The Laundress

by Barbara Sapienza

  “No,” he answers.

  Lavinia feels a sense of relief, not liking to think of her fifteen-year-old mother posing naked. “She’s more beautiful than I even imagined her.”

  “Yes.” He touches his heart. And stays still, seeming to be in his own world.

  “Do you know who took this picture? Could it be him?” Lavinia asks.

  A shadow crosses George’s face, accentuating his aquiline features and intensifying his dark eyes. At first, he doesn’t answer her. Then, as if the shadow has passed by, he says, “Her father. Well, he stole her life, didn’t he?” Their eyes stay glued to each other for some time before he offers, “Let’s have some tea and cookies.”

  She follows him to the multi-purpose room he uses as a kitchen, where she watches him fill the teapot and put it on the gas burner. This time he sets out some clay mugs on the table. They sit and wait for the teapot to call its readiness. She doesn’t feel as jittery this second time.

  “Do you want to see the other photos?” she asks as he pours hot water into the mugs.

  “No, I want to sit with you, Lavinia. I’ve waited so long.”

  “Me, too. Only I didn’t know it.”

  Lavinia fingers her hair as George gets the cookie tin. They drink slowly. She dips the biscotti and watches the chocolate melt, just as her own heart is melting for her father.

  “I called Uncle Sal today. It’s true he wouldn’t let you see me before a year ago.” She tells him how Sal accused him of being responsible for Angela’s death; how she told Sal he was wrong; how he didn’t want the knowledge that Papa Antonio killed Angela; how she hung up on him.

  “Bravo,” he says. He sips his tea, his face softening. “Who could bear that fact?”

  Fingering her lips, other cheats come to mind: Aunt Rose, who stole her Raggedy, the one tangible connection to her mother; Don, who taunted her; Nina, who acted cold and bitchy toward her. All jealous, nasty, rageful people, or some combination. Her grandfather must have been like that.

  George looks at her as if waiting for her to complete her wandering thoughts.

  “My mother is beautiful, just the way I remember her,” Lavinia says. Then she tells him her recollection of the flowing sheets on the line and how the clean, fresh air carried her mother’s love song call, “Lavinia Lavinia.”

  George smiles. “My sentiments. Truly beautiful and still beautiful.” He takes Lavinia’s hand. She feels his rough sculptor’s fingers. His voice lowers solemnly, as if he’s confessing. “Your mother didn’t meet me at La Guardia as planned, so I called Giovanni, my uncle. All he would say was that she wouldn’t be coming to New York City. Nor would you.” He looks into Lavinia’s eyes and bites his lip as if to hold back some sound.

  “You didn’t know she’d died.”

  “No, they didn’t tell me then.”

  “But why?”

  “Omertà.”

  “What is that?’

  “It’s a Mafioso pledge. The law of silence.”

  “Isn’t that Palermo?”

  “You know, then, about the Mafia. But it’s also throughout Southern Italy—the entire boot, the heel and the toe. Even Roma. Your great-grandfather had those proud ways.”

  “Do you think Papa Antonio was actually a Mafioso?”

  George shrugs. His shoulders rise up like question mark.

  “Did you know him?”

  “He was the scary one in the village. Possessive. One day when he saw me sitting with Angela at the laundry pools he came and pulled her up by the armpits from where she sat washing the family clothes. ‘You can’t do that, you can’t do that,’ I yelled. But he kept dragging her away with brute force, his steel blue eyes bulging out of his thick face.”

  When George says this, his own eyes widen with what seems like rage, but just as quickly they become as clear as a still night.

  “Your mother looked at me with an expression saying she would be all right, and then she told Antonio, too, that everything would be okay. She left with him, but not before he scowled at me as if he wanted to do bad things to me.”

  “The secrets, even Sal’s, kept me away from you . . .”

  “Remember, Sal is Antonio’s son, and loyalty is sometimes stronger than love, Lavinia.”

  She looks straight into George’s eyes. “Another law.”

  “You’ve got it, girl. I often think it’s the first law, loyalty. Followed by silence.”

