Carmella Commands
go to the afternoon movies. Her abrupt refusal left him in new doubt as to his position in her favor.
“Dad may need me,” she explained.
“Santo Dio!” he sneered. But it was his only attempt at repartee.
As she prepared for bed that night Carmella held back the tears by the simple process of growing angry. There was no weeping in her program of wrath. Tommaso had not called on her all the long day.
“I wonder if all fathers are as hard to train,” was her final thought. And she dreamed that she was standing on the top beam of a steel skyscraper frame, commanding her father and her brother Joe to bring bricks to her, quickly, so that she might throw them from twenty stories high at Mrs. Alibrio, who was passing on the sidewalk below.
Tommaso had gone to work when she appeared for breakfast the next morning.
“Did father ask for me?” she inquired.
“No. Why should he?” asked Maria.
“No reason. I just thought he might.”
With heavy steps she started downstreet on an errand, after finishing the dishes. Nicolo hailed her from Mike Laudini’s yard, but she barely answered.
“High hat as hell!” commented the boy to himself. “I think I get me another girl.” But in his heart he knew he would not.
Tommaso, meanwhile, had been early on the job in Greendale, transporting his workers and their tools in
[159]
