“He’s Abruzzese,” Franceschina remembered. “What’s the name of the village?”
But Stella already knew the answer before Carolina chirped, “Carmelo Maglieri! So, Stella, I told him you were going to be at the party, and that if he made sure Frank came that you would dance with him.”
Fiorella and Tina squealed.
“Ooo, Carolina! You are such a crook.” Stella’s heart was pounding. Handsome, smug Carmelo Maglieri—she did not want to see him again, and she certainly didn’t want to have to endure a dance with him. “You wait until now to tell me? I don’t even have time to think of an excuse to get out of it.”
“I would have called you, if you had a phone.” Carolina paused to put on a bright red lipstick that matched her bright red Christmas dress. “Anyway, Stella, there are much worse people to have to dance with. Wait till you see who I promised Fiorella here to.” She winked and all the girls hooted with mirth.
Stella knew she wouldn’t be able to explain why she was so deadset against Carmelo’s attention—they thought he was a catch, with his twinkling blue eyes and his concertina voice and his smart gray suit. She could hardly explain it to herself, but her gut instinct screamed out against him.
Stella solved her problem by sticking tightly by her mother throughout the party instead of mingling with her girlfriends. Tina, regretful to miss the romantic high jinks but reluctant to leave her sister, stayed in their corner. The Fortuna women watched Carolina, Fiorella, and Franceschina attack the Abruzzesi boys, pinning them in a cage of skirts, and soon the whole group was laughing and chatting. Stella congratulated herself for the excellent appearance of Franceschina’s bosom, which Frank seemed to be having trouble not looking at.
“Well done, Stella,” Tina said.
“Thank you,” Stella replied.
“Franceschina should pay more attention to herminneor they’re going to fall out,” Assunta worried.
Carmelo Maglieri was not to be shaken off, though, and when hispaesanFrank was safely dancing with his huntress Carmelo stepped through the crowd to join the Fortunas, bending low to kiss Assunta’s hand. Stella saw how the gesture charmed her mother, her simple mother who had never seen a film in the cinema. Carmelo’s necktie was holly-green. It was hard to ignore the brightness of his eyes.
Tina had dozens of questions for Carmelo about Rocco, but it quickly became clear that he had little to tell her; Rocco was not sending Carmelo letters from abroad. When Tina fretted over this, Carmelo laughed. “Why would he send letters to me?” he said. “It’s much more important for him to write to his special girl.”
Predictably, Tina’s face began to turn fuchsia at this. “Am I really his special girl, do you think?”
“I’m sure Rocco thinks of you every day.”
The idea passed through Stella’s head that maybe Carmelo waschecking up on Tina for his pal, keeping her loyal. She felt a new flare of distrust for him.
“We pray for him every day,” Tina was saying. Her eyes were wet and energetic in her flushed face. “You should pray for him, too.”
“I will,” Carmelo said. His voice was serious now. He turned to face Stella. “I was sorry to hear about your fiancé. My condolences to you and your family.”
Stella’s wariness toward Carmelo coalesced into a cold nausea. Why would he be sad about Stefano, whom he’d never known? No man was that tenderhearted. No—by bringing up Stefano, Carmelo was alerting her to the fact that he saw her as on the market.
“We’re very sad,” Stella said stiffly. “He was a good man.”
“He was a good man,” Tina repeated, her voice breaking. Oh, not at the party, Tina, Stella thought, but Assunta was reaching out to grab Carmelo’s wrist, an intimate gesture that surprised both her daughters into silence. “Youare a very good man,” Assunta said to Carmelo. “Thank you for thinking of us.”
Suddenly the nausea overwhelmed Stella, and she was half-blinded by silvery spots of panic swimming over her field of vision. “Excuse me,” she said. She twirled away from them and walked briskly toward the ladies’ room. She had to escape. Let them think she was upset about Stefano. Luckily there was no line of waiting women. She locked herself in a stall and sat right down on the toilet in her dress, gulping lungfuls of urine-scented air, trying to calm herself.
She had been shaken by a vision of being married to Carmelo, too-smooth Carmelo, with his patient jokes and his unknowable agenda. Once the thought was in her head, she couldn’t fight off the related thoughts it spawned. His hands on her, which set off ripples of phobic chills. Her body swelling with his baby. Her legs splayed like an animal’s, like she had seen her mother’s when Louie was born, that awful purple fig slimy with blood. Stella felt her body cramp, a ripple of fear and revulsion that started in her mons and shot up into her stomach.She couldn’t banish the vision. She clutched her stomach, feeling the suture scars through the cloth of her dress. She had already been broken open once. It wasn’t going to happen again.
When Tina came in and called under the stall doors for her, Stella ignored her. “Stella.Stellll-la. Come out.Stellll-la.” Stella was stubborn in her silence. Finally, after the attempted interference of several other women, Tina went away.
Stella closed her eyes and tried to draw her mental picture of the mountain, the blue-silver olive leaves rippling like water in the breeze. She waited in the stall until the roiling in her stomach had subsided. Before going back to the party, she took the opportunity to pee. When she pulled down her panties she found blood in them—she must have lost track of the days again. She pulled down a handful of toilet paper from the roll, squashed it into a wad, and plugged it in, feeling better already. Perhaps it wasn’t a premonition that had given her chills, just regular cramps.
NEVERTHELESS.SHE COULDN’T LETCARMELOMAGLIERIget too close.
“Did you ever think,” said Stella to her mother the next morning as they were setting the table for lunch, “that blue eyes, like Carmelo’s... that you need to watch out formal’oicch’?”
“That’s silly,” Assunta said immediately.
“You know what they say about blue-eyed men,” Stella said. “Nothing to stop the devil from looking out.”
“That’s superstitious nonsense,” Assunta said. “You know that’s not how it works.”
“I know,” Stella replied, chastised.
