Three of them were travelling to a wedding in Udine, because her papà’s sister had finally managed to snag a husband. Cristina’s mother, forced to stay behind due to a difficult third pregnancy, had argued to keep Alessio home with her, but Cristina’s papà was adamant about showing off his first son and heir. And to spare the children a long train ride on the wooden seats of third class, he’d managed to borrow a car.
Cristina’s mother leaned through the driver’s window, kissed her husband, and then blew a kiss toward Alessio. To Cristina she said, “Be careful with your dress. And behave yourself.”
The gears crunched as Cristina’s papà pulled on the shift. When he set a tentative foot on the gas, the engine choked and died. Chagrined because his wife laughed, he restarted the engine and stomped hard, pebbles bouncing against the undercarriage as the car surged forward. In the darkness and mist, he circled about Cristina’s mother, beeped the horn, waved his arm through the window and hollered: “Ciao! Ciao!” like a happy lunatic. Cristina, nervous and thrilled, clung to the door handle with one hand and, with the other, clutched the doll against her thumping heart.
~
Now she pauses in the front hall. A curtain of black-and-white chenille cords, hung across the open doorway to discourage insects, sways in the barest of breezes. It’s a discreet insufflation rich with the scents of ivy geraniums and roses; with ripening grapes and pears.
To Cristina’s right, narrow double doors lead to the dining room where six straight-backed chairs flank a polished walnut table and a matching cabinet. Behind its glass doors gleam her mother’s bright crystal, bone china and silver trays.
There’s the sound of a car stopping outside the front door. Cristina hurries to the kitchen where two dark berries sit in plain view on the cutting board. She opens a drawer and scoops the berries into it, managing to reach the front hall again just as Doctor Rossi calls, “Permisso!” and steps inside. He stands with his medical bag in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, wearing a suit, but no tie. The collar of his shirt is open and reveals the round neck of a white undershirt. “Good evening,” he says while swiping at his broad forehead and thinning white hair. “Your house is pleasantly cool.”
Cristina places herself between the doctor and the kitchen. “Good evening, doctor. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
“I had unexpected business in town, so I thought, Why make two drives when I can make one? And how is our patient today?”
Cristina looks at the floor and manages a quiver to her voice. “No better. Perhaps worse.”
Dr. Rossi sighs and shakes his head. “Ah, these are sad times for you, truly sad times.” When they climb the stairs together, he slows his pace to match hers.
Inside the bedroom, Cristina opens the shutters wider. Her mother turns her head as Dr. Rossi drops his bag onto the chair and takes her hand. “Signora, I see some colour in your cheeks today. Don’t worry; we’ll have you out of bed in no time.”
Cristina knows this is a professional lie intended to comfort a hopeless case. He doesn’t bother looking into her mother’s eyes while he speaks, but when he takes out a tiny flashlight, he peers into her like a man making a cursory inspection for a soul.
From below the window comes the sound of voices. It’s the neighbour, Rita, speaking to her son. Cristina strains to make out the words, and then flinches when the young man starts his motorcycle, revs the engine and roars off.
Dr. Rossi snaps his bag shut. “Her appetite is the same?”
“All she wants is the broth, but I coax her to eat bread, too.”
“Signora, you must try eating vegetables.” The doctor takes his bag. “And a bit of boiled chicken. I’ll see you again in a few days. Ciao.” On his way from the room, he wags a finger at the fan. “Cristina, you must remove it. In your mother’s condition, any draft could be fatal.”
“I had no idea. Of course, I’ll be careful.”
Downstairs, Dr. Rossi sets his bag on the floor and wipes his glasses with his handkerchief. “You must have courage, Cristina. The two of you have been together all your lives and now this. But.” He tucks his glasses into the breast pocket of his jacket. “I must say I still don’t understand your mother’s inability to speak. Stroke victims usually regain some speech. Does she try talking?”
Cristina claps her hands together as if in prayer. “How many times I’ve tried to get Mamma to speak.” Her arms drop. “But you know how stubborn she is. Sometimes…sometimes I believe she has given up.”
