“Why?”
“Are you serious, Gio? One of us is in dire need of spiritual intervention.”
“Sorry to hear you’re going through a tough time.” Gio pulled the cap back over his eyes and went back to sleep.
Nicky stood inside the vestibule of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The scent of beeswax and incense hung in the air, reminding Nicky of his own church, and of the comfort he found there. Inside, the sanctuary was a baroque showpiece of gold marble with red velvet accents. Pale ivory pillars lined the center aisle. The pews were bedecked with more ribbons, the altar with sprays of red roses, white carnations, and fronds of green. He looked over at the statues of the saints, mounted on the walls along the side aisles. They hovered over the pews like umpires on a baseball diamond.
Nicky knelt in the last pew. He made the sign of the cross and sat back on the bench, and on to a stack of commemorative booklets for the town Jubilee.
Nicky opened one and read the story of Roseto, falling into the story of the place as though it were a fairytale. A lot happened in this little burg. There were photographs of the women who worked in the town blouse factories, the priests of the parish, and the Monsignor from nearby Nesquehoning, the nuns of Saint Joseph and the men of Roseto working in the local slate quarries. He tucked the booklet into the breast pocket of his uniform before genuflecting at the end of the pew. On his way out, he picked up a flyer listing the Jubilee’s events by the door, thinking it might be fun to take a drive back to Roseto with Peachy and attend the carnival. It was just the kind of date she enjoyed.
When Nicky returned to the cab, the slam of the car door didn’t wake his cousin, so he nudged him. “Time to deliver.”
“Yeah.” Gio sat bolt upright.
“You never get a decent night’s rest, do you?”
“I’m a spotty sleeper at best.”
“Because you stay out too late.”
“I got a lot on my mind.”
“It’s a lot of pressure, thinking up new places to hide.”
“You are correct, cousin.”
Nicky took the turn onto Truman Street, a cozy block of two-story clapboard houses painted pastel colors, separated by two-family brick homes with colorful striped awnings. Nicky pulled up to 125 Truman, a single-family home, and handed the telegram to Gio.
Gio adjusted the official cap of the Western Union telegraph service as he sauntered up the sidewalk and rapped on the door. The house’s red-and-tan-striped awning looked sharp and clean against the brick. Nicky made a mental note to purchase awnings for the house he’d picked out for Peachy on Wharton, as they gave the exterior of a house a real flair.
“We’re good,” Gio said as he got back into the car.
As they drove to the top of Garibaldi Avenue to take the road out of town, Nicky took in the field roped off for a carnival. There were empty stands with signs advertising torrone candy for sale, sausage and pepper sandwiches, and zeppoles by the bag. Streamers decorated with small triangles of Italian flags flapped in the breeze. An empty Ferris wheel spun slowly in the distance, the sun peeking through its bright blue spokes.
“Cute town,” Gio said. “Must be celebrating something.”
Nicky stopped the car at the stop sign and pointed up, not wanting to miss a chance to educate his cousin beyond his expertise in the world of craps. “It’s a Jubilee, Gio.”
“How do you know?”
Nicky pointed to the banner that read Welcome to Roseto’s Jubilee.
“Hey, that guy looks like you.”
“What guy?”
“The guy on the banner. The faccia. What do you know?”
Nicky peered up at the banner stretched across the street, welcoming Ambassador Carlo Guardinfante. The painted image of the ambassador, framed in a laurel-leaf medallion, was impressive. Gio was right, the man’s face had the unmistakable shape, forehead, lips, and nose of a Castone.
“He has your hair. Your Ameri-gan hair.”
“He does, doesn’t he?” Nicky didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so he was fascinated to see a picture of anyone who resembled him.
“Everybody’s got a twin. Well, we found yours, didn’t we?”
“I guess we did. And mine wears an impressive uniform. I’m glad if somebody looks just like me; he’s a man of substance.”
“I wish I had a twin,” Gio said wistfully.
“So you’d have someone to cover for you when you were on the lam?”
“That’s one consideration. I’d also like a twin to run things by. Talk to him—see if what I’m thinkin’ is what I should be thinkin’.”
“You already have a guardian angel.”
“If you say so.”
“Who do you think gets you out of your scrapes?”
“Mother luck.” Gio shrugged.
Nicky drove down Garibaldi Avenue slowly taking in the quaint houses. At midmorning, the streets were empty; the men were at the quarries busting rock, the children were in school, and the women were working in the blouse mills.
“Cute little place,” Gio commented. “I could never live here.”
“Not enough action?”
“Nowhere near enough.”
“I’m sure they have poker here. They have cards everywhere, you know.”
“Yeah, but do they make their own cheese? I don’t know if I could live in a place where they don’t make their own cheese.”
*
The girls of Saint Mary Magdalen de Pazzi’s eighth-grade class were lined up in rows of ten across on Broad Street, leading the annual May Day procession. They wore pink eyelet ballerina-length dresses and carried bright blue prayer books in their white-gloved hands. On their heads, they wore crowns made of pale pink baby roses woven with white satin ribbons that cascaded down their backs, fluttering in the breeze as they walked.
Father Perlo walked behind the girls, moving from one side of the street to the other, dipping the sprinkler into the holy-water pot and blessing the crowd as he went.
The May Queen, Carol Schiavone, a fragile thirteen-year-old beauty selected by the nuns, stood proudly with one arm around the statue of the Blessed Mother, under an arch of red paper roses on the flatbed truck the class had decorated for the occasion. Beneath their feet was an Aubusson rug, in rich shades of ruby red, coral, and green borrowed from the convent entrance hall.
The Schiavone girl wore a formal white gown with long sleeves, a fitted bodice, and skirt made with layers of white tulle that were fluffed to look like a dollop of whipped cream. Anchored atop her deep brown curls, she wore a crown of white roses woven into delicate strands of gold wire, identical to the one on the statue. The Blessed Mother, her plaster robe freshly painted ice blue, loomed against the fawn-colored sky speckled with tufts of clouds.