“And how about your brothers?”
“You know about Roberto. Angelo became a brother in the Maryknoll order. Orlando married a nice Jewish girl, Rachel, and they had a daughter, Rafaella. And then my dear Exodus, he and Orsola had seven children, four girls and three boys, all of whom are still in Italy, doing well. I made many trips to the Veneto to stay with them. The kids loved it when Zia Lucia brought them Yankee baseball gloves and Hershey’s chocolate. Sadly, the men in my family didn’t have very long lifelines. None of the boys lived much past Papa’s age.”
“Aunt Lu, did you ever marry?”
“No. But there was a man in my life for a long time. He was already a widower when I met him, even though he was only in his forties. He and his wife never had any children. I wasn’t the love of his life, and he wasn’t mine, but we had a lovely, uncomplicated relationship. We did love each other in our own way. He was a wonderful companion.”
As the train pulls into the station, Kit watches the wives and children of prisoners, dressed in their Sunday best, disembark and walk toward the visitors’ entrance. The mood is surprisingly happy, even though the travelers are on their way into a depressing place.
Lucia pulls her compact out of her purse and goes over her face with a round powder puff, never lifting it off the surface but pressing the color against her skin. Then she freshens her lipstick. She offers Kit a mint, then puts one in her mouth. “How do I look?” she asks.
“Beautiful,” Kit tells her. Lucia is wearing a black skirt and a white blouse with a long mint-green scarf. She wears her mink coat. Her hair is done.
“Let’s see what John Talbot has to say for himself,” Lucia says.
The women follow their fellow passengers down a sidewalk marked with bold arrows and the word VISITOR showing the way. Kit’s nervousness returns tenfold. Horrible scenarios race through her mind. What if John Talbot is a lunatic? What if they get caught in a prison riot? What if something terrible happens to Aunt Lu and Kit has to explain it to Duct Tape Tony?
Kit and Lucia are patted down and put through metal detectors (not too different from going to a Knicks game at the Garden, Kit thinks). Unfortunately, a guard confiscates Lucia’s tin of cookies. They are then asked to wait. After almost half an hour, they are shown into a large room filled with visitors and surrounded by guards.
“How will we know him?” Kit asks as they find a place to sit.
“I’ll know him,” Lucia says.
Metal doors extending from ceiling to floor swing open, bringing to mind the Trojan horse going through the castle gates in all those B-movies. As the metal scrapes the concrete, there is a low rumble followed by the entrance of a sea of prisoners in orange jumpsuits entering the vast meeting area. Lucia scans the crowd for a few moments.
“There he is.” She points.
Kit sees a tall man with thick white hair standing near the doors, away from the rest of the men. “Wait here,” she tells Lucia. She walks quickly through the crowd and approaches him. “Are you John Talbot?”
“Yes. Are you Miss Zanetti?”
“Yes, sir.” Kit blushes. No one ever calls her Miss Zanetti, and she finds it a little bit provocative.
“Where is Miss Sartori?” His voice breaks. He clears his throat and leans on his cane.
“She’s right over there.” Kit motions over the crowd to Lucia. “I’ll take you to her.” She turns and begins to walk, then realizes she’s moving too fast. She slows down and takes his arm. He walks fine on his own, but he’s slow.
“I see her,” John says.
Lucia stands. Kit can tell that Aunt Lu is trying not to reveal any emotion. As Lucia and John exchange greetings, she seems to warm up. John takes Lucia’s hands into his own. They look at each other with the wise knowing only old lovers can share. For a moment the years seem to melt off them, almost as if a vapor has lifted off the present and left behind their youth, when men were gents and women were girls, and as the day grew longer, so did a lady’s gloves. “Lucia, as beautiful as ever,” John says grandly.
“Thank you, John.”
“I’m going to leave you two to chat,” Kit says.
“No, no, sit right there.” Lucia points to a chair nearby. Kit slides down into it, embarrassed to be as eager to hear what John Talbot says as Lucia is. John helps Lucia into a chair and then takes a seat across from her. Lucia sits up straight, her spine like a steel rod, and John leans toward her, resting his hand on the top of his cane as they talk.
