Every Italian knows that once the gravy is burned, there is no saving it. The only solution is to throw it out, all of it, every drop, along with the pot. Dominic and Mike threw one another away and did not look back.
A division within families was nothing new in South Philly. The neighborhood had at least two of everything, so it could accommodate any family schism. A family could split and survive, move into a new half of a two-family home, tithe in a different church, send their children to another parish school, and even get their haircuts at competing barbershops without running into each other on a regular basis. Life could go on as normal in a state of rage for years on end against one’s own blood family without repercussion.
Vincit qui patitur.*
Mike and Dom would live a street apart without acknowledging one other, and so would their wives. Their children, a small army of boys, were mystified by the break between the two heads of their households, but quickly learned to abandon their relationships with their cousins to appease their parents, as they lived within the fault lines, careful not to upset the ones whose approval they most craved. Years later, the vitriol flowed fresh into the hearts of new family members who married in, the young brides taking sides easily as part of their oath of loyalty and proof of love to their new husbands.
If you wanted in, you had to recognize the sin.
The break didn’t seem to bother Dom and Mike, even though they were the only two men in the world who remembered the port of Naples on the cloudy morning of April 29, 1901. Domenico, twelve years old, and Michele, eleven, stood together aboard the ship that would bring them to America, to their father, who had emigrated to Philadelphia to work in the Naval Shipyard as a welder. Their mother had died suddenly of a fever, and no relative in Avellino had enough room to take them in or the resources to provide for them, so their father sent their passage.
The boys mourned their mother desperately. They were grief-stricken and frightened. Clinging to one another, they held hands (which they had not done since they were three and four years old) on the deck of the Argentinia as they bid arrivederci to their home, without any idea what lay ahead. Only Dom would know that Mike wept in his arms, and only Mike would know that Dom whispered “Non ti lascero mai.” Dom may have promised to never leave his brother but all of that was forgotten years later, when one brother was certain the other was cheating him over a parcel of land whose value was negligible and which neither would have wanted had their father not left it behind, callously favoring one son over the other, or perhaps for another reason entirely.
Their father, Domenico Michele Palazzini, was a talented ironworker but also a gambler, turning everything in his life into a contest he could bet on. He took particular pleasure in pitting one son against the other. Without the tender influence of his wife, he was a bully, and his sons knew that the only way to survive was to please him.
After the old man’s death, the gold ruled, and the Palazzini brothers became loyal subjects. Dom didn’t want to talk about their father, and Mike wanted to become him. Their kingdom, including their booming taxi business and their modest real estate holdings, was now divided in two, like the pot in a high-low game of lowball poker.
The brothers learned that half of something wonderful is just half, but their animosity was so deep, neither cared about what had been lost. They would live a street apart from one another, close enough for Mike to catch the scent of Jo’s gravy on Sunday and Dom to hear Mike’s hi-fi playing Sinatra in the wee hours, yet far enough apart to allow their anger to fuel their ambition to outdo the other and win. Sixteen long years had come and gone, but the wound was fresh.
Alea iacta est.*
Act I
A young man married is a young man that’s married.
—All’s Well That Ends Well
1
May 2, 1949
Philadelphia
Elsa Palazzini moved through the Ninth Street Market hastily, past the fishmonger, the farmer, the baker, the butcher, and the fruit vendor. The merchants’ banter with the delivery boys filled the air, drowned out occasionally by the thuds of wooden merchandise boxes as they hit the ground, the squeaks of the rubber wheels on the trucks as they nosed in behind the stands to make deliveries, and the deafening crash of an avalanche of ice as it was poured into a metal bin. Out front, deals were made sotto voce, vendor to customer, with only their body language giving away the terms.
The sun was not yet up; the only light in the open-air market came from the headlights on the trucks and the bare bulbs that dangled underneath the red-striped awnings. Elsa pushed through until she found the peddler selling fresh flowers. An overnight rain had left a cool mist in the air. She shivered and buttoned her jacket.
A lone bulb on a wire swayed lazily back and forth in the breeze, throwing streaks of light on the display of gray buckets filled with fresh flowers. Elsa surveyed the selection of purple lilacs, yellow daffodils, pink peonies, puffs of blue hydrangea, and bunches of daisies until she found what she was looking for.
She lifted a cluster of baby roses tied with a string from a bucket jammed full of them. The fresh, icy water ran down her hand as she examined it. She put it back, choosing another, and another, until she found a bunch whose petals were closed so tightly the buds resembled pink flames.
“May Day celebration?” the peddler asked as he wrapped the flowers in waxed paper.
Elsa nodded.
“I ran out of white roses yesterday. Our Lady of Good Counsel decided all white this year.”
Elsa smiled at him. “Luck is with me. All my girls are wearing pink. Except the queen and the statue of the Blessed Lady. And I’ve already made those crowns with white roses.” Her accent, a combination of her native Polish and proper English, along with her willowy stature and innate elegance, gave Elsa an aristocratic air.
“The Queen of Heaven comes first,” he said.
“Of course.” Elsa unsnapped her change purse and fished for seventy-five cents. As she paid for the flowers, a woman joined them.
“Very pretty,” the customer commented as the peddler handed Elsa the roses.
“Thank you. This is the best stand for fresh flowers.” Elsa winked at the peddler.
“Then maybe you can help me. I don’t know whether to choose the peonies or the daffodils.”
“What is the occasion?”
“A wedding.”
“Why not both? And add the laurel leaves.” Elsa pointed to the bundles of waxy green leaves gathered with string.
“That would be lovely. I don’t know what the ladies at the temple would say.”
“What temple do you attend?”
“B’Nai Abraham,” the woman answered. “Do you know it?”
“On Lombard Street?” Elsa heard the tap of her husband’s horn and waved to him before turning back to the woman. “Mazel tov to the bride and groom. Shalom.”