Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [3]
Giovanna smiled at her older cousin Pasquale. Many times, this still formidable man had served as their protector. As children on the beach, Giovanna and Nunzio would search among the water-polished stones and fragments of terra-cotta for the ancient Greek and Roman coins that frequently washed ashore, particularly after a storm. They would use these thousand-year-old coins, with bits and pieces of heroic images still visible, for a pitching game played in the narrow alleys of the Chianalea. Once, older boys had cheated them out of their prize coins during a game. All burly Pasquale had done was knock on the culprits’ doors, and the treasure was quickly returned to its rightful owners.
Zia Antoinette’s cracked face brightened when Giovanna passed. Zia Antoinette had been the first of many to catch Nunzio and Giovanna kissing. She’d whacked Nunzio so hard with her broom that Nunzio would later joke that kissing Giovanna made his head spin and culo hurt.
Giovanna passed the row holding Nunzio’s sister, Fortunata, her pregnant belly, and six children. The older boys, Orazio and Raffaele, were already fishermen. They stood tall next to their lean, muscular father, Giuseppe Arena. Fortunata’s youngest boy, Antonio, waved to Giovanna from the pew.
Giovanna was also conscious of who was missing. In her mind she placed her brother, Lorenzo, who lived in America, and Nunzio’s father, who had succumbed to cholera a decade ago, at the end of the aisle with her mother, Concetta, and Nunzio’s mother, Zia Marianna.
Tears streamed down Concetta’s and Marianna’s faces and over their delicate features. Giovanna always thought the sisters-in-law looked like matching porcelain dolls: one with dark chestnut hair like her own, the other with red hair like Nunzio’s. They were close, and even now they did not separate to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, as was customary for in-laws, but stood together holding hands.
Nunzio and Giovanna had grown up listening to their mothers talk and gossip while they wove linens and embroidered late into the night. They marveled at how quickly their mothers turned the simple string into strong and beautiful cloths. When Giovanna and Nunzio were twelve, they heard Concetta and Marianna planning to sew together two tablecloths they had made to create one large enough to cover the Christmas dinner table. On the night before their mothers were to stitch the two cloths together, Giovanna and Nunzio each took the string from their mothers’ sewing baskets, and out of sight in the moonlight reflected by the sea, they pulled the string slowly through their mouths. When Concetta and Marianna knotted the stitches that wove the two halves together, they did not know they were accomplices in Nunzio and Giovanna’s first act of commitment. And only the week before the wedding, Concetta still did not know why Giovanna was so insistent that the stained and tattered Christmas tablecloth be part of her trousseau.
Nunzio took Giovanna’s hand after she had kissed her father and he’d shuffled into the pew beside his wife and sister. The couple’s eyes locked. Nunzio said he saw the sea in Giovanna’s eyes. He often told her that when he was out fishing he imagined himself sailing on her gaze, and that like the sea, the color of her eyes changed before a storm. Nunzio could tell from the color of the water what the day’s catch would be, and he could tell from the color of Giovanna’s eyes whether she was tranquil or had dark undertows. For her part, Giovanna felt that Nunzio’s eyes were windows. When life held her captive, she could escape through those windows. She could see farther and more clearly through Nunzio’s