The white light at the high-up windows had turned gray, then disappeared. The antechamber was even draftier, and Cettina had nestled into Stella’s side so they could share body heat. Luigi and Giuseppe, both of whom the sisters had had to scold for raucousness, were asleep on the floor, heads in Assunta’s lap. Stella’s feet hurt from standing in her new Nicastro shoes.
Five thirty came and went, and Stella’s heart began to pound. One by one the station agents, the doctors and record keepers who staffed the facility, had left, pulling knee-length wool coats over their uniforms and tucking scarves under the lapels as they passed through the antechamber and into the wind whistling outside. At five of six, the black-shirted man came out again and said something to them. Stella, her stomach sutures pulsing with her panic, smiled brightly and nodded. He repeated himself, and so she nodded again. He sighed, and walked back to his office box.
The overhead lights were turned off at six, but the uniformed man kept the light on in his office. The sisters were silent, Cettina trembling but for once keeping her silly mouth shut. Stella stroked her mother’s head like a cat’s to keep them both calm. She watched the minute hand descend again. There had been an innocent mistake, and Antonio had gotten the day wrong. Antonio had gone to the wrong place and would find them here when he figured out where he needed to go. Antonio was not looking for them. Antonio was dead. Antonio was in jail. The tickets had been a hoax. The journey had been to punish Assunta for being a bad wife and now they would all live homeless in a foreign country. The minute hand passed the six and began its ascent toward the twelve again. Any minute now the guard would kick them out.
It was 7:20P.M. when Antonio Fortuna finally came to collect his family. He came with another man who looked familiar but whom Stella couldn’t place.
“We went to see a movie when we heard the ship was late” was the first thing Antonio said to his wife after not having seen her in almost a decade. “But we got up so early this morning to drive down here that when the lights went out in the movie theater we both fell asleep.”
“You must have been so worried,” the strange man said. He had a warm face and a friendly-looking mustache. “You poor things.”
“This is Zu Tony Cardamone,” her father announced. “Your Za Violèt’s brother. He’s going to drive us home in his car.”
Stella and Cettina exchanged glances. Car?
“Zu Tony, you know my wife, Assunta. These are our children. Mariastella, Concettina, Giuseppe, and this must be Luigi.” Antonio stooped to look in the brown eyes of the son he had never met. “Luigi. I’m your Papa.”
“I know,” Luigi said. His face had flamed.
“Are those all the clothes you have to wear? Short pants?” When Luigi, confused, didn’t answer, Antonio turned to his wife, his voice rising. “You let him wear short pants in December?”
Assunta didn’t reply, either, and Stella could only imagine the disorientation she must be feeling, knowing she had made a mistake but not sure where she’d gone wrong. Stella’s gut rippled with anger at her father for humiliating her mother like a child. She swallowed to stop herself from saying anything.
Antonio took off his long coat and wrapped it around Luigi’s shoulders. The hem came down to the little boy’s ankles. “There,” Antonio said. “Hold that closed so you don’t catch cold. It’s even colder in Hartford.”
DAZED AND APPREHENSIVE,they followed Antonio Fortuna outside and into the darkened park that abutted the harbor. Stella peeredthrough the murk and shadows, trying to see what was different about this place. The air felt hard on her skin, the cold wind so strong her cheeks tingled. Stella shivered and focused on the pain in her feet to keep warm until they reached a plot of land that was full of parked cars, their glass headlights a row of winking eyes in the dim light. Stella was silent in awe, imagining how much money all these cars could be worth.
“We all have to fit in here,” Antonio told them. He opened one of the car’s doors and pulled out a coil of rope. “Giuseppe, help me tie the trunk on top. Assunta, you get in the front with me and Zu Tony. Stella and Tina, you ride with the boys in the back.”
“Cettina,” Stella said sharply.
Her father turned to look at her. He knew she was correcting him. “What?”
“She goes by Cettina, not Tina,” Stella said, because she knew Cettina herself was going to be too shy to speak up.
“She’ll be Tina here,” their father said. “Cettina is such an old-fashioned name.” He held Stella’s gaze with his narrow own, and then, deliberately, let his eyes case her body, sliding down over her hips and then back up to fix on her famous breasts. Stella remembered, suddenly, the night he had pinched her, and she felt an oily bristle run up her torso, tasted a mouthful of bile. “Tina is a better name for an American,” Tony said.
As Stella and now-Tina huddled into the cold backseat of the car, Stella understood that she hated her father even more now than she had as a child.
THERE WAS SO MUCH TO SEE,and yet it was dark. Stella must have fallen asleep. Tina shook her awake as the car descended a hill toward a sparkling clot of tall buildings. “This is Hartford, Papa says.”
Electric lamps, tall as trees, hung over the pavement, each bedecked with a ribbon-bound green garland. Stella marveled at theopulence as Tina shook the boys awake to gawp. Was there so much wealth in this city that everyone had electric lights and paved streets? Was one of these tall buildings their house?
“See here,” their father said. “See this big store? That’s G. Fox. My construction company did renovation work on it last year.”
Stella tried to imagine her father having something to do with the arches of glittering glass, the monolithic stonework.
“Is it a church?” Tina asked, staring at the bright lights.
“What?” Antonio guffawed. “No,stupida,I told you it’s a store. It’s the largest department store in the whole country, right here in Hartford.” He craned his neck over the passenger’s seat to look at Tina. “Why would you think it’s a church?”
But Tina had recoiled at being called stupid. Stella didn’t speak up, because she was still woozy with sleep, but she knew what her sister had meant. Tall, white-skinned ladies, statues but somehow more alive than statues, stood frozen behind the glowing glass, lit by the most fiery, brightest lights Stella had ever seen. They looked like angels stepping out of boxes of heaven.
It was past midnight, but they stopped at Zu Tony Cardamone’s house. Zu Tony’s wife, Za Pina, who looked sleepy but was cheerful, had made a hugeantipastispread. There were eggplant cutlets, provolone cheese, pickled mushrooms, and oil-cured roasted peppers. There was lots of fish—anchovies and sardines and breadedbaccalà. It was Christmas Eve, after all. There was a basin of chewyfettuccineand extraraùPina had kept hot to pour over the top. This, Stella would learn, was what American Italians ate. This was what made them think of home, although they had never eaten anything like it when they’d lived in Italy.
Stella was ravenous, the dread she’d felt during the endless wait in the New York terminal finally lifted. As soon as she had eaten, she became so sleepy she thought she might sit down right on the fancy cloth-covered chair and sleep through the night. Just as keeping hereyes open had become painful, Antonio herded them back out to the car so Zu Tony could take them to their own new home.
The building they pulled up to was much like Zu Tony’s, but the street was darker. They trudged up two flights of mold-flecked stairs, Zu Tony insisting on carrying Assunta’s trunk before bidding them all good night. Stella sleepily marveled that this kind man was in any way related to needle-eyed Za Violetta.
