Lucia, Lucia

  My brothers are silent and every bit as bewildered as I am. As she herself has pointed out, our mother is young. “How bad is it, Doctor?” I ask.

  “We won’t know anything for twenty-four hours. She’s responding to stimuli, which is a positive sign. I’m sorry. We have to wait and see.”

  Angelo fights back tears. I gather my brothers in a circle and reassure them like Mama did with us when Papa got sick. “We’re going to stick together, and we’re going to wait and see what the tests tell us. And then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  The boys stay in the hospital most of the afternoon, until I send them home. I remain by Mama’s side. Sometimes I sit on the bed and wipe her face gently with a cool washcloth. When I cry, I try not to make any noise to wake her.

  When the morning comes, my body feels like a bent wire. I slept sitting up in the chair and woke up whenever Mama moaned or a nurse came in. But I’m seized with panic when I open my eyes to find her bed empty. I run out into the hallway and grab the first nurse I see.

  “My mother, Maria Sartori, where is she? Is she okay?”

  The nurse answers in a soothing voice, “She’s been taken down for tests.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her. Please, God, don’t let me lose my mother.

  I go back to Mama’s room to wait. As soon as my brothers arrive, the doctor gathers us together.

  “I have hopeful news. It definitely wasn’t a stroke. She’s sustained some damage to her heart, but it’s minimal. Basically, your mother has a rapid heartbeat, which has probably been there all of her life and which caused her to short-circuit. The blood supply to her brain was affected. Luckily, you found her almost immediately.” Roberto puts his arm around me as if to thank me. “But she’ll need physical therapy and a lot of help at home.” The doctor leaves us, and we embrace one another, feeling relieved. We are very lucky.

  Mama is able to communicate by suppertime. She speaks slowly, and sometimes she has to stop and search for a word, but she understands everything we’re saying. She’s hungry, and in our family that’s always been a sign of good health. Rosemary sneaks a first-class dinner of spaghetti al burro and chopped greens into Saint Vincent’s.

  Roberto insists that I go home. The long, hot shower feels fantastic, but all my clothes are in suitcases, so I have to unpack to get dressed. I pull the stool from my vanity out onto the terrace, yank the long telephone cord out the door, and sit down to make a call. “Delmarr?”

  “How’s your mother?” Delmarr says with concern. “Rosemary called me.”

  “Mama almost had a stroke.”

  “Jesus. But Rosemary said she’d be okay.”

  “Eventually.” And then I bite my lip, because I’m starting to cry. “I can’t go to California.”

  “That’s okay, honey, you can join up later. Helen Rose isn’t going anywhere. She’ll understand. I’ll explain the circumstances.”

  “Could you?”

  “Of course. She’s a human being, not a cold cookie like Hilda Beast.”

  “Thank you.” I wipe away my tears and exhale, knowing that Delmarr will always look out for me.

  “No problem, honey. You take care of yourself. And Mama Sartori. I’ll call you when I get there, and we’ll make your plans then.”

  I hang up the phone. It was sweet of Delmarr to say we’d make our plans at a later date, but we both know the truth. I’m never going to California, I’m never going to work for Helen Rose, and I am never going to sew the costumes of the stars. I’m going to stay here at 45 Commerce Street and take care of my mother for as long as she needs me. When that duty is done, and I hope it won’t be for many years, I’ll think about my life and what I want. For now I am the daughter my parents raised, and I will put my family before anything and anybody else, including Delmarr, Helen Rose, and a glamorous life in Hollywood. I must find a way to be here, to take comfort in doing my duty. Zia Caterina’s curse has real teeth. Yes, I am brokenhearted, but not by the loss of a man. It’s the closing of the Custom Department that broke my heart, and the loss of quality, style, and service that went with it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lucia and Kit’s tea party has lasted past suppertime and blended into evening seamlessly. The silvery afternoon rain clouds have gone and left behind a sky the color of indigo ink. I’ve been sitting here for hours, Kit thinks to herself, but what a story. She shivers. The rear apartments on 45 Commerce Street are evidently cooler because they aren’t over the boiler. Kit looks over at Aunt Lu’s mink coat and considers asking if she can try it on, just to warm up.

