But at times, dad felt that he needed a break from Molly, the pretty staff, the office, the authors, the critics, the book launching parties, and the many demands on his private and public life. At those times, he would look at me and say: Now we’re going to disappear. Just the two of us. Alright, girl? Wink.
Once we disappeared for two weeks. Dad kept his word and took me to all the places I had seen on postcards, “from sea to shining sea.” He sang for me while driving his Corvette convertible toward the Rocky Mountains and beyond. We went as far as California where he grew up and where he still had the Santa Barbara mansion he inherited from his parents.
All this was dazzling for a kid her age. But even in her enchantment she would, at times, think of mother back home and feel a sting of nostalgia. Amy wondered why she categorically refused to come and live here. Anna, that was her name, said her life was in Italy, especially her life as an artist, because she could not grow and express herself outside of her own environment. She had achieved some recognition as a young artist, and now her works were internationally known. At the beginning of her career, she had a show in New York. It was on that occasion that Anna and Larry met.
The gallery owner had commissioned the catalogue from L&N Publishers, and at the opening he introduced Larry to the artist. Larry was a big hit with women. Anna was very beautiful. Tall and slender, she moved with the grace of a reed wafted by a light breeze, and her classic features possessed an inner radiance. Larry was smitten. So, that night the two of them ended up in the penthouse. Anna did not leave the next day, as she was scheduled to, or the next week, or even the next month. She stayed in New York much longer than she had planned. When she finally left, Larry followed her and spent several months in Italy. He went back after Amy was born, when he became convinced that Anna would never agree to marry him.
When Amy returned from that first summer vacation, she was bombarded with questions—Tell me about America. It must be fabulous over there. What did you see?—And she must have repeated her story a hundred times, about the swimming pool on the deck, the fifty-floor elevator, the tropical greenhouse in the lobby with its parrots and streams, surfing in the Pacific Ocean, and other marvels. Stella, in particular, wanted to go over the details time and again. They practiced English together, spending long hours on their favorite bench in the rose garden at Villa Flora, reading a wide range of novels from Jane Austen to Mark Twain. Amy was pretty fluent by then. She made a lot of progress during her summer months in New York, and, of course, it helped that she had an English nanny as a child. On the other hand, this contributed to her strange accent, an odd combination of native Italian, stylish British, and ordinary New Yorkese.
“Here we are, miss. Where should I drop you off?” The cabbie wakes her up from her reverie.
“Can you pull up by the pizza place, over there? D’you see the sign, Santa Lucia?”
“Lucheeah...is this how you say it in Italy?! It sounds pretty. Isn’t it misspelled on the sign?”
Jeez, something’s lost in translation, Amy thinks, and I don’t have the time for a language lesson.
“Here, keep the change. And go take your kid to school.” “Thank you, miss. It’s nice of you...”
...and something else she can’t hear. She’s already running, always on the run.
She catches a glimpse of her image in a shop window. She likes what she sees. Slender figure, good legs, bumpy curls, a focused gaze, a smart designer outfit... Overall, a youngish, sexy woman. She’ll turn fifty-four in a month and she looks even better than the glamorous boomers on the cover of AARP Magazine. I’m gonna have a big party, she promises herself.
The door to the pizzeria is locked. She has to go in from the parking lot in the back. Rosa is surprised to see her.
“Hi, beauty!” She actually says: Ciao, bellezza, because she prefers to speak Italian to her. They hug and kiss. “What happened? Did you fall off the bed?”
“Sort of. Way too early for me. Last night I worked until 2 a.m.”
“You need a good cup of coffee. Real Italian espresso.”
Rosa goes behind the counter on which a massive Illy coffee maker towers in all its glory of shiny chrome, black levers, bending tubes, hissing spouts, and steam puffs. As a result of her skillful operation, the machine releases a precious drop of concentrated coffee in each of two tiny cups. Rosa brings them to the table and they sit down.
The dining room is large and bright, with tasteful Mediterranean decor—white walls, terracotta floor, dark wood furniture, and ceramic panels with landscapes of the Amalfi coast imported from the region. On one side, French doors lead to a patio lined with potted lemon and orange trees. On the other side, a wood-burning oven is in full view.
“I had not seen it after the renovation,” Amy says, looking around. “It’s really nice. Simple and elegant.”
“You should tell Chris. He’s the one who designed it and supervised the work.” Chris is Rosa’s son, a successful architect and the owner of a hip design studio, the first in the family to graduate from college. Rosa continues, “It took him a long time to convince his father that the place needed a facelift. Joe didn’t want to hear of it. He liked it the way his parents set it up fifty years ago, with Formica table tops and an electric oven tucked away in the back of the kitchen. But now, he too is happy with the results. Business has been terrific.”
II
A flashback
Joe Tornese was born in New York in the early 1930s, a second-generation son of Italian immigrants from a village south of Naples. His parents came to the U.S. as kids, with their families, after WWI. In 1921 the U.S. had resumed its immigration program, after a brief interruption due to the war, and had passed the first Immigration Quota Law to control the huge demand from people desperate to escape the dismal living conditions in a Europe devastated by the conflict. Joe’s grandparents and their children were among the 560,971 immigrants admitted to the United States that year. Joe’s mother, known as Mamma Lucia among the pizzeria’s patrons, is still alive at age eighty-nine and keeps telling the same story that Amy has heard dozens of times.
“È stata la miseria, bella mia. We were starving, you know? You think we would leave if we were well off? You kiddin’? That was home, family, friends, the graves in the cemetery... Hell, no. We would not leave. But we were starving. The land we worked belonged to the baron, don Ferdinando, that son-nabitch God forgive him. He had acres and acres of land, and we and other hands worked just a small piece each family. Still, it would have been enough. But at the end of each month, his men came by on horseback, with a wagon, and took all the crop. We sweated on his land and were left with nothing. Noi a faticà e lui a magnà. We had no choice but to get on the ship and go seek a better life.”
Lucia was nine when the family embarked on their journey to America with their possessions wrapped up in two blankets. Going up the gangplank, the father carried the two big bundles, the mother held two younger sons in her arms, and Lucia walked by her, holding on to her skirt. For three weeks they shared the cramped quarters in the bowels of the ship with dozens of other families. The air was stifling, there were no portholes. They slept on narrow berths, adults and children together. Twice a day they received a meager meal, consisting mainly of soup and stale bread. Many were seasick, others fell seriously ill, two women gave birth before their time. The stench grew more unbearable every day. Lucia was able to sneak out at dusk and venture onto the upper deck. At that time, the first-class passengers and the crew were having dinner, and she could move stealthily around without being seen. On one of her outings, she met a boy about her age, a fellow immigrant who ten years later became her husband.
Lucia