“Mama,” Giulia was saying, “we can’t wait. We can’t.”
Josephine pressed her temples with the palms of her hands. So many worries, these daughters gave her. Only Concetta was easy. She worked at the mill. Helped at home. Stayed out of trouble. Her mind flitted back to her baby girl, Valentina. What was it like in Vermont? she wondered. Cold. Snowy. She thought there might be mountains there.
“I want my scholarship,” Elisabetta said. “I need to study Latin to get into college.”
“Mama, are you listening?” Giulia said. “We can’t wait.”
Josephine frowned at her.
“Mama,” one of them said.
“You’ve brought shame to this household?” Josephine said to Giulia. Hypocrisy rose in her throat but still she said the words as if she did not know about desire and sin and the babies that come from that.
Giulia bent her head.
“But who is this boy? This Mario?”
Giulia shrugged. “A foreman at the mill,” she said again. “I love him.”
“He’ll marry you?” Josephine said. Tommy Petrocelli’s face appeared in her mind.
Giulia nodded, her head bent.
Josephine sighed and looked at Elisabetta. “Go there now. Learn your Latin. Get to college.”
“But it’s late,” Elisabetta said, even though she was grabbing her pink sweater and slipping on her shoes.
“Go to him now,” Josephine said. This daughter would get out of here. She had a good head on her shoulders. She would be a scientist, like Madame Curie.
Chiara watched her sister hurrying to the church, to Father Leone, to some future that Chiara could not even begin to imagine. Last Tuesday, Elisabetta had whispered to Chiara in their dark bedroom, “Did you know Father Leone’s name is John?” Her sister’s words had pierced her. He had chosen Chiara to become a nun. It was Chiara who was special, not Elisabetta. “Giovanni,” Chiara had corrected her.
“Go!” Josephine was shouting as Elisabetta gathered her things: Latin book and spiral notebook filled with verb conjugations. “Get away from here! Run to him, Elisabetta. Run!”
Chiara felt frightened and jealous and desperate. She fumbled in her pocket for her rosary beads, but when she found them, she was unsure what to pray for.
Coney Island Dreams
ALL WOMEN WERE PUTTANAS. CARMINE KNEW THIS. But still.
Still at night, to calm the images of that day in France in 1918, he summoned Eva Peretsky. Eva Peretsky was only six years ago, right before he left for the war, but she seemed a million years ago. Too much had happened since that weekend in Coney Island and tonight, lying in his bed in his mother’s house. He had to work hard to summon her, reach back before the thing that happened in the war. Back to Coney Island. First, Carmine closed his eyes and counted to three, picturing each number clearly before moving on to the next. The straight line of the 1 with its small hook at the top, like the hook at the end of a fishing pole; then the 2, swanlike and elegant; and finally the 3, its curves as round and bulging as Eva Peretsky’s breasts.
But he could not think of them yet. No. First he had to count backward: 3, 2, 1. Again picturing each number clearly, the breasts of 3, the swan of 2, the fishing pole 1. Sometimes, he was already growing hard at this point. Sometimes, he had to place his hands beneath his ass to keep from touching himself. He counted backward and his hands twitched, begging for Eva Peretsky.
“Not yet,” Carmine sometimes scolded himself out loud. His room was small and narrow, a former storage closet. His bed was also small and narrow, not even really a bed. More like a cot, like the one he’d slept on during Army training. If he thought about Army training, he would think about France, and then he would lose Eva. He made himself take a slow, deep breath, the way the Army doctor had taught him when he came home. He made himself count backward: 3, 2, 1.
Then he imagined a lemon. He imagined a lemon the size of his hand, the hand fighting for release beneath him. He imagined the yellow of that lemon. It was a yellow all its own, not the yellow of butter or egg yolks or Eva Peretsky’s hair. It was the yellow of this lemon. Sometimes he could almost smell the citrus over the sour smell of his sheets and his small room. When this happened, Carmine smiled. If he could free his hands, he would have made the sign of the cross in thanks to the Virgin for helping him get this far: Eva Peretsky’s hair. But he could not free his hands because he knew where they would go and what they would do and he had not earned that yet. He had not yet worked his way back to Eva Peretsky.