Sweet Life (11 page)

“Next time their good aunt comes, they’ll welcome you with many kisses, as usual. Here.”

This is the wine Maria brought with her, so much better than the cheap stuff Enzo buys. If he could afford property, he could plant grapes, make his own wine and grappa. But the combined incomes of his work at the abattoir and Lidia’s housecleaning jobs do not pay enough.

Perhaps next visit Maria won’t bother with gifts. Why should she? When no one can be bothered to show proper gratitude, when the three people she cares most about in the world will not make time for her?

“How are the boys doing at school?”

“The same. Rico gets top marks and Roberto is the class clown. Maybe he can join the circus when he grows up.”

“What a thing to say. Roberto is like his father, full of life and charm.”

“Oh
sì
,
sì
, my husband has
mucho
charm. Bags and boxes of it. Such a snappy dresser, too. Did you see how carefully he adjusted his hat?”

“All the men in our family took care of their looks. Why should Enzo be any different?”

“No reason. But which of his friends cares how Enzo wears his hat?”

“Bitterness is a fault in a young woman, Lidia. I don’t say this to criticize, because God knows how much you’ve been through.”

Lidia looks into her empty glass. “No, of course you don’t criticize. But when do you look me full in the face? Really look? My husband stopped doing that long ago. Now my sons are older, they are ashamed to be seen with me. All three of them drive me crazy with their masculine secrets.” She pushes herself from the table. “I have to get ready for Mass.”

Astonished by this long speech, Maria watches Lidia cover her head with a scarf and yank on her coat. Maria must save something here, but what? “I’ll go with you. The walk will do me good.”

Lidia shrugs, takes her cane and waits while Maria opens her suitcase for her scarf and cardigan. They step into an evening that’s been softened by the earlier drizzle. The church bells clang from the direction in which the two women head, Lidia leaning on the cane, one arm linked with Maria’s. Other women move along the street, many also linking arms. Maria catches only the occasional male voice.

Men paint the holy pictures, fashion the images and erect the churches, but they don’t need God. No, if something needs changing, the men will do it themselves.

Maria’s alarm over Lidia’s outburst fades with the day’s light. The skies have cleared and faint stars glimmer as through water. If Maria excuses herself, she can walk to the edge of town and cross the road to a cornfield, see those stars more clearly. But what reason would she give Lidia? Let people believe Maria hasn’t ever attracted a man; her doctor could tell them a thing or two.

There’s the church, light spilling from its open doors. Time to go through the motions.

~

A van is parked outside Carlo Catelli’s yard. Six men climb out and help each other scale the double gate. Paola watches from a short distance away, her Mercedes running. Soon she hears Carlo’s roars, the men’s shouts, the noises growing more and more panicked. She keeps her hand on the gearshift, ready to step on the gas should Carlo charge down the street toward her.

But he doesn’t escape. Soon the gate’s door bangs open and all six men emerge with Carlo, who struggles and shouts in spite of the straightjacket. His screams are terrible. “I will kill you, Paola! I know it was you! I will escape and squeeze your throat until the flesh oozes between my fingers!”

Five men join Carlo in the back of the van; the other drives it away.

It takes Paola three tries to get her car into gear. Once inside
the gate, she stops to shut it against the neighbours, those witnesses of another Catelli humiliation. She looks about. There’s Nero’s large head hanging over the door of a barn stall, his black eyes watching. But the chickens and geese ignore her, peck and squawk and fly about the junk piles.

What if Carlo does escape, comes back and finds her here? She considers waiting inside the house and locking the door. No, even Carlo can’t escape the straightjacket. She tries not to think of how he looked, trussed like a bird.

Soon a horn beeps. She opens the gate and a car drives through. Two middle-aged men emerge with pens and books. After a brief conversation with Paola, they get to work.

A few days later, these same men show up at Paola’s
palazzo
to provide the answer of what use Carlo can be to her. Who would believe junk could be valuable? This improvement in her fortune will be more than enough to make her a desirable bride for Alberto Barbaro.

~ ~ ~

With the
Signora
and her husband honeymooning for two months, Maria has the
piccolo palazzo
to herself. This morning she sits at the long table in the dining room with her feet resting on a chair. She sips espresso and reads a newspaper. Such a luxury to have no one to please but herself, no one to wake her in the middle of the night, no one to wait on but Rico and Roberto, who’ve promised to visit every weekend.

Her one worry is Enzo. He refuses to visit and won’t say why. Maria suspects a problem with Lidia. That peculiar speech about hats and faces and secrets. Roberto join the circus? No proper mother would say such a thing.

And at last the crazy one is gone. Even now Maria trembles to think what could have happened to Roberto and Rico. It was the right decision to have the man committed, although
it took
Signorina
Catelli – no,
Signora
Barbaro – long enough to get to it.

Maria reaches for the liqueur and adds a generous splash to her coffee. No more weekend escapades for
Signora
Married Lady. Still, if Maria knows anything,
Signor
Barbaro will have his hands full with that one.

Should Maria have passed on what
Signor
Barbaro’s chauffeur swore was absolutely true the one time Maria accompanied the
Signorina
to Milan? No. Let the new
Signora
find out for herself. Life will be much easier here without some baby yowling in the middle of the night, the place stinking of diapers. And who needs nannies moving in, with their opinions and their snooping? One more person in the house is enough and, hopefully, he will turn out to be a sound sleeper.

~

Heavy hands grab her neck. “I know it was you.” Giant thumbs squeeze her windpipe.

“Now I will kill you.”

Paola wakes and thrusts the bedcovers off her neck. Even on her honeymoon Carlo disrupts her sleep. She gropes for her nightgown, slips it on and waits for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Next to her, Alberto lies on his stomach and snores lightly.

