Book One of the Santa Lucia Series

by Michelle Damiani

  Sauro mumbled, “What was that?”

  Ava peeked at Edo through lowered lashes.

  Edo answered, “I don’t know. I saw him yesterday and I did offer to come by and help. He didn’t answer, I didn’t even think he heard me.”

  Chiara put her hand on Edo’s arm, “He doesn’t mean it, Edo. He loves you, always has.”

  Edo shook his head, “Maybe. I clearly did something wrong. I’m clearly ‘not normal’.”

  Ava bit her lip and ventured, “It’s not you that did something wrong. It’s Massimo. It’s just made Luciano so angry and sad that he’s confused.”

  Chiara leaned toward Ava. The girl seemed to be trying not to cry.

  The bar was quiet.

  Sauro cleared his throat, “Dante says we’re finally getting recycling bins.”

  Edo darted his eyes at Ava. She blinked and then turned to Sauro. “Really? And only ten years after Perugia got theirs.”

  Everyone visibly relaxed. Arturo added, “My prediction is that Carosello will use those recycling bins more than everyone else put together.”

  Edo laughed and said, “At first maybe. But people will catch on. Northern Italy has been doing it forever, and it works. Santa Lucia will figure it out.”

  Talk turned to the gossip about Rosetta, the principal, and her trip to the Dolomiti. Her son had had a narrow miss with a drunk Russian man careening down the ski slope. The child was fine, but Rosetta had come home hopping mad. Who were these Russians to come to their country and act like it was their playground? Ordering the most expensive food and eating it all with sides of vodka and the wrong wines (selected purely because they were the priciest)? And then drunk skiing with no regard for Italian children.

  Soon the bar was full of laughter again, and Chiara returned to the business of making coffee, her hand ducking into her pocket one more time to touch the corner of the envelope.

  Magda stormed into Bar Birbo moments before the end of the morning rush, her head swiveling from side to side, as if she were watching an invisible, aggravating game of tennis. Chiara smiled and greeted her while flipping on the La Pavoni to make Magda her cappuccino.

  “Tutto a posto, Magda?”

  “Sì, sì . . .” Magda took a breath, “Only, um.”

  Chiara glanced over her shoulder at Magda still standing in the center of the bar. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes! Of course! I mean, well why . . . I mean . . . I just wanted to see. It’s probably not anyway,” Magda stammered.

  You can’t be familiar with this side of Magda. It is so rarely on display.

  Chiara poured the milk into the cup with the coffee and handed it to Magda with an expression of concern. She must be having the same thought. “Seriously Magda, I’ve never seen you not be able to get a sentence out. What’s wrong?” Ah, yes, exactly.

  “Nothing! Well, I mean, not really it’s just a strange thing, and I . . .” her voice trailed off.

  “Oh, Madonna mia! Did you hear something about your husband? Did they find him? Is he alive?”

  Magda clucked, “Chiara, why on earth would I care what that scumbag does? I have no idea if he’s alive or dead and I don’t even have a preference as long as he stays away from me.”

  “Okay. What is it then?”

  Magda hesitated before straightening her shoulders, “It’s not a big deal, Chiara, so don’t turn it into one. It’s simply that I keep forgetting to ask you if you found my amulet in the bar.”

  “Amulet? Like for malocchio?”

  “No, no, nothing to do with warding off the evil eye, just an amulet. I think it slipped off of my necklace some weeks ago.”

  “It did? Why didn’t you ask me sooner?” Chiara pulled out a box under the register and began extracting items. Sunglasses, a scarf, a keychain, a faded photograph, a child’s tiny doll.

  “Maybe I would have, but there are always people in here. I didn’t want a lot of questions. ‘Oh, Magda! What are you looking for? Oh, Magda, you mean you dropped something? What is it? Where does it come from? Why is it special?’ This town is full of interfering gossips.”

  Chiara smothered a smile. “Well, it’s not here.”

