Don't Sing at the Table (3 page)

By late afternoon the laundry, hung on the line in the morning, was ready to come down. Folding her bleached sheets was like folding cardboard. She never used fabric softener (“It gums up the machine,” she'd say). She was an early environmentalist. Viola was green before anyone thought about being green. Every day was Earth Day for Viola. She loved a low electricity bill and a wee water bill. It was a badge of honor for her to employ Mother Nature instead of Mother Maytag.

“Don't you feel good?” she said to me on that summer day, inhaling the fresh Pennsylvania air. I didn't want to admit I was exhausted, because she didn't believe in it, so I lied and said, “Like a million bucks.”

“Come on,” she said.

I followed her into the kitchen. She took two crystal tumblers out of the cupboard and went for the liquor cart. She took the gold shaker and commenced making a killer batch of her Manhattans. Like a scientist making a brew to save mankind, she'd measure (by eye) sweet vermouth, whiskey, and a few tablespoons of cherry juice into the shaker. Then she'd gently shake the concoction like she was rattling maracas in a Carmen Miranda kick line.

She put the shaker aside (“Let it rest,” she said), and made our hors d'oeuvres: thin slices of fresh mozzarella, the ends of some crusty Italian bread drizzled with a bit of olive oil. Then she took out a canister and put a couple of oil pretzels she had made on the tray. (These resemble popovers with a hard-shell crust. When you bite into them, they are spongy and not too sweet—perfect with a cocktail.)

She poured the Manhattans into the ice-filled tumblers, added two cherries to each glass, and said, “Let's go.” She carried the drinks outside, and I followed with the snacks.

She usually took cocktail hour on her folding chair under the shade tree by the kitchen window. But on this day, I felt compelled to break her routine.

“Let's go sit in the field,” I said, grabbing a garden chair with my free hand, and we walked toward the top of the hill overlooking Viola's lawn. The fringe of towering pine trees around the property seemed as tall as a city skyline. The low wall of fieldstone in the distance looked lavender as the late afternoon summer sky turned the color of a ripe peach. I lay down on the grass while Viola sat in the lawn chair.

Viola had lived alone since my grandfather died. If she was ever lonesome, she never let on. Somehow, caring for the home she'd lived in with her husband and continuing his efforts to keep the land in perfect shape gave her a deep sense of fulfillment. Her home meant everything to her. She prayed to never have to leave it. Viola never got over the fact that she lived in this majestic Tudor, that she owned it outright, so she took care of it like a castle, a steward of the house and the land, knowing her time in it was precious and now fleeting.

We sipped our cocktails and talked. Our relationship had changed over the years. At first I was in awe of her, then scared of her, but eventually she became my friend. These were the years I would love the best, when I was young and she still seemed to be. She had short, wavy, silver hair now, and her knees were bowed from arthritis, but in every other respect, it appeared she had not changed in the twenty years since I was born. She was still gutsy, and in fact she got more so as time went on. It was as if she wasn't going to let anything get her, not old age nor sickness nor death. For a long time, I imagined that she'd never die. If anyone could skirt death, it would be Viola, by sheer determination.

When she saw an elderly lady (around her age) crossing the street slowly, she turned to me and said, “She's not slow because of her age. That one moved like a turtle when she was young.” Viola would not accept old age as an excuse for giving up or giving in. She had her armor on.

The sun began to slip over the Blue Mountains. Hot summer days in northeastern Pennsylvania cool off quickly at twilight, and the temperature was near perfect. The sky colors were like an Impressionist masterpiece, saturated blues with streaks of lilac, soft corals hemmed in milky beige. I could see the first flickers of fireflies in the trees. Even the cocktail turned more beautiful in this light. The cherries glowed at the bottom of the amber mixture.

Viola, far right, wears an ostrich plume hat, at her sister Helen's wedding. They flank their father, Davide.

This was bliss.

I'm not much of a drinker, but Viola's cocktails were delicious; they had a woodsy taste that burned my lips (the whiskey, evidently), but then went down sweet (the vermouth) and cold, as a lovely and immediate buzz ensued. After the chores that culminated in washing the car, I came to appreciate that lovely buzz. It meant we were finally off the clock; miracle of miracles, there was nothing left to do around the house.

