The Three Graces of Pearl Street

In the first year of the 20th century, ten-year-old Maria Tuttoilmondo arrives in New York from Rome on a ticket meant for her older brother, who was arrested for stealing meat. She settles in a working-class neighborhood north of New York City and names her daughter Graziella after Le Tre Grazie, the Three Graces of Roman mythology, whose statue she passed daily as a child. The naming tradition passes through three generations: Graziella names her daughter Graziella (called Grace), and Grace names her daughter Graziella (called Ella).

On Christmas Eve, Ella visits her ninety-six-year-old grandmother and her mother, Grace, a psychologist and Columbia University professor, at 125 Pearl Street. Their bond has frayed over five years since Ella grew distant during her last year of college. Dinner erupts when Ella announces she has gone vegan, refusing the Feast of the Seven Fishes, an Italian-American Christmas Eve seafood meal. Graziella, who knew about the veganism months earlier, provokes Ella with a can of cat food. Ella hurls it at a china figurine and storms out, vowing not to return until there is a funeral.

Six weeks later, a radioactive emergency is reported near Times Square, where Ella works at Big Apple Bargains, a charity thrift shop. That morning, she discovered a lead pig, a lead-lined box used to shield radioactive material, among donated items. Drawing on her training in nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she called 911 and was fired on the spot. Grace, meanwhile, is coping with the end of her marriage to Bill, who moved to Bermuda a decade ago and has told her he met someone else. When Graziella hears the news, she races to Grace's door, and the two speed toward the city.

Near the evacuated Times Square, Graziella steps over a police barricade and attacks officers with her cane. Both women are detained. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrange a phone call to the hospital, and Ella breaks down crying at Grace's voice, resolving to go home if she survives. Her discovery leads authorities to a dead Soviet-era scientist's apartment containing radioactive materials sufficient to cause mass casualties. Ella is declared a hero and, after four days of quarantine, tells Grace she needs to stay in Mamaroneck.

Graziella reshapes Ella's routine, waking her at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday for Mass and assigning her to the food pantry. Grace's life is also unraveling: Divorce costs her the country club membership, and when her dishwasher floods the house, she moves into Graziella's. All three women now share one bathroom. Graziella orchestrates a reunion between Ella and Mike Graziano, a childhood friend who now works as an FBI forensic accountant. She assigns Ella to pick up trash near the train station in an orange vest, knowing Mike's schedule will bring him past. Over pizza, they reconnect, and that evening they sleep together for the first time.

Secrets multiply. Graziella slips on a wet floor at the food kitchen, sustains a concussion, and is hospitalized, where doctors discover she had childhood polio, a fact she never shared. Grace accuses her of lying by omission. Separately, Joyce Romano, the daughter of Graziella's late community rival, reveals that Bill had affairs throughout the marriage.

The family's deepest secrets emerge when Ella, while teaching Graziella to use her new laptop, inadvertently memorizes her grandmother's trading account passwords. She wakes Grace at 2:00 a.m. to show her the balance: $45,275,432.81. Graziella overhears and retaliates by revealing that Ella actually graduated from MIT and lied about dropping out. Grace is devastated by the double deception. Graziella explains that she invested the life insurance payout after the death of her husband, Frank, Grace's father, and kept investing because helping people in his honor filled the void. The food kitchen will receive the bulk through a trust, and Grace will receive $5 million. Graziella directs Ella to establish a new food kitchen as a nonprofit, free from the archdiocese's control.

Ella later confesses to Mike the real reason she lied about her degree: During her final semester, at her then-boyfriend's suggestion, she deliberately sabotaged a professor's research project. She later learned the professor had recently lost his wife and had a child with a disability, and she could not bring herself to confess. She told her family she dropped out because she could not celebrate a degree she felt she did not deserve. Mike tells her nothing she could say will scare him away.

Graziella confronts the cardinal at his Midtown office over the food kitchen's future. He offers a papal honor in exchange for keeping it under the archdiocese. She refuses. On the way out, Grace impulsively tells the cardinal's financial director she prefers women, her first public acknowledgment of her sexuality. Graziella, who has known since Grace was a child, responds with acceptance.

The archdiocese retaliates by shutting down St. Joseph's food kitchen. Graziella orders Ella to open the new Tuttoilmondo Food Kitchen by Easter Monday. Ella leases the old laundry building where her great-grandmother Maria once worked. As Graziella's health declines, she executes la grande caccia (the big hunt), her largest investment play, involving initial public offerings (IPOs) of companies she has backed. She teaches Ella to cook the family recipes. At Frank's grave, she tells Grace and Ella about her miscarriages and the death of their infant son Francis, and urges them to visit the piazza in Rome where Maria grew up.

More than 500 people gather for the food kitchen's Easter Monday opening. Reverend Mother Flora, Graziella's former fellow novice, and fifty nuns from the abbey bless the space. Ella delivers a speech honoring the family name Tuttoilmondo, which means "the whole world," and reveals that she has been accepted to Columbia's doctoral program in nuclear physics.

Days later, Graziella begins to die at home on Pearl Street. Mike visits her bedside privately to ask for her blessing to marry Ella and receives Graziella's engagement ring. Over five hours, Graziella dictates the complete recipes for the Feast of the Seven Fishes in Italian, with Grace translating for Ella, who records everything on her phone. At ninety-six, Graziella waits until both Grace and Ella have fallen asleep, then passes away.

The full scope of Graziella's generosity emerges: Analysts estimate $90 million in donations over 26 years. Grace delivers the eulogy, calling Graziella "a lioness among men." Father Gerald, the parish priest Graziella once distrusted, reveals Graziella's final plan: All resources from future IPOs will fund self-governing orders of religious sisters running food kitchens, bypassing the archdiocese entirely. Grace accepts the position of dean of students at Columbia, a role Graziella extracted as a deathbed bargain.

Graziella leaves the Pearl Street house to her neighbor Maria's family rather than to Ella, knowing Ella would turn it into a shrine. Mike proposes on Christmas Eve morning while Ella prepares the Feast, sliding Graziella's ring onto her clam-juice-covered finger. Ella begins her doctoral program at Columbia. Grace settles into her renovated home with Joyce, who has become her romantic partner.

The following May, Grace and Ella travel to Rome, fulfilling Graziella's wish. In the Testaccio neighborhood where Maria grew up, a café server recognizes the Tuttoilmondo name. Following a gray cat through the streets, they discover a food kitchen run by religious sisters, operating exactly as Graziella's did. On a small table by the door sits a photograph of Graziella with a candle and a cross, confirming that la grande caccia has reached Rome. Graziella is still feeding the world from the place her family came from.