Worn Masks

by Phyllis Carito

  Elena wrote more about Giuseppe, now the only living full sibling of her mother. More about the visit to America he took to see his beloved Teresa, and how as a boy he clung to his sister, Teresa, when their mother died, and when Christina first came into the family. He struggled accepting Christina as Momma. The first time Giuseppe spoke badly of Christina, crying for his sister, Papa beat him, but Christina eased his wounds with cool compresses, and promised him she would help him keep close with Teresa.

  But Teresa was angry with her papa, and when she could she left for America. Christina arranged it through their cugina Rosalie Giordano, daughter of Giovanni’s brother, to send Teresa away. “They only meant to help her,” Elena wrote.

  Rosalie kept connected to Teresa with her letters, even after she married into the Maschere family. It was against Papa’s will. Mary Grace wondered how much her mother had answered the letters? She felt uncertain. When she had the translations done of those letters, each time Rosalie questions how is America, tell us about the bambina?

  In Elena’s letter she apologized for her sister, Teresa, and that she had caused the family turmoil, and yet they loved her and always wanted to reconnect with her. Unfortunately, Rosalie had passed away and they had no evidence of letters sent back to her from Teresa. So, maybe Aunt Maggie was right, that her mother didn’t write back to her. But, Elena did confirm that she had written and received letters from Aunt Maggie, written in the years after Uncle Paul had passed away.

  Letters Mary Grace still could not find. And she could not imagine how nervous it must have made Aunt Maggie having these letters come to the house. She would have to get the mail before Teresa, not chance Teresa seeing a letter from Italy with a return address of a Giordano. And later would she even have known her sister Elena’s marriage name? Still, just the fact that Aunt Maggie was getting letters from Italy would have sparked Teresa’s curiosity. Poor Aunt Maggie, hiding, always hiding.

  And why couldn’t Mary Grace recall the visit that Aunt Maggie and Elena seemed to remember so well? Mary Grace felt the Italian words in Elena’s letters were sweet and loving. In a way, for Mary Grace, it made perfect sense that she had no memory of the visit. She learned early it was better not to be engaged, just to be quiet. Not to ask questions. Mary Grace’s mother may have warned her not to bring it up again, and in time it became buried, like everything else.

  Mary Grace was embarrassed, not because she didn’t remember, but because it sounded like her mother had been rude to them, no worse, cruel to her own younger brother and little sister. Mary Grace felt the old anger stirring. She closed her eyes to hold back her emotion, and her fear. Was she like her mother–did she shut everyone out?

  She wrote back to Elena, “Grazie, I am grateful to know all of this. Tell me more about Giuseppe.”

  Elena visited Giuseppe again and together they wrote another letter. Giuseppe was ill and his body was drained from fighting, but his mind was still sharp. He loved his, mia cara, mia sorrella, mia Teresa, mia bella. His descriptions were not of a woman Mary Grace had ever known. “And I still cry, again and again, mia bella, mia sorella, so much she suffered,” wrote Elena for her brother.

  Toward the end of the letter in a shaky hand were his own words, “bambini soffrano i loro genitori.” Mary Grace had an eerie feeling, like somehow Giuseppe knew her, not just her mother, although that was nonsense.

  Was this family? She felt the breath fill her lungs, and she felt her heart thumping against her chest, as if it had just begun to beat for the first time.

  Elena often talked about her husband, Federico, and their eleven-year-old son, Mario. She was so proud of both of them. “I met Federico at university, and my momma supported me telling my papa that she would not lose another daughter. It may have helped that Federico’s family were successful exporters and they knew I would be well taken care of.” She told Mary Grace she had hoped for a second child, a girl, but that was not to be. “No sister, and no daughter.” She then apologized: “Not that my brothers aren’t wonderful, but a girl wants a sister.”

  They arranged to Skype together. There in front of Mary Grace was the beautiful Elena.

  Mary Grace tried to ask Elena why her mother would name her after the twins and yet never tell her about them? Of course, it wasn’t a question Elena could answer. Although, she seemed to understand how it troubled Mary Grace. Elena kindly talked around the question to how difficult it must have been to be so alone in America, to have such a heavy heart. She did admit, “I was so angry with Teresa. Everybody in the house talk about her. Her brothers missed her. And Papa warn me not to misbehave like my sister, Teresa.” Yet, Elena also related that she felt Teresa had led the way for her to break from the family, in a good way. The brothers would always stay close to home, “but I go away to university and then move sud with mia amore, Federico.”

