Alba returned to Signora Elias’s home and curled up in bed right away. She didn’t wake till late afternoon, when a clatter of banging rose from the garden. Alba creaked one eye open. Her body ached. Her hair hurt. Her face felt caulked, dried in the heat, flaked plaster. In the bathroom mirror she caught sight of this vision of disappearance; a hollow trunk. The tiles were cold and shifting underfoot. She was a question mark; a character in search of an author.
Something called to her, a quiet hiss of thought, wordless yet urgent, like the steam fighting out of a coffeepot. She had been running her whole life, so fast, so focused on winning the race. Now she stood past the finish line, the cheers of the crowd ricocheting in her head like hammers. She gazed back at the starting post, her escape. A young girl stood looking at her, wearing the T-shirt from the night Marcellino was taken to the cave in her place. She’d left her so far behind. Chained her back where she belonged. And as the grown Alba squinted in the bathroom mirror, the other began a slow walk toward her, her twelve-year-old legs shuffling across the runners’ lanes till she could almost feel her breath upon her. She stood in Alba’s shadow now, slipping across the tiles in a faint silhouette. She was a powder of memory, the swerve of dashed hope in a dream, disorienting, insistent; in her voice the strangled call of home.
Another clang of a dropped hammer. A yelp. A man’s voice cursed, before the teeth of a saw bit through some wood and further percussive jitter jiggered through the still of the afternoon. Alba swung her legs off the side of the bed and went to the window, tipping the shutters open just enough to see who was making the racket. Mario’s vest top was streaked with sweat. She opened the shutters fully and poked her head out. He was beneath Elena’s olive trees, building what looked like some kind of support. She was about to retreat back to her bed, her skin still felt gray and her body didn’t crave company, when he stood and looked up, catching her before she slipped away.
The second time he’d seen her feeling at her worst, she thought.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” he asked, running a quick hand over his black hair.
“Shall I lie?”
He laughed then, the lines around his eyes deepening, the easing afternoon sun casting olive tree dapples over his face. “I promised Elena I’d finish up the job this afternoon for her, before I head back to the officina later.”
“Everyone knows better than to argue with Elena,” Alba replied. And with that she stepped away from the window and closed the shutter once again. She threw on her silk dressing gown, sat to put a little cream on her face, then left her reflection forgotten instead and headed downstairs. She filled a coffeepot and decided to start the day all over again.
“I’ve made you papassini too, Alba,” Elena said, walking in, wearing the apron she always wore for garden work. “Dear Mario has been a lifesaver. He does the olives now. Makes oil for me from them. Patience of a saint.”
Alba shot her a look.
“I know. Miracles never cease.”
Alba twisted the coffeepot shut with an extra turn.
“You imagining it’s someone’s neck?” Elena asked.
Alba smiled.
“He is so kind, really,” Elena continued, sitting down at the table, “what with everything going on at home.”
Alba leaned against the counter waiting for the lit ring to do its magic.
“His wife left him for a dreadful man in Pattada a few years back. He’s fought to keep the girls. Your brothers had a lot to say about that I gather. His parents aren’t around anymore as you know, and I think he looks on me as the grandmother I doubt he ever had.”
“All of us do,” Alba replied, knowing that the simple act of being in the presence of this woman alone seemed to make life better.
“Still, mustn’t sit here gossiping, the grapes need some attention this afternoon if I’m to have any wine this year, and the geraniums for that matter. I’ll take this jug of lemon water to him,” Elena said, opening the door of the fridge and grabbing the glass handle at an awkward angle so that it almost slipped out of her grip. Alba took it out of her hands.
“Here, Elena, let me,” Alba said, reaching for a glass from an overhead cupboard. She left the kitchen and headed onto the terrace, walking down the steps to the olive grove where Mario was fixed on the task in hand.
“You winning the fight?” she said, placing the jug and glass on a stump beside him.
