It was the first time the little girl understood that her mother, who ran everything in their lives, never could know the things that Sister Carmela did—that there were other fine things in life as well as food. Then, when Carla learned that the old mansion was not going to be sold but was going to become the wholesale-produce warehouse, she cried and had her first experience of powerlessness before what was called progress.

After Margherita’s death, Umbertina threw herself into work at the new place on Catherine Street with extra vehemence. The enterprises were divided: Ben managed the bank and steamship agency, while Jake ran the wholesale-produce business. Umbertina took charge of the grocery store, and the older girls ran the house and filled in at the store.

Then, in correct immigrant interpretation of values, quickly incorporating American nonsentimentality and disregard for the past into their thinking, they had the lovely stone mansion gutted inside to become the wholesale warehouse. Wagons and trucks of produce now went up the drive from along which the specimen trees had been cut down for parking space; they went to a loading dock that was built onto the veranda where in 1825 the stately double doors, now removed, had seen the entrance of the marquis de Lafayette and dignitaries of Cato to a celebration in honor of the opening of the Erie Canal and the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolutionary War. Gone, too, was the hung stairway of the entrance hall and the niched walls that had held classical statuary; the mansion now housed crates of fruits and vegetables.

It was the correct move in terms of getting on with fortune building in the first immigrant generation; but it also set family values squarely into what they called business sense. Despite Paul’s suggestion that they preserve the mansion for their residence and put the Wholesale in the ugly Catherine Street structure, it was clearly more practical to have the Wholesale facing Broad Street, where business was concentrated and where there was close access to the railroad and canal. This was the smart way of looking at things and it made Paul seem impractical—even to Umbertina, who favored him.

Umbertina had very little sentimentality in her toward people, and none at all for buildings. The older girls didn’t mind the move; they would be married and out of their mother’s house soon. Besides Paul and Carla, only Serafino might have wanted to keep the old mansion, which in some way reminded him of the old Norman abbey in the valley below Castagna; but he was retired now, and like Carla, what he thought really didn’t count.