Worn Masks

by Phyllis Carito

  Her mother was blotting her red lipstick with a folded tissue. In the vanity mirror Mary Grace watched her finish dressing: straightening the cinched belt on the blue-Swiss-dot dress and slipping on the two-tone pumps.

  “Mommy, what color is your hair?”

  “My hair—a—sale e pepe. Salt and pepper.”

  It was unusual to see her mother out of her housedress and not in one the three black dresses that dominated the closet. There was the old one, for going food shopping, sometimes worn without the black nylons, the good one for Sunday Mass, and the other one for visiting neighbors. They were called mourning clothes and she wore them from two to six months depending on the death—for an entire year when her father died, although they hadn’t spoken in over twenty years. How wonderful it was for Mary Grace to see her in the shiny dress and matching shoes, so beautiful.

  Her mom instructed her: “Are you paying attention? Stop leaning on the bed—you’re wrinkling the bedspread. You mind your manners with Aunt Maggie. Now go downstairs, Maria Graziella. We’ll only be gone a short while.” Then she bent forward and turned her cheek for a kiss from Mary Grace.

  Mary Grace always liked being downstairs. She liked when Aunt Maggie would call up the stairwell, especially after her dad had wandered in late for supper, and the food was cold, and her mom and dad’s voices grew louder.

  “Come down, watch the Lennon Sisters on the Lawrence Welk Show with me.” Mary Grace would scramble past them down the stairs, the sound fading behind her. In Aunt Maggie’s living room their voices from above were muffled. Together they would listen to the music as Aunt Maggie hummed along to the songs.

  Later her mom’s raspy voice called down, “Maria Graziella, come up and get ready for bed.”

  Mary Grace turned from the window to face her mother. “I can’t do this. I just can’t do this.” She left the room. Like a mantra on the way to the elevator, down, out, and into her car: I have to remember that I am Gracie. I got away, and I made my life. I won’t let her interrupt my life.

  Broken Bones

  Chapter 10

  BLINKING, MARY GRACE reached for the receiver, and tried to adjust her eyes in the semi-dark to the iridescent digital number. She fell back against the pillow. “Shit, the nursing home. What pill can’t they give her today?”

  “Is this Maria Graziella? Your mom . . .” Had she heard correctly, had her mother called Mary Grace? To be woken by that name, the one only she used? Mary Grace shook her head and tried to focus on the voice, quiet with a distinct Indian accent. “Sorry, she has been brought to hospital . . .”

  They were deliberating about surgery for her smashed hip. She had slipped out of their arms when they moved her from the shower harness back into her wheelchair. She had jerked, she had twisted away from them . . . she had tried to get away?

  There were concerns about doing surgery, concerns about not doing surgery.

  Mary Grace was saying to herself, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And the next line should be: unless they come from my mother!

  How many times had Mary Grace stood in her mother’s shadow, in a store, at school, people trying to ask her a question and she wanted to answer, but her mother would take a half-step forward and into her, the perfect block, and then decide. “She’ll take this blouse” or “No, no, she no want to play sport.”

  Mary Grace tried to breathe. I was a child then. But, what of when Dad was dying and the doctor asked her if he had a living will or a health proxy and Mary Grace knew exactly what these were and began to say she would try to talk with him. Her mother pushed her, literally pushed her aside, saying, “Ahh, no paper, I am telling, I am the wife.” Mary Grace knew her mother had no idea what they were talking about, and she tried to say it was about her father’s choices. Her mother’s look alone pierced her and she crumbled as if she were twelve again.

  Now Mary Grace couldn’t get clear in her head that she had to make this decision for her mother, who had never allowed her to decide anything. Who could she call? Aunt Maggie? Yet, somehow she knew it was important for her to make this decision, not Aunt Maggie, not anyone else. Her mother was a master of sayings, which came out at the worst times, when Mary Grace wasn’t helped by a cliché answer whose purpose was to suppress her reaction to something. Words that had hurt her many more times than the pain of broken bones, that slipped under her skin and irritated like a rash gone wild. Words that scarred.

