The Queen of the Big Time

  Roma and Dianna move in with Elena and Alessandro for the winter. It is much easier for them to walk to school, and they are a great help with the baby. But the quarters are getting tight here; with three bedrooms, there is no extra room. I decide to move back out to the farm. I don’t mind taking the trolley in the morning, and with my salary, I can afford to do it. And Mama is glad to have me back home.

  “It’s so lonely here when you’re all in town,” she says. “I love having you back home.”

  “I like it too.” I give her a hug. “I’m going to bed. It’s supposed to snow tonight.” I look out the window at the pasture. The full moon casts a hazy silver glow on the field, which looks like a lake blue in the darkness. I can see the white flakes begin their tangled descent to the cold ground. Dizzy snowflakes usually mean a blizzard.

  “More snow?” Mama complains. She misses the warmth of Italy. She has never liked these cold Pennsylvania winters, and she longs for the warm beaches of her Adriatic Sea.

  I climb the stairs to the room I used to share with my sisters. Mama has left it intact. As I get undressed, I think about how my life is going backward. I am becoming the maiden aunt, even though I never planned to be. I hang my dress on the same hook I hung my pantalets and apron on when I was small. It’s so odd to be in this old farmhouse without my sisters. Now I know what it would have been like to be an only child, and I don’t think I would have liked it.

  Every night before I go to sleep, I reread the letter Renato left me, hoping to find some new meaning in the words. It’s been months, and I hate myself for reading it over and over again. Each time I read it, I promise myself that tomorrow will be the day that I throw it in the fire once and for all, but something always holds me back.

  I pray to Saint Anthony to help me find myself. He’s the saint of lost items, and though my self-confidence is slightly more valuable than a set of keys, he seems to be the right saint for my troubles. There has been no word of Renato’s whereabouts. I guess he went back to Italy; he always said it was the place he felt most comfortable and inspired. He sold his family home to his cousins, and when Chettie inquired, they said they had no idea where he had gone.

  I’m sure Renato is happily in the arms of another girl now. She is educated and beautiful and has no responsibilities except to please him. Chettie thinks I should find a new beau. But I don’t want one. No one will ever compare with Renato.

  News of a movie house opening in Roseto has everyone excited. Nestled among the houses on Chestnut Street, it can only seat a hundred people per show, but it doesn’t matter. We no longer have to go all the way to Easton to see the serials.

  The first showing will be The Scarlet Letter, starring Lillian Gish. She is my favorite actress, because her troubles on-screen seem so real. There are two shorts with Buster Keaton, and I can’t wait to see them. I need to laugh.

  With the opening of the new mill, Mr. Jenkins has more work for us than ever. And I like the new mill better than the old one. When we open the windows, there are trees right outside, not like the open field we were in before. And the cross-ventilation keeps the gray haze from the fabric to a minimum. During the winter, the girls take lunch at their machines. This isn’t ideal, but it’s too cold outside, and the shipping area in the new building can’t accommodate everyone. When the girls take lunch, I don’t. This is when I go through the bin and count the tickets on the bundles. One day, when I reach the pressing department, there’s a small cardboard bakery box on a shelf where I place the finished tickets. It has my name on it. I open the box, and there’s a single cream puff inside.

  “Thanks, Chettie,” I tell her as I pass her station a few minutes later.

  “For what?” she asks.

  “The cream puff.”

  “What cream puff?” She looks baffled.

  “This one.” I hold up the box. “It’s sweet of you.”

  “I didn’t leave it for you.”

  “Well, then, who did?”

  “I don’t know.” Chettie smiles. “You must have a secret admirer.”

  I take the box by the string and go into the office. I pour a cup of coffee out of my thermos and sit down to enjoy the cream puff. No matter who it’s from, I love a pastry from Marcella’s.

  “Mama, I am not going.”

  “Please, Nella. Beatrice Zollerano is expecting the entire family for dinner.”

