Back on Via Scorta, he left his rented Mercedes in the visitor parking lot and entered through the nursing home’s front door. The large vestibule had windows on three sides, shelves of books, a sofa and chairs. A pleasant room to enter, but no one could leave without punching the code on the security keypad.
He knew where she would be this time of the morning, had called and spoken to someone earlier. And his grandmother, the nonna he’d never seen, had been told he was coming. At the first doorway on the left in the hallway, he stood and looked around the salotto, his feet planted squarely on a large, black tile. His gaze passed over the two men playing checkers, the several people watching television and the woman playing solitaire. And there was his nonna where he’d been told she’d be: sitting near a window that looked out to the garden. A square-looking woman with a flat bust, her curled grey hair framing a light complexion. Both her hands balanced on top of a cane.
Anna pretended not to see Vittorio cross the room, wasn’t ready to see him. She wanted her lunch. She was starving. Ravenous. She wanted hot soup, white rolls and soft cheese. Not this young man with thick, red-gold hair.
“Buongiorno. May I sit next to you?”
Anna stared at the top of her cane. “Free country.”
Vittorio moved a chair, sat, planted his feet and unzipped a leather bag.
“What are you doing?”
He removed a notebook and pen, smiled like a man accustomed to charming recalcitrant women. But she still wouldn’t look at him, and he let the smile go. “You know who I am? The director told you I was coming?”
“That Roman. Can’t be trusted. All Romans are rats and if you give one a chance to run anything, he will drag it down the sewer.” Anna glared at the door as if daring the director to walk through it.
A woman with a walker stopped and caught her breath. “You can talk to me about anything you want, honey.”
Anna thumped her cane. “This is my visitor, Ina. Go.”
“If you get tired of the cranky princess, meet me by the television.” Ina lifted her walker into a halting turn.
The young man clicked the pen.
“What the devil are you doing?”
He closed the notebook. Perhaps the book was a bad idea. Perhaps the whole thing was stupid. Hadn’t his best friend warned him against coming? “I wanted to take notes.”
Again Anna thumped her cane. “Who sent you?”
While sitting, their blue eyes were level. “I came on my own. I would appreciate being able to ask questions. Personal questions.” He stopped himself from adding please.
“Personal. You show up out of nowhere and expect me to fill you in about my life?”
The young man turned his head toward the wide window framing the garden. He watched while an elderly man on a bench pulled a blue handkerchief from his shirt pocket and blew his nose. And it was like seeing a vision of himself in fifty years: a man resting, with nowhere in particular to go.
He hadn’t come all this way to fight. When he turned to her again, his tone was as flat as the notebook onto which he refastened the pen. “I apologize for bothering you.”
Her own voice rose like a startled bird. “Giving up already? You should have more backbone. All right. Ask me questions. But no writing.”
He slid the notebook into the satchel. “My mother –”
“Did you hear a bell? I could have sworn I heard the lunch bell and there is nothing wrong with my hearing. Have all my teeth, too, the ones in the front, which is all the chewing power a person needs around here. See the brown woman in the wheelchair? A big whiner like everyone coming from Calabria. Can’t speak Friulano* properly, accent thick as your arm. Fake hair, fake teeth. What is the point of vanity at her age?
“I have always been too sensible to put on airs. When my hair turned white, I let it. But when I was young…” Anna looked beyond the young man as though she had a clear view to the foothills of the Alps. “I was a real blonde. Blue eyes like the sky cleaned by a hard rain. Or so the tailor said in the poetry he wrote me, the silly ass. My friends and I laughed our heads off. I was fifteen, he was thirty, had a wife and six kids.”
“Do you have any photographs?”
“Ha. You young people can’t understand what it’s like to have nothing but the clothes on your back, nothing to eat except what grows. But you’re not the son of a farmer, not with those pretty hands. That’s a silk shirt, and you didn’t buy those fancy shoes from the Monday market in town.”
“How old were you during the war?”
