Elizabeth Street (8 page)

Meatball had a heart attack the first week they worked under the disc, but he survived. He was now helping to sell fruit on Mulberry Street at half his paltry laborer’s wage. In the late afternoons, when Carmine and Nunzio made it back to Mulberry Street, they would head for Meatball’s cart. The garage behind his fruit stand housed Meatball’s friend’s ice truck, and he would take Nunzio and Carmine there to sit inside its cool walls and eat the bruised fruit that he had saved for them.

Near the end of August, they finished riveting together the plates of the tank’s bottom. “Ah, just in time for winter, we’ll come aboveground,” Carmine mocked.

They drilled holes in the plate to insert the jacks. The plan was for the scaffolding to be removed and for the jacks and screw logs to hold the bottom of the tank above the concrete floor. Nunzio noticed that Mr. Mulligan looked more worried than usual and was making many phone calls. When Nunzio couldn’t contain himself any longer, he asked what the procedure was going to be for lowering the structure onto the floor. One of the foremen grabbed him by the shoulders and yelled inches from his face, “Stop asking stupid questions!”

In that instant, Nunzio realized the question wasn’t stupid, and he was not the only one who didn’t understand the mechanics of how this disc was to be lowered. Work slowed for a day or two, and another man in a suit showed up. Supervisor Mulligan and the man went into the construction office. Supplies were stored near the office door, so Nunzio walked over pretending to need a new drill bit.

“Mulligan, we’ve got six jobs to worry about. If you can’t handle this one, let us know,” was the first and last thing Nunzio heard before a foreman walked by and snapped, “What are you doing? You’re supposed to have a runner get that.”

Lowering the disc to its surface could be put off no longer. On the morning of September 2, the men arrived at work and were surprised to see an additional crew of twenty-five laborers on site. Mulligan called all the foremen and lead men together.

“Alright, we’re going to lower this baby to the bottom today. I want one man to every two jacks and one to every screw log. We got extra men here to help. Take it down. Slow as you need to. And we’ll need a few men underneath to oil the cups of the jacks.”

Go underneath when it was being lowered? Even the company’s foremen were stunned. Mulligan answered the silence. “The head engineer says that unless those jacks are oiled she’s not going to come down smooth and easy.” The silence continued, and eventually so did Mulligan.

“Okay, let’s try it without men below the disc and see how it goes.”

The men, including Nunzio and Pretty Boy, who was now also a lead man, broke from the circle relieved and went to round up the crews to work the jacks and screw logs. By ten o’clock the disc had been lowered two inches in a tedious, arduous process. The jacks and men groaned from the weight. Nunzio overheard the foremen calculating that it could be three to four days before they got the tank floor to the ground. Supervisor Mulligan nervously circled the disc when he wasn’t being summoned to the phone. At noon the men were promised an extra hour’s pay if they took ten minutes to eat and skipped their lunch. They were hot and exhausted, but it was too good an offer to pass up.

By two o’clock the disc had been lowered to twenty-six inches. After another phone call, Supervisor Mulligan brought the foremen and lead men together once again.

“We’re going to oil the cups; it’s going too slowly. I figure if eight men go underneath, that should do it. At twenty-six inches, they need to work on their backs, so the skinnier the better.” Mulligan walked away, leaving them in stunned silence.

It took a few moments for the chief foreman to speak. “There’s eight crews. Each lead man should pick one person from their crew to oil the cups.”

The eight lead men stared at the Irish foreman, who knew them well enough to know that they would pick themselves. It was a matter of honor. They were the lead men; they were making five cents more an hour. It was their responsibility. Nunzio looked around at the other men and wordlessly asked the question. The lead men all nodded.

“We’re the men,” intoned Nunzio.

They gathered again at the bottom of the disc to discuss positioning. The foremen figured they needed five men in the interior and three along the perimeter. The chief foreman called off names. “Lagato, Fiero, Constantino, Romano, and Idone will work toward the center. Pontillo, Amato, and Jones will handle the perimeter.”

Pretty Boy, whose real name was Mariano Idone, tried to control the shaking in his hand as he reached for his oilcan. Nunzio noticed and offered, “Pretty Boy, I positioned most of these jacks, why don’t you stay around the edge and I’ll go in.”

Pretty Boy stared at Nunzio and quietly said, “Alright Profes sore, if you think so.”

