The old man told them not to worry, told them he was fine. “Fiora will see me home.”
But the men insisted. Two formed a chair with their arms. Two others lifted the old man and sat him between them. They trudged together through the thickness which now defined our world, trading stories and jokes.
I trudged behind. This is how regular people talked. People whose mothers were not the neighborhood fortune-teller. Easy and friendly with one another, containing a lightness which defied the bubble’s growing density, their words allowed to exit unmeasured, unexamined. Unnoticed.
They knew the old man, knew he knew things. Yet they treated the old man with respect and remembered my mother with fear.
It wasn’t fair.
The old man made the men leave him at the stoop. “Go,” he told them. “Fiora can help me from here.”
They slid caps from their heads, each backing up a step with a deferential nod. Then they turned, replaced their caps, and were gone.
The old man took his time taking the stairs. In the apartment, he took his place at the table.
I rummaged among the canisters on the shelves. “Where are your pills?”
“The doctor gave me one.”
“Then where are they in case you need another?”
“By my cot.” He reached for a leather punch. “What did the doctor give you?”
The booklet. I pulled it from my pocket. It was in English and titled Childbirth in the Home. I paged through, blushing at the illustrations, at anatomy the nuns told us we should keep to ourselves, appalled at the apparent physical impossibility. “I can’t do this.”
The old man stopped working. He gathered a hammer and a few tacks. “Come with me, Fiora Vicente.”
He opened the door to my attic and mounted the stairs. He took it slow, his feet landing with a soft thud on each tread. I followed, shutting the door behind us. His hand grazed the bedpost, then the back of the padded rocker. He ran a finger along the brim of the gigantic flowered hat, then took a seat. It seemed the chair enveloped him, as Mamma’s curtain did me. He sighed and his shoulders slumped, and it became clear why these items were up there and not downstairs where they should be. “You miss her.”
“To have someone to miss is a blessing to be embraced.” He gazed at the projection of an upside-down market moving five minutes ahead of us across the far wall, at shuttered stalls and streets emptier than I’d ever seen. “But I do not think it is bad to sometimes wish to not be so blessed.”
He pulled the curtain aside. The market bleached out. He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a pamphlet, not so thick as the doctor’s booklet, but larger in dimension. He handed it to me. “Unfold it.”
The pamphlet was a map of Philadelphia, south of City Hall, extending west to the Schuylkill and east to the Delaware River. Somebody had traced a series of concentric circles to the right of Broad Street, centered on the old man’s apartment and sketched in the same red color as the dust in my vision.
The old man took back the map and laid it on his lap. He traced the innermost circle. “This is the morning I noticed the wind had stilled.”
He looped through two more. “This is the day you were too modern to be polite to Carlo.”
He spiraled onto the fourth. “This is the day you brought the boys to the market and left them with Signora Bruni.”
The fifth. “This is the day you distributed my wife’s needlework over the apartment.”
He traced three more spirals. They tracked the pattern of red Xs Tizi had spiraled around the map tacked to the wall behind her mother’s counter. With each spiral, the old man described that day’s arguments and discourtesies, misunderstandings and failings, and plain old stubborn refusals.
He moved to the outermost spiral. “And this is today, the most important of days, for this is the day you again disobeyed me and returned to visit with the guaritrice.”
He stopped spiraling. “How did you get in? I ringed the pharmacy with verbena, stuffed your pockets full. Where is your coat? I sewed a layer into its hem.”
He’d sewed verbena into the hem of my coat? “I wasn’t wearing my coat. It stank. Carlo has it.”
“Carlo was there.” The old man looked alarmed. “Is he all right? Where is he?”
“Home I suppose. He didn’t stay.”
The old man looked like he was undecided about that answer. “Tell me everything she said to you.”
“Why do you need to ask?” I tapped under my eye. “You know everything I do. You’re like my mother.”
He tapped his ears. “Signora Lattanzi’s is not the only wagging tongue in this neighborhood.” He put out a hand. “Whatever the guaritrice gave you, give to me.”
