When he dropped Tony off after work, Carmelo would come in for a glass of wine and then end up staying for dinner. He was not subtle about his interest in Stella. She was being courted, and her father, who was old-world enough to believe his opinion mattered, was pleased. Stella was aware of the danger. Little innocent-looking lifestyle changes, like the commuting arrangements and the dinner drop-ins, were going to pile on her gradually until she found herself the mother of Carmelo’s ten children and not sure when, exactly, she’d been broken down.
Stella was besieged in her own house, and her supposed allies were sympathetic to the enemy. Everyone liked Carmelo. He flirted with Assunta, who would chuckle and swat him with her kitchen towel. She invited him back night after night for dinner. “Poor thing,” she’d say, “living in that awful bachelor building with a bunch of men.” Stella didn’t feel one bit sorry for him; the man was hardly starving and could easily charm some other doting mother into feeding him.
Carmelo gossiped with Tina like they were old girlfriends. He taught Louie card games. On nights Carmelo came over, Tony and Joey would both stay in, and the men would play cards at the kitchen table—a rare rapprochement between Joey and his father. This wasthe year Tony began to go out less in the evenings; it might be when his relationship with that other, unknown woman ended. As much as Stella resented Carmelo’s infiltration of her family, she knew her mother was happier, free of the anxiety and sadness she’d had to rally against every night her husband hadn’t come home.
Carmelo read and wrote well in both Italian and English; he read the newspaper every morning, he told them, and that was how he learned everything he’d ever known. It was Carmelo who enabled the Fortuna girls to pass their citizenship tests, at last, in July 1945. Carmelo read the study questions aloud, interpreted them into Italian, and quizzed the sisters until, finally, it felt like Stella was memorizing something she understood. He spoke to Tina in English, knowing she struggled with the language, prompting her kindly.
Carmelo now used Calabrese expressions he must have picked up from the Fortunas. Was he working so hard to fit in with them that he even changed his speech? Stella wondered, was he doing it on purpose or subconsciously? And—which would be worse?
IT WOULD COME EVENTUALLY,the direct confrontation. “Eventually” turned out to be the week after Stella had become a United States citizen.
“With your father’s permission,” Carmelo had said during dinner, in front of the whole damn family, “I would like to take you out on a date, Stella.”
“A date,” Antonio said, repeating the American word. “What kind of date?”
“Dinner and a movie on Saturday night,” Carmelo said. He seemed calm and confident. Meanwhile Stella was full of dread, looking down at her plate of pasta as the rest of her family stared at her. Their glee was palpable; it filled the dining room and clamped around her like an invisible vise. How could she fight against his charisma?
“Well, Stella?” Tony said.
“No, thank you,” she replied in her politest voice. She could notbreak down under this pressure. She would not be subjugated. “I don’t go on dates.”
“Now’s a good time to start,” Tony said. “Or you’re going to be an old maid.”
“No,thank you,” she repeated, sitting up straight and looking her father in the eye. “I do not date. I am mourning my lost fiancé.”
“Horseshit,” said Joey in English. Assunta would have smacked him if she’d understood.
“Enough!”Tony had escalated to his roaring mode already. “She accepts your invitation,” he said to Carmelo. “You can pick her up here on Saturday at six o’clock.”
Stella’s hands were vibrating in fury. She was not in control of this situation. What could she do? “Tina, you’ll come with me as a chaperone,” she said.
Tony said shortly, “You’re twenty-five years old. You don’t need a chaperone.”
Stella looked around the table, at her brothers and sister and parents and suitor all watching her, waiting for her to say something. With Joey filling the chair on one side of her and Tina on the other, there was no way she could stand up and storm out of the room with any dignity. She contemplated throwing her plate of food, but she wouldn’t be proud of herself for that kind of melodrama.
So instead she gave them as little satisfaction as was within her ability. She picked up her fork, tined a collection ofzitipieces, and put them in her mouth. Her tongue was dry and her stomach tight. The moment dragged on, everyone waiting for her reaction, as she made her way steadily through the plate of pasta.
“Well, all right,” Carmelo said after too long. “I’ll pick you up on Saturday.”
All his pretending to be a gentleman—a real gentleman would have backed off when she made it clear she didn’t want to go out with him. No, he was like all the rest of them, the exhausting conspiracy of men working together to make women do what they wanted them to.She would tuck this away, this definitive proof that Carmelo wasn’t as nice as he seemed.
THAT NIGHT, AND EVERY NIGHTleading up to her date, Stella had her nightmare. It had been more than a year since she’d had an episode and she’d hoped it had gone away. But here it was, back again—her imprisonment, the rapist’s hands on her naked skin, her helplessness. Sleepless and exhausted, she’d go sit at the kitchen table under the first Stella’s shrine and try to nap on her folded arms. She tried to rub away the feeling of the rapist’s erection pressing into her thigh, rubbing until it bruised. She prayed to Mary for protection and forgiveness.
DOGGED BY INSOMNIA, HARASSED,and unwilling, Stella refused to make any special effort with her appearance for her date, which was very upsetting to Assunta.
“Why can’t you just do this, Stella?” her mother sobbed. Friday night had become a full-scale screaming match. “Why can’t you be just a little nice to him so you don’t spoil your chances?”
“For God’s sake, Mamma, why can’tyoujust listen to me?” Stella’s voice cracked with rage. “I’m saying Idon’t wantto marry him. I don’t care about spoiling my chances because Idon’t wanthim.”
“Yes, you do!” Assunta shouted. “Yes, you do, and you know it!”
“Mamma. Why don’t you believe me? Why don’t youlisten?” A fight like this with her father would have been easier—he was just a brute and Stella hated him. But coming from Assunta—this was betrayal by the woman Stella loved most in the world, who apparently didn’t care about her daughter’s hopes or opinions. “When have I ever lied to you about anything? Never.”
Assunta’s sobs transitioned into howling. She was incoherent, the situation helpless. Stella, worn out by her anger, went into the bathroom and washed and curled her hair. She needed to for church, anyway. It was just one day early.
Carmelo, on the other hand, had made a good effort for theirdate. When he came to pick her up, his black curls were dampened and combed down along a neat center part. He wore his gray suit and a sky-blue silk tie. He had a new fedora pressed to his chest when she met him at the door.
Carmelo chatted, obviously a little nervous, during the short car ride, and Stella rode in depressed silence. Her fight with her mother lay heavy on her still. She was enervated by frustration. No one believed she knew what was best for herself; everyone wanted to control her.