  She continued to replay the phrase, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me, to think about its irony. She realized she had suppressed words all her life. How many times had she just wanted to say she hated her mother? How often had she resisted asking questions about their miserable marriage? What about her mother’s family, known by letters written in a foreign tongue, addressed in fancy script to Signora Teresa Giordano Maschere? Letters Mary Grace didn’t know if her mother answered.

  Broken bones happen to the body, the skeleton of our existence, but where do the words reside—in our hearts, our minds, and our reach to the rest of humankind?

  After the broken hip there was a stroke, after the stroke, congestive heart failure, not once but three times. Each time her mom receded deeper into the shell of her body until it completely shut down.

  Back in Time

  Chapter 11

  AUNT MAGGIE COULDN’T climb the stairs very well, her knees knotted with arthritis. “Honey, you’ll have to go through everything yourself.”

  She could just hire someone to pack the boxes, get rid of clothes, and phone the Salvation Army for the furniture, but Mary Grace couldn’t stop thinking about the neighbor who had come over to her at the funeral. “It was so difficult for your Aunt dealing with your mother. But now she has to be alone.” Mary Grace had an eerie feeling herself, an unsettled lingering where she thought she’d have relief. She convinced herself that since she was here she might as well clean out all those years of stuff left by her parents. Plus, she was worried about Aunt Maggie. She could see now how she had aged. She seemed frail and sad. Wouldn’t it be liberating to not have to deal with her sister-in-law anymore?

  Although she had avoided the nursing home, Mary Grace spent a lot of time at the house going through one bureau, one box, at a time. Each took so long. What did any of it mean? Why did her mom save what she had? Was there a reason why no one talked about Uncle Paul? Was the box still in the attic? Mary Grace only wanted to go back to the sense of quiet and peace in that attic room.

  Still, she was dutiful, completing her tasks, canceling prescriptions, filling out insurance forms, packing jewelry and a few other things she felt, for some unknown reason, she couldn’t dispose of yet. There were few relatives to contact or send thank you notes to, and fortunately Aunt Maggie took care of them.

  In the evenings she sat with Aunt Maggie and worked from her computer while Aunt Maggie watched television and nodded off in the chair. But, Aunt Maggie also tried to have a conversation with Mary Grace about her mother’s family. “There is her family and they should know.” Mary Grace was tired of it. She just wanted the distraction of the manuscripts she had brought from work.

  At one point Aunt Maggie took her fingers and tried to gently lift Mary Grace’s eyes to her, with slight pressure of her fingers under Mary Grace’s chin, like she had done to her sometimes as a child, but Mary Grace turned her head and said, “Oh, it’s been a long, long time since she was in touch with them. Just let it go, Aunt Maggie.”

  Did Mary Grace care at all about her mother’s life? She just wanted all of this to be finished. She hoped now even the dreams would fade away.

  Had Mary Grace lost compassion for every one? Now she felt herself turning away from Aunt Maggie. Mary Grace always had mixed feelings where her father was concerned, but she could not be mad at him, only feel bad about him, that she couldn’t understand well enough what ever drew him to her mother.

  Why would she go through this now? She wasn’t a child. It is over! Do
ne. Why should I care?

  Mary Grace knew people thought her odd, living alone in her third floor walk-up apartment, never being friendly, and never accepting invitations from people from work or her neighbors. If you asked her landlady she would shrug her shoulders and have nothing more to say than, “She pays the rent, doesn’t bother no one, doesn’t ask for nothing.”

  Mary Grace liked it that way. It kept everyone away from her. And she had her own secrets. Men had come and gone, because she had so little to give them. Visits with Aunt Maggie had persisted over the years, but always away from the house. How absurd to meet her around the corner by the bakery to take her to lunch, and take her shopping.

  “When you drop me off, maybe just say hello to her?” Aunt Maggie would ask.

  “No. I’ll drop you at the corner. Her bills are paid. I have no reason to see her.” Mary Grace hadn’t thought she could handle going to the house. It brought up so much anger in her.

