Beautiful Secret

by Dana Faletti

  “It’s not what I expected,” Tate said to no one in particular. Unfinished tenement housing and run-down buildings dotted the dry, desert landscape beyond the highway.

  “Parts of Reggio are very…crude,” Michel told her, slamming on the brake for the fifteenth time in the last five minutes.

  Diesel fumes and cigarette smoke seeped into the car through every crack. Even though the air conditioner was cranked and the windows closed, Tate felt like she was breathing pure pollution. “I can’t believe the traffic,” she said. What should have been a nine-hour drive had ended up being closer to twelve hours.

  “Many people vacation in the south of Italy in August,” Michel said.

  Tate gazed out the windows at the mountains in the distance. The landscape, with its sand-colored foothills giving way to mountaintops, reminded her of a trip she’d taken to Arizona years ago for a friend’s wedding. Where France and Emilia-Romagna had been green and lush, Southern Italy was a study in dust. Sparse plots of olive and lemon trees sprung up unexpectedly from empty expanses of earth, destitute-looking homes sitting unassumingly behind the trees. Laundry hung in colorful lines from the tops of cement buildings that rose up singularly here and there for no apparent reason. Groups of dirty children kicked soccer balls and chased dogs along narrow side streets that were visible from the highway.

  Southern Italy made no sense. It just was.

  “This doesn’t strike me as a tourist trap,” Tate said, squinting through the haze outside at piles of trash stacked next to a grocery store dumpster. Quite the opposite.

  “Right now you see the beginnings of Reggio, Tatiana.”

  Tate assumed he meant the outskirts.

  “Some of it is not so nice,” Michel said. “But where we go next is different.”

  “Valanidi, you mean?”

  “Valanidi is not Reggio Calabria. It is up the mountain, a small town. Not so much people there,” Michel explained. “But we go first to the house of Zia Mimma in the city of Reggio. It’s very nice there, more modern.”

  * * *

  Tate’s thoughts didn’t conjure the word “modern” as Michel cautiously parked the Mercedes on a busy side street. The surroundings reminded her of an overpopulated and underprivileged village, the air smelling of sewer and overripe fruit.

  “Every time we come to Reggio, we stop first at this house, the home of Zia Mimma,” Michel told her as they approached the iron-gated entrance of a row house.

  Tate’s memory reached for the cheat sheet. She tried to visualize where Zia Mimma fit into the sprawling web.

  Nana Maria’s sister-in-law, Tate thought. But which of the brothers was her husband?

  There was no time to dig the wrinkled paper out of her purse to check, so she followed Michel and Zio past the cars and scooters that lined either side of the street and stood waiting on the doorstep with Zio and Michel.

  Zia Mimma was a tiny woman with a huge smile and two missing teeth. Her chubby cheeks and tight gray curls greeted Tate with exuberance and a two-kiss embrace, ushering her into the house. Wafts of hot, salty olive oil and tomato sauce sauntered through the air, and Tate’s mouth watered unapologetically as she was introduced to three young women.

  “Your cousins,” Zia Mimma told her, introducing them one at a time.

  “Giuliana,” she said taking the waist of a woman who was not much younger than Tate—in her mid-twenties, perhaps.

  “Ciao,” the girl said, familial welcome cascading from her dark eyes. Giuliana took Tate’s hands into her own and kissed her cheeks. “I’m so happy you are here, Tatiana,” she gushed with a naïve joy that was refreshingly honest.

  Giuliana stepped back, and an auburn-haired girl with loose curls like Tate’s own took her place. “Ciao,” she said, speaking more softly than her older sister. “I am Olivia.” Tate smiled at the young woman’s halting English as she leaned into Olivia’s kisses.

  “And this is our Nattina,” Zia Mimma said, introducing a girl Tate assumed to be about sixteen years old. Nattina performed a dramatic curtsy, then lunged forward on tiptoes to deliver her kisses. Delighted, Tate grinned at her youngest cousin, taking notice of Nattina’s deep, almost black eyes and fair skin. The young girl reminded Tate of a porcelain doll.

  As Zia Mimma and Zio Nino bantered in speedy dialect, the three girls took Tate through the house, eventually leading her into a tiny kitchen and to the back door.