  “Aunt Lu, if the Custom Department closed in the early fifties, what did you do at B. Altman’s until 1989?”

  “I took a position in Evening Wear. The hours worked well with taking care of Mama. Look at this.” Lucia shows Kit a framed article from New York magazine featuring the B. Altman bridal shop. The headline reads, LUCIA SARTORI, MOTHER TO THE BRIDES. How ironic that a jilted bride-to-be became a mother of sorts to hundreds of New York girls seeking the perfect wedding gown.

  “When did your mother pass away?”

  “Not until my forty-seventh birthday.”

  “That’s why you never made it to Hollywood?” Kit asks.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Kit leans back in the chair and looks at the wall. “Aunt Lu . . . this wallpaper, it’s the wallpaper you put up with Ruth, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the very same.” Lucia smiles.

  “This was your room?” Lucia nods. Kit asks, “Where’s the sewing alcove and the bay window?”

  “I lost them when they divided the floor in half,” Lucia says quietly.

  “They chopped your room in half? That’s criminal! Who did it?” Kit realizes she has raised her voice and takes a deep breath.

  “My nephew Tony.”

  “Oh, that’s rich. You mean to tell me that my Tony Sartori, Duct Tape Tony, is the sweet little baby who came after Maria Grace? He hacked your room in half?”

  “He’s the one. Each floor was divided, if it wasn’t already, into two apartments. More rentals, more income, you see.”

  “What a sleazebag! I’m sorry, Lucia, but there’s no excuse for such a thing.”

  “The worst part was that he did it as soon as my brother died. Roberto hadn’t been gone a month before Tony took over the building and changed everything.”

  “Lucia, I don’t mean to be rude, but shouldn’t you own this building? If all your brothers are gone, how come you didn’t end up with the building?”

  Lucia shakes her head slowly. Clearly, this is something she’s still struggling to understand. “When Papa died, he left everything to my mother. When Mama got sick, she turned everything over to Roberto. Roberto had four sons. He was very traditional, much more so than Papa, and he believed the family property should always remain in the hands of the men. That’s how I got cut out. Of course, Roberto insisted his sons take care of me, and they believe they do take care of me. And I suppose this apartment would be expensive today. If I ever have a real problem with them, I pick up the phone and call Rosemary, and she straightens her boys out. It could be worse.”

  “But that’s not fair! You took care of your mother! The family should have thanked you or repaid you somehow.”

  “Roberto didn’t look at it that way. A daughter’s duty in those days was always to her family.”

  “What about Rosemary?”

  “She wasn’t in the immediate family. And she’s a woman, too. I don’t believe my brother left anything to her—just the order that their children take excellent care of her. Besides, she had her own mother to look after.”

  Kit stands and paces, fuming at the injustice. “Did they cut you out of the sale of the Groceria, too?”

  “I never worked there like my brothers, but when they sold it, they split the sale among themselves. That was fine, it was their company,” Lucia says evenly.

  “I think it’s terrible! You’re as much a Sartori as they are.”

&
nbsp; “You’re of a different generation. These were the rules my generation followed. I don’t like them, but I understand them. It all goes back to Italy and the way property is passed down in a family. It’s not a good deal for the women, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Well, it’s a raw deal.” As Kit sits down again, she notices the stacks of B. Altman’s gift boxes. “Lucia, what’s in all the boxes?”

  “Dishes and things.” Lucia pauses. “They’re my wedding presents.”

  “Oh my God.” Kit wonders how Lucia has lived with a daily reminder of John Talbot in her home all these years. “Why did you keep them?”

  “The police kept them as evidence after they apprehended John. They convinced me to take them back. And then I tried to return them to my guests, but they wouldn’t take them. Bad luck, they told me.”

  “So the Caterina curse, it was for real?” Kit shudders.

  “Maybe I believed it, and that made it real. We’ll never know.” Lucia puts the empty teacups on the tray and stands. “I’m exhausted. Are you?”

  “Totally.”

  “I hope I didn’t bore you,” Lucia says.

  “Bore me? Are you kidding? It was riveting. Every morsel of it. Thank you.”

