IMMIGRANTS, DEBUTANTES, STUDENTS
1
“WHERE in the world did you get this?” Salvo asked. “You must have stolen it.”
They were looking at the suit Gina was holding out for her brother. “What are you complaining about?” she said. “You think God would help you find work in a stolen suit? You’d be trampled by a horse before you got to the end of Canal Street.”
Salvo examined the wool trousers, the finely made jacket, the waistcoat. She had even got him a worn white shirt, a gray tie and some used shoes. He dressed while she watched and then they both stood in front of the mirror and appraised him.
“You should trim your hair,” she said. “It’s too wild.”
“You’re a fine one to speak.”
“I’m not a man in a suit.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Society of St. Vincent de Paul,” she replied.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A mission to help the poor. Yesterday I was asking around . . .”
“I thought you were looking for a job.”
“I was. For you.”
“Sciocca ragazza. I can look for my own work, thank you.”
“You were out yesterday in the clothes you sailed in on. How did that go?”
“I don’t see you having a job either,” he muttered.
“Yes, but today you have a suit.”
Salvo smiled. “I look quite dashing, don’t I?”
“Yes. If you cut your hair you’d look almost American.”
“I didn’t see that vagabond you were so keen on with a haircut.”
Stepping away, Gina busied herself with a sudden need to rid the sewing machine of loose thread. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “But listen, don’t waste your time applying to be a machinist at the Pacific Mill.”
“Okay. Why would I? And why not?”
“Their ‘jobs offered’ signs are everywhere,” she said. “But they only hire skilled union men.”
“And I’m neither.”
“Right. But perhaps at the glaziers? Or the shoemakers?”
“I don’t know how to cobble shoes, Gia,” Salvo said. “Why do you keep mentioning all the things I can’t do? Why don’t you get work as a plumber? No, I’m going to apply at the restaurants. They must need cooks.”
Gina said nothing.
“What?”
“They pay poorly.”
“How do you know this?”
“I asked.”
“Who could you possibly ask? We got here five minutes ago.”
“We got here four days ago, and what do you think I was doing yesterday?”
“Looking for work—or did you also sin not only by your indolence but by lying to our mother?”
“I asked at St. Vincent’s.”
“It’s like the Boston Public Library, this St. Vincent’s,” said Salvo. “Maybe they have work too as well as information?”
“Oh, they do.” She sighed. “Not paid work, though.”
Salvo laughed. “That’s not work. That’s a hobby.”
“Okay, Mr. Clever. But in the meantime I found out what jobs you shouldn’t bother with.”
He put his palm over her mouth. “You think you’re the only clever one? I know what I’m doing. I’ll find some day work.”
“Day labor is neither stable, nor well-paying. Don’t you want to move out of this boarding house? I saw such nice houses near the Common. They have porches and big windows, and the streets are lovely and lined with trees.”
“Prima le cose,” he said. “First work, then a house. And don’t get all fancy on me. You know we can’t live in the nice areas.”
“It’s not that nice. It’s for people like us.”
“Mimoo asked you to find us a different church,” Salvo said, trying in vain to slick back his unruly hair. “Did you? She didn’t like the priest on Sunday.”
“Mimoo is full of opinions. It’s the only Italian church in town.”
“She said Italian is not a must. Proper Catholic is a must.” Gina whistled in surprise. “St. Mary’s of the Assumption that runs St. Vincent’s is some church. Father O’Reilly is the priest there. He’s famous around these parts.”
“Where could you possibly hear that? No, don’t tell me . . .”
“St. Vincent’s,” she confirmed, pausing. “I hope to hear from the mill today,” she said.
“About what?”
“A job as a wool sorter.”
“So you did look for a job!” Salvo scoffed. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t work at the mills?”
“It’s skilled labor, Salvo,” she said. “Many people crave those jobs.”
“What in the world could you possibly know about wool?”
“Clearly something.” She shrugged. “The manager at Washington told me I apparently have a gift of hand sensitivity.” She smiled. “I can tell the difference in the quality of the fleece just from touching it. I’m fast too. He gave me a pound of fleece to separate, based on curl, length, softness. He said he’d never seen anyone do it so quickly. So he wants me to interview with his boss.”
