All This Talk of Love (33 page)

11
Miracles

T
H
E NEW DOCTOR
at Christiana is not the first to make the suggestion. He’s the first Italian specialist they’ve seen, though, and his last name, amazingly, is Grasso, and if a sign like that worked for Prima and Patrick, it can work for Maddalena.

“Take her home,” Dr. Grasso tells Antonio.

He’s young and tan and has a degree from Harvard. He doesn’t say, Take her to Santa Cecilia. But that’s what he means. He says, too: Forget her resistance to the trip two years ago. She might as well have been a different woman. Her body is healthy enough for the plane ride, her heart and bones are strong. Flood her mind with the happy memories of youth.
Th
e stage she’s in, she’s regressed to her childhood and can only be made more peaceful if what she sees with her eyes matches what’s going on in her head.

Th
ese last words Antonio hears most clearly.
She can only be made more peaceful
.
Your wife, Signor Grasso, can only be made more peaceful
.
Th
ey leave the office and drive straight to another Italian, Ombretta, the travel agent Antonio’s never had the chance to use until now. She gets Frankie on the phone, then they call Prima, and then she’s buying them four tickets for Saturday’s Alitalia flight from Philadelphia to Rome. It’s crazy. It’s not like Antonio to act this fast. But nothing is as it used to be. His life has changed more in the past two years than in the fifty before.

Th
e fourth ticket is for Kelly Anne, not Prima. She doesn’t agree with Dr. Grasso’s prescription. She calls other doctors and begs Antonio and Frankie to listen to their concerns, to consider the dangers of taking a woman so frail on such a long trip. But she’s wrong.
She can only be made more peaceful
. If she were Prima’s child, she’d do whatever it took to help her.

When Saturday comes, Prima shows up early in the day to say good-bye. Maddalena sits in the living room in the flowered dress Prima bought her last Christmas, a dress Kelly Anne helped her put on for the plane ride, and right there on the spot, seeing Maddalena in that dress, Prima changes her mind. She calls Alitalia and buys a last-minute ticket for the flight. Two thousand dollars. But nobody blinks.

Antonio and Maddalena have flown only twice in their lives: once to Las Vegas, once to Miami. Both times on senior citizen vacations organized by the dance studio. Both times, Antonio had to take tranquilizers for his nerves. Tonight he wants nothing deadened. He presses his face to the window through the long night hours, while everyone around him sleeps.
Th
en, shade by shade, the sky lightens, and when Italy finally appears below him, it’s like a woman stretched out on a bed in the morning. He can climb on top of her and wake her with his kisses, or he can watch her sleep a little longer, taking in her beauty. Either way, she is his.

At the Rome airport, they rent a car, and before long they’re on the
superstrada,
which cuts through the mountains like a thing from the future. Frankie, from behind the wheel, tells Antonio it’s called science fiction, the kind of movie Antonio feels like he’s in, where everything’s real and familiar and at the same time impossible and strange. Maddalena sits beside him in the backseat, humming, her hand gripping his. Prima’s on the other side of her. Kelly Anne’s in the front reading the map. All of them, even Maddalena, are talking, pointing at the views of Valle del Salto, Antonio talking most of all. He can’t shut up.
Th
e stories come one on top of the other, so many stories as they climb up and up and around the mountains, where memories hang from the trees and are soaked into the heavy stone. And then the sign for Santa Cecilia appears (a tall green metal sign, the same as you’d see in Rome or on the Jersey Turnpike, impossible!), and they exit the
superstrada.
Th
e road up the hill through the olive grove used to be dirt. Now it’s paved.
Th
e olive trees, though, are in the same place, like they’ve been waiting for Antonio all these years. At the first row of houses the car goes quiet, or at least Antonio can’t hear a word they say. He’s crushing the tiny bones in Maddalena’s hand, his heart is exploding, it’s been fifty-seven years, and he is home.

Th
ey pass his father’s house with the crack above the door. “Slow down, Frankie!” he says. He points out the Grasso farm that never grew enough, and now, look, it’s bursting green.
Th
ere’s the stoop where the old witch Guglielma Lunga used to sit, and there’s the window where Gabriella Puzo used to stand and change her blouse. He says these names aloud, watching Maddalena’s eyes for a spark, but the spark doesn’t come. Still he keeps talking.

After the bend in the road, they come upon the grocery store that once belonged to the Piccinelli family.
Th
ey park in front. Antonio can’t bring himself to step out. Not yet. He leans across Maddalena, points through the back window, and reads her the sign in the window:
DROGHERIA PICCINELLI
. “Can you believe that?” he says to her. “
Th
at’s your old name—you remember it? Before you were a Grasso, you were a Piccinelli.” She smiles, but maybe only to match the wide smile he gives her, like a baby does for her father before she’s old enough to know it means she’s happy.

“What do you think,
tesoro
?”
he asks again.

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and the village is quiet. Frankie and Kelly Anne stretch their legs in the sun. Prima rings the buzzer of the house above the store. Taped to the glass of the
drogheria
are posters for discounted meats, for bands appearing in the piazza later in June, and for parties at Pensione Granara and Pensione Lupo. Antonio reminds his wife that, back in their day, these hotels were his friends’ houses. Bands came through twice a year if they were lucky.
Th
e meat was always on sale, or you could barter or beg for it if you told a sad enough story. “You remember?” he asks again.

Frankie opens the door on Maddalena’s side and helps her to her feet. A young tourist couple walks out of the store carrying flowers and a jug of wine and bread in a long paper bag.
Th
ey stare at them, smile, and move on.

From the house comes an old man with Maddalena’s same wrinkled face. He goes to her and pulls her close without a word.

“You know him,” Antonio says. “
Th
is is your brother Claudio.”

She doesn’t know him.

