“We know, Mrs. Longobardi, what America has given many Italian families, for their success is now familiar to Catonians,” she said to Umbertina, who sat there impassively in her black, not leaning back in the armchair but sitting up straight on the edge—wanting, Carla knew, to be back in her kitchen or garden and not wasting time sitting in the front room. “But, as a typical successful Italian, what would you say your countrymen have given their new country in return?”

Carla gave Umbertina the gist as Umbertina nodded and looked hard at the young woman: her hair, her lips, her colored nails, her pencil poised over pad, her bony knees showing from her shortened skirt. She seemed to Umbertina to be in her own way a fanatica, but with less style than the oldtime women like the Colombos.

Curtly Umbertina gave her answer. “Hard work,” she told the young American woman, “and good bread.”

Carla was faintly embarrassed. Wasn’t there something else? Could they mention Marconi or the poet Carducci who had won a Nobel Prize? But no, the famous Italians were in Italy and they certainly weren’t Calabrians, anyhow; for the first time Carla wondered what they, the Italians of America, could point to besides their cars and furs and big houses. But that feeling didn’t last long, and it was her simultaneous courtship by two suitors which put things in perspective for her.

It was Carla Longobardi who was the more polished and sure of herself when Sam Scalzo from Gloversville came courting her. She was attractive, as all the sisters were, and she had her mother’s good skin; for the rest, she was dark-eyed, dark-haired, and rather sharp of feature like Zio Moustacchio’s side of the family. Sam first came to Cato as a novice in the produce business, hoping to become connected with Longobardi & Sons as his initial supplier. And Jake, kindhearted and generous as he was, invited Sam home for dinner. Umbertina liked the shy young man and felt sorry for him because he looked so thin and sickly. “Be kind,” she admonished her daughters, who were giggling between themselves at his turtleneck sweater and strange shoes. “He’s just lost his mother!” Though he owned his own business and drove a Packard, he looked like a kid.