Worn Masks

Worn
Masks

by

Phyllis
Carito

© 2016 Phyllis Carito

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any means,

electronic or mechanical, without permission in

writing from the publisher.

978-1-943837-48-9 paperback

978-1-943837-49-6 epub

978-1-945805-27-1 mobi

Cover Design

by

GusGus Press

a division of

Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

Fairfield, California

http://www.bedazzledink.com

Set
in the late twentieth century, Mary Grace, an independent and solitary woman in
her late forties, is drawn back into her mother’s life and death, and a journey
that impacts her life as an estranged daughter. Although, surrounded by her
family, as a child Mary Grace had always felt isolated. Her Italian parents, in
their new American life and home had language barriers and emotional rigidity
that left Mary Grace confused about who they and she really were. The story of
her family begins to unravel with the unfolding of her mother’s life and the
events that lead Mary Grace to walk in her own family’s footsteps to uncover
the path her family has hidden for so long.

for Regina,
mia cara sorella

Acknowledgments

This
work has come to fruition with support of
teachers
and friends who guided me through the writ
ing process. With special
thanks to writing teachers
Joanna Clapps
Herman and Liz Eslami; and my dedi
cated readers and dear friends Marcia
Sullivan and
Patricia Fecher; and
grazie
mille
to Dawn-Marie Vitto
ria Blasl, and Carl Denti.

Preface

Our
familia Italiana
was centered on food, the cook
ing, the
aromas, the hours of the
sorelli
preparing
the meal, and then the gathering. From noon to eve
ning, from soup
to nuts, around the table we sat, multiple generations, where I watched the
dynamics of the family. Much of what I know about family came from these times.
As a child I learned you didn’t ask
questions,
but if you were quiet enough, you could lis
ten.

The
story of Mary Grace is a story of all the Italians who I have known, women who
cooked and cleaned for their families; who were good wives; who lived with
their losses and their sorrows, and no matter what hap
pened stayed true to family. Mary Grace does the un
speakable, she
questions. As her story unfolds so do the passions and heartaches of the
family.

Part I

The Phone Call

Chapter 1

HOW COULD MARY Grace ignore the call without breaking her promise to
her father? “You always take care of family,” her father said many times, and
there was the way he grasped her hand in the hospital. “She’s your mother.”

She had somehow hoped not to ever have to return to 2224 St. James
Place but how else could she respond to Aunt Maggie’s call?

Back then Mary Grace had tried to talk to her dad about what was
happening to him the last time he insisted that she promise to take care of her
mother. He held her hand tight and said, “It is all I want of you. Make sure
she is okay.”

“Dad, don’t worry. I will.” Mary Grace had actually said the
words, not ready to believe that hospital stay would be his last. She figured
there were ways to do this. She could hire people to clean her mother’s
apartment, or go to the store. She would figure it out.

Why was this call from Aunt Maggie different?

Aunt Maggie, her father’s sister, had always been an alarmist,
more reactive than the rest of the Maschere family, but she had never before
sounded so worried about her sister-in-law, Teresa Giordano Maschere. Mary
Grace and Aunt Maggie had a similar distain for Mary Grace’s mother. Aunt
Maggie had always been
Mary Grace’s comfort,
knowing just when to call up
stairs and invite Mary Grace down to her own
apartment, and get Mary Grace out of the fray between her parents.

This had been a Maschere household for over sixty years since Papa
Maschere purchased the house for his wife, Momma Rosa, Mary Grace’s grandmother,
and their three children. They had converted the house from a one-family to a
two-family when Luigi got married to the mysterious, dark-haired Teresa, a
wispy girl from the north of Italy, and unlike the full-bodied, sun-soaked
Maschere brothers who had come from the south along the Amalfi coast.

After Momma Rosa died it was a relief for Papa Maschere, what with
the wayward ways of Uncle Paul, and Aunt Maggie never marrying, to know his
middle son, Luigi, would be in the house when he was gone. Luigi would watch
over the house and over Maggie.

For Luigi, the idea was always that he would move out of this
house, out of the converted three bedrooms into some place of their own for
him, his wife Teresa, and their sweet-faced
bambina
, Mary Grace. Early
on
he saw how unhappy Teresa was, how she
always re
marked, “It is like a midget’s house, this tight space of
kitchen, living room, and bedroom, in a stuffy upstairs, and to top it off, I
have to go down the hall to use the bathroom. How is this a home?”