Claudio wipes his eyes with a handkerchief he pulls from his shirtsleeve. He puts his arm around his sister’s waist and leads her into the store.
Th
e aisles stand where they’ve always stood.
Th
e barrels of nuts are the barrels from 1946.
Th
e radio is where it used to be, except it’s half the size and has flashing lights and stacks of tapes and CDs next to it. A teenage boy works the counter.

“You want her to look around the store?” Claudio asks. “Or is she ready for upstairs?”

“Are they there?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go up, then.”

Th
ey climb the back stairs to the rooms where Maddalena lived until she was nineteen.

Everyone is watching her, looking for a spark, for anything, but her eyes stay blank. On the walls are framed color photos of nephews and nieces and cousins they’ve never met.

In the hallway of the kitchen, Vito Leone waits for them. He’s skinny as ever, wearing a wrinkled off-white suit. His tie is crooked, his belt tied too tight.
Th
e strap of the belt hangs halfway down the front of his pants. Here is the great romantic, an old man now. He’s the mayor of the village and the three little towns around it, and has been, off and on, for two decades. He holds out his hand to Antonio, American-style, but Antonio kisses him on both cheeks. He is his brother-in-law, after all. Whatever war they fought over Maddalena fifty-seven years ago is long over. And if it’s Vito Leone, not Claudio or Carolina, not the sight of her old house or the church or the olive grove, that brings Maddalena back, just for one second, then Antonio will be grateful to the man for the rest of his life.

But Maddalena Piccinelli Grasso looks at Vito Leone like she’d look at an empty wall. He takes her hands in his and says, “You look beautiful, signora. To see you is a miracle.”

“
Grazie,
” she says.

“He’s the one who made that bike you always told me about,” Frankie says. “With the big silver tires and the rock for a seat.”

“It goes too fast,” she says.

“No
freni,
” says Vito. “No
brakes.
” He learned a little English from his daughter, Donatella, he explains. He asks Antonio, in Italian, “
Th
ey don’t speak the language?”

“No,” says Antonio. “We didn’t teach any of our kids.”

“
Che peccato,
” Vito says.

“What’s going on?” Prima asks.

“Fiorella makes such a fuss,” Maddalena says. “She wants a boyfriend too bad. Who’s going to put up with her?”

“Fiorella was her friend,” says Claudio. “She died of cancer five years ago.”

“Is there any happy news in this place?” Frankie asks after Antonio translates.

“Not anymore,” says Vito. He puts his hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “You two to be married?” he asks.

“Us?” Frankie says. He looks at Kelly Anne. She looks at him. “Too soon,” they both say at the same time. Vito laughs.

“Don’t wait,” Vito says. “You have a coin in your hand, close your fist.”

Th
ey’re crowded in the dark, narrow hallway that separates the kitchen from the rest of the house. Claudio shuffles his feet, checks his watch, asks if they’re hungry, if they want some wine. No, says Antonio, they’re not, and not yet.
Th
en they have no more small talk to make.

“Your wife,” Antonio says to Vito. “Where is she?”

“In the living room,” Vito says, “watching TV. It keeps her calm.”

Th
ey walk through the dining room, past the table and chairs where Antonio ate his first dinner with the Piccinelli family.
Th
e same wooden table, the same shiny chairs, arranged in front of the window under the silver crucifix. Antonio could have chosen any of Aristide and Chiara’s daughters. He was a rich American with paid passage to New York and a way with words and a trunk full of promises. But he chose Maddalena, even though she didn’t love him, even though she’d promised herself to the man now leading him down the hall.

It was always Maddalena.
Th
e night after that first dinner, he invited himself back, and then again the night after that. For two weeks he tried to impress her. In the meantime, he and Aristide talked and made plans, and the night all the details were settled, the two men met on the terrace and drank a toast to Maddalena’s future as an American wife.
Th
at’s how Antonio remembers it, at least. He promised Aristide many things: to keep his daughter safe and never let her worry for money and give her whatever she asked for no matter how crazy it sounded. He’s kept every promise the best he could.

Th
e old woman who sits in the corner of the couch has a blanket over her knees. Her hands are crossed in her lap. Her hair’s long and gray with streaks of white; it flows over her shoulders down to her elbows. Her face resembles Maddalena’s—the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and above her lip, the high forehead, the eyes blank as a field of snow. She’s watching a game show where girls onstage dance around in bikinis and throw pies at a fat middle-aged man. She looks up from this nonsense to see, after almost sixty years, her sister, her best friend, on the arm of the man who took her away. She squints, leans forward, and the tears come. She holds out both arms. She runs to her.

Who is this old lady? Maddalena wonders. Why’s she so happy to see me? First there was the man in the white suit, now this
strega
-looking woman with dry skin and a chicken neck and veins all over her legs.
Th
e weather’s too nice to be cooped up in here. And it smells funny. Baby powder and bleach.
Th
e handsome young man and his girlfriend look so sad.
Th
e lady with the limp, too, in her sundress too small in the waist.
Th
ey want to get out of here as bad as she does. If they can escape the old fogies, she’ll take them to the café. She can hear the music. “Turn the TV down, will you?” she says, angry, to the man who brought her, squeezing his arm. “You hear? Shh.
Th
ey’re doing a waltz.”

“Who?”

“Across the street.”

He’s not paying attention. He makes Maddalena sit down next to the old lady on the lumpy couch.
Th
ey tell her she’s Carolina, but that’s a joke. Carolina’s in Rieti with Teresa and Celestina buying fabric. Maddalena wanted to go, but Papà made her stay and work in the store, and now all of a sudden there’s a new boy behind the counter and she’s in the room with these strange people. Somebody died, maybe, because the old lady is crying. “What’s the matter, signora?” Maddalena asks her.