The Train to Orvieto

by Novelli, Rebecca J. ;

  I dropped the newspaper on papà’s chair and took the letter upstairs to my room. Grazia followed me with a basket of laundry. “Grazia, look! It’s a letter from the university.” I held the letter out to her.

  She shook her head and crossed herself. “I can’t read letters.”

  “I’ll read it to you.” Grazia continued to put the laundry away. “Don’t you think papà will be proud of me?” I asked her when I had finished.

  She shook her head again and made the sign of the cross. “A fruit cannot fall from two trees. Una grande sfortuna.” Very unlucky.

  “No, Grazia, it will be good luck. I’m going to be a history teacher.” I lifted the lid of the mahogany wedding chest that had once belonged to Nonna Marcheschi, papà’s mother. Leaves and flowers and the goddess Juno had been painted on the front panel. Folded inside was everything I would need when I married: embroidered linens and gowns; tablecloths with cut work, fringe, lace, faggoting; hand-stitched quilts and a heavy, crocheted coverlet begun several generations before that consisted of hundreds of squares sewn together and fringed. There was also a hidden compartment where I put keepsakes: a postcard with a picture of Botticelli’s “Primavera,” my gold baby ring, the candle I held at my first communion, and an article about James Dean, the American movie actor, that my best friend, Maria Lucarelli, had given me when we were thirteen. I also kept Nonna Marcheschi’s pearl necklace and earrings there. I slipped the letter into the same compartment, closed the chest, and locked it.

  Just then, I heard the sound of voices beneath my window and went to see who was coming to visit us. It was Dottor and Signora Lucarelli. I knew the box Signora Lucarelli was carrying contained the confetti, white sugar-coated almonds that always accompanied wedding announcements. Dottor Lucarelli lifted the latch on our high gate and allowed his wife to precede him. He followed her bulky form as she strode toward our front door. People often told jokes about the Dottore’s small stature and the Signora’s bulk, the principal one being that he was slight because the Signora was always on top during their lovemaking. Still, the Lucarellis were a very respected family.

  As soon as I opened the front door, the fragrances of wisteria and jasmine engulfed me. The vines cascaded over our courtyard walls and obscured the bullet holes made during la Guerra, a subject that everyone avoided. Some Orvietani, including papà and mamma, had sympathized with the partigiani while others, including the Lucarellis, had supported the fascisti. There had been many deaths for which each faction still blamed another. The Orsinis, among others, had tried to remain neutral. It was likely only by chance that the retreating Germans spared the Orsini’s property and not that of their neighbors. Still, some suspected the Orsinis of collaborating with the Germans. After the War, people found it difficult to forget that these things had happened and to go on with their lives. Often, the smiles with which they greeted one another when they met on the streets and in the shops provided only the thinnest disguise for their bitter memories and suppressed rage.

  Signora Lucarelli smiled at me and held out a small box tied with a white ribbon.

  “Mamma! Come!” I called. “It’s the confetti for Maria and Edgardo.” When we were little girls, Maria Lucarelli and I had promised that we would attend one another on our marriage days. I already had the blue dress I would wear for Maria’s wedding mass. Whenever I had tried to talk to mamma about my marrying Bruno, she always said, “You’ll have plenty of time for that later.” I knew that girls who waited to get married could miss their chance. Mamma apparently didn’t think that was important, but I knew papà did. At the time, I thought that mamma was simply preoccupied with her illness.

  I untied the ribbon on the box and lifted the cover. Then we all kissed one another on both cheeks and said how happy we were. At that moment, mamma appeared in the foyer. The Lucarellis and I watched in silence as she shuffled toward us like a large shadow, her black leather slippers dragging against the terra cotta floor. By then mamma had been sick for more than a year. Dottore Lucarelli had first diagnosed her problem as “indigestion” and prescribed castor oil and herbs. When she got worse, she went to a doctor in Arezzo, who said she was suffering from a “nervous esophagus.” It wasn’t until she went to a specialist in Milano that she learned that she had cancer. By then, there was little that could be done to arrest the progress of her disease. Most people regarded this news as fate, but mamma saw it as bad luck. Bad luck that she had the misfortune to live in Orvieto instead of in a place with “real doctors, not quacks.” Mamma always had strong opinions. Mine was a less certain temperament than hers, but I had no doubt that I wanted to become a teacher.