“Too young and too old.” Now Anna looked at the young man, his translucent eyelashes, the faint shine of whiskers along his upper lip. “I suppose you want a better answer. When the war started, I was seventeen. Let me fill you in so you don’t waste my time. The eldest was my sister, Gina. Not half as pretty as me, but twice as wild. After me came Leonardo, Alessio and Franco. Mamma died when Franco was two. Mussolini paid a bonus for each child and trying for that money was the hardest work Papà ever did in his life.”
“So there were six of you when the war started?”
“Are you telling this story? Gina took the train to Rome and got work as a maid in some rich man’s house. Before the war, she became a Black Shirt. I suppose you know Black Shirt.”
“Fascist. Follower of Mussolini.”
“Bravo. Gina became a Fascist because she believed Mussolini cared about the poor. He handed out shoes; the first time in his life Papà wore anything but zoccoli. Now only farmers wear those wooden clogs into the fields. Not long after poor Mamma died, Papà dropped dead from a heart attack. Goodbye Papà, hello war.”
“Did you own a house in town?”
“Papà was hopeless. Drunk most of the time, and all he ever managed to hang onto were some tools. We stayed with relatives and slept in the attic.
“During the war, we moved in with a woman who needed help with her house and small children. In return, she let us share her children’s beds. The only men left in town by then were the grandfathers, the cripples and the crazies.”
Vittorio again looked toward the window. The elderly man’s head had dropped. He napped with his big-knuckled hands curled like cups on his narrow lap.
“Such an awful day when the Nazi troops marched into town. Those faces, hard as stone, their boots like shouts on the streets. The soldiers took over people’s houses but left us alone; we were already crammed one on top of the other. They did take my landlady’s chickens, but they paid, which was more than the Italian soldiers did.
“Eh, such a cruel time and me with three brothers to look out for. We were starving and we were cold. Why were we cold, why were we starving? Most blamed Mussolini, but some blamed the Jews. One priest said judgment had come for the Christ murderers.
“The priests could talk, but I was the one who had to hunt for sticks, anything that would burn. One day, I passed the shrine of the Madonna of the Roads. And there stood a soldier, his blue eyes piercing through me like I was a moth being pinned to a book. ‘Signorina,’ he said, ‘are you looking for firewood?’ My tongue turned to clay because I recognized him: il Capitano.
“He waved for me to follow and I was afraid, I can tell you. We walked to the road, where a Volkswagen and driver waited. The captain spoke good Italian and he told me to get in. When he saw how terrified I was, he said, ‘Tell my driver where you live and I will have the coal delivered.’
“After I returned home, the driver pulled up and unloaded a bag of coal. The woman of the house could not believe her eyes. ‘Where did this come from?’ And the soldier said, ‘Kapitän Wolfmann.’
“A miracle, after all our suffering. We burned the coal in the stove, dried out our mattresses and slept warm at last. Next day. Meat and vegetables and bread. Unless you have been hungry, you cannot imagine. Everyone was happy but that ingrate, my brother Leonardo.
“‘What did you do for this captain?’ he said.
“‘Nothing, nothing.’ But he would not believe me. ‘Don�
��t eat,’ I said. ‘Take your money and buy us food.’
“Leonardo was the one with Papà’s bad temper. Stubborn, too. Worse than a mule being forced to plow. That stubbornness has ruined more than one person in my family. More than one. He wanted to hit me, but the woman we lived with stopped him. ‘Let me feed my babies.’
“Leonardo warned me not to speak to the captain again. What did it matter he was younger than me? He was the eldest male, so he was the boss. My job was to cook and clean for all of those boys and do what I was told, no please or thank you. Are you married?”
Vittorio hesitated before shaking his head no.
Anna poked the hem of his pants with her cane. “I suppose your girlfriend washes those pants. Cleans the piss from your toilet.”
“I live with my parents. What happened to the captain?”
The grey-haired woman playing solitaire lifted her voice in a trembling falsetto, sang about the friends she could no longer find. He watched his nonna’s face, watched for a hint of sadness or regret. But she continued in the same matter-of-fact tone.