  “I know what you’re up to. You’re trying to make a match with me and Franco. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “I am not trying to make a match!” Mama puts her hands on her hips. “It is very important for Elena to socialize with the other families in Roseto now that she’s married to Alessandro.”

  “So let them go to dinner.”

  “Franco wants you to come.”

  “Ma, I know he wants me to come to family dinner. He’s invited me out several times. I always say no.”

  “But why? He’s so handsome.”

  “Because, Mama, I … that is …”

  “Ay. He’s gone! Renato is gone. He’s not coming back. Beatrice has invited the entire family. It will look terrible if you don’t come.”

  I give in, not only because Mama is persistent, but because I think she’s right. If Elena and Alessandro befriend the families on Garibaldi, they will be a part of things. I would hate to see little Assunta ostracized because her father and aunt married. So, Mama, Papa, and I take the trolley into town, stopping at Elena’s so the whole family can walk to the Zolleranos’ together.

  Mama looks us over before our walk to Garibaldi. Roma looks sweet in her velvet jumper, Dianna has on a wool skirt and a crisp white blouse; even baby Assunta has a bow in her hair. Alessandro and Papa wear their suits, while Elena and I have put on our best dresses.

  When we arrive, Mama knocks on the Zolleranos’ door. Mrs. Zollerano, in a plain black shift and a pearl brooch, answers the door. “Come in, please. Welcome.” She’s around Mama’s age, but her black hair has more white in it. She’s very tiny, with a trim waist and small hands and feet. Mr. Zollerano—who Papa knows from the Marconi Club, where they play cards—takes our coats, while Papa makes all the introductions.

  Franco comes from the kitchen carrying a tray of bitters in small rainbow-colored glasses. He offers my father the first glass, then proceeds around the room serving all of us. He wears a blue serge suit with a crisp white shirt and gray silk tie. When he serves the little ones soda, he looks like a giant next to them.

  “Thank you for coming,” he says when he reaches me. As he does in the factory, he takes me in from head to toe. To make a point, I follow along, examining my dress and shoes just as he does. He catches himself. “I’m sorry. You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” I take a drink from the tray.

  When Mrs. Zollerano calls us to dinner, she seats us as we enter the dining room. Franco is the middle of three sons. The eldest, Giacomo, is recently married to a nice girl from West Bangor named Maria. Mrs. Zollerano seats them across from each other. She asks me to sit next to Giacomo and puts Franco next to me. (Just as I predicted, I am the Plan B of Mama’s Plan A evening.)

  The youngest son, Alberto, is ten years old and knows Roma and Dianna from school. Mrs. Zollerano seats them together. She fills the rest of us in around the edges, with Papa opposite the head of the table from Mr. Zollerano. Mama is next to Papa. Alberto says grace before we take our seats. Franco pulls my chair out for me.

  The conversation at dinner is much livelier than I had expected. Papa and Mr. Zollerano talk about Italy. Papa talks about what Roseto is like on the other side, while Mr. Zollerano talks about his hometown of Biccari, a few miles from Papa’s. The kids laugh at the funny stories of goats and chickens living in the same house as people.

  The meal is a feast of polenta and chicken. Mrs. Zollerano made the chicken in a thick tomato sauce with a touch of cinnamon. She serves the polenta as a base, then smothers it in tender chicken and sauce. She follows the meal with a salad and cheese board. F
or dessert, she has made cream puffs.

  “I think I solved a mystery,” I say quietly to Franco.

  “What mystery?”

  “Someone leaves me cream puffs at the mill. Would you know anything about that?”

  “Nope. You must have a secret admirer.” He smiles.

  “You call that a secret?” I roll my eyes. Franco laughs.

  Elena and I insist on helping Mrs. Zollerano clean up after the dinner, while the men go into the living room to smoke.

  “I always wanted daughters, now I know why!” Mrs. Zollerano laughs.

  “We have five girls at the ready whenever you need us.”

  “I may take you up on that,” she says. “Franco tells me that you’re the forelady at the factory. How can that be? You’re so young.”

