Kiss Carlo

  By the time the group photographs were taken, every single one of the five hundred guests had appeared in at least one of them. Between set-ups, the guests managed to return to their seats to finish their plates of Beef Wellington served with green beans almondine and tossed salad, and attack the cookie trays as the coffee was served. The band, the Nite-Caps, was ready to swing.

  Nicky worked his way back to the dais, his mouth watering at the thought of a hot meal. When he reached his seat, he was too late; his plate had been cleared, and the Tutololas had demolished the cookie tray. All that was left next to his nameplate was a glass of ice water and a lemon wedge. What Nicky would give for one fig cookie! And he didn’t even like them.

  A dinner roll had been left on absentee Hortense’s bread plate. Nicky grabbed the roll, buttered it, and swallowed it whole; it went down like a tennis ball. Being famous meant there was never time to eat. Give me obscurity, Nicky thought as he touched his forefinger to the tip of his tongue and gathered the crumbs from the empty cookie tray, savoring a hint of the delicacies that might have been.

  * * *

  Hortense stood by the stove as Minna showed her the final step in preparing her Venetian gravy.

  “You see where the sauce has thickened, and most of the liquid has burned off,” Minna said as she stirred the thick, fragrant tomato sauce. “Then I’ll make a well in the center and add a half a stick of butter, and I’ll keep stirring until the butter is mixed into the sauce completely.” She handed Hortense the spoon.

  Minna drained the macaroni into the colander in the sink. “Never rinse the macaroni,” she instructed, gently shaking the noodles and setting them aside. She lifted the pan off the stove and poured some of the gravy into the serving dish. She added the macaroni on top, then ladled the rest of the gravy onto the hot pasta and mixed it together. She grated fresh Parmesan cheese on top. Minna lifted the bowl of macaroni off the counter.

  “Bring the tray, please,” she said to Hortense. Her guest picked up a tray filled with crusty bread, butter, a salad of dandelion greens, black olives, and sweet onions tossed with olive oil and vinegar, and a carafe of homemade wine.

  Hortense followed Minna outside to the table she had set in the garden.

  “This is what it must be like in Italy,” Hortense marveled.

  “Al fresco. Try the macaroni.”

  Hortense sampled the dish and closed her eyes. “I’ve never tasted anything so delicious. It must be that secret ingredient.”

  “It’s everything. Do you think you can make the gravy yourself?”

  “I’m going to write it all down.”

  “You should.”

  “I’d love to make it for my next church supper.”

  “Do you think they’ll like it?”

  “I don’t know. The only red sauce we ever serve is barbeque, so maybe not.”

  “If you love to cook, people always love to eat what you prepare.”

  “That’s true. My family loves my cooking,” Hortense admitted.

  “But you work in an office?”

  “Yes. Pays the bills.”

  “Mrs. Roosevelt must make that work interesting.”

  “She does. Keeps me hopping. Do you have children, Minna?”

  “One son. He lives in Albany, New York.”

  “All the way up there?”

  “His father-in-law has a business.”

  “Your son didn’t want to stay around here?”

  “His wife didn’t.”

  “We lose the sons, don’t we?”

  “Always. Do you have sons?”

  “Two daughters. They’re grown now. I had a son too. He was born on November 5, 1916. He died the next day. I named him Malachy.”

  “I’m sorry.” Minna placed her hand on Hortense’s.

  “But I know about boys. I’m around them at work. I mother everyone, I guess you could say.”

  “We mother the men too. I worked with my husband.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He had a blouse mill. Everybody around here has a blouse mill.”

  “When did he pass?”

  “Six years ago.”

  “That’s difficult.”

  “I still have a hard time with it. I went to the funeral, and then to the cemetery. I came home and haven’t left this house since.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t leave the house. I go as far as the garden and the boxwood hedge out front.”

  Hortense took a sip of wine. This must have been the mental condition that Cha Cha referred to. “How do you make it?”

