Storytime at the Villa Maria

By Constance Walker

A charming novel of senior citizens, storytelling, nostalgia, and a world gone by but not forgotten.
Meet:
Dominick, who married “the most beautiful woman in the world”...
Sophie, who is haunted by terrifying memories of the Holocaust...
Ella, who made “sweet apple pies” for her war veteran husband...
Tom, whose music lured women into his arms...
Artie, who is plagued by the ghosts of long-dead soldiers...
Frank, who can’t let go of his yesterdays, though a better tomorrow beckons...
Join them and others as they gather every Monday night in the library at the Villa Maria to share their memories, their fears, and their dreams
STORYTIME AT THE VILLA MARIA—the unforgettable book about life lived and still to be lived, and about the mysterious threads of joy and heartache and love that are woven into every life—including your own!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Constance Walker
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780988430747

Constance Walker

Constance Walker is the author of When the Heart Remembers, One Perfect Springtime, Lost Roses of Ganymede House, among other works of Gothic and modern fiction, including Warm Winter Love (2013), In Time (2014) and The Shimmering Stones of Winter's Light (2015).

Book preview

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WHAT AMAZON AND GOODREADS READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT CONSTANCE WALKER’S BOOKS:

LOST ROSES OF GANYMEDE HOUSE

The author’s command of the English language is superb and the paranormal plot reminiscent of Jane Eyre…this story is among the best titles I’ve read in years.

Loved this book and I would recommend it to all…one of those books that you can’t put down.

Throwback to old ‘70’s and ‘80’s Gothic. Loved it!

This book is amazing. I recommend it to those who love reading Gothic mysteries.

It was awesome!

THE SHIMMERING STONES OF WINTER’S LIGHT

Recommended by Melinda Curtis, Happy Ever After, USA TODAY

Elegant prose that reminded me at times of novels by Thomas Hardy or the hushed brooding tone of Daphne DuMaurier.

I absolutely loved this book. The characters were surprising and the ending…no way could I guess.

Her cliché-free writing goes beyond craftsmanship and into the realm of art.

Great read. Loved the mystery.

This story had me from the very first page. Highly recommend.

It’s a perfect read for a rainy day.

IN TIME

This poignant story of a forever love will live forever in your heart.—Barbara Brett, author, Between Two Eternities."

It’s the kind of story when you finish reading you start telling everyone about it. Five stars.

Hardly able to put down. Her writing transcends genre.

A paranormal treasure. I loved the setting, the characters and, most importantly, the story.

You’ll always remember this wonderful story of a forever love.

Fantastic read! Left me emotional and speechless! Five stars.

WARM WINTER LOVE

The main character, Katie, is relatable to any woman who has ever had to make a tough choice.

The reader is pulled into Katie’s life with such creative narrative that you think she’s an old friend by the end of the first chapter.

ALSO BY CONSTANCE WALKER

LOST ROSES OF GANYMEDE HOUSE

THE SHIMMERING STONES OF WINTER’S LIGHT

IN TIME

WARM WINTER LOVE

Constance Walker

STORY TIME AT THE VILLA MARIA

A Winter’s Eve Book

Copyright © 2017 by Constance Walker

All rights reserved. This Book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Law, and except limited excerpts by reviewer for the public press), without written permission from Constance Walker. For information, please contact Winter’s Eve Books via email at [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. We assume no liability for errors, inaccuracies, omissions or any inconsistency therein.

Cover by Barbara Rainess

Cover Image By Anna Bilinska-Bogdanowicz [Public domain],

via Wikimedia Commons

Published by Winter’s Eve Books

www.WintersEveBooks.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017904425

Paperback Edition ISBN 978-0-9884307-3-0

0-9884307-3-8

Digital Edition ISBN 978-0-9884307-4-7

Printed in the United States of America

Author Services by Pedernales Publishing, LLC.

www.pedernalespublishing.com

For Ben...always

South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1946

The tuxedoed emcee pointed to the last couple on the dance floor and motioned them forward. And the winners of tonight’s Pavilion Dance Hall contest are Miss Mae Agnes Adams and Mr. Dominick Ricci. The smiling couple came forward and accepted the envelope containing the two one-dollar bills and bowed first to the other dancers and then to the audience, and then Dominick’s eyes searched and found the table where the beautiful redheaded girl was sitting. I wish I had won you, instead, he thought. The redhead looked at him with her sad brown eyes as if she heard the words and then quickly looked down at the table.

