by Dana Faletti
“Maria,” Nicolina called to me from the kitchen after I’d deposited the forty or so loaves onto the metal racks inside the store. “There are some jars of dried basilico in the bread house. Will you get one for me? I’m making a frittata for Domenico.”
“Yes. I’ll be right there.”
Stepping lightly back outside, I raised my eyes to the swirl of gray above. I remember thinking that the clouds were hanging so low over the mountain that day. It seemed as if the sky itself were falling.
The lingering aroma of yeast and savory crust welcomed me back into the tiny stone hut. I scanned the wooden shelf that held jars of vegetables and herbs that we’d put up at harvest time. Spying the basil, I reached out to grab it when an overwhelming sense of being watched from behind lit my senses with fear. Turning completely around, I crumbled beneath the weight of his black eyes, the enormous presence of his small form. The glass jar of basil slipped from my fingers, hitting the cement floor and breaking into a thousand shards. I remember thinking it would be impossible to separate the sharp glass from the dried basil.
“You’re bleeding, Maria.”
“Am I?”
Giuseppe came toward me, his boots crunching over the broken shards. I watched him bend down and remove a chunk of glass from my shin, feeling nothing but the creep of dread over my skin as his fingers lingered too long there.
“See?”
He held up the sliver he’d extracted from my leg and smiled as if he’d discovered a treasure. The light that trickled through the bread house door bounced off of the glass and onto his bloody fingers as he tilted it this way and that.
Blood and basil.
Sickly sweet and pungent.
To this day, the odor of either of these brings me back to that moment in the bread house. To that morning when he returned for me.
The sky hadn’t fallen after all, but Giuseppe Domani had come home—a far greater disaster for sure.
This was the first time I died, bella. So, you see, Tati, I am not afraid. I’ve done this before, and the first time was much worse, I promise you.
There is more to this story, my precious one, but I am too tired to say another word. I am smelling basil and blood and something else. Maybe it is the scent of rest. I’ve done my part. I’ve had some happiness, my sweet Tati. You will, too. You’ll see
Chapter 37
Tate
Tate dunked a piece of hard bread into Elena’s garlicky tomato broth, then brought it to her lips for a half-hearted bite.
“You don’t like my cooking?” Elena asked her from across the table, her cheeks red, her black eyes like two stale raisins, extra dry and bitter.
“I love it, Elena. It’s delicious.” Tate tried to infuse some oomph into her voice, but her head was still spinning from the conversation at the fountain.
Michel’s legs were warm against hers beneath the table, his obviously worried eyes scanning her face. After a thirty-minute conversation with Signore Nigro, she’d rushed back to the house, where everyone was already gathered at the table, enjoying a light evening meal of cioppino. Tate hadn’t had a chance to share her discoveries with Michel and wasn’t sure she was even ready to do so. She needed to digest it all.
She needed to talk to Suri.
“I’m sorry,” Tate said, interrupting the conversation between Zio Nino and his friend Ludovico, who’d graced their table at the Ferragosto celebration as well. She stood and pushed in her chair. “I’m feeling a little funny. I need to lie down.”
“Tatiana,” Michel said, taking her hand. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” she lied, knowing he’d see right through her words. “Too much sun, maybe.”
“Or perhaps too much history,” Zio said as he dug a small clam from its pearly shell. “It’s a lot for the heart to dig so deeply into the past. Sometimes we trip over the souvenirs we never thought we would unearth, no?”
Tate’s skin felt as if it were melting off of her face. If only Zio knew how his words resonated within her.
And then, suddenly, like the first moment of dawn blotting out the dark of night, a light swam through Zio’s dark eyes, bleeding truth onto Tate.
Of course he had known all along. This little man, with his quiet air and seemingly inobservant eyes. He knew everything. The sad, sweet story of unrequited love between her Nana Maria and Pietro Nigro. Zio had been here, on this mountain, through all of it.
Tate dug her gaze into her great-uncle’s, not knowing whether to scream at him for keeping it from her or to thank him for letting her journey to this place of discovery in her own way.
“I have to go,” she said, her mouth dry and hot with the need to spill everything to someone who would understand.
A minute later, she was dialing in the dim light of her dingy bedroom.
“Tate?”
Tate’s words tumbled from her, sliding through tears and choking on a regret she felt for Nana Maria. She let her pain spill onto Suri, who knew every bit of the story except for what Tate had discovered this evening.
“She loved him, Suri, and he was crazy about her,” Tate said, her words catching on the mucus that lined her tight throat. “They were together for two whole years, and he adored my father, would have raised him as his own.”
“What happened?”
“My grandfather got word of the affair somehow. No one ever figured out who told him.”
“Do you think it was Concetta? Or Nana’s brother, Giovanni?”
“I don’t know. Giuseppe must have been corresponding with someone from Valanidi, but who it was remains a mystery.” Pausing to wipe the tears that wouldn’t stop coming, Tate fingered the sunflower rock she’d placed on her dusty dresser. “No one thought my grandfather would come back for her. Not even his own mother. He was such a bastard, Suri.” Tate sobbed into the phone, her body wracked with a heartache that was twofold.