  “I don’t know. I’m very lucky. The boss noticed that I was fast and figured things out quickly. I was supposed to be in school, but then things happened and, well, I guess I’ve just made the best of things.”

  “That’s too bad about school, though.”

  “I used to feel that way, but now I accept it. When you’re part of a family, they come first.”

  “Yes, sometimes life gets in the way of what we want to do. Often young people take a long time to understand that. You’re better off learning it now, even if it is a hard lesson.”

  Mrs. Zollerano is amazed at how quickly Elena and I can clean up the dishes, but there aren’t that many more than we used every night in Delabole. Mrs. Zollerano has nice things: a full set of china and simple silverware that look as though they were handed down to her. The decor of the house is very Rosetan. Flowery red chintz slipcovers adorn the couch, and the furniture is mostly mahogany. There is a hutch full of dishes, with teacups hanging on small gold hooks. Mrs. Zollerano has artfully placed the dinnerware on the open shelves. As in all homes in Roseto, the front parlor leads to a long hallway that connects to the kitchen in the back of the house. There is usually a sunporch off the kitchen, for sitting in the summer and storage in the winter.

  Baby Assunta is asleep on a blanket in the front room. The conversation and laughter of the men lulled her to sleep. Alberto, Roma, and Dianna play a board game and seem to get along beautifully.

  When it’s time to go home (we’re all staying on Dewey Street since it’s such a late night), Franco offers to walk with us.

  “There’s no need to,” I tell him with a smile. “We know the way.”

  “No, no, I insist,” he says, pulling on his coat.

  Elena bundles up the baby, while I help my sisters with their coats and hats. The air is fresh, though cold. Roma and Dianna run ahead.

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” Elena tells Franco.

  “Thank you for helping Ma clean up. She never has kitchen help with boys around.”

  “So she said. Once in a while, help her with the pots and pans,” I tease.

  As we walk up Garibaldi, we pass what used to be Renato’s house. There is a lamp on in the front room. Even though his cousins bought the house, seeing the light on reminds me of what I have lost. I don’t say anything the rest of the way home, leaving Elena and Franco to chat. When we reach the house, the girls run inside. Elena kisses Franco on the cheek and joins them.

  “You have a wonderful family,” Franco says.

  “So do you. And please thank your mother for making such delicious cream puffs for dessert tonight. They’re better than Marcella’s.”

  “I will.” Franco smiles. “I was wondering …”

  “You’re not going to ask me out again, are you?”

  “Are you going to say no again?” he asks.

  “Probably.”

  “Why don’t I ask anyway, and you give me the first answer that pops into your head. Would you like to go to a show sometime?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him.

  “What’s to know? We go to the show, I buy you popcorn, we laugh at the story, or you cry, depending on what’s showing.”

  When I don’t reply, Franco shakes his head and slowly walks down the steps. At the bottom, he looks up at me. “You still love him?”

  The question stops me cold. I might have been thinking of Renato all the way home, but I’m smart enough to pretend I don’t know what Franco’s talking about. “Love who?”

  “Lanzara.”

  I am taken aback at how forthright Franco is, and a little unglued at how astute. “Can you tell?”

  “Yeah. I guess I was hoping you were over him.”

  Franco says this with such a cavalier tone that it infuriates me. “I’m not over him. I will never be over him.”

  “Never?” Franco seems surprised.

  “You obviously have never really truly loved someone, because if you had, you would understand that love isn’t something you get over like a head cold, or grow out of like an old pair of shoes. If you really fall in love, it becomes a part of you, and you would as soon cut off your own hand as lose it.”

  “Jesus.” Franco shakes his head. “I had no idea. I saw you two in the factory, but it didn’t seem—”

  “Didn’t seem like what? And how dare you spy on us, anyhow!”

  “I wasn’t spying on you!” He grows defensive. “You shouldn’t have been kissing in the middle of the cutting room! That’s a nice way for a forelady to act.”

