by Tony Romano
“Welcome home, Nicholas,” Victoria crooned.
Angela Rosa glanced at the door to see if it was closed. This is how we will live, she thought, checking doors, speaking in hushed breaths. At least for a while.
Victoria finished her feeding and handed Nicholas to her mother. After each feeding she had to remain immobile for a minute or two until the pain in her nipples subsided. Mama told her that each day the pain would become less severe, but she hadn’t noticed any signs of that yet. She’d endure this, along with the birthing pains in her pelvis, which were healing, because she had to. But she didn’t think she could endure Lupa’s shrill cackle for another day. Her voice carried from the far reaches of the apartment to the bedroom like a scratchy toy trumpet. Fortunately, Lupa would depart soon—she made it abundantly clear she wanted to get back to her house—but this was small consolation because Victoria knew she’d be visiting more frequently now to see Nicholas, her favorite because she’d been there from the start. And Lupa would pretend not to despise Victoria because they had this secret between them now. Lupa would whisper—Victoria could hear it now and feel the dryness of Lupa’s breaths—and her aunt would offer conspiratorial winks to remind Victoria of the link they’d forged. Victoria felt weak to her stomach; she knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid these sweet and severe endearments.
A few minutes passed and she and her mother slid back to the living room, Victoria thinking they’d need to be more discreet about disappearing together like this. And she hoped no one would detect the yeasty scent of milk on her.
Uncle Vince got to his feet, preparing to leave so he could drop off Lupa at home and return to open the store. But Lupa didn’t move. She talked about the deep well outside the farmhouse. She looked at her sister and without pausing for breath said in Italian, “Every morning, I was telling them, every morning I would bring in six or seven pails of water and the water would be gone by noon, what with soup and washing—”
“Lupa,” Vince pleaded.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Lupa said. “Let me look at him once more, this beautiful baby. Where will he sleep, this little one? All the bedrooms are taken here. Let me take him with me.”
Victoria’s heart jumped.
Vince and Agostino exchanged glances. The apartment, they knew, wasn’t as full as the women thought.
“Where is Santo?” Angela Rosa asked.
Vince moved to the door, waving Lupa on. “We go, eh?”
“Let me put him down to sleep,” Lupa insisted. “Five minutes. If I can’t have him, I can at least put him down. Then we will go.”
“Please. We go now, eh?”
Lupa pried the baby from her sister’s arms. “Where will he sleep? Show me.”
They all looked at one another. No one wanted to mention Benito’s crib, stored away in the cellar shortly before he’d gotten sick, nor his room, buried with tawdry trinkets. And Agostino wouldn’t volunteer Santo’s bare room. Not yet.
Victoria broke in. “I’ll make a temporary bed for him on your floor, Mama. We’ll borrow a bassinet from Irene next door later.”
“Good,” Angela Rosa said. “You make good…girl.”
For a second, Victoria yearned to hear that she’d make a good mother, it’s what Mama wanted to say, but she let that yearning pass. It would do her no good to dwell on those kinds of thoughts.
In Mama’s room she found a quilt, laid the quilt on the floor, and spread white linen over it. My old life is over, she thought. She would be a mother to this child, but she would be no mother at all. Her life would be nothing more than play-acting, one exclusive role, day after day, with no one to guide her.
Lupa brought the baby in and placed him on his makeshift bed. She kissed him three times, patted Victoria on the back of her head, spouted off hurriedly about the wisdom of keeping secrets, then left. Victoria watched her go out, she wanted to savor her leaving, and sighed deeply when those broad shoulders disappeared from her sight. She remained crouched on the floor, her legs tucked under her, studying Nicholas. She wanted to savor this, too, these quiet moments alone with her son when it didn’t matter what anyone called her. Another thought occurred to her then, a new thought: this secret would also rob Mama of her role as grandma, a title she knew her mother would have worn well.