And now everyone on the dance floor, the master of ceremonies said, and the girl’s face disappeared behind the crowd of eager dancers.

Warsaw, Poland, 1938

Hurry, Sophie. Show the new boy where the matches are so he’ll light the stove on Shabbos. Sophie, impatiently looking forward to her ninth birthday the next week, couldn’t help staring – he was the cutest boy she had ever seen. She grinned at him and then closed her mouth quickly because she didn’t want him to see where the tooth in front had not quite grown in. The young, almost fourteen-year-old schoolboy shyly smiled back and clutched his woolen cap even more tightly.

Here, she said pointing to the box of wooden matches. Here is where we keep them.

Sophie’s father came into the kitchen and handed the boy a coin.

Thank you, the boy said. I’ll be here tomorrow right after church school.

Ah, thought Sophie, he’s really, really not one of us. But he was so handsome that she had to tell Yetta Rachel, her sister, about him and how he had smiled at her.

County Cork, Ireland, 1952

"Tommy, Tommy, me boy, that there saxophone’s surely going to be the key to your success when you get to America. You’ll see, mark my words, they’ll be lining up on those gold paved streets just awaitin’ to hear ya play. You’re going to be rich, me boy. Positively rich.

You think so? It had to be true. Tom’s cousin, who once studied for the priesthood, said it was so. He’d make a lot of money and send it back to his da and mum so they could buy a nice house in County Kerry, near Da’s sister’s grand house.

He fingered the shiny saxophone. Yeah, he’d make lots of money and make the whole family proud. America, here I come.

Wilmington, Delaware, 1935

He could hear his father coming up the steps, tripping and then cursing and getting angrier and angrier.

Wait till I get my hands on you, woman. I’ll show you who’s boss.

His father was drunk again and Karl hid under his bed so that his old man wouldn’t find him. He heard his mother’s cries and the crack of the belt and Karl cowered in fear hoping that his father, the person he most hated in the world even though Reverend Bernard of the Emanuel Lutheran Church said it was a sin, would exhaust himself and fall asleep before the parent started on the children.

The muffled cries stopped and he heard the thud of his bully father as he stumbled into bed. The eight-year-old Karl was safe for another night.

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1942

Miss Mamie surely had a fine looking man sitting next to her. Ella adjusted the purple felt hat with the purple plaid band and wondered who he was. Miss Mamie didn’t have any children and none of her boarders were that young. Let’s see, he must be about nineteen or twenty. No matter that he was darker than her own skin color—she liked the look of him and the way he sat up real straight while the preacher spoke. And the way he stood up and sang out the hymns in that deep voice that she could hear even though she was across the aisle and one row in back of him.

Maybe I can just sidle by and take a good look at him after the service. Maybe Miss Mamie will introduce us. I think I would like that.

Paris, France, 1944

Eleni, come away from the window – the cold comes in too much and you’ll get sick. Eleni’s mother patted the bare floor in front of the fire where she sat with her other children. Quick, the fire will die soon. Come and warm while you can.

The twelve-year-old, very thin girl rubbed at the cold inside ice-crusted window with her sweatered elbow and shivered. Someday when this war was over she was going to be able to look out of all the windows she wanted to and she would still be warm and she would have lots of heavy sweaters and dresses and shoes and socks. And she would be able to see a beautiful world through the windowpanes and she would smell like lavender and eat as much as she wanted to and most of all, she would never ever be afraid again.

Camden, New Jersey, 1954

Hail Mary, full of grace, she kept repeating to the little statue on her bureau. Forgive me. Please, I beg of you, forgive me. I can’t help it. I love him so much. She gently touched the blessed-by-the-priest statue of the Virgin. Maybe if she prayed every day and hard enough she could get Mary to understand. Mary was a woman. She would know how much she loved him. How much she needed him. If it was a sin then why did God introduce her to him? Why did God put temptation in her way? Hail Mary, full of grace….