“What are you going to wear?”
She flared her dress with her hands.
“Should’ve gotten yourself a dress instead of me a suit, sister,” Salvo said, looking over her drab rags. “It’s okay. You don’t want to be a fleece sorter anyway.”
“Oh, really? Angela gets paid three dollars a week for over fifty hours of work. You want to know how much they will pay me if I get this job?”
“How much?”
“Twelve dollars.”
Now it was Salvo’s turn to whistle. “Oh, how badly you need to be a sorter,” he said, hugging her.
“That’s what I thought. Go kill ’em, Salvo. And stay away from carpenters.”
Don’t count me out, Salvo whispered into the mirror as he adjusted his tie and hid the frayed collar under the jacket before leaving.
He came back late that night, his suit dusty and soiled. They had already eaten and Mimoo and Pippa—who had cleaned three large houses together, working over sixteen hours—were exhausted and asleep. Angela was upstairs visiting with a girlfriend. Gina dutifully waited for Salvo on his couch, nodding off with an English book on her lap.
“How did it go?” she said as soon as she heard him open the door. “Are you hungry?”
“Starved,” he said, sitting at the table, crossing himself, and gulping down the bread with salt and olive oil before he could speak. “I did all right. I have work for tomorrow. I found work for a week as a grinder.” He almost smiled but was too tired. “Don’t need a suit for that.”
“No,” she said sitting with him, putting her head on the table.
“How did you do? Why do you smell of sheep?”
“I washed in the river. What, didn’t help?” She shrugged. “I must get a new dress at the mission.”
“Did you get the job?”
“Sort of.” She said it without enthusiasm. “They hired me, Salvo, but they didn’t want to pay me the going rate. They said other women would get extremely upset to see a young kid like me taking away the job they spend years trying to get promoted into. It’s union work. So they said they could hire me but pay me only five dollars as non-union.”
“I hope you told them in perfect Italian what they could do with their sheep sorting.”
“Except I really want to move to a different house,” Gina said. “What I told them was I’d work part-time for five dollars. If they wanted to give me half the pay, I’d only work half the time. Then no one could complain.”
“Did they agree to this?”
“Reluctantly. The manager liked me. He thought I was productive.” She was too tired for inflection. She showed Salvo her hands, dried and abraded from the thorns and burrs, from rough wet and dry work. Hives were forming on her fingers from the sheep grease.
“Gia!”
“Well, I know. It’s not great. It’s better than being a skirter and wool washer, don’t you think? Tagging off manure-filled fleece. Yuk. And Washington has the nicest mending room in Lawrence, Salvo. That’s where I want to get promoted to. Ladies work there, and they sit behind a table and the room is sunny with big windows. I would get to dress up. So I took this, hoping in time for that.” She pulled out a large shopping bag from under the table, stuffed to the brim with clean pale fleece. “I got four more just like this. Almost a pound total.”
“You stole from your new employer?” Salvo couldn’t believe it.
“Why do you attribute the worst motives to me? I didn’t steal it, I took it.”
“Oh! Fine difference.”
“They told me I could take it. It’s the discard pile. Downrights and abbs and breech.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry, it’s been thoroughly washed.”
Salvo inhaled the bean soup, the half block of mozzarella and fell away from the table, wiping his mouth. “What are we going to do with your sheep hiding under the table?”
“First thing I have to do is pay St. Vincent’s back for your suit,” she said. “Then buy me a dress. After that I have a plan. You’ll see.”
“You and your plans.”
They fell asleep on Salvo’s couch, sitting up, leaning against each other.