Nunzio slithered on his back under the disc and headed for the center. He used his heels on the concrete and his palms on the metal tank bottom to propel himself through the space. He held the oilcan in his mouth. It was dark, and the few inches that were lost with the lowering of the disc made a huge difference in the amount of air and anxiety that flowed through his body. To keep going, Nunzio was forced to use a mental trick Giovanna had taught him that she used with women in labor. His body was sandwiched between sun-scorched steel and concrete, but he visualized himself sitting with Giovanna on the cliffs of Scilla. A sea breeze cooled them, carrying the smell of lemons.

The laborers above were instructed to lower the tank an inch while the men underneath oiled the cups and checked the jack pins to ensure they were working. The strain of the jacks on the metal was amplified beneath the disc. Nunzio’s head felt like it was going to explode from the noise and the heat. It was almost pitch dark under the disc, but when Nunzio saw how the pins played loosely in the cups, he knew he had found the problem. He decided to check one other jack cup before telling the foreman. Nunzio shimmied over to the next jack. He glimpsed the bottom of a boot and called out.

“Do the pins seem okay to you?”

“I can’t see a thing, I’m getting out of this goddamn inferno,” came Lagato’s voice.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

Aboveground, Supervisor Mulligan noticed that the strain on the jacks and screw logs had not changed. He was furious with the engineer for backing him into this problem. It wasn’t his fault it was taking so long; the engineers had come up with a lousy idea. Mulligan decided to tell them he was stopping the job until they came up with a better plan and marched off to the office to call.

Nunzio had checked a second jack cup and found the pin just as loose. “No oil is going to help this situation,” he thought. “They’re strained.”

It was going to be a long crawl out from under the disc. His panic worsened, making it harder to get out, so he narrowed his mind’s focus to the blue of Scilla’s water, skies, and Giovanna’s eyes. He stared at the blue and heard the rushing sound of the tide through small stones that seemed to sing “Ssh-illa.” Within seconds his concentration was shattered by a strange creaking sound.

“Forza!” yelled Nunzio into the dark. Curses and the sounds of desperate scrambling came in reply. Nunzio ripped the skin on his elbows, hands, and legs as he frantically tried to move his body faster along the concrete. The next few moments, like the metal inches above him, hung in the air. Nunzio felt the disc lurch westward and heave a heavy groan. He had a split second of recognition that he was going to die, and he let his mind flash onto the blue before all two hundred tons of steel heaved, fell, and crushed his body.

The police, firemen, and the laborers identified a few areas with minor elevations and worked in teams with heavy sledges and chisels to rip up the plates. An hour after the metal jacks and timbers had snapped like toothpicks and the tank bottom had crashed to the concrete, one rescue team had ripped up enough metal to locate a body. Work stopped and there was a hush when they brought Lagato into daylight. It was his clothes that held the pulp of Lagato’s body together. At the sobering sight of the first body reduced to a fleshy mass, work slowed, perhaps because it was evident that survival was impossible or the thought of finding another man was too gruesome.

Carmine, however, refused to give up his urgency. He urged his crew on. Pretty Boy, whose leg was cut open from the ankle to the knee, wouldn’t allow them to take him to the hospital until they found Nunzio. He lay by the edge of the disc muttering, “Nunzio, he yelled, ‘Forza.’”

The rescue crew took advantage of the void left by the removal of Lagato’s broken body and wedged long sticks underneath, poking to pinpoint the location of the other men.

Several thousand people had gathered at the scene, including a number of reporters and a priest. To Carmine, the priest looked like a black crow waiting to pounce on a corpse, and he spit in his direction without interrupting the swing of his hammer on the chisel.

Work stopped briefly again when Constantino’s body was removed and taken, as Lagato’s had been, to the police station to be examined by the coroner. Finding Constantino made Carmine work faster, because he was now sure it was Nunzio beneath the slight elevation where they were working.

Near six o’clock, Carmine’s crew removed their fourth panel and found Nunzio. His legs were visible, and although they knew he was dead, Carmine made the men lift the final metal plate as gingerly as possible. He wanted to keep his friend’s body intact. With the last bloodstained metal plate removed, Nunzio’s body, every bone broken and arms and legs at unnatural angles, faced the sky.

Giovanna woke with a start, shivering. She pulled the quilt tight around her body but soon realized nothing would make her warm. She got out of bed and paced, eventually going outside to look at the sky as if it would tell her something. There were no signs in the stars or the breeze, only the terror that coursed through her body.

Six hours later, Concetta awoke to an eerie silence. She went looking for her daughter, and when she did not find her in her bed, she ran outside to where Giovanna still stood facing the sea, drenched in morning dew.

