Salvo failed to hide their shock.
“America has been good to you,” Mimoo said, hugging her cousin.
“She has a gentleman caller?” Salvo whispered to Gina. “Aunt Pippa! So nice to see you! You haven’t changed a bit!”
“Salvo, you’ve always had a silver tongue. But don’t waste it on me, I already have a man.” She swallowed him in her skirts.
“Aunt Pippa, how you kid. Please let go. I’m suffocating.”
Pippa herself had no children, but had raised Angie as her own after Angie’s mother died ten years earlier.
“Will there be room for us?” Mimoo asked. “We don’t want to impose.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s plenty.”
But it was Pippa who was silly. There wasn’t plenty. There was barely any. She and Angie lived in two small rooms on the second floor.
“It’s really two and a half rooms,” said Pippa, pointing to half a closet in which an oven stood.
Salvo looked around. “What is your plan?” he asked.
“I know it may not look like much,” said Angela, “but it’s cheap and it’s close to work.”
“So is that boat on the canal,” said Salvo. “But we don’t live in it.”
“Salvo!” That was Mimoo. She sat down heavily in the chair in the living room and took Pippa’s hands. “This is very good and kind of you, Pippa,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”
“Of course we will be,” Pippa said. “As soon as you find work, we will look for a bigger place, perhaps a proper house, like they have over by the Common.”
“I like being close to work, Aunt Pippa,” Angela said.
“You can stay here. Why do you have to come?”
They bickered but all squeezed in: the four women piled into the bedroom, with Gina and Angela on the floor, while Salvo took the couch in the living room.
“Salvo is not complaining, Pippa,” Mimoo said. “He’s just in a bad mood.”
“He’s been in a bad mood for a year,” said Gina. “What’s your excuse now, Salvo?”
“I need an excuse?” He spread out on the couch with the small window ten feet from him. “In Belpasso, I had my own room, my own space. Now I’m next to the dining-room table.”
“Gina, if you want, you can stay with Verity,” Angela said. “She lives a few blocks from here, across the river on Ashbury. Her parents have a little house. She said you could stay with her.”
“How would Gina staying somewhere else help me?” Salvo snapped.
“It’s not all about you, Salvo,” Gina said.
“No, it’s all about you, Gina.”
“Stop it, you two,” said Mimoo. “Maybe Gina should stay with Verity.”
“No,” he said. “The family stays together.”
“Fighting every minute?”
“Together.”
“Cheer up, Salvo,” Angela said, pinching him. “You’ll get work, we’ll find a bigger place. In the meantime, upstairs there is a young lady I can introduce you to. She’s nineteen but not blonde. She’s not blonde or Italian.” Angela tickled him, kissed him. “I’m just joking with you. Come on, it’s not so bad. You can take her out for ice cream. Gina, you want some ice cream?”
“How often do the trains run?” Gina asked suddenly.
Angela was momentarily rendered speechless. “Trains run where?”
“Anywhere. Say, to Boston?”
“Gina!” That was Mimoo. “Don’t even think about trains or Boston. You are not allowed to go to Boston.”
“I’m just asking a question, Mimoo. I’m allowed to ask questions, no?”
“No!”
“I don’t know about trains,” Angela said. “I don’t go to Boston.”
“You don’t go to Boston?” Now it was Gina’s turn to be speechless.
“Not since the day we came. And Verity has never in her life been. Why do you need a train to Boston?”
“I don’t. Just curious.”
Salvo elbowed her. “No,” he said. “Not even curious.”
“You leave me alone.” She moved away.
“Gina,” said Mimoo, “stop your lollygagging and help me unpack the trunks. We need fresh clothes. Train to Boston—ignore her, Angela. It’s dinnertime soon.”
Dinnertime! Gina couldn’t believe it. On top of all its other sins, Lawrence swallowed time.
They unpacked as best they could and helped with supper. They had spaghetti with tomato sauce and clams, “caught fresh yesterday!” The bread was good, as was the homemade Buffalo mozzarella, though Salvo later, and privately, pointed out to Gina that his mozzarella was much better and Gina pointed out to Salvo that the two rooms they had stayed in yesterday were much bigger.
After three glasses of wine, Mimoo began to cry about Alessandro and Antonio, and Gina took that as a cue to leave the table, because she knew that once her mother started, her mother would not stop. She went into the bedroom and lay down on the blankets on the floor. She didn’t even look out the window because there was nothing to see except the alley behind Canal Street.
But when she closed her eyes, she heard the bagpipes and the barrel organ and the wedding mandolins, saw the beautiful people in their urban haze, riding uphill in cable cars and trolley cars, and a busker with a harmonica on the jammed city street, who played and sang. On her first disillusioned night in her new home town, Gina fell asleep to the memory of the singing man, yearning that someone someday might want to win her heart like the pretty girl had won the heart of the lonely musician.
“Since we met I’ve known no repose, she’s dearer to me than the world’s brightest star, and my one wish has been that someday I may win the heart of my wild Irish Rose …”
Chapter Six
A SUNDAY IN A SMALL TOWN
“BARRINGTON is the heart of the American way of life,” Ben Shaw would add after he had introduced his friend Harry as the son of the man who founded and built a town entire. It was the way he had introduced him to Alice, a few years back, whom they both wanted to impress and were even more impressed when she wasn’t, and it was the way he had introduced him to Gina, whom they both wanted