2
Alice stood in front of her closet and waited for Trieste, her lady’s maid. Trieste was late and Alice was already running behind a carefully constructed schedule, though it was barely eight in the morning. She decided on a dark blue wool skirt and a white lace blouse. She kept her jewelry simple and was already putting on light makeup—by herself. She thought her face looked swollen from having slept too long on one side, having been in bed since nine the night before. She made a mental note not to sleep on her side, because it creased her cheeks, made her look puffy. But she needed her beauty sleep. She worked hard during the day and she needed to get proper rest at night. Mother said so, and it made perfect sense. Ever since she had been a little girl she loved to sleep, though the opportunities for unabashed rest were lessening with the years. Once she turned eighteen, and had gone to forty balls and functions, she just got busier and busier.
After a short knock on the door, Trieste came in with a tray of tea and soft biscuits with jam. She apologized for running late, but they couldn’t get the stove to turn on, to heat up the water for the tea. Trieste thought an engineer needed to be called in. Alice said she didn’t care about the silly old tea, “but what I do care about, Trieste,” she continued, “is that a shipment of six thousand logs is waiting for me at Roxbury, and do you know where I am? Not at Roxbury. That is my problem. I’m going to be late for all my appointments.”
“I apologize, Miss Alice. I know you like your hot tea in the morning.”
“Not more than I enjoy being on time, Trieste.”
Trieste apologized again, while quickly spreading jam and clotted cream on the scones.
“Where is your day journal, Miss Alice? Would you like to go over your schedule?”
Irritated, Alice pointed to her bedside. She had looked at the schedule the night before, but she couldn’t remember anything past the sawmill. She continued applying her makeup while Trieste read aloud the day’s events.
“At 8:30 you’re supposed to be in Roxbury . . .”
“Where I am not. What’s next?”
“At ten you have a late breakfast meeting at the Mayflower Club to go over the final menu for the annual fall bazaar in September.”
“How long will that take? I have lunch with Daddy at noon.”
“Lunch with Mr. Porter is at 12:45 at the Bavarian Club back here in Brookline. Your carriage will be waiting for you on Commonwealth.”
“How long from there to the Club?”
“Probably forty-five minutes.”
Alice sighed. She had a bite of scone and a sip of tea. She only liked apricot jam, and today Trieste had given her blackcurrant. Nothing was going right. She made no comment. She never forgot her manners no matter what she was feeling like inside.
“Lunch until two o’clock, at which time your father and you will ride out to Timber Mills for a board meeting on next year’s fiscal projections.”
Alice set her jaw. That was her least favorite part of her father’s business: sitting in a stuffy room with closed windows going over numbers on paper. She liked the inspection of the lumber, dealing with actual product despite the many problems that arose with shipments—the quality of woods, dampness, rot. All of it was better than board meetings, and best of all were the quarterly river drives, when she traveled to Maine for weeks at a time and oversaw the forestry operations from felling to bucking. Walking atop the huge tied-together trunks floating in shallow rivers was a joy akin to riding horses—dangerous and thrilling. She would do that every day if she could. Board meetings were another matter entirely.
“How long is that meeting?”
“Until 4:30.”
She groaned. She could do that in front of Trieste, make noises of dissatisfaction she could not make in the outside world. “Am I going to have any fun at all today?” she asked plaintively.
“At 5:15 you have tea at the Boston Public Library. Your father has made a generous donation to BPL, and they want you to approve their catalogue purchases.”
Alice brushed out her hair before she pinned it up, appraising her fine features in the mirror. She was delicate and dainty, she had a small nose, a perfectly formed mouth, big blue eyes, high cheekbones, and thin silky blonde hair.
“Please tell me the rest of my week is not as full, Trieste.”
“It is quite busy, Miss Alice,” Trieste said, leafing through the subsequent pages. “Ah, but I see here, on Saturday you have some free time. Harry has begged off Saturday’s activities. He said he was helping Ben with some engineering problems.”
Alice sighed. “Can you schedule a longer trail ride for me on Saturday then?”
“Will do, Miss Alice. But tonight you have an appointment at 6:30 at the Back Bay salon for a manicure before your evening.”
Alice glanced at her polished nails. “I don’t need it,” she said. “They were done just two days ago.”
“Yes, but after the lumberyard, they will be a mess.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“If they become rough and cracked before your dinner, then what?”
Alice sighed. “What time is dinner?”
