New York - The Novel

the door. They had just reached the elevator when Salvatore looked at it and realized that it wasn’t a dollar. It was five. He showed it to Paolo.
    It was surely a mistake, and quite an easy one to make. The dollar bill had a bald eagle and portraits of Lincoln and Grant on its face; the five-dollar bill had a running deer. But they were the same size, and the man had been busy on the telephone.
    “I guess we’d better tell him,” said Salvatore.
    “Are you crazy?” Paolo stared down at him contemptuously.
    Paolo had only been a little taller than Salvatore until recently. But in the last year he had suddenly started to grow so fast that he was already nearly as tall as their father. “Giuseppe never grew like that,” their mother declared. “Maybe it’s America makes him grow so big.” She didn’t seem to be pleased about Paolo’s sudden new height. And maybe Paolo wasn’teither, because his mood appeared to change. He and Salvatore were companions in everything they did, but he didn’t seem to joke the way he always had before. And sometimes, when they walked down the street together, Salvatore would look up and realize that he had no idea what his brother was thinking.
    Salvatore didn’t think it was so crazy. Five dollars was a huge sum of money. The man had surely made a mistake. Taking his money seemed dishonest.
    “He made a mistake. It feels like stealing.”
    “That’s his problem. How were we to know he didn’t mean to give us five?”
    “He’ll be mad when he realizes,” Salvatore countered, “and then he’ll hate us. Anyway, he’s always been good to us. If we show him the five dollars, maybe he’ll be pleased, and let us keep it.”
    “You don’t understand anything, do you?” Paolo hissed. He was starting to look really angry. At that moment the elevator arrived, and he pushed Salvatore inside and made a sign to him to keep silent. Only when they had left the building and were on the sidewalk outside did he turn on him.
    “Do you know what he’ll think if we show him the five dollars? He’ll despise us. This is New York, Toto, not a convent. You take everything you can get.” Seeing that Salvatore wasn’t convinced, he took him by the shoulder and shook him. “What do you think those men do in that office all day? They trade. They buy and sell. If you make a mistake, you pay. If you win, you get rich. Those are the rules. You won’t take the money? You look like a loser.”
    “Papa says it’s important that people trust you,” Salvatore said obstinately.
    “Papa? What does he know? Papa trusted Signor Rossi, who took all our money. Our father’s an idiot. A loser. Don’t you know that?”
    Salvatore stared at his brother in amazement. He had never heard anyone speak about their father in such a way. Paolo’s face had contorted into a scowl. It made him look ugly.
    “Don’t say such a thing,” he cried.
    When they got back that evening, they placed all their money on the table for their mother, as usual. Paolo had changed the five-dollar bill into singles, but she was still surprised at the amount. “You earned this? You did not steal?” she asked suspiciously.
    “I would never steal,” said Salvatore, which satisfied her.
    But in the months that followed, though some of Paolo’s good humor returned, it seemed to Salvatore that a secret rift had opened between himself and his brother. They never spoke of it.
    It was his sister Anna to whom he drew closer. If she’d seemed bossy to him before, now that he was older and working, the age difference between them seemed less. He could see how much she did with their mother in the house, too, and he tried to help her. During part of the day, the two youngest children were at school, but when they came home it was Anna who usually looked after them and prepared the evening meal while her mother worked. In particular, she would try to keep Angelo away from his father, who couldn’t help being irritated by his youngest son’s dreamy ways. Little Maria was easier to deal with. Round faced and bright-eyed, she had become the family pet.
    Most of the day, his mother sat at a small table by the window in the front bedroom, on which there stood a Singer sewing machine, bought on the installment plan. There she would do piecework for the garment trade by the hour. Sitting in a little armchair nearby, Anna would do the hand-stitching. It was not so bad in summer, but on long winter evenings, it was another story.