“Every once in a while, have a drink,” she said. “When you've earned it.”

This advice comes from the same grandmother who sent me a tin of her cookies when I was in college. The note said, “Eat one cookie at a time.” I'm still not quite sure how to eat them otherwise. (Viola's letter provided great entertainment to my roommate Cynthia, for whom I gave readings of the letters in our dorm room at Saint Mary's. Cynthia, raised by steel magnolias from Alabama, said, “Dang. Your grandmothuh has mine beat. Mah grandmothuh sends me a tin of cheese straws, but she nevuh tells me how to eat 'em.”)

There is nothing like the quiet in the country; you can think, and you can breathe. The scent of sweet grass hangs in the air and every once in a while the night-blooming jasmine plays through like delicate perfume on a sophisticated woman. I didn't crave nature or peace and quiet in my youth, but now I understand my grandmother's need for it. It gets harder and harder to
think
amid the noise of the world, and lately it seems that the volume dial has been cranked to the max. I look back on my time with Viola and remember the value of silence.

Viola was lucky enough to find a place she could make sacred. She'd had this kind of peace on the farm as a girl, and now, in her advancing years, she retrieved it, held on to it like the best of her memories. Her home became her final passion and mission; she was determined to hold on to that house, the rolling hillsides, and the fringe of forest. As luck would have it, she never had to leave the place she loved—she lived there until she died.

“Did you ever think you might remarry?” I asked her.

“Never,” she said.

“You never had a date after Grandpop died?”

“No. Although I did let a man buy me a hot dog in Atlantic City once.”

“That's not a date, Gram.”

“I guess not.” She sipped her drink. “You know, when I brought Grandpop home from Rochester . . .”

In a last-ditch effort to save my grandfather's life, my grandmother took him to the Mayo Clinic in the spring of 1968. They had heard of experimental cancer treatments, and Grandpop's local doctor recommended he try them. They went to Minnesota and tried the new treatments, drastic radiation sessions and chemotherapy, but it soon became clear that were not going to work. So, at Viola's insistence, the doctors stopped the treatments. They flew home, so my grandfather could die in peace with his family around him.

“We flew home from Minnesota,” she said. “And we were sitting on the plane. And your grandfather said, ‘You're young, Viola.' ” She was sixty years old at the time. “And you've got a couple of bucks. Be careful.”

And then she said to him, “Don't worry about me. I had everything I ever wanted.”

This was one of their last conversations. As soon as my grandfather returned home to his bed, he stopped speaking entirely. Viola's diary tells me that he died at 8:15 that evening. (This entry was the last she ever wrote, even though she lived twenty-nine years beyond his death.)

I knew, around this time of day, when the work was done and the cocktails were poured, she missed my grandfather. I also knew that as the years passed, she missed him
more
, not less. She had regrets, but she was a widow who wasn't going to make things right by finding a new husband and growing through new experiences. Her job was to keep everything nice—the garden, the house, the property—and all of that effort was in his honor. She had a sense that it was her duty to continue to make him proud, even though he was not here to enjoy her efforts.

Viola was not a sentimental woman, though she could be moved to tears by Lifetime movies and photographs of missing children on milk cartons. Love wasn't something she talked about, but rather would
show
, by making a meal that would please my grandfather, shipping a perfect lot of blouses from the mill, or meeting payroll. I don't believe they talked about their feelings very much, from the things Viola told me, but it was clear they acted upon them. They
showed
their love for one another. Even though their temperaments were different and they had individual approaches to problem solving, they had an underlying devotion to one another and their marriage. Viola saved the cards and telegrams he sent to her, and more telling (at least to me), Michael saved those she had sent to him. Reading them now, I understand how they felt about one another. They did not have an easy time of it. Viola's ambition was an ongoing challenge for him, and I'm sure he sometimes hoped for a more traditional wife. At least, this is what Viola told me.

