A Heart Most Worthy Read online

  She pulled her scarf down over her eyes with a trembling hand and started away from the steps. As long as she didn’t go out to the corner, she wouldn’t encounter any men. She shouldn’t. None but the shopkeepers. And those she could not avoid.

  Not if she wanted to eat.

  She took hesitant, measured steps, pausing to look up and down the street between each one. Two storefronts down, she paused in front of a window. A macelleria, it dangled a few rabbits from its ceiling, skinned but for their round, fuzzy tails. An enticing chain of salami hung beside them, caught up in a snare of twine. There were roasts displayed on a shelf behind the window, encased in white marbled fat. But the glass also reflected back a pair of men, sauntering down the street.

  Luciana bolted toward the door. Opened it and fled inside.

  The man behind the counter smiled as she entered. “Buon giorno, Signorina. What do I get for you?”

  At least that’s what she thought he must have said. She wasn’t certain. She couldn’t make sense of his accent.

  He raised his brows, opened his hands behind the glass of the case. “What do I get for you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Inglese?”

  English? Is that what he was asking her? She scarcely knew a word.

  He shrugged. Decided to help the girl settle on what it was that she wanted. “Insaccati?”

  Ah. Now there was a word she understood. But no. No preserved meats for her. The contessa wouldn’t know a salame from a cotechino. She’d think for certain someone was trying to poison her.

  Luciana took a step farther into the shop so that she could peer out the window. Those men were still there. They’d stopped in the middle of the street. The reason they’d stopped, of course, is that they’d seen one of their friends. But Luciana didn’t know that. And when she saw the dawn of recognition light their faces, she feared the worst.

  “Prosciutto?”

  She jumped.

  The butcher was holding up a hunk of aged ham.

  Luciana shook her head. She was getting hungry now. She took another step farther in, toward the case, to hide herself in the relative recesses of the room.

  “Agnello?”

  Her mouth began to water. She hadn’t had lamb in . . . far too long. If only they had some casoeula. That would be worth the money. Tender meat stewed with sausage and bacon. Served with white cabbage and polenta. What she wouldn’t give for a taste of that once more. But it was so very difficult for Luciana to know what to ask for when she had never cooked before.

  “Coniglio? Polpette?” Rabbit. Meatballs.

  The contessa had grown tired of watered wine and cheese and bread. Luciana had too. “Bistecca?”

  “Bistecca?” The man raised a brow.

  Beefsteak. That sounded like what she had asked for, didn’t it? Enough like it that she nodded. And then hoped. And prayed. Maybe if the contessa had a real meal, she would sleep through the night. And then Luciana could too.

  “Una?”

  She nodded, knowing she only had enough money for a single steak.

  “Una bistecca.” She watched as the butcher picked up a large thick steak, wrapped it in paper, and tied it up with a string. “Something else?”

  Something else. Did he have a Carabiniere or an arrest warrant hidden behind his counter? Could he buy her passage back to Italy or breathe her father back to life? A beefsteak would have to do. She counted out the precious coins as if they were her last. Laid them on the counter, fingers lingering atop their warm, shiny surfaces.

  The butcher wiped his hands on his apron and then swept the coins into his palm with a deft hand. “Arrivederci.”

  Luciana paused at the window. Looked past the salami in their string cages to the street outside. The men were no longer there.

  She drew open the door.

  The women were still on the sidewalk, sitting in their chairs, sighing over a shared memory. Looking beyond the crumbling sidewalks, gazing past the tenements, back through the years into the golden age of their youth. To the days when Tommasina still had all of her hair and Generosa had all of her teeth. Hadn’t the boys come sniffing around? And hadn’t they been the talk of the village back then?

  Luciana didn’t care about old women. Her thoughts were on things more basic. More immediate. She cared about life. Or if not about life, then she cared about death. And she didn’t want to bring it to her door. Not again.

  Sì. The men had gone from the street.

  She slipped away from the butcher’s door and out into the day. Bolted for her tenement building. She couldn’t do it without skirting those old nonne and stepping into the street, but she did it quickly and then she was back up the stoop and into the building.

  She was safe.

  As safe as she could be in a falling-down tenement, filled with the poorest of immigrant classes. She was, perhaps, as safe as she would ever be again.

  Slender and light as she was on her feet, she ran straight up the stairs. All four flights of them. As she twisted up their heights, the air grew hotter. Closer. More stale. At the top, she felt more than saw her way down the gloomy tunnel of a hall. Passing a cluster of giggling girls and a rack of maccheroni set in front of an open doorway to dry, she reached the door of her apartment.

  She closed and locked the door behind her – testing it – before she placed her package of meat on a narrow shelf. Then she unknotted her scarf as she walked toward the window and the straight-backed old woman who sat before it, hands folded within each other on her lap.

  At least they had a window.

  Others on the floor, a dozen in the building, had no such luxury. And though the glass itself could have used a good cleaning, it was open this afternoon. No rays of light came through it just now, but across the street, windows glowed where the sun still touched them. And sometimes when light itself cannot be had, then a glimpse of it will suffice.

  “Contessa?”

