Only the Second World War and Nicky’s procrastinating had stood between her daughter and the altar celebrating the DePino/Castone high nuptial mass, and now, the path was clear. In a few short months, Peachy would have her dream, the paperwork filed, and the gold band on her finger. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Castone would be recorded in the chancery for all eternity. Concetta was as ebullient as she was relieved.
Connie looked into the mirror hanging over the bar cart and examined her changing face. It was framed by her hair, dyed a soft apricot to cover the white. Her eyebrows remained black and thick from her youth, nicely contrasting with her brown eyes, but her lips needed something extra. Concetta had taken to using three shades of coral lipstick, from light to dark, blotting in between applications to plump up what nature had taken away. She pulled the clasp from the back of her pearls to the front so that the pavé diamonds threw light, which Concetta believed gave her a glow. She stepped back, turned sideways, and tilted her face to the mirror as she pulled in her stomach and threw back her shoulders. Since her sixty-fifth birthday, Concetta’s shape had shifted from that of a violin to a duck. Her small waist had broadened; it was shot, loose like elastic found in old underpants. It would be a longline girdle for her for the rest of her life. She hummed a sigh of surrender. At least she still had the face.
Small tea sandwiches made from thin white American bread, filled with either pimento cheese and bacon bits or cream cheese and red caviar or a mixture of fig paste with whipped honey butter, were arranged on a ceramic platter on the dining table by flavor. On a tiered silver server, snowball wedding cookies iced in pink coconut were arranged alongside cutout sugar cookies shaped in the letters D and C, which Concetta had been horrified to realize were not only the initials of the surnames of the bride and groom but shorthand for a procedure she had at Allegheny Medical a few years earlier. Concetta quickly flipped the letters to C and D until the tier was in alphabetical order.
“Why the damn fuss, Connie?” Al DePino, her husband of forty-two years, stood in the doorway in his thick white undershorts. Not since Humpty Dumpty sat on his wall had a neck, chest, and waist been so seamlessly connected.
“Criminy, Al! Get dressed. The Palazzini women are on their way over.”
“So?”
“I don’t want to scare them.”
“It’s the DePinos who should be scared.”
“Why should we be afraid?”
“Castone is not a man of conviction.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I don’t like him.”
“Well, I do.”
“He’s a shifty orphan. Couldn’t she have picked one of the boys with parents?”
“She likes the nephew. Okay? The oldest one was never going to go for Peachy. Gio? I don’t want a gambler in the family. That’s a curse you can never crawl out from under. Besides, that one went for the Irish girl anyway. And Nino has loved Lena Cortina since grade school. That leaves Nicky Castone.”
“We only got to pick from one family in all of Philadelphia?” Al put his fingers together in the formation of two beaks and pecked his words for emphasis. “We can’t choose from the tri-state area? We’re limited by geography? We’re like a potted plant that can only grow in certain climes. Who made up these rules?”
“Your daughter likes what she likes.”
“You spoiled her, and this is the result.”
“No, you moved us here against our will from Rhode Island when Peachy was getting traction with some very nice young men, and she had to start over and then there was the war and here we are.”
“What does all that have to do with anything now?”
“There were more marriageable young men in North Providence. Look around. Philly is a dustbin.”
“Your opinion. I like it here. At least we didn’t wind up in the internment camp.”
“That’s because of me and my connections. Your people are a bunch of followers. The DePinos put their hands in the air and marched right into the coops. If it weren’t for my family and Joe Peters and his quick thinking . . . ”
“I am not going to kiss your cousin Joe’s coolie for the rest of my life.”
“It wouldn’t kill you. He kept us out of the camps.”
“I send him a bottle every Christmas, what more do you want from me?” Al scratched an itch on his rear end.
“Not near the food, Al!” Connie pushed her husband away from the dining room table. “Please behave yourself. I can handle your glares and grunts and gas, but other people aren’t obligated. You look like you could kill someone with your black-eyed stare. It’s off-putting. It’s ill-mannered.”
“I’m not changing to impress people. You didn’t marry Serge Obolensky.”
“No, I did not. But you could have a little class. Show a little effort. Some couth! If not for me, for your daughter.” Concetta went around the dining room table and straightened the chairs and adjusted the place mats and napkins. “I don’t understand you, Alessio.”
“What’s to understand? I love my kid,” Al said, his eyes filling with tears. He grabbed a paper napkin.
“Not my party napkins!” Concetta fished into her dress and under her bra strap, producing a pressed handkerchief, and handed it to her husband, grabbing the paper napkin out of his hand.
“Always with the decorations.” Al dabbed his eyes with her handkerchief.
“It’s what women do.” Concetta fanned the paper napkin next to the cookie tier. “We get tired of looking at the same old thing, so we decorate. Now go upstairs and put on your pants. And would it kill you to put on a tie?”
“It would.”
“Do it for Peachy.”
“Do what for Peachy?” Peachy entered the dining room, wearing a pink wool skirt and a pale green sweater. She had placed a small pink velvet bow and a matching green one in her hair.
“Whatever you want!” Concetta took her daughter’s face in her hands and kissed her forehead. She reached down to her daughter’s skirt and pulled at the loose waistband. “You’re too thin.”
“I’m all right, Ma.”
“You’re my Peachy Piccina, Skinny Minnie, Fattie Boom-ba-lattie, I don’t care about your size. You’re getting married and I’m so happy for you.”
“The only time I’ve ever seen your mother this happy is never.” Al popped a coconut cookie into his mouth.
“Al. Stop poaching the refreshments. Your pants.”
“I mean it, Peach,” Al said, hiking up his briefs to cover his belly button. “This wedding is your mother’s life.”
“Peachy is my life. So what? She will have the most beautiful wedding South Philly has ever seen.”
The doorbell rang, sending Concetta across the dining room, arms akimbo, to shove her husband out of it. “Pants, Al! Pants!”
Peachy laughed and slipped a C cookie from the tier on her way through the living room to the front door. She chewed and swallowed quickly before throwing the door open to greet her wedding party. “Aunt Jo!” Peachy embraced Nicky’s aunt, standing in for the mother of the groom.
Jo Palazzini had a small, muscular build and a chic, cropped hairstyle that showed off her thick black hair streaked with white. “Ma!” Peachy called out. “The girls are here!”