They’ve taken the honeymoon suite of what was once an eighteenth-century palace. Fair cupids fly across the blue ceiling, their chubby privates covered with bits of drapery, their round fists holding love’s bows and arrows.

When my husband gets out of bed, shoot an arrow into his skinny ass.

Since the wedding, Alberto has shown more irritation than ardour, and over such trivial matters, she can hardly believe it. He claims kissing her is like kissing an ashtray. The entire world smokes; everyone she knows smokes. Why does he have to make such a big deal? And orders. “Paola, find out if my pants were properly pressed. Paola, are my shoes shined? Does this scarf go with this shirt? If you have to smoke, please stand over there.”
She could forgive him if he were an unselfish lover or showed some imagination. She surprised him in bed tonight. Well, she knows what she wants and he better get used to it.

She gets out of bed, takes a cigarette from her silver case and picks up the gold lighter. She crosses the thick carpet to the far end of the room and smokes while leaning out the window. Across the street is another hotel, not as fine as this one. Clouds hide the moon and stars; Rome’s dampness reminds
Paola of the fog at home. Because this set of rooms is on the hotel’s top floor, there is nothing to hear but the occasional car, the sound of its engine a thin purr, and from the distance, a dull chugging like a train leaving a station.

In spite of Alberto’s habits, it’s been a wonderful honeymoon. They’ve been to two fashion shows and she’s ordered several outfits. Every day they visit another of his friends: a politician or a movie star or the owner of some grand estate. In a few days they’ll head to the Italian Riviera where they’ve been invited to cruise the Mediterranean. Paola should be having blissful dreams, not nightmares about Carlo.

Everyone, including the doctor, told her she made the right decision. Carlo is better off where he is. Even the mayor had the effrontery to drop in and congratulate her. Still, he did wear a decent suit at her wedding and gave a gracious speech praising the Catelli family’s contributions to Manna. Even Alberto was impressed.

Although he would’ve preferred a much longer engagement, he didn’t argue when Paola insisted she couldn’t wait to be his wife. She’ll pass off the baby as being premature in order to fit the time since their first night together. Hopefully, the baby will have her features, because he certainly won’t have Alberto’s.

Yesterday’s phone call to her accountant eased her mind on the progress of selling Carlo’s hoard. There are also renters waiting to move into the farmhouse once the details are worked out. Of course, Maria will take good care of the
piccolo palazzo
until Paola returns and, in the meantime, has likely opened its doors to her peasant family from San Daniele.

Oh, what Paola would give right now for fresh coffee and grappa! Or a wrestle with Enzo, in spite of the stink he couldn’t
scrub from his pores. Didn’t he sulk and rage and weep real tears when she told him it was over. He promised to leave his crippled wife, risk scandal if only he and Paola could be together. His drama was better than watching an opera. She was fond of Enzo in the same way she’d been fond of a good-natured greyhound she once owned.

Now she returns to bed, lies on her side with her head on the frilled pillow. Her problem is she is too sentimental. She has to forget Enzo. Forget Carlo, too, lost as he is in his mad world where, she’s been told, he still screams vengeance. She closes her eyes.

And she is in her own front yard. The bells from the Church of San Martino bang loud as thunder. It’s her wedding day and if she doesn’t hurry, she’ll be late. She tries to run, but stumbles against the narrow skirt of the Japanese robe. At last she makes it to the gate, but all her pushing and pulling won’t budge it. Where is everyone? She spins about and sees, instead of the
palazzo
, the lunatic asylum. From its front door races a large man, headed straight for her. As he nears, she sees his silver eyes narrow like a wolf’s, sees his hands reach out. Just when she expects him to grab her neck, he passes and disappears through the stone fence.

And still the bells clang. She will miss her son’s baptism. Paola struggles again with the gate. She must reach the church before Carlo does, before he finds her baby where she hid him behind the altar.

This time when Paola wakens, she rolls onto her back, lays one hand on her belly. The winged cherubs stare back from the ceiling, their enigmatic smiles lost in the shadows.

The
Virgin in the Grotto

In the town of Manna, the bells of San Martino toll.
They could be announcing the end for the woman dying in an upstairs bedroom on Via Dante. Or they could be signalling a beginning for the woman’s daughter, who climbs the stairs with a supper tray.

Perhaps tonight. And Cristina imagines how it could be the next day: She, entering her mother’s room, unhooks the shutters, casts them open to the autumn morning. When she turns, she sees the face slack, the blue eyes vacant.

Cristina’s left knee drags and she takes the stairs one at a time. The
brodo
in the bowl slides to the brim, slides down again, leaving behind a glistening film. The recipe for the broth came from Dr. Rossi: boiled beef bones from shank, carrots, celery, onions and oregano. A white bread roll sits next to a glass half-filled with red table wine.

A small landing separates two parallel flights of stairs. After the devastating earthquake in ’76 opened wide cracks along the walls of the stone house, Cristina’s stepfather had the bathroom re-plastered, then tiled in blue and white. Here, she sets the tray onto a bureau, dampens a face cloth and continues her climb.

Upstairs, white sheers at the double balcony doors filter the waning light; the rest of the hallway is dim. Peripheries of a cushioned chair, edges of a commode crowned by a plant, framed sepia photos of the family dead merge soft and nebulous against the pale plaster. Cristina turns toward the sound of muted voices. Inside a large bedroom, the full-length mirror on a massive
guardaroba
reflects her entrance. She doesn’t look. She has avoided mirrors most of her life, believing the image reflected in the cold steel of her mother’s words:
You are too tall. You are too thin. You must wear your skirts long to hide the scars on your knee. Your breasts are no larger than walnuts
; y
ou could pass for a boy, especially with that manly chin.