“Ah, it happens.” Doctor Rossi shakes his head. “And to think, only a short time ago, she had the vigour of a young woman. She could have passed for your sister.” Oblivious to any offense his words might cause, he continues, “But your mother has a wonderful nurse, and you are a good daughter. No one could give your mother better care.”
“Any daughter would do the same.”
“Oh, no. The stories I could tell you.” And because Cristina knows Dr. Rossi lingers in the hope of her offering him a glass of wine and time to sit and gossip, she says, “I admit I am always busy. Even now I have laundry waiting.” She glances toward the back of the house, yet is careful to keep her voice regretful, because she needs this man, depends on his lack of imagination and his complacency. Another physician, who is not on the cusp of retirement, would inquire more closely into her mother’s illness.
Dr. Rossi rocks back and forth on the soles of his shiny shoes. “And you? How do you get on these days?”
Cristina forces brightness into her voice. “Much better, thank you.”
“Those pills are helping, then. Good. Well, I won’t keep you from your work.”
After watching his Mercedes vanish around a bend in the street, Cristina returns to the kitchen, aromatic with the smells of boiled beef and oregano.
She takes a box tied with ribbon from a cupboard. It’s a narrow, white box with a name lettered in blue along its top. Folded within sheets of tissue paper is the black silk slip the saleswoman talked Cristina into trying on. How sexy she looked in it, the woman enthused. Wasn’t the fabric soft and smooth? When Cristina stood at the till to pay, she felt both abashed and exhilarated.
What a silly thing to buy at her age. Still. She passes a hand over the blue ribbon. She will take the slip upstairs and try it on, again, later. She leaves the box on the corner of the table.
Because the September sun still radiates enough heat to burn the potted cyclamen on the two window ledges, she keeps the kitchen shutters partly closed during the day. Now, she flattens them against the outside wall.
A corner shelf next to one window bears a candle, a bud vase with a single white rose and a statuette – an exact replica of the Virgin in the Grotto standing within the grounds of the nearby convent. Under her blue wimple, the Madonna’s serene pink and white face inclines benevolently; a serpent writhes beneath her sandals.
Cristina removes a pan of creamy pasticcio from the oven, ladles out a portion of noodles and white sauce and sets the plate onto the tablecloth. She pours herself a glass of red wine. She likes to watch her favourite program, Quiz Show, while eating. Whenever the camera gives a close-up of the host, a handsome man of forty, she smiles. He banters with the contestant, a plump, middle-aged woman with a circle of red beads around her throat, who receives yelled encouragement from her daughter in the audience.
The host asks the plump woman: “Dom Perignon invented champagne. What was his occupation?” As always, the answer is multiple choice. Cristina decides on the correct answer by elimination. Blacksmith doesn’t seem right. Perignon might have been a soldier, but she settles on abbot because monks usually grow their own food and grapes.
While the contestant ponders, the camera zooms in on a voluptuous young woman standing alone on a pedestal and wearing nothing but a glittering, bikini-type costume. Cristina stops eating and leans forward. Every time the woman breathes, her exposed breasts and belly glitter from the sparkles scattered over her skin. A poised distraction, an
erotic showpiece, she keeps the audience’s attention every time a contestant takes a long time answering. Unsmiling and silent, the luminous woman stares at the camera with calm eyes.
Like a woman seeking the revelation of some mystery, Cristina watches the shiny bow mouth, high round breasts and cupola-curved thighs. Of what does a beautiful woman think? How much happiness does her beauty bring her?
When the camera goes back to the contestant with the excited chins, Cristina turns off the television. She pours the leftover broth down the sink, then scrubs and rinses the cooking pot several times. The berries in the drawer are for the next pot of broth, but she needs a few more to cook with them.
One single step separates the front door from the narrow street, and on this step she stands to shake out the tablecloth. Rita’s daughter calls “Ciao,” and waves as she climbs into her car, speeding off into the twilight to whatever it is the young do while away from their parents. Maybe she will meet her boyfriend, a slim-hipped fellow who greets Cristina with the type of nods he likely reserves for unattractive and aged women.