He stood up with a grateful sigh. “Not anytime soon.” He took the glass, filled it, and downed it in one go before refilling. “Grazie.”
“Thank you for helping Elena.”
“It’s my pleasure.” He took several more thirsty gulps. “She’s been good to me.”
Alba tightened the knot of her dressing gown a little, as it threatened to slip undone.
“Didn’t know you were staying with her. Should have figured that,” he said.
“Haven’t thought my plans through yet.”
“What do they say about the best laid plans?”
“I’m taking a sabbatical from the ‘they.’”
Mario’s face eased into a wistful smile. “Smart.”
They stepped into a sliver of quiet for a moment.
“How are the girls?” Alba asked, knowing she was prying.
“Lunatics.”
“Good.”
He smiled for a brief breath, then took a final gulp of his water, set it down, and looked toward the trees. Alba watched his expression tighten into sharp lines. He was a different man than the one she’d walked beside in Rome. He still had that relaxed swagger about him but also a quiet weight to his speech now. Perhaps he had been trying to tell her about his situation back then? When he had spoken about the predestined lives of Ozieresi she’d taken it as just another person starstruck with her fame. Had she let him say much at all that night? She was so wound up in her performance she doubted she’d left space for anyone or anything else; Francesco had filled her with daydreams and Rachmaninoff had given her wings.
“I didn’t know you were into all this?” Alba asked, willing him on.
“My dad loved the trees.”
Alba felt the blood color her skin for the first time that day.
“And he passed on his gift in spades,” Elena interjected, reaching them with a tray balancing Alba’s forgotten coffeepot and two cups. “Do pardon the pun. They’ve made more fruit in the past two years in the hands of this handsome human than they ever did for me. He talks to them in tones they understand. I’m best with the begonias, but don’t tell anyone, will you?”
She filled their cups with the hot coffee, insisted they inhale a papassini, then left, declaring she would be deadheading some geraniums in the front driveway should they need her.
“She is a marvel,” Alba said, spooning sugar into her cup and offering him some.
“Thank you, just the one,” he answered. “More than a marvel—lifesaver.”
“Thought that was the trees?” she teased.
They stirred their coffee, melting the sugar, both welcoming the sweetness this miraculous woman brought to their lives, even in the bitterest days.
33
Fermata
a prolongation at the discretion of the performer of a musical note, chord, or rest beyond its given time value
Alba wound along the periphery ring road of Ozieri, downhill from Elena’s villa, around the pineta, down toward the main Piazza Cantareddu, where all the buses arrived from out of town. The piazza was long and wide with gelaterie and bars along the width, customers spilling out onto the pavements before them, sipping midmorning coffees, some starting their drinking already with small glasses of ice cold beer or aperitivi. From there she began the steep climb toward the other side of the funneled town, passing the narrow Piazza del Cantaro to her left, where straggles of teenagers huddled in the shade of the trees, the same piazzetta where she had leaped over the embers with Raffaele all those years ago, the memory of the smell lingering on the tips of her hair floating into focus.
She arrived at the next main junction of Ozieri and took a hard right to begin the near vertical hairpin turn. As she glanced in the rearview mirror her town spread out in the midmorning sun, the cathedral’s spire glinting. The incline of Monserrato rose ahead, beyond the convalescent home for nuns.
Mario had explained that her brothers had built a house each, beside Bruno’s brothers’ homes. They were at the top of the hill, just before the tiny chapel at the apex, where Ozieresi would stroll the feast of Madonna of Monserrato, intoning their prayers and song on the steep path where it narrowed to a white road beyond the houses as they performed their musical pilgrimage till they reached it. Alba remembered doing it with her mother once, under duress, the only pleasure garnered from spying the tiny stone plaques carved into the rock retelling the Madonna’s story. It always sat at odds with her, this worshipping of a problematic mother figure; virginal, inimitable, omnipresent yet distant. She’d never forget the expression her mother pulled when she tiptoed around her confusion in conversation after her first and last pilgrimage. They’d never spoken of it again.
