Two Stores on Baxter Street

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 263, 24 November 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

Two Stores on Baxter Street

People of heart and imagination always felt vaguely distressed when - they saw a new grocery store opening in Baxter Street. Not for Tonetti’s, which had been there for 30 years, but for the new place. They knew it would only be a matter of weeks months at most until it would be empty, the floor a litter of torn paper and gaping cardboard boxes, and the “For Rent” sign displayed once more. There was one opening now, directly across from Tonetti’s. PASQUALE MASCAGNI, announced the impressive gilt lettering on the plate glass window: DELICATESSEN. Passers-by, observing it, shook their heads. “As long as Maria’s across the street,” they predicted, “he’ll never make a go of it.”

It was true. Everyone in Baxter Street knew Maria Tonetti. And everyone was devoted to her, from the young Park Avenue matron arranging novel parties in her Greenwich Village playhouse, to the down-at-heel artist subsisting on bread and cheese on the top floor of a disintegrating walk-up. In the chain stores around the corner on Sixth Ave. butter was three cents less a pound, oranges three for five instead of two for five, and other commodities cheaper in proportion. Yet, because of Maria, people continued to shop at Tonetti’s. “Maria’s a saint,” they said. “Only for her, that good-for-nothing old father of hers, and the rest of that good-for-no-thing family, would have been in the poorhouse years ago.” This, also, was true. Though no one was less conscious of the fact than Maria, excepting, of course, Maria’s family. Almost from the day her father had first discovered that his eldest daughter could lug a gross of canned tomatoes up from the cellar unaided, Maria had been the mainstay of the little grocery in Baxter Street. At 14-she knew the stock by heart. At 15 she practically run the store. At 16

people already spoke of shopping at Maria’s rather than at' Ton - etti’s. Nick Tonetti, huge,/handsome, affable, and inordinately lazy, finding that his services were no longer required, was quick to retire into the background, where he found all manner of mysterious but important matters to occupy his attention. Madame Tonetti, shiftless, complaining, and perpetually engaged with the annual baby, had neither time nor strength to give to the store.

Maria had been a beauty then, with her plump, lithe figure, white skin, black hair, and her face was like the face of a Giotto madonna. The boys in the neighbourhood had been mad about her. And about one of them, Toni Suracci, Maria had been mad in return. But nothing had come of it. When Maria, a dream in her gray eyes and on her soft, vivid lips, had announced her intention to marry, there had been a tempestuous scene in the Tonetti household. Madame Tonetti had flung her apron over her head and 'burst into loud and reproachful wailing. “Just now, with Another bambino coming and thifigs so busy in the store !” Nick Tonetti had blustered and raged. And Esther, Maria’s younger sister, appalled at the prospect of being withdrawn from .-the high school to slave her youth and beauty away in the store, had added her •hysterical weeping to the general hubbub.

your street?”

A Broken Romance. Maria, who was as good as she was passionate, promised to talk to Toni. She had begged him to wait for a while a year six months. There had been a quarrel, and Toni, wild with frustration, had flung himself out of the Tonetti home and married, two weeks later, a buxoiti girl in a neighbouring street /with a generous dowry and no Conscientious scruples. And/Maria had returned to the store, <j,uiet, industrious, outwardly c4lm but with the dream gone from her eyes, and some part of* her rare and lovely spirit forever broken. Maria’s family had fattened on the tragedy. In the productive soil of her undethrived, wore to high school, uhiversl|jjf even. And Maria stayed on, ait much a part of the place as tlfe shelves or the worn counter ~—2*as indispensable, and as much /taken for granted. Jf To-night, as she satfon the upturned end of a soap-pox enjoy-

ing the brief lull before closing at midnight, there was little to remind one of the Maria of 16. At 29 the plump figure was broad, the strong arches broken, and the neat ankles thick and swollen. But in the black, abundant hair, pale skin, serene eyes, and the face that was like the face of a saint, some unquenchable part of her beauty still lingered. It was Saturday night. Maria had been on her feet since seven that morning, and she was tired. She sat, heavy arms folded across her broad bosom, her feet, in loose carpet slippers, elevated to the top of an empty spaghetti carton to ease their chronic av.uc, staring into Baxter Street.

