Penny from Heaven (4 page)

“Did you have fun with Connie?” I ask.

“I had a lovely time,” she says, and smiles to herself.

My mother leans against me and kicks the floor, which sets the swing in motion. We stare out at the night, the fireflies dancing in the trees. Pop-pop snorts in his sleep and turns over. There’s a small hissing sound, and Scarlett O’Hara whimpers and jumps off the couch and trots over to us.

“Mother,” I whisper, wrinkling my nose.

“Yes?” she says.

“What’s that smell?”

“I think it’s Pop-pop,” she whispers back, and we both giggle.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Luckiest Fella Ever

The first difference between Me-me’s kitchen and my Italian grandmother’s is the smell. My grandmother Falucci’s kitchen smells delicious: like basil and tomatoes and garlic. It makes your mouth water.

The second difference is that Nonny’s kitchen is downstairs in the basement. There’s a stove and a refrigerator and a big sink and a wooden cutting table and pots and pans.

In the corner is a wringer washing machine. It’s usually my job to help with the laundry if I’m around, same as at my house.

There’s a regular modern kitchen upstairs that my aunt Gina uses. Uncle Paulie bought the house from my grandmother, but she still lives here and everyone still calls it her house. Nonny doesn’t approve of the way Aunt Gina cooks and so she demanded a kitchen of her own in the basement. At first Uncle Paulie said no, but then he put one in “to keep the peace.” Uncle Paulie spends a lot of time keeping the peace between the women in his life.

“I should’ve been a diplomat,” he always says, shaking his head. “Least I’d be getting paid.”

When I walk down the rickety basement stairs, Nonny’s back is to me. She’s tiny, maybe eighty pounds, and her legs are like two thin blackstockinged toothpicks poking out from underneath her black dress. I’ve never actually seen her in anything but black. Even her winter coat is black Persian lamb.

“Hi, Nonny,” I say.
Nonna
is Italian for “grandmother.” The story goes that I couldn’t say
Nonna
when I was little, so I called her Nonny, and it just sort of stuck. Now everyone calls her that.

Nonny turns around, takes one look at me, and bursts into tears.

I sigh. I’m used to it, I guess. She cries every time she sees me.

My father, Alfredo, who everyone called Freddy, was her favorite, the firstborn son. He was the first person in the family to go to college, and he became a newspaper writer. Everyone was so proud of him, especially Nonny. His death was the worst thing that ever happened to the family. A real tragedy. Which is why Nonny wears black and cries every time she sees me.

“Tesoro mio,”
Nonny says, wiping away her tears with a black lace handkerchief. She calls me
tesoro mio
, which means “my treasure.” Nonny doesn’t speak English very well.

I take my usual spot on the stool by the table, and she pushes a plate at me and says in her thick Italian accent, “Too skinny. Eat. Eat.”

Sitting on the plate is something Nonny calls
pastiera,
a dish made with spaghetti and eggs and cheese and black pepper that’s baked and served cold. It’s one of my favorites, so Nonny cooks it all the time for me.

I watch as her small, gnarled fingers knead dough for fresh macaroni. All the Italian women in my family make their own macaroni. Nonny carefully rolls out the dough and then takes a sharp knife and cuts it into long strips and hangs it to dry on a wooden rack. Sometimes she lets me help her make it.

Nonny wipes her hands on her apron. “We see your papa now, yes?” She says this like it’s a question, but I know it’s not.

Uncle Paulie is already waiting for us in the upstairs hallway.

“There’s my ladies,” Uncle Paulie says with a broad smile.

My uncle Paulie’s a big, round fella. Probably because he has to eat two dinners every night: one cooked by Aunt Gina and one cooked by Nonny.

Nonny ties a black lace scarf around her head.

“Paolo,” she says, and points to her gloves. Paolo is Paulie’s name in Italian.

“Here ya go, Ma,” Uncle Paulie says, handing her the black gloves.

“Freddy,” Nonny says, waving at the wall in the hallway where there’s a shrine to my dead father. There’s a dozen photographs of him: at his First Holy Communion; at his graduation from high school; one with his arm around Uncle Dominic when they were young, the two of them grinning like they’ve got some big secret.

“Your father was a great man, Penny. Real good fella. Best brother ever,” Uncle Paulie says.

