Eddie left the dining room and went out the kitchen door through the garden.
“I think he’s the most handsome man I ever saw,” Grace Delgrosso said longingly. She was seventy-seven years old and still had the muscle tone in her thighs to pump the pipe organ at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. “If I was twenty-five again, I’d set my cap for him.”
“You would?” Mamie smiled.
“I’d take him on a hayride that would never end.”
As the Viglione family filed into the dining room, the ladies served them their sympathy dinner. The tradition of the sympathy dinner, which their mothers had brought from Roseto Valfortore, was one that made them feel useful in times of loss. They remained in the kitchen as the family ate their meal, taking turns serving the guests. After dessert and coffee, the women lined up in the kitchen, as the family came through to thank them for preparing the feast.
Then, without fanfare, the ladies packed up the pots, pans, and ceramic dishes to take them home. The glasses were placed back in the basket unwashed. The dishes at the table were stacked, the silverware rolled inside a cloth napkin. Mamie set the centerpiece of roses aside and took the damask tablecloth, tied it around her waist, and knotted it with a large white bow. The ladies helped her load the pouch with the dishes and cutlery.
Marie Cascario placed the fresh roses in the center of the empty dining room table and turned off the chandelier.
They picked up their empty pans and formed a line, as they had when they entered the house. Led by Mamie, they left Minna’s home and, faithful to their tradition, did not disturb the household by washing the dishes before leaving; they carried them away so the family might rest before the funeral the next morning. There was not a crumb, a splash of gravy, or a lone olive on the kitchen counter. They left the house as they had found it: tidy and clean. They left it as Minna would have liked, in honor of her, in her memory.
Act III
Can we outrun the heavens?
—Henry VI, Part 2
10
Three Years Later
December 21, 1952
New York City
There wasn’t a star to be seen over Queens as night fell. The sky was peppered with charcoal-colored clouds as Nicky Castone drove his cab onto the lot of the Woodside Taxi Company to park after his shift. The air had the scent of an oncoming snowfall. Nicky flicked his cigarette out the open window before rolling it up. He grabbed the fare envelope filled with cash and got out of the car.
Strands of red, green, and navy-blue Roma Christmas lights swung haphazardly over the fleet of bright yellow cabs as he dropped the keys into the can outside the dispatcher’s hut. He slipped the envelope of cash through the deposit slot of the entrance door, which was crisscrossed with silver tinsel. Nobody ever accused hacks and grease jockeys of having an eye for holiday decorating, and if they saw the hut, they still wouldn’t.
Nicky waved to the attendant inside on his way off the lot. He pulled on his gloves as he passed the familiar storefronts on his way to the train station. The shop windows were fogged from a combination of steam heat and holiday crowds clustered inside at the cash registers. Bells jingled on the doors as customers exited with their packages. Christmas music poured out of speakers attached to the roof of the toy store. Only the rumble of the subway train on the elevated tracks overhead, its wheels heavy with a cargo of standing-room-only passengers, interrupted the Christmas din.
A flurry of snowflakes began to swirl around Nicky as he trudged up the steps to catch the train back into Manhattan. He groaned at the possibility of a white Christmas. The Woodside mechanics had already installed chains on the cab tires, so no matter what happened weatherwise, he was set.
Nicky squeezed on to the hot, crowded train car and grabbed the pole as it pulled out of the Woodside station and jerked onto the tracks over the expressway. He looked out the window and took in Manhattan’s skyline, which looked like a stack of blue velvet jewelry boxes sprinkled with pearl dust. Snow or not, the twinkling city at nightfall always gave him a lift and filled him with a sense of his own potential, even though his big dreams had not panned out as he had hoped.
When Nicky got off the train, he was in no hurry, so he stepped aside and allowed the rush-hour throng to flow past him like the rushing waters of a mighty river. He imagined their lives, husbands on their way home from work, stopping for milk before dashing home to their wives and apartments filled with children. The guys at the cab company reminded him he was lucky to be free, but Nicky knew luck had nothing to do with it.
Nicky stopped at the deli on the corner of Thirty-Fourth Street and Third Avenue and bought a turkey sandwich on a roll with two dill pickles on the side, one serving of rice pudding, and a cup of hot coffee. As he walked home, the pockets of his trousers were heavy with quarters, his own version of Christmas jingle. Holiday shoppers were always good for tips. There was probably fifteen bucks’ worth of coins that day, two shifts straight on the streets of Manhattan. He had earned every dime; this hack was beat.
Nicky went down the steps to his building and pushed through the common door. He stopped at his mailbox and flipped the brass plate. Finding his box full of envelopes, he stuffed the mail into his coat pocket before heading downstairs to his basement apartment.
“Surprise!” His neighbors, the Silverbergs, a young married couple who lived on the second floor, and the bachelor Ralph Stampone, a handsome bon vivant who lived on the first, stood next to Nicky’s dining table, decorated with a birthday cake and a bottle of wine alongside paper cups, plates, and napkins printed with balloons and stars.
“What would I do without my neighbors?” Nicky gave Mary Silverberg a kiss on the cheek and shook Mark’s hand and then Ralph’s. “I’d be a forgotten man.”
Nicky placed the sack from the deli in the refrigerator. The studio apartment was painted almond white, the same color used in the garbage room of the building, but a shade warmer than the odd pale green used on the walls in the hallways. There was a table with four chairs near the efficiency kitchen. A twin bed was made neatly under the only window in the apartment, which had a view of the sidewalk. As he lay in bed, Nicky could see people’s feet as they walked by. He had almost become an expert in guessing the whole of passersby based upon their footwear and gait. All the art was outside the window, as there were no paintings or photographs on display in the apartment, no hi-fi or record collection either. However, there were books from the Twenty-Eighth Street branch of the New York Public Library. Lots of them.
Nicky flipped on the radio to underscore the surprise party. “I’m glad you let yourselves in, and made yourselves at home.”
“You really should lock your door,” Ralph said, looking around, “though there’s nothing in here to steal.”