The Incident at Montebello (15 page)

When the mattress quaked the next morning, Donato opened one eye. Lucia, still in her nightgown, was sitting on the bed and brushing her hair. After all this time, after all they had been through, he needed her and wanted her. She had to feel the same way. Her heart wasn't made of stone.

Sitting up, he stroked her gleaming hair. Her shoulders tensed. “I don't want it to be this way,” she said, lowering her head.

In reply, he kissed her cheek. “I don't like it any better than you.”

“Can you imagine how hard it was? I did everything alone—the burial, the grieving. Even now you can't seem to understand how much I love and miss her.”

He followed her gaze to the dresser where Sofia's picture was nearly obliterated by candles and portraits of dead relatives. He hardly knew this child, conceived on a trip home from Boston. The first and only time he saw Sofia, she had just started to walk. Swooping down, he kissed her and she howled. For that he blamed Lucia. Thanks to her, he was a stranger to his own children. Still, it was a shame he'd never know his youngest daughter.

“Of course I understand,” he said. “A mother's love is the greatest love of all.” When he brushed his finger along her cheek, she shuddered. “You're cold. Come under the blankets. I'll make you warm.”

She pushed his hand away. “The children want their breakfast.”

“They can wait.”

“Even my heart is cold.”

“Come under the covers.” He kissed her shoulder, hungry for her touch, her comfort. He patted the mattress and she slid under the blankets. After stroking her thighs, he climbed on top of her, his weight and size pinning her to the bed.

“Just hold me,” she said, but how could he wait? Tugging on her nightgown, he lifted it over her hips. Pushing hard, he entered her. After a few minutes of thrusting, he jerked and shuddered. When he rolled off her, she didn't move.

“Better?” he asked, kissing her cheek.

She nodded. With a sigh, she threw back the covers and pulled on her skirt and sweater.

“All that black,” he said. “You look like a widow.”

“I need time to grieve, Donato,” she said. And then she added something that might have come from a book. “You can't avoid sorrow. It's a part of life—like breathing.”

“But it could have been avoided. If it weren't for that careless
americano
bastard, she'd still be alive.”

“Who said it was an American? I heard it was Il Duce himself.”

He blinked in surprise. “And you believe that nonsense?”

She shrugged. “I don't know what to believe anymore.”

“Listen. It makes sense. An American did it. The
americani
don't give a fuck about the little guy. Only the big shots with money count.”

She stared at him.

“What? What are you looking at? It's true,” he shouted as she hurried downstairs.

The smell of coffee and toast lured him into the kitchen. Lucia was stirring a pot of polenta on the stove and Nietta was setting bowls and spoons on the table, but he gazed through the window at Charlie as he gathered wood. When Donato came upstairs to bed, the boy was snooping through his suitcases. That was all he needed—for Charlie to find what he'd hidden under the false bottom.

He sat down and lit a cigarette. Nietta watched, biting her lip. “Is something the matter, papà? Are you angry with me?”

“No. Of course not. You're my girl.”

Charlie nudged open the door, his arms full of kindling. After dumping the wood into the bin, he brushed the hair out of his eyes. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold.

Donato told Nietta, “You give me nothing but sunshine, but your brother gives me a pain right here.” He poked his thumb against his chest.

“What did I do now?” Charlie said, his smile fading.

“It's what you didn't do. Your mother needs water.”

“Why can't Nietta do it?”

“That's your job. Now go.”

Lucia stepped in. “I have enough for now. At this rate, he's going to be late for school.”

Donato frowned. She was making the boy too soft, no doubt about it. “So, he'll be late. He needs to learn responsibility.” He turned to Charlie. “Go.”

Irked by the boy's laziness, Donato squashed his cigarette in the sink and shadowed him across the yard. The boy needed to learn a lesson. He needed to learn respect. He poked Charlie in the back. “You better jump when I tell you to do something. Do you hear me?” But Charlie kept walking, so Donato grabbed a fistful of his jacket; one yank made Charlie stagger backwards and another sent him sprawling in the dirt. Landing hard, he hit his elbows and head and cried out like a baby.