I’ve heard this a million times. And I know the next part, too.

Nonny starts crying. “My Freddy good boy.”

“That’s right,” Uncle Paulie says, a fat tear rolling down his cheek.

“Regular party in here,” a voice says from the top of the stairs.

It’s Aunt Gina. She’s wearing a white silk top with a fitted skirt and holding a cigarette. With her bleached-blond hair, she looks glamorous, like Marilyn Monroe.

“Hi, Aunt Gina,” I say.

“Hi, doll,” she says, walking down the steps, eyeing Nonny standing by the door with her scarf and gloves. “Honey, I thought you said you were taking me shopping today.”

“Paolo,” Nonny says.

Uncle Paulie lowers his voice. “I gotta take Ma to see Freddy.”

“The cemetery,” Aunt Gina says, her voice dry.

Uncle Paulie nods uncomfortably.

“Sounds like a real swell time,” Aunt Gina says, tapping her cigarette.

Nonny mutters something in Italian and my eyes widen. I know that curse word.

“What’s that, Mother Falucci?” Aunt Gina asks loudly.

Aunt Gina doesn’t know much Italian, and she always thinks that Nonny is trying to insult her, which is probably true because Nonny doesn’t like Aunt Gina. I personally think Uncle Paulie is going bald trying to survive in a house with two women who don’t get along.

Frankie walks in the front door.

“Francuccio,” Nonny says, and kisses him on both cheeks and hugs him tight until he wiggles free.
Francuccio
means “little Frankie.”

“Where’s everybody going?” he asks, taking in the scene.

“The cemetery,” I whisper.

“Oh, swell!” Frankie says loudly. “I love the cemetery!”

Aunt Gina taps her foot.

“Ready, Ma?” Uncle Paulie says nervously. “We better get going.”

Aunt Gina glares at Uncle Paulie, but he takes Nonny by the elbow and practically shoves her out the door, saying, “See ya later, honey.”

As the screen door slams behind us, Aunt Gina shouts, “I tell you, the only way to get someone to pay attention to you in this family is by dying!”

“Penny, look at this one,” Frankie says in an excited voice, pointing at an old gravestone that looks like it’s going to fall over any minute. “It’s got a skull on it. Whaddya think?”

“Could be,” I say.

“Definitely,” he says. “Get a load of the name.
Howard Pfeiffer.
That’s a criminal’s name if I ever heard one.”

Frankie likes coming to the cemetery because he heard there are a lot of criminals buried here.

See, he reads crime comic books, and he thinks that they’re true. His favorite is
Crime Does Not Pay.
He won’t read real books, but he’ll read comic books.

Some of the graves have patriotic red, white, and blue flags stuck on them. These are the graves of fallen soldiers. A lot of men from our town were killed in the world wars.

My father’s gravestone is marble, imported all the way from Italy, where we have lots of relatives. Uncle Nunzio had it made by a master carver, some cousin who does everyone’s stones. It’s the only gravestone with an Italian name in the whole row.

ALFREDO CHRISTOPHER FALUCCI

There’s a Catholic cemetery across the street, and that’s where my grandfather Falucci is buried. My father’s buried here because my mother hadn’t converted to Catholicism by the time he died, so they weren’t allowed to bury him in the Catholic cemetery. Nonny’s still upset about that.

“How’s it going, Freddy?” Uncle Paulie says to the ground. Uncle Paulie always talks like my father’s going to crawl right out of his grave and go off and smoke a cigar with him.

Nonny gets down on her knees and starts picking weeds, although it’s already the neatest grave in the entire cemetery. The groundskeeper, an old skinny fella named Lou, takes extra special care of my father’s plot. Uncle Ralphie sends him a ham at Christmas. Not to mention we’re here just about every week. To be honest, I hate it. I just do it because it makes Nonny happy.

“Real nice day for a visit, huh, Penny?” Uncle Paulie says, puffing away on a cigar. I guess dead people don’t mind the smell.

But Uncle Paulie’s right. It’s a perfect day, not too hot, and I start thinking that maybe there are worse ways of passing time than being here in Shady Grove Cemetery. It’s a peaceful cemetery, with trees everywhere. Not a bad place to be dead, if you ask me.

