It was a man’s world, they said, and this had never troubled her when she was actually in command and actively wielding her own will; but to be deposed now as a widow, because there was not the figurehead of her husband, was hard to take. She saw now that there was much that was not honest in this world, and she remembered Domenico, whom she had scorned when she was in full vigor, saying that in a just world women would be valued for themselves and all things would be open to them. Now she sat in the kitchen and felt that a woman alone was a poor and wasted thing.

Though her daughter-in-law never said anything, Umbertina sensed that Amelia would have liked control of her own house, and would have enjoyed being in the kitchen alone sometimes to have a supper of milk-toast or to make the thinner tomato sauce or simpler dishes she preferred to Umbertina’s rich concoctions. For her own part, one of the indignities for Umbertina of not being in her own home was having to put up with the insult of Cristina Muzzi’s visits to Amelia; Cristina would draw her daughter into her bedroom to talk behind a closed door for hours instead of sitting in the kitchen with her as decency would demand. Umbertina saw each visit of la strega as an invasion of Longobardi territory, and she rankled with fury at the idea of the stories they told behind that closed door.

The only respite they all had from each other was the two weeks each summer when Umbertina took Sara and Carla by train to nearby Richfield Springs, a spa in Cherry Valley that for some curious reason was filled with wealthy Cubans come to take the waters there instead of at Saratoga.

Other things weighed on Umbertina’s mind. She blamed herself for having unwittingly provided the first visible sign of family disunity by quarreling with her brother, Beppino. It was years now since they had seen each other, and this was wrong. She who had always held the family inviolate, one for all and all for one, had undermined its structure with her quarrelsome and grudging nature. She saw signs among her sons that made her uneasy.

Paul was prospering independently of the others with real estate and stock market investments. With the excuse of his health, he stayed home from work and studied investment reports while the others worked at the Wholesale. Yet all this time he was receiving his share from the Wholesale, too.