I wear a new white cotton bathing suit, with a vent of illusion netting around the waist. Ruth and I bought suits wholesale when Cole of California came through with their trunk sale.
John is due to pick me up in a few minutes, so I dress quickly. Over my white swimsuit, I button on a full tulip skirt with bold alternating panels of bright white and hot pink. I wear matching pink espadrilles with ballerina ties around the ankles. I load wide gold bangles on one arm. I attach a coral and pearl starfish brooch, the only piece of jewelry John has given me, to the crown of my wide-brimmed straw hat.
When I look into the mirror on my vanity, I see an exhausted girl. A month of working day in and day out does not make for a serene countenance and bright eyes. I hope my bright pink and white ensemble will make up for the gray half-moons under my eyes.
“John’s here!” Mama shouts from the bottom of the stairs. I grab my beach bag and go downstairs, where he’s waiting for me in a pair of white chinos and a pale blue cotton shirt. He’s already tan, and with his black hair, he looks like one of those rich playboys you see in Life magazine, on the terrace of a villa on the Isle of Capri.
“You look pretty,” he says, and kisses me on the nose.
“So do you,” I tell him.
John takes my beach bag from me while resisting Mama’s endless pleas to bring some food for the drive. “No, thank you, Mrs. Sartori, we’ll get a bite out at the beach.”
“All right,” Mama acquiesces as she sees us out.
In the car John chats excitedly about a deal he has brewing with a plant nursery in New Jersey. Apparently, the contract for supplying trees to Manhattan’s parks has expired, and John wants to get in on it.
“Is there any kind of business you won’t do?” I ask him.
“What does that mean?” John shoots me a wounded look, then turns his attention back to the traffic.
Papa still believes that John is frittering away his time in nightclubs and prefers a good party to an honest day’s work. Papa told me that John needs to settle on one kind of business instead of dabbling in anything that comes his way. I tried to tell Papa that a hotelier in Manhattan needs connections, and those are made in restaurants and nightclubs frequented by the elite. I say now, “Honey, you’re very eclectic in your business dealings. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Oh. Well, yeah.” John’s posture relaxes a bit. “It’s a big city, and there’s a lot to be done. I met one of the mayor’s aides in the dining room at the Taft Hotel—that’s where all of them have breakfast—and started a conversation over scrambled eggs at the buffet. He mentioned the parks contract, and I made a couple of calls, and here we are. I’m doing a little business with the city.”
“That’s fantastic,” I tell him, giving his arm a bit of a squeeze.
John smiles at me, relieved that I approve. I never tell him what I’m really thinking when it comes to his business life, and he never questions my attitude. I wonder if this is a bad sign. He doesn’t instinctively know how I feel, and I’m becoming reluctant to tell him. I’m sure these silly fears will disappear after we marry.
As a girl who’s worked since I was twenty, I have a pretty good head for business. I’m no expert, but I agree with Papa: the only way to get results is to focus on one product, make the best item you can, and then sell it to the widest possible audience. Papa taught me the importance of serving the customers and giving them a pleasant experience when they’re shopping. The Groceria is artfully laid out, so the customers enjoy the displays as much as the food, and he gives away small samples while people shop. When I told Delmarr, he imitated Papa and made sure that when customers came in for a fitting, we offer coffee or tea with a pastry. It’s the personal service that’s important.
John drives us all the way out to Montauk Point. We have hot dogs and soda at a roadside stand and take a long walk on the beach. We climb to the top of the lighthouse and stroll through its gardens. As we walk along the streets, admiring the homes with an ocean view, John points out different styles of houses and asks me which one I like best. I appreciate that he pic
tures us in homes that I’ve seen only in magazines. I think of Dante DeMartino, who would have been content to live with me in his parents’ home all of his life, with an occasional weekend trip to Coney Island. The life I’ll have with John Talbot is beyond anything Dante could have imagined.
As we drive back toward the city, we pass a yard sale in front of an old Victorian house. I see a rocking chair painted pale yellow that would fit nicely before my front window. I crane my neck to survey the goods as we go by. John stops and turns the car around. I start to object, but he cuts me off. “I saw that look. You can’t tell me you don’t want to have a go at that sale.”