My father’s grave is sandwiched between Stuart Brandt, a young soldier, and Cora Lamb, a girl who died when she was nine. Stuart’s stone says:

STUART BRANDT

Valiant Soldier and Beloved Son
He Gave His Life for Our Freedom
March 19, 1923–June 6, 1944

Cora has a marble sculpture on her grave—a baby angel with short stubby wings. One time when we were visiting my father’s grave, I met Cora Lamb’s mother. She was an old lady with gray hair. I asked her how Cora died.

“The flu,” said Mrs. Lamb.

I think about Cora Lamb sometimes. Did she like butter pecan ice cream and read the funny pages? Did she fight with her mother about what dress to wear? Did she have a favorite toy? A fancy doll? See, I think it’s important to know someone’s story.

My uncles tell me stories about my father all the time. Uncle Dominic likes to tell the story of how he and my father went into New York City when they were just teenagers and got pick-pocketed. So my father stood on the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway and sang every Bing Crosby song he knew until they made enough money for the train fare home. Uncle Paulie always tells the one about how my father once bet twenty dollars on a pony named Lucky Duck at the race-track and won and bought everyone in their section a bag of peanuts.

My grandmother is crying.

“Freddy,” Nonny says, patting the stone. “So wrong, what happen to my boy. Those bad men. Non
è giusto. Non è giusto
.”

“What’s she talking about?” I ask Uncle Paulie. “What bad men?”

Uncle Paulie clears his throat. “Uh, the doctors who treated him. She blames them for what happened. You know how she is about hospitals.”

Nonny hates hospitals. She cut her finger once chopping garlic and refused to go to the hospital. Everyone thought she was gonna lose the finger, but she didn’t.

“What’d my father die from, anyway, Uncle Paulie?” I ask.

“Pneumonia,” he says quickly. “Real bad case of pneumonia.”

Frankie sidles up to us. “Pneumonia? That’s a boring way to die. How about a shot to the head? Or maybe knifed in a back alley?”

“Aw, shut up, kid,” Uncle Paulie says. “Last time I bring you here.”

If my Italian family didn’t talk about my father, I wouldn’t know a thing, because my mother won’t tell me anything. All she’s ever said is that he liked Bing Crosby, and honestly, what does that tell you about a person? Nothing, that’s what.

There’s a box under my mother’s bed that I found by accident. Scarlett O’Hara has a habit of stealing my socks and then hiding them, usually under beds, so I was looking for a sock when I found a pink department-store box. There wasn’t much in it—a few cards, a dried corsage, some shells, a bunch of photographs. One of the photographs was of my mother when she was younger, maybe twenty. She was wearing a bathing suit on the beach and laughing at the camera. She looked like a completely different person, so happy and carefree.

At the very bottom of the box was a picture postcard from Atlantic City. It was of a hotel, the Chalfonte–Haddon Hall, “in the very center of things on the Beach and Boardwalk.” The note was in my mother’s handwriting:

Dear Mother and Daddy,

Here we are on our honeymoon and having a grand time. Our room is beautiful and it looks out to the ocean. The weather is clear and cool and our appetites are large.

Love to all,
Ellie and Freddy

Scribbled beneath this in my father’s handwriting was a little note that said:

I am the luckiest fella ever.

I’ve never told anyone about the postcard—not even Frankie, and I tell him everything.

“We better start back,” Uncle Paulie says, helping Nonny up.

As we drive down Heavenly Lane of Shady Grove Cemetery, I’m proud that my father was the clever brother who sang for the train fare and the swell fella who bought peanuts for everybody after his pony won.

But more than just about anything in the whole wide world, it’s the man who wrote “I am the luckiest fella ever” on that postcard who I wish I could’ve met.

CHAPTER SIX

Uncles, Uncles Everywhere

My mother always says that even though my father’s family is full of men, don’t be fooled. It’s the women who really run things.

It’s Sunday, and that means dinner at Nonny’s house. On Saturdays I have dinner at home, which is usually a dry pot roast and burned potatoes because Me-me leaves it in too long. I don’t know when this started, me going over to my father’s family on Sundays; it’s been this way forever. And it’s always just me, never my mother or Me-me or Pop-pop.

