“I’m in love with you,” she says.
He moves closer to her and says, “I want to spend my life with you.”
Their arms and legs move in unison, mirroring each other. They rock and tumble from side to side like joyful babies.
They dance the kind of dance that’s not hers, not his, but theirs. The dance they make together is both the beginning and end of time, like eternity.
He doesn’t have to go into work. He calls Carmine to relieve him so they can spend the day in bed together, talking and giggling and playing like kids, interrupted only by the peak coffee times, when rumbling voices and coffee fragrances drift up into the apartment. Every now and then she hears a release of steam from the machines; it reminds her of Zack’s beautiful hum, like thousands of bees making honey.
Mario and Lavinia stay together the whole day and through to the next morning, when he goes downstairs for work in the café. Then she nests into the comfy, warm spot he’s left behind, breathing in his scents, until the sun is up.
She texts Kinky: “All is A-OK. I’m home.”
Soon a response comes: “Already?”
“Yup! It’s all a miracle. Dinner with you and Mercedes tonight?”
“Super, can’t wait.”
She calls George, who answers on the first ring. He’s happy to hear she’s home safely, mission completed, and tells her he has some great news, too.
“But not on the phone,” he says.
“I’ll be right over. I can’t wait anymore. No more waiting!”
“Okay, then. I’ll put up the tea.”
Lavinia gets dressed and pulls on her red jacket as she makes her way toward the door. She calls an Uber and in fifteen minutes she’s in George’s small kitchen, sitting at the wooden table with tea and biscotti set out for her, her red jacket on the back of her chair.
“Okay, tell me,” she says, “I can’t wait another minute.”
“The Museum in Naples, Capodimonte, has invited me to show my work in their beautiful botanical garden as part of their permanent sculpture art.”
“Which pieces?” She recalls the heavy, large rectilinear piece of stone with the reclining sleeping woman—her mother—in it.
As he tells her which pieces are to be shown, she sees clearly how her mother’s memory will live on in the secret garden where she and George made love, and this makes her happy. Then she sees her grandfather Antonio’s love—a possessive and vengeful love like Don’s—and this makes her sad and angry. In a moment of clarity, though, she wishes for both her mother and her grandfather to rest eternally in the long now, as the clock does buried deeply in a limestone mountain, ticking and ringing for ten thousand years, showing that we have time to balance and foster a less impulsive thinking. Maybe we can hold the long view. She knows love can take many forms and sometimes can even kill. Her grandfather’s stark beliefs—what Zack called heart rot—killed her mother.
She shivers, rubbing her hands on her face.
“Will you come to Naples with me next summer?” George asks.
She stops cold at this invitation, goes inside herself. She considers that this is the invitation she’s always longed for. There are many reasons to go to Naples—to see where she was born, to find Salvatore and forgive him, to see the garden where she was conceived, to meet her grandmother Caterina. And yet she’s confused. It feels like she’s stepping back—back two steps and one step forward, back two and one forward through time, never really progressing.
George is staring at her. Lavinia sees love in his eyes and feels blessed, but she cannot give him an answer right away.
She pictures her nonna as George described her, the then-forty-six-year-old ancient woman, sitting in a darkened room in a catatonic state, growing old in her chair, looking at him with the eyes of a great whale. The ancient sea creature must be similar to the bristlecone pine. She fantasizes for a moment that her grandmother is waiting for her.
As if reading her mind, George says, “I have a letter from your grandma addressed to you.”
“What!”
“Uncle Giovanni sent it to me to give to you since I last saw you. And a little package, too,” he says. “Uncle Giovanni wanted me there when you opened it.” George reaches into a small drawer in the wooden table and pulls out a letter on silky paper and a small cardboard box wrapped in brown paper and hands it to her.
Her fingers slip over the paper. She opens it and looks for a long time at a pair of tiny brown gloves, fingers rubbed smooth by someone’s hands. Lavinia touches each soft leather finger, which has clearly been caressed repeatedly over a long period of time. Her tears fall onto the brown, leaving a spot that’s almost black, as she touches the old woman who has held her for all these years.
George hands her a Kleenex box after taking one for himself. They sniffle together. Then she opens the letter and stares through blurry eyes at the small, well-formed letters. She notes the way the g’s sit on the line with their tails wagging so gracefully below; the way she addresses her, Cara Lavinia Lavinia. She wants to read it, but the whole letter is in Italian.