  Mary Grace questioned Elena about all that Giuseppe had said, especially in the end of the letter about something concerning children and parents–and Elena explained it was a saying–bambini soffrano i loro genitori, which explained that it is not the children’s fault that the parent sometimes doesn’t know or understand, and the child suffers because of it. Elena said that Guiseppe had relayed to her that their mother, Elenora, had always told them, Guiseppe and Teresa, that they could be something and they could go to America and have a good life. Teresa had tried to live that but she was so full of anger from her losses she couldn’t find that happiness. Mary Grace shuddered with a strange sense that she knew this already. She had heard the phrase or seen it, or there was something about the putting together of it. It was probably just that she was exhausted from all of this, feeling one moment angry with her mother, and the next sad for her.

  The house was almost ready to put on the market. She sat at the piano, playing the old tunes Aunt Maggie had taught her, and deciding if she should take the piano or sell it along with everything else.

  Finding Home

  Chapter 21

  MARY GRACE’S FEELINGS about seeing Elena, the effort between them each time they would Skype, when they spoke together, half in Italian and half in English, coaxing each other with smiles and pantomime, left her feeling uneasy.

  Was this a resistance to belonging? Was it what her mother could never find, a feeling of belonging in her life in Italy or in America, with either family?

  One night, as Mary Grace became more comfortable to ask questions, she broached the subject of her father again. “Why was your father so against your sister, my mother, marrying my father, just because he was from the south?”

  Elena took a long gulp from a glass of wine before answering. “My father, Giovanni, he couldn’t accept it. There is so much. He had a sorella who had married a man from the south, and it didn’t go well, and then he didn’t want his daughter to do the same. He felt they are not good enough. In the end I do the same, too.”

  Mary Grace could see that for the first time it was Elena who was uncomfortable. She pushed further. “Did he know anything about my father’s family?”

  “It is complicated. We need to talk with Giuseppe again, and maybe you understand more.”

  “What? Does Giuseppe know about my father’s family?” Mary Grace was using the little information that Aunt Maggie had told her. Now she wanted to see what Elena knew about her Uncle Paul.

  Elena hesitated, filling her glass again. “When your mother turned Uncle Giuseppe away when he came to America, he had to find a way to know his beloved Teresa was well, do you capsici?”

  “Yes, it sounds like you all cared very much for her.” The pieces of Mary Grace’s mother’s life story were finally coming together, but how did this part of about her father’s family fit in?

  Elena talked about how Teresa had taken care of her siblings when her mother, Elenora, died. “So much for a young girl, when her mother, and then her dear twins were gone. She couldn’t accept my Momma, Christina.”

  Elena felt that Teresa never forgave herself, although, of cou
rse, there was nothing she could have done to save her mother or the twins. She had sat with the twins through the time of their fevers, and tended to their every need. She was just devastated when they, Maria e Graziella, died.

  Then the rift between her and their papa began and grew. Teresa never forgave him, and he never forgave her, both mad about things they had no control over, sickness and death, and the pain of living.

  Mary Grace felt a new mix of feelings tearing at her. Her mother had loved the twins, but couldn’t love her. Her head was swimming.

  That night she couldn’t sleep, and the next day after work she went to talk to Aunt Maggie, but Aunt Maggie didn’t want to hear about, or didn’t understand, that she had “seen” Elena.

  All she would say was, “We did it for you, Gracie. First Uncle Paul, and then, well, I promised him I wouldn’t let the families lose you too.” Mary Grace realized that Aunt Maggie, like the women Mary Grace had seen in the nursing home previously, was just living now in her own world of memories. Aunt Maggie and Uncle Paul had done their best to give Mary Grace a family and better memories. But, Aunt Maggie couldn’t take on anything more.

  Back at her apartment that night, Mary Grace looked at the painting she had on the wall in her bedroom. It was of the chiesa, the one Uncle Paul had hanging on the wall in his otherwise stark room. The church he had sketched over and over again in his books. Mary Grace couldn’t form the words to explain what it meant to her. The aging ochre stone surrounded by the tall cypress, with the open fields behind it, the church rose large and stately.