He wanted to move, he talked about it, usually
after
a
few drinks. But they never moved. There was always some reason to stay, Luigi’s
job, Teresa’s health, leaving Aunt Maggie alone after Uncle Paul died. So, they
wound up staying in the too small, too tight space.

Could it be that Aunt Maggie was getting irrational and
overreacting? Mary Grace replayed the voice mail a few times, and something
about Aunt Maggie’s voice made her feel uneasy. “Mary Grace it’s not good, not
good, oh, you must come.” Aunt Maggie’s jittery high pitch was shaky and
desperate.

“She no answer me, she don’t tell me to go
back
downstairs. 
She’s not right. I had to call for an ambulance,” is how Aunt Maggie described
finding her mother slumped across the couch and unresponsive, when Mary Grace
called her aunt back.

Mary Grace let out a sigh. Could she look at this
situation differently, separate from the past? All
that oc
curred long ago, the inability for her and her mother to ever see
eye to eye, the cryptic conversations that
Mary
Grace knew existed, but never what they con
tained, weren’t they all in
the past now?

Mary Grace had always lived at the edges of
fam
ily
interactions, always lingering in doorways watching, listening, sandwiched
between Aunt Maggie living downstairs, and Uncle Paul living upstairs above her
in the attic. Both her aunt and her uncle fascinated Mary Grace, but she
learned early not to share that with her mother. Even a simple comment that
Aunt Maggie had given her a piece of coffee cake would end up with her mother’s
stinging words, “You think she bakes it herself? It is from the store.
Stupido
.”

Her father, on the other hand, encouraged her to go downstairs to
be with Aunt Maggie, but told her very clearly that it was better to leave
Uncle Paul alone. “
Bambina
, Uncle Paul he no likes too much noise. He no
like people all around when he is home, so when you see he leaves the porch and
goes up the stairs, he wants
to be by
himself. He no wants to see your bird puz
zle.” But, that wasn’t so.
Uncle Paul liked to talk to her. When they met alone on the porch he would tell
her stories about a beautiful place in the
boot called It
aly where the trees spiraled up to the sky, and the
chiesa
had a tower so tall it rose above the trees.

Besides, in a small house of five people, it
was dif
ficult
to not cross paths. For Uncle Paul to get to his space, he had to pass through
the porch, where Aunt Maggie often was sitting, and then go past her apartment,
up the steps to Mary Grace’s family’s apartment, and then down the hall and
through the bathroom to get to the attic steps. If Mary Grace was sitting in
the hall doing a puzzle and someone was in the bathroom he waited there in the
hall, and he smiled, made faces
at her, and
mimed the birds flying. Still, it was obvi
ous, even to a child, that
there were more than physical walls and stairs between all of them, and some
things she didn’t know how to ask her parents.

Could Mary Grace go back now?

Back then, when arriving home from grade school
each day Mary Grace wanted to stay with Aunt Mag
gie
on the screened-in porch. Aunt Maggie, not wanting any trouble, would coax her.
“Go say hello to your Momma.”

When she did as her aunt told her, her mother was either in the
living room staring at the black box of the television, or in the bedroom with
all the blinds closed tight. “Momma, I’m home.”

“Go downstairs. Go outside. Just leave me be.”
Te
resa
wouldn’t turn her head to see her daughter.

Mary Grace took a deep breath and reasoned that this many years
out, she could handle a brief visit back to the family house, the house she had
hoped to avoid forever after she left at sixteen years of age. What she
never conceived was how the visit would begin to
un
ravel the whole of their lives, beginning with her childhood bed—the
couch. 

The Couch

Chapter 2

MARY GRACE HAD felt sickened by the thought of interacting with
her mother. She ran conversations through her mind as she drove and reminded
herself again that she had promised her dad. When she arrived she went first to
the house, and Aunt Maggie’s downstairs’ apartment, and maybe to put off the
inevitable a little longer decided to call the hospital. She spoke with
someone in the emergency room. “Your mother is a
vic
tim of a heat stroke that has put her into a coma, and the next
twenty-four hours will tell us . . .
”

Is
this the end?
Mary Grace’s knees were shaking, but in her
head she was angry, and her heart was ice cold.

