“She was born in Italy—in a small town outside Naples. She was raised in a convent and she came to this country when she was sixteen. She came over to marry my father—it was an arranged marriage. He paid her way to this country. He was nineteen years older than she was—a grown man—and she was just a girl.” Uncle Paulie shook his head and looked out at the ocean again. “I used to wonder sometimes what went through her mind when she got off that boat and saw him for the first time.”

“Why did she agree to do it?” Carrie asked.

Uncle Paulie turned to her and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “In the old country she wasn't a catch. She was pretty, and she was smart. She could read and write—the nuns saw to that. But the story was, her mother was an opera singer from the big city—Naples. And she wasn't married to Mama's father. That's why she gave Mama to the nuns to raise.”

“My great-grandmother was illegitimate?” Carrie said, fascinated by this colorful tidbit of her history.

“I know it's not a big thing today. Half the weddings in Hollywood, the best man is the couple's three-year-old kid …but back then, oh, it was such a disgrace! And no matter how terrific Mama was, she could never forget it.” He put on his glasses, stood up, and held out his hand to her. “You've got wheels, right?” he asked. She nodded and let him help her to her feet. “Let's take a little drive. I want to show you something.”

THE ROUTE UNCLE PAULIE chose took them through New Haven. Carrie white-knuckled her way through a maze of oneway streets and did a lot of praying, but her passenger didn't seem to notice how many near misses they had. He'd designated himself tour guide, pointing out little pockets of the city that hadn't been touched by the disastrous urban renewal of the sixties, giving a quickie history of each. They saw part of the Yale campus—a potpourri of architectural styles in which Gothic and Georgian seemed to predominate—and they drove past a green with three churches in its center, which, Uncle Paulie informed Carrie, was on the National Registry of Historic Places. Finally, when it seemed to Carrie that her hands had permanently welded themselves to her steering wheel, he announced that they could stop. They were on a broad street lined with houses that looked like they'd been built in the early part of the last century. Ample, welcoming porches curved around the homes, which were so close to the sidewalk that there was only room for a few shrubs in the front. The neighborhood seemed to be a mixed bag in terms of upkeep, some of the places sparkling with new paint and roofs, others badly in need of TLC.