Beautiful Secret

by Dana Faletti

  I realized, after she’d knocked three times and waited for no one to answer, that the sister was looking for an empty room. When she opened the door and revealed the room I would call home for the next few months, an odd mix of freedom and loneliness washed over me. Although it was cramped and small, the space on the other side of the door was more than any I’d ever had to myself. I felt like the only ship in the ocean.

  Before she left, the sister dug a folded paper from the black layers of her garment and handed it to me. Crossing herself and bowing her head curtly, she backed out of the door and closed it behind her. Glancing down at the paper that had to be the list of rules for life at Santa Genoveffa, Nicotera’s beloved convent and home for unwed mothers, I sighed, frustrated that my reading skills were too poor to decipher the words on the page. I sat it down on the bedside table, sunk into the twin bed, and imagined myself wrapped in the warmth of my mother’s body, the smell of her that always seeped onto my side of the bed. Before my eyes had time to tear up, I heard a loud thud at the window on the far wall of the room.

  Thinking a bird must have flown into the glass, I pushed open the window and stuck my head out to see if the poor creature had met the ground below. Before I could even look down, something struck the side of my forehead.

  “Ouch,” I cried and looked up to see the girl with sunshine teeth eyeing me from the next window over. She squinted and covered her mouth in what looked like surprise.

  “Sorry about the pebble,” she said in a quiet tone that was deeper and throatier than I would have expected. “I’m Luisa.” She glanced down at the ground before grinning at me. “So, maybe there is a God, no?” Her words were in Italian, but her accent was one I couldn’t place. “I actually prayed last night. Not the usual prayers they force you to say here. I can never remember those words, but I asked God for help for the first time ever, and here you are in the very flesh.”

  I rubbed my sore temple and raised my eyebrows at this crazy Luisa. What on earth was she talking about?

  “I’ll see you in a few minutes. We meet in the hallway to go to lunch,” she said and edged backward inside her own window.

  Flattening the wrinkles from my simple blue dress, I headed out the door to find Luisa waiting for me in the hallway, looking as happily unkempt as when I’d first laid eyes on her.

  “Lunch is at precisely eleven. Everything on your schedule is precise, and the sisters don’t tolerate tardiness. See, there’s Sister Diana now, waiting for us to line up, right on schedule. She’s nothing if not precise.” Luisa led me down the hallway toward the somber-faced nun who’d brought me to my room. At least now I knew her name. I noticed more doors opening, more women entering the crowd.

  “We should be quiet now,” Luisa whispered, even though she was the only one speaking.

  Sister Diana led us down several flights of stairs to the cafeteria, a large rectangular room in the basement of the convent where long tables were set with wine, water, empty bowls, and baskets of bread. I followed Luisa, thankful she had alerted me to the schedule, although a friendly orientation would have been nicer than the goose egg she’d left on my head. Sitting down next to her, I mimicked her actions and bowed my head in prayer, making sure to keep one eye opened to stay with the group. A plump nun wearing small round glasses and carrying a kettle began ladling some sort of soup into bowls. Once everyone was served, she sat, prayed, and began eating. The others followed.

  The silence unnerved me. Even as I looked around at the others, roughly two dozen sisters and perhaps ten other young women like myself, I felt oddly shaken. Never in my life had I sat at a meal without conversation. In my family, whoever spoke most loudly got the attention.

  At eleven thirty, the sisters, by table, began clearing their settings. Our table was last, and before anyone stood from their chair, I watched as Sister Diana carefully checked over each of our bowls as if to monitor how much we had eaten. She reminded me of a mother bird pushing worms into her babies’ mouths. Earlier, I hadn’t gotten a maternal feel from the woman. Perhaps I’d been mistaken.

  Once Sister Diana nodded in wordless approval at our food consumption, we were led into the chapel for mass. Sun-kissed stained glass tossed glints of color across the dimly lit sanctuary as the priest said a thirty-minute mass.

  I was beginning to wonder if there was a half-hour time limit to every activity here.

  After the sisters genuflected and exited the chapel, Sister Diana led us outside onto the rear grounds, where almond trees budded with tiny pink flowers. Luisa and I fell into step.

