* * *
Calla sat in front of Mr. Collier’s desk at the Third Federal Savings and Loan of Philadelphia wearing her best blue velvet hat, black wool coat, and kid gloves. She knew to wear her Sunday best to any meetings at the bank. Sam Borelli hadn’t cared for institutions much; when he stood on line to make a deposit to meet payroll, he would grumble about the grandeur, the granite floors, marble counters, and gargantuan mother-of-pearl-faced clock, reminding his daughter that it was the customers who paid for this opulence. He called the intimidating decor “the splendor of the lender.”
A row of fine mahogany desks were lined up across the room, the contents of their polished surfaces identical down to the leather pencil cups. The men that sat behind them looked alike, as though they had been ordered from a catalogue that sold bankers like farm equipment or trousers. Buy your financial expert here! the advertisement might have read: choose a gray, myopic, balding middle-aged man with roots in England to handle your money. He knows something you don’t. No wonder most of the paisans in South Philly kept their money under their mattresses.
Elwood Collier, the jovial bank manager caring for Calla’s interests, looked like the rest, but at least he was pleasant. He returned to his desk with three envelopes for her.
“Here you are, Miss Borelli.” Mr. Collier handed her the bundle of envelopes and took a seat. He looked at Calla’s face and reassured her. “Don’t question your decision. Since the war, houses are going for fair prices. You did well.”
“You know, I always wondered,” she said softly.
“What’s that?” He pushed the cancellation of Sam Borelli’s mortgage across the desk for Calla to sign.
“If having money makes you feel better.”
Mr. Collier smiled. “I think it helps.”
“I don’t think it does.” Calla picked up the fountain pen and signed the document.
Collier stamped the contract paid in full and placed the receipt in the file. He folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “This happens in every family. It happened in mine. The parents pass away, and the children are left behind and have to make a decision about the family home. Your sisters don’t live in the city any longer. They’re married, with their own families. Someday you’ll marry and have a family and you’ll look back on this and know that you made the right decision. A house is nothing more than wood and stone.”
“A pile of bricks?” Calla added.
“That’s right.”
“Not to me.”
“I didn’t mean to sound insensitive. But it isn’t the house itself that matters, it’s the people in it that make a home.”
“I don’t know. Places are important, Mr. Collier. At the theater, sometimes we think to do the play without a set, just lights and black walls. We call it minimalism. And pretty soon we’re in rehearsal, and we realize that the actors need things to fill out the world. They need places to sit. Doors to move through. Rooms to make memories in, to live inside. A place to hold their stories. A context to be. Familiar places that we return to, where we remember the scent of the kitchen when our mother’s baked or the wallpaper of roses in the stairwell or the old porch with the bum step; they aren’t nothing. They are part of what makes us human. We’re defined by where we dwell and how we take up space in this life and what we choose to put in it. I’ll always mourn the sale of my father’s house, my mother’s garden, and the kitchen table where I ate every meal of my life. Why wouldn’t I? I don’t know how you sell off every memory you ever made and feel good about it.”
“I can’t answer that for you. But I do know, when it’s time for you to buy a new home, you come and see me.” Mr. Collier handed her his business card. “And this bank will be happy to help you with your first mortgage.”
Calla stood. She exhaled slowly from her mouth, and the sound she made came out like a whistle. The bankers looked up from their desks to see where the whistle came from as Mr. Collier rose to shake her hand.
She placed the envelopes in her purse, the individual checks cut for the proceeds of the sale of the family homestead on Ellsworth Street. There was a check for Helen and one for Portia, and the final one belonged to her.
As Calla walked out of the bank, she wished for the first time that she were wealthy—Really rich!, as the cartoon character Little Mary Mix-Up had shouted that morning on the funny pages—because if Calla were loaded, it would have never come to this. She would have bought the house from her sisters and lived in those rooms all the days of her life. She needed those walls, for reasons she could name and for others that she couldn’t. Calla believed there was something terribly wrong about selling the house, but she couldn’t convince her sisters to hold on to it any longer. They had reached the limit after three years of Calla buying time with nothing but empty promises and hopes of a hit at the theater to provide extra cash. Surely her brothers-in-law had put pressure on their wives, and they had issued an ultimatum. Calla was not their responsibility, they were raising families of their own, running businesses. She accepted that, so Calla sold the house. Everything her parents lived, worked, and struggled for was gone, divided into three parts, never to be whole again.
* * *
The Drama Bookshop was on the second story of a building on Forty-Second Street whose street-level store sold musical instruments. Nicky climbed the stairwell off the street and entered the shop, filled with books and light that poured in through the storefront windows. The shop had a clear view of Times Square, the sidewalks were packed with people while the streets cluttered with cars and trucks. The last of the gray snow had melted along the gutters of Midtown, turning into black streams before disappearing into the grates on the street corners. Nicky was happy to have a day off, out of the traffic, noise, and cold.