  The woman raised her head, turned just an inch, as if to summon Luciana closer.

  The girl obliged. And when she entered the old woman’s peripheral vision, the contessa offered up a hand. Luciana took it, curtsied, and then kissed it.

  “Sì?”

  “I have come to prepare your dinner.”

  “Grazie, ragazza.” The old woman withdrew her hand before Luciana could think to hold on to it.

  Ragazza. Girl.

  Luciana would have given her own heart to have heard the words mia bambina fall from the old woman’s lips. My little girl. For when a child of any age has been orphaned, all she longs for is to find a safe place, a firm lap to climb into, and be comforted. But the contessa would comfort no one. She simply sat in front of the window all day long, back straight as a rod, never touching the slats of the chair, speaking to no one, requiring nothing, treating Luciana like a servant girl.

  While Luciana spent her days in the shadows, pacing the length of their sad set of rooms, using the window at periodic intervals to scout the neighborhood, the contessa sat and gazed out, impervious to shadow or light. Sometimes the strained notes of a song came out in a feeble hum. Once or twice, Luciana thought she had heard the woman speak, and several times when she looked into the contessa’s eyes, she thought she’d seen her nonna looking back. But most of the time the old woman was silent.

  Luciana had given up hope. It was no use calling her “nonna” any longer. That engaging, warm, vital woman was lost in the far reaches of a grief-stricken mind. Gone was the proud mother, the doting grandmother, the competent administrator of the estates of the conte di Roma. The woman all Roma had once referred to as Contessa Formidabile had disappeared.

  Luciana would have kissed the top of her head had the woman displayed any sign at all of her former person. But she did not, and so the girl went to the shelf, took the steak from the wrapper, and prepared it as best as she could. Which I must say, if truth be important, was not so very good at all. After wasting three matches trying to light the stove, she cooked t
he steak at too high a temperature. So when the contessa sat down to her dinner, the beefsteak was burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. But the butcher was an honest man if he was a clean one, and neither Luciana nor her grandmother got sick that night.

  The contessa slept without waking, but Luciana could not sleep at all. Aside from a trip down the hall to the communal toilet, she did not leave their rooms. But she knew the next morning that she would have to. It was unavoidable. The beefsteak had taken the last of their money. The next day she would have to find a job.

  3

  Madame Fortier was going to need another seamstress. More than a seamstress, perhaps. She was going to need an artist. She knew it as sure as she knew the latest modes from Paris.

  Taking up the sample book the postman had just delivered, she walked from the floor of her oriental-carpeted, chandeliered shop back behind a glass case filled with gloves, tasseled bags, handkerchiefs, and belts. Placing the sample book on top of it, she opened the front cover. Pen and watercolor-print illustrations bordered with squares of fabric filled the pages.

  She flipped through the book quickly, giving the designs a cursory look. And she approved. Of most of them. After she was done, she had proof to bolster her suspicions. She would have to hire another girl.

  Julietta was a genius with all kinds of embroidery, though Madame frequently wished the girl would alter her attitude. Annamaria, though she rarely spoke, smocked like no one Madame had ever seen. The girl’s interior work, the back side of her designs, was impeccable. But the styles for spring were going to be more ornate. And beadwork was just as tedious as embroidery or smocking. It required someone with a steady hand and abundant patience. And more than that, it required someone who knew what happened when beads were joined to fabric. Someone who could anticipate how their weight would pull and stretch the material. It was true handiwork. A lady’s work. And where was Madame going to find a lady who was willing to work?

  For what Madame Fortier could afford to pay her?

  She frowned before she could remember not to. Madame Fortier never frowned. Rarely frowned. Why was it so difficult, after all those long years, for her to remember the role she had laid out for herself to play? She went back through the book. Stopped for a moment to consider an illustration. Simple and sleek. But such dark colors. Black. Navy blue. Only one or two of the styles she’d examined were offered in green.

  Dark green.

  It wasn’t easy to remember the gowns women had bought before the war. But how could anyone in 1918 think of wearing Copenhagen blue or Nell rose? Lavender or terra cotta? What she wouldn’t do to be able to order a bolt of silk crepe in a reseda or a Russian green! But how could anyone think of looking cheerful when a war was being fought? When thousands of boys were dying in Europe’s trenches?

  Madame crossed herself, some habits being nearly impossible to break.

  She sighed as she turned another page. When would it all end? When could she stop making black gowns and selling veils to match? When could she stop converting fanciful patterns meant for shimmering beads into sober lines intended for black jet? And when – oh when! – would she be able to order charmeuse again? Or chiffon? Her fingers itched to touch a whimsical voile.

  It’s not that she missed those fabrics exactly.

  She missed their innocence. Their charm.

  Julietta brought her own kind of exuberance to the shop, but she was a restless, impatient sort of girl. Which was too bad. Julietta had style and taste to go with it. She needed a girl like Julietta; Madame Fortier could not be Madame Fortier forever. It was too exhausting. The strain showed in places she didn’t know to look. It showed in the depths of her brown eyes and the slant of her shoulders. It showed in her walk and in the measured way that she talked.

