Streets of Gold

Streets of Gold by Evan Hunter

Book: Streets of Gold by Evan Hunter Read Free Book Online
Authors: Evan Hunter
Tags: Contemporary
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antipasto — pimentos and anchovies and capers and black olives and green olives in a little oil and garlic — served with crusty white bread Umberto himself cut into long slices from a huge round loaf. While the men at the table were dipping their bread into the oil and garlic left on their antipasto plates, the women were bustling about in the kitchen, taking the big pot of pasta off the stove — spaghetti or linguine or
perciatelli
or
tonellini
— straining off the starchy water, and then putting the pasta into a bowl, the bottom of which had been covered with bright red tomato sauce, ladling more sauce onto the slippery, steaming
al dente
mound, bringing it to the table with an accompanying sauce-boat brimming and hot. “Somebody mix the pasta,” Teresa’s mother would call from the kitchen. And while Umberto himself tossed the spaghetti or macaroni with a pair of forks, and added more sauce to it, the women would bring in more bowls, filled with sausages and meatballs and
braciòle
, thin slices of beef stuffed with capers and oregano and rolled, and either threaded or held together with toothpicks. And then the women themselves would sit down to join the others, and Umberto would pour the wine for those closest to him, and then pass it to either Francesco or his other son-in-law, or his son Marco, but rarely to the buggy-whip salesman who planned to marry Victoria. There was celery on the table, and more olives, green and black, and there was always a salad of
arugala
, or chicory and lettuce, or dandelion, which was delicious and bitter and served with a dressing of olive oil and vinegar. And when the pasta course was finished, the women would clear the plates, and the men would pour more wine, and from the kitchen would come platters full of chicken or roast beef or sometimes both, roasted potatoes with gravy, and a vegetable — usually fresh peas or spinach or string beans prepared in the American manner, or zucchini cooked the Neapolitan way — and they would sit and eat this main course while filling each other in on the events of the week and the gossip of the neighborhood, and the latest news from the other side (they almost always referred to it as “the other side,” as though the Atlantic Ocean were a mere puddle separating America from Italy), and then they would rest awhile, and drink some more wine. And then Umberto would go into the kitchen and take from the icebox the pastry he had bought on First Avenue, and usually Teresa’s mother had made a peach or strawberry shortcake with whipped cream, and they would spread the sweets on the table, and only later serve rich black coffee in demitasse cups, a lemon peel in the saucer, a little anisette to pour into the coffee for those who craved it. There would be a bowl of fruit on the table, too, apples and oranges and bananas and, when they were in season, cherries or peaches or plums or sometimes a whole watermelon split in half and sliced, and there would also be a wooden bowl of nuts, filberts and almonds and Brazil nuts and pecans, and hot from the stove would come a tray of roasted chestnuts, marked with crosses on their skins before they were set in the oven, the skins curling outward now to show the browned meat inside — there was much to eat in that decade when my grandfather was twenty-four.
    Later, the men would break out the guinea stinkers, and the women would go into the kitchen to do the dishes and to straighten up, and still later they would come in to wipe off the table, leaving only the bowl of fruit and the bowl of nuts (“If anyone wants it, it’s here”), and then all of them, men and women alike, would sit down to play cards,
settemezzo
, or
briscola
, or hearts (a new American game), or
scopa
, betting their pennies as though they were hundred-dollar chips, forming kitties for future outings to Coney Island or the beach, while the children chased each other through the house or crawled under the dining room table or

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