  When he calls her girl, she folds toward him again, recognizing herself as his child—not Sal’s, not Papa Antonio’s. She smiles. George is breaking the silence.

  “When the news came to New York that you and Angela would not be coming, I was furious with Giovanni. He had let me down by not getting you and your mama safely on the plane. Then I was furious at Antonio, knowing that he must have had something to do with it. That he’d found a way to keep her from leaving him.”

  Lavinia drops her biscotti in her hot tea and watches it dissolve.

  “So the plans changed suddenly, and there was a big hole in me where there’d been joy and anticipation. I had just finished art school and had some great shows under my belt—galleries in New York City. I jumped on a plane to Naples in search of your mother and you, only to find, when I arrived, that the funeral had passed. The only evidence I found was a placard near where she’d died. Like the ones you see in Mexico, planted on the side of the road, when a loved one passes tragically. I never saw you, either. They had sequestered you away from me.” A shadow passes over George’s face. “The women in the streets spoke in whispers, lowering their eyes when I passed by. I searched for you, but you were nowhere to be seen, and Giovanni’s lips were sealed. He knew nothing. He spoke to me with his eyes lowered. I walked by the restaurants and pizzerias through the old labyrinth of streets, hearing her laughter at every turn. I walked to the gardens on top of the great hills to the place behind a tree where we made love. I walked to the waterfront where hydrofoils take passengers to nearby islands, wishing we had done that together. But everywhere I turned I longingly looked for you as well. Every four-year-old girl was you but attached to a different angel. Not Angela.”

  Lavinia stares at him.

  “I even went to the kindergartens, the scuole materne, waiting for the children to be let out for recess or after school. I knew I’d know you if I saw you, but no, you were not there. Once I followed a little girl with T-strap sandals, thinking it was you. From the back, with her auburn hair glistening long, she was how I imagined you to be. But then she turned . . . and I knew. No. You had disappeared from me.”

  Lavinia feels her anger with Sal rising in her again.

  “Yet I wasn’t convinced then that you were gone from Naples. I needed to find you. And I needed to visit your nonna Caterina. I entered her house, and next to the front passageway I saw a small memorial altar encased in stone. There was a small statue of the Virgin Mary and a picture of your mother smiling, the angel she was. Angela Campana, and then the dates of her short life—1975 to 1996—were inscribed in the stone. Someone had put a pink rose in there. A votive candle was flickering. All day. All night.” He puts his hand on his heart. “There was no picture of your dead grandfather.”

  Lavinia can hear his voice cracking. Seeing that his own cup is empty, she offers him some of her tea and watches his lip quiver as he sips.

  He goes on. “The silence they showed toward me was remarkable. Even Giovanni and Luciana, my aunt and uncle, buttoned up. I knew your mother was guiding me, though. It was as if she took my hand, accompanying me up the steps into the darkened chambers of her mother’s heart. Caterina Luisa Campana. It was like walking into a dark tunnel, a cave, the old woman bleeding in deep contemplation or catatonia, wearing a shroud.”

  “How did she survive?’

  “I don’t know. In one swoop, she lost her daughter, her husband, and her beloved only grandchild, you. Outside her house, a pulley was attached to the second story that allowed her to lower a basket for the local grocer to place bre
ad, cheese, fruit, vegetables, and chocolate in, almost daily. For the first week I spent hours hanging out by the door each day, watching, hoping I might see her, talk with her, see something of Angela in her features. But no. She did not emerge. So I went up the dark stairwell carefully and slowly. I took each step thinking how your mother walked this same passageway during her short life. This was Angela’s stairway. Not grand. Full of shadows, except for the brightness she brought to it with her own inner light. At the top of the stairs I stopped at the front door. There was a small white button—the doorbell—and a peephole. All quiet, inside and out. I pressed the button. A long time passed before I heard slow shuffling, like slippers, across the floor. I felt as though someone peeked out. I wondered if Caterina would recognize me, and, if she did, whether she’d even let me in.”

  Lavinia wishes she had a piece of gum to chew right now. She twirls her hair tightly around her finger and takes a deep breath.