I stepped away, aware of the bags stuffed within my bodice. “She gave me nothing except advice. About Carlo. About you. That you’re men and men always want to tell women what to do.”
He eyed me. “You went all the way to the pharmacy for advice?”
“I went for something for the Lattanzis, for the agita. All the druggist could offer was Chiclets. The Lattanzis would only throw them up.”
The old man pushed up from the chair, his eyes shadowed. He splayed the map across the ceiling slope, dead center, and tacked it to the wall.
“Every day I mark the map.” He retraced the outermost spiral. “And here is as far as I can mark. My heart is too weak. It is now your penance to keep track. Your bubble is growing, and you need to keep a record.”
“Of what?”
“Of all the might-have-beens that may never be. When your bubble collapses, many people will need help. Signora Bruni will need it first.” He picked up the booklet and shoved it back into my hands. “You should check on the Lattanzis.”
Everything collapses, buildings, roads, mountains, even people. It is the way of the world. Stronger structures take longer, but eventually, everything falls apart.
I no longer had to knock. I’d found one of Signora Lattanzi’s spare keys in the finial atop the newel post. So I surprised the boys, Fipo eating cold oatmeal at the table, Etti out of a bowl atop a chair. Etti jumped when I entered, his food landing in a clump the consistency of mud patties. He squatted beside the mess, and lapped at it with his tongue.
Like a dog.
Thirteen
I avoided Benedetta in the days that followed the doctor handing me the booklet. I crept down stairs and peeked around corners, sponge bathed in my attic and held my pee for the Lattanzis’ bathroom lest Benedetta and I crossed paths on the way to our shared toilet.
What I didn’t do in all that time was read the booklet. I buried it deep into my pillowcase, as if its physical proximity to Benedetta might be enough to bring the baby on and force me into action.
Guilt is a weight that multiplies when indulged, and on the third morning after the old man showed me his map with all the concentric circles, the guilt knocked me off-balance outside Benedetta’s apartment.
The floorboard creaked. The plate lidding a bowl of beans I was bringing to the Lattanzis rattled. Benedetta popped her head out of her door. “My goodness, Fiora, where have you been? I asked the don about you last night. Was beginning to wonder if you’d moved out.”
“No, not at all. Just busy with the Lattanzis.” I lifted the bowl of beans like I needed evidence. “Well, I guess I better get back to them.”
“Don’t rush. I left a loaf for them this morning.” She leaned over the railing. “I don’t see it, so the boys must have found it. They’ll be fine for an hour. Come in, have coffee. I’m about crazy to find a way to break the tedium.”
As if inspired by her invitation, the scent of her coffee wafted from the apartment, fragrant, rich, pungent with the scent of cinnamon and cloves. My mouth watered, starved for a flavor not made insipid by the increasing strength of the bubble. “Tedium?”
“Oh, dear.” Her hands flew to her chest, one palm over the other. “There I go talking like I’m the only person in the world. Of course you are anything but
bored, scrubbing, cooking, doing laundry all day, while I sit around, reading my books like I’m the Queen of Italy.”
I peeked past her, at dough piled on the table. “It doesn’t look like you’re sitting around.”
“I’m rolling pasta. That’s what I do. I leave my parents in Italy. I roll pasta. My husband goes to war. I roll pasta. I find out I’m expecting. I roll pasta. And every day the war news. I roll pasta, roll pasta, roll pasta.” She laid a hand over her bulge. “My time is here. It is past here. He kicks. He moves, but he won’t come out. So I roll pasta.”
Knowledge of the unread booklet weighed heavy on my tongue. I didn’t want to get sucked into conversation, afraid I’d blurt out the wrong thing. I also didn’t want to appear rude. “You also bake bread.”
“Only when I’m not rolling pasta.” She laid a finger over her lips. “The don said I should set up a stall in the market. What do you think?”
What did it matter what I thought? The don had already spoken. “I think you would be very successful.”
She threw her hands into the air. “Oh my, I wish this baby would come. Caged in here, everybody convinced if I step one foot outside this apartment, the sickness will find me. At least the baby would give me something different to do.”