The new Fresu houses were built one next to the other, all similar in shape, with an undulating thick white wall that linked them and framed their driveways like castle barricades. Their newfound wealth had been expressed no different than she might have expected.
Her father’s was a little beyond, finished in the early eighties, named Villa Giovanna in dedication to his late wife. The tile said as much, in twirled font, stuck upon the brick support of one of the tall black metal gates at its driveway entrance. Alba parked her car outside on the street, pretending her heart wasn’t galloping, ignoring the quiver in her fingers as she pressed the buzzer at last. She didn’t call ahead. She didn’t want to give him the option of refusing. This time a meeting would be on her terms.
She waited a beat or so, then rang again.
A clipped female voice answered. “Who’s there?”
“My name’s Alba. I’m here to see Bruno Fresu.”
“In regard to?”
“I’m his daughter.”
There was a click and the electric gate began opening. The driveway stretched ahead of her, paved with thick chunks of granite puzzled together in a pleasing zigzag of country idyll. Either side, succulents draped themselves over the boundary walls, oleander bushes streaked the white with bright pink blooms, geraniums poked out their pink and purple blossoms, and beyond, in the garden that seemed to wrap around the house, large medlar, fig, and almond trees. The floral fruity scent would have been uplifting on any other day. The sun streaked down across her shoulders, but her palms were cold.
The woman on the entry phone appeared at the door of the house, the glass panes reflecting the wide panorama of Ozieri nestled at the base of the surrounding valley. The balcony above which stretched the length of the house, must have views even beyond that, toward Tula and perhaps even Lake Coghinas, where her father used to take her and her brothers to fish. Alba’s mind bounced toward any distraction available, only to ricochet back to the business at hand, like a jarring change of key signature mid-piece.
“Buon giorno, Signora,” the woman said. “I’m Teresa, Signor Fresu’s nurse.”
Alba shook her hand. Teresa’s touch was firm, no-nonsense. She was wearing a full nurse’s uniform, which put Alba on edge; was Bruno more vulnerable than Mario had described?
“He’s not expecting me,” Alba began.
“That’s quite alright,” Teresa replied. “Do follow me.”
She opened the glass-paned door a little more and they stepped into the stone cool of the entry room. Paintings of traditional farmers lined the walls of the space, which was more a formal sitting room than a hallway. By the door was a huge wooden dresser stacked with porcelain. There was a chest of drawers toward the opposite end, upon it framed photographs of Marcellino and Salvatore and a number of children, which Alba presumed must be her nieces and nephews. Her eyes took in the space and landed on a collection of three paintings just to her right by the doors. They seemed to be designed upon dried slabs of cork or leather, the bright turquoise and terra-cotta hues at odds with the subject matter. In the first, a man was being led away from the spectator’s gaze, head covered in a sack, two armed men beside him. In the second he was inside a cave, bent over scraps of bread. In the third he seemed to be embracing one of his captors. Alba couldn’t tear her eyes away. Seeing their terrorizing episode immortalized in a blatant, bizarre trio of art made her feel dizzy.
There was no daughter in any of the pictures.
“Signora?” Teresa asked the motionless Alba, who snapped back into the room. She followed the nurse toward the darkness beyond the door at the farthest end of the entry room. When her eyes acclimatized to this new room, cooler and dipped in more shadow than the first, Alba made out an enormous table that stretched the length of what looked like a taverna. It could have seated at least thirty people at a swift guess. At the far end there was a wide stone hearth, the walls either side hung with a comprehensive collection of copper pans, deep, shallow, small, large, even one on a long handle with holes in it, which Alba recognized as an antique bed warmer. At the end nearer the door where they stood was a bar, complete with a marble countertop and sink and enough bottles of mirto and grappa to keep several wedding parties inebriated for days.
“Bruno was quite the entertainer,” Teresa began. “My father has a tale or two of him and their friends over the years, and many more he probably doesn’t remember!”