Later that night, alone in their bedroom, Agostino tried to console Angela Rosa over Santo’s leaving. Sitting there on the bed, his arm around her, her skin cool against his own, he felt he’d gotten his wife back finally. She’d moved away from him and toward another, thinking it would alleviate her grief maybe, then traveled back to her motherland, separated herself from Agostino as she had to, but now she was back. He’d welcome her and this baby and teach himself how to forgive. And through his actions each day, he’d ask Angela Rosa for her forgiveness. They could begin anew, he thought.
As for Santo, he couldn’t bear to look at him. Dozens of women to choose from—girls were always interested in Santo—and he had to pursue this one. Agostino would never understand this betrayal.
He handed her another tissue.
“He’s nearly twenty,” he told her. “He was ready.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well…”
“But why so suddenly?”
“Young people today.”
“He didn’t leave an address? A phone number?”
“Yes yes. Vince has it all. He said he would come by after you arrived. You will see him tomorrow. I am sure of it. There’s no need to cry anymore. Leaving is natural. You were younger than he is when you left your mother.”
She glanced up at him and their eyes held, both of them recalling their first days together, awkward and thrilling. He pulled her in and took her hand. Sitting on the edge of the bed like that, leaning into each other, they could have been sixteen again, innocent and hopeful.
“Promise me one thing,” he said. He gripped her hand. “Promise you won’t leave again.”
She forced a smile and nodded.
“You promise?”
“I do.”
“Never again.”
“Yes.”
“And I will not—” Agostino said. “Never.”
And then they made love again, only the second time since Benito’s death, taking their time, exploring with slow touches, giving in to each other like waves into a shore, their sins laid bare and silent before them and beginning to recede.
Three weeks home and she had to tell someone. How could she keep this any longer? After feeding Nicholas and swaddling him—the very word made Victoria ache with delight—and placing him in his crib for what she hoped would be until midnight, she ambled down the block on this Friday evening in July to find Darlene, already feeling with each step that she should get back. She brought along a photo of Nicholas, but—unlike Father Ernie, who immediately recognized the mother in this boy but who remained staunchly silent about it—Darlene detected nothing. And when Darlene realized that Nicholas did not automatically evoke in Vicki painful memories of Benito, she seemed almost wholly disinterested—Nicholas was simply another of Vicki’s brothers—and wanted to resume their quests for cigarettes and a car for the night. They made their way to St. Anthony’s and sat on the school steps.
Cigarettes. Cars. Pushing curfew. How could any of this have mattered? Despondent, Victoria claimed she had to get back and nearly managed to break free but couldn’t stem the hot tears, which sprang forth with little warning lately. Darlene took hold of her arm and pulled her back to the stairs, apologizing for saying the wrong thing, for not asking what was wrong because she knew, she could see, but was afraid since there hadn’t been any letters or calls.
Victoria saw the hurt in her friend’s eyes. “I could have written. You’re right. I had time. I know what it’s like to be waiting for a letter. I’m sorry. It feels like—like my life’s been on hold for a while.”
Later, thinking back on the next few moments, Victoria wondered why she’d told her friend anything at all. Victoria didn’t
want entrance back into her old life. She wasn’t seeking pity, nor did she feel she owed Darlene for not having written. Even the release she yearned for, the unburdening that talking would bring, would turn out to be short-lived. What she wanted most, she admitted to herself during dark moments, was a display of common human frailty from her friend, Darlene taking Victoria’s solemn secret and trusting another with it, the truth spreading until Victoria could no longer defend the lie. She’d already relinquished her desires; why not let others continue to forge out her future? Darlene, however, would remain faithful to her promise, perhaps less out of loyalty than pity, for when Victoria told her about labor in the cold farmhouse, Darlene looked like she’d been stabbed, remaining rapt, stifling any shock she might have felt until Victoria told her of the manufactured birth certificate. Darlene’s sudden outrage caused Victoria to view the last few months again from her old defiant self. How calculated they were, Mama and Lupa. How resourceful.