We’re not the only ones who have taken a detour on the way back from the beach to see what treasures the old house might be hiding. Cars are parked on the lawn, and dozens of people are milling around. The rocking chair has a small SOLD sticker on it. “That was a lure,” John says quietly. “Who doesn’t love an old rocker?” Then he goes over to a folding table packed with personal items, from handkerchiefs to shoes. He holds up a small turquoise enamel vanity mirror with a matching hairbrush.
“You must have this,” John says, pulling out his wallet as he turns to the gentleman overseeing the sale. He hands a bill to the man, who promptly hands it back, explaining, “I don’t have that kind of change.”
John shuffles through the bills in his wallet; they all seem to be hundred-dollar bills, nothing smaller.
“How much is the set?” I ask.
“Two dollars.”
I open my purse and give the man two dollar bills.
John shrugs at the salesman, then kisses me on the forehead and says, “I owe you, honey.” I can feel the salesman watching us as we go back to the car. We drive through a series of small seaside towns separated by fields and make our way down quaint main streets, passing an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor and boutiques holding sidewalk sales of clothes, books, and handmade crafts. The twilight sky turns from bright blue to purple as the sun meets the water in an explosion of hot pink clouds. As we near Huntington, John turns off the main road and heads to our spot.
He pulls up in front of the open field where he took me last winter and comes around to open my door. “Here we are,” he says, helping me out of the car.
“Look, more houses going up.” I point to the field behind us, where two more homes are being built. “Soon we won’t be able to park here.”
“Why?”
“Because this land will be sold, and somebody will put a house on it.”
“You’re right,” John says. “It has been sold.”
“I knew it,” I say, sighing and looking out at the bay. “How could land with a view like this sit for long? They’re very lucky.”
“You are,” John says with a grin.
“What do you—”
He pulls me close and kisses me. “This is where I am going to build you a house, Mrs. Talbot.”
“Mrs. Talbot?” I am thrilled by the sound of it. This moment goes beyond what I imagined it would be.
“You will be, if you say yes. Will you marry me, Lucia Sartori?”
John Talbot gets down on one knee and opens a velvet box. Inside is a ring with an emerald-cut diamond, simple, spare, and white, in a magnificent platinum setting.
“Yes, I will marry you.” I rest my hand on John’s shoulder.
He stands. “Go ahead, put this ice rink on your finger.” He pulls the ring out of the box and places it on my hand. I begin to cry. “Now you’re legit, Mrs. Talbot. Two carats’ worth of legit.”
I laugh. “ ‘Legit’? What a word!”
John continues holding my hand in both of his. “Well, it’s not all that you are. You are everything to me, Lucia. You believe in me, and no one has ever really believed in me before. I’m a successful man, but I’ve always had to scrape and fight and push to take my place in the sea of men who inherited their wealth, or got lucky on a scheme or a bet. I’ve traveled the world, and everywhere I went, I looked for the girl who would be mine for life. After all that, I found you right here in New York. I wouldn’t have believed it could happen. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
I imagine John traveling without me, and the thought makes me sad. I have such empathy for him; I want to take care of him. And now I’ll have a lifetime to love him. He covers my face in small kisses, and then moves to my ear and down my neck.
I know the rules. I am supposed to wait until my wedding night, but I can’t. I won’t. I would give John Talbot everything I have in this moment, my heart, my mind, my home, all of it, and it would be the right thing to do. John’s hands slide under my skirt, and he carries me to the far side of the field, where a hill leads down to a dune. The sky is a veil of orange haze. I look up into John’s eyes and see what I have prayed for. This man loves me, and only me. He slowly undoes each button of my skirt and then uses it to make a blanket beneath us on the sand. He gently slides on top of me. “I love you,” he says.
All my life I’ve wondered what this moment would be like, and now that it is here, it’s as though I’m not in my body. I’m somehow floating above this romantic scene, savoring details but not feeling as though it is entirely mine. Then John’s kiss reminds me why I’m here and why he’s chosen me out of all the girls in the world. In the rise and fall of his breathing, and his gentle caresses, this feels right. Slowly, all sound and scene fall away, as in the moment I met him. When something is right, there’s no need to be afraid, and there is no reason to question it.
I run my hands through his thick hair, and the dazzling stone of the ring catches the last bit of light before the sun buries itself behind the dune. The best day of my twenty-six years turns into night, and if the sun never returned, I wouldn’t mind.