“Giovanna, get inside!” Concetta pulled the wet quilt from Giovanna’s body and tried to lead her indoors, but she would not move. Concetta’s pleas drew Domenico from his bed. He begged Giovanna to tell him what was wrong. With every unanswered plea and vacant stare, Domenico and Concetta became more convinced that death had visited, and Giovanna had lost Nunzio. They gave up trying to get her inside and instead forced her to sit in a chair facing the sea at the door to the house. Concetta spooned hot tea into Giovanna’s mouth and wrapped her in dry shawls while Domenico dressed to go to the telegraph office.

The telegraph operator sat behind a long oak desk. Dead flies flew again on flypaper that flapped in the breeze of a humming black metal fan. Domenico stared at the telegraph machine for a long time. It was as silent as Giovanna. The operator told Domenico to go home, commenting that Giovanna’s condition was probably from something she ate. Domenico knew his daughter’s silence was not caused by her diet, but he also knew that the news would come whether he watched the mysterious machine or not.

Domenico walked home and drew up a chair next to Giovanna. Word of Giovanna’s condition had traveled to Nunzio’s mother, Marianna, who arrived at the house distraught. She pleaded with Giovanna to speak to her. Giovanna could only answer with her eyes, but her aunt could read the loss. Concetta took a stunned Marianna inside and handed her a rosary. Together, on their knees, they began their prayers. They prayed to their patron, Saint Rocco, they prayed to Saint Anthony in case Nunzio was lost, and they prayed to the Madonna, because she was a woman and would understand.

Nunzio’s sister, Fortunata, got word as she was preparing to board the boat for Messina, where she made money as a wet nurse. She ran from the dock to her home to gather her family, and they arrived together. Seeing her mother and aunt praying sent Fortunata into wails. Her daughter took the baby from her breast, and her older sons left for the chiazza in search of information. Her second youngest boy, Antonio, who was six, would not leave the women and sat at their feet, rocking to the rhythm of their prayers and the sway of the crosses at the end of their rosaries.

Domenico and Giovanna continued their vigil, seated in chairs that wobbled on the uneven cobblestones. Domenico would lean forward looking down the narrow street each time he heard footsteps or hooves approaching. The Scalici family came by with food and placed it in their laps. They then left plates inside on the table for Concetta and Marianna, who remained on their knees beseeching the saints to intervene.

In the late afternoon the sunlight made the leaves of the olive trees flash silver and the ripples in the sea glitter gold. Domenico and Giovanna were equally oblivious to the light and to the untouched food on their laps. When they heard the sound of gentle footsteps approaching, Domenico did not need to lean and look. Telegraphs were delivered by boys with gentle, purposeful footsteps. The telegraph boy came around the bend holding a paper trimmed in black. Notices of death were trimmed in black. A gang of children respectfully followed ten yards behind him, waiting to run home and tell their mothers the news. The young messenger gave the paper to Domenico, but only Giovanna could read.

“I am sorry, Giovanna,” Domenico said, crying, handing her the telegraph.

Moving for the first time, she took the paper from her father, but instead of reading it, she crumpled the paper and handed it to the boy. The telegraph boy was flustered. He would be punished if the message wasn’t delivered.

Domenico motioned for the boy to read it. He flattened the paper with his palm against his leg, and in a halting falsetto the boy delivered the news they already mourned. “With great sorrow stop Nunzio killed in accident stop I will bury him in New York stop Lord have mercy stop Lorenzo.”

Concetta, Marianna, and Fortunata had ceased praying but remained on their knees inside the house, listening to the boy read their sorrow. Marianna collapsed into Concetta’s and Fortunata’s arms with thunderous wails when he read “Lord have mercy.” Little Antonio, frightened by the sobbing, buried himself in his mother’s skirts. Tears flowed down Domenico’s cheeks. Nothing flowed from Giovanna. Nothing.

The pots on the terrace of the Costa house were barren. It was late October, and an early frost had killed the last of the vegetables and herbs, but Giovanna scraped at the potted soil, trying to find even one remaining sprout she could nurture back to life. Giovanna was on her knees when Concetta passed the door to the terrace and stopped to stare at her daughter. For Concetta, Giovanna’s state of mind had become as heartbreaking as Nunzio’s death.

It had been nearly two months, and Giovanna still had not spoken a word. She spent her hours staring silently at the sea, gardening, or doing chores in the house. The first time Giovanna had been called to deliver a baby after Nunzio’s death, she simply shook her head and retreated inside the house. Signora Scalici traipsed the town, exhausted from the burden of being Scilla’s only midwife.

