“Not at all.”
“You made the day special. I heard so many wonderful comments as the procession passed. The Blessed Mother will protect you always.” Sister Theresa squeezed Elsa’s hand before going into the school. Elsa looked down into the box of crowns she had so carefully constructed. It had taken hours to anchor the fresh flowers and weave the ribbons through the wires. Once assembled, she had spritzed them with cold sugar water, wrapped them in muslin, and stored them in the refrigerator. She had taken such pains with each crown, making them works of art. What had been so lovely was now a tangled mess. The circles of wire intersected one another in the box like magician’s loops. The ribbons were knotted. Elsa’s eyes filled with tears.
“It’s a shame. One parade, one day, and it’s all over,” Mabel said, standing above her on the steps. “I could weep too. And I might. All your effort. All those thorns. All those crowns.” Gio’s wife wore a black maternity coat with a white collar. Her blue eyes looked lavender against the sky. “Hey, Elsa. Pop’s inside, having cake and coffee with the priest. And I got a newsflash. The sky over South Philly hasn’t fallen.”
Elsa smiled. Mabel always managed to cheer her up.
Mabel joined Elsa at the bottom of the stairs and took the box of crowns from her. “Come inside and hear the compliments. Your crowns made the May Day. They’re all yakking. All the mothers said so.”
“They did?”
“Every single one. And these Neapolitans are a fussy bunch. Don’t say I said it.”
“I won’t.”
“You and me have to stick together. We’re the outsiders. The Irish and the Pole in the middle of all this marinara. You know what I mean.” Mabel winked.
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“Now, come on inside. I want my sister-in-law to get her due. Let them fawn. The nuns included.”
Mabel turned to go back up the steps. Elsa stood still, looking off in the distance.
“Are you all right?” Mabel asked.
“It all goes by so quickly. There’s something sad about it.”
“It won’t be sad when our kids are in it. Your Dominic will march when he has his Confirmation. And you never know, maybe I’ll have a girl and she’ll be the May Queen someday and you’ll make her crown. Won’t that be something?”
“That’d be nice.” Elsa followed Mabel into the school. She wasn’t thinking about the parade, or the roses or the crowns. On this holy day of remembrance honoring mothers, Elsa was thinking about her own, and how much she missed her, and how it never hurt any less to know that she would never see her again.
2
The night air had a nip as Nicky pedaled through Bella Vista on his bicycle. He’d had a nourishing supper of pasta fazool with a heel of bread washed down with a glass of homemade wine before heading out to his second job. He stood up on the pedals and swerved onto Broad Street, feeling the breeze on his face as he skimmed past the childhood homes of his friends, where he had spent time as a boy when he wasn’t with his cousins.
Nicky shifted his weight as he grabbed the handlebars, lifted his feet off the pedals, and jumped the curb, landing on the sidewalk as though the bike were a horse and he were a jockey. As he pedaled past the old houses, he sang the family names of the folks who lived inside like lyrics from an aria:
DeMeo, LaPrea,
Festa, Testa, Fiordellisi, Giovannini,
Ochemo, Cudemo, Communale,
Larantino, Constantino,
Imbesi, Concessi, Belgiorno, Morrone! Spatafora!
Cuttone, Caruso, Micucci, Meucci,
Gerace, Ciarlante, Stampone, Cantone,
Messina, Cortina, Matera, Ferrara,
Cucinelli, Marinelli, Bellanca, Ronca,
Palermo, Zeppa! Ferragamo!
Ruggiero, Florio, D’iorio . . . Sabatine, DeRea, Martino!
Nicky peeled off the macadam and onto the dirt alley behind the Borelli Theatrical Company as he sang out one last name:
Sempre Borelli!
He parked his bike on the loading dock next to the stage door and walked around to the front entrance of the theater, whistling as he went.
When Nicky entered the lobby of Borelli’s, he walked into the vestibule of his own cathedral. The lobby was gloriously Belle Epoque—that is, if the belle had been through hard times, come out the other side, and survived. The vaulted ceiling, papered in gold leaf, was peeling from age but still shimmered. An impressive set of double-arched staircases swirled up to the mezzanine. Upon close inspection, the velvet rope that draped to the top and served as a banister was worn in places and the treads of carpet on the steps were thin, but from a distance, the rich red velvet and wool remained regal.
A hand-painted mural of a landscape of Pennsylvania horse country provided a backdrop on the landing that had appealed to the fancy orchestra patrons. The luster of the paint had faded over time, leaving behind a soft patina in shades of butter mints.
Overhead an opulent Murano glass chandelier with hand-blown horns of white milk glass twinkled over the polished terrazzo floor, causing the gold flecks in the black-and-white stone to sparkle. The lobby’s flaws might be obvious in daylight, but at night, when the chandelier was dimmed, the soft glow made everything look lovely, including the patrons.
Sam Borelli’s parents had founded the theater seventy-five years before. The company staged Italian operas, which were popular with Neapolitan immigrants who longed for the music and stories that conjured home. Sung and performed in their native language, a night at Borelli’s made them feel as if the turquoise sea off the Amalfi Coast and the white beaches of Sicily were as close as the Jersey shore. But as these Italians became more American, their tastes changed as their memories faded. Soon, they preferred Broadway shows, plays and movies that featured stories about shop girls, men in uniform, and the swell set, young people with ambition and dough. No longer did they seek entertainment that reminded them of where they came from; they bought tickets to shows that dramatized where they were going: to the top, in Main Line style.
The Borellis were a show-business family, so instead of giving up, they adapted, forming an acting company. They dropped the opera, leaving it to the Academy of Music farther down on Broad Street, and instead began to produce classic plays, knowing anything British had appeal for their aspirational, working-class audience.