“Mrs. D, Mary wouldn’t go out to eat with me and you know why? Because she’s working too hard!”
“Maria,” her mother said, waving a gnarled index finger. “Maria, I tella you, no work so hard! I tella you and Bennie! She no listen? You no listen?”
“I listened, she listened, we all listened.” Mary felt vaguely as if she had just conjugated something. “Don’t start, Ma. It’s for Amadeo Brandolini, and there’s a lot to be done.”
“BUT FIRST WE EAT!” Judy said, hugging her mother again. “How can I help, Mrs. D?”
“No, no, you sit! Sit!” her mother replied, waving her off as she always did, because the kitchen was her exclusive territory and offers to help were construed as insults. “Sit!”
“Talked me into it.” Judy took a seat across from Mary. Meanwhile, Penny, who had finished drinking, ran a dripping pink tongue over her chops and trotted over to the kitchen table, her black nose in the air, undoubtedly sniffing for Aquanet.
“Okay, I make gnocchi for you, and coff’!” her mother said.
Mary scrutinized her mother as she picked up a plate of gnocchi layered with waxed paper for freezing, carried it to the counter, and set it down. Her mother seemed to move nimbly enough as she filled the dented spaghetti pot with water, took it to the burner, and twisted the knob to HI for the flame. Mary had to find out what was going on, but she needed a secret plan. Italian mothers had force fields that deflected the fears of their children, even when their children reached thirty years old. Actually, the force field got older, too.
“Ma,” Mary began, talking to her mother’s flowered back, “so what’s the matter with Mrs. DiGiuseppe? I saw her outside and hardly recognized her.”
“She’s got the cancer,” her father interrupted. He evidently didn’t understand about the force field and the secret plan. He scuffed in black slippers to the cabinet and retrieved two cups and saucers, which he brought to the table and clunked down in front of Mary and Judy. Mary straightened her cup in the chipped saucer, happily mismatched, and took another shot.
“What kind of cancer, Ma?”
“Liver,” her father interrupted again, but he missed the dirty look Mary shot him. He turned around and headed for the silverware drawer, retrieved two forks and two spoons, then brought them to the table. “How she suffered, with the chemo. It’s a sin.”
“She looks so thin, Ma.” Mary would need Kryptonite to crack this force field. Or her father would have to shut up. “She even looks shorter. Smaller. What could make her shrink, Ma?”
“It happens when you get older,” her father said, coming to the table with two dishes. Mary caught his eye with a meaningful glare, and he met her gaze, his milky brown and a little sad behind his bifocals. And then she knew. Her father wasn’t being dumb, he was playing dumb. He was hiding something.
“Dad?” Mary said, involuntarily, but he waved her off.
“Nothing to worry about.”
“For real?” Mary’s heart lodged somewhere in her throat. They both knew they weren’t talking about Mrs. DiGiuseppe.
“Not now,” he said firmly, easing into his seat at the tiny round table.
Mary’s gaze shifted to her mother at the stove, where she was shaking salt into the gnocchi water and stirring it with her wooden spoon. Then she turned on the burners under the pot of gravy and the old-fashioned coffeepot they had used forever. In a few minutes, everything would boil, bubble, and perco-late, and Mary would pretend everything was all right, at least for the time being. On the sidelines, a mystified Judy looked from Mary to her father, staying silent. She had been around the DiNunzios long enough to know that English was their second language and their first was Meaningful Eye Contact.
“So how’s Angie?” Mary asked, about her sister. A former nun, Angie had gone on a mission in Tajikistan, teaching English and helping build homes for poor people. Because of Angie’s life and works, the entire DiNunzio family had an E-ZPass to heaven. The girl took pro bono to a new level, and Mary couldn’t help but miss her. “You hear anything lately?”
“Not since last month,” her father answered. “Tell us about Brandolini’s case. They been askin’ at church.”
“I haven’t gotten anywhere. I haven’t even found his file yet.” Mary filled him in against the throaty gurgling of the coffee, and in the next moment, its aroma scented the already fragrant kitchen. And just when the room was too small to fit even one more smell, the tomato sauce started to bubble.
“Brandolini was sent to a camp in Montana?” Her father’s eyes widened. The DiNunzios never left the house, much less traveled, and their only summer vacations had been to Bellevue Avenue, in an Atlantic City that no longer existed. “ Montana? That where they shipped him? Why?”
“I don’t know, not without the file, anyway. There were forty-something internment camps around the country, and I haven’t figured out the reason for who went where.”
“But Montana!” Her father smacked his bald head, as if she’d said Pluto. “That’s way out. That’s cowboy country!”
“They packed the internees on trains, and when they got to Missoula, they called it bella vista.”
“Beautiful sight,” her father translated, undoubtedly for Judy’s benefit.
“Right, because there were mountains and all. Or at least that’s the propaganda the government was putting out.” Mary had researched Fort Missoula, read a book about its history, and pieced together what she could from the other internee files. “Most of the Italian internees at Fort Missoula were from cruise ships that were at sea when war broke out. Some had been waiters at the Italy Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York. Amadeo was one of the ones from Philly.”
“How did they keep the records?” Her father was a smart man, albeit uneducated. Mary, who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and its law school, didn’t think she’d ever be as smart. In fact, lately she’d considered asking for a refund.
“I think they were kept at Fort Missoula, and when the camps were opened and the internees released, the files ended up in the National Archives.”
“So maybe not all the files made it.”
Mary shrugged. The coffee was done. She wanted to get it herself, but that was against the rules. Her father was already on his slippers, fetching the pot and bearing it back to the table. Simultaneously, her mother reached over and turned off the burner, one of the smoothest moves in their kitchen dance. Mariano and Vita DiNunzio had been married forever, and it showed.
“Maybe his file got taken out, because he died in the camp.” Her father poured hot coffee into Judy’s cup in a glistening brown arc. She thanked him and dumped in three spoons of sugar, followed with the light cream that was always on the table after dinner, next to a plastic napkin dispenser of the Praying Hands. “Maybe it got sent somewhere when he died and didn’t end up in the same place as the others. Did anybody else die in the camp?”
“From my research, three other Italian internees, all of natural causes. None by suicide except for Amadeo.” Behind her, Mary heard the hiss of fresh gnocchi hitting the boiling water and the gurgling of the gravy in the pot next to it, bubbling its heady brew of ripe tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, and bits of chicken cooked until it melted off the bone. As delicious as she knew the meal would be, none of it tempted her. Between her mother and Amadeo, she was too bummed to be hungry. “I’m double-checking the files for references to him. Maybe that will lead me to whatever happened to his boats and business.”
“Poor guy.” Her father poured Mary’s coffee, and she thanked him. “So what else is new, girls?”