To her surprise, Victoria found herself defending them. She could have resisted, she told Darlene. She could have howled until Lupa had given in, for Lupa was the key architect of the plan, she suspected. But, and she spoke now with measured calm because she needed Darlene to soften, she had to ask herself a simple question: What would be best for my son? She wasn’t sure how to answer this but felt certain that bringing Nicholas home as her son would serve only her own desires. Victoria could barely acknowledge, even to herself, the other selfish thoughts, the ones Darlene in fact might understand; that is, if she didn’t have a son she might be able to recapture seventeen again, though that no longer held much appeal to her at this instant. And what a gift for her mother, another boy to care for, after all she’d been through. “I only want what’s best for my son,” she kept insisting between tears, more to herself, as Darlene, brushing her back in wide circles, tried to comfort her.
Angela Rosa needed to set things right. They’d been home three weeks, and other than the middle-of-the-night feedings when she’d often sit with Victoria, taking delight in how she gazed upon her son, they’d had no time alone together. She waited now before the black screen of the television for Victoria to return from her walk. Every few minutes she sauntered to Santo’s old room and remained rooted there until she could hear Nicholas breathing. Was there a more beautiful sound? she wondered.
An hour later, Agostino still at the store and the boys helping there tonight as well, Angela Rosa barely heard Victoria pad in from the back porch.
“Sit,” Angela Rosa said.
“Let me just check on him.”
She listened to her daughter’s fading footsteps, the slight creak as she neared the bedroom, the movement toward the kitchen, the clink of a glass, the faucet, the sweet sound of her daughter’s steps returning to her.
“Why so dark in here?”
The only illumination filling the apartment came from the overhead bulb on the porch that spilled its weak rays inside, the night-light in the kitchen, and the table lamp on a stand in the living room, where they sat.
“Where you go tonight?” Angela Rosa had to check her annoyance. She’d been waiting over an hour for what she expected would be a short walk.
“I ran into Darlene.”
Still the short answers. Still the resentment.
Angela Rosa had never learned how to subtly broach difficult matters—she bluntly announced the concerns that weighed on her—but now she found herself asking about feedings and the next doctor appointment, insisting they try to find someone closer. Finally, she turned and said, “Victoria—” She thought she’d attempt English, but she couldn’t find the words. In her own tongue she said, “You have suffered. I see that plainly. And when I see you like this, I suffer, too. In my head, I tell myself—I hope—that if I suffer I will swallow yours.”
She looked away from her daughter and down at her hands and said in English, “I make shame.”
They let this thought settle for a while, the July street sounds blanketing them.
“I’m not suffering, Mama.”
“I no believe.”
“I’m just—sad, I guess.”
“Sad.”
“I was reading about it. In the paper. Sometimes women become sad after a baby.”
Angela Rosa nodded. “I rememb.”
Her daughter’s gaze swept from the television to the carpet to the end of the apartment, as if deciding, then she finally asked, with clear reluctance, “Shame for—why shame, Mama?”
“In this house,” she began. She took in the apartment, waving her hands as if to curse these rooms. “Nobody make—nobody tell—everyone make hush-hush. Penso che, maybe better if we tell”—she faced her daughter and whispered hoarsely—“maybe better if we tell everything.”
Victoria began to weep, she wept all the time, so Angela Rosa crept closer and took her hand, began to stroke her hair.
“Papa è Santo. They no talk. Nobody say to me this. But I know.” Angela Rosa had to suppress her own weeping now. “Pero,” she said. “Non voi lo stesso per tu and me.” I don’t want the same to happen to us. “Right now. Every day. I regret. You believe? I regret. But no more. I do what my daughter want. I mean.” She cradled Victoria’s chin in her palm. “I do what you want. You want I tell everything? We tell.”
Angela Rosa had intended to make some grand gesture to bring them closer, but she hadn’t planned on going this far. But that no longer mattered. Nothing else mattered. She would find a way to honor her daughter’s wishes. “Tell me how you want,” she said.
“I want what’s best for Nicholas.”
Angela Rosa nodded in agreement.
“How? How you make best? For you, too.”
“I don’t care about me.”
“No no no.”
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking, Mama. I don’t know if this makes sense. But right now, it doesn’t matter who knows the truth about any of this. The whole world could know. The whole world could not know. Either way, Nicholas still gets fed and held and loved. If I wake up tomorrow and decide this is too complicated and my son is worse off because of—because of what we say or don’t say in this apartment, well then…I’ll do what I need to do. For my son.”
