“He was starting to make it out in Hollywood—that's what we heard—and then he had an accident. He was on his motorcycle on the highway that goes up the coast and some car slammed into him and killed him. That was maybe 'fifty or 'fifty-one. There was a memorial service for him in New Haven and Lu came up from New York for it. She was sad about what had happened, I knew that, but by then it was—what, seven or eight years since she'd seen Ricky? I think she felt the way you would if you heard someone you dated in high school had died—not the father of your baby.”

“How warm and fuzzy of her.”

Uncle Paulie sighed—a sigh that was full of gentle reproach. “Lu was never warm and fuzzy,” he said. “She didn't pretend to be. But there was a lot about her that Rose never told you. Like, from the time Rose was six years old, Lu was supporting Mama and Rose and the house in New Haven—the whole shebang. I guess you could say Lu was a star by that point, but getting the next job in the theater is always a crapshoot. It must have been hard for her, carrying all that on her back, but she never complained.”

“I thought the family was well off—what about the grocery stores?”

“Pop's accountant was as lousy at the business as Mama had been afraid he would be. And when my brother Carmine junior came back from the war to take over … well, he was a nice guy—rest his soul, he died ten years ago—but he was even worse. The economy was flying after the war, with the boys coming home and getting married and having kids. It took talent to go belly-up in those days, but Carmine did it. He lost all three of Pop's stores. And Mama just didn't understand that she couldn't spend the way she could when Pop was bringing in the bucks. She wanted the best of everything for Rose, because that little girl was the light of her life. Lu had to come up with a pretty penny each month to keep them going.” He shook his head. “To tell you the truth, she carried a couple of us. When I got out of the service, I went down south to start a business with a buddy of mine—a hamburger joint that didn't pan out—and Lu staked us. Then Eddie quit the doctor racket because he wanted to find himself—only we didn't say it that way back then. We called it being lazy. His wife left him for a year until he came back to his senses, and Lu picked up the tab for her and Eddie's three kids the whole time.