The dark walnut floors of the bookstore were buckled from age. The warped shelves were filled with books about the history of theater, biographies of the players, plays, and academic volumes on directing, acting, and producing. A felt-covered game table was filled with a display of coffee table books with elaborate illustrations of costume design, rendering of sets, and photographs of evocative stage lighting.
Nicky wandered to an open area, where a large, polished table was stacked with books about Shakespeare, surrounded by individual copies of his plays for purchase. Nicky picked up A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As he leafed through it, it brought back good memories of the Borellis.
Nicky took his time going through the stacks. He had a giddy sense of anticipation at all there was to learn, but he also wondered: At his age, why should he try? Was it too late for him? What would he do with the knowledge once he had acquired it? Nicky was desperate to act professionally onstage in New York. He had come close at several auditions, only to lose out to actors with more experience. Coming close kept Nicky in the game; it also led him to the shop, to look for a manual to help him do better at auditions.
Nicky did not have the benefits of an education; everything he learned was from observation and the practical knowledge he had gleaned from his work at Borelli’s. He was an eager student, though, and in Nicky’s favor, he had a natural acumen for Shakespeare, the language came easily to him. Sam Borelli said some people were like that; they read the verse, understood the intent, and it made sense to them.
Nicky discovered a low shelf behind the new releases:
Used Books for Young Thespians
He sat down on the floor and looked through the children’s books, thinking he might find something for the Palazzini kids, who were multiplying at a rate that rivaled the tomatoes on the roof of the Montrose Street house. There had been some changes, but the family remained close. Mabel and Gio still lived with Jo and Dom. They had a daughter, Giovanna, who was probably walking by now. Elsa and Dom’s son had started school, and they had a second baby, Joseph, who had just begun to crawl. Elsa sent a photograph of their new home two blocks down on Montrose. Lena and Nino still lived in the homestead, and were expecting their first baby.
&
nbsp; Nicky was sorting through the spines of the children’s books when he recognized a title. He pulled the hardcover book from the shelf. The size and weight of the book were also familiar, as was the jacket art.
“You need help there?” the salesman asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good book,” the man said as he passed.
Nicky’s heart began to beat faster as he turned the pages of the book. Of late, when his heart raced, it was a result of anxiety, but not today. He remembered this book, and it brought him back to the beginning. The illustrations had not been forgotten but had simply been layered upon by time. They were there in his mind’s eye as clearly as the moment he first saw them. He had been told, as a young boy, that the pictures in this book were called plates. Between the plates were translucent sheets of sheer paper etched in gold to protect the artwork. He even remembered the flimsy paper!
At five years old, Nicky had been confused by the use of the word plates, knowing that was where food was placed, not art. He recalled being afraid of a character on the jacket art, which showed Elizabethan actors in a theatrical parade. All these years later, the face of the sinister court jester holding hands with a young man clutching a balloon still gave Nicky pause. How Nicky had wished he could jump into the picture and warn the boy about the jester with the face of the devil.
Nicky ran his hands through his hair, trying to remember more.
Tales from Shakespeare
Charles & Mary Lamb
Colour plates by A. E. Jackson
The touch of the sleek jacket paper, embossed in black, and silk-screened with velvet-rich tones of sapphire blue, ruby red, and harvest gold, sent him back in time. The endpapers were deepest maroon, and made Nicky feel that way, lost, yearning, marooned and longing for a time that had defined him.
This was the book his mother had read aloud to him night after night, before he went to sleep. She would curl her body around him as he lay in his bed, resting on his pillow. Nicola would hold this book open with both hands while her son, cradled in her arms, tucked under the blankets, followed the pictures as she read aloud. The renditions of Shakespeare’s plays were presented as simply as nursery rhymes and as dramatically as fairy tales. Shakespeare’s tales were the smooth stones that built the mosaic that became Nicky’s imagination as a man.
Nicky was bereft when he recalled the night his mother stopped reading aloud to him. So ill, she lost her voice and could no longer speak. The loss of that ritual from his life was as central to his present loneliness as was the loss of her. These stories, typeset in black ink, letter by letter, were imprinted on his heart. The plain font, offset by the scrolling of the Elizabethan calligraphy, with its arcs and swirls placed by hand on paper—they had not disappeared from his memory either.
The illustrations had shaped his romantic view of women. Every girl he ever lusted after looked like the drawing of Beatrice in the garden. She was painted as a mischievous brunette wearing a yellow taffeta gown and a knowing expression. He was compelled to Beatrice when he was a boy, and she struck his fancy now, echoes of her in the real women he had loved.
Nicky closed the book and held it, as though he had been reunited with his oldest friend on his darkest day. His knowledge of Shakespeare hadn’t come from his keen ability to decipher the text, it had come from his mother.
“This is an old one,” the cashier said over his reading glasses. “From England.”
“I read it as a boy.”
“You’re lucky,” the cashier said as he rang up the book.
Nicky nodded, but he disagreed with the fellow. How was Nicky Castone lucky? Nothing had panned out for him—at least none of the things he had set his heart upon. People just say things to fill the air, he thought.