“Shh, Tate, it’s okay.”
“How is it okay, Suri? This man, this Pietro, loved her, adored her,” Tate said, gasping through her grief into the wet phone. “And she left him here to go to a foreign country where she never felt at home, to endure a life with a man she never loved. A horrible, abusive man who never appreciated her for the angel that she was.”
Tate fell backward onto the bed then, landing in a tangle of moist, unkempt sheets. She wrapped herself inside them and cried and cried, barely holding onto the phone as Suri whispered soothing words from across the ocean. Deep down, she knew she wasn’t only crying for her grandmother and the beautiful life she’d left behind. No, the steady drip of sadness that fell from her burning eyes was also self-inspired. Truthfully, she was sobbing in part for herself, for the future she’d refused to even think about ever since she’d allowed herself to get lost inside Michel’s blue eyes.
“Tate, are you okay?” Suri asked after a bout of silence.
“I’m just so shocked, Suri. And sad for her. She deserved happiness.”
“She was happy, Tate. She was always so happy with her family.”
“I know, Suri. It’s just…I can’t explain it.”
“Listen, Nana always used to say that things happen for a reason, right?”
Tate huffed, rubbing her weary eyes and shaking her head at the simplicity of Suri’s logic. “I guess.”
“And if she hadn’t come to America, you wouldn’t even exist. What would I do without my tomorrow girl?”
“Ah, Suri.” Hearing her father’s nickname for her brought a small smile to Tate’s lips. She sighed into the phone. “I have so much to tell you.”
“I believe it.”
“Oh, Suri, but you won’t,” Tate told her. “You can’t even begin to imagine.”
“Listen, Tate, I know this is pretty weird, but Nathan called me yesterday.”
Tate flinched at the sound of her husband’s name. “For what?”
“I don’t know. He sounded horrible. Asked if I’d talked to you at all and when you were coming home.”
&
nbsp; Nathan had asked when she was coming back. This shard of knowledge pierced her, and she winced.
“He knows the dates of my trip,” she told Suri.
“Yeah, well, you know Nathan. Not exactly stellar in the listening department.” Suri’s voice was laced with distaste.
“Why now?” Tate asked, more to the stagnant air than to Suri.
“I don’t know, Tate. I asked him if he had your number, said he could call you if he needed something, like dry cleaning or grass cutting. He said he had it in his phone.”
Tate didn’t want to give two shits about whatever was going on with her husband, but a wave of concern crept over her.
“Listen, Suri.” She pushed away the unwanted thoughts of Nathan and whatever his problem was. “Thanks for being here for me.”
“Shut up, sister. Now, go enjoy some vino and spaghetti, okay? And don’t forget to write everything down in the journal I gave you.”
Tate sighed. She hadn’t written one word. She’d been far too busy experiencing life to find even a moment to write about it. “Okay.”
“Bye.”
Tate pushed End and stared at the screen, hating her very own fingers as they dialed the next number.
“Tate?” His voice was foreign to her. She didn’t know if it was because everything before Europe seemed to inhabit a different version of her life or because there was actually something odd in his tone.
“Nathan.” She hated having his name on her lips, wanted to scratch the syllables off of her tongue before she even said it.
“Tate, I’m sick.” The words spilled ice all over her, freezing her with a fear that had nothing to do with the relative wellness of her spouse—a fear that was sealed by the next phrases that invaded her ears.
“Tate, I have lymphoma.” He paused, waiting for a response from his wife. She had nothing. “I need you.”
Oh. God. No.
The air was gone from the room.
She wanted to hyperventilate, but there was nothing to breathe.
She wanted to vomit, but her belly was numb.
She wanted to tell him to go to hell.
But she didn’t.
“Okay,” she said and pressed End so hard with her thumb, she thought the touch screen might shatter into a thousand pieces.
Tate mindlessly slipped her feet into athletic shoes and prepared to do the one thing she knew to do when everything came crashing down around her: run.
Chapter 38
Tate
Dusk at Valanidi. The purple sky buzzed with the noise of early night: young people flirting at the fountain, random strains of music floating from neighbor’s verandas, the bustle of evening meals being served and cleared.
Tate ignored all of it. Focusing on the stark white of San Nicola Catholic Church at the top of the hill, she willed her feet to move.
Past the handful of tiny houses. Away from the sounds of conversation and life.
Up the endless stone stairs that led to the church where her grandmother had married Giuseppe Domani, a man she’d never loved.
Across the uneven dusty squares of ground that showcased each terra-cotta station of the cross, the stages of suffering God’s son had endured for His people.
But even as she sought out that place of comfortable mindlessness, that refuge she could fade into, she could not flee her pain. It found her around every corner, forcing her to face the dismal reality of her circumstances.
At some point within the past two weeks, Tate had unlatched the doors to her heart. She’d let others in, let them see her cry. She’d stood up to the fears of loss and grief that had reigned over her life for far too long, and she’d allowed herself to feel again. Now, the valve that had staved off her emotions was opened wide, and she couldn’t close it off. She was drowning.