  Magda sighed. “I didn’t think so. And you clean regularly on the edges of the shop? Could it have been kicked against a wall and gone unnoticed?” Magda began frowning at the place where the wall, covered with signs for the sagra, met the floor.

  Laughing, Chiara said, “I’ll go ahead and ignore the implicit accusation that I’m slovenly when it comes to cleaning my bar and just say . . . oh! Wait a minute.” Chiara hit a button on the register so that the drawer popped open. “I just remembered, Edo found a little golden something on the floor a month ago. It was small, and looked like it could be important, so we put it in the register rather than in the lost box.” Chiara fished through a small well in the drawer, extracting coins from other countries that she’d accidentally accepted and keys to her grappa cases, while Magda hurried over to watch.

  Chiara pulled out a golden ‘Y’ shape with an extra prong, like a trimmed down representation of a broom, and held it up with triumph, “Here it is! Actually, is it? I don’t really know what it is.”

  Magda snatched it from Chiara’s fingers and barked. “Yes! That’s it!”

  “Oh, good. I wish you had mentioned it sooner. Or that I remembered it when you said you lost an amulet. I think of amulets as stones or shells.”

  “It’s probably an error in translation from German. Regardless, thank you.”

  “Glad I could help. What is it anyway?”

  Magda shot a glowering stare at Chiara, who held up her hands, “Okay, okay, I don’t mean to pry. It’s unusual, that’s all.”

  Twitching her hair back over her shoulder, Magda mumbled, “My mother gave it to me as a child.”

  “Ah, so it has sentimental value.”

  Magda shuddered before guffawing, “Ha! No, not at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”

  With that, Magda dropped coins in the copper plate, turned on her heel, and, leaving her cappuccino untasted, walked with stately purpose out the door. Chiara watched as the door closing behind Magda spurred her steps, and she fairly flew down the street, away from Bar Birbo.

  Magda turned left out of Bar Birbo, tears clouding her vision. She didn’t know where she was going, she just knew she had to move, to escape the images crowding her head.

  But the voices only got louder the farther she got from Chiara’s gentle bewilderment.

  “Magda! You idiot! What will the Gestapo say when they see you here with your hair all untidy like a Jew!”

  “Magda! What is this I hear about you whispering during the prayer for our Führer at school? Didn’t you think for a moment of the shame you were bringing on your family?”

  “Magda! You don’t need second helpings, you fat cow!”

  Her mother’s voice chased her down the street, her father added the icy undertone.

  “Magda, get in here. I heard about you speaking to a Jew on the street outside the bakery.”

  “Magda, if only you had never been born. Then I wouldn’t have this shame of a daughter who is an idiot.”

  The cries threatened to erupt out of her, she had to get home, she had to get home! She couldn’t shame herself by collapsing in the street. Furiously, Magda wiped her eyes and gulped for breath. Where was she? Where was she? Ah, in the piazza. Stop! Think! She ordered herself. Turn right, then at the end of the alley, a left and then she could rush to her door. Magda narrowly avoided banging into Luciano sitting on the bench. “Scusi. Entschuldigen sie.”

  Luciano looked up. “Hey! What the—Magda?” His voice wavered with drink.

  “Leave me alone!”

  Luciano pressed down on his cane to reach out to Magda, but she batted away his arm as she hurried away. He plopped back onto the bench and
tried to corral his blurry thoughts into order. What was the matter with Magda?

  Meanwhile, Magda stumbled over a loose cobblestone dashing down the alley, then careened around the corner.

  Her hand curled tightly around the amulet, until she could feel the cold metal biting into her skin, a familiar sensation which helped clear her mind. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” she chanted under her breath.

  Her parents were dead. Long dead. Buried in a Nazi graveyard somewhere in Germany. They couldn’t hurt her anymore.

  But those voices lacerated her soul. She had to quiet the voices. They had only haunted her when she thought about the box under her bed. Now they were unleashed, and more clamorous than ever.