CHAPTER 1

Philadelphia, PA, 2016

They took their places at the tables and couches in the room that had been designated the library. Surrounded by books and magazines that were either donated or left behind by residents now no longer alive or living at the Villa Maria Senior Citizens Apartment House the collection had swelled to three floor-to-ceiling narrow bookcases so that anyone who wanted to read could always find something of interest. That some of the magazines were old and sometimes three or four years out of date never mattered to the Villa residents for often the information was new to them. And besides, reading old news about celebrities long past their prime, or in some cases dead, didn’t bother those who remembered and sometimes lived in the world of the good old times. The books and magazines were just another way to stir memories and sometimes recapture their own lives.

Your turn to tell us a story, Dominick. Betty Shermer from the sixth floor settled herself into a seat next to the window.

A rotund, slightly wrinkled-faced, eighty-some year-old man nodded. Yeah, I figured it was about time. I figured you’d get to me soon enough. He smiled and moved slowly, leaning his weight on a carved mahogany cane, to take his place in the dark green upholstered club chair that had been arranged at the front of the room. And I was thinking about it all weekend … what story I should tell you. And what story you haven’t heard before and so ... he smiled at his audience, tonight I’m gonna tell you about the most beautiful woman in the world, my wife, Rosalia, God rest her pure soul." The forty-five or so seniors settled back into their chairs already smiling in anticipation of the story.

Ah, Dominick, what a nice thing to say. Mrs. Kathleen O’Brien, fourth floor, end of the hall, clasped her hands together and others nodded their heads as though they had known Dominick’s wife and were confirming the husband’s words. Then they were silent, looking at the nearly bald-headed man who was about to share with them an integral part of his life.

He cleared his throat and spoke softly enough so that they leaned forward to hear.

Now this is a love story, you see. About my wife, Rosalia, and me and how we met. He cleared his throat again and one of the women handed him a glass of water. He took it and put it on the table next to him.

Rosalia DeLuca. I found out her name right away. Rosalia DeLuca. And I swear that when I first met her—or rather didn’t meet her but just saw her—I swear I thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I really did. She had this copper red hair. Bright red hair. And later, when I got to know her, I found out that she had a temper to match. He smiled again at both his recollection of the woman and at his own joke. "It was like fire and when she was out in the sun just walking down the street everyone would look at her. She was that pretty but it was her hair, that magnificent hair. Bella. My God, I never saw such a color and not even one of our own four children has it. I used to tell Rosalia that after God colored her hair he threw away the dye because it was so beautiful and no one else should have it because the Earth couldn’t stand two women that same color red."

He paused, momentarily drifting back, then cleared his throat again.

Anyway, the story. This was 1946 and we both worked at the same dress factory here in the city. I was a cutter and Rosalia, she was at a sewing machine with the ladies. I was only twenty years old then but I was good at my trade—everyone said so—the supervisors and the bosses and even the other workers. And I was fast and accurate. You had to be accurate so you didn’t waste fabric. And in the morning I would get a pattern from the boss and I would cut hundreds and hundreds of the same dress over and over again. You ladies might have worn some of my dresses—Sandra Loeb Sophisticates. You ever hear of them?

Mrs. Sophie Gold, room 810, tentatively raised her hand.

I did, Dominick. Not so expensive? But third floor quality at the department store. I think maybe Gimbel’s or Macy’s used to carry them. Maybe, but I’m not so sure.

Could be, Sophie. They were carried all over. We shipped throughout the country six days a week. Boxes and boxes of dresses to everywhere in the country. I remember reading some of the labels—Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland—and thinking what it would be like to someday go to those places. He smiled at the memory of the foreign American city names.

"Well, about my wife ... I was already a cutter at Loeb’s for about five years. I apprenticed when I was fourteen at Froester’s Pajamas but they went out of business—poor management, we had heard—and I moved to Loeb’s down the street. I remember, I was working on some orange material with white stripes and I was thinking that the stripes were gonna make me dizzy looking at them all day long. And I had to match—you ladies know about matching—where the stripes have to meet? That was a mark of a good quality dress. The matching. Not like now with flowers that don’t match or even make any sense. Yellow petals next to red ones and you can see the seams sewn right in the leaves. And sometimes crooked, too. Most of the time crooked. Even the expensive dresses because I always look when we have lady visitors.

Well, in those days you shouldn’t see the seams and so you had to really watch what and where the scissors cut. It was all hand done then, no machines for us. Just a big pair of heavy, dark iron scissors and lots of calluses. He held up his gnarled fingers. These hands saw a lot of calluses and cuts. He rubbed the inside of his thumb and forefinger where the hard lumps of skin and bone had become permanent.