“One day, when I walked home from visiting a friend in Castello Blanco – or was it Camerina? – the captain passed me in his car. He stopped, got out and took off his hat. His hair…a colour I’d never seen before. Not gold or red, but something of both. He asked my name.
“When I told him, he said, ‘Your name is not Anna; your name is Ninfa, because you remind me of the beautiful nymph at the piazza fountain.’ Yes. He called me his Ninfa.”
“What was he like?”
“You heard it this time. The bell.” Anna started to rise.
The young man looked about. “No one is leaving.” He waved to an attendant, a middle-aged woman pushing a man in a wheelchair. “Is it lunchtime?”
She set the chair’s brake and crossed the space between herself and Anna in three strides. “Well. Such a handsome visitor, Anna.” She beamed at the young man. “Are you a relation?”
Anna thumped her cane. “Lunch is late. Everything around here is late. The staff is incompetent.”
The attendant raised her brows at Vittorio, turned on her heel and marched back to the wheelchair.
Anna scowled. “Do you know why I have to live in this awful place? I am not sick or crazy or too old, like these others. I am here because of the generosity of the state.
“None of my family would take me in when I couldn’t keep myself. This is my reward after a lifetime of sacrifice.
“A bad lot, my brothers. After the war, Alessio went to America and got rich. Has he once thought of me? Would sending me a fur coat kill him? But I didn’t ask for charity from anyone, not even Gina, who should have understood how it was, how I had no one to depend on. No father or mother or husband. The priests were no help. But after I moved in with him, I had all I needed.”
“You moved in with the Nazi captain.”
“Helmer took care of me. He explained who really started the war, and for the first time I knew why we’d suffered, my brothers and I. But they were ashamed of me, although I looked after them. Leonardo threw that name at me. You know the one. I slapped his face. He hit back and dragged me to the floor. There I was, my mouth bleeding and my brothers gathered like I was a dog they would kick to death. Me! The one who kept them alive, protecting them while my sister marched with the Fascists and ate white bread.
“I stood and faced them all. ‘Idiots. The capitano knows you help get food to the partisans. If not for me, you would have been shot a long time ago.’
“Oh that Leonardo, with his red face and Papà’s eyes. He chased me out and threatened to kill me if I came back. And I didn’t go back. All my life people believed my family wouldn’t have me.” The cane struck the floor three times. “No. No. No. I would not have them.”
Voices in the room faltered. The television droned on.
The young man examined his shoes. At last he raised his head. “And Helmer Wolfmann?”
“When they heard the Allies were coming, the army pulled out. I knew he had a wife in Germany. Sì, I knew. Yet I thought he would take me with him. Ah, such a naive girl. But the night before he left, he did give me a wonderful gift.
“Next day, I stood at the window and watched while his driver circled the marble nymph twice. He didn’t look up or wave, and then they were gone. Minutes later I heard the gunfire. The shots that killed my Helmer.
“For every German killed, ten civilians shot. The entire town forced to watch in the piazza. Afterward, everyone blamed me, but what could I have done? Leonardo got his wish and Helmer was dead. But it was only Helmer who could’ve saved Leonardo.
“Gina, too, blamed me after she came home with the Sicilian. I forget his name. Lazy like all Sicilians, but not lazy in bed, gave her seven children. Fell from a bridge and broke his neck. Then she married the butcher’s son, a man with a spine curved like a dog’s. No one wanted me. Not even the cripples.”
Vittorio watched the man on the bench rise and, with faltering steps, pass from sight.
“The bell. You heard it that time.”
People stood. There was a general shuffle toward the door. When Anna hauled herself to her feet, he didn’t offer to help. She stood behind him, leaning on her cane. “There is your personal story. Except for the part where I worked like a slave to raise your mother, sent her to school in Switzerland, far from people who said bastarda behind her back and Nazi whore behind mine.