The world was harsh, so Angela Rosa had always demanded much of her children, especially Victoria. One day they would have to get along on their own. But she realized with stark suddenness that Victoria no longer needed her. For the first time, she viewed her daughter as another woman, as a mother. To take that from her—
There was another concern weighing on her, unspoken and lurking in the cellar of her thoughts, the chance that Nicholas was her daughter’s blessed offering, compensation for her great loss, their loss. She recalled that last night, waiting for the doctor, clutching her baby, though she couldn’t bear to utter his name now, she couldn’t bring herself to talk of such matters.
“Please, what you want—” she said. “Figlia bella, I give you what you want.”
Victoria bent down as if to kiss her mother’s hand, but merely squeezed it, tightening her grip. “I want to be godmother,” she said. “Tonight, this is what I want. To be godmother to my son.”
October 1978
NICHOLAS PECCATORI
I gaze out my bedroom window, and I can’t stop thinking how Mama’s death brought us all together for a while. Just before she passed on, exactly a year ago, the dining room on Superior Street was teeming with Mama’s friends and neighbors and a handful of old coworkers from the factory who wanted to say their last good-byes. I’m not sure who told them to come, but they brought casseroles and soup and pasta and pies and other dishes I didn’t recognize and couldn’t pronounce. Mama was miraculously lucid that night, as if she knew this would be her last time with them. She wanted them all to believe that no one else was more important to her at the moment of their good-byes. She fixed her gaze on them and smiled placidly, intent on putting them at ease.
They wouldn’t have guessed that weeks before she’d been coughing up bla
ck tarlike phlegm, the sight of which upset her more than the pain. She trudged around the apartment with a towel, hunched over with her wheezing, the rattling cough tearing her apart inside. She’d gone to the doctor a few times, but when he sent her for X-rays and they told her she had a tumor lodged beside her vena cava, she refused to go back. The matter was out of the doctor’s hands.
Papa’s health began failing, too, for a while, as if he yearned to take her place. But it wasn’t his time. He finally realized, I think, that she needed him. Pale as he was, he put aside his own ailments and followed her around the apartment collecting towels, telling her stories about the old country, as if he were courting her. He even found the strength to finally clear Benito’s room of his clutter, as if to restore for everyone the pure memory of Benito’s short time with them, hauling boxes to the basement, insisting that no one else help him. Mama was too sick to appreciate much of this, but there were moments when her eyes would glaze over and I could look at her without turning away, and I imagined her off somewhere on her mother’s lap or feeding a mountain goat or in a green field running on little-girl legs. I wanted to ask her where she was. But her reverie wouldn’t last, and she’d begin to yell at Papa. I can’t have two minutes alone, she’d say. Just go make me some chamomile tea. He ignored the yelling and made the tea. The apartment smelled constantly of chamomile. He couldn’t have seen that she was pushing him away because she worried about him, how he’d get along without her.
After the last of the visitors left, some of them bellowing out final farewells on the stairwell as they descended—Angela Rosa, we will pick tomatoes in the summer—others wailing uncontrollably, I wanted to pull them back in. It seemed that as long as they were there filling the apartment, Mama would continue to breathe and smile and utter her small instructions to all of us. We would have done anything she asked. But her friends did leave, the last of their voices sealed away, it seemed, in that stairwell, and then only the family was left. Papa, Uncle Vince, Aunt Lupa, Santo, Vicki and her husband, Anthony, Freddy and his wife, and me. An odd silence descended upon the apartment after the door closed on the last visitor. We paced around, we gazed at the trail of food, bowls and dishes on every table, we stole furtive glances at one another, maybe looking for someone’s lead, we picked up napkins off the floor, we did everything but look at Mama. We wanted her to rest, she needed to rest, but more than anything, we wanted to preserve a semblance of normalcy for a few moments. We didn’t want to admit that there was a hospital bed in the middle of the living room, where Mama had lived for the past week. She’d fought the idea of the bed at first, but when she barely had the strength to sit up anymore, we pushed aside the chairs and the sofas and placed the bed in a spot where she could see everyone.