Across tiie way the proprietor of the new delicatessen was sweeping out his shop. In the unshaded glare of the big central light, his ligure and his features stood out boldly. He was a big, powerfully-built man with a square head and thick hair, graying at the temples. Bushy black brows shaded deep-set, intense eyes, and a thick moustache half hid a mouth so gentle, in spite of its full-lipped breadth, that it might have belonged to another face.

Maria, watching, felt sorry for him. There was something lonely and helpless looking about him, in spite of his size and strength. And, unless someone helped him, he was going to fail. Maria had known it ever since he opened his doors five days ago. That she might be the obstacle to his success never occurred to her. It was the man’s stock that was wrong. Even from across the street, she had been able to see that. A window full of imported cheeses, caviar, pate-de-fois-gras —in a neighbourhood where most people were poor. It was too bad. Someone should tell him.

From the living quarters at the rear of the store, Madame Tonetti shuffled in, and stood, a short, squat pyramid of a woman, watching Pasquale Mascagni over her daughter’s shoulder. Her eyes were the close-set, shrewd, faintly spiteful eyes of a "very old monkey.

“He's better save-a himself da work-a,” she observed, her thin lips fixed in a petrified smile of complacent old age. “He’s wonta last-a long-a here.” Maria sat on, watching the man across the street. Someone really ought to tell him. It was too bad.

Suddenly, in the midst of his work, Pasquale Mascagni glanced up, and for an instant, across the width of Baxter Street, their eyes met Maria’s calm, rancourless, sympathetic; Pasquale’s dark, intense, but rancourless also. It was only for a breath. Then Pasquale dropped his gaze and resumed his slow, awkward sweeping.

Next morning they met at the door of the Church of the Sacred Heart, where the tide of outsurging worshippers, narrowing to emerge, forced them together. Maria looked up, hesitated, and then smiled, a faint yet friendly smile.

“Good morning,” she said. Pasquale’s brooding eyes lightened incredulously, and his heavy mouth dropped open in astonishment.

“You you are not mad?” he faltered, “that I open the store in

Maria’s serene gaze answered him even before her words.

“Why should I be? It’s a free country.” “Yes but,” eagerly Pasquale stumbled into step beside her. “But —” They walked along in silence, Pasquale groping for words to express his confused emotions. Suddenly he gave up. “Madame Tonetti,” he burst out impulsively, humbly, “you are a very good woman, and I don’t like you to think I want to do you harm in your business. But, you see, I am born in Baxter Street—a’most 50 years ago—and always I want to come back. Always, after I move away, I think some day when I have the money I open the store in Baxter Street. It takes me long time. But I do it. But not<v ”he broket off, shaking his,' heavy head, “now, there the two “SurtHhere assured him with quiet heartiness. “But you got to ha.vjdji the right kind of goods. Wlfiy do you try to sell people only olives and caviar and chicken? Why do you not

By ENID GRIFFITHS

Advising Her Competitor.

When Maria emerged from the store next day to lower the awnings against the hot morning sun, Pasquale was standing in his doorway, his dark face beaming. As their glances met, he bowed a deep, very respectful bow, and waved one hand proudly to the right. Maria looked. There, on a shaky wooden structure, made of empty packing boxes, reposed a small mound of potatoes, three plump cabbages, three summer squash and a half a dozen bunches of carrots. Maria’s heart.sank. Like a child playing at store, she thought. People would laugh. A shaft of pity for him struck through her. But she nodded and smiled.

“Fine!” she approved with her lips. “Fine!” The week wore on. People approached Pasquale’s delicattessen’s loitered before the neatly dressed window, peered curiously in the door, and passed on —or crossed over to Tonetti’s. In the make-shift bin the cabbages turned yellow, the squash softened, and the carrots withered, their wilting tops hanging over the edge, like the drooping banners of some small, beaten army. Friday afternoon they disappeared, carried to the refuse box at the back of the store by a Pasquale whose broad shoulders seemed suddenly to have acquired a sag.

