A Wild Winter Swan

by Gregory Maguire

  Before Laura could collect cash from Nonna’s purse for the cheese, and while you’re at it a quart of heavy cream, the doorbell rang again. “Just like Geneva!” said Nonna, patting her head, as if she hoped her original hair had grown back in since breakfast. “If that is my sister showing up early to shame me in my stato vestito, I am going to kill myself,” she continued, “and then I will kill her, and let Mr. Corm Kennedy and Nonno fight a duel for the change. Answer the door, Laura, please, and if it happens to be a caller and not someone delivering another godforsaken poinsettia, show them into the waiting room and close the door, and I’ll rush up the back stairs and arrange my face.”

  The idea of Nonna rushing anywhere was a laugh. Laura did as she was told. There were two people at the door. One was a delivery guy with, yes, a poinsettia in a sealed paper envelope like a cone. The big packet of plant blocked the little person slightly behind the delivery guy. Only when Laura had put the flowers down on the floor in the front hall and turned back did she recognize the visitor. If it were a woman Laura couldn’t recognize, it might be Zia Geneva, because Laura hadn’t seen her great-aunt since Marco’s service and couldn’t remember her at all. But it was a different relative.

  “Oh, we weren’t expecting you,” said Laura, not meaning to be unkind.

  “I don’t like no telephone, you get voices in your head from the telephone, and we have enough voices in the head already, so I took the early Greyhound,” said Nonna di Lorenzo. “I hope you going to ask me in and not just talk to me here on this stoop like I’m sister collecting for Saint Colman’s Home for Children.”

  “Sure, come in,” said Laura, and to the lads behind her in the hall, “this is my other grandmother. Signora di Lorenzo.”

  “Buongiorno,” said John Greenglass, and to Laura, “What? You think I haven’t picked up any Italian, working here all week?”

  Laura installed Nonna di Lorenzo in the waiting room. “I’ll get Nonna Ciardi, but it might take her a moment. She’s not fully dressed.”

  “I dressed by five-fifteen in the morning,” said Nonna di Lorenzo. “Really, Laura, I came to talk you, mostly, but ask Nonna Ciardi to step in, see me for few moments. She should know about this, very also.”

  Laura closed the door on Nonna di Lorenzo, a much smaller and frailer old lady than stout Nonna Ciardi. “You got them coming out of the woodwork,” said John Greenglass.

  “What, more owls?” asked Laura.

  “Grandmothers.”

  Sam muttered, “Don’t she look like she could be a grandmother owl herself, though, showing up to find out what ceiling her stupid granddaughter got herself stuck into.” He had a point. Nonna di Lorenzo was tiny and bony and her fried hair was short and scattershot, every-which-way, a white feather duster someone had trimmed with nail scissors.

  Nonna Ciardi was livid at the news, and at first refused to come upstairs at all.

  “It must be important, Nonna. She hasn’t been to New York City in a while,” said Laura.

  “It’s only polite to say hello,” intoned Mary Bernice.

  “When I need my cook’s advice on manners I’ll fire you and hire another cook,” snapped Nonna Ciardi. But she wrapped two tea towels on her head and shucked off her apron. “If she thinks she’s getting an invitation to stay over, she’s got another thing coming. We haven’t time to make up Miss Gianna Tebaldi’s room for her, and anyway, that old quail-hen would never manage the top flight of steps.”

  But by the time Nonna Ciardi and Laura returned to the waiting room, Nonna Ciardi had composed her face and calmed down. “Se non si credo, non può essere vero.”

  “Gesù ti aiuterà a portare i tuoi fardelli, mia cara signora.”

  “English, please,” said Laura. “The only Italian words I know are swears.”

  “Santa Lucia, a blessing on Christmas Eve, to see you again!” Nonna Ciardi said to the other grandmother. “It’s mayhem around here, Magdelena, but I will sit down with you for a few minutes and find out how you’re keeping. Laura, park yourself. The cook will bring us some coffee, Magdelena, if you’ve time to take some.”

  “Oh, the cook,” said Nonna di Lorenzo, but seemed to think better of starting out shirty. “Isabella, you and your Vito have beauty home.”