  None of her clients noticed it. Why would they? They only saw what they wanted to see. Madame Fortier, recognizing this, had long ago given up her fear of being discovered for who she really was. It had been absurdly easy for her to cease being Cosimo the Tailor’s daughter and become the celebrated Boston modiste. Indeed, the city was filled with modistes, all of them Madames who had never set foot on France’s fabled shores. It didn’t matter. As long as Madame Fortier did nothing to break the illusion she had created, her clients were simply grateful to figure themselves on her small and exclusive list.

  Madame Fortier was a gown maker. That’s what the sign on her shop said. Madame Fortier, Gown Maker. She didn’t make dresses and she never had.

  Making a notation in the margin of the sample book, she fingered the square of navy silk that accompanied the illustration. It would look so much better in an organdy. In bright pink. But Madame knew Mrs. Rutherford, with her charitable work on behalf of the war, would want it just the way it was presented. Even more perhaps if the waist were raised just a tiny bit and the hem lengthened by an inch. Not everyone looked their best in the new short styles. Length had its virtues.

  She sighed as she shut the book, wishing for something she didn’t have the words to define. For something . . . different. Something else. Something other than what was. But she could not afford to investigate her feelings more deeply. She had chosen, you see, to leave her old life – her Italian life – far behind and now there was no going back. Not even when, quite often, she desperately wished to.

  It had taken some time for Luciana to work up the nerve to leave the building. The hardest part had been getting dressed. She’d shed the rags of her peasant’s disguise but had yet to put on the clothes of her old life.

  They lay there – the beribboned satin pumps, the silk stockings, the beaded satin gown – across the bed that she and the contessa shared. The satin wasn’t right at all for that July morning. It was too heavy and the color much too bright, but it was the only thing she had to wear. The shoes were utterly ridiculous, if you will excuse my saying so. And they were still marked by ashes. Luciana took up the hem of her discarded skirt and rubbed at the stains, but only succeeded in widening the smudges.

  If she went out, she might be recognized.

  If she stayed, they would most certainly starve to death.

  She had to go. She had no other choice. She would just have to do it.

  Luciana picked up a comb and pulled it through her hair. It delayed her getting dressed by a few minutes. Gathering her long dark locks, twisting them into a bun and then fastening the bun with pins took a few minutes more.

  And then she could delay no longer. She took up the stockings, unrolled them and pulled them up over her knees, and then she fastened them to her corset. She pulled on her drawers and a chemise; a petticoat. And finally, closing her eyes so that she could not be goaded into remembering the last night that she had worn it, she took the gown from the bed.

  She would not remember.

  She refused to remember.

  She stepped into it, pulling it up over her hips. She had to open her eyes in order to fasten it in front, but after sliding her feet into the shoes, she did not look down at the gown at all. But still, fear made her heart drop to the bottom of her stomach.

  Even if her father’s murderer didn’t recognize her, others would surely know her. Know of her. Enough to decide that she did not belong in the North End, not in a gown like the one she was wearing. And if he did find her, what would he do to her then? She needed a disguise. Though she couldn’t do anything about the shoes, perhaps she could cover the gown.

  With her scarf, maybe?

  She grabbed it from the pile of clothes on the floor and unfurled it across her shoulders. But no matter which direction she turned it, regardless of which end pointed down and whether it was placed in the back or the front, it did no good at all. The confection of beads that was sprinkled across the long, flowing collar of the gown still caught the morning’s light, winking at her as if they meant no harm at all.

  She could think of nothing else to use save the blanket.

  It was a ratty, holey old blanket of indeterminate color that had been left i
n the rooms by the previous tenant. The fact that it had been left, and what’s more, not stolen, might have told Luciana all she needed to know about its provenance and condition. But refugees are grateful for whatever they can come by and just then, during the stifling nights of July, it hid the stains on the mattress and succeeded somewhat in helping to level the lumps at night.

  She decided to try it, draping the blanket across her shoulders and drawing it to a close beneath her chin. It made her look . . . well, I hate to say how it made her look. Even fearful young women on the run from sinister persons would like to think, I’m sure, that they have at least something to do with modern fashion. That something, hidden underneath the clumsy folds and holes of a moth-eaten blanket, could signal the beauty hidden within. She knew it couldn’t look at all stylish, but she told herself it didn’t matter. Just a few short months before she’d been known as one of the most fashionable women in Roma. But that was when she’d wanted to be noticed – when she’d craved all the attention society had to offer.

  Once she ventured out – with the blanket – into the light of day, she made it from North Bennet Street to Cross Street without suffering any untoward glances. Indeed, without incurring a second glance at all. At that intersection of Boston proper and old-world Italy, once she crossed the street and the air shed the scents of sewage and rotting garbage, she dropped the blanket into a gutter, gathered her old airs around her and, lifting her chin, started off down North Street. But then she stopped. And very nearly caused a man walking behind her to trip. But there was no help for it; she had hit upon a snag.

  She had to find a job, that was certain. There was only one thing she knew how to do, it was true. But where, in that vast and crowded city, was she to find such a place of employment? She only knew where it wasn’t: It couldn’t be within the district of tenements and slums she now called home.