“Harry is meeting you at the Hasty Pudding Theatricals promptly at 8:45 in the evening. The show starts at 9:15. You’ll have just enough time, if you rush, to return home to change. I want to lay out your dress now, so we can be quicker later. Your mother is coming with you.”
Alice pointed to her closet. “On the right-hand side is my mauve velvet and organza dress. I received it as a present from Mother last Christmas and have not had a chance to wear it.”
Trieste retrieved it from the closet. “Beautiful,” she said. “But we will have to redo your makeup.”
“Will you be here for that, or will the stove be broken again?”
“I will be here. Shall I arrange for some hot canapés and wine while you get ready?”
“Cheese and crackers only. And a glass of sherry. I don’t want to get too full. Hasty Pudding feeds us till midnight.”
“Quite right. The show is over at one a.m. Can I release the driver? Harry is staying at the university and indicated that his driver will be more than happy to take you and Mrs. Porter home.”
“That’ll be fine.” She was glad to have rested last night. It was going to be a full week. She turned to Trieste, her hair up, her face flawless, her dress perfectly pressed. “What do you think?”
“As usual, exquisite, Miss Alice,” said Trieste, straightening out one of the pleats on the skirt. “I will get your boots and coat and umbrella ready.”
Alice glanced outside her floor-to-ceiling windows. The morning sun was blazing.
“It will rain,” said Trieste. “As soon as you get to the sawmill, it will pour. You know Boston.”
3
“How do you not see what a giant mistake this is?” Harry said to Ben after they boarded the train.
“I don’t see even what a little mistake it is.” Ben had come prepared. He had brought pamphlets about Panama, information about the canal, brochures about geographical advantages and advertisements for railroad jobs in Central America. He also came dressed in his best suit and hat. Harry looked as if he had forgotten to shave. He had been up late reading, so he was late getting up, having forgotten what train they were catching. He barely made it to North Union Station to find Ben pacing the platform.
“You are impossible,” Ben said. “Please tell me it was Alice that kept you up so late on Friday night you nearly missed our train.”
“Paine’s The American Crisis,” replied Harry, disheveled but smiling. “ ‘The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.’”
“That kept you up? Why didn’t you try some Common Sense instead? ‘Our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.’”
“Who is suffering?” Harry said. “I was never more happy than to stay in and read.” Once the 9:05 got moving, he examined the papers Ben carried. “Ben, you’ve gone insane.”
Ben took his research away. “I don’t recall asking your opinion.”
“I offer it freely.”
“Shut up.”
“You think your profits and bananas are going to sway an Italian girl?”
“Two separate issues.”
“Why don’t I think so?”
“Because you understand nothing.”
Harry pulled the hat over his face and settled into his seat, thinking he might have a quick nap. “I hope she never discovers,” he said, “your fickle and changeable nature. That last year it wasn’t bananas that kept you up late but boric acid. You don’t want her to draw any conclusions.”
Ben knocked the hat off Harry’s head. “Sit up straight,” he said. “We have an hour to learn what we can about Lawrence.”
“And how, pray tell, do we do this?” The train had been moving for five minutes.
From his bag Ben produced two books and a dozen pamphlets. Harry groaned and grabbed for his hat. “Start reading,” Ben said. “I’m counting on you. We have to fake knowledge.”
“Now there’s a way to win a girl’s heart,” said Harry. “Deceive her.”
“All right, paragon of virtue, let’s begin.” Ben opened the book on the history of Lawrence and stuck it under Harry’s face. “And I suppose you’ve been straight with Alice and told her you have no intention of doing anything, ever, but reading books.”
“She hasn’t asked.” Harry busied himself with the introductory chapter. “We are going to impress a fifteen-yearold—sorry, a fourteen-year-old with arcane minutiae about a town she’s been in for five minutes? Well thought out, sir.”
Ben ignored him. “Look—are you studying? Lawrence was incorporated in 1853. Not even half a century ago.”
“If that doesn’t get her to fall in love with you, what will?”