  “We’re allowed to speak quietly out here, during our walk,” she said as we rounded the patch of grass where a few of the others sat on wooden benches. Goose pimples arose on my bare legs as the cool spring air teased me with scents from the bakery on the street below. The smell of brioche had somehow found its way around the thick stone of the convent walls and was making my mouth water.

  “We walk for—”

  “Thirty minutes?” I finished her sentence, and she smiled.

  “You’re learning.”

  Chapter 7

  Maria

  The fact that my body would not sleep past five in the morning was not so much a testament to the sameness of the schedule at Santa Genoveffa as it was a symptom of my changing shape. As my belly stretched, leaving tracks across my skin, deep sleep became a luxury of the past.

  “You look awful,” Luisa whispered to me one day after lunch. Technically, we weren’t permitted to speak until we arrived in the courtyard, but Luisa had no respect for rules. I waited until Sister Diana deposited our group outside before giving Luisa an explanation.

  “It feels like the baby is trying to come through my throat. Terrible heartburn. I can’t get comfortable at night.”

  She patted my round middle. “Stop being nasty to your mother, little diavolo.”

  I half-smiled at her, this strange girl with whom I’d become fast friends. After more than three months of life at Santa Genoveffa, I felt I’d known her and her strange accent all my life. For thirty minutes every day after lunch, she talked. Nonstop. In this way, she revealed her story a little bit each day.

  “It’s a boy, you know,” she said, with one eyebrow raised.

  “Do you think?”

  “I know, Maria.” She winked at me. “Maybe he’ll look like your big brother.”

  I shrugged.

  As long as he doesn’t resemble his father, I thought.

  Luisa knew a little about my family, but I hadn’t told her anything about Giuseppe or that fateful night of San Nicola.

  “My brother didn’t speak to me at all after my mother died,” I said, surprising myself with my own openness. Usually, Luisa was the one spilling her secrets like water into an empty urn.

  “Hmm,” she said, her eyes darkening uncharacteristically. “I had a brother too, but he died.”

  I stopped abruptly, shocked by the information and because she’d never mentioned it before.

  “He was seven when he drowned in the lake behind my home.” She looked at her black shoes as she walked. “I was supposed to be watching him. It was my fault.”

  “Dear God…” I covered my mouth with my open palm.

  “After this was when my mother became ill. The doctors said it was lung disease, but I don’t know. I think she didn’t want to live any longer, didn’t want to breathe after Jean-Luc died.”

  I took Luisa’s hand then, thinking that I knew well how a broken heart could take away a mother’s living breath. I led her across the soft grass to sit on one of the vacant wooden benches. The blaze of summer sun on our shoulders was not enough to warm the chill from my bones. Of all the things Luisa had told me, she’d never once mentioned having a younger brother. I was sure this was because she felt responsible. She wanted to hide from her shame, and unlike me, with my swollen belly and fat red face, she could.

  “It was a year after he drowned, almost to the day, when she took her last breath.” She spat ou
t the sour words, and I caught them, trying to fit this tragic piece into the puzzle of Luisa’s story. “My father lost his mind when she died. It was bad after Jean-Luc, but this…this was just too much for him. He was used to getting what he wanted, Maria, and all the money he had in the bank couldn’t make her better.”

  I draped an arm around her sweaty shoulders and waited for her to go on.

  “So Leticia was his sad attempt at replacement. He plucked her from the throng of pretty young debutantes in our midst and inserted her right into my mother’s empty side of the bed.”

  I watched Luisa wipe the wetness from her cheeks with the side of her arm, thinking how odd it was to see her cry. Her devil-may-care way suddenly made more sense to me than before. The way she’d flippantly described her run-ins with the law in her provincial hometown, how she’d been caught stealing from local shops and vandalizing in the town. This was the reason her father had sent her away—not for being in a shameful way as I was, but for being contrary, a blemish on what Luisa had described as his otherwise pristine surface. And now I knew why she’d acted out.

  She’d desperately craved the attention and love of a father who’d deserted her. Her rebellion was her cry for help.