  “Then I heard the slow turn of the lock and a slower opening of the door. The apartment was even darker than the stairwell. The older woman squinted and winced, her hands covering her eyes, as if even the minimal light from the hall was blinding her. In comparison to when I’d last seen her, she looked ghostly—like a cadaver. Her black hair had turned gray. She wore a black sweater, a loose-fitting cardigan with small buttons, a long black skirt, and old lady shoes. She was shorter than I remembered and stooped over.”

  Lavinia sees this image so clearly, it’s if she’s standing there next to George.

  “She let me in. I followed her to a chair by a closed and shaded window. Maybe she opened this window daily to let down her food basket; I hoped she got some air on occasion. It was stuffy. I sat across from her in a chair with side wings, sweating. Caterina sat silently, chewing her gums. She had no teeth, and she hadn’t put in her dentures. With her hands on her lap, her fingers opened and closed. She let me sit there beside her. I wondered where the signs of a little girl were. Did she keep any of your toys or shoes or clothes in her apartment? Or had she renounced everything? I began to think that she was mute, even wondered if she was crazy. Then my thoughts left her for a bit and I wondered where you’d slept—where you’d eaten. Where had you taken your first step? When had you said your first words? You must’ve called ‘Mama.’ ‘Dada,’ too. All babies say ‘Dada.’” He smiles. “As if Caterina were reading my mind, she looked up at me slowly, which reminded me of the time when I looked into the eye of a whale at Provincetown. I saw something ancient in those eyes, something eternal—only her eyes spoke to me. She didn’t say anything.” He pauses. “She just gave me that look, that whale-eye look, then smiled, an upturn of her lips, like a smiling moon.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It was the smile of your mother.”

  He gets up and goes to the shelf above the biscotti and takes down two tiny shoes. Hands them to Lavinia. “She gave these to me.”

  They don’t speak for many moments. Then Lavinia cries into the soft leather T-straps, big enough for a four-year-old. And she thinks of her grandmother.

  “My poor nonna,” she says, thinking how life took its toll on her. She lost her granddaughter, her daughter, and her husband—all in a fraction of a second. And then Sal reappeared and disappeared again. “My God.” Lavinia bows her head in sorrow for her grandma Caterina and for her own losses as well. For the first time she realizes she has not only lost her mother but also her grandmother and her grandfather.

  She clutches the soft Italian shoes in her hands, thinking of the four-year-old, still a little girl, who never got to wear the T-straps her mother picked for her; who never knew her family, because it was snatched away from her; who lost everything dear to her before she was even five years old. She cries into the cup of the soft animal’s skin.

  Chapter 29:

  BREAKING THE CURSE

  “Dancing tonight?” reads the text from Kinky with a happy face emoji, waking Lavinia up from her reveries. She just left George’s studio, and she almost forgot she made plans with Kinky and Mario to go to a special pre-Thanksgiving dance.

  “I don’t know,” she texts back at first, but Kinky convinces her to get out and to meet her at the pizza place near Falcone.

  Kinky is sitting at a back table of the long, narrow pizza parlor when Lavinia arrives. She smiles and waves when her friend walks in, then stands up and embraces her. Lavinia falls into her arms, grateful to have a friend like Kinky—someone who listens but also keeps her from falling into the abyss.

  When they sit down, Kinky’s eyes stay glued to Lavinia’s. “What happened today?” she asks.

  “George told me the whole story today. Even his part in it.”

  “No way, Vinnie!”

  “It’s a kind of crazy story, beginning with Mario finding George in front of my house in the early morning. George was leaving me another of his notes before sunrise.” Lavinia smiles, no longer disturbed by this mail-dropping habit. “But now the truth is coming, just like I’ve always wanted, Kinky.”

  “Tell me everything,” she says.

  Lavinia starts with the letters from Giovanni and the story George told her about going back to Naples to find out what happened, finding her grieving grandmother, and what he learned about out why they never made it to New York. “I heard it first from Giovanni and now from George, who wove the story around his love for me and my mother. Today he gave me a tiny pair of shoes that my mother bought for me before she died. My grandmother gave them to him. Can you believe it?”

