I leaned over the old man’s shoulder and pointed to the headline about the plant workers. “With so many sick, somebody must need help. Somebody who isn’t convinced I’m getting married. Unless you’ve already taken out an advertisement setting the date.”
“The Lattanzis will need you.”
Yes, the Lattanzis were still alive. Sneezing. Hacking. Rasping so much I could use them as sandpaper. But alive. “I will check on them before I leave.”
Every wrinkle on the old man’s face tightened. He shoved his newspaper aside. “The children need more than a minute of your time. Children must always be watched, with careful and constant attention. What will you do when you have your own?”
“You can’t order me around. You are not my father. They are not my children. I cannot spend hours every day cleaning their messes. They are not my responsibility.”
“No. They are your moral imperative.”
I wasn’t sure what a moral imperative was. Something the nuns would make us do whether we wanted to or not was my guess. “I have to find work.”
“There is plenty of work at the Lattanzis’.”
I showed him my apron, stained, my fingertips, raw, my palms, cracked and coarse and smelling of carbolic. “I have been working. I will not be trapped by ancient superstitions, boxed in by old-fashioned customs. This is America.” I tapped my temple. “Only modern thinking.”
He rose, put on his coat, and slapped his hat on his head. “Fine, then I will leave you to your modern thoughts.” He nudged a leather satchel by the door. “Young Carlo forgot this the other day. He is coming to pick it up and deliver another. Perhaps you could find it in your modern heart to speak to him with at least the respect you would reserve for a dog.”
“I won’t be here when he arrives. I have things to do.”
“What could you possibly have to do? You, a modern woman with no responsibility to your neighbors, to your benefactor, to your culture.”
Did I answer? No. But only because the old man slammed the door after him.
I switched off the gas, threw on some clothes, and headed out. I was in no mood for tea.
The pregnant girl stood on the second-floor landing, clutching the rail, her face pinched. Sweat beaded over her upper lip.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m melting. The paper claims today’s weather is cool and breezy.” She swiped at her forehead. “The person who writes the report never gets it right. He should just look out the window.”
I poked in my coat pocket for a handkerchief to give her. It exited with a cloud of verbena.
She pulled a twig out of my hair. “I see the don is making sure to protect you, too.”
“He stuffed all my pockets.”
“Leave it. If you clean them out, he’ll only put in more.” The pregnant girl was still in a bathrobe, belted carelessly over the bulge under her nightgown. She pulled it more modestly around her and peered up the stairs.
“He’s not home. He had a load of moral imperatives he needed to deliver.”
“Oh dear. Sounds like you and the don had a fight.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Not about Carlo, I hope.”
“Why do men think a woman alone is a problem that needs to be solved?”
“Because a man alone is helpless.” She rubbed at her neck, then shook the hem of her nightgown. “I can’t sit in there any longer. Every window is open, but it still feels like I’m standing in a vat of tomato gravy. I’m desperate for a breeze. I was going to open the door to the street.”
I imitated the tailor’s wife’s key ring jangling. “The signora wouldn’t like that.”
“The signora won’t care. She keeps a key in the flowerpot beside the stoop and another wedged between the casement and the brick. You never noticed? Never mind. We’ll have tea. So long as you’re not in a hurry. The water’s taking forever to boil.”
She patted her hair and cocked her head in an appraising way, then reached for my braid and twisted it in her fist. She leaned forward, awkward around the baby’s bulk, and looped the twist behind my head. She pulled a couple of pins from her chignon. “Take off your hat and turn around.”
I did so, her attention sweeping my grumpiness to the side.
She fixed the braided loop into a loose bun and secured it with the pins. Her touch tingled against my scalp. She took me by the shoulders, turning them until I faced her, then set my hat back into place. “There. Now you look like one of those typewriter ladies.”
I touched the braided bundle, feeling the need to stand taller, put my shoulders back, to counterbalance the new weight.