“Please read it to me, George.”
She squares herself in her seat and closes her eyes.
“Here goes. Bear with me my translating, Lavinia.”
Lavinia sits in her querencia, the place she’s discovered with Mama Mercedes, the still place where she is safe, waiting, protecting herself.
Cara Lavinia Lavinia,
What would I tell you if I could see you? How I’ve prayed for your well-being every day of your life. Have you heard me ask you for forgiveness for what I did? Your nonno was a proud man, strong, and willful, too. Strong in his body and mind. He could do everything—help others and even kill our Angela. He let his vengeful pride override his goodness.
You probably can’t understand how he could love your mother and do such a horrible thing. I’ve asked myself that, too. There he was screaming at her on the tracks, cursing in rage. Pushing and pulling at her bags with the new dress and shoes she bought for you to wear on the plane. He pushed her, she slipped, and he fell crashing with her.
I see it as a crime of passion, committed because of his impulsive rage—not a suicide to save face. We call those honor killings. Some here would think him honorable for taking his own life with hers and not just hers. But that was not his way.
What he took was my life, and yours.
The day your father came looking for you, I wished you were here with me so I could hand you to him. But you were already gone, safe away with Sal. Maybe I could have told him where you were, but I didn’t. I was so afraid of the curse that had taken Angela away from me. But I secretly hoped your father would find you and you’d be united, like in the dream I dreamed every night.
I must have looked like a scary old lady when he came here. I was only a shadow of myself. Lost and confused, with only my prayers. I promised myself I would someday give you the shoes your mother carried. They are yours.
Each bead I prayed, and still do, is for your uniting with him. I pray for forgiveness for what I did to you. I don’t even pray that I will ever see you, because I don’t deserve that. I do pray that your mother’s presence is somewhere, guiding you. In the trees, in the water, doing the laundry, baking. She loved all those things.
I let Sal take you away from me. Why I didn’t follow you there so I could be part of your life and tell you about your parents, I don’t know. Why didn’t I get Giovanni to call his sister? I ask myself these questions every day.
Why didn’t I see to it that George got custody of you? My complacence makes me as guilty as your nonno’s act of violence. I am sorry for my passivity. I let my self-pity and self-indulgence keep me from helping you.
All of them in this village played along, wanting to protect the prideful vengeance of our people. We were all guilty of the sin of pride. How did I not see this at the start? Wasn’t I a part of this? I think so. I am sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I give you back your hands.
> Your nonna, Caterina
Molti Auguri, Baci
So many feelings compete in Lavinia’s heart. A whirlpool of contradiction—love and hate, sadness and joy, feelings of being both lost and found. She feels sucked into that tidal wave, like her grandmother, rolling and churning, and wants to be free. She doesn’t want to face the same fate as her nonna, trapped in the past. She remembers Zack telling her that what happened to her mother was not her fault, that she has her own destiny.
She remembers her dreams of being in the dark womb of her mother and spinning; how Mercedes told her spinning can turn things around for us, not to fear them; how she has danced forward and backward, getting closer to her place; how she has danced the dizzying 180 degrees to the right, 180 degrees to the left, back and forth, around the room, spinning forward, taking her place in the physical world with her new family by her side.
Now she has her feet and her hands and she’s spinning on that thermal, going up on a vortex, circling, circling, circling like Zack’s bird, going through multiple vortexes and finally reaching a hot spot where she sees a new family and a new future. She wants to go to back to school; to teach alongside Kinky; to play drums with Mama Mercedes and eat tamales; to dance with Mario and marry him; and to get to know her father here in San Francisco. Now she has time to do so.
George is waiting. She hears him say her name.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Will you come?”
She pauses as a crystalline thought burgeons from deep within. “No, Dad. I cannot come. Not now.” She calls him “Dad” for the first time. He is her dad. The thought makes her happy.
There is a pause. They look into each other’s eyes.
After a long silence, he smiles. “Maybe another time. For now, I hope we can get to know each other here in San Francisco.”
“I want that,” she says.
“There’s time, Lavinia Lavinia.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without Brooke Warner, my coach and publisher, who believes in me, there would be no Frances Pia or Lavinia Lavinia. Thank you and the staff at SWP, especially Shannon Green, Krissa Lagos, and Julie Metz, who helped make this a beautiful book.