  Why was she reliving all this–maybe it was normal grieving. But, what had ever been normal about Mary Grace and her mother? Maybe Mary Grace would always suffer from her mother’s ways–the threat of the wooden spoon instead of the hug.

  The next day Aunt Maggie called her downstairs, handed her a tin with keys, instructing: “This one is for the closet downstairs, this, the tin box in the pantry, and this,” she hesitated, “the trunk in the attic.” Mary Grace realized that death permeates our heads. Now, Aunt Maggie was trying to be prepared. It struck Mary Grace then, that once they were all gone she would never know any more about them. All the times as a child she thought she wanted to know. Did she still want to?

  Mary Grace exposed her own past. “I found Uncle Paul’s box years ago.”

  Aunt Maggie turned pale, unsteady, and then shook her head no, patted Mary Grace’s cheek, and hobbled in the living room saying, “It is time. We were not to tell, never to speak a word. Please try to understand. Only you, Gracie. That is all that mattered.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mary Grace felt overwhelmed. She thought, Fear has paralyzed us, our entire lives, but why? Aunt Maggie had been a jittery woman, hiding on her porch, and always disappearing behind her brothers’ lives. While Mary Grace’s mother had hidden in her bedroom with the curtains drawn. Was Mary Grace hiding, too? Secrets and lies and living behind worn masks.

  Mary Grace chastised herself: I’m not going to know until I confront it. Do I want to end up like either of them? Yet, wouldn’t it be easier to just leave the childhood baggage behind and live my own life?

  Then, like every conversation in her head it circled back to her. “Why couldn’t my mother just . . . ?”

  Children are to be seen and not heard. That’s why, Maria Graziella.

  Part II

  Aunt Maggie

  Chapter 12

  MARY GRACE HAD regularly visited Aunt Maggie at the house after her mother was gone, and now she often visited her in the nursing home. Aunt Maggie had been moved there not long after Mary Grace’s mom died. Aunt Maggie had first become agitated and nervous, and then began hearing people in the ceiling talking to her in Italian, telling her they knew her secret, and she had cried out, “Basta, basta cosi!” She had had enough. She couldn’t take it anymore. Aunt Maggie sat by the steps to the cellar with a broom because she swore the man with the slouch hat had come back and that he was down there in the cellar, with Camille, a girl from up the street, hiding behind the furnace. Aunt Maggie wasn’t eating or taking her medicine. She must have developed dementia. She had no training for being an independent woman after everyone was gone from the family home.

  Mary Grace resigned herself that she would have to spend her weekends going through Aunt Maggie’s apartment, the cellar, and attic, and put the house on the market.

  On visits to the nursing home Aunt Maggie kept bringing up her mother’s family again. “Mary Grace you have to talk with them.” Mary Grace was fighting voices of her own in her head as she toted around the backpack that held all her family papers straining her shoulder. She had searched through every piece of paper in the house where her dad and mom had lived for thirty-four years, and then her mom had lived alone for twelve years after that. None of it directly helped her know who her mother was any better, or why Aunt Maggie suddenly felt her niece had to know about her mother. Mary Grace had no expectations to find anything useful in Aunt Maggie’s part of the house. Yet, Mary Grace was becoming interested to connect the missing links. Aunt Maggie must know something. Maybe she could help her. Then Mary Grace got the call from the nursing home.

  They were requesting a meeting with Mary Grace, and it had to be during the week, another afternoon taken off from work, but for Aunt Maggie’s sake Mary Grace made the appointment. She assumed Aunt Maggie had been experiencing a normal dementia of aging. Mary Grace was so surprised to hear that the nursing home had Aunt Maggie seeing a psychologist.

  The psychologist seemed fresh out of graduate school to Mary Grace. She played the part beautifully, with her stickpin skirt and tailored shirt, her hair tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck. “The nursing staff has been reporting odd behavior in the interactions that your Aunt Maggie is having with other residents.” She slowly mouthed each word. “It would seem your aunt is blocking the way when a male resident comes down the hall. She is pushing men away from other women in the sitting area.”