Ben continued reading. “Smart businessmen saw that the Merrimack River was a plentiful source of electric power, so they dammed it with the Great Stone Dam above the city, past Andover, and then built textile mills on both north and south banks.”
“I know for a fact that the damming of rivers is enticing to young girls.”
“Ah! Did you know that in 1860 one of the mills collapsed and burned, killing over a hundred workers and injuring thousands? The Pemberton Mill.”
“You are deranged.”
“No, this is useful. We can wisely counsel her not to get a job there.”
“I thought you just said it burned down?”
“They rebuilt it, numbskull. Did you know that Lawrence has more immigrants per square mile, of which there are only six, than any other city in the world?”
“Six immigrants?”
“Six square miles.”
“Useful as evidence for committing you,” said Harry. “Are there any sanatoriums in Lawrence?”
“Immigrant girls from Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium, Poland”—Ben smiled—“and of course, Italy . . .”
Harry slunk down on his seat. “I will not come visit you in the pokey,” he muttered. “Not even at Christmas.”
“That’s the difference between you and me, old boy,” Ben said. “Because I will come and visit you in the pokey.”
“Why would I be up the river? Do you see me being threatened with certain prison or risking death at the hands of an irate Italian male? I don’t think so.”
“Harry!” Ben stopped with the books for a moment, looking wistful, softened, dream-like. “Did you see her?”
“I could hardly avoid it.”
“You have to admit . . . her mother trying to hide her under those awful clothes . . .”
“Not hide her, save her.”
“Nothing could hide that girl. That hair, that mouth.”
Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
“Well?” Ben nudged him. “Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?”
“Clearly Thomas Paine. I’d be asleep now in my bed.”
“Do you remember the name of the street they live on?”
“Let’s see . . . Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?”
“Canal Street! Thank you.”
“I’m going to stop speaking.”
“Harry, admit it, if you weren’t so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself.”
“Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself.”
“Exactly!”
“Ugh.”
“I’m surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?”
“Stunned.”
They spent the rest of the ride bickering like this and alighted in Lawrence nearly an hour and a half later. After buying a quick bun at a local mart on Broadway, they walked to Essex Street, found an acceptably busy corner on Essex and Appleton, took out their clipboards and pamphlets, and began approaching anyone who was willing to stop and talk to them for a minute or two. After forty-five minutes of being cut off on, “Please can we have your signature to reopen the study on the advantages of building the Panama Canal to help American trade and the American economy—”, after being ignored, insulted, pushed past, shouted at and misunderstood, they had collected six signatures.
“How many more?” Harry asked.
“Four thousand nine hundred and ninety-four. If you sign, then four thousand nine hundred and ninety-three.”
Harry put down his clipboard. “I’ll sign right now. Can we go home?”
“Yes—when we get a thousand signatures.”
“Ben!”
“You’re not even trying!”
“Can you do math? Are there even a thousand people in Lawrence?”
“A hundred thousand.”
“How many?”
“I thought you’d read the pamphlet I gave you.”
“I completely ignored it. Ben, you do understand, don’t you, that these people don’t speak English? They don’t understand when you say, ‘Study, advantages, Panama, canal, American, trade.’ You say the word ‘economy,’ they hear gibberish, gibberish, gibberish.”
“You’re giving up already?”
“Aren’t engineers required to do rudimentary math? If it took us nearly an hour to get five signatures . . .”
“Six with you.”
“How long will it take us to walk back and catch the 3:20 back to Boston?”
“Harry? Ben?”
The female voice came from behind them. When they turned around, Gina stood before them smiling broadly. To say she looked unreservedly pleased would be to under-define her expression. Ben smiled broadly back. She was dressed in a green skirt and a white high-necked lace blouse, and she carried a basket on her forearm. Her hair was properly tied up. Next to her stood a skinny homely girl.
“Hello, Miss Attaviano.” Ben was beaming. “And is this your cousin Angela?”
“No, this is Angela’s friend Verity. Verity, Ben, Harry. Harry, Ben, Verity. I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your family names.” Gina smiled apologetically. “What are you two gentlemen doing here?”
“We are collecting signatures to open research on the construction of the Panama Canal,” Ben said. “What about you?”
