Breakfast and dinner were included in the weekly rent, and there was a wringer washing machine as well as drying racks in the basement. But more important than all these lovely features of gracious living was the camaraderie of the young residents, who aspired to better lives on the wings of their talent and creativity. Finally, Laura and Enza were with like-minded peers, who understood their feelings and drive.
Miss Caroline DeCoursey, the house mother, was an elegant white-haired lady, petite and well bred, who took an instant liking to Laura Heery; Miss DeCoursey’s mother was Irish, and from the same county as the Heery family.
Enza and Laura were led to the fourth floor, where the wide hallway was lit by a skylight. A series of closets lined the wall, each with a simple brass handle. Miss DeCoursey opened one of the closets. Inside was a long, deep storage shelf at the top for hats, a hanging rod with empty wooden hangers, and enough floor space for shoes and storage of suitcases and duffels.
“You take this one, Miss Ravanelli,” Miss DeCoursey said. “And this one is yours, Miss Heery,” she said, opening another set of doors.
The girls looked at one another, unable to believe their good fortune. Closets! Enza had lived out of her duffel since leaving Italy, while Laura shared a cupboard and hooks with her sisters and cousins in her family home.
“Follow me,” Miss DeCoursey said, unlocking a door in an alcove nearest the closets. She pushed the door open, and there was the most beautiful room Enza had ever seen. The ceiling sloped under the dormer, and a fireplace and mirror occupied the center of the room. Light poured in the window, reflecting off the buffed walnut floors.
Two plump beds were made up with soft cotton coverlets, a nightstand set between them with a reading lamp. A desk under the window and another by the door would give each girl plenty of room. The calm simplicity of the decoration, the scent of lemon wax, and the fresh breeze coming in off the garden through the open window made the room seem like home.
“I thought two seamstresses might like a room with good light, even though it’s on the fourth floor. Most of the girls prefer being on the second floor—”
“No, no, it’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” Enza insisted.
“We’ll never be able to thank you enough!” Laura added.
“Keep your rooms neat, and don’t dry your stockings in the common bath.” Miss DeCoursey handed them each a key. “We’ll see you at dinner, then,” she said, closing the door behind her.
Laura threw herself onto one bed, and Enza did the same on the other. “Did you hear that?” Laura asked.
“What?”
“That was the sound of the dinner bell . . . and our luck changing.” Laura laughed.
Ciro figured Luigi could handle the shoe repair cart alone for a few hours. Business was brisk but in no way overwhelming by the docks of lower Manhattan, where the construction workers took lunch by the pier.
Ciro decided to walk back to Little Italy through Greenwich Village. He liked to walk through the winding streets in the warmth of spring, taking in the Georgian-style homes on Jane Street, with their double set of stairs, and the Renaissance town houses on Charles Street, with their wrought-iron balconies and small private parks behind airy gates filled with urns of yellow daffodils and purple iris.
Beautiful homes soothed him. Maybe it was the connection to his days as a handyman, when he’d painted and planted at San Nicola, but whatever the reason, manicured gardens and well-tended homes reassured him, giving him a sense of order in a world where there was little.
As Ciro passed Our Lady of Pompeii Church, a wedding party spilled out onto the sidewalk. A dazzling brand-new Nash Roadster was parked in front, with a bouquet of white roses nestled in tulle and streaming with satin ribbons anchored to the hood ornament.
Ciro stopped to take in the convertible, midnight blue with a red leather interior. The sleek lines of the polished wood and gold brass buttons were enough to make any young man swoon. The car was almost as gorgeous as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
As the organist played the recessional, the guests poured out of the church onto the sidewalk. A lovely collection of bridesmaids, carrying long stalks of calla lilies, wearing wide silk headbands peppered with crystals and floor-length gowns in soft pink chiffon, lined up on the stairs.