  Mary Grace questioned, “Are you sure my aunt is doing that? That wouldn’t be Aunt Maggie.”

  The psychologist continued. “I wanted to talk to you about what we believe is the cause of this aggressive behavior. Maggie has revealed an incident that may have left her with detrimental feelings all of her life.”

  Mary Grace resisted laughing and saying that “Aunt Maggie didn’t have a life.”

  The psychologist had an aide bring in Aunt Maggie. Then the psychologist began to relay the story that Aunt Maggie had revealed to her earlier that week, adding every few words, “Is that so Maggie?” And Aunt Maggie, chin tucked into her chest, nodded. Mary Grace heard the words but couldn’t connect them with Aunt Maggie. A man, a man who the family knew as a friend, had abducted her when she was twelve years old on her way back from getting bread at the bakery up on the avenue. She had wanted this chore, this show of her being a big girl. It wasn’t her fault, but he had ruined her.

  All the years Mary Grace had just tagged Aunt Maggie as a typical old maid, the child who stays at home to take care of aging parents. Mary Grace had not thought past that. Thinking about it now, she had admired Aunt Maggie in photographs, her classic 1930s movie star look, strong cheek bones, full lips over a wide smile of straight teeth, a curvy figure with shoulder pad full shoulders, ample breasts proportionate to her waist and hips, ending with long dancing starlet legs. Why wouldn’t she have had suitors?

  It seemed none of that mattered. It was not that there had been no suitors good enough for her. “She believes the event ruined her. Do you understand? A girl, who was defiled had to stay in the house, was not longer a candidate for a gentleman. She had to take care of her parents, and over the years watch her brothers live their full lives.”

  “What?” Mary Grace’s mind was flooding with thoughts about interactions over the years. “How could this be? No one knew. No one helped her.” Mary Grace’s voice trailed off. This was horrendous. Was it any wonder Aunt Maggie was screaming in her actions about what she had never before even whispered.

  Mary Grace just couldn’t believe it. She pushed back. “Could it be some random dementia and not that she is really recalling pieces of some horrid past event?”

  “Your aunt does not have dementia.” That was that. The nursing home had informed her. Sitting across from Aunt Maggie, Mary Grace cupped Aunt Maggie’s arthritic hands in her hands. They sat quiet in the late afternoon light coming through the slats of the blind in her room. Is this what had happened, some unspeakable life event, to the women Mary Grace had seen when her mom was in the nursing home, women locked in to memories ingrained in thei
r minds, where their lives had walked off a cliff?

  Mary Grace took the house keys from her car, and back at the house tried to find some hints to what Aunt Maggie was talking about. How many times had this man come to the house? Had Mary Grace ever met him—an old man with amnesia for his violent behaviors—or still smiles for little girls?

  Mary Grace decided to take to the nursing home the black-and-white photographs she found in the tin box in the pantry. Although when she showed them to Aunt Maggie, her aunt could hardly make out most of the people–the combination of her macular degeneration, and how the photographs had faded to grey—Mary Grace described them. “ . . . many people sitting around a table in the cellar, a party, maybe it was my father’s birthday? Who would be there? There are men standing together.” Mary Grace hesitated. “Was he there?”

  The Aunt Maggie she knew so well, eyes and head down, averting everything, asked, “Is there a chicken on the table?”

  “Yes, I guess, there is a big dish with what could be pieces of chicken over pasta–was that polla alla cacciatora?”

  “My momma would put on her gremiule da macellaio, a butcher’s apron, take the big knife, and go into the backyard. I’d watch from the window as the chickens scurried. They knew she was there to take one of them. She wasn’t wearing her gremiule da cuoco, cooking apron, held up full with feed in it for them. Momma was fast as she bent over to snatch one. Then with one quick twist she’d wring the chicken’s neck. The head would flop over, but the feet would still be shuddering.” Aunt Maggie’s shoulders were trembling as she said this. “She’d grab the pot, place it next to the chopping block. I could never watch the rest.”

  “Who else came to the party, Aunt Maggie?”