“There are no reprints of this book that I know of,” the cashier offered. “Last copy I’ve seen in a while. Maybe they have it at the library.”
“Good to know.” Nicky pulled out his wallet to pay for the book.
“You shopped here before?”
“No. I’ve heard about it from other actors.”
“You’re an actor? I was too. A hundred years ago.” He grinned.
“That’s when they lit the stage with smudge pots.”
The cashier laughed. “That’s right.”
Nicky looked at the man. The city was filled with second-story shops tended by former actors, dancers, and singers who had moved to Manhattan for the same reasons he had with the same goals in mind. He felt a kinship with the man and the bookstore, so he asked, “Are you looking to hire anyone here?”
“You looking for work?”
“Something part-time. Something in the theater.”
“I don’t have anything right now. But there’s a board in the back with job listings.”
Nicky thanked him, tucked the bag under his arm, and headed to check out the job board. He took down names of theaters, a prop house, and an electrical supply company, and the telephone number of a well-known actress who needed her dog walked on matinee days. He was delighted to read the listings; they reminded him of his old second job at Borelli’s. Nicky moved closer to the board when he saw this advertisement:
Monthly productions! A three-hundred-seat theater! Weekly seminars! Nicky could picture the building on Riverside Drive; he drove on that street daily picking up fares, dropping them off. Surely it was fate that he’d found this post, but more so, the five words in the ad that would make it all possible: Accredited by the Veterans Administration. Not only would Nicky be able to study theater, it would be paid for on the GI Bill. If they wanted him. If he could get in. The sacrifices he had made during the war might give him what he most yearned for: a second act.
* * *
Hortense hid in the Palazzinis’ mud room as Jo ladled Minna’s Venetian gravy onto the fresh penne at the stove in the kitchen. Dom was home for lunch, and Jo had agreed to be part of the dispatcher’s secret experiment. Hortense stood behind a fig tree that was ready to be planted out in the garden. The Spatuzzas had made their annual spring drop-off, and one tree at a time, Jo was planting the bounty.
“Is this how you want it to look?” Jo whispered, showing the dish to Hortense on her way to the dining room.
Hortense nodded.
“Here goes.” Jo went into the dining room with the plate of macaroni and placed it in front of her husband. She scooted the bowl of grated cheese and the red pepper grinder in front of her husband. “What’s new, Dominic?” she asked casually.
“I need a new lift at the shop.”
“Are they expensive?”
“What do you think? Hydraulic. It’s not like the old days. Everything costs.”
Dom placed his napkin over his shirt. He picked up his fork and pierced the penne. He tasted the pasta and chewed.
“How is it?” Jo asked.
“You got more gravy?”
Jo went into the kitchen. Hortense watched as Jo ladled gravy into a small ceramic boat. “He wants more!”
Hortense raised her hands in a silent Praise be! as Jo brought the gravy boat into the dining room. Dom doused his pasta with the gravy. He sprinkled fresh grated cheese on the gravy before spearing several flutes of penne and putting them into his mouth.
“What do you think of the gravy?”
“What do you mean, what do I think?”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s good.”
“It’s different, Dom.”
“You tried something new?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing important.”
“I like it.”
“That’s all that matters,” Jo assured him.
“If that was all that mattered, you wouldn’t change the food around here. I like what I like.”
“If I can improve things, why wouldn’t I?”
“You have a point.”
“Thanks, honey.” Jo gave her husband a quick kiss on the cheek before returning
to the kitchen. She joined Hortense in the mud room. “He likes it.”
“Does he know it came from a jar?”
“If I told him, he’d spit it out.”
“Even if it’s delicious?”
“It wouldn’t matter to him. He’s off the boat. They’re impossible. If he could have me pounding cornmeal on a rock in Calabria in the hot sun to make his polenta, he’d be happy. Gravy is supposed to be from scratch. He has to know that I have stood there for hours pressing tomatoes through a sieve. Somehow, in his mind, my efforts translate to love.”
“I understand.”
“I knew you would.”
“I’ve been working for him for over thirty years. He is a man who sets parameters.” Hortense turned to go back to the office.
“I can test it out on the whole family tonight if you want,” Jo offered.
“Would you do that for me?”
Hortense climbed the steps to the dispatch office. She placed her straw hat on the file cabinet before fishing out the ring of keys from her purse. She sorted through them and unlocked her private drawer in the filing cabinet, pulling out a large black ledger marked TESTING. She opened it and made a series of quick notes under the column header Batch 77. She closed it, slipped it back into the cabinet, and looked up to heaven. “Come on, Minna. Give me a sign.”
* * *
Riverside Drive curled along the cliffs above the Hudson River like a garland. The Beaux Arts buildings along the wide, tree-lined boulevard of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, built of white sandstone, cream-colored granite, and gray fieldstone with bold architectural flourishes, including copper-tipped cupolas and shingled turrets, reminded Nicky a lot of Paris. Over the drive the steep hillside sloped down into Riverside Park, which, at twilight, was filled with children as they finished playing before supper.