Ciro took in their faces, recognizing them from the neighborhood—southern Italian girls with dark eyes, their hair worn in elaborate upsweeps of serpentine braids. Their figures, delicate and curved, were as smooth as porcelain teacups. They reminded him of Enza Ravanelli and how she looked on the roof at Mulberry Street. He put her out of his mind as quickly as he’d conjured her; he was not a man who longed for what he could not have, or specifically, what he had lost.
The bride and groom emerged from the top of the stairs, showered by rice and confetti. Ciro was astonished to see Felicitá Cassio, her veil of tulle trailing behind her, in a gown of palest white. As ethereal as smoke, she looked out over the crowd and smiled at the guests. He had not seen her since last Christmas, before he’d traveled to Hoboken, when he told her they had to end their easygoing relationship once and for all.
Felicitá had just married an attractive, compact, dark Sicilian, who left his bride with a quick kiss on the cheek to have his picture taken with his parents.
Ciro turned to go, but it was too late. Felicitá had locked eyes with him, an expression of shock crossing her face, which she quickly masked with a warm bridal smile. She waved to Ciro. His fine manners and good convent training, ingrained so deeply, wouldn’t allow him to walk away without paying his respects.
Felicitá handed off her bouquet to her maid of honor like a necessary nuisance. Ciro looked down at his coveralls, smudged with smears of oil and chalk from his work. He was hardly properly dressed to greet his old girlfriend in her wedding gown. Felicitá’s satin gown, cut on the bias, skimmed the sleek lines of her body. As she moved, the sheen of the satin hugged her curves. Ciro was hit with a powerful wave of desire.
“You just got off work,” she murmured, knowing the effect her sultry voice had always had on him.
“I was down on the pier. Congratulations,” Ciro said. “I didn’t know.”
“They announced the banns several weeks ago. Since you never go to church . . .” She allowed her voice to trail off flirtatiously. “I meant to write and tell you,” she added.
“You like to write about as much as I do. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy for you. You’re a beautiful bride. Is he the match?”
She looked down at her satin shoes, trimmed in marabou. “Yeah. He owns half of Palermo.”
“Ah, a Sicilian prince. It may take you a year or two, but I think you can turn him into a king.”
“My mother did it for my father, so I guess I can too,” she said, not looking forward to the task that lay ahead.
Ciro had turned to go when Felicitá stopped him. “You gonna give that girl from the Alps that ring I always wanted?”
“Pray for me, will you?” Ciro smiled.
The library at the Milbank House was a beautifully appointed room in the English style, decorated in shades of sage green and coral with glass-fronted barrister bookshelves and a grand piano, angled between the front windows.
Eileen Parrelli, an eighteen-year-old prodigy from Connecticut, ran scales on the piano and sang. Her red curls and freckles indicated her mother’s Irish lineage, but her voice was pure operatic Italian, from her father’s side.
Enza sat down on a chair with a notebook and pen, listening while Eileen practiced. She could not believe how much her life had changed in a few short weeks.
No one, except Laura and maybe the other girls who occupied these rooms, would ever understand what admittance to the boardinghouse meant to her. The last thing that Enza wanted was to lose her room at the Milbank House. Laura and she needed jobs, and not just any temporary position. They needed jobs that would assure them a steady salary.
As Eileen finished her exercis
es, Enza went to the secretary. She placed paper and envelopes on the desk; then she pulled two square swatches out of a muslin pouch, one of black velvet embroidered in gold, the other, double-backed pink silk in a fleur-de-lis design of seed pearls and small crystals. Enza checked out the spelling in the library dictionary as she went.
To Whom It May Concern:
Enclosed please find two sewing samples for your perusal. Enza Ravanelli and Laura Heery are experienced machine operators, but also pattern makers, seamstresses, and most excellent trim and beading specialists.
We have extensive knowledge of the stories of the opera, plots, and characters, due to repeated exposure to the phonograph records of Signor Enrico Caruso.
If you would like to meet with us regarding potential positions with your organization, please write to us at the Milbank House, 11 West Tenth Street, New York City.
Thank you.