Viola, despite her proud demeanor, had a
heart
, and in her own way she could articulate the details of the rooms in it in a way that an artist might, in one brushstroke in a single perfect shade. She had regrets, she'd later share, but she knew what they were and why she had them. She told me she had made many mistakes, with her husband, her children, her grandchildren, and her employees. Those regrets often kept her up at night, and when I would visit, she'd wake me up to talk them through. She believed in atonement, but mourned that she could not atone once those she loved had died. Viola never practiced self-deception; she was as clear in her thinking as the cloudless sky. Viola owned up to her shortcomings—or at least, she did to me.

I was lying on the grass, next to her in the chair, a summer snow angel at this point, stretched out and one with the earth beneath me, as though I was carved into it. My arms were behind my head, pretzeled to make a pillow. The crystal tumbler rested in the grass like a jewel.

Suddenly there was a great whooshing sound. I sat up and surveyed the sky. There was another blast of this strange sound I'd never heard before, but no movement. We looked in the direction of the forest, a expanse of green trees beyond the property line, but the leaves on the trees were still.

The noise grew louder.

I looked up at Viola; she was more curious than scared. She wasn't always so trusting of the universe. When I was a girl, she made us stay indoors one summer when it was reported that bits of Skylab had broken off from the lunar station. NASA determined that errant shards of metal might drop into the earth's atmosphere, through the clouds, and onto children playing outside in northeastern Pennsylvania. That was the summer I learned how to embroider.

But this day she didn't run into the house, nor did she advise me to seek cover. She sat there calmly and looked to the origin of the sound. I followed her gaze up and over the trees.

Suddenly, in the purple sky, the edge of something massive, round, and strawberry red rose from the green forest. It grew larger and larger, towering over the height and breadth of the tree line below it.

This mighty red thing cleared the treetops and revealed itself. It was a hot air balloon, with a dangling gold basket suspended on cords, climbing higher and higher into the sky. As it sailed over us and then out of sight, I looked up at her.

“Are we drunk?” I asked her.

And she said, “No. Just lucky.”

Chapter Two
Lucia

The Spada children surround their mother, Giacomina, in Schilpario, Italy. Lucia stands behind her mother.

L
ucia Spada was born in Schilpario, Italy, on Christmas Day, 1894. The Spada family lived high in the Italian Alps, above the city of Bergamo, which is north of Milan in the Lombardy region. Lucia stood five-seven and was trim, with strong legs. She had refined northern Italian features—an oval face with large, dark brown eyes, accented by thick, well-shaped eyebrows, a razor-straight nose, full lips, and high cheekbones.

Lucia was the eldest of eight children. Her childhood was marked by tragedy, when her beloved five-year-old sister Margarita (Rita) died suddenly of an illness. The family that remained struggled to survive, as did all families at the turn of the twentieth century in the mountains of Italy. Her father, Marco, looked for work to supplement the income he made from running a horse-and-buggy service from Schilpario to Bergamo. Marco was stern, a perfectionist with a creative streak that made him a bit of an inventor with a hunger for world travel. His wife, Giacomina, was a sweet and tender mother who made a comfortable home life despite their poverty.

The notion of Marco running a buggy service in the Alps was enchanting until I went up the mountain to Schilapario myself, decades later. A single narrow, winding road cuts through the mountain, with hefty ceilings of stone overhead, only to sweep out from the underpass and create a harrowing path on the edge of the mountain itself. The road weaves in and out in this fashion all the way to the top, past Val de Scalve and up to Schilpario, where villages are carved out in the hills as if in relief.

High in the Alps, the vistas are majestic. Towering trees form a swirling skyline against a swath of deep blue. At night the full moon looks like a sugar cookie, and seems so close, you might reach up and break off a piece of it. By day, the colors of the landscape are painterly in the light, a waxy green palette of wide, deep fields with clusters of bright yellow and dark purple from local flowers like edelweiss. At sundown, the Alpine sky turns a deep inky blue, and the stars over northern Italy shimmer like flecks of gold.

As heavenly as it is to look from the curves up to the peaks, it's utterly terrifying to look down. The gorges between the steep mountain walls are so deep, it is impossible to see the bottom. Great shards of rock stick out from the valley walls like teeth.

