Assunta looked down at Tommy, who was crawling awkwardlyacross her kitchen floor. Her mouth was pulled to one side; Stella could tell she felt bad for not knowing the answer. “It’s true,” she said finally, “you all were walking before one year old, I think. But maybe things are different here. Children aren’t outside as much.”
Now Stella was worried and made Carmelo drive them to the hospital. The doctor was unhappy with what he saw. Stella couldn’t understand all the difficult medical language, but she could see there were terrible possibilities the doctor was not taking off the table. Tommy’s poor little body—too little, the doctor said; it was not growing correctly—was subjected to measurements, tapping, stretching, and bending. For three sleepless weeks Stella wondered if God was going to take away another child from her.
The tests came back negative—little Tommy did not have cancer. He had a very rare condition that caused him to grow benign but growth-inhibiting tumors all over his body. He would always be small-boned; he would never make a sports team or hold his own if he got bullied. They had to be careful with this one—keep him close to home and out of trouble as long as possible.
As it turned out, “as long as possible” was “forever.” Tommy would never move farther than across the street from his mother’s house. He would be thirty-nine when Stella would have her incapacitating Accident. He might have gotten married, pursued his own dreams, but instead he would stay to take care of her.
ONMAY 28, 1951,Stella gave birth to a second living son, Antonio “Nino” Maglieri, named for his maternal grandfather. Despite his namesake, he would turn out to be Stella’s favorite, the last boy whose childhood she still had the mind and heart to enjoy before there were just too many babies spilling and spitting and crashing and crying. Louie and Queenie stood up as his godparents, even though they weren’t married yet.
Nino would grow up to be a robust and jovial child with lots of friends and an easy manner for talking his way out of trouble. He washis older brother’s protector and best friend; no one messed with Tommy in the schoolyard because no one messed with Nino anywhere. Without Tommy’s medical woes to protect him from the draft, Nino would be called up in the ninth batch of the 1970 draft lottery. At least as Stella nursed her beautiful chocolate-eyed infant she had no way of imagining that when he would be just nineteen years old his perfect body would be blown apart by a landmine in a South Vietnamese forest.
WHEN THEY GOT HOMEfrom their honeymoon in April 1952, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Fortuna, as they were now, moved into the ground-floor apartment on Bedford Street, into the bedroom Stella and Tina had once shared. Queenie was not circumspect about her displeasure with the arrangement.
“There’s just so little privacy here,” she said to Stella and Tina. “We’renewlyweds. It’s not right to have people living right on top of us, opening the doors at any time.”
“You know we all did it,” Tina said. “Just until you save up some money.”
“I’m not like you,” Queenie said. “I grew up American, and in America we don’t put up with what you did in the old country.” She didn’t say this meanly, but was she ever blunt.
“It’s just for a while,” Stella said to soothe, before Tina got upset. “Think of it as free rent.”
“Hardly free.” Queenie snorted. “Your father thinks because it’s his house he can come right into my room anytime he wants.Anytime.” Her meaning was plain, but she spelled it out anyway. “Stella, he comes in whenever he hears us in the middle of, you know.”
“Of doing the job?” Tina asked, aghast. Stella was disgusted but not surprised. At least Tina didn’t seem to know Tony used to spy on her and Rocco, too. How glad Stella was for the lockable doors and the flight of stairs between her married life and her father.
“And I’ve caught your mother going through my stuff,” Queenie added.
“No,” Stella said. “Mamma wouldn’t do that.” Queenie had had Stella’s sympathy as long as she wanted to complain about Tony, but Stella was not going to let this little Kewpie doll spread malice about Assunta.
“No way,” Tina chimed in.
“Wouldn’t she,” said Queenie.
“Maybe to help with your laundry, or something like that,” Stella said. “But she would never snoop or take anything. If you think she would, you don’t know her at all.”
“Well,” said Queenie. She sat back in her chair and didn’t say anything else about that. Queenie might always be right, but she had also learned that when Stella took a position it was unbreachable.
***
WHOSE FAULT WAS WHAT HAPPENED LATER, REALLY?Well, it was Tony’s fault—only Tony is to blame for what he did. But that doesn’t mean other people weren’t responsible, or complicit.
It was Assunta, for example, who brought Mickey into the family.
In July 1952, when Louie and Queenie had been back from their honeymoon for three months and, Stella surmised, the first-floor apartment was feeling a little crowded, Assunta made an announcement: it had been twelve years since she had seen her people in Ievoli, and she wanted to go back. She wanted to make a pilgrimage to the Madonna at Dipodi, to celebrate the festival of the Assumption, and to see her mother’s grave.
In fact, Assunta had hatched a plan to make her straggler, Joey, grow up and start a family. He would never get a wife the way he was going, because he spent all his salary at the bar and withputtane. Assunta had tried crying and nagging, to no avail; now she’d decided maybe things had to happen in the opposite order: if he had the wife at home to support, he would have to settle himself down. She just had to trick him into getting married. Well, there wasn’t much she could do here in Hartford, because she didn’t understand girls like Queenie or how to impress them, and besides, she needed to get Joey away from his bad habits and from all the people who knew about those habits. In Ievoli, though, she’d be able to control the situation.
The pilgrimage scheme came together quickly. When she made her announcement to the family at Sunday dinner, she added that she would need a chaperone and begged Joey to come with her. It would just be for a couple of months.
“A couple of months? No way, Ma. I’d have to quit my job.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Assunta said, although of course he would. A good pensioned job that he’d only just nailed down. “Anyway, I already bought the tickets for us.”
It was obvious to everyone what the plan was; Assunta was notskilled at subterfuge. Stella was only surprised that her father seemed to shrug the whole thing off.
“Women’s business,” he said. Tony had despaired of managing his son and maybe he figured Assunta’s plot was worth a shot.
Joey and Assunta left on July 27. In the middle of September, Tony received a letter in Joey’s badly spelled combination of English and Italian saying they were enjoying their visit, that they were going to stay in Ievoli for Christmas but then they would be bringing home his new wife, Michelina, whom he referred to as Mickey.