  “What would you know about being in charge?” I practically shout.

  “Hey, don’t take it out on me. I didn’t leave you. He did.”

  The words sting because they’re true. I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Franco. I shouldn’t have said that, but you’d be angry too if everything you ever wanted was out of reach. Not just the big things, even the little things.” I am sorry that I have revealed even this much of myself to him. I turn to go inside. This conversation is over.

  “You think I get everything I want?” he says quietly. “I was hoping to get a kiss tonight, to tell you the truth, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

  I put my hands on my hips and look down on him. “Not in a million years.” I turn to go into the house and have my hand on the knob. As I’m about to push the door open, Franco comes up the steps, pulls me away from the door, and takes me in his arms and kisses me. This is no soft, gentle Renato kiss. This is a hungry kiss, and I am shocked by the intensity of his feelings. There is not only passion, there is determination in this kiss. I can’t believe he has the temerity to take me on. He lets go of me and goes back down the steps.

  “That will never happen again,” I call after him.

  “We’ll see,” he says as he crosses Dewey Street.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In a few days, I will turn twenty-one, and although everyone teases me that I will finally be a legal adult, the official rite of passage is lost on me. I’ve been a forelady since I was sixteen, and in the factory since I was fifteen, so I don’t see that I am reaching a major milestone. Rather, it’s just more of the same.

  Mama and Papa go home to Italy every January now, returning to Pennsylvania at Easter. Papa rented the farm out to some of his cousins from Italy. They pay Papa a stipend for the use of the land, and a percentage of what the contract brings in. Papa is forty-eight years old and Mama is forty-six, and they like making money without having to get up at dawn and work until night. Even though we are in the midst of the Great Depression, somehow our little part of the world is surviving just fine. There is plenty of work in the mills, and because Rosetans traditionally have grown their own food, made their own wine, put up fruit and vegetables for the winter, and kept their own cows and pigs, there is always plenty to eat.

  When Mama and Papa come home to Roseto, they have their hands full with grandchildren: Assunta is a feisty six-year-old. Alessandro and Elena have had two more children of their own, a daughter, Aurelia, and a son, Peter. Alessandro bought the other side of his two-family home, so Mama, Papa, and I live next door with a shared porch between us.

  I am still unmarried, and I like it j
ust fine. Work is my husband, and I love the rewards it brings, and the satisfaction I feel when I deposit my paycheck into the First National Bank in Bangor.

  “You wanted to see me?” I take a seat in Mr. Jenkins’s office. I remember how frightened I was the first time I was summoned here. Now, when I look at him, I see an old man behind a cluttered desk in a small closet of an office. He is not the mogul I imagined him to be, he’s just a cranky man with business headaches.

  “We’re switching gears here,” he begins. “I’ve been taking contracts from the Rosenbergs on Long Island all these years, but now we’re ready to go from making original designs to knockoffs.”

  “Whose knockoffs?”

  “Hollywood’s.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s very simple. The Rosenbergs are working with a middleman in Hollywood who draws the costumes seen in the latest pictures. He sends the design to Rosenberg, who cuts the pattern from the drawing. The blouses are named for the star who wore them. For example, our first order is a sailor blouse called the Joan Crawford from Dance, Fools, Dance. The movie is coming out this fall.” Mr. Jenkins slides a drawing across the desk to me.

  The sketch is the perfect likeness of Miss Crawford, the strong jaw, the arched eyebrows, the thick lashes. The costume sketch is of her upper torso only, and in the corner, the artist has drawn out the pattern pieces with proportions.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “It’s so far-fetched it could work. You mean the customer will go to the movies, see her favorite star in a blouse, go to the department store, and it will be hanging there ready for her to buy?”

  “You got it. Edith Head, Adrian, all the big names, all of them are participating. Hell, even Schiaparelli and Chanel are getting in on it. You might say we are mass-producing the Hollywood dream.”

  “I like the movies as much as anyone, but it sounds like we’re creating the trend before the movies even come out.”