“Lordy, Lordy,” she mumbled to herself. “That’s a bad sign. Somebody’s going to be with Jesus.” She looked up. “Safe travels.”
Hortense put down her paring knife, closed her eyes, and said a quick prayer. She sat down at her kitchen table, opened her loose-leaf binder, and wrote out Minna’s gravy recipe neatly. Again.
Minna Gravy–Test #17
For 5 cups of gravy:
6 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic peeled and sliced paper thin
2 small sweet onions, chopped very fine
2 medium carrots, diced
2 hearts of celery, diced (from 2 stalks)
5 pounds of fresh tomatoes (boiled, skinned, and strained like Minna)
5 stems of leafy basil shredded fine by hand, remove the stems
1/2 stick of sweet salted butter
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt to taste
Secret ingredient guess #17: 1/4 cup sugar
Hortense closed the binder and went to the stove. She dropped a tomato into the large pot of boiling water, following it with another, and another. She had boiled so many tomatoes since her return from Roseto, she had developed a technique whereby the boiling water engulfed the tomato without so much as a splash.
Louis Mooney entered the kitchen, placed his hat on the hook on the back of the door and a brown bag with a loaf of fresh bread on the table. “You’re making that tomato sauce again?”
“Yes, Louis.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“I don’t need your judgment right now,” Hortense said patiently, fishing the tomatoes out of the boiling water and placing them in a bowl to peel them. She set the bowl aside before adding more tomatoes to the pot.
“Is this all we’re going to eat until we’re dead?”
“Until I get it right,” she said pleasantly.
“Good to know.”
Louis left the kitchen. Hortense dropped a large tomato into the boiling water, but this one splashed. Boiling water ricocheted everywhere, like clear bullets. She jumped back and took a deep breath, pulling her rib cage up and her belly in, before exhaling. She went to the sink, chose another tomato, and dropped it into the pot. This time, the addition made barely a ripple.
*
Saint Maria de Pazzi Cemetery was a lovely one, as those places go. The working families who buried their loved ones there were artisans, stonemasons, carpenters, bricklayers, and welders; therefore the headstones, statues, and mausoleums were as ornate and well crafted as any shrine in any cathedral anywhere in the world. The humble were exalted here.
Sam Borelli’s fresh grave was covered in black earth, along with the scattered remnants of the flower arrangements from his funeral mass. White carnations, their long stems bent, fronds of yellow gladioli, pink chrysanthemums, and cypress leaves crisscrossed one over the other, a patchwork quilt of grief as Calla stood over her father’s grave and wept. She hated every flower in the church, knowing her father would have too. In her hands, she held a bouquet of long-stemmed calla lilies, which had not been represented in any of the arrangements from Falcone Florists. She had stopped and bought these at the flower market herself.
Calla knelt next to her mother’s headstone, kissed her fingertips, and touched the stone before rising. She placed the bouquet on her mother’s grave.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Rosa DeNero said from behind her.
“Not at all.”
“I couldn’t make it to the funeral, but I wanted to pay my respects.”
“We appreciate it, Rosa.”
“You brought flowers. With all the flowers from the church, you brought more,” Rosa commented.
“They weren’t the right flowers.”
“Falcone does the same thing for every funeral.”
Calla shrugged. “My sister went to school with the daughter who runs it now.”
“It’s all the buddy-buddy system. That’s the problem with South Philly. Business goes to who you know. No new blood. So everybody does everything the same.” Rosa sighed. “Your dad must have liked calla lilies. He named you after them.”
“My mom named me. That wasn’t the plan. My father had named my sisters after characters in Shakespeare. I was the last child, so I was going to be Olivia.”
“From Twelfth Night!”
“Right. But my mother said no. She said we may work for the theater, live for it, and sacrifice everything for it, but Shakespeare will not get the final word on everything we do. So I got named for her favorite flower. It was my mother’s only act of rebellion. That I know of.”
“She’d probably approve of the theater getting sold.”
“What?”
“You’re selling the theater.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I must have heard wrong,” Rosa said nervously.
“I’d love to know what you’ve heard.”
“The usual gossip. The box office has been weak. Now that your dad is gone, why keep the place going—that sort of thing. Everybody’s talking about the future.”
“What do you mean?”
“Frank Arrigo had an engineer come to look at the building.”
Calla knew Rosa wasn’t the sharpest employee at the theater, but surely she knew that Calla and Frank were a couple. “I know about that. Frank brought a city engineer in to make a bid to repair the building. It was my idea. I asked Frank to help.”
“He’s helping all right. He’s booked the wrecking ball.”
“What do you mean?”
“Frank Arrigo wants to tear it down and put up an apartment complex. The engineer said that the building would be too expensive to fix. Frank said it didn’t matter anyway. He was taking down the building.”
“He said that?”
“I heard it with my own ears. You’re going with him. I figured he said it to you too. Everybody says you’re going to marry him. Good for you. It’s none of my business, but I think you ought to grab him. A tall man is a rarity in South Philly.”
Across the cemetery, behind the cross of the risen Lord, stood the Palazzini mausoleum. It was built of Carrara marble and had an elegant open-scrollwork black iron gate over the stone door, which had been welded by patriarch Domenico Michele, one of the two people buried inside. Next to him, in the crypt, were the remains of his grandson, Richard, whom everyone knew as Ricky, Nancy and Mike’s son, who’d died in battle during World War II. The mausoleum was large enough to fit eight family members, so admission was a matter of who got there first. The remainder of the Palazzini clan would be buried in the lots behind the mausoleum and, when those were filled, in the field beyond the church parking lot. The arrangements had been made before Dom and Mike’s split. They may not speak in this world, but they would reside next to each other in the next one.
Jo Palazzini had cut a large bouquet of flowers from her garden, wrapped them in wet newspaper, and taken a walk over to the cemetery to decorate the mausoleum. Her summer garden was off to a great start. The blue hydrangea had never come in so full and blue, their periwinkle petals like velvet.