  “What a surprise!” mamma said looking at the confetti. “How long have they known each other?” She didn’t appear to be talking to anyone in the room. I saw the Lucarellis exchange glances.

  “But our daughters are best friends.” Signora Lucarelli looked at me and then at mamma. “You don’t remember the banns?” I was embarrassed for mamma. She had become increasingly forgetful and often said odd things. She extended her frail hand toward Signora Lucarelli, who touched it as if it might break. Signora Lucarelli believed that every disease was contagious. She let go of mamma’s hand as quickly as possible, and when she thought no one would notice, wiped her hand on her skirt.

  Mamma stumbled and nearly lost her balance. She reached out for my arm. “I’m just a little weak today.” She continued toward Dottore Lucarelli with her hand extended. He bowed. It seemed to me that their greetings took an especially long time. “What a lovely surprise,” Mamma said again. Her voice sounded stronger, and I hoped the Lucarellis felt more welcomed.

  “We’re disturbing your rest,” Signora Lucarelli said.

  Mamma waved her hand as if she were removing a cobweb. “It’s certainly taken you long enough,” she said. She didn’t mean it the way it sounded; her Italian wasn’t perfect. Holding my arm, she plucked one of the confetti from the open box and held it in her yellowed fingers, seeming to forget that it was there.

  Signora Lucarelli took one of the confetti from the box for herself. When she put it in her mouth and chewed, it sounded like small bones cracking. “We hope that the Marcheschis will honor us with their presence at Maria and Edgardo’s wedding,” she said to mamma.

  “Odd that confetti have two tastes,” mamma said. “Sweet at first and then bitter afterward.” She chewed the candy with difficulty, choked, and then cleared her throat. “Just like marriage.”

  “But what could be sweeter than my daughter’s marriage?” Dottore Lucarelli said.

  “Mamma, the Lucarellis think that you’ve wished Maria and Edgardo an unhappy marriage.”

  “It’s my poor Italian,” mamma said to the Lucarellis. “Forgive me. On the contrary, I—we—wish Maria and Edgardo great happiness.” She brushed a strand of her thin, graying hair from her forehead.

  “Yes, great happiness,” I said, hoping I sounded more convincing than mamma had.

  “I don’t suppose Silvana and Raffaele will be able to join us?” Signora Lucarelli spoke very carefully, as if mentioning my older sister and brother were a dangerous and provocative act.

  Mamma took another confetti. She seemed to swallow it whole. Signora Lucarelli observed her as though she were watching a thief. “I don’t think so,” mamma said after a long pause. “Silvana and Raffaele have their….” She hesitated, seemingly unable to name exactly what it was that prevented their attending Maria and Edgardo’s wedding. “Yes, their work and…other obligations,” she concluded in the manner of a child spelling a long and difficult word from memory. She took a deep breath as if she had crossed over an abyss to safety.

  Signora Lucarelli smiled and seemed to relax. “Maria and Edgardo will be very sorry that they aren’t able to come. Their nozze will be the most beautiful anyone has ever seen in Orvieto, I promise you.” Signora Lucarelli’s size and her certainty seemed to expand as she spoke. “Edgardo is a very special young man and he’s going to be very successf
ul. Very important.” Dr. Lucarelli nodded in agreement. When Signora Lucarelli felt her words had achieved the effect she desired, she rubbed her hands together and turned to me. “Now, carissima, we’re going to the Orsinis and then to see Monsignor Enrico. So much to do when a daughter gets married!” She looked at mamma. “I think you’ll find out just how much very soon.” She winked at me as if we shared a secret.