  “I have good neighbors who shop when I need something, and the priest brings me communion. People look out for me.”

  “Have you tried to go beyond your house?”

  “Can’t do it. I try. I bought a ticket to the dinner tonight. When I buy it, I actually believe I’ll go. I even planned what I was going to wear. If you go up to my room, you’ll find a pale blue chiffon dress hanging on the back of the door. My good shoes are sitting on top of the box, my stockings are on the dresser. But as the time gets closer, I get more anxious. Then tonight you knocked on my door and took the burden off of me. I didn’t have to go because you arrived.”

  “Can I let you in on a secret? I didn’t want to go either.”

  “You must have so many events in public.”

  “It gets tiresome. If I never have to appear in public again, I will be happy.”

  “Of course that’s up to Mrs. Roosevelt. Hortense, if you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?”

  “Everything.”

  Minna laughed.

  “No, I mean it. There was a lot of good in this life. But I would go a different way.”

  “What do you mean?” Minna poured her guest more wine.

  “I’d find my true purpose.”

  “You don’t think you have?”

  “I don’t.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “What’s yours, Minna?”

  “I’m older than you, a good twenty years, I’d say, so I’m finished searching. My purpose now is to have a peaceful end. That’s a purpose too, you know.”

  “That’s why we spend time in church. Just trying to earn our salvation.”

  “A peaceful end is important, but you have to plan for it. The days and nights leading up to the end have to be filled with thoughts of grace. You can’t sit around thinking about what you didn’t get in this life, chasing what was owed you, jealous of someone who has what you wished you had gotten, angry at your spouse because he didn’t give you what you needed. Believe it or not, there are those people who die that are still angry at their parents for not giving them what they believed they deserved.”

  “Poor souls.” Hortense sipped her wine.

  “You can’t find grace if you’re full of misery.”

  “If you walked around out there, you’d find plenty of misery,” Hortense assured her.

  “That’s not why I stay inside.”

  “Have you figured it out?”

  “It began after my husband died, and the condition just got worse and worse. I tried to shake it. I tried to get better but the fear has gripped me and won’t let me go. A good friend of mine sent a witch over. I burned herbs, soaked in white vinegar, painted a wall peacock blue and stared at it fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen at night—nothing cured it. They’ve had masses said, rosaries, novenas. Nothing breaks the hold this has over me. Then I thought it through. And I told myself, just like I fell into this, there will be a day when I walk out the front door and keep walking. It will pass.”

  “The bad times always do.”

  “They do. In the meantime, I prepare. I eat from the garden. I grow flowers. And when I’m lucky, I make a new friend.”

  * * *

  Nicky was trying to figure out how to leave the dais to steal a cookie tray from a table near the dance floor when he heard a voice from behind him.

  “Hey.”
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  He turned to see Mamie Confalone in a cocktail-length dress with a kitchen apron tied over it, handing him a plate full of food. He didn’t know what looked more delicious, the food or her. “You’re an angel.”

  “No, I’m in charge of the food service on the dais, and I didn’t want your food to get cold.”

  “I have never been this hungry.”

  “You almost passed out in the Marconi Club picture. Eat,” Mamie ordered, before weaving her way through the crowd and outside to the kitchen station.

  As Nicky watched her go, the sway of her hips in the cocktail dress drove him to distraction, but not enough to stop eating the food she had brought to him and go after her. He was so hungry, he forgot she was married. He speared a hunk of potato and meat and crust from the beef Wellington and had put it in his mouth when the band started up.

  As they played a revelry, Rocco Tutolola walked out onto the dance floor while two men rolled a large red steel bingo drum out to the center.

  A spotlight hit Nicky as he shoveled in another bite of the Beef Wellington. He heard the ambassador introduced. He was asked to come to the dance floor to choose the winning ticket of the Cadillac. The spotlight followed Nicky until he put his hand into the drum to pull the ticket.

  The crowd shouted:

  “SIFT!”