Well, anyway, I was cutting on this orange material and just happened to look up and there was this Mr. Woodley, our boss—a nice family man he was, a heckuva nice man—leading this young girl past all the cutting stations and all I could see of her was her red hair or rather, bits of her red hair. She had on this dark gray coat with her collar pulled up around her neck and she was wearing one of those hats that came down in front of her face and sort of dipped over her forehead and eyebrows. A cloche they call it. It was gray, too, with a little gray feather in it. I didn’t get a good look at her then because they were walking fast past us and I only saw her red hair in the back where it wasn’t wrapped under her collar. Just a few bits, mind you, but as she walked past a window near me—it was dirty but you could still see the sunshine as it hit on those wisps of hair and it was honest-to-God like a fire on her head. A real fire with that bright red-gold color like the time that shoe polish warehouse on Front Street burned down and the firemen had to work for hours to stop the flames.

He looked past his audience. And I think I fell in love with her that very minute.

Ah, Dominick, what a sweetheart you must have been. What a treasure for someone. Mary Morgan, room 528, threw a kiss to the storyteller. What a wonderful man you must have been. No wonder she married you. Did she fall in love with you right away, too?

"Oh, no. Not Rosalia. It took a while, although when we were married for a few years she did tell everyone that she had seen me and that she had this premonizione—premonition—that she would marry me. And you know what? I used to tell her I believed her, but, nah, I really didn’t because you see it took so long for me to meet her. Never a hint ... not one hint ... did she throw my way. He made a tiny inch gap with his fingers. Not one inch.

But, well, I noticed her and I started saying hello to her, just hello, or rather buon giorno" because she couldn’t speak a word of English. That was one of the problems. And although I’m Italian and I speak Italian I just never figured it out until one of the other girls told us that Rosalia didn’t understand English. Not one word. We thought she was just quiet. But then us guys noticed that when Mr. Woodley would want to tell her something about her work he’d ask one of the girls to translate it for her. What did Mr. Woodley know? He was an Englishman and he only spoke English.

"Anyways, it turns out that Rosalia had just come over here from Naples. Not more than three weeks off the boat it was before she got her job. She had come to live with her two American lady aunts who lived on Columbine Street here—the Capaletti sisters we always called them although one was a maiden aunt with another name who lived with her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Matteo Capaletti. My Uncle Dante knew them slightly because he and Mr. Capaletti used to belong to the Democratic Club near our house.

Well anyway, I found out her name was Rosalia DeLuca—her mother was the one related to the sisters. So, I kept seeing Rosalia when I was on the sewing floor but she never looked up at anyone. I guess her aunts and her family impressed on her that she had to work and cause no trouble and that the streets weren’t really paved with gold like they used to tell us when we lived in Italy.

I remember they told me that when I was still living in Ireland, Tom Fallon, room 308, interrupted. My cousin, Brendan, told me that in a letter. ’Come to America, Tommy, me boy’, he said, ‘the street gutters run with gold.’ But we found out it wasn’t true.

Just like the rest of us who came, Dominick said. We all were told that. Gold in the streets. And all you had to do was shovel it into burlap bags. Yeah, horse manure was more like it. He shrugged.

Go on with the story, Dominick, Julia Grimaldi – Room 430—urged. We’re waiting to hear how you finally married your wife.

Well, where was I? There was a slight pause as the man searched his memory for his last words. "Oh, yes, about how Rosalia didn’t speak English. Well, anyway, Rosalia just minded her own business and kept sewing the dresses. She did the finishing on the self-belts that were attached to the waists. And she’d sew all the time. She was a good worker. Darn good worker. Always was ... even after we married. She kept a really clean house. Everyone always said so.

Well, anyway, in the meantime, all the young men at the factory were beginning to notice her because as I said she was beautiful. And different. Because not many Italian girls that we knew had red hair like she did. So that made her different and made her stand out some. And also, it was something about her, maybe the way she walked straight as an arrow or the way she carried herself or maybe because she didn’t talk to anyone. Whatever it was, she was something and you couldn’t help but look at her. All the men did and pretty soon all of them are saying things like how beautiful she was and how they would like to call on her and talk to her. Not saying those things to HER, mind you. Just to the other men. And they would find excuses to walk by her sewing machine or to smile at her but not once did she look at them. Not once did she even take her eyes off the sewing needle. She never said anything except maybe a couple of words to the ladies next to her and in fact she never even smiled. We would see her coming into the shop in the morning and we would smile and say buon giorno" and she would look away or look down at her shoes. He paused. She had pretty little feet, too.