Gina pointed. “I live just down the street on Canal,” she said.
“Oh, is that where you live?” said Ben. “So close. We had no idea.”
“We are doing a bit of shopping. Negotiating for some cheap fruit. Verity runs the mission bazaar table on Sundays and I’m helping her collect some things to sell to raise money for the poor.” She smiled. “Like me.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, poor like me, not sell like me.”
Ben laughed. Harry took a step back. Ben took a step forward. “How is your family?”
“Very good. Thank you.”
“Are you working?”
“More or less.” She nodded. “We’re doing okay. I’d invite you to the house, but it’s so small, you wouldn’t fit in our living room. We’re hoping to get a bigger place soon.”
“Are you going to go to school?” That was Harry. It was the first time he had spoken.
Verity nodded her head. “I tell her she should. They are trying to encourage more children to attend school and improve reading and writing.”
“I’m literal,” said Gina. “I can read. Even in English.”
For some reason this amused Harry, who smiled from behind Ben, looked at his fine black shoes, fiddled with the hat in his hands, and said, “Going to school is good.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t pay me money,” Gina said, squinting at him in the sun. Her shoulders were covered with a shawl, but her teeth sparkled, particularly white against her dark skin, her vivid lips. “I need to work,” she said. “Make money, be independent.”
“Education is so important,” said Harry.
“So is paying your rent,” said Gina. “And buying gloves.”
“Let your mother and brother worry about that,” Harry said.
“That’s what I keep trying to tell her,” Verity said. “Come to school with me.” She was offputtingly skinny. She looked like a boy.
Ben just stood smiling. He paid attention to nothing but the Sicilian girl. “So what are you selling at the bazaar, Gina?”
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” She smiled back. They moved to the side of the street to let rushing pedestrians pass and stood under an awning of a cigar shop. Verity eyed the two men curiously but suspiciously, especially Harry.
Foolish girl, Harry wanted to say to her, it’s not me you need to watch out for. Meanwhile Ben and Gina stood next to each other, chatting.
“Gina, we should go,” Verity said. “We promised the sisters we’d be back soon with the fruit.”
“Soon is so vague, Ver,” Gina returned.
“Yes, but we don’t have any fruit yet.”
Gina turned away from her friend. “How long are you gentlemen in town for?”
“For the afternoon,” said Ben. “We need to get a thousand signatures, but unfortunately we’re not having much luck. I’m afraid we’ll have to return to Boston soon if we don’t do better.”
“A thousand signatures is a lot,” Gina said. “How many do you have?”
“Six,” Ben replied.
“Eight if you two girls sign,” Harry said. “Oh, wait. You have to be over sixteen to sign.”
“I am over sixteen!” Verity exclaimed. “I’m eighteen.”
Ben cast Harry a look that said, you’re just pure evil, aren’t you? You had to go and bring up age.
“Though I can’t sign, Ben,” Gina said quickly, “perhaps I can help you? What do you say, Verity?”
“We said we’d be back.”
“Look what a lovely afternoon it is. We’re just out and about.”
“Gina . . .”
“It’s fine.”
“Let’s just go, G.”
“Well, you go ahead, then. I’ll stay and help.”
Harry and Ben exchanged stunned looks. It was rare indeed in the circles in which they were born and raised to have a young girl remain even on a public street alone with two men. By rare, Harry meant unheard of. And Verity was obviously torn. Though she was really too young to be entrusted with such a responsibility, she was nonetheless entrusted with looking after her young charge, and yet couldn’t budge her from the street.
Verity stayed. Harry watched her timidly trying by turns to rein in and to mimic Gina, telling her not to stand so close, watching her every move, trying to fling her own hair about, adjusting her tiny bun, fixing the bows on her dowdy blouse.
Gina had no imitators though. She turned out to be uncannily good at getting people to stop, much better than Ben and Harry. The green peasant skirt made her look untailored, yet fresh and young. She was tanned, looked happy, and walked up and down Essex Street, shouting at the passersby both in Italian and English. In three hours she collected seven hundred signatures. The boys and Verity collected eighty-four—combined.
