The Saturday Evening Girls Club by Jane Healey

Author:Jane Healey [Healey, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503943278
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2017-04-25T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

It is better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a lamb.

—Italian proverb

Saturday, February 6, 1909

Holy Mary, mother of God, please bless my family.

Please bless Maria and her family during this time of grieving. And please help her see Mark Toscanini the way . . . the way the world sees him.

Please bless Ada and Dominic, so that they end their secret romance before their families—and the entire North End—find out.

Please bless Thea tonight, the night of her engagement party, as she prepares to marry a young man she barely knows.

And please, Holy Mother, please give me the strength and perseverance I need to open my own hat shop. Even though I’m a woman and an immigrant, I feel being a business owner is what I’m meant to do in life.

And, if you can, please help me understand my feelings for Sal . . .

Thank you for—

“Caprice, it’s—what in the world are you doing on the floor on your knees? Oh, are you praying?” Fabbia had her hands on her hips, her head was tilted, and she was looking at me like I had lost my mind. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t remember the last time I had prayed at our bedside. But in the past few weeks, life had become complicated. A couple of prayers to the Virgin Mary certainly couldn’t hurt.

“Why are you praying right now?” Fabbia demanded as I got up off the floor. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” I said, brushing off the front of my dress and quickly making the sign of the cross. “I just have a lot on my mind right now, Fabbia. I felt like praying about it. What were you going to say?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

“Papa’s home; it’s time for dinner,” Fabbia said, and then, dropping her voice to a whisper, added, “You should see the gift he brought home for Mama. It’s so . . . well, you just have to see it.”

“Giuseppe, please!” I heard my mother say as we walked through the sitting room. “The oilcloth we had was perfectly adequate. We didn’t need a new oilcloth. It’s too . . . it’s . . . it’s too extravagant.”

“But I bought it from a pushcart vendor at Haymarket,” said my father. “It was a great price.”

I walked into our stuffy little kitchen. My father was standing with his back toward me.

I saw that our old red-and-white checked oilcloth, the one that matched the kitchen curtains my mother had made, was gone. In its place was a new oilcloth with an enormous picture of Christopher Columbus standing on a rock. Columbus had one hand on his hip, his hair was blowing, the ocean was behind him, and the sun was setting. It was the most ridiculous oilcloth I had ever seen.

“Caprice.” My father turned around and held his hand out, motioning toward the new oilcloth. “Look at the gift I got your mother. She says I’m being extravagant, but I thought she deserved a special surprise.

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