The Sunday Ledger

ACT I: THE ENVELOPE

The church of San Giuda had been built in 1891 by the Italian immigrants who came to New York with nothing but calloused hands and a picture of the Madonna sewn into the lining of their coats. Angelo Moretti came to Mass there every Sunday because his mother had made him, and because after Mass, in the cool dimness of the nave, he could sit for five minutes and remember that he was a man and not just a pair of hands that glued soles to leather all day long.

He found the envelope on the third pew from the back, where the wood was worn smooth by the knees of men who had knelt harder than they sat. The envelope was manila, yellowed at the edges, with no name on it and no address. But it was thick, and when Angelo picked it up, he felt the weight of paper inside that was heavier than letter-sized sheets.

He told himself he should turn it in to the priest. Monsignor Ricci was a good man, but he was also a man who trusted his congregation with a kind of blind faith that made Angelo sometimes want to shake him and tell him to be careful. Still, he put the envelope in his coat pocket and decided he would bring it to the priest after he sat for those five minutes.

But five minutes became ten, and ten became twenty, and when Angelo finally stood up, the church had emptied and the envelope was still in his pocket and he had decided, in the way that decisions are made by men who have worked eighteen hours a day for six months without a raise, that he would open it on the walk home.

He opened it on the corner of Mott and Mulberry, where the street vendors were selling oranges and the air smelled of roasting chestnuts and the diesel from a new car that parked too close to the curb. Inside the envelope were three checks. One was for two hundred dollars. One for three hundred. One for four hundred. They were signed by the parish charity fund, payable to "The Family of G. Rossi, 42 Hester Street."

Angelo had never heard of a G. Rossi. He had never heard of 42 Hester Street. But he knew what two hundred dollars meant to a man who made twelve dollars a week, and he knew what four hundred meant to a woman who was eight months pregnant and working twelve hours a day stitching linings into other people's coats.

He put the envelope back in his pocket and walked home in a fog that was not weather but feeling.

ACT II: THE JEALOUSY

Frank De Luca lived three doors down from the Morettis on the second floor of a building that had once been a warehouse and had never quite decided to become apartments. He owned De Luca's Market, a small grocery on the ground floor that made just enough money to keep him in cigarettes and just enough above that to make him bitter.

Frank had seen Angelo pick up the envelope. He had been standing in the doorway of his market, watching the street the way men watch streets when they have nothing else to watch, and he had seen Angelo's hand go into his pocket and come out with something thick and flat. He had seen him open it on the corner. He had seen him put it back in his pocket with the expression of a man who has just found a dollar in a coat he thought he'd lost.

Frank told himself he did not care. Angelo Moretti was a good man, perhaps too good for this city, but he was a good man. Frank had learned early that good men lasted longer than bad ones, because good men did not make enemies.

But that night, lying in bed with the sound of traffic filtering through the window and the image of three checks burning behind his eyelids, Frank De Luca understood that he was not a good man and had never been one.

The next morning, he went to a man he knew from the docks who made counterfeit checks for fifty dollars a job. The man looked at the checks Frank brought him, nodded once, and said, "Done by Friday." Frank said, "Wednesday," and the man said, "Wednesday it is."

On Wednesday, Frank went to the church after evening Mass, when the candles were still burning but the pews were empty. He found the third pew from the back. He found the envelope. He took it out, counted the checks (three: two hundred, three hundred, four hundred), and replaced them with three new checks that looked identical but were signed by a ghost and payable to a ghost and worth exactly what the paper they were printed on was worth, which was nothing.

He put the envelope back. He went home and made himself a sandwich and did not eat it.

ACT III: THE CONFESSION

Rosa Moretti used the checks. She went to the bank on Canal Street, where the teller was a young woman with a bob haircut and a kind face who stamped the checks without question. Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred—nine hundred dollars, deposited into an account Rosa opened with a piece of paper and a name she wrote in a hand that shook slightly because she did not trust herself to be steady in a place like this.

She bought medicine for her lower back. She bought fabric for the baby's clothes. She bought a radio because Angelo had told her, two years ago, that he wanted a radio, and she remembered. She bought food that was not beans and not rice and not pasta made from yesterday's dough. She lived, for nine hundred dollars' worth of days, like a woman who had not been poor for six months.

Then the housekeeper came.

Mrs. Gambini was sixty-three years old, fat and fierce and the only person in the building who could make Frank De Luca look ashamed of himself. She had worked for Frank for eleven years and had seen him cry once, over a dog that had been run over, and had never spoken of it to anyone. She also saw him put an envelope into the church on a Tuesday afternoon, which was not a church day, and which was suspicious enough that she followed him three doors down to the Morettis' apartment and listened at the door while Rosa told Angelo in a voice that was half-laughing, half-crying, "Nine hundred dollars, Aniello. Nine hundred."

Mrs. Gambini went back to her kitchen and sat down and thought for a long time about the difference between being a good person and being a useful person, and decided she wanted to be both.

She went to the Morettis' apartment on a Sunday morning, while Angelo was at church and Rosa was buying bread, and she stood in their doorway with her hands on her hips and she said, in a voice that had negotiated with every butcher and grocer on Mulberry Street for forty years, "I need to tell you something about that envelope."

ACT IV: THE GATHERING

Frank De Luca did not run. He did not pack a bag and leave the city and change his name and move to Chicago. He sat at his market counter and waited, with the cash register open and the cigarettes arranged in their rows and the apples piled in their pyramid, and he waited for the sound of footsteps that he knew were coming.

They came at noon, when the lunch crowd was thin and the street was quiet and the sun was a pale oval behind the smog. Two men in suits who worked for the Treasury Department, and a woman from the bank who had a kind face and a stern voice. They asked Frank De Luca to come with them. He said he would need to lock up first. They said that was fine.

He locked up. He walked three doors down. He stood in the doorway of the Morettis' apartment and saw Rosa holding a baby that had been born two days earlier, small and red and furious, and he heard Angelo making a sound in the other room that was not crying but was close to it.

He said nothing. He turned around. He walked to the church. He sat on the third pew from the back. He put his head in his hands and stayed there while the evening Mass began and the choir sang and the candles flickered and the people he had known his whole life came in one by one, their faces lined with the work of the week and the hope of Sunday, and sat down around him without noticing that he was there.

On Monday, Monsignor Ricci organized a fundraiser in the community hall on Grand Street. It was a warm evening, and the windows were open, and an accordion played in the corner, and the tables were filled with food that everyone brought because that was what people did in this neighborhood when someone needed something. There were twelve tables. Every table was full. The baby slept in a box lined with fabric in the corner, and Rosa smiled at every woman who passed by, and Angelo stood by the door with a glass of wine he did not drink and watched the people he had thought were strangers and realized they were not.

Frank was not there. But someone left a envelope on the table with the accordion player. It contained one hundred dollars. No note. No name.

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