Behind him, the door slapped open and Lucia glared at him, her hands on her hips. “Was that necessary?” she said. “He was doing what you told him to do.”

“I'm the father. I make the rules around here.”

“But you're wrong, Donato.”

“I don't care what you think.”

Lucia scowled at him and slammed the door. At breakfast, she sipped her coffee and wouldn't speak to him. Charlie and Nietta lowered their heads over their polenta and toast. After a few bites, Donato pushed the food away and lit another cigarette, his eyes narrowed against the smoke spiraling upwards. His mood worsened as he debated how to break the news. Finally, he said, “Don't think it was paradise over there. The Americans don't care about screwing the little guy.”

Startled, Lucia looked up. “What happened?”

“Vittadini, that bastard, promised everything and delivered nothing. Half ownership of the business? What a joke. His nephew got it all. Do you know why? He was jealous of my skill and reputation. All the well-heeled customers asked for me by name.”

“Wasn't that good for business?” Lucia asked.

He knocked his cigarette ashes onto his plate. “Sure. All the money went into his pocket and not mine. Five years I waited and what did I get? Nothing. I quit.”

“You're so talented. You'll find another job.”

He shrugged, deciding it was wiser not to tell them everything yet. “I've had it with America and their big talk. I need a rest.”

“For how long?” Lucia asked.

“I don't know.” He looked around the table—Lucia studying him, her eyebrows scrunched together, Charlie kicking the table leg, making the silverware jump, and Nietta's mouth puckering with worry. He had to make them understand all he wanted was for everyone he loved to be in the same room with their feet under the same table. He told them, “We need to be together. Now more than ever. After Sofia.” Fumbling for his handkerchief, he blew his nose with a forceful honk.

Lucia walked around the table and kissed his cheek. With a sigh, he lifted his cup and drank, splashing coffee on the tablecloth.

She turned towards the children and said, “I need to talk to your papà.” With a scrape of chairs, they carried their plates to the sink and scuffed their way out the door. “You're right,” she said when the door clicked shut.

He nodded, relieved that she understood. “You have no idea what it's like over there. Hoover talks a good game, but the bread lines are snaking down the street. Capitalism isn't the answer. I've had it with America and their promises.”

“Give it time. Things will change for the better.”

He shook his head. “That's what I thought in '30 and '31. How much longer do I have to wait? I'm done. Finished.”

“That's what you say now. Have a little more patience. Don't forget our plans.”

“Well, you can forget about opening your own shop. Everything went up in smoke when the market crashed. Hoover spends all his time thinking instead of acting.”

“But you had a job, Donato,” she insisted, stacking up dishes with an angry clatter. “You decided to quit.”

“I can't work for that bastard Vittadini.”

“But you made a choice. You quit. So tell me the truth. Why don't you want to go back?”

“I already told you,” he insisted, but she frowned and he knew she suspected a lie.

He stayed at the kitchen table smoking and brooding until she left for work. Crushing out his cigarette, he dashed upstairs and knelt by the suitcases. With his pocketknife, he slashed the lining and pried up the cardboard bottom. Between layers of oilcloth, he had sandwiched rows of fifty-dollar bills. In a few swift moves, he pocketed the money and replaced the cardboard. Then, he spread out his suits on the bed and grabbed the scissors from the sewing basket. One by one, he slit the linings, reached inside the secret pockets, and made a stack of crisp American bills.

He twitched with guilt as if the priest were watching him, but he reminded himself he had no choice. He had to do what was best for his family. How could he come home empty handed? He'd invest the cash in a business that would leave his mark in town and help catapult his status and the family's. No one was going to stop him.

After carrying the money down to the basement, he dug a hole in the dirt floor beneath the shelves of canned tomatoes and peppers, counted the bills, and set them inside a cookie tin. His heart pounding, he covered it with dirt and brushed off his hands. In a few strides, he was hurrying up the street, cut into sharp quadrants of light and dark.