John asks, “How is your family?” While Lucia tells him, Kit can’t help but smile. The last time he saw them, Roberto beat him up.
“Did you ever marry, Lucia?” John asks.
“No.” She takes a deep breath. “Did you?”
“Four times,” he answers. Lucia smiles as John puts his hand to his head as though he is pounding a message to his brain. “Twice to the same woman, but four total.”
“Any children?” Lucia asks.
“No children.” Kit notices that the look on Lucia’s face is almost perplexed, as if she’s trying to connect this old man to the dashing fiancé of her youth. He’s probably thinking the same thing.
“John, I came to thank you,” Lucia says, to John’s obvious astonishment. “Back in 1979, you sent me a letter. It was a lovely letter, and you enclosed a check for seventy-five hundred dollars.” John nods slowly. “I thought it was very brave of you to get in touch with me and honor your debt after all that time. I wanted to thank you in person for that.”
“It disturbed me that I took your money. I know that’s funny, isn’t it, coming from a man whose current address is the state penitentiary.” John laughs. “But I knew what that money meant to you. I always knew what I had done was terribly wrong. A good woman can make a man do the right thing. And in my lifetime, you were that woman.”
Lucia bows her head. “Thank you,” she says. They sit in silence, then Lucia looks up again. “John, we have a few things to clear up. I always wondered why you came to my house that Christmas. What did you come to tell me?”
John stares out the window while he considers her question. “It was simple, Lucia. I came to tell you that I loved you.” He straightens the collar of his prison uniform. “I know you probably won’t believe it, but I didn’t set out to hurt you.”
“Oh, John, you had me marked from the minute you saw me,” Lucia says. “Didn’t you?”
“Sure, in the beginning I thought you could help me. I suppose my initial thought was always about advancing myself in some way. But you were so lovely and accomplished that I really fell in love with you. That’s how things got as complicated as they did. I’d never been in that boat before, believe me. I even tried to convince your father, who was dead set against me, to see the light. He offered me ten grand to leave, and I turned him down.”
“My papa offered you money?” Lucia is stunned.
“He was surprised when I turned him down. But, see, I wanted to marry you. You wanted the same things I did. But then I had a bad run. The worst of my life.”
“A bad run?” Lucia says the words slowly, apparently not quite sure what to make of a man who has dismissed the happiest year of her life as a bad run.
“See, one thing after another went wrong when I was with you. Everything I touched went south. Jim Laurel backed out of our Huntington deal. And Daniel Parker ruined me all over the Upper East Side. He got it in his head that my business wasn’t legit. And your father was never going to trust me. I saw that he’d never make me a part of your family or allow me to help expand the Groceria. The last straw was Sylvia dying a week before our wedding. No matter what the police told you, Lucia, she was like a mother to me. She wanted me to have that money. I took good care of her. I deserved it. We deserved it. But that rotten daughter of hers took everything.”
Lucia watches as John spins this fable, this strange version of the truth. Kit can tell that she’d like to stop him, but he has a certain look in his eye. He must have had a similar look in 195
1, painting the dazzling picture of their future together. It’s a manic look, one of daring and wild intent, but it’s also the face of a salesman. John is so convincing, he is almost irresistible. But Kit sees that Lucia is right: John Talbot hasn’t changed. He can justify every crime that landed him in this prison. The only thing he’s guilty of, in his mind, was trying to better himself, to become an important businessman.
“To be perfectly honest, I was overwhelmed. And then there was you, and the wedding, and the life with your family, and I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t pretend for one more minute that I could pull off a traditional life with the mother-in-law and the father-in-law and the kids running all around. I needed a good streak, and it wasn’t happening. It was as though I was cursed; I couldn’t catch a break. So I took the coward’s way out. I left.”