  Instead of giving her what she’d needed more than anything in the world, he’d sent her away to Santa Genoveffa. That way, he could rebuild his expensive life with his pretty new wife on a clean foundation.

  My heart broke for her.

  “Which sister am I?” she asked, a teasing smile suddenly jumping onto her red, tear-streaked face as she deftly maneuvered her eyes so that one of them looked lazy, just like Sister Marguerite’s.

  I pursed my lips and touched her forearm, ignoring her attempt at humor. “Luisa, you don’t have to hide from me. It’s okay to feel the way you do.”

  “Come on, Maria, guess,” she said, crossing the one eye even further.

  I let it go.

  “Sister Marguerite,” I said finally and watched Luisa collapse into giggles. “You’re shameless, Luisa,” I shook my head, knowing she couldn’t care less.

  Luisa harbored a deep resentment toward the Catholic Church and often cursed the sisters, who, in truth, were ultimately kind to us. I found it shocking and sinful that she didn’t believe in God, didn’t recite the morning prayers, but instead cursed under her breath when she was supposed to be saying a Hail Mary. Fitting Luisa into convent life was like trying to slip a glove over a foot.

  “Mon dieu!” she cursed in French. “My father the bastarde, sending me here to a convent in some hole in the Italian mountains! We never even attended church, for God’s sake. Oh, putain!”

  “Look,” I said, trying to sway her attention away from her rant. I nodded into the courtyard, toward a girl I’d never noticed before. Over the past three months, women had come and gone. They’d arrive fat and pink-cheeked and leave skinny and wan. The new girl was waiflike, though, her skin almost translucent and her eyes sad as she walked the circle alone.

  “Is she a girl or a ghost?” Luisa asked sarcastically, shrugging her shoulders unsympathetically at the newest one among us. “Thank God for you, Maria. You’re the only one here who has any personality. I can’t believe you’re a Catholic.”

  I sighed and crossed myself, silently praying that God, in his goodness, would overlook her flaws and see inside her heart. It was in there somewhere. When Luisa caught my gaze, she mocked me, did the sign of the cross backward and began singing the French national anthem in a voice that was far too loud for Santa Genoveffa’s standards.

  At the end of her song, she tilted her head sideways and flashed me her wide yellow smile. In spite of myself and the fact that Luisa was definitely going to hell, I had to laugh.

  Chapter 8

  Tate

  The morning after her introduction to grappa, Tate was sitting at Zia Luisa’s kitchen table in her pajamas and slippers when Colette bounced airily into the tile-walled kitchen.

  “So, cousine, did you enjoy your rest last night?” Colette asked as she raked a chubby hand through her hair. As usual, the gap between her two front teeth was on display, and Tate thought it only added to the woman’s quirky charm.

  “It was lovely, Colette. Thanks,” she said, watching her cousin’s eyes meander until they came to rest on her pack of menthols.

  “Of course, Tatiana.” She spoke loudly, so as to be heard over the buzz of the coffee machine. “I think you are developing a taste for my mother’s cuisine, no?”

  Well, if that wasn’t the understatement of the year, Tate didn’t know what was. Zia’s preparation of escargot, nestled in curled black shells and drenched in garlicky butter, was sinful. She’d eaten so much bread, dunking it into the parsley-dotted sauce, she’d probably gained five pounds at one sitting. An extra mile or two during her run today would make up for the calories. After all, the calories were worth it.

  “I love your mother’s food,” said Tate. “But the company’s even better.” Although she’d only spent a few days with them, she felt an unexpected bond with this unlikely crew of distant relatives. The way they constantly teased each other, their raucous laughter and table-slapping antics, their tireless togetherness—it was all so attractive to her. And to be so immediately and intimately accepted into their fold…she hadn’t foreseen this. “It’s wonderful to be here with all of you, to get to know this part of my family.”

  Colette faced Tate, stirring her coffee and grinning. “Yes,” she said. “My family…we have much fun together, no? We are a little crazy sometimes, but that is the way of things here, you know.” She drew on her cigarette and blew out smoke in the direction of the open back door. “And it is a celebration to have you here with us, Tatiana.” Setting her cigarette down in one of the many ashtrays in the room, she placed her hand on top of Tate’s. “Your father…he was very special to my mother. She is glad to know his daughter now.”