  “Ahh,” Kinky hums.

  Lavinia watches Kinky as she processes this last bit of information. Her face is twisted, and now Lavinia has some insight as to how she might have looked upon hearing the news. She loves her friend for her reaction. “Yeah,” is all she can say.

  “That’s wild and weird shit, like a novel. What do they say about true life being weirder than fiction?”

  “There’s more. I called Sal.” Lavinia tells her how Sal blamed George for what happened to Angela and how he still can’t come clean with Lavinia.

  “And the barista?” Kinky asks.

  “Kinky, I think I’m in love. He’s so precious to me, so there for me, like I’ve never had.”

  “You know”—Kinky smiles at her—“my mother told me today that you are happy, and I can see it now.”

  “She knows everything,” Lavinia says.

  “About her girls,” Kinky says, placing her hand in Lavinia’s. “You’re my sister, Vinnie. Should we get a slice of pizza and a beer?”

  “Just what I need. I’m starving, and”—she looks at her watch—“there’s still time before we have to meet Mario.”

  While Kinky walks up to the counter to order, Lavinia remembers the alegría, the one Mercedes sang on the day Lavinia and Mario first made love, and she begins to hum it to herself. When Kinky returns with the beers, Lavinia sings, “Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay.” They both laugh and toast each other with their mugs. And then they eat their pizza.

  Lavinia and Kinky cross over onto Columbus, arm in arm, singing, and walk the few blocks to Falcone, where Mario is standing at the door with Carmine close behind him.

  “You look divine,” Mario says, giving them each a hug before they all move outside and walk down Columbus toward the dance hall across from Washington Square, only minutes away. The queue is moving from the street into the building. It’s almost ten thirty, near to when the music will start.

  This time the venue feels celebratory—a gratitude dance. Lavinia is more at ease with all the costumes people wear, the hugging, and the “stay quiet” rule. In fact, she loves that there’s a place where you can experience two hours of dancing and no one is allowed to talk. She’s getting used to a room filled with more than one hundred people, all moving slowly to the flowing music. She and Mario face each other; music thumps around them, but Lavinia is only aware of their internal silence. Slowly, she begins to let the rhythm of the slow beat move her. As she and Mario sway gently together, she smiles,
taking pleasure from his eyes that seem to mirror her joy. She knows he is happy to be with her, in this room, in this time.

  The two of them respond to one another in kind, rooting their toes and feet into the earth while flowing and swaying. They move like two waves in the great ocean, not noticing the people jumping and playing around them. They stay glued, and their eyes switch from still presence to joy. They dance through the openings in the crowd like ribbons blowing in the wind. They are heating up—and then the subtle rhythm signals a change and pulls them to dive in more deeply, spiraling, even jumping, swirling, and spinning. When has she ever danced like this? She hears herself hooting and singing like Mercedes hoots and hollers when she sings. Then they are waltzing across the long room, their arms and hands circling each other, creating a world that holds them within its galaxy.

  Yet again the sound shifts. Calmer and quieter now, it’s a kind of pause. Lavinia and Mario stand close, sweaty, sparkling, bathing each other in warm breaths. Like stars in the night sky, they twinkle. When the music finally stops, they are encircled by its after-hum, which wraps around them and spreads through them. They cannot move; the soft caress of those vibrations holds them hostage.

  They carry the feelings from the dance outside into the city, where the moist San Francisco air raises goose bumps from Lavinia’s skin. Mario puts his arm around her and pulls her in.

  The silence is broken by Kinky. “What a workout! I’m thirsty,” she says.

  “Let’s get a beer,” Mario says, moving them toward a bar where kids hang out on the sidewalk. A teenager spins a yoyo, its orange glow like fire.

  “I could use a tequila,” Kinky says.

  Lavinia mostly wants to swaddle herself in these vibes and listen. She misses the silence of the dance hall, where she doesn’t have to use words to relate. “Let’s keep dancing,” she says, and her friends comply. They dance down Columbus toward the bars, stopping at one and then another bar.

  They stay out well into the early morning. Carmine and Kinky hold hands. Mario and Lavinia hold each other around the waist.