Kit watches Lucia’s eyes reveal the pain from so long ago. The excuses must seem weak, much like the character of the man she was to marry. Lucia holds up her hand to stop his story. “John. I’ve heard enough.” He looks surprised. Evidently there aren’t a lot of people who stop John Talbot in his tracks. “There’s just one more thing I need to know.” Lucia takes a deep breath. “The day before the wedding, when we drove out to Huntington to see the house, how on earth were you planning to get out of that? There was no house.”
John shakes his head slightly. “That was my one piece of good luck in a long while. You gave me an out, Lucia. I think you knew you gave me an out, too. You made it easy for me to walk away. If you’d pushed me to show you that house, I would have had to tell you the truth. But you gave me an extra twenty-four hours to figure out what I was going to do. And I couldn’t see a solution, so I walked away.”
Lucia thinks for a moment. “And to think I would have followed you to the ends of the earth.”
John fishes in his uniform for cigarettes and offers one to Lucia, but she declines. “But you see, I didn’t have to worry about you, Lucia. You didn’t need me.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucia leans forward in her chair.
“You had a life without me. You loved your job. You had a home. A family. You were an independent career girl. You were going to be just fine. Believe me, I’ve known women who need a man to take care of them. You can’t leave those girls at the altar.”
The din from the conversation in the room escalates. Since there isn’t much time for the prisoners and their visitors, people talk loudly, as if what they’re saying to one another will matter more. A loud and frightening buzzer goes off, signaling the end of visitation.
Lucia, John Talbot, and Kit rise to their feet. He whispers something in Lucia’s ear, kisses each of her cheeks, and then lightly kisses her lips. He holds her, his eyes squeezed shut as if he’s trying to see the picture in his memory more vividly. John goes back through the huge metal doors without turning back.
“Are you okay?” Kit asks.
“That was just fine,” Lucia says softly.
As they join the herd going back to the train, Lucia stops to take in the view of the prison, set beside the Hudson River.
“What is it?” Kit asks.
“He told me that every night before he goes to sleep, he pictures me in a white cotton dress standing in a doorway. We’re alone, and he takes my hand and says to me, ‘Come out and see the ocean, Lucia. It’s all I have to give you.’ And you know what’s funny about that?”
“What?”
“I’m seventy-eight years old, and I never did have a home near the water, but John does. He’s in a cell with no window, but he’s still on the water.”
Kit helps Lucia into the window seat and takes the aisle. They ride in silence for a while, each thinking about the distinguished white-haired man, once the most dashing man at the spring cotillion at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Kit turns to Lucia. “Do you regret anything? You know, with all that’s happened to you, the turns of your life, do you wish things had been different?”
“You can’t keep bad things from happening,” Lucia says. “And the good things—I don’t think you can take any credit for them. They’re luck.”
“So it’s a no. No regrets,” Kit says, leaning back in her seat.
“I don’t regret anything that’s happened to me, because somehow those things were meant to happen. The one thing I wish is that I had reacted differently to some of the events. I let things get me down and keep me there, sometimes for too long. And I believed I could somehow control the bad things, and that was a big mistake. Things turn around when they’re meant to. You can’t force it.”
When they arrive back on Commerce Street, Lucia invites Kit upstairs to her apartment. “It will only take a minute,” she promises as she opens her door. “I want you to have something.”
She crosses the room and comes back with a dress bag. Kit opens it and takes out the gold lamé dress Lucia wore at the Waldorf on New Year’s Eve.
“Of all the things I ever wore, this was my favorite.”
“Oh, Lucia,” Kit says, and embraces her. “I will cherish this all my life.” She holds the dress up against her body. “And if anything will keep me at my goal weight in this lifetime, it will be this dress.”
After visiting John Talbot, Lucia and Kit fall back into their routines, with one difference: Kit now checks on Lucia frequently and takes her out to eat once a week. It’s been a rough Monday. The cuts on Wall Street mean that the temp pool has been reduced by half, so Kit is doing the work of two people. No playwriting these days, only company business. Kit climbs the stairs slowly. By the time she reaches her apartment, she has opened all of her mail.