“Oomph,” she sputtered as her body tumbled into the stony dust at the foot of the cross. Her shoe had gotten caught in a tangle of weeds, and her body in motion had been hurled forward. Tate pushed herself up and dusted flecks of dirt from her sweaty palms, from her brush-burned knees. Tears scalded her eyes as she stared accusingly at the sad statue eyes of God’s only son, as if He were the one who had knocked her down.
“Why?” she asked weakly, her voice dripping childlike from her lips.
On the wind of a whimper, she was transported to one of the other worst moments.
* * *
The gurgle that spilled from the back of Nana’s throat had mucked up her words. She’d been saying that Giuseppe, Tate’s grandfather, had come back to Valanidi for her—to collect her, Tate assumed, and bring her with him to America. Then Nana had stuttered and choked on her saliva.
Something was beeping. One of the damn machines hooked to Nana was sounding an alarm.
“Nana?”
Frantic fear coated Tate’s shoulders and froze her in place as staff began to appear in a flurry of medical garb and shiny metal equipment.
“Mrs. Robbins, you need to step outside, please. Come on, Mrs. Robbins.”
From somewhere Tate couldn’t focus on, a hand grasped her arm and began guiding her from the room. A cloudy voice, steady but firm, was telling her she needed to leave her grandmother’s side.
Suddenly, the force of all that had been taken from her slammed itself into the back of her throat and emerged with a desperate wail.
“No!” Tate shoved off the hands that were pushing her out the door of the hospital room. She shoved away the nurse who was in her path and threw herself onto Nana’s bed, smashing her hips into the hard plastic rails.
“No! No! No! You cannot die! You can’t leave me here all alone!” She screamed and begged again and again, her words tripping over her tears. “I’m all alone,” she cried.
Her prior sentence snuck out in a small voice, the syllables seeming to try to crawl right back inside her lips and hide themselves under her tongue.
“I’m completely alone.”
* * *
For a brief second, the mountain seemed to quake beneath her feet, reaching to shake her out of the past and bring her back to the foot of the cross.
Before the memory faded, Tate remembered what Nana had said before she’d passed: “I’ve had some happiness, my sweet Tati. You will, too. You’ll see.”
Nana had left her one and only love behind to marry the man who’d both stolen her innocence and given her a son, and yet she’d found happiness in life. She hadn’t had a choice in the matter, but Tate did. The weight of righteousness sat heavy in Tate’s heart, making it hard for her to take a deep breath.
Suddenly, Tate heard her Nana’s voice. Soothing. Singing. The lullaby she’d crooned to all of her grandchildren at bedtime, Tate included.
Fa la ninna, fa la nanna
Nella braccia della mamma
The moist air grew cool around her as Tate stood still and searched the night for the source of the song, knowing all the while she wouldn’t find it with her eyes.
“Help me,” she uttered, the words feebly slipping from her cotton mouth. She knelt at the statue of Jesus and laid her forehead on its cool stone base. “I can’t do this,” she whispered.
Fa la ninna bel bambin,
Fa la nanna bambin bel,
Fa la ninna, fa la nanna
Nella braccia della mamma.
Fa la ninna, fa la nanna
Nella braccia della mamma.
The words of the lullaby drifted over and around her, wrapping her in its pacifying rhythm, and when cool hands fell upon her shoulders, Tate didn’t need to turn around to see who was there.
She could feel the grooves of wrinkles in those fingers.
She could smell the cold cream in the air.
Tate buckled under the comfort of those hands, feeling more connected than ever to the woman who’d always been there for her. In life, in the stark memory of her choices, and now, even in death.
“Thank you,” she said, and as the words left her lips, the presence evaporated, leaving Tate alone once more with the r
ealization of what she had to do.
* * *
When Tate re-emerged onto the veranda, it was as if nothing had changed. Zio and Ludovico were sitting across from each other. If Tate was hearing them right, they were talking about the garden and how productive it had been this season. Elena was clearing coffee, the clink of the china espresso set echoing across the small courtyard.
Michel must have sensed her presence because his eyes were expectant as he turned to take her in. Immediately, he stood.
“What is it?”
Tate stood at the end of the now-silent table, her arms hanging limply at her side, her mouth dry.
“I—” she started, choking on the words and stilling herself to rein in her tears. “I have to go home.”
Chapter 39
Tate
“How did you get here?” Michel asked Tate as she squatted next to him on the beach and nudged herself into his warm skin. He didn’t look at her but kept his eyes on the sea.
“Arturo gave me a ride. Your grandfather took me to Trunca to say good-bye,” she told him, cautiously edging her bare knees closer to his body. “I had lunch there with his family. After, he said he was going into town, so I asked him to drive me here.”
Michel said nothing, barely moving a muscle other than to mindlessly scoop and release pebbles with his left hand.
Tate couldn’t read him. Last night, she’d explained to everyone at Valanidi about Nathan’s illness and that she had to cut her trip short. Michel had grown quiet, then disappeared. Tate hadn’t spoken to him since.