  Of course, it was no secret that Bruno Orsini had courted me for more than a year, and it was expected that we would soon announce our betrothal and become fidanzati. Bruno was considered buon partito: excellent reputation, excellent family, excellent prospects. Handsome like an actor. Refined. People regarded him as trustworthy, too, so that even his elders sought his advice. In Orvieto there was nothing more important a young woman could do than to marry a man everyone respected. I was proud to be considered Bruno’s intended, though he hadn’t yet proposed.

  “Bruno is nearly as much un buon partito as Edgardo,” Signora Lucarelli confided to me. “Don’t you agree?” Signora Lucarelli was crafty, and her compliments often meant something else. She intended to convey that Bruno was respected, admired and thought worthy of being emulated, but just not as much as Edgardo was. Despite what Signora Lucarelli said, I knew that everyone admired Bruno more. “Everyone still has great respect for the Marcheschis and the Orsinis,” she continued. She pressed my cheeks between her hands as if I were a small child and smiled. “Am I right?”

  Of course, I recognized Signora Lucarelli’s references to Silvana and Raffaele’s scandalous reputations and to the recent financial reverses of the Orsini family. She felt free to mention these things because of her powerful position in the community. Few risked conflict with her. Her reputation for vengefulness dated from the time of la Guerra. Of course, those stories might have been exaggerated. How does one ever know for sure? But she was right that the Marcheschi and Orsini names commanded great respect. They still do today, despite what happened right after Maria and Edgardo were married and despite what people say.

  Just as the Lucarellis were leaving, papà returned. “Benvenuti, carissimi!” He shook hands with Dottore Lucarelli and kissed Signora Lucarelli’s hand. “Has no one invited you to sit down? Come. Come.” He saw the box of confetti. “And what is this?” He plucked one of the remaining confetti from the box and held it between his fingers. “Such wonderful news!” He popped the confetti into his mouth and then held his arms wide. “We must celebrate Maria’s happiness and Edgardo’s good fortune.” He led the Lucarellis into the salotto. “Grazia,” he called, “bring the wine and prepare something to eat! It’s not every day that a daughter marries, as well I know.” He looked at me and wiggled his little fingers, a gesture to ward off la sfortuna. “Imagine! This one talks about going to university and teaching history instead of getting married.”

  Signora Lucarelli’s eyebrows rose and then came together. “Well, this is news. I thought you were preparing your wedding chest.” She made it sound as if I had violated a law.

  “Not instead of getting married…,” I began.

  “Why shouldn’t Fina go to university if that’s what she wants to do?” mamma said. No one had noticed that she had come into the salotto until she spoke. She had always told me that I should leave Orvieto as soon as I could.

  “Never mind,” papà said, turning his attention to the Lucarellis. “Today, we celebrate your daughter’s nozze.” He poured the wine.

  At that time, I often wrote my future name, Signora Orsini, on slips of paper just to see how it would look, although girls believed that writing down one’s married name before the banns was unlucky. “Don’t invite sfortuna before fortuna,” we warned one another. Few followed this advice. Just to be safe, I burned each slip of paper in the fireplace until only ashes remained. In fact, I had already planned my own nozze: I would wear a crown of flowers tied with long, colored ribbons that would flutter in the breeze during my wedding procession and afterwards during the dancing. I wanted to look like Flora in Botticelli’s Primavera, a painting I had seen several times when mamma and I had gone to Firenze together. Once, an older man wearing a grey hat was standing next to us in the gallery. He and mamma spoke very quietly, so quietly that I couldn’t hear what they said, but as we were leaving, the man gave me a postcard with a likeness of the painting, the one I kept in my wedding chest. He touched my cheek—I still remembered his cool, dry fingertips—and he said, “Someday, you’ll look just like Flora.”

  After the Lucarellis left, papà and I watched mamma shuffle back to bed. “She seems weaker,” I said.

  “She would feel better if she went out more. She spends too much time in her room.”

  “Papà, I got a very important letter today about enrolling at Cattolicà—”

  He threw up his hands. “Santo cielo! Why won’t you give me any peace?”