Alba struggled to hear her over the television blaring out the obnoxious trill of a game show. As the cheers subsided, Teresa walked to the other side of the table and over to its far end. That was the first time Alba noticed the thin crescent of a bald head rising over the tip of a high-back armchair facing the television. Teresa stood in front of it. “Bruno,” she began, in the tone Alba had heard adults address children, “you have a visitor.”
Her father’s voice was a muffled whisper.
“A visitor,” she repeated, louder this time, enunciating with more of her lips. “It’s Alba.”
Teresa straightened and smiled at Alba, who tried not to receive it as a threat; it was a teacher’s smile, more warning than welcome.
“Come on in,” she insisted, “you have to face him so he hears you.”
Alba followed Teresa’s pathway, past the hearth and the pots, past a huge mural of her mother pictured cooking at this hearth, a double vision of surreality; her mother would never have seen this house and yet was immortalized in his view forever as if she had. The noise of the sequinned girls now gyrating in front of the game show host upon the screen screeched into the room.
Alba turned the corner of the table.
Her father looked at her.
Then he turned to Teresa. Alba felt her body become rigid; she tried to not prepare for a fight, for a dismissal, or worse, utter indifference.
He took a breath. “Come to gloat?”
Alba’s throat tightened.
“It’s Alba,” Teresa replied, taking his hand in hers, warm, but professional, as if her touch might anchor him back. He flit his eyes back to Alba. They looked gray in the light until Alba realized they both had cataracts. His skin was sallow but well shaven. His body looked comfortable, especially underneath the two blankets wrapped tight around his legs.
“He gets horribly cold,” Teresa explained, noting Alba’s look. “Can’t move around too well, so I keep him warm.” She turned back to Bruno. “Lunch soon, si? Then off to bed.”
Bruno chuckled. His sense of humor alone was intact.
His body was smaller than Alba remembered. He sat, strapped in by Teresa’s cocoon, the garish drivel from the screen ahead of him now frenzied on account of someone winning a food blender.
“Here,” Teresa said, “sit on this chair beside him, Alba, he’ll hear you better. I’m just going to prepare his insulin and medications in the bathroom just here, if you need me.”
Alba didn’t react as quickly as
she would have liked.
Bruno’s eyes were glued to the swish of half-clothed dancers, twirling around a second appliance that the contestant was under threat to win.
“Babbo,” Alba said.
Bruno didn’t move.
“Sono Alba, Babbo.”
Bruno threw his gaze with surprising speed. A flicker of recognition snuffed as quick as it appeared.
Alba cleared her throat. “I wanted to see you, Babbo.”
“Why?” he grunted, his voice hoarse. “You’ve done fine without me all these years.”
Alba sat, waiting for the teary reunions she’d read about, watched in films, some kind of saccharin closure she didn’t want to crave.
“I didn’t come to fight.”
“Never knew anything else. All your life you’ve been a fighter. No one can talk sense into you. I gave up years ago.”
Alba fought the need to walk out, to forget her pilgrimage to this place.
“I came here because I need to talk.”
Bruno gave a half-hearted nod, a Sardinian shrug signaling to a talker that the listener was not convinced.
“I’ve been punishing you all my life,” she blurted, because there was no sense in a warm-up, or a segue, or any kind of logical approach to conversation. Their relationship had no foundation in logic. It was barbed love that had no way of being expressed other than through hurt or caged anger. “And I’d like to stop. Because it’s made me hard. And I don’t like the person I’ve become.”
“Oh, you came to blame.”
Alba felt her leg twitch. She gave a glance to the mural. Her mother looked down at her with a fake, painted-on smile.
“No change there then. You show up like a storm, stomp around like everyone’s wronged you. No one in this whole town treats me like you do! They tell me how nice I am, how fair, how kind. Christ, I’ve probably kept the whole economy of this place going for years. But my own daughter? She treats me like I’m dirt.”
A Roman Rhapsody Page 38