“You clearly have skills we can’t ever hope to attain,” Ben said with an impressed glitter, as if he needed one more thing to impress him.
“Not at all,” Gina said graciously. “You could be successful. You just give them too much information.” She smiled. “It’s the education university. Shoppers don’t want to hear about swamps and mosquitoes and ships. Please sign the petition to bring exotic tropical fruit to Lawrence. That’s all you have to say. And next time you come, bring your bananas, Ben,” she added. “We’ll give away a banana with every signature.”
“I don’t think I can get four thousand bananas,” said Ben.
“Do you want the canal or not?”
What could Ben say?
“If you come next Saturday,” Gina said, “Verity and I will make a barrel of lemonade . . .”
“We will?” muttered Verity.
“Yes, and we will set up a little table, where on a hot August afternoon, for every signature, we’ll offer a free cup of lemonade. A banana would be good too. That’s almost a full lunch.”
The boys stood and gaped as she beamed with satisfied pleasure.
“But, Gina, we have no money to buy lemons and sugar,” whispered Verity.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get some,” Gina whispered back.
4
Four steaming August Saturdays blew by in a whirlwind, and by the end of the month, after trolley cars of bananas and barrels of lemonade, with four clipboards and some muchneeded help from the humid weather, Ben had his 5,000 signatures and his heart in a mangled twist. He had already begun feebly insisting that what he needed was not 5,000 but 10,000, so he could keep on coming indefinitely to Lawrence. But on the last Saturday, Pippa, who usually didn’t venture out, was unfortunately one of the people into whose hands Ben thrust a glass of lemonade and a pen. She signed first, then she saw her cousin’s daughter, in a borrowed dress too short for her, her hair up only by the loosest of definitions, and her sleeves inexplicably three-quarter length, though no acceptable dresses were made with three-quarter sleeves anymore. Moreover, Pippa saw Gina as she really was—relaxed, laughing, the way no fifteen-year-old girl was supposed to act on the street with men many years her senior.
“I’m in trouble, you two,” Gina whispered, as Pippa’s plump, moist hand went around her forearm. “Goodbye!”
All of these conclusions about Gina’s impropriety in dress and demeanor Pippa revealed not only to Gina when they got home but to Mimoo and Salvo later that evening. She saved it, actually saved it, for when Salvo returned from the quarry.
“So this is how Verity has been looking after you?” Salvo bellowed.
“Don’t blame Verity for this! It’s nothing!”
“This is not nothing, Gina!” shouted Mimoo. “But this isn’t Verity’s fault, Salvo, it’s your sister’s! Verity is not her keeper.”
“She actually is her keeper, Mimoo! We let Gina out on Saturday afternoons because we thought she was organizing donations at the mission—with Verity!”
“We did that first,” Gina defended herself. “We did it quick. There haven’t been that many. Mostly toys. It’s not so hard, Salvo.”
“This is despicable and inappropriate.”
“What was most inappropriate,” said Pippa, fanning herself, sitting down, sweating, “was their banter, as if they were old friends!”
“Do Verity’s parents know this is what their devout Catholic daughter has been up to?” asked Mimoo.
“No one was up to anything, Mimoo!” Gina desperately didn’t want her new friend to get into trouble.
They went around like this, with Gina sticking up for Verity and pretending they were simply on a busy street in the middle of an afternoon in plain view of the whole town. No one in the house believed her, except for her mother—but only because Mimoo finally became too exhausted to fight. When Angela came home late from being out with friends, she defended Gina like a trooper, calling them all ridiculous, old-fashioned, stuck in the last century, and blowing all manner of things out of proportion.
“All right, Salvo, stop the puffery,” Gina said. “You see? I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Like Angela said. I was standing on a street corner—”
“Exactly!” yelled Salvo.
“Asking for signatures for a canal in Central America.”
“For what?”
“A canal!”
“Is that what they call it nowadays?”
“Mimoo!”
“It’s a ploy,” Salvo said. “It’s a ruse.”