She ties back the chenille cords for the night, shuts and locks the door. On her way to the back of the house, she passes the storage room stocked with bottles of water and wine, jars of pickles and brandied cherries she has canned over the years. Draining in a colander in the back sink are white mushrooms, a gift from Rita, who picked them during her usual morning hike into the hills.
Most of the neighbours have known the Bozzas for more than thirty years, and whenever they see Cristina, they inquire about her mother’s health, give advice and recount their own experiences with illness. Sometimes Rita will sit with her mother while Cristina runs errands, but she uses her mother’s worsening condition to discourage visitors. This is not difficult. Her mother’s sharp tongue and affectations during her second marriage put people off, and now she doesn’t have many friends. Except for nieces and nephews in other countries, there is no family left.
It was Giorgio Bozza who saved Cristina and her mother from the reluctant charity of relatives. Her mother arranged to be introduced to him, a newly retired broker who had moved to Manna to spend his retirement years in rural tranquillity. The man was flattered by the attention of a pretty widow. Until the day he died of cancer, he believed the whirlwind courtship and marriage had been his own idea.
From the beginning, Cristina’s mother often fell into long bouts of melancholy, spent days in bed, crying and sleeping. The doctor explained to Giorgio how one could expect such behaviour from a woman who had suffered much. This was a young Doctor Rossi. “Signor Bozza, you must have patience and understanding.”
Giorgio Bozza had too much pride to tell the doctor how his wife shrieked out commands from her bed until she got up, then she rushed about in a manic fury, screaming, “Why isn’t this done, why isn’t that?” He soon learned to grab his hat and desert to one of the neighbourhood bars, leaving Cristina to bear her mother’s tantrums.
Now Cristina steps onto the back pavement made from ochre-red stones. Clay pots, like chubby soldiers, stand in a straight line with red or pink ivy geraniums cascading over their brims. Other plant pots contain oregano and basil and laurel. A square yard with a garden separates the patio from the rear wall of the neighbour’s house, which looms against the darkening sky.
She crouches on the patio to break off dead leaves and pinch faded blossoms she then tosses into a pail. In a corner grows her mother’s belladonna with the bell-shaped flowers, and from it Cristina takes a few black berries and drops them into her apron pocket. Finally, she waters the pots with a hose, returns inside and locks the heavy oak door.
It takes longer to climb the stairs this time of day when she is tired and her leg aches. She stops at the bathroom and runs warm water into an enamel basin.
Her mother, dozing in the shivering light of the television, doesn’t acknowledge the sound of a drawer opening and closing. Cristina tugs her mother from her nightgown and unfastens the diaper. She dabs a sponge across her mother’s shrivelled skin before fastening another diaper. Lastly, her mother’s favourite cotton nightdress with rose-coloured ribbons and white lace. A pretty gown for a healthy woman, it now resembles finery on a corpse.
Cristina takes her mother’s wasted hand into her own. “Mamma.”
Her mother’s eyelids twitch.
“You must believe this is for the best. Soon you will be in heaven with Alessio.”
Her mother’s imprisoned hand quivers. “Yes. I know you still miss him.
“Do you remember my first Mass after the accident? After you finally brought me home from the hospital? Because of my knee, I couldn’t stand or kneel. I stayed sitting and watched how the stained glass windows held the light, saw how the apostles sparkled in a circle around the high dome. I felt a draft against my face and when I looked at the statue of Jesus near me, I wondered if it was His breath I felt.
“And the pink-and-gold cherubs. Flying high about the arched ceiling, carrying banners among the fluffy clouds. Someone told me that Alessio became an angel in heaven and watched over us. When I saw the boy angels with their round cheeks and blond hair, I asked if one of them was Alessio. Instead of answering, you pinched my arm. It was like being bitten by a snake.
“After Mass, when you stood with the priest, a lady took my hand. Led me to the table with the votive candles inside the red glass cups. She gave me a burning taper and said, ‘Light a candle in memory of your poor little brother.’ She held a candle close enough for me to reach. ‘Good girl. Now light one for your poor father.’