November and the glorious days between the autumnal spirit world, November 1 and the shortest day of Winter Solstice, lend me a creative spirit. In November, anything is possible, including the unfolding of plot and story inspired by my inner fire and Chris Baty’s No Plot No Problem. November is novel-writing month.
Many thanks to others who inspired the particulars of this novel. Peter Schumacher introduced me to The Long Now Foundation in Fort Mason, San Francisco, where the real Millennium Clock originated from the efforts of Danny Hillis, Stewart Brand, and others. Thank you.
Others I owe thanks to:
Cary Pepper, professor at The Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco, in whose class the characters Lavinia Lavinia and Zack Luce were born.
Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms and The Open Floor Dance, Sausalito, where dancing brings me closer to my best self. Dancers and teachers Kathy Altman, Claire Alexander, Lori Saltzman, Jennifer Burner, and Andrea Juhan, as well as Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness, inspired this work.
Miriam Philips, who first brought flamenco dancing to Marin County.
My Sicilian and Abruzzese grandparents, who found their way to America. This ancestral heritage appears in all my works to date.
Thank you to my parents George and Gloria Indelicato and my sister Catherine Kurkjian for your love.
The Ancient Bristle Cone Forest, which I first visited in 1999 with my husband, and which has stayed with me into the Millennium.
Tebby George’s sculptures, which, like George Lavinia’s, are eternal.
My love for my dear husband, Peter Sapienza, informed Lavinia’s relationship with the barista Mario.
Lavinia Lavinia would like my gum-chewing, African-dancing daughter, Elisa Sapienza, and my granddaughters, Isabella and Milla, who dance every day. My son, Peter Sapienza, is a storyteller whose skills I admire. His wife, Valerie, is an incredible chef who inspired the great dishes on Mercedes’s table.
Thank you to my teachers at San Francisco State and the Fromm Institute, who gave me the gift of craft, which I tried to apply here to balance my more open style of writing.
And thank you, dear readers: Kathy Andrew, Sue Salinger, Marsha Trent, Janet Constantino, Clarice Stasz, Ann Ludwig, Sharmon Hilfinger, Susan Shaddock, Marlene Douglas, and Marie Greening. Thank you Sister Mary Neill, Chris Durbin, and Laurie Schubert.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photo by Chris Loomis
Barbara Sapienza, PhD, is a retired clinical psychologist and an alumna of San Francisco State University’s creative writing master’s program. She writes and paints, nourished by her spiritual practices of meditation, tai chi, and dance. Her family, friends, and grandchildren are her teachers. Her first novel, Anchor Out (She Writes Press, 2017) received an IPPY bronze medal for Best Regional Fiction, West Coast. Sapienza lives in Sausalito, CA, with her husband.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Size Matters by Cathryn Novak. $16.95, 978-1-63152-103-4. If you take one very large, reclusive, and eccentric man who lives to eat, add one young woman fresh out of culinary school who lives to cook, and then stir in a love of musical comedy and fresh-brewed exotic tea, with just a hint of magic, will the result be a soufflé—or a charred, inedible mess?
Beautiful Garbage by Jill DiDonato. $16.95, 978-1-938314-01-8. Talented but troubled young artist Jodi Plum leaves suburbia for the excitement of the city—and is soon swept up in the sexual politics and downtown art scene of 1980s New York.
Cleans Up Nicely by Linda Dahl. $16.95, 978-1-938314-38-4. The story of one gifted young woman’s path from self-destruction to self-knowledge, set in mid-1970s Manhattan.
To the Stars Through Difficulties by Romalyn Tilghman. $16.95, 978-1631522338. A contemporary story of three women very different women who join forces in a small Kansas town to create a library and arts center—changing their world, and finding their own voices, powers, and self-esteem, in the process.
The Lucidity Project by Abbey Campbell Cook. $16.95, 978-1-63152-032-7. After suffering from depression all her life, twenty-five-year-old Max Dorigan joins a mysterious research project on a Caribbean island, where she’s introduced to the magical and healing world of lucid dreaming.
Tzippy the Thief by Pat Rohner. $16.95, 978-1-63152-153-9. Tzippy has lived her life as a selfish, materialistic woman and mother. Now that she is turning eighty, there is not an infinite amount of time left—and she wonders if she’ll be able to repair the damage she’s done to her family before it’s too late.
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