There’s a letter from the Cherry Lane Theatre. How ironic, Kit thinks, theaters soliciting poor playwrights for donations. Can things get any worse? She opens the letter anyway, because it might contain good news for some lucky playwright, word of upcoming productions and workshops. But as Kit reads the letter, she sees that they don’t want money. And there’s no mention of another playwright or another play. It’s from the artistic director, Angelina Fiordellisi, and it’s about Kit’s play Things Said While Dancing. The artistic director loves the play and wants Kit to come and work on it at the Cherry Lane. She asks if Kit would be willing, and if she is, to please call her at her office at her earliest possible convenience.
Kit opens her door and tosses the rest of the mail onto her sofa, and without stopping even to take a sip of water, she shoots straight up the stairs and raps on Lucia’s door urgently, knowing that this news will thrill her to bits.
“Lucia! It’s me. Kit!”
“Coming,” she hears from inside the apartment.
“Hurry, I’ve got good news!”
Lucia opens the door. She looks fabulous in a pink suit with a big brooch, an enameled yellow rose.
Kit says, “You look amazing! I have news. Finally, somebody in the American theater wants to work with me. The Cherry Lane wants to develop one of my plays!”
“That’s fantastic!” Lucia beams, but she doesn’t invite Kit into the apartment. In fact, she is barricading the door with her body.
“Sorry. Do you have company?”
“I do,” Lucia says, trying to communicate with her eyes.
“Oh. Who?” Kit whispers. “A guy?” Lucia nods. “Oh, wow!”
“No, no, come in,” Lucia says, and opens the door wide.
A suave older gentleman in a classic navy sportcoat and charcoal slacks is sitting on one of her chintz chairs. His gray hair is neatly combed, and his pencil thin moustache recalls another era.
“Kit, this is Mr. Dante DeMartino.”
“Oh my God! I’ve heard all about you.” As he rises to greet her, Kit notices that he’s holding the picture of Lucia on New Year’s Eve. “She was stunning, wasn’t she?”
Dante looks directly at Lucia, and Kit can’t help but compare this to the way John Talbot closed his eyes and seemed to prefer an image from memory. “As beautiful as she is in this photograph, she was even more so on the inside,” Dante says. ??
?Still is.”
Kit decides to lighten the moment. “And you do look like Don Ameche. I have the DVD of Midnight downstairs.”
“Besides my striking resemblance to Mr. Ameche, what else did Lucia tell you about me?”
“Just wonderful stories about what life was like when you were my age. What the Village was like. How you lived. She told me that you didn’t have to carry a gun in your purse to the San Gennaro Festival, and girls wore gloves and men worked in the family business, and everybody was happy.”
“She told you the truth, then.” Dante smiles.
“At least for Italians, right? So, what are you two doing tonight?”
“I’m taking Lucia to dinner.”
“A date?” Kit grins.
“I hope so.” Dante winks at Lucia. The way he winks is sexy, Kit decides, and it’s a small revelation to her. How could men her grandfather’s age be sexy?
“Well, I’ll leave you two alone,” Kit says. “Have a wonderful time.”
Lucia walks Kit to the door and steps out into the hallway with her. Kit gives her a silent thumbs-up.
“Congratulations on the play, Kit. I’m proud of you.” Then Lucia lowers her voice. “And thank you. Dante has been widowed for three years, but I never had the guts to call him. The trip to Sing Sing put everything in the past, where it belongs. And I have you to thank for it.”
Kit goes back down to her apartment and grabs a Diet Coke. She takes the letter from Miss Fiordellisi and reads it over until she has committed it to memory. She leaves an identical message for every one of her friends on speed dial, giving them the details. Then she sits in the window and looks at Commerce Street, leaning out to see the bright red barn doors of the Cherry Lane Theatre, a place she dreamed would produce one of her plays someday. Kit looks at her street, with its stoops and window boxes and beat-up trash cans, and remembers why she moved to New York. Her passion for storytelling brought her here; the desire to live the artist’s life in a place that inspires it keeps her here. She takes a moment to be grateful and to remember that talent may be a gift, but persistence is its own reward.