The picnic in the meadow at Lake Petulia had grown out of her remembrance of the lunches eaten in the fields in Muskieville when she and Serafino and their children had gone out to work their leased land. Then, when the daughters had grown and married and both Carla and Anna had moved away from Cato to their husbands’ towns, Umbertina had spoken her wish: that they should come back each summer when travel was easier and meet in a meadow large enough for them and all the cars, to have a picnic. In her old age, it was the event that pleased her most, more than Christmas or Easter or any of the saints’ days. She lived with the memory of it through the long winters; and by the time spring came and she could go out in her backyard and start the rows of corn, put in the stakes for the beans and tomatoes, and nurse the first tender lettuces and herbs, she would be planting for the coming picnic.

The weather was always good—they had never had to cancel a picnic on account of rain or misfortune—and the food was always good; but as Umbertina sat under her tree and looked at her progeny, she knew bitterness as well as contentment. All that work and sacrifice that she and Serafino had known. Did any of these gay, chattering, well-dressed, and happy people around her know any of it? Jake and Ben, maybe, yes—they might remember the early days in the tenements; and she often thought that Ben, with his dour and dark temperament, might have been forever burned by that experience. Jake, though, was like Serafino, open and optimistic and not given to looking back and brooding. But where was the companion of her strength? She had married a man much older than she and now she was left. There was Paul being waited on by Pauline, the only one in the group besides Umbertina who had a chair to sit on because of his still-delicate health.

When Prohibition had ended, Paul, through his wide political connections, got Longobardi & Sons licensed for wholesaling liquor. With this further expansion, the Longobardis had reached the peak of success, financially and socially, in a period when others were still recovering from the Depression.