I imagined a horse and buggy on that mountain, in the snow and rain, and wondered how Marco survived. From the distance of decades, I could appreciate his notoriously stern demeanor. Lucia's father worked in a state of constant anxiety, and his wife's was probably worse.

Circumstances became so terrible for the Spada family that by 1917, Lucia volunteered to go to the United States with her father to find work. The plan was to send the money they made home to Schilpario, and then, when they had saved enough, Marco and Lucia would return and buy a house so that the family would be, at long last, secure. The plan was made quickly as they always are when a situation is dire. The Spadas had a cousin in Hoboken, New Jersey, who would put them up and help them find work. This begins the story of Lucia, who, once in United States, insisted upon being called Lucy, the American version of her name. She had a clear mission, and her goal was to see it through, until her family was secure.

Once Lucy and Marco arrived in New York City, after a journey where Lucia became so ill she would never board a ship again, she settled in with her cousins and got a job in a Hoboken mill as a sewing machine operator making children's clothes for $2.00 a week.

Lucy told me that she made quick work of learning English, because on the first day, the foreman came by and hollered, “Faster, Lucy.
Faster
.” She didn't understand what he was saying, so she vowed to learn English so she could keep her job and understand what was required of her.

Soon after Lucy was settled in New Jersey, her father decided to travel to find work that paid a decent wage. Marco left Hoboken for nearly two years, working around the world and saving his pay. He went to Canada, then to Argentina, on to Australia, then back to the States.

In the meantime, Lucy had fallen in love with my grandfather, Carlo Bonicelli, who was, surprisingly enough, from Vilminore, a neighboring village to Schilpario only five miles away. Though they had never met in Italy, they were bonded by their dialect, work ethic, and utter attraction for one another. There was something instantly familiar about Carlo for Lucy, they were
simpatico
and their similarities reassured her. Carlo Augustus Bonicelli was romantic and funny. His square jaw showed determination, as his soft brown eyes showed his emotional and sensitive nature.

Lucy told me years later that when she was young, a woman rarely chose her own husband; that duty was left to the family, who arranged the marriages and “made a match.” But, she said with great pride, she and Carlo had
chosen
one another; it was a marriage based on love.

This was so important to her that she reiterated it in the last conversation I had with her.

Lucy was a serious young woman, and Carlo was the opposite. Funny, gregarious, and social, he played a mean tin bugle. Marco met his future son-in-law and, confident that his independent daughter Lucy had chosen a good man, returned to Schilpario, to his wife and family, to build the house on Via Scalina that the Spadas and their descendants still live in today.

Lucy told her new husband that she would be happy to do any job except farm. In Italy, her family kept rabbits and chickens, but part of Lucy's American dream was not to make a career of it.

Carlo was a shoemaker, and with Lucy's skills as a seamstress, they knew together they could make a living. They decided to partner with Carlo's friend, another shoemaker, Giuseppe Bonanto. The men had heard that shoemakers were in short supply on the Iron Range in Minnesota, so the two couples decided to leave New Jersey for the Midwest.

When they arrived in Buhl, Minnesota, it became clear, after a time, that there wasn't enough work for two shoemakers in town. So the men flipped a coin to decide who would move on to the next town, Chisholm, where there was a need for a shoemaker. Carlo lost the toss, and he and Lucy departed for Chisholm.

The Iron Range

Chisholm, a prim small town in northern Minnesota, on the vast Iron Range, looks from a distance like low, rolling hills of cinnamon, where the earth has been stripped to dig for iron ore. As in most American mining towns, there was work at the ready, the mines were in operation twenty-four hours a day. Day shifts blended into hoot owl (night) shifts, so the industry attracted ambitious immigrants hoping to make a living, or men like my grandfather looking to supplement their trade with an extra paycheck.

In 1956, Lucy wears her own creation. She stands with her son, Orlando.

A colorful mix of Yugoslavians, Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, Italians, Polish, Russian, German, and Jewish families rounded out the community, built at first by those of Scandinavian descent. Lakes large and small surround the town, and there's a beauty right off Main Street called Longyear Lake. I remember whitecaps on that lake, when the wind blew through during summer storms. The water was deep and clear and blue.