  Tate nodded, sensing an urge to wrap up the conversation. Her now-clammy fingers went to her face to brush a stray curl from her eyes.

  “You don’t like to speak of him, do you?” Colette, apparently, was a digger. She had no idea of the vast amount of bedrock Tate had spread over all of her sore subjects. Colette would need a team of excavators and a heavy-duty backhoe to get break through Tate’s protective shell.

  “Not really,” Tate answered, gathering the crumbs from her plate with the tip of her index finger and then dusting them off with her thumb.

  “We speak much of the loved ones who have passed, Tatiana,” Colette said and put out her cigarette. “We find it keeps them alive for us.”

  Tate chuffed and narrowed her eyes at nothing until everything in front of them was a blur. “I don’t agree with you, Colette. When I think about my father, all it does is remind me of just how dead he is.”

  Just then, Zia shuffled into the kitchen wearing a navy silk dress and orthopedic shoes. Her sudden appearance provided the exit route Tate sorely needed. She went to her aunt and greeted her in French, with the traditional four kisses. They exchanged niceties, and Tate stole a wary glance over Zia’s shoulder at Colette, who was still eyeing her knowingly.

  “Bonjour, Maman,” Colette said to Zia, kissing her cheeks as Tate had, then turning her attention once again to her cousin. “Today we go to Dinant, Tatiana, a town in Belgium, where there are very good chocolates for you to try. We will have lunch in this town and go to the shops if this is okay for you.”

  “It sounds fabulous to me,” said Tate, wearing a bold smile to hide the layer of grief that lined her gut. She could tell Colette wasn’t buying her “everything’s coming up roses” routine, but she acted the part anyway.

  An hour later, the three women slid into Zio’s black Mercedes sedan, Colette taking her place behind the wheel. The road seemed to run right through the forest at times, angling upward then sharply down, thickly canopied by trees whose leaves nearly kissed the roof of the car as they passed.

  As they neared the little town of Dinant, about
twenty minutes past the Belgian border, the land tamed, hills rolling gently into mostly flat expanses and farms popping into sight.

  “I love the landscape here,” Tate said, completely taken in by the view from her passenger window.

  “The Ardennes are a great sight to see, Tatiana,” Colette told her. “We have many landmarks.”

  “We should take you to the Point de Vue,” Zia said in slow French that was easy for Tate to understand.

  “Ah, Mont Malgré-Tout. It is a beautiful place to take photos,” Colette agreed. “When we turn back, we can maybe stop at the point for some photography moments, okay?”

  Tate was getting used to Colette’s strange English, finding it to be endearing, even. “Yes, I’d love a good photography moment.” She paused for just a moment before adding, “It would be quite premium for me.”

  They enjoyed shopping and lunch, Tate experiencing her first taste of mussels steamed in white wine with fresh herbs and French fries with mayonnaise. Apparently the people here had a sort of vendetta against ketchup, preferring the creamy slather of mayo on their fries to the tartness of tomatoes and sugar. Tate found the regional cuisine to be surprisingly delicious, and although she didn’t make a habit of eating fries at home, she couldn’t help but eat every last one.

  The food tasted different here. Fuller, riper somehow. She hadn’t expected to love France or Belgium, but they were gradually easing their way under her skin, like a slow suntan, warm and pretty. She found she even liked herself better these past few days. There was a freedom to being the only one around who knew her past—a freedom that allowed her to be only who she wanted to be, to cut out the parts that didn’t sit well in her belly.

  Like Nathan, she thought, taking a sip of the red wine she was growing accustomed to drinking with every meal. Could she cut him out of her life so easily? So little of him was even left; the surgery would be minor. A quick and easy outpatient procedure.

  She wanted to laugh at her own joke, right there under the pretty striped awning that shaded them from the merciless Ardennais sun. She wanted to snort, even under her breath, but she wasn’t there yet. Couldn’t reduce the past six years of her life, her entire marriage, to a sour joke. Not yet, anyway. Maybe another glass of wine would get her to it, but Colette insisted on shopping just then.