Whenever any reference was made to his two working sons by the men at Scalise’s, Serafino would inwardly fume because what they said was true: His third son, Paul, was still a bachelor living at home and still not contributing anything to the family. He was personable and charming and liked to dress up and walk about town talking to people. He was a good talker and he was full of ideas, schemes that never worked out. First he persuaded Jake to carry an expensive line of candies at the Wholesale; when that failed, he got his brothers to invest family funds in a dying cotton mill. His last venture was The Blue Bird Cafeteria, which he opened on Bleecker Street with family backing and then watched wither and die because Bleecker Street itself was dying by then. Whenever one of Paul’s business schemes failed, Jake and Ben and others simply worked harder to make up the losses. Paul was not blamed; he was more educated than the others, Umbertina said, and it was simply a question of bad luck, not bad judgment, that he hadn’t succeeded. In any case, Umbertina wouldn’t have allowed any censure of him; the only thing that displeased her in Paul was his courtship of Mary Pauline Colombo.

Mary Pauline’s mother was Francesca Colombo, who would sometimes come to visit in her gray silk gowns with her gray hair handsomely marcelled, sitting there regally accepting coffee and little pastries while Umbertina, in her frumpy full skirts, would bustle around, her hair spilling out of its combs in long, untidy straggles. The Colombos were all fashion on the outside, Umbertina muttered, but without substance where it counted—by which she meant linens for a dowry.

For even though the Colombos were well off, they had never produced for their girls the dowry that Umbertina was assembling for each of her daughters. Even worse, the mother, being a fanatica, had produced a daughter who was bold—a daughter who one Sunday after mass at Mount Carmel had come to Catherine Street to ask for Paul, and when told he was still sleeping had horrified Umbertina by going to his room to wake him.

But the attachment was real, and when Mary Pauline dropped the first part of her name so that she’d be Pauline to his Paul, and then moved her birthday back so that she wouldn’t be any months older than he (for he had to take precedence in everything), Umbertina knew she had to accept the inevitable. She became resigned to the idea: The girl was clever and intelligent and completely loyal to Paul, and that was what was needed.