  “Come back another day, and we’ll go through the boxes. There are some lovely things in there that I think you’d like. A hand-painted urn. Some crystal vases. Enameled teaspoons.”

  “Thank you, Lucia. I’d love that.”

  As Kit descends the stairs back to her own apartment, the deep compassion she feels for Lucia gives way to a hunger for the truth. She goes into her apartment with a plan. Although she would like to know what happened to Delmarr and Ruth and Violet and Helen, she has to find out what became of John Talbot. She stays up late into the night making a list of as many dates, places, and names as she can remember from Lucia’s story. Perhaps tomorrow, before getting back to the play she is writing, she can make a trip down to the New York Department of Records.

  John Talbot’s aliases were all common names, so searching through the records of 1951 and 1952 brings up hundreds of documents. It would take Kit a lifetime to sift through them. She goes to the information desk in the outer office and waits in line.

  Kit follows the research assistant back into the main library, where he makes copies of all the police records from the Greenwich Village and Upper East Side precincts. There are several pages with references to a John Talbot. Kit takes the voluminous material home to read.

  A few phone calls, a long session on Google.com, and three reading sessions at Starbucks later, Kit has the John Talbot dossier.

  Lucia Sartori’s old flame is alive. The problem is, he’s in prison again. After a twelve-year stint for various theft charges, he seemed to go straight. When he got out, he looked up his buddies who’d found him work before, including Patsy Marotta at the Vesuvio, who got him a job out on Long Island with a restaurant-supply company. Talbot stayed clean for a while, but about twenty years ago he slipped back into his old ways. He got involved in a stolen-car operation, shipping parts from Germany to the United States. Kit figures this most recent conviction will probably keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

  Once Kit has uncovered all the facts, she knows that she must share them with Aunt Lu. She’s pretty pleased with herself for the successful detective work and excited by the prospect of helping Aunt Lu find a resolution, but she’s also dreading having to deliver such monumental—and potentially upsetting—news. In the end she decides that Lucia has been living with the aftermath of John Talbot for fifty years, and she deserves to see how he turned out.

  The walls of propriety have come down after Lu and Kit’s tea. Kit feels absolutely at ease charging up the stairs to the fifth floor and banging on Aunt Lu’s door. “Lucia?” she calls out.

  “How are you, Kit?” Lucia says, opening the door in her bathrobe. Lucia must also feel that their long afternoon has put them on familiar footing.

  “I’m great, thanks. But busy. Really busy. Let’s see. First I wanted to know if you’d like to go out to dinner with my friend Michael and me tonight. Just Chinese. At Ma Ma Buddha.”

  “I’d like that, dear. Thank you.” Lucia beams.

  “Okay, I’ll come get you around seven.” Kit turns to go.

  “Kit? You said ‘first.’ ”

  “Oh, yeah, that means there’s a second. I also wanted to mention that I’ve found John Talbot.”

  Aunt Lu looks at Kit. Then she steps back into her room and sits down in the nearest chair.

  “Lucia, are you okay? Are you upset with me? I just had to know, and I wanted to share what I found, but if it makes you unhappy, I won’t . . .”

  Lucia doesn’t answer.

  “Lucia?” Kit says nervously.

  At last Lucia breathes deeply and closes her eyes. “Where is he?” she says.

  “Oh, Lucia. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in the slammer,” Kit says honestly.

  The way Kit says “slammer” makes Lucia smile. “Well, he always had a difficult time with the up-and-up.”

  “No kidding. I Googled him—I mean, I went online and found all sorts of articles about him. And I got some of his police records, too. He’s at Sing Sing. The state prison in Ossining, right up the Hudson.”

  “Kit, I hope you won’t be offended if I ask you to leave. I’d like to be alone. I need to think.”

  “Absolutely,” Kit tells her. She pulls Lucia’s door closed and goes down the stairs with a heavy heart. What possessed her to go digging in the graveyard of Lucia’s lost loves? She should have known that Lucia was not the kind of woman who goes looking for closure. If she was, she would have looked for John Talbot herself.

  As Kit is settling down with her laptop to try and make some headway on her play, there’s a knock at the door. She is surprised to find Aunt Lu standing there, still in her bathrobe.