Very sincerely yours,
Enza Ravanelli and Laura Heery
Ciro made a decision in the spring of 1917, no different from other Italians on long-term work visas. He decided to go to war. Without a sweetheart to keep him stateside, he decided to see the world and do his bit.
The U.S. Army recruitment office on West Twentieth Street was a temporary storefront with an American flag in the dusty window. Inside, a makeshift office operation with temporary desks and rolling stools made up one of the hundreds of official recruitment offices, compliments of the passage of the Selective Service Act.
Ciro met Luigi outside before they entered. A long line of young men snaked around the block, most of them dark-haired like Luigi.
“I didn’t tell Pappina,” Luigi said.
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t want me to go. She thinks I’m slow on my feet and will get my head blown off.”
“She’s probably right.”
“But I want to fight for this country. I want to get my citizenship, and then Pappina will have hers.”
“Are you going to marry before we go?”
“Yeah. Will you be my best man?”
“I’ve never been asked a question with more enthusiasm.”
“Sorry. I have a lot on my mind. I don’t like doctors.” He whispered, “They squeeze the noci.”
“I know all about it.”
“It’s barbaric, that’s what it is.”
Ciro chuckled. If Luigi thought the physical was barbaric, what would he think of war itself? Once inside, the men’s applications were taken, and they lined up to go inside to see the doctor. Luigi and Ciro undressed down to their undershorts and waited in line. More than a few young men were asked to leave, when an infirmity was diagnosed that prevented them from serving. Some of the boys were belligerent when asked to leave, while others were clearly relieved.
“You ever held a gun?” Luigi asked.
“No. How about you?”
“I used to shoot birds in Foggia,” Luigi admitted.
Luigi went behind a screen with the doctor. Ciro stood and waited his turn for what seemed like a long time.
Luigi pushed the curtain aside and shook his head. “I have a bad ear. They won’t take me.”
“Oh, pal, I’m sorry.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ciro joined Luigi on the sidewalk outside. Ciro carried the paperwork to report to New Haven, Connecticut, on July 1. He folded the paper and stuffed it in his pocket.
“You got in?” Luigi asked.
“Yeah.”
Ciro was gratified that the army had accepted him, knowing that it was the fastest route to earning his citizenship. But there was also a sadness, a gnawing anxiety that he was running from something he couldn’t name. It was in moments like this that he thought of Enza and wondered about the different path his life might have taken had she been waiting for him on Adams Street.
“I wanted to go fight.” Luigi kicked a pebble off the sidewalk into the gutter. “Maybe I ought to take Pappina and go home to Italy.”
“And what will you do there?” Ciro asked.
“I don’t know. I got no place to go. When the U.S. Army doesn’t want you, you don’t have a lot of choices.”
“You keep working on Mulberry Street. By the time I get back, you’ll be a master.”
“Signora takes all our profits. You’d think she’d cut us in. You invented the cart, after all.”
“Remo taught me a trade. I owe him,” Ciro said firmly. “But I think we have generously paid off the marker. We need our own company, Luigi. And I’m going to count on you to pull all the pieces together while I’m overseas.”
Ciro’s wise offer seemed to assuage Luigi’s feelings of failure at the recruitment office. For young fellows like them, the war was a chance to become men, to see the world and save it and return home as American citizens. It didn’t occur to either of them that lives would be lost, that the world they were to defend would shift under their feet and never be the same again. They only dreamed of the adventure.
A flower cart parked on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street overflowed with bouquets of white lilies and pots of pink hyacinths tied with gold bows. Glassy, bright green boxwood hemmed in the front gardens of brownstones. Windowboxes sprouted with purple and pink bachelor buttons, red impatiens, and bright yellow marigolds. Enza breathed deeply as she walked to Tenth Street. As she climbed the steps to the entrance of the Milbank House, Miss DeCoursey was sorting the mail in the vestibule. She handed Enza an envelope. The return address read: The Metropolitan Opera House. Enza sprinted up four flights of stairs to open it with Laura.