“Salvo, you are crazy. Ben is going to be an engineer. He is going to build the greatest man-made wonder of the world. It’s incredible, Salvo . . .”
“You’re swallowing his lies hook, line and sinker, sister.”
“They’re not lies, Salvo. He’s going to build banana plantations in Costa Rica.”
“Banana plantations in Costa Rica? You said a canal in Panama?”
“How are the bananas going to get here, Mimoo?”
“Salvo is right, child,” Mimoo said. “I don’t like bananas and will not eat them.”
Gina wanted to yell in frustration at the unfairness of it all. They were pacing around the tiny living room. “Will you eat sugar?” she said, not hiding her impatience. “Coconuts? Chocolate? Ben will grow that too. And ship it here.”
“Gia, those two men are laughing at you right now,” said Salvo. “Have you looked at a map? They don’t need a canal to ship it here.”
“Now who’s the one being laughed at, Salvo?” said Gina. “They need one to ship it to Italy. To China. To France. In other words, to the rest of the world.”
“I’m not going to stand and argue with you about this,” said Salvo.
“Then why are you?”
“They’re going to have to build this canal without you, Gina Attaviano. Because no sister of mine is going to stroll the streets with two drooling men in their twenties. Do you understand?”
“You don’t understand, Salvo! They’re not drooling!” She ran to her room. What she wanted to say was they were not the ones who were drooling.
She overheard her family from the next room. The whole block overheard them. Salvo told Mimoo that Gina wasn’t allowed to see Verity anymore, but Mimoo stopped him. She pointed out to her son that Verity was studying to become a nun, that she had two devout parents who attended Mass daily, that her volunteer day job after school was collecting donations for the poor. “Is that really the kind of person your sister shouldn’t be around?”
Salvo still said yes.
“Come on, son,” said Mimoo. “It’s all right to be friendly with this Verity girl. Maybe some of her piety and love for the Lord will rub off on your sister. Maybe Verity will be a good influence.”
“Maybe,” Salvo said. How Gina regretted letting him in on her secrets in Belpasso! “But did you ever consider, Mimoo, that your daughter may not be the best influence on Verity?”
To help her learn the correct behavior, Pippa gave Gina The Young Lady’s Friend to read. Gina glanced at the first page in the slim volume of manners, checked the date of publication, and when she saw it was 1838, she promptly slapped the book shut in a huff and complained to Angela about the uselessness of learning manners from sixty years ago.
Angela tried to play mediator. “Okay. But Pippa is right. There is a proper attitude to be maintained at all times toward gentlemen.”
“Bah,” said Gina. “Actually, the real test of good manners is the proper attitude that gentlemen maintain at all times toward ladies. It’s their responsibility.”
“And yours?”
“I pretend I don’t quite know what good manners are,” Gina said with a smile. “That makes me seem impetuous and brave. I’d say I seem rather adventurous to my two new friends,” she added.
“Don’t let your brother catch you talking like that,” said Angela. “You should develop some natural modesty that will guard you against any intimation of familiarity with young men.”
“Of course, Angie. I’m going to hop to it.”
“Since breeding is something you don’t possess, then let your good taste help you in this regard.”
Gina fell quiet. She wasn’t sure she had any of the latter either.
“You must remain at all times delicate and refined.”
“Of course, Angie.”
“I can see you don’t think much of what I’m telling you,” Angela said, “but understand that manners is the only thing that separates the plebeian from the upper classes.”
Gina frowned. “Ange,” she said, “I don’t mean to be improper, but I’m not from the upper classes. I never was. And no matter how hoity-toity I act, not sneezing in public or touching a strand of my hair, I’ll never be mistaken for an upper-class lady. Won’t my airs just seem fake and put-on?”
“Better than no airs at all,” declared Angela.
After Salvo’s unwelcome intercession, September came, though the two had nothing to do with one another. But in September, life stopped being measured by mystical Saturday afternoons of lemonade and bananas, by two boys in dapper suits and bowler hats standing with a girl on Essex Street, her serving the drinks, them collecting signatures, having fun and making jokes, being young.