“How’s your luck?”
“The sun is shining, when I thought it never would again, so I would say my luck is good.”
The ambassador was on his way to America, and he would need it.
Carlo turned to take one last look at his village. The hillsides were mounds of wet black mud, smattered with a few hopeful sprigs of green. The spindly trunks of the fig trees had survived, stubbornly pushing up through the earth like markers of hope itself. The clutter of stone houses on the hilltop stood against the powder blue sky like a stack of cracked plates on a shelf. All was not lost, but what remained might not be enough to save his home.
Carlo watched as his wife pushed through the crowd to get a final glimpse of the carriage. Carlo waved to her. Elisabetta placed her hand on her heart, which made him feel more pressure to return a hero and gave him an ache in his gut.
Elisabetta’s face was the final image Carlo would take with him on the road to Naples to board the ship that would take him to America, where he would make his way to a small village in Pennsylvania that he believed held the key to saving Roseto Valfortore. He had heard that in America, all that was broken could be mended; there was a solution to every problem, and money flowed like the sweetest wine at a party that had no end.
Ambassador Carlo Guardinfante was about to see for himself what was true, and whether the land of hopes and dreams would provide either for him so he might save the village and the people he loved.
Prologue
May 1, 1949
Philadelphia
Philadelphia est omnis divisa in partes tres.*
All of Philadelphia was divided into three parts because Dom Palazzini and his brother Mike had not spoken to one another since March of 1933 (or thereabouts, the date was fuzzy on either side of the vendetta). As a result of their argument, they split the family business, the profitable Palazzini Cab Company, down the middle, and with it, the city they served.
Hoc est bellum.*
Dom lay claim to Montrose Street and all blocks south, while Mike took the tony territory of Fitzwater and Center City to the north. It was decided that Broad Street, both north and south, would be neutral territory. Pickups and dropoffs could be made on either side without censure. The flip of a coin determined that Dom would keep the name Palazzini Cab Company, while Mike would call his new venture the Pronto Taxi & Limousine Service.
The brothers severed ties over money, the cause of every split in every Italian family since the Etruscans, but the details behind the rift changed depending upon whom you asked and which side of Broad Street they lived on.
The inheritance of a small plot of land on Montrose Street had been verbally promised to Dom by their father but left to Mike in his will. Mike intended to sell the parcel to Dom—who had purchased Mike’s half of the family homestead upon their father’s death—but Dom felt the land parcel was part of his rightful inheritance and should have been included in the buyout of the house at no additional cost to him. Dom believed Mike should have simply done the right thing and handed over the deed. After all, their father had lived with Dom and his family in the homestead for many years, and Dom’s wife had cared for the old man until his death.
Unfortunately, what should have been a gift came with a bill. Insults were hurled. Dom accused Mike of being ungrateful, and Mike accused Dom of stealing. Money had gone missing from the petty cash in 1932—where was it? Who took it? Why did it matter now? There had been an incident one evening where the bank bag didn’t make it to the night drop. What happened to the cash?
What had festered like a boil for years was lanced—true sentiments were exposed. Mike told Dom he was “a cut-rate manager who ran the place on the cheap,” while Dom called Mike “a big-hearted Charlie” who was wasteful down to the lavish soap-to-water ratio used in the buckets when the fleet of taxicabs was washed and waxed. Dom wasn’t flexible with fees and lost customers to competitors, while Mike, who was charming and a better negotiator, was muzzled by his older brother, a hardheaded know-it-all.
The grievances stacked up, one upon the other, like soggy layers of wedding pastries on a Venetian table. Then it got personal.
Mike took too much time off to play cards and frolic in Atlantic City while Dom stayed behind and covered for him. Dom was an old-fashioned off-the-boat Italian immigrant, while Mike was a flashy Ameri-gan who had forgotten his roots. Mike had taken loans from the business, built a grand home on Fitzwater with an above-ground pool, and lived extravagantly with a marble fountain in the front yard, while Dom never borrowed a penny, lived within his means, and made do with a birdbath that he filled with a watering can. There was tumult. But then it got worse.
The wives got involved.
Dom’s wife, Jo, and Mike’s wife, Nancy, were like sisters until they weren’t. Jo was a martyr: she cared for her father-in-law until his last breath and cooked and cleaned and hosted Sunday dinner for both families without complaint, while Nancy put on airs, wore a leopard coat with a red satin lining, and dreamed of a Main Line life with servants. Jo wore a cloth coat, sewed her own clothes and curtains while Nancy went to the dressmaker, ordered her draperies from Wanamaker’s, and drove a cobalt blue Packard.
As the business prospered, Jo saved, while Nancy spent. Jo’s simple gold wedding band remained on her hand, but Nancy traded up. The prongs on Nancy’s modest quarter-carat diamond engagement ring were stretched to accommodate the glitzy three-and-a-half-carat upgrade. The delicate gold chain around Nancy’s neck was replaced with one as thick as a strand of pappardelle, from which dangled a new medal more miraculous than a pope’s.
Jo kept to the old ways, holding on to the traditions of her Sicilian family. She was happy to stay home and take care of Nancy’s boys along with her own, while Nancy went out on the town wearing the latest Mr. John hat to soirees, where the closest thing to anything Italian, besides her, was the cut lace on the tablecloths. Nancy, ever the climber, walked all over good-natured Jo on her way to the top, leaving bruises behind. Dom stepped in to defend Jo, and Mike did the same for Nancy.
Dom and Mike were so furious with one another that they brought their battle into the street, making it public, which no Italian family had done since Romulus and Remus called the wolf Mama. Outsiders were happy to fuel the fight with gossip and innuendo, deepening the rift.
The truth grew spikes and became a wrecking ball, severing the families.