In the bubble’s unrelenting pressure, we were all caged. Still . . . “You never wanted to do anything else?”
“You mean other than rolling pasta?”
“No, I mean . . .” My gaze dropped to her belly.
“Oh.” Benedetta stiffened. It was like the air around her went brittle, and a cool breeze blew through the cracks. “You mean because this is America. Only modern thinking.”
“No. Of course not. That’s not what I meant at all.” That was exactly what I meant. She was so pretty, so bright, so interested in what happened around her. “What I meant was, a baby is a lot of work.” All poop and piss and puke. Kind of like what I’d been doing with the Lattanzis. Except for years and years. “You know, like that’s all you’ll be able to do.”
“Signora Lattanzi does plenty. She has a shop. Your mother, too. She worked hard. I can have a baby and do something else. Besides.” She put a supportive hand on her back. “It’s a little late for me to be thinking about that now, don’t you think?”
The hole I was digging was only getting deeper and wider. So, of course, I threw away the trowel and went at it with a shovel. “I’m sure the baby will come when it’s ready. What does the doctor say?”
“Pfft. He hasn’t been around for days. Said to send for him when my time comes. Said often the date calculations are not accurate. Is the signora feeling any better? I was counting on her to get me through this.”
Finally, something I could answer with a degree of safety. “Sometimes she looks pretty good. I read somewhere that if the sickness is bad, it’s bad quickly.” I stopped myself, not wanting to remember, not wanting to think.
I kind of expected Benedetta to understand how maybe she’d stepped where she shouldn’t, as I just had. Expected her to say something like, “And there I go again, reminding you of something sad. Come, take a few minutes. Let’s talk of happy things.”
She didn’t. Her face went worried, brows scrunched, mouth pulled to the side. To see her like that, nervous and unsure, made me even more nervous and unsure. Of course, I asked probably the worst thing I could think of at the moment. “Does Nicco have any ideas?”
Her brows scrunched more. Her mouth pulled even farther to the side. “I haven’t heard from him either.” She looked past me, then to the ceiling, and to the floor. “I’m so worried. Worried the bell will ring and I’ll go downstairs to answer and it will be one of those messengers. A telegraph boy. You’ve seen them, with the peaked caps.”
I had. In the neighborhood. I thought of the lady now living in my old apartment, the lady who’d had Mamma’s curtain. Maybe she’d worried about the same. Maybe the day I knocked, that was what she expected. A telegraph boy with bad news of her husband. And I’d purposely scared her. For fun.
Should I have told Benedetta it would be all right? Not to worry? I couldn’t. The air around her had taken a dark turn, going gray to match the rest of the bubble film.
Benedetta shook herself. “I’m acting like I’m all alone. Like there’s not a person in the world who can help me.”
Dread, deep and distracting, pulled at my skirt, begging me to get out now, take the beans and run, before Benedetta asked me to do the unthinkable regarding the birth of her baby.
She didn’t. She leaned against her jamb, arms crossed over her abdomen. “I could telphone my aunt, have her come down and give me a hand. She could bring my niece. Or maybe find somebody up there to keep an eye on her for a little. I was thinking I’d go up there anyway after the baby is born. Stay with her until Nicco returns. She writes to me, says the influenza is not so bad there as here and at times like these . . . well, Signora Lattanzi is right. It’s always better to be with family.”
Benedetta had what she needed. A husband. A baby she could call her own, one who would be hers alone to adore. And there’d likely be others. Many, probably. I’d be off typewriting someplace, maybe spending a lonely weekend sitting on an Atlantic City beach, eating fried claims out of a paper holder.
Tears sprang, surprising, and unbidden. Over what? A life I didn’t want. One I steadfastly planned to avoid. Even more than I planned to avoid helping Benedetta birth her baby. I ducked my head, hoping it looked like I was only nodding my agreement. “That sounds sensible. Well, I better get these beans down to the boys. Maybe we could have coffee later. Tomorrow. Or the day after.”