John and I don’t say a word as he drives me home to Commerce Street. I sit close to him, his arm around me, and every few minutes he leans over and kisses me. The art of conversation isn’t an art at all; it’s the silence that has meaning. When he pulls up in front of my house, I invite him in.
“They’ll be so happy for us. We have to toast our engagement, it’s tradition!” I kiss John on the cheek. “You’re going to marry an Italian girl. We toast everything, even laundry day!”
John laughs. “Okay, okay, you’re the boss.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
As we climb up the stoop, the stairs feel different. I’ve changed, and the world I live in feels different. These are the steps I played on as a girl, but I get an odd feeling that this is no longer my home. My place is with John.
“Mama?” I call out as we enter the foyer.
“She’s in the kitchen,” Papa says from the living room. I throw my bag down on the bench and take John’s hand and lead him into the living room. “Did you eat?” Papa asks, looking up from his paper. He checks his watch. “It’s late. You must have had dinner.”
“I’m not hungry, Pop,” I tell him.
“How are you, sir?” John asks, leaning down to shake Papa’s hand.
“Fine. How are you?” Papa replies.
Mama comes out of the kitchen. “Oh, you’re home. Can I get you a sandwich or something?”
“No thanks, Mama. I have something—we have something—to tell you.”
Mama can sense what I am about to say, but she tries to contain her excitement to let me deliver the news.
“John has asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”
Mama shrieks and runs to us, embracing us and kissing me on both cheeks. As she hugs me, I look over her shoulder at Papa, who is staring at the floor. “This is wonderful! Wonderful!” Mama says. “Congratulations! Antonio, get the glasses. We have to toast them!”
“I told you.” I wink at John.
Papa stands up and goes to the kitchen for the glasses. He returns with them and a bottle of port. He pours the port and gives each of us a glass. “Lucia, you’re my life.” He raises his glass.
“Pop?” My father’s eyes are wet with tears. “Papa?”
Mama
fills in the silence. “Oh, he’s fine. He is overwhelmed, his little girl is getting married, that’s all.” She shoots Papa a look.
“No, Maria, I’m not fine, and I’m not overwhelmed,” Papa says. He looks from Mama to John. “I’m disappointed that this young man asked my daughter to marry him without discussing it with me. What kind of a man does such a thing?” He turns to me. “And what kind of daughter accepts under those conditions?”
There is a dreadful pause. Finally, John speaks. “Mr. Sartori, I apologize. I didn’t think to ask you because Lucia has already been engaged—”
Mama looks at Papa. John doesn’t realize that by making such a statement, he has brought my virtue into question. The implication that I’m used goods, and therefore a separate entity from my family, is not what my father and mother need to hear.
“He doesn’t mean it like it sounds, Papa.” I move to John’s side. “It’s just that John is leaving on a business trip tomorrow, and we won’t see each other for a couple of months. It slipped his mind to come and seek your permission.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what happened,” John says. Papa regards John with what seems like pity, as though my fiancé is hiding behind my skirts while the gun is aimed at his head.
“You’re twenty-six years old, Lucia,” Papa says. I wish he wouldn’t say my age like that. I sound like the oldest maid on Commerce Street. And I feel like one as I look around this living room, with its faded chintz slipcovers, outdated lace doilies, and ceramic lamps with fringe on the shades. Don’t they know that I was looking at mansions today? Estates with an ocean view? I may have been raised here, but I want more. My father came to America for the very same reason. Can’t he see that a man cut from the same cloth has walked through the door? John will give me all the things I desire, but he’s not enough? “You can do what you want. But don’t expect me to be happy for you.” Papa puts down his glass and starts to leave the room.
I am furious. I put down my glass and follow him. “Papa, how dare you ruin this moment for me? You say you want me to be happy. Stai contenta! Stai contenta! You say it every day, but you don’t mean it. Be happy, Lucia, but you can only be happy if I tell you to! You couldn’t care less what I want. Nobody is good enough for me, but when I find someone to love, someone I truly love, you humiliate him. He didn’t do anything wrong! This is 1951, and your silly peasant traditions belong back on the farm where they came from. I can take care of myself, and I don’t need your blessing!”