  2

  On the morning of Maria and Edgardo’s wedding, I unlocked the wedding chest with the key that I kept hidden in my underwear drawer and slid the front panel out. The letter from Cattolicà was still there. I took out the postcard and compared the image on it with my reflection in the mirror. Like Flora, I was fair and lithe. And I loved flowers. I hoped that this would be a good day to talk to papà about my plan to go to university because enrollment was only two months away. Celebrations always put papà in a good mood. I left the postcard on my bureau and put on the blue dress. Then, I wound pink flowers in my hair the way I knew would please papà and Bruno. I wanted them to feel proud of me.

  When I was ready, I took out Nonna Marcheschi’s pearls. As the eldest granddaughter, Silvana would normally have received them, but after the birth of Silvana’s second illegitimate child, nonna had given the pearls to me just before she died. I liked keeping things that were part of our family’s history, but to avoid hurt feelings, I wore the pearls only when Silvana wasn’t present. I didn’t want her to feel that she had been left out. She had a volatile temper and a tendency to talk about unpleasant things, especially if she was angry or upset. I held the string of pearls around my neck, but when I tried to fasten the clasp, the old silk thread broke. Pearls scattered on the uneven floor and rolled into the cracks and crevices between the planks. I gathered up as many as I could find and dropped them into a pink porcelain bowl rimmed with silver that had also belonged to nonna.

  Next to the bowl I kept a photograph of our family that Grandmother Carver had taken twelve years before at The Pavilion during our family’s only trip to America. The photograph was mounted in a bronze frame, which had been cast with ribbons and garlands and had once belonged to Nonna Marcheschi’s grandmother. In the center of the photograph, papà rested his right hand on mamma’s shoulder and his left on Raffaele’s shoulder. At that time, Raffaele had just turned thirteen, and I was about three. Mamma is holding me on her lap and looks straight into the camera as if she were waiting for the answer to a question. To one side and separate from us, Silvana, nearly fifteen, looks intent on something beyond the picture frame.

  “Fina, it’s already nine o’clock,” papà called. “You’ll make us late.”

  I opened my door. “Papà, after the wedding, I want to talk—”

  He shook his head and put his hand up. “Presto! Presto! We’re going to miss the procession.” I went back and put on nonna’s earrings, the ones with pearls as big as olive pits. Silvana didn’t know about the earrings either. Mamma said it would be best not to tell her about them. I slipped on my new white shoes, then put the postcard away, and locked the chest again. When I came downstairs, mamma emerged from her room. She pushed her grey hair away from her face. I noticed she had a bald spot at the crown of her head. I hoped she wouldn’t discover it; she had always taken so much pride in her thick, auburn hair. When I kissed her pale cheek, her skin felt cool against my lips, and she seemed thinner and even less present than when the Lucarellis had brought the confetti. I must be mistaken, I thought.

  Before mamma had gotten sick, we had always been confidantes,
but by this time I could feel her slipping away from me, going to a place where I couldn’t follow her. Earlier she would have talked to papà about my going to university herself, but by then she no longer seemed to notice what happened in my life. Looking back, I suppose she must have been thinking about dying, understood that her death was nearing. At that time, I didn’t have a real understanding of such concerns.

  “Please give the Lucarellis my regrets,” mamma said. Papà moved abruptly, betraying his impatience, but at least he didn’t say anything to upset mamma or make her angry. So often he did.

  “I hope you feel better by the time we get back,” I said. “We’ll have so many things to tell you.”

  “Perhaps Fina will want to discuss her wedding plans with you,” papà said, smiling.

  “She’s too young to get married,” mamma said. A cloud passed over papà’s face.

  “Tomorrow,” he said to mamma, his voice unnaturally hearty, “you’ll feel like yourself again. We’ll make a passeggiata together in the new vineyard. The exercise will do you good, and we can talk about it then.”

  “Gabriele, don’t you see that I’m dying?”