I said other stuff, equally awkward. It all sounded hollow to my ears. Benedetta answered. I said something pretty polite back.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I had a friend, or the real possibility of a friend. And all that friend talked about was taking herself and her baby off to Coatesville to live a life of which I’d never be part. And I was doing and saying everything that might help that friend leave.
Sometimes . . . life is stupid.
Fourteen
The next day, or maybe the day after, or maybe the day after that, I woke to church bells playing the Angelus in air so dense it crushed my chest. The bells resonated through Mamma’s curtain, reminding me of a world where breezes blew unfettered, the sun shined unmeasured, and time progressed without obstruction. I reached for Mamma’s Big Ben, wound and rewound it, but the clock’s dulsatory tick . . . tick . . . tick refused to catch up with the bells.
My heart slowed, the beats grew faint, my fingers numb, like my blood only sloshed as far as the second knuckle, gave up, turned around, and started its return journey. I longed to inhale, to fill my lungs to their limit, drive the heaviness to the dark places, and rejoin the outside world.
A sluggish half hour passed. The sky grew no lighter. Street lamps, weak and ineffective in the constant night fog rising from the cobbles, cast a murky glow. I braided my hair without brushing it, gathered it into a bundle at the nape of my neck, and wrapped a scarf at the crown to hide the tangles and wisps. I crept downstairs, tiptoed around the old man’s snoring, lit a burner, and set the kettle to boil, expecting with each clink and clank to hear the old man stir, but he slumbered on, cocooned in the heavy sleep the bubble encouraged.
I checked the old man’s roof garden, as I did most days, longing for freshness, color, new growth, a bit of life not sapped by the bubble. The old man’s candles were still there, turning the world under the windowpanes warm enough to grow a jungle, yet the tomatoes remained green, the peppers were still hard little knobs, and the strawberries . . . oh, the strawberries, looked about the same as the first time the old man showed me.
Back to the kitchen for tea instead, hot and scented of lavender which layered like a cushion, steeped in what I needed most. Mamma, warm and welcoming, Poppa, strong and certain. In dreams remembrance became real. The table filled with comfort, inviting me to sit, do nothing. Later is always f
ine since later is not now and now never ends, so relax, drink tea, and do not worry. About anything.
My head thumped to the table. I blinked. Sunlight shone in subdued shadows through panes which always looked dingy, no matter how often I washed them. The old man, dressed and shaven, stood beside me, flowered teapot in hand. “Where is the rest?”
“Of what?”
“The guaritrice’s mix.”
“That was the last of it.” A sample, a promise of more to come.
“You told me all she gave you was advice.”
“I didn’t want you to take this from me. Didn’t want you to take it from the Lattanzis.”
The old man rummaged on the shelves and showed me the bag. “This is not tea mixed with herbs. This is what we call a vector. A means to an end.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Wrapped it around his hand and shook out the dregs. He shoved it under my nose. “Smell it. Breathe deep. Feel all your worries disappear. All your fears.”
The world went fuzzy. The old man’s ire no longer bothered me. He was a nice old man, but given to worry.
The old man went to the window and pulled down its clump of verbena. He shook it over my head. My eyes watered. My nose stung. My skin came alive, aware of every movement across its surface. I hopped up from my seat, shook out my skirt, brushed the verbena away. “What are you doing?”
He scraped his handkerchief into the sink, poured what was left in the teapot down the drain. “You must stop lying to me, Fiora Vincente.
You must stop lying to yourself. If you do not, all you are, all you hope to be will disappear. Anything the guaritrice suggests, you will follow. Your ideas will not be your own. Think, Fiora, who profits from this bubble?”
The guaritrice. But the old man would never understand. The guaritrice only did what she must to protect herself. To feed her daughter. Her teas helped the nausea, cleared the nose, reduced the fever. And even if they didn’t do any of that, the teas made people believe that they did.
The guaritrice offered nostalgia to the bereft, hope to the hopeless, consolation to the forlorn. Maybe that’s all any of us who were like the guaritrice could offer. In the modern world of the time, a world unable to offer the suffering little more than aspirin, weren’t those reassurances worth a few dollars?
The Infinite Now Page 12