  “DIG!”

  “DEEPER!”

  “They mean don’t pick a card off the top,” Rocco said quietly.

  Nicky put his arm deep inside the drum, as if it were the mouth of a lion and he were a lion tamer. His arm went so deep it could have been snapped off if the metal door had accidentally shut. He pulled a card from the bottom of the drum and handed it to Rocco.

  Rocco walked to the bandstand and lifted the microphone off the soloists’ stand. “The winner of the Cadillac is Wayne Rutledge.”

  “Who? What?” the crowd chattered.

  “Wayne Rutledge of Florence, Alabama.”

  “An Ameri-gan?” a guest shouted from a table.

  “Where’s Alabama?”

  “Who cares? It’s not Pennsylvania!”

  “This is a travesty!”

  “Must be a mistake!”

  “Yes, it appears an Ameri-gan won the Cadillac,” Rocco confirmed. “An Ameri-gan from Alabama.”

  “Who sold him a ticket?”

  Mike Muzzollo stood up from a table near the dais. “I did. I bought tires for my shop. I asked my regional rep to sell some tickets for me. The guy does tires east of the Mississippi. He has a client in Alabama, and the client sold one to Wayne Rutledge, who does the guy’s taxes. And he won.”

  “An accountant won?” a woman shrieked.

  “A tax man? Ugh!” another shouted from a far table.

  A local woman stood and shook her fist. “Someone from town should win.”

  “This stinks!”

  “Pick another card!”

  “What a bust!” The crowd began to revolt.

  “Folks, settle down,” said Rocco. “This is a raffle. That means it’s a game of chance, which means there’s only a chance you’ll win. Now you saw the ambassador—he dug in that drum like he was pulling shrapnel from a lung.”

  “We should’ve had a Tricky Tray,” a woman sniffed.

  “The Ameri-gan probably would’ve won that too,” a man added as he puffed on his cigar.

  Rocco persisted. “We sell tickets wherever we can to whomever we can because it all goes to the betterment of our town. Your generosity raised seventy-five thousand dollars for Roseto. It looks like we’ll be able to install a fountain in Borough Park and have plenty left over for beautification. We’ll be happy to let Mr. Rutledge know he won the Cadillac. Rosetani are happy for the winner.” He placed the microphone back in the stand and urged the band to play.

  “A raffle is a raffle,” Rocco said to Nicky. “Nobody stole the car out from under anybody else.”

  “The people are-uh very upset,” Nicky said nervously. He felt the black eyes of the men glaring at him.

  “They don’t like a con.”

  “How was it a con? It was a raffle, fair and square.” Nicky was so exhausted, his accent had left him.

  “Pretty good with your English. Fair and square.”

  “I heard it-uh today-uh at the factoria.”

  “Right. Did you eat?”

  “Just a bite.”

  Rocco checked his watch. He pulled a cookie from a pedestal off a table by the dance floor. “Sorry, Ambassador. The dance is about to begin. You’ll need your strength.” He handed Nicky a cookie, which Nicky swallowed whole before retrieving another through the cellophane.

  Cha Cha approached Nicky. “Ready to rumba?” She swiveled her hips.

  “Si, si, La Bamba. I dance with the chief burgess’s wife first. My hostess.” Nicky thumped his chest to force the dry cookie down.

  “Enjoy.” Rocco patted Nicky on the back and walked off.

  Nicky took the very petite Cha Cha in his arms. Moving on the dance floor with her was a lot like stooping and pushing a wheelbarrow full of sand over a gravel tar pit.

  “My husband tells me you enjoyed the tour of the mill today.”

  “Very much. Mrs. Tutolola, I must-uh ask you, because the resemblance is overwhelming. Is-uh Mamie Confalone your figlia?”

  Cha Cha stuck her chest out and into Nicky’s waist with pride. “You think she could be my sister?”

  “Oh, you look-uh so much the same.”