"At first we thought it was her manner to be stand-offish because she was so beautiful but then we realized she was just very, very shy. She was young, you see, not more than sixteen if she was that old.

Well, in those days you got half an hour for lunch. You worked a long day, ten hours Monday to Friday and six hours on Saturday and during the lunch time in the lunchroom they would play records on an old Victrola. I know, I know, I got to stop saying ‘victrola’—my granddaughter tells me it’s called an IPod now—but anyway, they would have this wind-up Victrola and they would play some nice music on it. First it was all the old songs, opera mostly, because most of us knew all the words and the arias and the melodies. But then some people started to bring in their own records and we heard stuff like Dark Town Strutters Ball ... Alexander’s Rag Time Band." You know, that kind of music. Lively music. Dancing music. And pretty soon some of the men would ask the ladies to dance and then it was like it was every day that we would eat our sandwiches and fruit real fast so that we could all do maybe four or five dances during lunch break. You have to remember we were all younger then and dancing was what mattered most to us.

"Now I was considered a fairly good dancer. I knew all the steps and I had the rhythm and I watched some of the well-known ballroom dancers at the Pavilion over on Broad Street on Saturday night and I picked up the steps real easy. I was what they used to call ‘a natural’. Dancing just came easy to me. So the girls liked to dance with me. And at lunchtime I never lacked for any partners.

Then one day, it was in the spring, maybe about three months after Rosalia came to work, I noticed she came and sat in the lunchroom with her lady friends and they would watch us dance. It was warm in the room and we liked to stay there because sometimes in the cutting rooms it was either too hot or too cold and well, we just liked to stay in the lunchroom. So there was Rosalia sitting there in the room and sometimes maybe one or two of her friends would take a dancing turn with one of the fellows. But not her. She never danced, mind you. Never even looked up at a man or flirted or anything like that. Lots of the girls flirted back at us men. Harmless stuff. But not Rosalia. She just looked at people’s feet and I caught her once or twice moving her foot just a little like she was tapping out the beat.

He hesitated, looked down at his own loafer-shod foot and moved it so that the sole of the shoe touched the floor and made a slight shuffling noise on the carpet and when it did he smiled at the sound.

"Well, this lunchtime dancing went on for a couple more weeks and it was really fun and all of us seemed to be about equal in dance routines although maybe once in a while we tried to show off with a new step or something. We all enjoyed it. It was a break from the cutting room and it helped make the workday a little nicer. Because when we worked we didn’t fool around. We had to work hard and make our quotas or else we would lose our jobs. That was the way it was.

"But then we’d start to notice some really good dancers in the group. I was good but not like them. In fact, I heard two of them went on to become professional ballroom dancers and even went as far as dancing in some of the big contests in the city. Won, too. Boy, they were so smooth ... so good.

"Well, anyway, one day it was raining hard outside and it was nice and warm and steamy inside and we were all laughing and joking about how we were all gonna have to stay overnight at the dress factory because of the rain and I saw Rosalia look up and she looked a little scared. By then she was picking up English and I think she thought we meant it. But she caught my eye and I just shook my head to reassure her and then I mouthed ‘uno scherzo’—a joke—and I saw her almost answer back, ‘si’ as though she had just done it without thinking that she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. I smiled at her and then went on with my dancing because I was dancing with Mae Agnes Adams and let me tell you Mae Agnes Adams was some dancer. Knew all the steps. She was older, about twenty-six, and we all knew that she was a little fast. You know what I mean? Not running around fast like somebody with no morals but fast like in having lots of savvy. She had this boyfriend who worked on the docks who liked to take Mae Agnes to all the fancy places in town on Saturday night. That’s where she learned those steps. She was a real good-looking blond Irish lady and she had a nice figure and I guess he liked to show her off.

So, Mae Agnes and I are dancing and she’s teaching me a new step in the waltz. The double-turn pause, double-turn again waltz step she called it—very complicated. And I’m having a great time learning it and I really didn’t pay any more attention to Rosalia. She was beautiful like I said, but I wasn’t hurting for lady friends. As long as you could dance you always had partners. He raised his hands as though to encircle a woman’s body and dance and then he smiled and took another sip of water.

