The other part of education for her was the story of The Little Engine That Could—that chugging, struggling little prig of an engine full of dutiful fortitude and New World optimism whose painful sense of responsibility to others overcame the odds and got him over the mountain in time to deliver his load of toys to the children for Christmas. You were supposed to be responsible, dependable in life, no matter what. (Years later, looking for something to read her own child, Marguerite came upon that tale in a storybook collection. “The hell with the choo-choo train,” she told Tina, “let’s read something wicked.” “I thought you were a serious person, an activist,” Alberto said, amused. “That was before I married a decadent like you, Alberto. You saved my life.” And she tore the story from the book.)

If all her childhood she had been quiet and dreamy, by the time she was sent to the Franciscan sisters for high school she had become sullen and withdrawn. Carla liked to look on the bright side of things and could never understand her daughter’s discontent. “Smile,” she’d tell her, “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” And Marguerite would answer, “Who cares about flies . . . or being popular . . . I’m not some damn Homecoming Queen. All you want me to do is smile, play golf, and have dates as if that’s what life is all about.”

“What is life about?” her mother asked.

“I don’t know . . . but I’ll find out, and it won’t be what you think.”

Too serious for a girl, they all agreed.

At school, where all the daughters of the top Irish families went, including the mayor’s daughter, she got to be known as Mad Marguerite—because she read books no one else had heard of (Voltaire, Spengler, T. S. Eliot, Ivy Compton-Burnett) and because she defied convent ways. She wore her uniform too tight, she studied too hard, her answers were delivered in a deprecating way, and for religion class she had written the notorious answer on a test that the Virgin Birth could be explained by coitus ante portam—“intercourse outside the door,” i.e., without penetration.

The nuns crossed themselves, said their prayers, and only kept her on in the school because of the large food donations Sam sent them from The Place. But Marguerite’s soul, if not her presence, had already left them.

Pale, nervous, thin, Marguerite trembled in a confusion of roles, unsure of herself and withdrawn, while her brothers changed from dark skinny kids into tall, athletic, handsome boys full of masculine confidence. She began to think of herself as the family freak-out, a throwback to Grandpa Scalzo, the Old Man, who had come to America and never made good and so was given a broom and the job of sweeping down at The Place.