climbing up on his back when she was a girl, grooming him as soon as her hand had grown large enough to hold the brush, and, when she grew tall enough, feeding him slices of apples from her hands. She remembered loading the carriage lamp with oil in the winter, and making bouquets of fresh flowers to attach to the carriage in summer. Cipi had pulled the carriage that carried Stella’s coffin, and had taken every bride and groom from Sant’Antonio down the mountain to Bergamo after their weddings. She remembered braiding Cipi’s mane with ribbons on feast days—red on Christmas, white on Easter, and pale blue for Santa Lucia. She remembered leaving the house on the night of a snowstorm and going to the barn to throw an extra blanket over him. She remembered shaking the sleigh bells on the carriage at Christmastime as Cipi pulled the children through the streets while the snow fell. She had taken excellent care of this horse, and in return, he had served her family loyally and well.
The long shadows of her brothers, sisters, mother, and father looked like tombstones against the stable wall as they stood around Cipi. Enza rested her body against the horse she had loved all of her life, taking in the clean scent of his lustrous coat.
“Thank you, Cipi,” Enza whispered. “You were a good boy.”
Besides having been May Queen at Our Lady of Pompeii Church, Felicitá Cassio was also the privileged daughter of a grocer in Greenwich Village who had emigrated from Sicily with his bright, sturdy wife and built a small empire that began with a fruit stand on Mott Street and eventually spread to every corner below Fourteenth Street.
As her father loved peddling fresh fruit, strawberries and cherries, Felicitá loved boys. Ciro pursued Felicitá in the weeks after the festival, but he didn’t have to work too hard to win her; just as he had chosen her, Felicitá had chosen him.
She arranged to stop by and visit with her friend Elizabeth Juviler at the cheese store on Mulberry on a regular basis, with the goal of running into Ciro. When she discovered that Ciro made deliveries of boots and shoes he had repaired to the factory workers in the West Village, she made sure to take a walk across Charles Street when she knew she might run into him. Felicitá had a serious attraction to the mountain boy. She was taken with Ciro’s light hair and eyes, and he was enamored of her bella figura, the envy of every girl in Little Italy.
Felicitá was thinking how lucky she was as she brushed Ciro’s hair off his face and studied his profile as he napped. Her parents worked long hours in the business, and she had their apartment to herself during the day. An only child, she cooked and cleaned for her parents in exchange for everything a girl of sixteen desires.
Felicitá found Ciro more impressive than the compact Sicilian boys, who were attractive enough with their thick eyebrows and Roman noses, but only a couple inches taller than she. They were also too eager to please for her taste. She liked that Ciro didn’t fawn over her; he was remote, yet warm, and Felicitá saw those attributes as signs of maturity. Ciro was so tall he barely fit in her small bed. Her shoes, resting nearby, could easily hide inside his.
Ciro stirred and opened his eyes. She once had a party dress the exact blue-green color of his eyes.
“You should go,” she said.
“Why?” He pulled her close and rested his face in her neck.
“I don’t want you to get caught.” She sat up and pulled a small crystal bowl filled with her jewelry off the nightstand. She slid delicate rings—thin, embossed gold bands, others inlaid with round opals and shimmering chips of citrine—onto her fingers.
“Maybe I want to get caught,” Ciro teased.
“Maybe you ought to get dressed.” Felicitá fluttered her fingers, now sparkling with metal and stones. She flipped her long hair to the side and snapped on a necklace with a holy medal. “Hurry up. Papa will kill you,” she said without the slightest urgency.
Ciro pulled on his pants and then his shirt.
Felicitá grabbed Ciro’s hand. “I want that ring.”
“You can’t have it.” He pulled his hand away, laughing. They’d played this game before. “Your name doesn’t begin with a C.”
“I’ve always wanted a signet ring. They can scrape off the C at the jeweler on Carmine Street. Then they can size it and