  “We set the table outside, Tatiana,” Olivia told her, steering her back out into the dusky evening.

  Tate crossed the threshold from the house to what she thought would be a simple backyard patio, and she was suddenly transported to a place that seemed plucked from a time long gone. She’d imagined settings like this one when her grandmother’s voice had lulled her to sleep with stories of her pre-Pittsburgh life. A long narrow table of aged barn wood stretched the length of the terrace under a grape arbor that enveloped the scene in Old World romance. Purple and green leaves overlapped densely on the wooden beams that supported them, their gnarly stems jutting out every which way. Vines crawled from the top to the bottom of the structure, some rambling onto the floor of the stone patio. Tate’s mouth dropped open at the sight of the fist-sized lanterns hung haphazardly along wire that was strung between the wooden poles. The lanterns glowed, diffusing an amber flush across an impeccably set dining table.

  “This is amazing,” Tate breathed.

  Giuliana took her arm. “Sit, Tatiana. We eat now.”

  Tate took her seat near one end of the table, and Michel slid into the chair next to hers. Immediately, his hand was under the table on her knee. His touch stopped her for just a moment, and she swiftly turned to face him.

  “Is this like your Nana’s grape arbor, Tatiana?” Michel asked.

  She adored him for remembering one of the minuscule but special details she’d shared with him.

  “No,” Tate told him, placing her own hand atop his beneath the table. “This is different.”

  Their eyes locked for a moment, his gaze searing across her skin. The perseverance she found inside his stare made her feel shaky and excited at the same time, but she didn’t look away until Zia Mimma’s voice wove through the maze of her desire and broke the silence.

  “Mangia tutti, mangia!” she exclaimed, placing a steaming plate of pasta in red sauce on the table. Olivia followed her, carrying a pan of what looked like eggplant parmesan, and Giuliana appeared last, bearing grating cheese and a dish of olives.

  As they enjoyed Zia’s culinary creations, the wine and conversation flowed equally richly. Tate discovered that she preferred eggplant parmesan prepared in the local Calabrese style, stuffed with bits of hard-boiled egg and bright green peas. When Michel held a rice ball to her lips and offered a taste, she bit into the steaming fried coating, letting her lips brush against his fingertips just enough to make him shudder visibly. She grinned.

  “Mmm,” she said, holding the flavors of nutty cheese and parsley on her tongue. “Delicious.”

  He bent his head close to hers and whispered, “Yes, cousine, you are.”

  She threw her head back and laughed, confident that the others at the table wouldn’t notice their interaction. Zia and Zio were in a heated conversation, speaking in their native tongue much too quickly for her to understand, and the three girls were busy entertaining family friends who had joined their table for the evening.

  “Where is Zia Mimma’s husband?” Tate asked Michel as she sucked the sweet green flesh of an olive off its pit. She knew Zia Mimma had married one of her grandfather’s brothers but couldn’t remember which. She needed Aunt Mimi’s cheat sheet.

  “Zio Federico died three years ago,” Michel told her. “His liver was bad.”

  Federico, that was the brother.

  “My grandfather died of cirrhosis of the liver,” Tate said, thinking that the brothers may have indeed died of the same disease. She wondered if it had been genetics or a mutual obsession with whiskey that had ultimately destroyed
their livers.

  “Zia Mimma seems to do well on her own in this big house,” Tate said, glancing up and to the right at the narrow three-story home that most definitely had quite a few stairs. She guessed Zia Mimma to be at least in her early seventies, but the woman seemed much younger.

  “Zia is a young vecchia,” Michel said. “She has much energy, Tatiana. Women here are accustomed to hard work. This does not change for them as they age.”

  Tate regarded Zia Mimma again, hands flailing this way and that in discussion. “She does seem energetic.”

  “You should see her dance the tarantella,” Michel said, and took a drink of his wine.

  “Tatiana,” Olivia said, approaching Tate with a sweet, subtle smile painting her fair cheeks. “My friends and I, and my sisters, we go tomorrow to Tropea, a beautiful place on the sea. It is not very far from Reggio.”