My Italian family starts their dinner in the afternoon, so I go over after lunchtime. Everyone’s sitting in the upstairs kitchen around the table and the room smells like lemons. They put the lemons in the decanters of homemade Chianti. An Italian opera’s playing on the record player. My Italian family is crazy about opera music.

All the uncles are here—Uncle Paulie, Uncle Ralphie, Uncle Nunzio, who’s married to Aunt Rosa and lives next door in a house that has two stone lions guarding the front door, and Frankie’s dad, Uncle Angelo. They’re my real uncles. Nonny had six kids—my father, Uncle Dominic, Uncle Paulie, Aunt Teresa, Uncle Ralphie, and Aunt Rosa. Then there’s my father’s cousins, who Frankie and me still call our uncles. There’s Uncle Sally, whose real name is Salvatore, and Uncle Chick, who’s in the ironworks business, and Uncle Louis, who raises fig trees in his backyard, and my other uncle Louis, who everyone calls Little Louis because he’s younger—even though he weighs three hundred pounds and isn’t exactly little; in fact, I think he could stand to go on a diet. Pretty much everyone is related somehow. I don’t think anyone’s not Italian, except me, and even I’m half.

It’s times like these that I wish I understood Italian. But they won’t teach it to any of us kids because they say it’s our job to speak English and be good Americans.

Aunt Gina says the reason they don’t want us to learn Italian is that during World War II, Italy was on the wrong side, with Germany and Japan, and so the Italians who were in America got in trouble for it. She says that even Joe DiMaggio’s father had problems, and if Joe DiMaggio’s pop can get in trouble, you got to watch it, and this is why my relatives always speak English in public. But Frankie thinks the real reason they don’t want us to know Italian is so that they can have secret conversations. Frankie and me know all the good curse words anyway.

“There’s our golden girl,” Uncle Nunzio says. He’s wearing a real nice suit, charcoal gray with a thin pinstripe. It looks like something a Hollywood movie star would wear.

Uncle Nunzio owns a clothing factory, which is probably why he’s such a snappy dresser. He’s not handsome like Uncle Dominic, but there’s something about him. He has this way of looking at you, like he’s looking right into your soul. I don’t think too many people cross Uncle Nunzio.

“Hi, Uncle Nunzio,” I say.

“How are you, sweetheart?” he asks.

“Good.”

He gestures to a plate of fresh Italian pastries. “Eat something.”

“Thanks,” I say, and pick up a
sfogliatella. Sfogliatelle
are pastry with ricotta cheese inside. It sounds funny but they’re really good.

Aunt Gina walks in with Aunt Rosa, who likes to pinch me on the cheeks, and Aunt Teresa, who always looks worn-out, and our cousin Sister Laura, who’s a nun.

This is how it is here: people coming and going. There’s always a pot of something bubbling on the stove, a glass of Chianti being poured, macaroni in the oven. They think nothing of playing Italian card games like
scopa or briscola
until two in the morning. I don’t think my mother has ever even been up until two in the morning, let alone had someone arrive at midnight to join a game.

I slip away and go look for Uncle Dominic. He doesn’t like big gatherings, even if it is family, and he usually hides out in his car. The car’s empty, so I go around back and find him with the girls, which is what he calls his dogs.

As long as I’ve known him, Uncle Dominic’s had dogs, and they’re always dachshunds. I call them wiener dogs because they look like the wieners you get at the boardwalk. He’s got two right now, Queenie V and Queenie VI. Queenies I, II, III, and IV are dead and buried somewhere in the backyard. He names the boy dogs King, but there’ve only been two Kings so far. A couple of years ago Uncle Dominic built the dogs a pen so that they can tear around and play and not get run over in the street, which is what happened to the dead Queenies and the Kings, too.

When I get to the pens, Uncle Dominic’s talking to one of the dogs.

“How’s my favorite girl?” he’s saying, like the dog is a regular person. Uncle Dominic talks to the dogs a lot, and he cooks special for them. When you come right down to it, I think he prefers them to people. He says dogs are nicer. Also, they don’t care if he wears his slippers.

Nonny loves the Queenies too. She’s always spraying the fancy perfume Uncle Paulie buys her, Tabu, on them. She speaks to them in Italian, and they’re probably the only dogs I know that can understand two languages.

“I thought I was your favorite girl,” I say.

