Sammy was practical. He had let his father talk him out of taking a job on the West Coast and he had gone into business down at The Place. But what Sammy did that was really outstanding was to capitalize on his golfing acquaintance with Art Burke by marrying his sister, Betty. It was beyond any expectation Carla had ever had of her children marrying well. Betty’s late grandfather had been vice-president of the United States and the family still lived in his beautiful old home outside Gloversville. That Sammy got married in an Episcopal church was more than graciously accommodated by Carla. “They’re hardly different at all from Catholics,” she said. That there was no papal blessing was a small thing compared to the luster of the Burkes.

For years Carla had avoided the Scalzo clan and their Italianness. But with Sammy’s marriage she felt she could invite them all, for the reception was to be held at the Burkes’ country place. If Betty Burke chose to marry Sammy it meant that Burke receptiveness was broad enough to accommodate even those Scalzo and Vitale relatives Sam and Carla wouldn’t want in their own home.

Carla went even further in her Italian sentiment and advised Betty to have Josie Strombaluppi from the North Side bake her wedding cake. “For tradition’s sake,” she told Betty, since her own wedding cake had been done by Josie’s father. And yet it was not tradition, but the firm assurance that the old times could never again touch her, that made Carla suggest it. Betty was delighted at the quaintness of that touch.

The cake was the one thing about the wedding that interested Marguerite. Josie’s store, down on the North Side behind the glove factory, smelling of almond-paste and anise and so different from an American bakery, had always seemed an exciting place to her. And the wedding cake that Josie’s father had baked for her mother was a fabulous confection that had become part of the mythology of her childhood.

“How was your wedding cake, Mother? Tell us about it.”

“Well, it weighed as much as I did—I was slimmer then, before I had children. And when I cut it, lovebirds came out.”

Marguerite, enraptured, would think to herself of those birds waiting there in the gloom and soft innards of the cake; lodged there helpless like raisins in batter. She never wanted to say anything because she was a shy and reticent child, but she used to think: Wonder if they dirtied there, while they were waiting—how could anyone eat the cake? Or maybe the guests wouldn’t know it was bird stuff, would think it was part of the mixture and eat it anyway. But what about her mother, didn’t she know? Finally she asked.