“You know the rules, Joey. If your father doesn’t like him, it doesn’t matter if your sister likes him.” Carmelo shrugged. “Rocco is a serious guy. He does things the Italian way. His family, they try to keep traditions.”
Stella wondered about Carmelo’s family. Young men on their own were dangerous because they had no fear of consequences, no family pressure to do the right thing. It was so easy for them to prefer the “American way” with the girls and then move on to another job in another city if things got too hot; everyone said that was what happened with Adelina Rossi, who got sent back to her father’s village in Vibo Valentia last year. Stella watched Carmelo Maglieri break a meatball in half with his fork and push it onto a heel of bread. Can you tell a playboy by looking?
“Well, which sister is he even here for?” Joey was saying. “I haven’t seen him talk to either one.”
“I don’t know. But,” Carmelo added gallantly, “either one is such a catch, when he chooses, I will ask your father if I can court the other one.”
“Hmph,” Stella said.
Joey was incredulous. “He didn’t even tell you before you came over?”
“Well, maybe it’s hard for him to decide. You have two very pretty sisters.” This time it was Louie who snorted. Eleven-year-olds disparage that sort of observation.
Joey lifted his wineglass, a warning little toast in Carmelo’s direction. “Don’t say that where they can hear you. They’re already stuck-up.”
Stella gave Joey a demure nod. She was happy to be called stuck-up.
Carmelo, of course, protested. “They’re not stuck-up at all.”
“They sure are,” Joey said. “Don’t go wasting your time beingnice to them. They think they’re too good for any of the guys around here.”
“That’s a really rude thing to say about your sisters,” Stella said.
“Well, why don’t you ever have boyfriends then?”
“I do so have a boyfriend,” Stella said.
“No, she does not,” Joey told Carmelo.
“Yes, I do.” She was calm now, her position unimpeachable. “You know I am engaged to Stefano Morello.” She turned to Carmelo and smiled. “He’s away at war in Africa now, but he writes me letters.” It had only just occurred to Stella that if she fudged some of the details of her tenuous and halfhearted courtship with faraway Stefano it might protect her from the more aggressive intentions of any Hartford skirt-chasers. “We have an arrangement to get married,” she said. “After the war.”
“After the war—that could be a long way away,” Carmelo said. Did he look disappointed? She thought he did. Well, good. Better disappointed now than later.
But she had a flash of pity for him, now that he was no longer any risk to her, this very good-looking man all alone in this country and maybe just on the hunt for a family to be part of. She looked him in the eye and gave him her best, happiest smile. His cherry-round cheeks were pink as he smiled back.
AFTER DINNER,as the two young men collected their coats, Rocco Caramanico asked Tony if he could speak to him alone. Tony led him to the kitchen.
“I’d like to marry your daughter Concettina,” Rocco told him. Everyone in the hallway could hear every word.
Antonio had been waiting all night to deliver his line.
“If you come back alive,” he said, “you can ask me again.”
***
THE FIRSTSATURDAY OFMAY 1942,Joey escorted Stella, Tina, and Fiorella to the Italian Society spring ball. There were fresh bouquets of carnations on every table and the crowd was both celebratory and jittery. The roar of conversation was so loud that Stella wasn’t always sure what song the band was playing.
Boys had come in their new uniforms, because everyone was enlisting. Opinions about homeland, duty, and opportunity were strong and contagious and became more so with the distribution of alcohol. Joey had been bragging about thinking about enlisting for months now, and had plenty to talk about with the khaki evangelists. Stella knew Joey was especially attracted to the uniform itself, the effect he’d seen it have on women.
There was a separate sense of urgency among the ladies. Now that so many of the Hartford boys were going off to war, the screws were tightening on relationships and engagements. Some girls had sweethearts or approved family matches back in the villages; others were hunting with fresh voracity, collectively agitated by the feeling that something needed to be set into action with some young man before they all shipped out.
The Fortuna girls were above it, Tina armed with her standing promise from Rocco Caramanico, Stella with her artfully embellished half-imaginary fiancé in Africa. She was amused by the romantic fervor infecting the Italian girls. What sense did it make to put yourself in a position to be widowed by a man you barely knew? Better a widow than a spinster, apparently. That had always been the way of the world, hadn’t it? Well, let them all prance around like fluffy roosters in their spring dresses. It was pure joy to be the only two people in the crowd with no agenda.
Stella and Tina were themselves celebrating: the Fortunas had bought the house on Bedford Street. The old Napolitano had decided to move back to Italy and had sped up the deed transfer. He had beenangry, or maybe scared, when the FBI agents had come to his home and confiscated his radio. He accepted $1,860 from Antonio in cash for the house, together with the promise that Antonio would send along the rest to an address the Napolitano would forward. In fact he would never send Antonio his address, and so the balance of $140 would sit untouched in the Fortunas’ bank for five years. They assumed he must have been killed in the bombings.
In any case, they had a house now. As a reward for their accomplishment, the girls had new three-dollar dresses from Sears with capped sleeves and large buttons up the front. Stella felt extremely American in her dress, which was watermelon-red. Her forearms were bare, but she didn’t feel self-conscious about her scars, which seemed to match her dress, pinkly unobtrusive.
Fiorella had brought them congratulation presents: enamel brooches shaped like little butterflies. “After all your hard work!” Her long, gentle face was bright with her smile. “I have so much respect for you girls.Tanti auguri!”