He looks startled for a minute and then, realizing it’s just me, relaxes.

“Hi, Princess.”

“Taught them any new tricks?”

Uncle Dominic says wiener dogs are real smart. I’m not too sure about this, though. They can’t be that smart if they’re always chasing cars and getting run over.

“I’m working on something,” he says. “I’ll show you when it’s ready.”

Aunt Rosa pokes her head out the door, the sun catching in her thick, dark hair. “What are you two up to out here?”

She’s my father’s youngest sister, the baby of the family. When she was a teenager, she was always running away to New York City. My uncles would have to go and find her and bring her home. The story goes that her brothers got tired of tracking her down and so they sent their friend Nunzio to go get her, and when he brought her back, they were engaged. Uncle Nunzio must be some kind of a smooth talker.

“Just playing with the Queenies,” I say.

“Well, come on in. Dinner’s ready,” she says.

“Go on,” Uncle Dominic says. He never takes meals with us, which, believe me, is saying something in an Italian family. He’s like a shadow; he just drifts in and out with nobody paying much attention to him, except maybe me.

Pretty soon I’m sitting at the long dining room table with the lacy tablecloth that Nonny made herself. We’re all crammed in and everyone’s talking at once and laughing and arguing and it’s real loud.

Baby Enrico, who’s Aunt Rosa’s baby, waddles over to my chair. He’s almost two and is real mischievous. But he’s got the best smile that you’ve ever seen.

He holds his arms up to me and says, “Carry you! Carry you!”

What he’s trying to say is “Carry me!” but he thinks it’s “Carry you!” since people ask him, “You want me to carry you?”

“Come here,” I say, and pick him up and put him on my lap. He fishes around on my plate, takes a piece of bread and gnaws on it, and then tries to stick it in my mouth.

“Eat!” he orders. He’s Italian already.

Frankie and me used to get a lot of attention until all the baby cousins started showing up. In addition to Enrico there’s Uncle Ralphie and Aunt Fulvia’s baby, Gloria, and Frankie’s baby brother, Michael, and Aunt Rosa’s pregnant again. I like the baby cousins, especially Enrico, but I hate changing smelly diapers.

Dinner is a big production here, and it takes hours. We usually start off with some soup, and then we have macaroni, and then some meat, like breast of veal or
braciole,
which is braised beef rolls, with vegetables and potatoes. After that there’s salad, just lettuce with oil and vinegar, no tomatoes or anything else. Then there’s a break, and all the men go drink anisette in the parlor or play bocce ball in the backyard while the women sit around eating raw fennel. Then comes coffee and nuts and fruit and cordials. After that, we’ll sometimes have a snack.

I start in on the soup, which has escarole and bits of egg. The food I eat here is completely different than at home. Here, food is everything. They even call the food by different names. They call pasta “macaroni.” At home we say it’s tomato sauce, and here they call it gravy.

“Why don’t you come down to the factory, Penny?” Uncle Nunzio says to me. “Pick out your fall coat. The new styles are in.”

I get a new coat every year from Uncle Nunzio. I also get a lot of other clothes—muffs and hats and matching skirts and jackets. I never have to shop in stores like regular people. I just tell Uncle Nunzio what I like, and he has one of the ladies sew it up for me.

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

Nonny walks into the room, carrying a huge casserole dish. Nonny and my aunts cook enough to feed an army. “Just in case people show up” is what they always say.

Today she’s made lasagna, which is my favorite.

“Looks good,” I say as she puts a large portion on my plate. She always puts too much on my plate and gets upset when I don’t eat it all. It doesn’t matter how much I eat: I can never eat enough to make her happy.

After dinner the uncles break out their instruments and start playing. There’s a trumpet, a mandolin, a violin, and the piano. They’re like their own band. Soon everyone’s singing and dancing and loud, and it’s a regular party.

It’s nearly six o’clock by the time I leave.

Before I go, everyone kisses me good-bye on both cheeks, something we never do in my family. They also slip money into my hands, rolled-up one-dollar bills. I kind of like this tradition.

“I’ll drive you home,” Uncle Dominic says. I’m perfectly capable of walking home by myself, but he never lets me. He’s almost as bad as my mother.