“Before I could light that candle, you took it from me. You pressed your hand against your waist where the baby had been, the one you lost after the accident. And you said, ‘We will light candles for Alessio, but never for the man who killed him.’”
Cristina traces a cord-like vein, blue beneath her mother’s transparent skin. “When the priest gives you the last rites, all your sins will be forgiven. Your anger against Papà, your cruelty to me. You will have Alessio and I will have my life.”
Cristina is about to let go of her mother’s hand when, with an unexpected energy, she grabs Cristina’s wrist. The grip is loose and lasts a heartbeat; yet it is enough to make Cristina leap from her chair. She looks down to see her mother’s eyes alive with hatred.
The look stops Cristina, but only for a moment. She yanks one of the two pillows from beneath her mother’s head, and then roughly sets her mother’s head straight on the other. Although Cristina has strict orders from Dr. Rossi to keep her mother covered during the night, Cristina folds the blanket to the bottom of the bed and sets her mother’s feet on top of it. Television off, shutters pulled in and fastened.
The fan. Cristina takes it from the bureau, sets it on the bedside table, aims it at her mother and turns it on. The ribbons on her mother’s nightgown ripple and leap.
And all the while Cristina’s mother watches in silence.
In the bathroom, Cristina begins her own ablutions by hanging her clothes on the door and covering her hair with a plastic cap. She moves with caution inside the narrow shower cubicle, keeps her feet planted on the rubber mat. Her breasts are tender when she soaps them. Dr. Rossi had explained she had the symptoms of early menopause. She wanted to tell him he was an idiot and that she was far too young. But she stood in his yard a long time afterward and watched the leaves of the acacia tree drip moisture from the morning’s fog.
Cristina fastens the buttons of her nightgown and again climbs the one flight of stairs to the second floor. The only sound from her mother’s room is the fan dragging in the air in one sustained breath.
She crosses the hall to her room, where light from the street lamp drifts through the window, strikes bits of gold on the dark tiles. She leans her arms on the marble window ledge. The night air feels soft and warm as an animal’s pelt. Bats launch themselves in and out of the lamp’s gleam across the street, and beyond, the dark shadows of grapevines stretch like silent ranks of soldiers waiting
for the call to march. She can almost see the shimmering richness of the autumn air, cumbrous with the incense of harvest. Ripe with possibilities.
She yawns, and closes the shutters.
In bed her eyes adjust to the dark. The dresser hunkers its long shadow against the wall and she thinks of the box she left on its top, the box with the slip. She reaches for the bedside light, and then pads to the dresser. The mauve tissue paper whispers when she lifts out the black silk.
The only full-length mirror in the house is in her mother’s room. Cristina opens the bedroom door and flips on the overhead light. When she approaches the guardaroba, she sees, beneath the slip’s hem, how her scar glows white. She sucks in her stomach and turns sideways, holds her breath for as long as she can.
Sexy.
Perhaps if she dyed her hair, got rid of the grey. She could lose weight, take a bus to the city and buy new clothes.
And then?
Who will see the silk slip? Dr. Rossi, in his examination room? No doubt he would laugh the moment she left. She places the palm of her hand onto the glass and covers her reflected chin. There. That’s better. Yet when she takes her hand away, she’s surprised. Her chin doesn’t make her look much different from the other women she knows. How is it she did not notice this before? For the first time in a long, long while she can look at herself without the old fury clawing for a way out.
She’s calm when she turns to the bed, touches a button on the fan and watches the whirring gradually subside. With a fingertip, she lightly touches the white stripe across her mother’s hair. Then she rolls her mother’s blanket upward, covering her arms and shoulders. Unaware, her mother sleeps on, her breath faint, but steady.
Her mother will regain her voice and tell the doctor everything. Will he believe her story and admit he has been incompetent this whole time? Cristina can forestall her mother’s revelations, convince the doctor her mother’s mind has been damaged by the stroke. Cristina knows the symptoms. Besides, Dr. Rossi has witnessed her mother’s irrational tirades many times.
Sweet Life Page 9