The pregnant girl shrugged out of her robe. “Tell you what. Forget the tea. Forget everything. Give me a minute to get dressed. We’ll show off your new style to the world.” She took my arm. “Walk with me.”
Oh how I wanted exactly that, to wander the market, arm in arm, friends forever. With her by my side, the shopkeepers might not be so quick to refuse me, ashamed to appear petty in front of such a gentle soul, but . . .
“The doctor said you should stay inside.” Something about pregnant women being more susceptible to the sickness.
She laid a hand over the bulge. “He also said exercise might help this little guy along. Honestly, if he gets any bigger, I’ll pop.”
Did babies grow in the bubble world? Did anything? I didn’t know. I glanced to my fingernails—they seemed the same length as the day before, and the day before that. “Why do you think you’re having a boy?”
Her mouth compressed and her eyebrows lifted, like my question surprised her, like nobody had ever asked her that. “I’m not sure. Nicco always talks about the baby like it’s a boy. ‘Sloppy and sticky and full of mozzarella,’ he says. I guess he worries about a girl. Worries she’ll break. Men always think boys are tough.”
Tough. I thought of my brothers, fighting with the Italians. Maybe that’s why men liked to send other men to war. Because then the war won’t worry them. I glanced to the bottom of the stairs, to the Lattanzis’ door. “The boys will be hungry.”
“I left bread for them this morning.”
Alarm zigzagged between my shoulder blades. “You talked to the children?”
“The older one. He’s a scamp. He opened the door a crack, told me you said he couldn’t talk to me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t leave butter or jam if I had any. They’ll be fine for a quarter hour.”
Two Fioras debated her invitation, the Fiora who wanted to be like everyone else and walk with her friend in the open and the other Fiora who worried doing so might bring danger upon that friend.
But . . . fingernails didn’t grow. Germs probably didn’t either. “Don’t forget your coat.”
“In this heat?”
The front door opened. In stepped the young shoemaker. My good mood went glum. The pregnant girl pushed me forward. She retreated to her apartment. “Don’t wait for me,” she said, loud enough for him to hear. “I forgot something.” Her latch clicked. Firm. Final.
Carlo gazed at me for at least a dozen of those lengthy intervals which now passed for seconds in our cramped and stagnant little world. He slid his cap off his head and fell to one knee. “Excuse my bad manners, signorina, but, to see you, standing at the railing like Giulietta . . . I am overcome.”
I glanced at the pregnant girl’s door, aware no power on heaven or earth would open it while Young Carlo, once so blessedly absent and errand-running, waited below. I descended the rest of the stairs through space thick as honey and tried not to pull where it stuck my clothes to my skin. I swept past him. “Wait there, Romeo. I’ll get you some smelling salts.”
He scrambled to his feet, beating me to the street door. “I know you’re not happy with me. Never did I intend to deceive you when first we met on Parade Day. Certainly not when you passed by Signor Minora’s shop. I didn’t want any gossip. You had no parents, and we had not yet been properly introduced. You know how people talk.”
Yes. I knew exactly how pe
ople talked. “Don’t you have something to pick up from the don?”
He smacked his forehead. “I forgot. A half hour won’t matter. The don thought it might be a good idea for you and I to get acquainted.”
“The don thinks a lot of things. Excuse me, please.”
He stepped aside and let me pass, but chased after. “But when the don thinks, things happen.” He slid his cap back on his head. “Where are you going?”
“South.”
“Excellent. Exactly where I was going, too.” He got two paces ahead, turned around, and walked backward, his step too lively for the new sedateness the bubble required. “Any place south in particular? Or are you going there in general?”
I switched directions.
So did he. “And now you go north. Why, signorina? To the north there are only monsters.”
That stopped me. “The pharmacy is north.”
“But you’re not sick.”
“I’m going to the pharmacy to inquire about a job they posted.”
“So you can earn enough money so you can go to typewriting school so you can take the trolley to your job every day and maybe take the train to Atlantic City.”
My jaw dropped.
