For years it had angered and puzzled Serafino in a way he didn’t understand that Paul slept late, made friends among outsiders, and generally acted different from the rest. Perhaps Serafino felt this way because of what he had suffered in his own youth, when work had been both a blessing and a curse. Anyone who got work was blessed, for how did you live without it? And yet, in those days to work was like going to war—you didn’t know if you would survive the harshness of it.

Paul, instead, easily succumbed to the flattery of politicians, who told him he was too smart to waste his time around two-bit family stores; he should be in politics. He let himself be persuaded to run for the state assembly and this touched off an ugly threat in the family ranks: Ben, disgusted at Paul’s attitude, threatened to disclose something that Paul had kept hidden from his political cronies—that he had been born in Italy and so was not eligible to run for office. Umbertina squelched Ben’s threat and Paul ran but didn’t win. It was another scheme that hadn’t worked, but this time Serafino had had enough.

“Why don’t you work like the others? Why always these ideas that waste the money your brothers earn?”

“Pa,” Paul explained to the old man, “there are other things I’d like to do; why does it have to be the store or nothing? We can still be a family without my having to work in the store with Jake and Ben.”

“Leave him alone,” Umbertina said, “he’s not as strong as the others. È più delicato. He needs a different kind of work.”

“Maybe he should be a priest, then,” Serafino answered sarcastically. “They’re the ones who know best how to get out of work.”

Despite Umbertina’s efforts, this time Serafino had his way about Paul. “If you don’t work with the family, don’t stay with the family,” he said. When Paul left, Umbertina added to her devotions a special one for Paul to bring him home and to his senses.

Umbertina and Serafino observed all the religious feast days and went regularly to Sunday mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, where they had given a window in memory of Margherita. Umbertina observed the saints’ days, especially those for whom her children were named and those who had special protective powers—like San Biagio, the patron of throats, on February 3, who could keep them from strep-throat infections at that bad time of the year.