  “Ovid,” said Nonna Ciardi pointedly, “is at his shop. He will be sorry to miss you. I suppose you can’t stay long.”

  “It seems no,” said Nonna di Lorenzo, looking around and drawing her coat around her. No one had asked her for her wrapper, and she seemed to realize she was getting a brisk reception.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” said Nonna Ciardi. “We are having guests, Magdelena, and this morning the kitchen is the absolute sacking of Rome.” She drew herself up and took a deep breath, and gambled. “We could perhaps pull up another chair at table tonight if you are staying in the city? No?”

  “No, no, devo essere a casa. I am expected to arrive back in Albany at three. I am on altar guild and have work in church at five. Umberto to meet me at bus terminal and to drive me.”

  “You’ve come all the way from Albany for a quick hello?”

  “Is more than hello. Is thank you to you and Vito—Signore Ciardi.” She seems not to want to call him Ovid, thought Laura. Nonna di Lorenzo went on. “I want to see my Laura, carissima ragazza figlia del mio cuore. I need to kiss her and kiss her. I need to tell you both about Renata, and to thank you for your help all these years. I no write good in English or italiano, and the telephone bad bad. Bad in itself, bad for bad news. Too far away.”

  “Is there bad news?” Nonna Ciardi looked about as sentimental as it was possible for a marauding Visigoth to manage. Just then Mary Bernice swung in with a tray of tea things. “I said coffee,” barked Nonna Ciardi, but Mary Bernice didn’t even reply. Garibaldi stalked in behind the cook and began to bat at low-hanging ornaments on the forlorn Christmas tree in the bay window.

  “All these years, you send the dollars, you so kind to us,” said Nonna di Lorenzo. “For now, you stop. I need to thank you with my own lips, dear Signore Mrs. Vito Ciardi. Dear Isabella.”

  “Why, has something happened to Renata?” Nonna Ciardi glanced at Laura, trying to decide whether or not to send her out of the room.

  Nonna di Lorenzo pulled the sides of her coat together, as if she were sitting at an icy bus stop. “Lei ha un ictus, un grumo di sangue. She lose the strength of her right face. No words, no muscle. They take her into public hospital. They do not think she get good, not ever again.” Nonna di Lorenzo looked glassily at Laura. “Your mama, mia dolce ragazza, she have the strokes. Her hard life, first her husband Giuseppe, then her beloved boy Marco, all gone. I do my best for her these years, and her soul no good, no good, sick with grande dolore. But now it not just her soul, but her mind, her spirit. It broken, she broke, she no walk, no talk, no feed herself. Umberto take me to visit each every day. I afraid she die, I want Laura to know before her mama she die. She at Ann Lee Home on public dollar. She miss you every day, Laura, every hour, every day. She no strength to raise you good, so Nonna Ciardi and Nonno Ciardi, all this years, they have money, they have enorme simpatia, they take you in and raise you up.”

  “But this is dreadful,” said Nonna Ciardi. “You must get a second opinion.”

  “Nobody ask for second opinion from Gesù, or get opinion of the devil.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Magdelena. A doctor. Shall I help you line up another doctor?”

  “There no time. I want bring Laura back with me to say goodbye.”

  “I can say goodbye to you here,” said Laura.

  “Laura, tua madre, non la rimanga molto tempo in questo mondo. She do not get good again. She flying home to Gesù. You come with me.”

  “That’s out of the question,” said Nonna Ciardi, standing up. “Goodbye.”

  “Nonna!” said Laura, though it was out of the question, for so many reasons.

  “We are bringing Laura to Montreal in ten days,” said Nonna Ciardi, relenting. “Perhap
s we can stop in Albany and visit . . . on our way.”

  “I have already think you say something like this. Only come in time.” Nonna di Lorenzo stood up as well. The tea had not been touched, not even poured. “You help me feed Renata all these years. Every two weeks, you send money for food. You send up the pacchetti di prosciutto crudo. We do not eat with you no help. That all done now. But why you never come to visit my daughter? In her sadness? She wife of your Marco, mama of your Laura.”

  “Give my very best to Umberto,” said Nonna Ciardi.

  “We starve without you help,” finished Nonna di Lorenzo. “I throw myself at you feet to say grazie prego ciao.” She looked as if she wanted to kill Nonna Ciardi.