In her lifetime, Lucy lived for the most part in two homes: the house in which she was born, in Schilpario, and at 5 West Lake Street in Chisholm. For the last seven years of her life, she lived in Leisure Hills, a rest home in nearby Hibbing. She suffered a stroke in 1985 that left the right side of her body paralyzed, but her mind was sharp until the day she died.

Carlo died when he was thirty-nine years old, and Lucy was thirty-five. She never remarried, or even went out socially with men after that. She raised her family and put all three of her children through college on the money she earned sewing and selling factory-made shoes, including the popular Red Goose brand. She believed children needed the best shoes in the family, a structured leather lace-up boot to protect the growing bones and support the ankle.

Lucy wouldn't sell a pair of shoes that didn't fit properly, and always encouraged parents to buy function and fit over style. She would rather lose a sale than fit a child's foot improperly. My grandmother talked her customers out of buying shoes as much as she sold them.

At the top of the hill, the first building you see when you make the turn onto the main street of Chisholm is the public library. With the flow of income from the mines, the community built beautiful public schools, parks, and the library. My grandmother went to the library weekly, and took her children along, which is where my mom's addiction to books began; eventually she and her twin sister Irma became librarians.

I spent a lot of time in the Chisholm library one long summer in the 1970s. The architecture of the library was inviting to children; it looked like a stately red brick house. Inside, the lemon wax used to polish the walnut reading tables and the sweet scent of ink on old paper filled the spacious rooms, filled with light from the generous lead-paned windows. The building was an avid reader's dream, lots of bright, natural light, and alcoves and nooks perfect for reading uninterrupted.

In 1920 my grandparents moved into a simple red-brick building that anchored the opposite end of the wide Main Street. The establishments that my grandmother frequented on Main Street had old world charm. Hilmer's Bakery sold delicious sweets (
povitica
), doughnuts filled with jam and rolled in sugar, and dense, sweet strudels (all that Central European baking talent), the Silvestri family ran Choppy's Pizza, and a popular Italian-owned family restaurant, Valentini's, held annual dinners where they made polenta on long wooden boards.

Known for her can-do common sense and even temperament, Lucy had a place of respect in her community in matters practical and philosophical. Parents trusted her with their children. Mothers would send their children to Lucy's shop after school to wait for pickup. Her shop was a meeting point in town. People knew Lucy was typically in the shop, and her door was always open.

The places Lucy avoided, like the local bars, were plentiful. Mining and the bar life go hand in hand like mother and child. During the summers, I would pass the bars in daytime, and the scent of booze and cigarettes would waft out, reminding me that there was a busy nightlife in Chisholm, where people worked hard and relaxed after hours.

The Progressive Shoe Shop

My grandfather opened the Progressive Shoe Shop in the front room on the street level of 5 West Lake Street where he repaired shoes, built some, and dreamed of designing his own custom line. Later, Mom told me that the joke was that there was nothing progressive about the shop, but the name indicated my grandfather embraced a modern, contemporary vision for his American business. As a veteran of World War I, my grandfather was a proud soldier, and a newly minted American citizen. When he married Lucy, she became a citizen too.

Lucy's sewing shop was in the back room of the first floor. There was an open service window in the wall separating the shoe shop from her workroom. This saved Lucy a lot of time when the bells on the door would jingle and a customer would enter, and in the years before he died offered her instant communication with her husband. There was a door leading to the back room, near the checkout desk, upon which was an ornate cash register with brass bindings, bezel-set number keys, and enamel flaps with numbers that would pop up in a pane of glass when the keys were pressed.

Lucy's workroom in the back was deep and wide, with a series of windows along the back wall. The gray wooden floor bowed in the center, from age and wear. The only pops of color were from the bolts of fabrics and the pots of red geraniums along the ledges of the windows.

Her sewing machine—a black-enameled Singer painted with gold curlicues set on a sturdy wooden table—was set in the center of the room to take advantage of the light. She let me sit in her work chair and pump the foot pedal, a wrought iron plate designed with open scrollwork. Both my feet could fit, and I would pretend to drive instead of sew.