  She felt lighted-headed at the sight of it. It was so familiar. She had sat on the floor in the attic room and looked at it so many times. She had gone up to it and run her hands along the lines of the church, the spirals of the trees. Mary Grace felt emotional, what was happening to her?

  Then she realized there was nothing to hide about Uncle Paul, or that she had been in Uncle Paul’s room and had taken the painting of this church from there. She didn’t have to keep any one’s secrets anymore. All the worn masks were being let go.

  Elena sent another letter with photographs she had gotten from Giuseppe, photographs of Uncle Paul when he was in their town before the war.

  Elena explained, “He was Guiseppe’s amico. He cared a great deal about your uncle. He talked about the beautiful pictures that your Uncle Paul would draw. Guiseppe said your uncle loved Caterina and loved you, Maria Graziella, more than anyone else. He wanted you to be happy.”

  Mary Grace felt her breath catch, her eyes filled with tears. Uncle Paul had seen what was happening between Teresa and her. He was watching her more than she knew. Had anyone ever grieved for Uncle Paul, for his losses? Had she ever grieved for Uncle Paul? And, had anyone ever known her so well as he knew her?

  Suddenly Mary Grace remembered. The memory flooded in. Uncle Paul was walking on the avenue with her and she was crying. They were walking away from a girl, a woman, and a strange man with her mother. It was her mother who told Uncle Paul to take Mary Grace home. “Take her out a’ here. No reason for her to know them.” But Mary Grace had wanted to play with the little girl. She had cried. Teresa had lifted her hand in warning toward Mary Grace, but Uncle Paul had circled his arm around her and taken her home.

  Then, Mary Grace remembered Giuseppe. She saw him, young, with a full mustache smiling at her, and holding the hand of the little girl.

  And now she knew that he and Uncle Paul had made a pact, had kept the Giordano family attuned to Mary Grace’s life. Mary Grace felt at once exhilarated and saddened. This was what she had to know, that someone had always watched over her.

  The nursing home had called and suggested she make final plans for Aunt Maggie. Aunt Maggie would be leaving soon. There would be no one left that Mary Grace had lived with, no one who knew her.

  She refused a Skype invitation from Elena. Mary Grace stared at the blank screen for a moment and then went into her room, collapsed on the bed with thoughts of all of the family she had learned about floating now in her head and her heart. Mary Grace was thinking about Uncle Paul and how he led her to all this, but what did it mean now for Mary Grace? After all, wasn’t she her mother’s daughter?

  The movers arrived early and walked around the rooms with Mary Grace. She pointed to the items that she was taking, and those that would stay for the auctioneer who would take the rest, really the bulk of it, to sell. When they got to the living room Mary Grace paused at the piano, she had thought she would take it, but now she had decided to leave it. She had all that she needed to know. She couldn’t live her parents’ lives; she couldn’t connect with families whose memories were not her memories. She told the mover the piano could stay. He pointed at the piano bench. “This too?”

  She hesitated, and then she opened the bench cover. Aunt Maggie’s music books, and the letters! She lifted the thick pile of letters out of the bench, flipped through them, seeing them addressed to Aunt Maggie, and written in what she now recognized as Elena’s handwriting. Mary Grace walked out of the room. She dropped the letters in the garbage can on the way to her car.

  Phyllis Carito was born a Bronx Italian and that sits at the core of who she is and how she expresses herself through her writing. Public libraries opened the doors to her world of reading and writing, and her work experiences have included public and private libraries, media print production, and teaching creative writing. The opportunity to earn an MFA with a writing focus through Manhattanville College cemented her desire as a poet and writer. Her book of poems barely a whisper was released through Finishing Line Press. Other published poems and prose appeared in Passager, Stone Highway Review, Inkwell Review, Vermont Literary Review, Voices in Italian Americana, and Returning Woman. Poems and short stories have been her main focus until this novel. She is currently working on the precision of flash fiction; and putting together a collection of short stories.

  A different version of Chapter 8, “Locked In,” was previously published as “Imprints” in Spring 2016, Voices in Italian Americana literary and cultural review.