In the dining hall, converted for the official processing on board of the cabin classes, Giovanna waited with the others to be examined. Sitting on one of the chairs now lined against the walls, she wondered how the buttonhook would be hooked on her eyelids and how much it would hurt. Moving up the line each time a chair was vacated, she finally arrived at her turn.
“Stand up,” said a deep voice from somewhere far above her and, when she obeyed, found that for the first time in her whole life, she needed to look up at someone’s face to see them. A very tall man, the tight leggings of his field uniform making him appear even taller, lifted her lids with feather-light fingers, peered through thick spectacles into her eyes for a suspended moment, then gestured dismissal, moving her on. The doctor who thumped her chest, then listened through his rubber stethoscope stood on tiptoes to do so, but he too found nothing and moved her on.
Breathless with relief, Giovanna hurried off to find Giovanni, who was being questioned at another table by an official speaking rapid English interrupting himself with loud bangs of his rubber stamp. Though impatient, Giovanna waited until she heard “Next,” the important word that Giovanni had taught her to listen for, then quickly whispered, “Giovanni! The eyes—I passed! But the doctor was gentle and no buttonhook. I thought you said …”
Giovanni, preoccupied, checking the official stamps and signatures on their papers of entrance, commented, “If you had been one of the poor from below, you would have gotten the buttonhook and the pain. For those who can pay, there are always privileges, so, you got gentle hands and no hook! Now, go collect your things and say your good-byes. We will be docking. I will come to fetch you when it is time to leave the ship.”
The small cabin was a beehive of last-minute emergencies. Megan, sprawled under her bunk was searching for a lost shoe, berating St. Anthony for not doing his appointed duty. Eugenie was tearing her bed apart in a frantic search for a precious hatpin while Bela on her top bunk, out of harm’s way, fully dressed, the salami cradled in one arm, her satchel in the other was beating out the rhythm with her booted feet as she practiced her name and destination in English. After things calmed down a bit, Giovanna handed Megan the paper with her address.
“To this you write, to me, please, if you wish about your Patrick and his nice horses,” Giovanna said very carefully to get all the words right and in their proper order. The Irish girl, much too excited to really pay attention, tucked the small piece of paper into her satchel and gave Giovanna a fast hug of farewell.
“Eugenie, this is for you. My address in America. You can write me in French, of course. I know you will be terribly busy moving into that fine new house but maybe, afterwards you will find some time to give me news of your exciting life and that maid of your very own.”
The French girl, her eyes a little misty by excited apprehension, nodded. Stuffing the paper into the pocket of her summer mousseline de soie that matched the color of her violet eyes, formally kissed Giovanna on both cheeks as though she was being given a medal—and was gone. Bela took hers, folded it in four, placed it carefully inside a small coin purse. Cupping Giovanna’s face in her large hands, said in her new English, “You good girl. Husband good. Like mine Lotar. We come Detroit—ha? Maybe?” And, hefting her suitcase and dilapidated hat from the bunk, left their cabin.
Watertight doors were opened, gangplanks attached, hundreds of anxious people looking up searching, as those on board looking down, did the same. Megan was the first to spot the face she was looking for, shrieked, dashed down the gangplank, catapulted herself into the open arms of a handsome young man in a pinstripe suit sporting a pearl gray fedora set at a rakish angle.
“Little darlin’,” he murmured, kissing her soundly. The two men flanking him stepped back in deference, smiled, appreciating the scene. Releasing the breathless girl, the man drew on his gray suede gloves, tucked Megan under one arm, his silver-tipped ebony cane under the other and, motioning for the men to take charge of his wife’s trunk, led her towards the exit. Giovanni, having observed the romantic reunion below, commented, “That’s no stable hand.”
A tree trunk of a man, the stoop of hard labor giving him the deceptive look of advanced age, plowed his way through the crowds, looking up, searching for the face he needed to see. Bela saw him first, waving the salami for positive identification, she yelled, “Lotar! Lotar!” Giovanna often wondered if it was that ridiculous sausage or his wife’s face that brought that big hulk of a man to a sudden standstill but, the way he caught Bela’s outstretched hands as she reached him, the joy that transformed him into a much younger man, that was hers alone.
Eugenie, in her rose-adorned boater and matching parasol, looking as pretty as a rotogravure on the sheet music of a love song, sat on her leather trunk waiting to be found. Giovanni hurried them out of the arrivals’ shed onto the teeming street.
The heat of a New York summer hit Giovanna with such force, she recoiled from it as though it were something alive wanting to devour her.
“Take your jacket off and roll up your sleeves,” instructed Giovanni doing the same. Seeing her astonishment, he laughed, “You are in America now! Freedom—my girl—freedom! Remember?”
So there stood Giovanna on a big city street in broad daylight, undressing and not one of the hurrying multitude paid the slightest attention. The sudden thought of how far could she could go before anyone did notice made her want to giggle but she didn’t, for that would really have been going too far even for the first day of a new life. For a fleeting second, she did think of the gossips of Cirié, then forgot them forever.
“Giovanna! Farewell!” Megan called as she was being handled into a gleaming, bright yellow motorcar that looked as though it belonged on a racetrack in constant motion, not parked sedately at a city curb by a fire hydrant. Handing Giovanna his coat to carry with her, Giovanni informed his wife that the gleaming beauty was actually a 1912 Four-Door Runabout converted with wire wheels, a monocle windshield, an oval gas tank and the removal of running-board panels into a special Ford Speedster and that Megan’s paragon of a hardworking, so dependable husband was, without a doubt, a most successful bookie and that he would explain what that meant when next he had time to do so, but now they had to hurry, catch the trolley about to leave without them, adding, “Don’t stop to look up—you can see tall buildings later!”