If Italians were officially despised by 12 year old Paul’s Chicago Irish relatives, everyone in his family seemed to have at least one Italian best friend. His grandmother Jane had two. Olivetta (a spinster who had held onto her virginity to care for her mother until the old crone had died at the age of 83 after a 47 year long terminal illness) was Grandma’s cemetery friend. Olivetta’s mother had thrown her house into perpetual mourning when Olivetta was three after Olivetta’s father had been killed in an industrial accident that no one would talk about. “He drowned after he fell into a giant vat of chocolate at the Cocobar factory” admitted Paul’s mother one day as she dipped a Christmas cookie into her scotch. “He was badly chopped up by the machine. At the wake, you could smell the nougat through the closed coffin.” The poor man’s wife had never forgiven him for having had such a ridiculous death. But she made the best of it in traditional Italian style and became a perpetual widow. The rooms were darkened and black crepe was hung around a startled looking husband hanging over the fireplace in the living room. This was the home environment of little Olivetta, who decorated her own dollhouse in deep mourning to the approval of her mother. As she grew up, she carried the somber darkness of her house with her in a tight-lipped and dignified manner, wrapping herself in the thick rich shadows of death and the creamy nougat center of perpetual mourning. She lived the destiny given to her as the daughter of a man who had been transformed into a chocolate bar before his time. Grandma Jane’s hobby was going to wakes. Olivetta’s hobby was going to the cemetery. When they finally found each other through the incense mists of a First Saturday Sorrowful Mother Novena, this happy confluence of possibilities made them realize how much they stood to expand each other’s horizons.

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