“And where is she after all my sacrifices? Lives far away, leaves me alone in this place. Won’t speak of me, so my grandson tracks me down?”
“My parents won’t tell me much. I wanted to meet you before – Well.”
“Sì, I’m getting old. Caught me in time, didn’t you? My only grandchild. They kept us apart for twenty-five years.”
“Mamma says you disowned her.”
“She said that? Or was it that Jew who stole her from me?”
And inside Anna’s stomach, the hunger hardened and rose, its uneven edges pressing against her heart. She raised a hand to pull back her words, but she didn’t have the strength to raise her arm, hadn’t had the strength for a long time.
The
Illusion
of Grace
What You Should Know
Here you are, safely sleeping, your hand resting on the sheet as though to keep the pink rabbits from flight. Even at sixteen, Cindy, you prefer bunnies.
All these years of watching, keeping you safe from whatever dangers lurk beyond the walls of our home, and it didn’t occur to me to warn you about yourself. But it certainly should have. I’ve come too close to being the father failure, the non-protector. No one could call me anything but lucky.
Here’s your laptop, green light steady. No point in wasting power, but if I turn the thing off, you’ll go at me in the morning, accuse me of snooping. Could be you have a desktop folder entitled “Ten Reasons Why I Hate My Life” and another one called “Why My Dad’s an Asshole.”
Not too likely you’d stop at ten. Even when you’re not upset, Cindy, you tend to gush. You hate it when I kid you about it. There have been times I tuned you out. But look at me now: thinking before I talk, then speaking like someone reading from a teleprompter.
Of course, I’m a bad father. A bad father is someone who leaves out the important details, recounts only the good. I had a notion that by describing my upbringing on the farm as idyllic, I protected you. Sure there was fun in living with my cousins, Debbie and Sonja. We played on the haystacks, chased the calves, took turns riding the horse. Uncle Al and Aunt Julie nearly succeeded in making me feel like I was one of their own. It wasn’t until I announced my plan to put myself through the university that I saw their relief because, after thirteen years of being responsible for me, they were finally done.
I know you’re proud of my awards, Cindy, that I make good money designing homes for the wealthy. Your mother is the next best thing to a soulmate. She’s intelligent and kind and, until now, we’ve gotten along in a decent fa
shion. Two people comfortable skirting intimate topics, keeping disclosures tucked away behind drawn-out silences.
She claims she noticed something was off about your behaviour, said you seemed glummer and more self-deprecating than usual. I do remember her bringing it up one morning, but it was only a few words while she dressed or did her hair. And I said something flip about the moodiness of teenagers in general and girls in particular. By the time I was on the stairs and headed to the office, I’d forgotten all about it.
Your mother holds this lack of attention against me, claims I block out whatever I don’t want to hear. She said what actually happened was that we sat together in the bedroom and had a ten-minute conversation about you. Forgive me, but I don’t buy this version. I suspect your mother needs to blame me more than she does herself.
Because that’s what parents do when their child attempts suicide. Blame themselves and each other.
“Teenage suicide has become epidemic,” the psychiatrist at the hospital told us. As though, Cindy, you were nothing more than a statistic, which, I suppose, you became in his notes, under the heading Attempted.
“What do you suppose she talks about?”
It could be your mother asking or it could be me, while we wait during one of your sessions with Mrs. Lance. We’re immensely relieved you are talking to someone and that she’s an expert in juvenile depression. Those times we wait, I amble about the room like a man with wooden feet. Your mother and I avert our eyes whenever we’re near each other, afraid of seeing our own fear.
My thoughts creep me out. I imagine you lying stiff in the morgue, a tag on your toe. Or in a coffin surrounded by flower arrangements, your hard cheeks crudely rouged, stuffed toy in your hands. How could I bear it?
If such a gesture wouldn’t wake you, I’d stroke your hair. You have your entire life ahead of you. Why would you want to end it? Haven’t your mother and I made a point of assuring you of our love every single day?
Sweet Life Page 11