  Fumbling, Magda removed her key from her pocket and stabbed the lock several times before she was able to pop it open and rush inside. As if chased, Magda pivoted around the door and slammed it shut with all her weight, turning the lock.

  She sighed.

  But who was she keeping out?

  The voices, the voices were still with her. Taunting her. The voices jeered while Magda sank to the floor, head on her knees, and sobbed.

  Luciano continued to sit, planted, long after Magda’s back receded down the alley. He tried in vain to process her hunched posture. Even his sluggish brain registered her shape as uncharacteristic. She wasn’t a pleasant person to interact with, but she had admirable posture—erect and confident. Imperious, at times.

  An hour later, his mind kept returning to the puzzle that was Magda, running sloppily, practically falling into the rosebushes.

  Another hour later, and the clawing hunger was stronger than the remaining drink in his brain. He needed to move, but exhaustion settled like a mantle over his body. His mind was still stuck on Magda.

  A far off feeling within him flickered in sympathy. She was clearly cowed by pain. And pain was something Luciano understood. His eyes welled with tears at the thought of so much pain in the world. This world that was so evil, that delighted in tormenting those with open hearts. Though frankly, he’d never before considered Magda someone with an open heart.

  Luciano tipped his face into the sun, which aggravated those easy tears. The numbness was wearing off. He needed more wine. He’d move in a minute, he just needed to see if she appeared, so he could watch her from a distance. No, she wasn’t his beloved daughter, but something about her slid into a place within him. It’s what kept him coming back to this bench, to see her crossing the piazza, her eyes wary and her shoulders curved inward. Yes, one thing she shared with Giulia was a lack of comfort with her space in this world. A lack of surety. He wondered where that had come from in Giulia. He and his wife had doted on her as a child, a teenager, a woman. They could never believe they made something so precious. He blamed Massimo for turning his daughter into a walking apology.

  In any case, though seeing Massimo’s new wife grated against the wound in his heart, he also felt compelled to seek her out, to seek out this pain, again and again. He found himself saving the bulk of his wine for the late afternoons, so that he could have the chance to see her less foggy from drink.

  Luciano closed his eyes and leaned back, relishing the sounds of swallows, joyous in the absence of the construction work that filled the weekdays.

  A shadow fell across his closed lids, and he opened his eyes to see Elisa standing in front of him.

  “Elisa.”

  Elisa bit her lip and sat down beside Luciano. She said nothing.

  “Elisa?”

  Elisa shook her head, and put her head in her hands.

  “What is it?”

  Elisa just shook her head again.

  Luciano watched her, wondering what to do. He remembered now, Elisa’s skittishness, her tendency to leap out of her seat at the sound of anything hitting the floor, even a spoon. Her stream of apologies at what she deemed an infraction against himself or Fatima, that would leave the two of them looking bewildered at each other while Elisa ran to a darkened corner to catch her breath.

  She had grown less edgy in their time together. Now? There was an air of her old brittleness. What had been happening?

  “Maestro?”

  Luciano startled, Elisa was regarding him, her face strained.

  “Sì, cara?”

  “Are you okay?”

  Ah, so this was no fresh insult at home that was causing her pain. It was him.

  He sagged against the solid safety of the ancient wooden bench. Felt it prodding against his bones, perhaps more brittle with age, but still solid. Luciano breathed heavily.

  He opened his eyes and saw that Elisa was still watching him, chewing her lower lip as she did when they worked out math problems together. That lip was red and chapped.

  “I’ll be honest, cara. It’s been a difficult time. And I’ve let it get the better of me.”

  Elisa was silent.

  The two of them watched the pigeons and cats argue over a scrap of food in the piazza. The bell tolled the hour and at the fifth sonorous bong, Luciano stood up. Elisa startled slightly before smiling at him in a fleeting way.

  Luciano nodded to himself and whispered, “Allora.”