"Well, the next day when we were dancing we pass Rosalia again and she’s sitting like usual with all her friends and I say real loud to her, ‘hello’ and she smiles at me and puts her head down and I see she’s got a little pink on her cheeks and I kind of felt sorry for her that I made her blush.

"This goes on for several days—couple weeks, maybe—and then one day after I said ‘hello’ to Rosalia she smiled back at me and didn’t look down. Mae Agnes says to me, ‘Dominick, how come you never ask that little redhead to dance?’ I thought about it a second and I told her I didn’t know—that the redhead was so quiet and it didn’t look like she wanted to join in the dancing. And besides, I told Mae Agnes I was having too good a time dancing with her.

"Well, about that time the guys are really noticing Rosalia and they’re talking about her. About her smile—like a shy angel, they called her—and about how she’s finally at least talking just a couple of words. And we notice that she’s saying ‘hello’ and not ‘buon giorno’, just a few words, maybe only two or three, but they’re all in English and we figure that the ladies are teaching her the American language. That’s how we all learned because none of us in that shop knew any English when we came over here. We all spoke Italian or German or Polish or whatever but we listened and learned.

"Well, it’s summertime now and the dances are more fun. We even opened the top windows to let in a little fresh air and there’s talk about a dance contest that’s gonna be held at the Pavilion Dance Hall on Broad Street in a month or so. And Mae Agnes says I should go because I was good enough to enter it. But she says she can’t come with me because she’s got this dockworker friend that she sees on Saturday nights. But she keeps at me, keeps telling me to go and enter the contest. ‘Dominick,’ she keeps saying, ‘you’ll dance circles around those guys there. Go show them what you know.’

And at the same time the young single guys—Sylvio and Salvatore and Attilio and Pete—I can remember their names like I saw them yesterday only they’re all gone now. But anyway, they keep talking about Rosalia and how beautiful she is and how it would be nice to walk out with her. But they know that Rosalia doesn’t go out with anyone at work so they came up with this plan. All of us put in two bits—a quarter—and the first one who got to walk her home or take her out would win the money. It was sort of a contest, you see. The first one to get her to pay attention to them would win. He laughed then and hunched his shoulders. "You know, it’s what guys did then ... no disrespect to you ladies.

"So for all that time we all sort of smiled a little more at her, said a few more words, and sometimes Rosalia would answer and sometimes not. She was still very shy. And by then the other married men in the shop knew what we single guys were doing and they sort of egged us on, telling us that we should try to talk more to her. You know, giving us bits of advice. Telling us what to say. They had us doing all sorts of crazy things because they had bets on which one of us would win, you see. They’d tell us to walk by her sewing machine and to hum some Neapolitan love song and see if she smiled, and sometimes she did. Or they would tell us to say a line from an Italian poem and see if she would look up but she never did. I found out later she didn’t like poetry.

"Anyway, it was summer now and it was hot. You tell a kid nowadays how hot it was then and they look at you because they can’t believe we didn’t have air conditioning. But you know how hot it was and how hot it got in July and August. Sweltering. That’s what it was. Sweltering. It was a sweatshop. That’s where that term comes from sweat-shop. But I always liked the hot weather because I loved the flowers that my mother, may she rest in peace, and my sisters, may my sisters, Filomenia and Laura, rest in peace, too, used to plant in the garden next to the tomatoes and peppers and the basnicol and oregano. Orange and yellow marigolds and purple petunias and pink zinnias and big red climbing roses—they were easy to grow."

I’ve always loved roses. Professor Victor Klein interrupted. I think they’re the perfect summer flower.

So do I, Professor, the best. And you should have seen the ones my mother grew. Big and sweet smelling. He made large circles with his hands. "You would have liked them.

"Well, anyway, one morning it was really early—before work—and I went out in the garden with my cup of coffee and even though it was still kind of dark because the sun hadn’t completely come up yet I took a pair of scissors and cut a few roses because they were like her name and I wrapped them in wet tissue paper. I was gonna give them to Rosalia.

"I carried them to work with me, walking the fifteen blocks to the shop, and I held tight to the stems so I wouldn’t lose any of them. But when I got to the shop I got a little shy myself and I