  “Come on in.” Kit ushers her in and closes the door, knowing that under normal circumstances Lucia would be far too proper and modest to wear her robe outside her own apartment. She’s not herself, Kit thinks, and it’s all my fault.

  Lucia looks at Kit. “I want to see him. But I can’t make the trip alone. Will you come with me?”

  “Of course,” Kit tells her. “I’ll take care of all the arrangements, and we can go this weekend.”

  “This weekend?” Aunt Lu touches her hair.

  “Yeah, Saturday is visitors’ day. But we can leave around lunchtime, so you can get your hair done as usual.” Kit knows Aunt Lu’s Saturday rituals as well as her own. The smell of Aqua Net lingers in the hallway every weekend after Lucia’s visit to Village Coiffures.

  “That would be nice,” Lucia tells Kit. “I would like to look my best.”

  Kit waits for Lucia in the vestibule before they leave to take the subway to the train. She looks at the old bench, imagining Lucia and John Talbot saying good night. She looks at the panes of pink glass in the door, and she pictures young Lucia peering out, waiting for her date to arrive. Kit has never paid attention to the building in such detail before. She looks up at the ceiling and sees an ornate chandelier; studying it more closely, she sees that the multicolored crystals on it are glass fruit.

  Lucia calls from the landing, “I’m coming, Kit.”

  “Take your time!” Kit calls out pleasantly. She continues to look around the vestibule with a new awareness until Lucia joins her.

  “Lucia?” Kit points. “Is that your chandelier?”

  “Yes, it is,” she answers simply. “No sense storing that in a box. It’s to be enjoyed.” She shrugs.

  The view from the train to Ossining is so tranquil that Kit isn’t surprised when Lucia tells her that there was an entire movement in painting called the Hudson River School. It turns out that Lucia took courses in art at the New School for Social Research with the encouragement of Arabel Dresken. The clefts of the hills, the wide pewter-colored river, and
the Victorian homes make Kit feel as though she’s speeding through another era. She needs all the soothing visuals she can get. Her stomach is churning with the fear that Lucia and John Talbot’s reunion will be a disaster.

  “Why are you so jittery?” Lucia asks Kit.

  “I’m scared to death that John Talbot will be a creep.”

  “He won’t be a creep. He’ll be what he always was, slick and confident and full of vinegar.”

  “How do you know?” Kit wonders.

  “I’m an old girl, and I’ve been around a long time. There’s one rule that applies to everyone, from the time they’re born until they die. People don’t change. Maybe slightly, but never deeply. We are what we are, I guess. And I’m glad about that, because I have a lot of things I want to ask John.”

  “I have more questions, too. But not for him. For you,” Kit says, seizing an appropriate opening.

  “Well, then. Ask me.” Lucia sits up and smooths her skirt.

  “What happened to the other girls at Altman’s, like Helen Gannon?”

  “Dear Helen. She had another son, Albert. And her husband did very well on Wall Street. They moved to Scarsdale. I used to take the train out to see her and spend the weekend with them. We still chat on the phone quite often.”

  “How about Violet?”

  “Violet died two years ago. She was married to Officer Cassidy up until the end. He has since remarried,” she says skeptically.

  “Boy, that was fast.”

  “That’s what we thought.”

  “Did they ever have kids?”

  “No.”

  “And how about Ruth?”

  “Ruth Kaspian Goldfarb,” Lucia says tenderly. “She and Harvey moved to Florida. They have three girls, all of them quite accomplished. One teaches fashion design at FIT. I see Ruth once a year, when she comes up to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with her sister. And I still talk to her at least once a week.”

  “Oh . . . and Delmarr! What happened to him?”

  “He made it big in Hollywood. He did costumes for television. All the big song-and-dance specials. Every time he was in New York, he would come to see me and say, ‘Kid, when are you coming out west to make it big?’ It wasn’t meant to be. He never married, and he always had a grand time. He left a string of brokenhearted women coast to coast. I never knew anyone who refused to be pinned down like Delmarr. To the end he was a solitary man in a very social business. He died last year. I took his passing very hard.”