  Isotta felt Margherita’s head tip onto her shoulder. The curls, frizzy from a day of playing at the park and chasing Isotta though the streets, tickled Isotta’s chin. Hardly daring to breathe, Isotta laid the child into her crib. Margherita twitched and sighed, freezing Isotta as she removed her hands. But then the little girl rolled onto her side, popped her thumb into her mouth and sank into slumber.

  Isotta sighed in relief. Lately Margherita had fought sleep. Always wanting one more game of hide and seek, or one more drink of water, or one more story read aloud. Isotta could never refuse her, particularly when it came to books. In fact, even now, the end of Margherita’s crib was stacked with books. Perhaps they would keep her occupied if she woke again at five in the morning.

  Tiptoeing out, Isotta followed the sound of the soccer game into the living room. She sat on the arm of the chair to lean against her husband, whose vision was trained on the television. “How’s the game?” she asked.

  Massimo glared at her. “Fine. Trying to watch.”

  Rebuked, Isotta got up and went to the kitchen, where Anna was washing dishes. “Can I help?”

  “No, no. I’m about done. Is she sleeping?”

  “Yes, finally. She ran me ragged today. It’s a wonder she didn’t use her plate of sausage as a pillow and nod off at the table.”

  Anna placed the last dish in the rack above the sink and reached for a towel.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”

  “I said I’m fine! Go watch the game with Massimo.”

  Isotta adjusted her blouse before answering in a measured tone, “Oh, I think Massimo would prefer to watch it alone.”

  Anna smiled, tightly. “Men. Always hypnotized by a moving ball.”

  Drumming her hands on the table, Isotta noted a rising level of irritation. She was getting tired of gender being used as an explanation for violating social conventions. First her sister, now this. Plus, there was that awkward conversation with her mother that she never wanted to think about again. So much for relying on a mother’s wisdom for advice on how to broach the subject of birth control with Massimo.

  Did she get any special passes just by virtue of being a woman? Or was that grace only extended to people with penises?

  The bluntness of her thoughts rattled her. But in retrospect, Isotta realized that she had spent her life muting herself in order to be seen as attractive. It was this whirlwind of her new life that made her value concise honesty. At least in her own reasoning process.

  Anna carefully placed a wineglass in the cabinet. At Isotta’s lack of response she turned toward her and said, “Isotta, it is not your place to be offended.”

 
Isotta flinched. “I’m not offended.”

  “Then stop acting like a child.”

  “How am I acting like a child?” Isotta fought back the tears rising in her throat at the sudden criticism from a woman she had started to feel safe with.

  “Sulking in the kitchen? Come on, Isotta. Go be with your husband.”

  “But he doesn’t want me there.”

  “Just because he’s not fawning all over you doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you there. You can’t expect it to be your honeymoon forever.”

  That was true, but the words might have been easier to swallow if there had actually been a honeymoon. Instead, she went from her wedding day straight into instant motherhood. Isotta’s thoughts battled between wondering if perhaps it was unreasonable to expect affection from her husband after a month of marriage and countering that a smile or a kind word weren’t too much to ask.

  “Look, Isotta, I speak my mind when it comes to my household. Massimo works hard during the day to provide for the family. Is it too much to ask that we make his evenings pleasant? He likes a good meal, so I cook a full dinner every night. The least you can do is allow him room to unwind. If you pout, he’ll find you unpleasant. That’s how affairs happen.”

  The logic of this didn’t sit well with Isotta, but maybe it was one more way her lack of experience didn’t prepare her for marriage. She nodded and stood to go back to the living room.

  “That’s better,” Anna grumbled.

  Isotta sat on the couch and tucked her bare feet underneath her. Massimo and Anna had teased her relentlessly about her preference for bare feet, even as the weather shifted to the chill of November, but her baby habits died hard. She smiled thinking about how Margherita had started flinging off her shoes and socks.