“You’re both as crazy as she is!”
“No, no. She isn’t crazy! All our lives we have been friends. Her mother was crazy, everyone knows that, but that doesn’t mean Giovanna is.” Celestina, warmed to her task, rushed on to present their conclusions. “Now listen, please! You came all the way back home to get yourself a sensible wife … and what do you do … you go and ask that Camilla. She’s pretty and all that silly stuff that you men seem to like so much … but really, Giovanni, she hasn’t a sensible bone in her whole spine and she has not too much up in her head either! Instead of having someone who could take proper care of you, you would have to spend all your time and money taking care of her. We, your loving sisters, think it was your very good fortune that Camilla turned you down!”
“And you better be careful that ambitious mamma of hers doesn’t force Camilla to change her mind and THEN you will really be in the soup!” Gina chimed in as Celestina was catching her breath, gearing up for the next assault.
“Gina’s right about the mamma. Now—we certainly don’t want you to find some Detroit lady to marry. Papa and Mamma would die. Their grandsons not Italian? What a thought! Now, as the good nuns love to say, ‘Let us look at the whole picture!’ You need a wife. Everybody agrees about that—healthy, strong, frugal … someone you can depend on. You said yourself how very, very hard the journey is to reach l’America … so what you need is a wife who can take the hardships you have told us about, who won’t have the vapors every two minutes, who can bear you healthy sons, save you money, and, also, has brains to learn to speak American so you won’t have to be ashamed of a wife as though you married an ignorant peasant from the South! Giovanna Zanchetta is not pretty, but she is dependable and all those other things I just said—and, as Teresa’s mamma always says, ‘Better an ass that carries than a horse that throws!’ And you know what is the best of all? Giovanna will never be able to run home to her mamma … because SHE HASN’T GOT ONE!”
Giovanni threw back his head and roared with laughter. Encouraged by his reaction, the sisters hugged each other, delighted.
“Come here, you two scamps!” and each received a brother’s kiss on their flushed cheeks.
Too much time was passing. Soon the ship would sail and with it an angry, disappointed bachelor. Giovanni, pressured by an imminent departure, made his decision, resigned himself to second best—more likely fourth or even fifth best, had anyone dared to question him—and so one evening presented himself at the Zanchettas’ front door.
Taken aback, Giovanna admitted him, presented him to her glowering father, and faded into the shadows, heart pounding. Giovanni wasted no time.
“Sir, I know the hour is late, but I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage. Please, before you answer, I wish you to know that I do not expect, nor do I have the need to accept, the required dowry. Should you give your consent I must warn you that any wife of mine will have to be ready to leave with me for America within the next two weeks.”
Giovanna’s father did not stir. His hawklike eyes focused on the young man before him, as though he were discovered prey.
“Couldn’t get the one you really wanted, so you’re desperate … boy?”
“No … sir.” Giovanni’s dislike of this man was hard to hide.
“Well, you can’t have this one! This one’s mine! She stays here where she belongs, to look after me.”
“And what about Giovanna? She is to have nothing to say … ?”
“Don’t you bring your evil foreign ways into my house! My daughter belongs to me! She will do what I say! GET OUT!”
Giovanni was more than ready. This bastard for a father-in-law? Nothing was worth that.
The soft “no” stopped his retreat. Despite his need to escape, Giovanni paused, intrigued. Stepping from the shadows into the circle of light, Giovanna faced her father’s chair.
“No, Papa! I am leaving. I shall go with Giovanni as his wife or not. I have no false pride in such things. If he will take me to America, I will go with thankfulness.”
Her voice calm, her manner assured, she turned, lifted her woolen shawl from its nail by the door, motioned the stunned young man to follow her, and stepped outside. The night was cold, darkened by a moonless sky. Arms folded, she stood looking up. He watched her, a little afraid of this young girl with the passionate convictions of a woman twice her age. Apprehensive silence lay between them.
I wish he’d say something! Anything! Get it over with. He won’t want to take me now after all this—so let him say it and get it over with. I’m tired of wanting too much! She tensed for his words, certain they would hurt.
Convinced he was making a catastrophic mistake, he turned her towards him. “Well, Giovanna Zanchetta, are you coming with me to America?”
“Yes,” she whispered, afraid to believe him.
“Thank God that’s settled! First we get your papers, then we marry …”
“You don’t have to, I meant what—”
“I know exactly what you meant in there. Where you get such craz—” Just in time, he caught himself. “STRANGE ideas is beyond me. Of course we have to be married. Mr. Henry Ford expects his workers to be respectable!”
She wore her mother’s summer hat, a bunch of wild irises her only finery. Her suitcase of straw, secured by its leather strap, contained the few mementos of a life already relegated to the past.
Nearly the whole village came to see them off. Sister Bertine and Sister Marie-Agnesia smiled benignly, slightly nervous as they always were when face-to-face with acts of coupling in the outer world. Father Innocente beamed. He loved the very thought that by nightfall of this very day these two young people would be one. Camilla, forgiven by everyone but her mamma, brought a pretty basket of fruit for the long train journey. The sisters wept, joy mingled with fear. When, if ever, would they see their favorite brother again? And what if, through their good intentions, they and they alone had condemned this bridal pair to death in the ominous depths of the Atlantic Ocean? Antonia wished Giovanna well, offered her a gift of a vial containing her father’s special concoction for the treatment of severe seasickness, cautioning her that as it contained laudanum, it could kill. Teresa pressed a small St. Benedict medallion into Giovanna’s reluctant hand, whispered as she held her close one last time, “May the Lord keep you, make His eyes shine upon you, guide you till the end of your days.”
The loud hiss of steam! Giovanna curtsied to her father-in-law, Giovanni embraced his mother, the sisters hugged their brother. The stationmaster, father to the Rossini twins, checked his large pocket watch, blew his special trumpet. Giovanna, following her husband, boarded the train.