Giovanna’s silence was the loudest sound Concetta ever had to endure, and now, watching her once proud, strong daughter futilely digging in the dirt, Concetta snapped. She ran out the door to Giovanna and pulled her to her feet.

“Stop it!
Basta
! There is nothing there!”

Giovanna bent to resume her scraping, and Concetta pulled her up again and violently shook her shoulders.

“Do you think you’re the only woman to lose a husband?” Giovanna tried to wriggle free of Concetta’s grip but was rendered motionless when her mother’s hand hit her face with a loud slap. “Talk to me!”

The sight of Giovanna’s vacant stare in reply defeated Concetta, and she collapsed, sobbing. Only then did Giovanna’s face register any emotion, and she tenderly picked up her mother, wiping her tears.

“There’s unfinished business,” pronounced Zia Antoinette, Concetta’s eighty-year-old aunt, who was the town expert in all matters pertaining to the evil eye. Concetta had called together Zia Antoinette, Father Clemente, and Signora Scalici to discuss what to do about Giovanna. The participants in this precarious caucus sat in the chiazza far from Giovanna’s eyes and ears. Never before had these three natural enemies come together and their mutual mistrust was obvious in their glances and in the way their bodies did not relax into their chairs. Father Clemente condemned Zia Antoinette’s pagan beliefs and Signora Scalici’s superior airs. Signora Scalici resented Zia Antoinette’s inexplicable cures and Father Clemente’s wealth in the face of poverty. Zia Antoinette was angered when Signora Scalici’s knife did what her remedies could not and when Father Clemente acted as if he alone owned the saints.

Concetta had organized this unprecedented gathering because she reasoned that if these three souls could agree on how to help Giovanna it would be the right path, and the trio consented to the meeting because the one thing they shared was a love for Giovanna. The spectacle of seeing these icons together drew a crowd, but the crowd kept its distance out of respect and fear. The mood in the chiazza was never so self-conscious.

A cat played with the rosary hanging from Father Clemente’s vestment, and everyone, including the priest, chose to ignore it. With each swing of the cat’s paw, the anticipation in the chiazza rose. When the father’s shiny black shoe finally sent the cat flying, the animal’s screech broke the tension, and people, even those in the tribunal, started to relax. Concetta called for a child to get a basin of warm salted water for Signora Scalici’s visibly swollen feet, and they resumed their discussion with less formality.

It was fairly easy for all of them to agree that Nunzio’s death had caused Giovanna’s state, but they were in spirited dispute about why his death had taken her speech.

Signora Scalici was frustrated with Zia Antoinette and Father Clemente’s complex conclusions. “It’s simple! Her heart is broken!”

“In Scilla hearts are broken every day! No, it is because of something Nunzio told her when he died,” spat back Zia Antoinette.

“
Stre
—,” Father Clemente stopped himself from calling Zia Antoinette a witch and offered his explanation. “No. Giovanna is worried that Nunzio is not in heaven.” When even Concetta looked at him puzzled, he continued. “Nunzio didn’t share Giovanna’s devotion, and she fears that she will not be reunited with him in God’s kingdom.”

“If that’s the reason, can’t you say a prayer and get him in there? He’s your padrone.” Signora Scalici was not usually so irreverent, but her feet were killing her.

Sensing Father Clemente’s disgust, Concetta jumped in. “Does it matter the reason?”

“She should say prayers at his grave,” said Father Clemente, dusting off his vestments.

“Giovanna must see the place of Nunzio’s last breath,” proclaimed Zia Antoinette.

Signora Scalici took a foot out of the bath and rubbed it. “She needs a change of scenery.”

So they agreed without agreeing, and all spoke the truth.

Maria Perrino, with her once breech child at her side, broke from the distant circle of onlookers and walked forward. She put coins on the table in front of Concetta. “For the passage of Signora
Levatrice
.”

Slowly other villagers followed until there was a pile of coins on the table. When the last person had added to the ante, Concetta made the sign of the cross.

Zia Antoinette put her weight on her cane and rose from the chair. “She should go after Christmas and before the new year.”

When there was no dissent, Concetta nodded and thanked her counselors, kissing their cheeks. The crowd in the chiazza slowly dispersed until only Concetta remained. Concetta was not surprised to see Domenico emerge from behind the bougainvillea bush where he had been listening. He had told her that he could not bear to hear the three old windbags talk about Giovanna’s fate, but Concetta knew it was because he was afraid that they would come to the conclusion that they both dreaded and suspected. Domenico took Concetta’s arm and escorted her home. It was their turn to be silent.