On Sunday Pasquale was at Mass, as ,usual. Maria, looking up from her devotions, saw him kneeling in the pew ahead, bushy head bowed, and beads of a worn rosary slipping through his huge, clumsy fingers. Again, leaving the church, they met. Pasquale bowed, tried to smile. But his lipS seemed stiff, and his dark eyes had a haunted look. They walked down the steps together without speaking. When they had reached the street Maria looked up. “How’s business?” she asked gently, her gray eyes scanning the lined face.

Pasquale shook his head, spread his arms, and let them fall heavily to his sides.

“No good,” he said. “I guess I close up.” “But you mustn’t. Not yet, anyway,” Maria assured him quickly. “You haven’t given it a chance.” Her brain, determined to help him, worked rapidly. “Look here,” she said a minute later, “why don’t you try getting a woman in the store for a while? You see, it’s the women who do the shopping and the cooking. A woman would know what to do ”

Once more Pasquale shook his head.

“I cannot pay,” he said quietly, “for have a woman in the store. All my money I use for the stock and for the rent.”

“Then you should get married,” insisted Maria. “Not some silly young girl, mind you, but some good woman that’s used to hard work.” She stopped, a surge of self-conscious colour staining her pale skin. But there was no occasion for embarrassment. Pasquale had not understood. He shrugged, a slow, hopeless shrug. “Only for have the women to work in store I cannot marry,” he declared with finality. “I am marry once long time ago,” he confided after a moment’s hesitation. “My wife she die A Modest Request. : D£irmg s 'the weeks that followed unprecedented things happened in the Tonetti grocery. Women, shopping for breakfast, found the milk supply short. Girls, laying in Sunday’s supper on Saturday night, asked Maria in vain for sliced ham, celery, potato chips.

sell them flour, sugar, salt, potatoes?” Pasquale looked bewildered, faintly worried. “But that is the grocery,” he protested. “The grocery business that is yours. Besides, it is only the delicatessen I know. It is in the delicatessen that I work all my life the delicatessen of the great Guigi in 57th Street.” Unconsciously, a note of pride crept into his voice. “Oh, yes,” Maria nodded her head. “ —s7th .Street! That is all right for chicken and caviar and pate-de-fois-gras. There are rich people there. But here there are only working people and poor artists. Only a few rich like Mrs. Van Zandt. You see, it is different. You must have the plain, cheap things—potatoes, vegetables—things like that.”

Men, dropping in, for beer , and pretzels, found the Tonetti stock mysteriously depleted..

! ‘‘.But, Maria,” they protested, “what’ll we do?” ' |: “The man across the street; keeps that stuff, I think,” Maria would suggest helpfully. “Why don’t you try him ?” Nick Tonetti, wandering into the store to beam genially on his customers one night, heard her saying, “ No, we’ve just run out of spaghetti. Try over there at Mascagni’s.” “ Maria,” said her father increduously. “How coine-a we no liave-a da spaghetti?” “ The new lot has not come, papa,” lied Maria, and suddenly realised that the box in question lay at her feet. A hot blush covered her face. Trying to appear nonchalant she pulled a sheet of brown paper over it and pretended to wrap an order. “ Would you like to take over for a few minutes?” she asked, knowing well that her father would refuse.

“ No I gotta plenty da worka,” said Tonetti. “You runna the shop.”

Next Sunday as they came out of church Maria sought Pasquale, who shuffled awkwardly. “ Your husband,” he said, looking away. “He does not go to church with you.” “ But I have no husband,” cried Maria. “ I—”

“Then he is not your husband?” Maria shook her head, laughed faintly. “That’s pa,” she said. “I’m not married.”

Pasquale stared at her dumbly for a minute. Then a light went up in his dark eyes.

“No? Then maybe sometime you you go to a movie with me?” His voice was shy, yet eager. “ Maybe sometime, if I do good in the store —you — you ” But he could not get it out. It sounded too bold, too sudden. If Maria had hurled a bomb into the middle of the supper table, she could have hardly have created a greater sensation than bv asking for a night off. For thirteen years, from seven in the morning until after midnight, seven days a week, she had never been out of the store except for meals, or for Mass, or to sleep. And now, suddenly, she was saying hesitantly to her sister: “Will you work in the store to-night ? I want to go somewhere.” The family gaped. “You want to go out? Where to?”