When Mary Grace went to the hospital an hour later, the
interaction in the hospital was surreal—her mother lying on an air conditioning
mat and hooked up to a respirator, her mother who she had not seen for so many
years, left Mary Grace feeling oddly suspended, not emotional at all, and
asking herself, “Who is this woman?”

Did she even recognize this person lying there? Why should she?
She didn’t know how to interact with this nonresponsive stranger. The ICU
nurse, whose name was chalked onto a board across from her mother, Nurse
Belinda, encouraged her to talk to her mother. “She may hear you.” But, Mary
Grace had nothing to say to her mother. Instead she told Nurse Belinda she was
going to have to leave. Nurse Belinda rattled on about how difficult it was to
see someone you love so ill, but Mary Grace just interrupted her. “Will you
just have someone call me?” Nurse Belinda assured her the hospital would call
her with any change at all in her mother’s condition.

Mary Grace went back to the house where she had grown up.
Faithfully, there was Aunt Maggie on the porch. “Anything?”

“No change, they will let us know. You should get some sleep, Aunt
Maggie. I guess I’ll go upstairs.” Mary Grace hesitated, her legs were heavy
and she felt uncertain that she could move them. It was harder walking up the
stairs to her childhood apartment than it had been walking into the ICU room. 

Mary Grace stared at the empty couch, covered with a gaudy
slipcover, one she had never seen. Mary Grace didn’t remember the colors of the
other flowery pattern
slipcovers her mother
had made every few years to re
place worn ones. She did remember the
folding metal and the creaking springs. She did remember sheets pinched in the
metal, with blackened grease-stained eyeholes cut open in them.

She opened the windows and stared at the stained couch in
disbelief. Aunt Maggie and the neighbor had found her mother lying across the
couch. She could
see where her mother’s body
had indented the cush
ions, foam from her mouth stained one end and there
were body excrements toward the third cushion, landing on both the middle
cushion and the mostly spared, but
most worn
last cushion. Mary Grace placed the cush
ions into a black plastic bag
and carried it downstairs and outside to the garbage can.

They said they’d know in twenty-four hours, so she’d
have to stay. Mary Grace had established herself as
a sol
id editor, had worked steadily for over fifteen years for the same
publishing house, so taking time off or working without going into the office
were not a problem for her. It was a solitary job and she liked it that way.
She was tired and not going to drive the hour to be called and have to turn
around, come back, and finish this. Maybe she was afraid that if she left she
would not be able to make herself come back.

Mary Grace had been eight years old when she was finally allowed
to turn the couch into a bed each night by herself without anyone’s help. The
evening ritual began when her dad, Luigi, checked the mousetraps, one placed at
the entrance to the living room, discreetly against the wall on the kitchen
side; and another one tucked behind the back of the couch. He removed the carcasses
to the garbage downstairs, and re-baited the traps with rind pieces of
provolone, and he promised Mary Grace that mice could not climb up the back of
the couch.

But, Mary Grace was clear now that she could not sleep on this
couch again, and would have to just lie down on her father’s side of her
mother’s bed.

Mary Grace went into the bedroom and heard her mother warning her
and her father, “Maria Graziella,
Luigi, you
never sit on the bed!” Her mother’s bed, al
ways made with care each
morning after a brief airing, all linens pulled back, after her mother’s
morning bathroom ritual, while the coffee was brewing, she made the bed,
topping it with a bedspread for each season. Once the task was completed the
perfectly smooth bedspread was not to be disturbed by Mary Grace or her father
sitting on it.

Back at the house the next few evenings after sitting in the
hospital all day, Mary Grace tried to get some work done but she couldn’t
concentrate on the manuscript and she couldn’t stop thinking about the stupid
couch. It was the center of life, even more than the kitchen. It was her secret
bed.

Even before she was allowed to open it, when it had been her dad
who opened the couch each evening, Mary Grace always wanted to be like the
Castro convertible girl on the television and open it herself. The Castro girl
was as small as Mary Grace and could open the couch. Still, Mom said it was
Dad’s job, and she warned him: “Don’t let it swing down and smash against the
floor. That old maid will be screaming about noise up here.”

Her mother was always characterizing Aunt Maggie. All of which
seemed to relate to her not having children. “That one, she’s peculiar, never
took care of a child.” “She’s so touchy, got to watch every word you say to
her, guess that’s what’s happens when you don’t have the sacrifice of
children.”