  “You’re sure you can’t stay for dinner? We can squeeze you in.”

  “No squeeze me.” Nonna di Lorenzo held out both her hands to Laura, who wanted to do nothing but run away. But Laura went forward and took both the hands of Nonna di Lorenzo. She kissed her mother’s mother on both cheeks, and submitted to a dry angry embrace, a pummeling, remonstrative embrace, though nothing was Laura’s fault, was it? Nothing. Nothing except that she, Laura, still existed and she still lived while her father, brother, and now mother rushed to the cliff edge of life and plunged over. “You come to me, Laura. Umberto he pick you up at Albany train station or at Trailways depot. I no money, I no schooling, but I no short of love. You only one left when my Renata go to Gesù.”

  “Merry Christmas, Nonna di Lorenzo,” said Laura.

  “How is merry, how is happy new year?” She pinched Laura’s cheeks. She was smaller than Laura by nearly a head. “My, how you grown so. Ho bisogno che tu viva. Ho bisogno che tu viva per poter vivere.”

  “Me, too,” said Laura, which over the years she had found was usually a safe thing to say to Italians.

  Nonna Ciardi escorted Nonna di Lorenzo to the front door. “Did you bring us this nice poinsettia, how kind,” said Nonna Ciardi.

  “I no bring.”

  “Then let me give it to you to take away.”

  “I no take.” Then she was at the top step, looking this way and that, and then glancing up in the sky, as if afraid a hawk was going to swoop down and carry her off. Laura called her goodbyes, but Nonna di Lorenzo had finished her work on Van Pruyn Place and did not reply or turn around to wave. She stepped down to the pavement and crossed the street and was lost behind a Westinghouse repair truck.

  “Well,” said Nonna Ciardi meekly as she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen, “wasn’t that a nice surprise.”

  “What did she mean,” asked Laura, following, “you have been sending her money and ham?”

  “Nothing. She meant nothing except to try to shame us for not visiting. When all along it is Nonno and me who give you your home. Your other nonna is a strong lady with a terrible life. Like the rest of us, Laura. You will see as you grow older. You would do well to have half her strength. But she’s demente with sorrow, and that’s bad. Sorrow is useless to us. Now you have to go get some more cheese before the doorbell rings and it’s Geneva with her man and his big wallet.”

  Laura said, with some effort, “I often don’t understand what is going on, Nonna. Did she say that my mother is sick?”

  “Yes,” said Nonna briskly. “Sick and maybe dying. What does Nonna di Lorenzo know? She is a contadina. But she may be telling the truth. As soon as we can find out how, we will make a plan to visit your mother, Laura. Rennie was never right upstairs, you see, after Marco died. We took care of you to help Rennie try to recover. We never want to alarm her or to make her upset. It is not easy to know the best thing to do, but we do the best we know how.”

  “Who is Umberto? He’s not my grandfather.”

  “Some parish man, I don’t know, some friend from the village back home. Nobody. Don’t ask.”

  Fifteen minutes later, with great relief, Laura was a few blocks away, standing in a long line of frantic, last-minute shoppers. She had two shakers of commercial Parmesan cheese in her shopping basket as well as five lemons and some curly parsley. Garnish and varnish for the plating of it all, as Mary Bernice put it. The market was bedlam. Laura was the twelfth person in line when a cashier returned from her break and flipped her closed sign to open. There was a scramble to switch to the new lane. Laura was pushy but others were pushier, and she was number five in the new line. Right in front of her, turning around as if directed by a mutual spasm of second sight, were Donna Flotarde and Maxine Sugargarten.

  24

  “Look who’s here,” said Donna. She had a plastic bottle of Clorox and a small sack of candy canes in her hands.

  “Poisoning little children again, I see,” said Laura, who couldn’t help herself.

  “Oh, that’s good,” said Maxine, whose nose, if possible, was even more thickly bandaged than yesterday. She wasn’t carrying groceries, so she must just be kicking around with Donna. “This is a surprise, Laura. I was going to come over and see you after shopping. I wanted to tell you something.”

