All This Talk of Love (27 page)

At the end of the song, he weaves his way through the crowd to his father’s table.
Th
e old man’s face lights up when he sees him, pure joy at his son’s surprise visit, at the interest he’s spontaneously taken in his parents’ dancing life.
Th
en the Grasso brain kicks in. “What’s wrong?” he asks. Quickly he pulls him out of his mother’s line of sight. “What are you doing here? Is everything OK?”

“No, Dad,” Frankie says, even as he’s annoyed that his father assumes the worst.
Th
en suddenly his mother’s there, too, between them, her hand on his back, her panicked face searching theirs for an answer. “You here, Frankie? O
Dio
!
” Her eyes well up. “What happened? Something bad, I can feel it. Tell me!”

A group of their friends—fifteen of them at least, a crowd of scared faces—walks with them up the pink stairs and out into the parking lot. Arlene helps his mother into the backseat of the car and gives Frankie a kiss on the cheek when she’s settled in. “You kids should come more often,” she says inanely as Frankie takes the wheel.

Maddalena lies in the backseat, praying in short mumbling bursts and screaming Prima’s and Patrick’s names. His father is beside Frankie in the passenger seat, his face turned toward the window.

“I want to leave this world,” his mother screams.

“No, you don’t,” says Frankie, though he should just let her say what she has to say. “
Th
ey’re both going to be fine. I know it. I promise.”

“
I WANT TO LEAVE THIS WORLD
,” his mother screams again.

Frankie starts to cry.
Th
e headlights coming at him from the other side of the highway go blurry. “Don’t say that, Mom,” he says. He grips the wheel. “Please. For me.”

“Don’t pay attention,” says his father, his face still turned away. His hand on his lap is clenching and unclenching a fist.

Th
ey’ve lived through a war.
Th
e Germans came through their village in tanks.
Th
ey spent the best years of their lives in kitchens and factories. Dancing or no dancing, their bones are old, their joints stiff, their minds going soft.
Th
ey don’t deserve another tragedy. All Frankie’s life, they said, “Let us do the worrying, let us suffer, so you don’t have to.”

Th
ey find Tom and Steve and Steve’s wife and Tom’s parents in the waiting area of the emergency room.
Th
e twins, looking crazed and angry, rush in soon after, with some girl who’s attached herself to Zach and doesn’t stop rubbing his shoulders for one second. Maddalena goes right for Tom, and the two of them stand there holding each other, her head against his chest. After a few minutes, a nurse comes in and offers to take the entire family to a room where they can wait in private.

Maddalena rushes the nurse. “
Th
ey’re going to be OK?” she wails. “Tell us!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she says. “Dr. Morrison will be out real soon, I promise.”

“
Disgraziata!
” she says. “
Th
ey never tell you anything! I’m her mother!”

“It’s not her job, Mom,” Frankie says. “We have to wait for the doctor.”

“
Disgraziata!
” she yells again as the nurse leads them through the swinging doors. Antonio walks beside her but doesn’t try to settle her.

“Did you see her badge?” Steve says to Frankie. “Her last name is Patrick.
Th
at’s a good sign. I believe in signs.”

“We all do,” Frankie says.

9
Close the Light

M
ADDALENA WALKS AROUND
the outside of her house, pulling weeds, inspecting the windows that need washing now that June is here. In June she washes all the windows, inside and out; in July she launders all the drapes; at the end of August she goes through the summer clothes they didn’t wear and donates them to the church. When they were young girls, Carolina used to tell Maddalena that she was special, meant for a big life. Is this what she meant? Is this a big life? Now that she’s near the end of it, can she finally say, No, Carolina, you were wrong?

If Maddalena had stayed in the village, chosen Vito Leone over Antonio Grasso, she’d have had all she has here: a house and children, a car to drive to a dance studio, a family business of some kind, and flower beds to keep up. Vito would have failed at his businesses just as Antonio failed at his in the early years. What would have been the difference between that life and this one? She’s been a seamstress, a wife, a mother, and an old woman terrified of the years ahead—no more special than any of her sisters, after all, just thousands of miles away and six hours behind.

Th
e mongoloid next door, a boy born the same year as Tony, is now a middle-aged man. He sits on his back porch with a dog in his lap and talks to his mother through the open kitchen window. Maddalena waves hello to him as she walks along the fence that separates their houses. She used to feel sorry for him, before Tony, but then over the years she came to think him better off never having had brothers or sisters or a wife or children to die on him, no romantic regrets, no rides down the hill on a bicycle in the arms of the girl who loved and left him.
Th
e Italian way is to think that the more people you love, the more insurance you have, but Maddalena doesn’t believe in the Italian way anymore.

