“A big piece for the doctor,” my mother said as she passed the plate to Vincent across our cramped dining room table. She held the plate in her left hand—her right hand was still a bit weak from the small stroke she’d suffered a few years ago—and the plate sagged under the weight of a slice of her Italian crème cake. She’d been stockpiling our rationed sugar for weeks to make that cake.
“Thanks, Mom.” Vincent smiled at my mother. He’d called her Mom for as long as I could remember, something that pleased my mother no end. She adored him as much as I did. He was the son she’d never had. I called Vincent’s parents, who now sat across the table from me, Mimi and Pop. The Russos lived next door to us in our Little Italy neighborhood. Our identical brick row houses had identical marble stoops and when I was very small and playing on the sidewalk, I had to concentrate hard to remember which house was mine and which was Vincent’s. Our houses were nearly identical inside as well, the rooms filled with crucifixes, statues of Mary, and framed paintings of Jesus’s sacred heart, as well as with the scent of tomato gravy and sweet sausage.
On this day, we were celebrating both my twenty-third birthday and the completion of Vincent’s hospital residency at Johns Hopkins. I’d known Vincent from the time I was in the cradle, and I’d loved him madly since I was a teenager but I had to admit that even I felt a new attraction to him the first time I saw him in his white coat, Vincent Russo M.D. emblazoned on the pocket, a stethoscope slung around his neck. That white coat set off his dark good looks: his thick hair with the slight widow’s peak. His wide white smile. His nearly straight nose, just a hint of the aquiline shape that was so prominent in his father’s face. We’d been engaged for the last year, and in May, I would become his bride. We’d been planning our future together for a very long time. We knew where we would live: a younger, fresher part of Little Italy, close but not too close to our parents. We would have four children. Both of us had grown up as only children—a rarity in an Italian neighborhood—and we most definitely did not want that lonely existence for a child of ours. With only the rhythm method to rely on, we knew we might end up with many more than four, but that was fine. We fantasized that someday he would have his own pediatric practice and I would be his nurse. In a few months, I’d graduate from nursing school, take my licensing exam, and finally be able to call myself a registered nurse, a career I’d longed for since I was ten years old when my mother developed diabetes and a nurse taught me how to administer her insulin shots. Mom had been perfectly capable of giving herself her own injections, but she’d wanted to plant that seed in me, guiding me toward the career she hoped I’d pick. It worked. Nursing was my passion. How I’d handle being both a nurse and a mother to four-plus children, I didn’t know, but I was excited to find out.
“Have you decided on your dress yet, Theresa?” Mimi asked as she swallowed a piece of cake. Like her husband, she had a soft, slight Italian accent. Theirs had been an arranged marriage of sorts. When Pop came over as a teenager from Sicily, he knew the daughter of an old family friend had arrived the year before and was waiting for him. I couldn’t imagine marrying someone I barely knew, yet they were devoted to each other. My parents, on the other hand, had been born and raised in Little Italy and met at a dance. My father died when I was four and I barely remembered him. Mimi and Pop had taken my mother and me under their generous wings after his death.
“I can’t decide between the two dresses we loved,” I said, “but it’s still so early.” Mimi and my mother had been with me when I tried on the dresses. If I picked one out now, I’d have to be careful not to gain an ounce before May. I wanted Gina Farinola, my closest girlfriend, to go with me to help me make the final decision. Then we needed to find a maid-of-honor dress for her.
“You can’t go wrong with either of them,” Mimi said.
“I like the one with the little rosettes, Tess,” Mom said. She leaned across the table to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear. I’d inherited her thick, unruly, nearly black hair, the only difference being that her hair was now streaked with silver.
“Oh, the one with the rosettes was beautiful,” Mimi agreed.
I caught the smile that passed between Vincent and his father as the girl talk continued. Those two handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired men stayed at the table, smoking cigarettes and bickering about the Baltimore Orioles, while Mom, Mimi, and I began clearing the dishes and carrying them into the kitchen. Vincent was leaving most of the wedding plans up to me. The wedding would be small. We planned to invite only thirty people to the reception, which would be held in one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants. We couldn’t afford much more than that, but I wouldn’t have cared if only our families were present. It was the marriage I longed for, not the wedding.
My mother was washing the dishes and Mimi and I were drying when Vincent walked into the small kitchen. “Can I steal Tess away from you ladies?” he asked, his hand already at my waist.
“Of course.” Mimi pulled the dishtowel from me. “Go on now.” She gave me a little shove toward the door. “You two have fun.”
Vincent took my hand and led me through the living room and toward the front door. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said. Outside, he put his arm around me as we turned left on the sidewalk. Vincent’s touch had been electrifying me for years. The first time I’d felt that lightning bolt pass through me when he touched me, I was fifteen years old and he was nineteen and home from college. I’d been trying unsuccessfully to change the needle on the Victrola in the Russos’ living room. Vincent had moved me aside, gently, his hands on my rib cage, and my legs went soft in the knees. He’d replaced the needle and turned to me.