  “Don’t let me stop you, Maxine,” said Donna. “There’s an informational tabloid in this convenient rack. I’ll just read this cover story about the alien takeover of the White House. They’ve brainwashed baby John-John Kennedy. So informative.”

  “You came over yesterday,” said Laura to Maxine. “You already said you were sorry I got expelled. I almost believed you. But there’s nothing left to say.”

  The line moved fast as they all pretended to be interested in the racks of Life Savers and Doublemint chewing gum. Donna tore the grocery bag out of the hands of the clerk and said to Maxine and Laura, “I’m expected home, so I’m going home. I hope you’re not making a big mistake of enthusiasm, Maxine. You’ll be sorry.”

  “Oh, Donna,” said Maxine, exhausted. “Mind your own beeswax for once.” She loitered as Laura paid for her own groceries. “Sometimes Donna can be so possessive.” But Laura didn’t want to get pulled into a consideration of the wearying friendship of Donna and Maxine. She had terrible campaigns of her own to manage.

  They left the store. Maxine seemed intent on walking Laura home. It was a free country, so why not. They stamped at mounds of slushy snow and inched on icy pavement. Once or twice Maxine started to talk about assignments due over the Christmas break, but Laura finally said, “Don’t forget I’m not coming back, Maxine. Thank you very much. So I don’t have to write a damn word about what I did over the Christmas vacation. It’s nobody’s business but mine.”

  “Look on the bright side. You don’t write very well,” said Maxine. “So that’s one good thing.”

  “Now I have to go to school in damned Canada.”

  That was rich language even for these dire circumstances, and both girls laughed nervously at Laura’s street talk. A little while on, Maxine said, “I know I came over yesterday to say I was sorry, Laura. And I am. I didn’t know you were going to get expelled. But I didn’t steal my own record album and throw it at myself, just for the record. Just for the record, get it?”

  “You kill me, Maxine.”

  “I went to the nose doctor yesterday for a second opinion,” said Maxine.

  “Opinion about what?”

  “My parents didn’t want me to go have my nose done,” said Maxine. “I’ve been asking for six months. But the new doctor said I’m probably going to need an operation and as long as they’re in there . . .”

  “What? As long as they’re up your nose?” Laura wasn’t quick at cause-and-effect. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m getting a nose job out of this, Laura. The week after Christmas, the doctor has an opening because all his clients are off to the Florida Keys or to the Bahamas. I’m getting my nose job. I’m so excited. This never would have happened without you.”

  Even under a bandage like a white felt clamp, Maxine’s nose looked perfectly fine. She had that blonde kind of swishy hair that looked great in a high ponytail and also with the right rollers could curl into coils with the circumference of beer bottles. I
n Laura’s opinion, people who already looked Park Avenue had no business trying to look Park Avenue Penthouse. But she didn’t care if Maxine wanted to turn herself into Marilyn Monroe. “I’m just saying,” said Maxine, “yesterday was sorry. Today is thank you.”

  “Okay. You’re welcome. Would you like me to break a couple of your arms next?”

  “Oh, Laura. I’m going to miss you, you know. Even if we weren’t very nice to you.”

  “You’ll find someone else to bully.”

  “I wish there was something I could do for you.”

  They were at Laura’s stoop. Van Pruyn Place was a dead end, so it was clear Maxine had no other ambition but to stand here until Laura sent her away. “I wonder,” said Laura, “do you know how to sew?”

  “I got an A plus in Home Ec,” said Maxine. “Didn’t you take it?”

  “I was doing Remedial Reading that block. Can you sew?”

  “Yes, I can sew,” said Maxine. “So what do you need sewn? Or should I say, sew what? Get it?”

  25

  By the time Laura made it through the front door, she could feel anxiety overflowing like a backed-up drain. Mary Bernice and Nonna were raising their voices at each other in the kitchen. The dining room tablecloth was laid, and the candles lined up like white daggers, ready for installation in the fancy silver candelabras. John Greenglass perched on the bottom step of the front hall stairs, writing out a bill for services rendered. Sam Rescue was piling drop cloths by the front door. “We’re going to need one of those,” said Laura, “or maybe two.”

  “Drop cloths?” asked Sam. “Your guests such sloppy eaters?”

  “For the wing you’re going to help me make. This is Maxine. She’s going to help, too.”