Carlo scratched at the back of his neck, mouth and forehead scrunched to one side, like somebody drew them together with a stitch. “My apologies, signorina. You did mention a lot of that the other day.” He looked at his feet. “And, as I said, you know how people talk.”
About everything, and everybody, and every chance they got.
“I’m not trying to distract you from your ambitions. I’m asking for a few minutes of your time.” He put out an arm. “Walk with me.”
On the heels of the pregnant girl’s invitation, his felt prescient, the feelings elicited with both, similar, the contrast, disconcerting. Memory of the day I’d watched the old man falter on the sidewalk took center stage, and I again saw myself as I had then, blinded before a sea of possibilities, crossed swords balanced against my chest, the growing pressure intolerable.
Oh bother. A little time now, maybe after he’d leave me alone.
I took his arm, hooking my hand in his elbow. It felt nice, secure, the muscles taut and strong. Nothing like the pregnant girl’s. I sometimes wonder how differently those same five minutes might have gone had Carlo waited an equal number to cross our threshold.
He turned us and headed west, slogging me across a street that felt packed with snowdrifts. At a half block and another half block past the lamppost, I paused and put out my arm, anticipating the wall of gelatin.
Carlo waved his arm in the space before him also. “What is it, signorina?”
Nothing. It was nothing. Or rather, more of the same. No gelatin, no border. Just more sameness. I pulled my arm from the crook of his elbow. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
The bubble had expanded again in the night, as it had the night before, and the night before that. As it had every night since the old man did not have his heart attack.
Tomorrow, the bubble would expand again, and again, the day after, and again, the day after that. For how long, I didn’t know. To what result, I couldn’t imagine. The weight of my responsibility piled before me, insurmountable.
I turned around, ditched Carlo. And went home.
Ten
That night, I dreamed of colors. Tomatoes red and tossed with basil. Skies blue as turquoise. Yellow hair ribbons. Roses so pink they looked like a kiss.
The tomatoes got me out of bed. I was hungry.
I headed to the old man’s garden and peeked under the quilts. But the fruit hanging from the vines was hard and green and far too pale, bleaching, like everything else in this bubble world. Hopelessness settled around my shoulders.
Somebody knocked on the old man’s door.
Fipo. He held Etti’s hand. “We’re hungry.”
“Signora Bruni didn’t leave you bread?”
“Signora Bruni’s sleeping. The don said to ask you.”
How come nobody worried if I was sleeping? I followed the boys downstairs. “Where are the cannelini?”
“We ate it. I gave some to Mamma. She threw it up.”
I tried not to think about the puke likely still lying on the bedroom floor. “Fipo, ask your mamma if there is money someplace so I can go shopping.”
He darted into the bedroom and returned with a box, slim and silver and etched with flowers. He handed it over. “It’s Mamma’s. Poppa decorated it for her.”
I lifted the lid. “I don’t see any money.”
“Are you sure? Mamma says everything important is there.”
The box contained a photograph of the boys. Fipo, seated and serious, Etti in his lap.
Well and fine, but I couldn’t trade sentiment for oatmeal. The signora must keep a little money somewhere. I rummaged in bowls, behind picture frames, upended vases, and shoved aside furniture, finally plowing my way to the bedroom across a floor that gelled like pudding and dreading what I’d have to do next—speak to the tailor’s wife directly. “Signora Lattanzi?”
Her response came with a cough, hard, and hacking, and tinged with blood. “How long will this last? How long will this punishment last?”
I opened a window, but the warm, moist, bubble-compressed air that sloshed over the sill, only accentuated the stench. “Nobody’s punishing anybody, Signora. You’re out of food. I need to buy more.”
“You’ve done enough of my mending to eat for a month.”
The signore turned over. He put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Shhhh.” Then he pointed to the dresser. “There’s an envelope stuck under the bottom drawer.” He fell back to his pillow. “Thank you.”