“It came,” Enza said. Laura pulled a hairpin from her chignon and handed it to Enza, who carefully opened the envelope.
Dear Miss Ravanelli,
Miss Serafina Ramunni would like to meet with you and Miss Laura Heery on April 29, 1917, at ten o’clock in the morning. Please bring your sewing kits and further samples of your workmanship, in particular with foil paillettes, silk trims, and crystal beading.
Very truly yours,
Miss Kimberly Meier
Company Manager
The girls immediately ran to the church of Saint Francis Xavier and lit every candle at the foot of Saint Lucy, the patron saint of seamstresses. The girls needed this job. The temporary kitchen work was not enough, and they were one week away from losing their room at the Milbank.
The morning of their interview, they ate a hearty Milbank breakfast of scrambled eggs, coffee, and toast before loading their sewing kits and samples into their purses for the walk from Tenth Street, thirty blocks uptown, to meet Serafina Ramunni, the head seamstress of the costume shop. Enza and Laura wore their best skirts and blouses. Enza wore a Venetian gondolier’s straw hat with a bright red band, while Laura wore a straw picture hat with a cluster of silk cherries for adornment.
The girls spent the night developing a strategy for the interview. If Miss Ramunni liked one of them and not the other, the one offered the job should take it. If there were no immediate openings for seamstresses, they agreed to take whatever starting positions were available. They both dreamed of working in the costume shop eventually, but they knew it could take years to earn a spot there, if they were lucky enough to be hired in the first place.
The Metropolitan Opera House, built of native yellow stone hauled from the valleys of upstate New York, took up a full city block on West Thirty-ninth Street. Its architectural grandeur was evident in its details—ornate doors, embellished cornices, and Palladian arches. The opera house had the massive dimensions of a train station.
On the ground level, a series of doors capped by brass scrollwork emptied the theater in minutes. The wide carriage circle accommodated every mode of transportation on wheels: motorcars, cabs, and horse carriages had plenty of space for dropoffs before curtain and pickups after the final ovation.
The main entrance doors, attended by footmen, were hemmed by velvet ropes. Enza and Laura entered through the lobby, where a handyman buffed the white marble floor with a motorized brush machine. br />
A swirling staircase rose before them, carpeted in ruby red, with a high polished brass railing. A crystal chandelier, dripping in shimmering glass daggers in the shape of a wedding cake, had been lowered on delicate wires to eye level for cleaning, and a maid dusted the crystal drops gently with flannel mitts.
The box office door was propped open. Inside, the ticket sellers were smoking and taking a coffee break. Laura walked up to the window. “We’re looking for Serafina Ramunni. We have an appointment.”
A young man in shirtsleeves and brown tie ashed his cigarette and nodded. “She’s onstage.”
Laura and Enza passed a series of Renaissance paintings framed in gold leaf in the inner lobby. They pushed the doors open, entering the dark theater, an enormous jewelry box trimmed in gold. The scents of fresh paint, linseed oil, and the lingering gardenia of expensive perfumes created a heady mix. Rows of seats swathed in red velvet tilted toward the downstage lip of the cavernous stage like rose blooms. Enza thought that church was the only other place where such hushed reverence was required.
The stage floor was lacquered black, with white lines indicating where scenery should be placed. A series of small X’s were painted strategically across the downstage lip, where solos were performed. From the highest tier of the theater, the follow spotlights were angled at these marks like cannons.
The ring of private viewing boxes, dubbed the “diamond horseshoe” by Cholly Knickerbocker and other society writers, was reserved for the wealthiest subscribers. These theatrical boxes were suspended over the orchestra seats, like delicate gold carriages, decorated with ornate medallions. Red damask draperies hung behind the seats, softening any sound from the stairways and grand aisles. Faceted glass sconces shaped like tiaras softly illuminated each level.
The girls walked down the vom and turned to look up into the upper mezzanine, empty seats that extended as high and far as the eye could see. The theater could hold 4,000 people, with 224 standing-room tickets sold for a lesser price, but never a lesser performance.