The family waited, openmouthed. Maria hesitated. “I wanted to go to the movies.” she admitted, finally.

“To the movies!” It was almost a chorus. Maria ignored it. Pier eyes appealed to Esther.

“But Maria, I can’t. I’ve got a date. I’m going to a concert up at the stadium.”

Maria turned to Mike, big, broad, natty in gray store clothes, his hair slick with hair unguent. “Will you, Mike? I’ll be home by ten.” “Gosh, Maria, I can’t! I’m going up to Radio City to-night.”

Astonishing the Family. Maria looked around the table. It’s a funny thing if I can’t get one night off in 13 years,” she said. Pier voice was even, but there was the suggestion of a flash in her gray eyes. “ What would you all do if I wasn’t here —if I was to —to get married?” “Married!” It was a derisive hoot, begun by Therese and echoed by the entire family. “Marry!” Ma Tonetti gasped. “ Marry! Who’s-a-want-a-marry you? Da millionaire, Mr. Ponzetti, maybe?” “ Maybe it’s the mayor,” suggested Nicki, the youngest, and snickered. Maria’s face, that was always ivory pale, went gardenia-white, death-like. Her dazed glance swept the circle of faces, once familiar, now hideously alien, distorted with awful, unbelievable laughter. Then, her features set as stone, her eyes unseeing, she j got up, pushed -, her chair / the atrdss tire * styeet. . : : A" ? Pgfsquale was eating a cheese' sandwich in the tiny room at the rear M the delicatessen. He leapt to his feet as Maria entered, and stood, staring at her white, stricken t face. “ Maria,” he exclaimed in alarm,., grasping, her c01d,., work-

thickened hands-in his. “What is it? What has happened?” Maria looked up and in the warmth of his sweet, instant concern, the cold hard thing in her breast melted. Tears started from the glazed, cfucified eyes, and ran slowly down her face. “ Pasquale,” she begaii. “ Pasquale—” But there her voice broke.

With a backward svyeep of his foot, Pasquale slammed the door leading into the delicatessen. Then his arms closed about Maria’s broad, heaving shoulders. “There, there, Maria, mia.” His voice was like a lullaby. “There, there ...”

“ And now,” said Pasquale masterfully, half an hour later, “ we go find the priest.” Maria looked at him with eyes not yet accustomed to the new warm light about her. “You—you’re sure, Pasquale? I won’t have a dowry, you know. ...” '

“ Pah ! Dowry !” Pasquale’s scorn was a beautiful thing to hear. “ What I care about dowry! We, I don’t have much, too, but for you, Maria, mia,” his earnest voice softened. “ I work very hard. I know soon I do good.” They were at the door, leaving the delicatessen when, across the street a dramatic blue roadster drew up to the curb in front of Tonetti’s. Maria’s hand closed on Pasquale’s arm. “It’s Mrs. Van Zandt,” 1 she whispered, “ the rich lady from uptown.”

Mrs. Van Zandt, exquisitely smart in tailored white, slipped out of her car, turned to close it, and saw Maria.

“ Oh, Maria !” She was across the road in a flash. “ I’m giving a party in the Village to-night, and I need tons of things. Look, here’s the list. Get them together for me and I’ll call back about eleven.” “But Mrs. Van Zandt,” Maria’s conscience drove her to confess, “ I’m not —I’m not at my father’s place any more. I —l over here now.”

“Oh, how nice!” Mrs. Van Zandt was politely enthusiastic. “ Well, anyway, Maria, you’ll look after it, won’t you? I know I can trust you.” She patted Maria’s arm affectionately, and was gone.

Maria stood staring at the list in her hand for an instant. Then she looked up at Pasquale. “ Maybe,” she said, her voice tremulous, and her eyes suddenly bright with happy, humble tears —“ maybe I bring you the dowry after all, Pasquale.”