Inside the house, the floors are waxed and shiny, the drapes washed, and the sheers resteamed.
Th
ere’s no dust in the air or on the furniture.
Th
e sink is empty of dishes. She’s already trimmed the dead leaves from the plants, made the beds, and checked the hamper. It’s too late in the day to start on the windows, and with the gnocchi and pork chops and roasted apples left over from two nights ago, there’s no reason to make dinner. Antonio won’t be back until five o’clock at least. Maddalena opens the refrigerator—not a crumb or a smear on the bright white plastic. She is too good at her job. Lately she’s been working faster and hurrying home from church instead of staying to talk to Father Larson, just in case she gets one of her spells. When the spells come, she’ll take to her bed for an hour or two, waiting for her head to clear. If they don’t come, she can finish her day’s work, and there is no better feeling.

Today, all week really, she’s been lucky. She knows who and where she is. She’s strong. Yesterday afternoon, she pushed Prima’s wheelchair for five minutes in the Brandywine Creek Park, until they got to the big hill, and then Tom took over.
Th
e weather was perfect, and instead of talking about that, about how good it was to be alive on a sunny day in June, they were talking about the end of the world that was supposed to come last New Year’s Eve when something happened to the computers. Maddalena stopped paying attention because they talked too fast and used words she didn’t recognize, but also because they were wrong.
Th
e world will never end.
Th
e world will keep going with or without them.

“Stop with this nonsense,” Maddalena interrupted. “Talk about Patrick. Tell me how good he’s doing.”

“He’s back to normal, Ma,” Prima said. “You saw him at the house, remember? You remember being at the house this morning, and having breakfast, and Tom driving us here?”

“Of course I remember,” Maddalena said. “He showed me how to swing a golf club.”

“OK, good.”

At the park, Maddalena looked out over the green hills, down to the lake, where ducks were moving slow over the water, then up to the big stone mansion, where the road split.
Th
ere were two horses in the yard of the mansion. She pointed them out to Prima, but then Prima snapped at her, saying that she’d pointed them out to Maddalena just five minutes ago. She snaps at Maddalena a lot these days, ever since the accident. She’ll have trouble with her legs for the rest of her life, the doctors told her. It’s Maddalena’s job to keep her from giving up. It was her idea to come to the park in the first place. She saw the weather and said to Prima, “You have to get out.”

A mother is never at peace. It’s the price she pays, and it’s worth it, but sometimes Maddalena wishes she could get a break.
Th
e worrying makes her so tired. In the days before Prima was born, she used to take five minutes of every day to sit on Mamma Nunzia’s porch swing. Five minutes of peace, music on the radio, neighbors stopping to say hello. She hasn’t done anything like that since becoming a mother, and then a grandmother. Her spells are no break. When Maddalena comes back from them and doesn’t remember where she was or for how long, it’s not peace she feels but fire spreading over her skin. How much longer will it be, she wonders (no one will tell her—no one tells her anything—and she can’t read enough words to find out for herself), until the spells take over, until she’s lost completely to her children and to Antonio, unable to protect and pray for them, unable even to say, “I love you,” or “I miss you,” or “I have a story for you.”

“Take her to a nice dinner tonight,” Maddalena said to Tom. “Hotel du Pont. I’ll pay the check.”

“Like we really need you to buy us dinner,” snapped Prima.

Th
e path took them into the woods. Birds flew up all around them, escaping into the blue sky. It was dark and cool, a good place to talk honest, like church, like the living room of Mamma Nunzia’s house in the middle of the afternoon, when the men were away. She had things to say to Prima. She wanted to tell her that what happened to her and Patrick wasn’t a tragedy, that she’d gotten off easy.
Th
en Prima decided they should turn around, something about the woods being dangerous, kids taking drugs and punks waiting to steal your purse and some other dirty nonsense she read about in the paper. So they walked back toward the parking lot.

“
Th
is is good practice for us,” Maddalena said.

“Practice for what?”

“For when we go to Italy.
Th
ere are a lot of hills in the village.”

Prima sighed. “We’re not going, Ma. Remember?
Th
at’s all over now. We were supposed to go, but then I had an accident—”

“I know all that,” Maddalena said, and this time she was the one doing the snapping. “I’m talking about next summer. When we try again.”

“You’re sure singing a different tune,” Tom said.

“People change,” Maddalena said.

Except she hasn’t. She was trying to help Prima, to give her something to look forward to, to let her think she’d been right about the trip all along.

“I’m through pleasing everybody,” said Prima. “I’ll tell you that much.”

Maddalena wasn’t sure what she meant or how it connected to what they’d been talking about, so she let it go.
Th
e parking lot was filling up—people with dogs on leashes, a van with Catholic-school students. Tom had one hand on Prima’s shoulder as he pushed the wheelchair with the other. “We’ll go somewhere just the two of us,” he said to her, as if Maddalena couldn’t hear them. “Yes, we should. We will,” Prima responded. Maddalena wanted to tell them,
Th
at’s what you should have done from the start.