  Tate grinned up at the young woman, who was bursting with the ripeness of youth. Where Giuliana was transparently lovely, Olivia was layered with several varieties of beauty. Waves of muted crimson hair fell casually around her shiny-cheeked face, bringing out the deep color of her full lips. Olivia had an unintentionally sensuous air about her that showed itself when she moved, when she spoke. She was all fluid and curves, and Tate found herself wishing she herself could be as comfortable with her own body as Olivia seemed to be with hers.

  “We like for you to come with us, for showing you the country there,” she said to Tate.

  “Tatiana,” Michel said. “You should go.”

  Tate was torn between sticking with the plan—staying the night in Valanidi and exploring Trunca tomorrow morning—and experiencing something unexpected.

  “I’d love to go,” Tate found herself saying. “Thanks.”

  Jumping off the ground with both feet, Olivia squealed with delight, her sultry side giving way to childlike innocence. Tate found that she was completely intrigued by this cousin.

  “Good,” Olivia said. “I am happy. We pick you up at nine of the morning, okay?”

  “Okay,” Tate said and clinked her wine glass with Olivia’s.

  Michel leaned back in his seat and placed his arm around the back of Tatiana’s chair. “You will like Tropea, Tatiana. Beautiful beach with caves inside the sea.”

  “Caves?”

  “Yes,” Michel said, draining the last of the wine from his glass and snatching a slice of cheese from a wooden board on the table. “You will see tomorrow.”

  “Aren’t you coming?” Tate asked, suddenly concerned about being apart from him for the day.

  “No,” Michel told her. “I have some things to take care of in Reggio. You go with Giuliana and the rest. They will show you a nice afternoon.”

  As soon as the words left Michel’s lips, music began to play. Tate watched as Zia Mimma clapped her hands and stood. The old woman pulled Zio Nino to his feet just as her granddaughters began converting the veranda into a dance floor. Nattina gestured to Tate to pick up her glass and began pushing the table to the back wall of the terrace. Suddenly, everyone was dancing.

  For a moment, Tate sat back and watched. Sheer joy exploded under the grape vines as Zia Mimma pranced and pointed. Zio led the dance, laughing a thousand laughs, and even the young ones played their part. Tate was amazed at her young cousins’ knowledge of the old dances and taken in by the pride they displayed with every move.

  “Dance with me, Tatiana,” Michel murmured at the base of her neck.

  “My father never taught me—”

  “I’ll teach you,” he said, sliding his chair out from under him and catching her hand in his own.

  She let him escort her to the makeshift dance floor. And when the music wound its way through her ears to her soul, she found it made perfect sense to her feet. She skipped when he skipped, clapped when he clapped, always keeping her eyes on his. When the tinny sound of folk songs paused, she let herself collapse into laughter and free fall into joy. The clutches of her old life had no hold on her here.

  This was Calabria.

  This was different.

  Chapter 24

  Maria

  This is my favorite place.”

  “Maria, it’s too cold for him.”

  “I’m just dipping his feet into the water.”

  I’d directed our well-paid driver to take a detour to Via Marina. I wanted Domenico and Luisa to lay their eyes on my sea. The water was as clear as it had been when I’d left it. I peered out at the horizon, as I’d done countless times before, this time knowing a little more of what lay beyond. This knowledge made me appreciate my home even more. I blew a kiss to the sea, silently praying for God’s guidance in the task ahead of me.

  “Luisa?” I turned away from the water and bent to pick up my shoes with one hand.

  “You’re right, Maria. It’s beautiful here. But”—she eyed me wickedly—“I could do without all of the little rocks.”

  I watched, grinning, as she lifted her dress to pick the tiny pebbles from her legs and backside.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Come on, let’s go to Valanidi.”

  As the car rounded the bend in front of the Domani home, I swallowed hard. Propping Domenico up on my knee, I took a deep breath of the petrol-laced mountain air and closed my eyes. Behind them I saw my son’s serene blue eyes, a shelter of calm that contradicted the storm of nerves raging within me.

  I exited the car and gestured for Luisa to follow me to the open door of the Domani’s tiny groceria, my heart pounding heavy and fast. The crackle of gravel beneath our feet announced our arrival, and before we could make our way through the archway and into the shop, Nicolina Domani appeared.