At my house he idles at the curb, watching to make sure I get in okay. I give him a little wave. I go into the parlor, and for a moment I think everybody’s asleep or something. But they’re in the dining room, eating dinner.

They’re so quiet, I hardly know they’re there.

The next morning I borrow Frankie’s bike and go to Uncle Nunzio’s factory.

The clothing factory is on the other side of town. It’s a big brick building that looks just like every other big brick building. During the war the factory made uniforms for the military, but now it makes regular clothes, mostly awfully nice wool coats. You can hear the sewing machines buzzing even before you go in.

Carolina, Uncle Nunzio’s secretary, is sitting at her desk outside his office. She’s wearing a stylish suit with a fake-flower corsage.

“Hi, hon. Your uncle’s on the phone. He’ll be done in a minute,” she says.

I sit on a bench to wait. It’s hot inside, real hot, even with the fans going, and I feel sorry for all the ladies at their sewing machines, row after row, sweating away. Most of them are from Italy.

“You want a butterscotch?” Carolina asks, holding out a tin.

“Sure,” I say, taking one.

“How’s your mother?” she asks. She and my mom went to school together.

“She’s good, thanks.”

“You look more like her every day,” she says.

“I sure hope she didn’t have this hairdo when she was my age.”

Carolina laughs. “Oh, your mother could’ve pulled off that hairdo. She was the most daring girl I knew.”

“My mother was daring? Honest to goodness?” I can’t picture my mom like this at all. She won’t go out of the house without an umbrella and scarf even on a clear day.

“Would I lie to you?” Carolina says with a laugh. “Our senior year, she helped steal our school rival’s mascot, a goat.”

“A goat!”

The door to the office opens, and Uncle Nunzio is standing there.

“It’s the little princess,” he says with a broad smile.

“Hi, Uncle Nunzio,” I say.

“Ask Alberto to come in for a minute, eh, Carolina?” Uncle Nunzio says.

A short elderly man with gray hair and a tape measure hanging around his neck comes into the office. Alberto’s been my uncle’s tailor forever.

“Alberto,” Uncle Nunzio says, “Penny needs a new coat.”

“Bellissima,”
he says to me, which I know means “most beautiful girl” in Italian.

Alberto leads me out of the office and over to a workroom in the factory where the coats are stored. There are all sorts of coats—coats with shiny buttons and fur collars and matching gloves and everything. I spot a nubby wool coat that’s cranberry red with a rabbit-fur collar and rabbit fur around the wrists. It has a matching muff and hat.

“That one, please,” I say.

Alberto has me try it on, but it’s a little long in the sleeves. He takes the coat over to a sewing machine and fixes it while I wait.

Uncle Nunzio is in his office looking at some papers when I come in, the coat over my arm.

“Got one?” he asks, looking up.

“Yeah,” I say, holding up the coat. “Thanks.”

“You take the muff, too?”

I shake my head. “I got the hat.”

“Take the muff,” he says. “It’s rabbit. The best.”

He goes to the door and calls to Carolina, “Get Penny the muff, okay?”

“You got it, Mr. Rosati,” she says.

“What about your mother?” he asks me. “She need a new coat?”

“Sure,” I say, although I know she doesn’t like gifts from my father’s family for some reason. Maybe she’s worried about getting more lamb’s eyes.

We go back to the coat room. He waves at a rack in the corner.

“Pick something out,” he says.

I look through the coats. They’re all so beautiful, trimmed in mink and rabbit and lynx. But it’s the reddish fox stole that catches my eye. It will go with my mother’s hair, and it’s something she would never pick out for herself in a hundred years. The fur gleams in the dim light, and the little teeth of the fox are bared and angry-looking, like it’s not too happy to be a stole.

The coat and muff and hat go in the basket of the bike, but I wear the fox stole draped around my neck the whole way home, feeling like a movie star. I imagine my mother wearing it, looking glamorous, although I’m not sure where she would go. Usually she spends her Friday nights listening to the radio with me and Pop-pop and Me-me.

When I was younger, she used to date. They were always good-looking fellas, but they never came back after she introduced them to me. I guess they didn’t want kids. Mother hasn’t dated in a long time, but I keep hoping that maybe she and Uncle Dominic will get together. He’s handsome and he already likes me and I’m sure I could work on the living in the car and get him to wear a pair of shoes.