HOLLYWOOD AND SAN SIMEON CALIFORNIA

 

Bloody hell. He was still a mess. Vanderbilt had hoped a dose of California sunshine would help clear his head, but months after the accident, he was still losing sleep over it, reliving the sharp jerk to the right, the children waving flowers, and the sickening thud as the girl was dragged under the wheels.

He told no one about it until one night over supper at the Brown Derby. As he spoke to Gaylord Wiltshire through bites of planked steak, scalloped potatoes and cherry pie, Gaylord ran his thumb over his walrus mustache, his blue eyes fixed on Vanderbilt. The man was an anomaly: a big-hearted socialist and one of the richest men in California. Who else would have had the foresight to buy up thirty-five worthless acres of Los Angeles scrub, name it after himself, and transform Wiltshire Boulevard into the hottest real estate in the city? Vanderbilt told Wiltshire, “Ironic, isn't it? The biggest story of my journalistic career falls into my lap and I can't publish a word about it or I'll end up at the bottom of the Atlantic.” He leaned back against the leather banquette and lit another cigarette.

“He threatened you?”

Vanderbilt nodded. “One moment, he yanked his gold cufflinks off his shirt and gave them to me just because I admired them. And in the next, he ran over a child in cold blood and told me one life, even a child's, made no difference to the Fascist agenda. A weekend with him frightened me more than the afternoon I spent with Al Capone. I don't know what to do.”

“That's easy,” Gaylord said. “You're a journalist. Write about it. It's your duty.”

“Come on, Gaylord. Don't get on your socialist high horse.”

“What did your editorial masthead say?”

“Serve the people—but what if I publish it and get shot in the head? I'm a coward, Gaylord, through and through.” Miserable, he stabbed out his cigarette while Gaylord signaled the waiter for the bill. He tried to read Gaylord's expression under the thicket of gray eyebrows and hoped his cowardice hadn't disappointed his friend who had stuck by him long after he had split with his family. To Vanderbilt's relief, Gaylord drew a few bills from his wallet and started to speak.

“You know what they say about evil, my friend. All it needs to thrive is for people to keep quiet about it. It's the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge.”

“Hitler's still the greater threat.”

Gaylord tossed his napkin on the table. “The press makes jokes about Mussolini's rubbery face, bulging eyeballs, and theatrics. But remember. He started the Fascist movement and Hitler is his protégé. What do you think they'll do next? Sit quietly at home and watch the grass grow?”

Gaylord was right. It was a risk any man of integrity had to take. And so, he had summoned his courage and called William Randolph Hearst. The upstart millionaire with a taste for the sensational was always creating his own news, but he was one of the smartest men in the business.

Along the private coast road near the Pacific Ocean, zebras roamed through the grass.

Vanderbilt shifted his car into neutral, the engine idling. He didn't know what amused him more—Hearst's extravagance or his monumental ego. And yet, through Vanderbilt's fiascos—one divorce and three failed newspapers—Hearst's loyalty was unassailable. At various points, he had rescued Vanderbilt from financial peril by hiring him to write features and edit his newspapers. When Vanderbilt had rung up about the hit-and-run, Hearst told him to come to San Simeon and bring his notes.

After lighting a cigarette, Vanderbilt jerked the Packard into gear and roared up the road to Hearst's castle, gleaming white. One hundred sixty-five rooms. One hundred twenty-seven acres. Terraces. Fountains. Gold-leaf ceilings. Swimming pools. A California version of Versailles. Even Vanderbilt, who had grown up in mansions on Fifth Avenue and in Palm Beach, thought San Simeon was excessive and that Hearst wielded money like a club to get publicity and whatever else he wanted. But Hearst knew real estate. The views of the Pacific Ocean and the ring of blue-gray Santa Lucia Mountains were breathtaking.