  “I see what you mean. The tilt of the nose. No, we’re not related.”

  “Who are her people?”

  “She’s a Mugavero. Prettiest girls in town if you ask me. Good bone structure. That’s a lucky break you know. She married Augusto Confalone. Sad story. He died in the war.”

  “She’s a widow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not remarried?”

  “No. In fact, shows no interest. Of course, she has her son. He’s five years old, and he’s her life. As it should be.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Nicky wanted to pitch Cha Cha out of the tent, find Mamie, and leave town with her, but he must not be rash.

  “A woman that has a child doesn’t have time for tomfoolery when the child is small. The child has to be raised. That’s your first priority as a mother.” Cha Cha sniffed with authority.

  “Yes, mothers are God’s eyes and ears on earth.”

  “That is lovely.”

  Cha Cha pressed into Nicky as they danced. The juxtaposition of her chatter about motherhood and her simultaneous grinding into his body with her ample bust and girdled midsection made him dyspeptic, or it could have been the undigested Beef Wellington—he couldn’t be sure.

  “Once children are raised, that’s a different situation. A woman can go back to being girlish. A woman has wiggle room to enjoy herself. She can go out, travel. Dance with ambassadors from foreign countries in uniform.”

  “You must vee-zeet Roseto Valfortore, Cha Cha.”

  “Is that an invitation?” Cha Cha ground into Nicky like a drill bit.

  “When one invites another to vee-zeet, that is an invitation. No?” Nicky felt the stays of Cha Cha’s girdle poke into his upper thigh.

  “Si. Si. Si,” she purred. Nicky felt a low rumble of desire peal through her body.

  “You would love Eee-taly. Your husband would-uh enjoy it. A second honeymoon for two lovers. No?”

  “No. Yes. It sounds swell. Rocco doesn’t like to travel. He has motion sickness.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Doesn’t seem to bother him when he takes his friend out on his speedboat on the Delaware.”

  “You should be happy he has outside interests.”

  “I’d be happier if it wasn’t a girlfriend.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “Politics. You know. Power. Women crave Rocco like chocolate. But I’d like his comare to live with him for a week and see if she’d stick around for the duration. I’ve had to do things to Rocco a medical doctor wouldn’t attempt. I’d like to
see his girlfriend go at him with tweezers, a magnifying glass, and ointment and see how long she’d last. Trust me. She wouldn’t.”

  Revolted, Nicky dumped Cha Cha off at the dessert table before sashaying back to the line of ladies waiting for their dance with Carlo.

  Rosalba cut the line and grabbed Nicky to dance to a Perry Como medley. She attached herself to his body like a barnacle on the second bar of “Volare.”

  “You dance like your mother,” Nicky said, worried that the wool on his borrowed suit would pill.

  “I learned how to dance at the Bee Hive in Bangor.”

  “Such skill.”

  “Thanks. How do you like Roseto?” Her hot breath in his ear made it itch.

  “A charming villaggio.”

  “How about your room?” She bit his earlobe.

  “It’s fine.” Nicky pulled his head back and glared at her.

  “We share a wall.”

  “I did not know.”

  “Now you do. It gets hot.”

  “Where?”

  “In the guest room. My mother stuffs it with junk.”

  “I did not notice.”

  “Don’t open the closet.”

  “I wouldn’t dare.” Nicky had dropped his accent, but he didn’t care.

  “My room has cross breeze. If you get hot.”

  “I don’t get hot.”

  “Even in this wool uniform?”

  “Especially not in this wool uniform.”

  “How about when you’re out of it?”

  “I sleep in the uniform in case of an invasion in the middle of the night.”

  “That could be arranged.”

  Nicky had had enough. He pulled her off to the side of the dance floor. “How old are you, Rosalba?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “When?”

  “A year and a half from next March.”

  “So you’re sixteen.”

  “I’ll be eighteen in no time.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “A couple. Well, three, if you count the mechanic I’m stringing along in Pen Argyl.”