After a week, the hospital still could not confirm what would
happen next to her mother. Her mother could remain in the coma or her heart
could just give out. Mary Grace called her job and extended her sick
time. They were gracious, “Do what you have to, Gra
cie.”
They had no reason to question her. She was a valued employee who never missed
a deadline. She came on time, stayed until the work was complete or took it
home to make sure it was finished. Her editing was thoughtfully and accurately
done, pleasing both the writer and the publisher. If you had asked anyone at
the
job about her life outside of work they
would say, “Fam
ily? I think she has an aunt.”

Mary Grace returned each night from the hospital and looked at the
old couch. She sat in the middle on the worn springs of the folded bed. Eating
on the couch had always been forbidden. “Clean out those crumbs,” her mother
said on Saturday mornings. The crumbs were along the horizontal folds of the bed
from snacks that she and her father had snuck onto the couch when her mom was
out, seeping down into the bed; or from the mice that after all had gotten in
and left them there.

The memories flooding back, Mary Grace decided that the couch had
to go.

Opening that Castro convertible bed each night for eight years,
Mary Grace had tried to make it her own.
The
nightly ritual was for Mary Grace to gather her pa
jamas from the bureau
behind the accordion door of her parents’ bedroom, brush her teeth and hair,
and then her parents vacated the couch so it could be transformed into her bed.

The process began with getting her pillow and
blan
ket
from the coat closet before jamming the gold vinyl chair against the door,
balancing the three couch cushions on the seat, and lastly sliding the round
two-tier occasional table in next to the chair. Both had to be exactly at the
right spot or the couch would not clear them
on
its descent. The completion of the ritual, her moth
er’s guiding the
couch into place, “Let it down slow, don’t let it swing down and smash against
the floor.”

Mary Grace would fix the couch with the pillows and blankets,
making the couch into a bed early so her mom could watch television with her
feet up, while Mary Grace curled on her side facing away from the blue
television light and tried to sleep.

Going to sleep each night and getting up each morning were all
wound around her mother’s rules. “Is it too much to ask, for a place to sit in
my own living room?” Teresa questioned in the mornings, on the way from the
bedroom to make coffee in the kitchen, and waking
Mary Grace as she passed through the living room. Pok
ing her
finger into Mary Grace’s shoulder blade, “Get up and make this bed.” 

There was no lounging in bed for Mary Grace,
especially on Saturday. Although she knew other chil
dren could sleep
in, her mother insisted on waking her, calling over and over, “Maria Graziella,
get up.”

Mary Grace wanted to scream each time: “Gracie.” She hated her
familiar and holy name of Mary and the added Grace was a bad prayer to her
ears.

It had been a night similar to this hot and sticky one, when Mary
Grace had not thought of the change of couch to bed, but changing her life.
Mary Grace felt her blouse clinging to her, the sweat running down her back, barely
breathing, afraid she would be sick there in front of her parents sitting on
the couch, her mother in an old housedress and her father stripped down to his
boxer shorts, and Mary Grace blurting out, “I’m leaving. I’m moving out. I’m
not coming home, not coming here again.” The heat was being blown around her
legs from the small floor fan. As always, the windows were only open a crack,
keeping out the air and keeping in their voices so the neighbors couldn’t hear.
“I’m moving out to live with M., a guy, you don’t know him.” She hadn’t even
used his name. Her mother would never meet him.

As she looked around the room she remembered
the tension that followed her announcement, like they were all held dangling
and not knowing who would fall first. Her father got up and turned off the
television. He walked out of the room into the bedroom he shared with his wife.
It seemed all sound had ended. Mary Grace and her mother became frozen in the
blue to grey light that slowly condensed into a white spot in the middle of the
television. They were drawn toward the darkness until their eyes couldn’t
capture any more light from the tube. Shut down.

It would be three years before her mother would say a word to her.
And many more years before Mary Grace found herself back in the living room.

Now all these years later Mary Grace called a junk man to take the
couch and she had to leave the room when they struggled to remove it. She felt
lightheaded as the movers turned it on its side to get it through the kitchen
doorway. They struggled to keep it closed as they brought it down the stairs.
They heaved it onto a waiting truck. It was then that Mary Grace noticed the
Castro convertible logo had faded and frayed and the dark-haired smiling girl
in her long nightgown was now almost unrecognizable.