  She stood in the shaded doorway, a portrait of silence and mystery, her small, black eyes unblinking and stern as always. Her gaze held mine but did not shift to the baby in my arms, and as the seconds ticked agonizingly by, I waited.

  Suddenly, her arms were around us, Domenico and me, her face folded into my shoulder, her lips kissing his forehead. Her tears altogether surprised me as they swam down her face and onto my arm. The old woman seemed to empty of every ounce of bitterness that life had poured into her as she stroked my stringy hair, her fingers gently tugging through the windblown knots. And when tiny, hard-faced Nicolina stood back from us, a radiant grin lit up her wrinkled face. The smile softened her, revealing the warmth within that had been masked by loss and war and the terribly hard life she’d led.

  “Grazie, Dei!” She thanked God and joyfully whisked Domenico from my arms. “Come, Maria. I have been waiting for you to return to us.”

  “That’s the scary old woman?” Luisa whispered to me as we followed Nicolina through the store to a tiny kitchen.

  “Sit,” Nicolina ordered, gesturing to a small round table and chairs.

  I watched in awe as she cooed over my baby and fussed with his blanket. Luisa and I each took a seat across from her and waited for her to speak.

  “Maria, there has been so much loss in these years.” Her black eyes danced toward the ceiling, as if above her hovered a gateway to the past. “First my mother, and then my husband in the war. But then you arrive, bringing with you this baby. So many nights I’ve dreamed of this child but woken up with the fear that I would never lay my hands on him. Mmm,” she hummed, staring down at him. “The child with the perfect blue eyes. Thank God, Maria. I don’t know how you did it, but you came home. And you brought to me my grandson.”

  “But how…” The words floated around me, stuck in a gooey haze. “How did you know?”

  “I know things,” she said, looking away as she spoke. “I started to know when I saw the way Giuseppe looked at you.”

  I blushed at this and uttered a silent prayer to the Virgin Mary for strength.

  “He is my son, Maria, but he is also a man, and I know the ways of men. I’ve raised eight children, you know. And Giuseppe, he is the type of man who takes what he wants, with or without asking. Right or wrong.” She sighed. “Ah, Maria. I knew when I saw his face that h
e wanted you. He broke the heart of that poor girl, your cousin.” She flinched and eyed me solemnly. “Much has happened here since you’ve been gone, child.”

  I froze. In the distance, a hen cackled. “Tell me, signora.”

  She stood from her chair, still cradling Domenico in her arms. The oddness of seeing her bounce my son was tempered with the knowledge that she was his grandmother. I wasn’t alone in loving him.

  “We still haven’t found Giuseppe. He’s run off, and no one knows where, or if they do know, they won’t say.” Her eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flared. “Now, he will be found. I’ll make sure of it. No son of mine will abandon his family, especially his son.” At that moment, she noticed Luisa for the first time. “Who is this?”

  “This is my friend Luisa, from the convent.” I got to the point quickly. “If it weren’t for her, I never would have made it home.”

  “Bless you, then, bella,” Nicolina said, placing her hand over Luisa’s. “You brought my family home.”

  Luisa smiled her yellow smile but said nothing.

  “Maria, something terrible happened to Concetta in the summer, an accident.”

  Holy God, don’t let my cousin be dead.

  “She is in the hospital now. She is…damaged.”

  “What happened?” I clutched the back of the chair with both hands.

  “When your aunt found her, she was already very sick. She’d taken the wrong medication.”

  On purpose. The horrible truth enveloped me all at once.

  My cousin—my young, radiant star of a cousin—had tried to take her own life. And it was all because of me and the selfish act of lust I’d committed.

  “And my Zia and Zio?”

  “They are in Messina, with Felicia’s sister’s family. I believe her sister’s home is very close to the sanitarium.”

  My Concetta. In an asylum.

  “Only Alfonso stayed here. He is in Reggio, living with…” She paused. “Your brother.”

  “Giovanni lives in Reggio? What about the farm?”

  “Your brother sold the property in Trunca, bella,” she said, each word slicing through me. “He works in Reggio now.”