Th
e perfect weather continues today, and so Maddalena sits for a while on the back porch, hands folded in her lap, admiring the violets and the wrought iron patio set she’s had for thirty years. She takes deep breaths and says a short prayer for Prima and Patrick, and then Arlene, and then she feels guilty and ends up saying prayers for everyone she knows, one by one, the same way she did last night and will do again tonight.

Th
ey will go to Italy after all, Prima and Tom, on a second honeymoon. Just the two of them. A romance. She imagines Prima stepping out of her wheelchair and walking hand in hand with her husband through Piazza Navona, stopping for coffee and pastries, kissing in the spray of the fountains.
Th
ey should skip Venice, with its dark alleys and tourists and dirty pigeons, and spend the extra days in Lake Como or Portofino.
Th
ey’ll never make it to Santa Cecilia.
Th
ey’ll quit halfway up the mountain, on those little roads with no fence between the car and the cliffs; they’ll get dizzy and lose their nerve.
Th
ey won’t believe people live so high up, in the middle of the clouds.

Funny how Prima’s told everyone Santa Cecilia will be a resort, like the Poconos. She’s shown Maddalena the brochures: stone buildings with terraces on the roofs, boutiques with gold clocks in the windows, air-conditioned bedrooms. Good luck! Prima should know that Italy is a country of exaggerators, the villagers worst of all. Maddalena would like to see her face when she drives into Santa Cecilia and finds only one run-down fabric shop, one café, one man playing his accordion in the street, one angry old woman renting out rooms with cracks in the walls; when the villagers tell her, You like, yes? Is charming, no? and she has to agree or hurt their feelings; when she brings Tom and the boys and Frankie into the Piccinelli store and tells the old man sweeping the floor, Zio Claudio! We are your family . . .

Here, alone on the porch, is where it finally hits her, what fate’s decided. She will not go back after all. She will never go back. Never again will she see Claudio, the store, the olive grove, the gorge, Carolina. She will take them all to her grave. She always expected she would, but now that it’s certain, more certain than ever, she feels no relief or contentment or satisfaction in having won, after all, this battle with her family. After her first and only victory, she feels, suddenly, shaken.

Th
is is why it’s dangerous having nothing to do. Your mind takes over, plays tricks.

She goes inside and locks the door behind her. Turns down the air conditioner.
Th
e grandfather clock chimes four times. It’s ten o’clock in Santa Cecilia, still early enough. In the top drawer of the lowboy she finds the wrinkled slips of paper with Claudio’s and Carolina’s phone numbers. She sits in Antonio’s chair at the kitchen table, picks up the phone, starts to dial the numbers, then hangs up.
Th
en again. Again. If she reaches them, what will she say? How will she make up for the years in between? Should she try? People don’t understand.
Th
ey say she’s been cold and cruel. Words that don’t sound like her at all.

“Heartless,” Frankie had the nerve to call her once, back in the fall when they were fighting all the time about the trip. Imagine!
Th
ey’d been talking about homeless people. He was feeling sorry for the little kids, growing up on the streets hungry, no fathers, stuck in schools with no books or paper or pencils. Maddalena had said she thought those children are better off, like the mongoloid.
Th
ey have little to lose; their lives can only go up.

“Better off?” Frankie said. “You’re kidding me.”

She told him it is much worse to have everything—a family who loves you, plenty of money, food on the table—and then lose it. You never recover. You try to get back to a place that’s not there anymore, and nothing, no matter how beautiful, can compare.

“Most of those kids don’t live long enough for comparisons,” said Frankie.

Th
at is a shame, Maddalena agreed, but there has to be a reason for it. God doesn’t do anything by accident.

“
Th
ere’s an expression,” he said. “ ‘Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ I’m guessing you don’t believe in that. What it means is—”

She knew that expression, she said. Every time she hears it, she wants to scream.
Americans are too much in love with love. Look at the soap operas.
Th
e women and men both, they want a love affair like they want new clothes, and then as soon as they wear the clothes, they’re tired of them. Italians are different. More balanced.
When we romance, we do it with our hearts, but we love our husbands and wives with our brains; our children and our parents we love with our souls. You have to keep them all separate, she told Frankie, or you get in trouble, mixing one kind of love up with another. Americans are in this kind of trouble all the time. Look at the talk shows: that man who shot his family so he could run off with the stewardess, that mother who stole her daughter’s teenage boyfriend—it was all the same problem with an easy solution.

“
Th
at’s compartmentalization,” Frankie said. He was always using that word. She still doesn’t know what it means.

Maybe she’s doing it now, as the phone rings in the room on the other side of the ocean, and Claudio’s confused voice calls out, “
Pronto? Chi è? Pronto! Pronto!
” Maddalena listens, drinks in her brother’s voice, then places the phone back on the receiver with a gentle click. Good-bye, good-bye.