I checked and found plenty of money. Indignation turned my burners to high. Like with her keys, the signora probably had stashes all over the house. And here she wanted me to hand over the money from all the mending the old man forced me to do. Money I had yet to see because nobody had paid me.
The signora raised herself on one elbow. “The gas bill is due.”
Yes, and the coal was getting low. The handkerchief with its tight-twisted coins I kept secure between my breasts suddenly felt petty. What would the tailor and his wife do when the money in their envelopes ran out? I returned to the kitchen. “Boys. Get dressed. Let’s go shopping.”
They clung to my skirts the entire time, Etti’s hand wound tight in mine. We stopped at the grocer’s. The apples looked pale, the sweet potatoes washed out, the prices higher than the newspaper said they should be. “Don’t you have something nicer?”
The grocer kept his gaze firmly on the boys. “My deliveries are not so regular these days. Too many are sick.”
I could try another stall. Maybe a block and a half or so, but the thought of braving the boundary, especially with the boys . . .
The grocer slid a squash across the table, a pumpkin with warts, what we call a zucca barucca, big and bright colored, the stem cut from where it had been harvested still raw. I rapped on its shell. The sound resonated deep and rich. The squash must have been newly arrived from beyond the bubble’s border, and, given the shortages, better than I’d have expected the grocer to sell to me.
He dipped his head toward the boys, “For soup,” then turned away, his part of the negotiation done.
Fine. I’d pay his ridiculous prices. People were watchful, casting me sideways glances. I made a big show of placing the money beside the cashbox.
Etti tugged on my wrist. He tapped under his eye. “Nobody’s looking at us.”
“Because they are all jealous of Signorina Vicente’s luck to be accompanied by two such handsome young men.” The voice came over my shoulder, light, familiar, and friendly. The pregnant girl. Welcome as water ice in August. She bent to the boys as best she could, given her condition, and held out her hand. “For you.”
“Peppermint!”
They sucked happily while I stood in front of them, a human shield against their germs. I opened my mouth, but she plac
ed her fingers over my lips. “They’re fine. I’m fine. Let me help you. You look ready to drop.”
Her hat rode so regally on her head. Her hair coiled so cooperatively at the back of her neck. I imagined the beautiful crochet collar of her shirtwaist covered in snot, the perfect pleats in puke, imagined her scrubbing and mopping, soaking and washing, ladling up bowlful after bowlful to feed two stomachs that seemed bottomless, and two that couldn’t hold anything down. Then I imagined her sitting outside all the mess, keeping me company while I did the nasty work. I imagined her making tea and whispering encouragement, making funny comments, keeping the boys occupied. I imagined how beautiful she would look putting them to bed, telling them a story, running a hand over their foreheads and telling them not to worry, how everything would be all right. I imagined a world in which we could be friends, and people did not look on me with suspicion. “What is your name?”
Sellers and customers at the nearby stalls grew quiet. No good could come of asking for what had obviously never been offered.
The pregnant girl looked from one stall to the next, delicate and defiant. She lay her palms on either cheek, then released them to the heavens. “All the talks we’ve had. Living in the same building all this time. How silly I haven’t told you already.” She took my hand and squeezed. The pall lifted. The day brightened. Had a bird found a way to squeeze past the bubble’s barrier, I believed it would have begun chirping. “I am pleased to meet you, Fiora Vicente. My name is Benedetta.”
Benedetta.
Next morning, I woke with her name on my lips. Lips that let each and every one of the name’s four syllables roll off my tongue with a click on the t. “Ben-a-det-ta.”
Benedetta.
Somebody who brings blessings. Of course that was her name. It couldn’t be anything else. I hopped out of bed, tossed on my clothes, and skipped downstairs, moving faster than I had in days.
The old man wasn’t around.
Good. Better a morning without Don Dismally Disapproving. I was tired of feeling depressed. I wound the old man’s Big Ben, eager for its chipper tick-tick-tick, but its hands pushed forward with the same reluctance of a visit to the dentist.
The Infinite Now Page 9