With alarm, Angelina looked up at her mother.
“I blame you because you’re an adult. I didn’t leave you when you were a child. I did everything I could, and then—I fell in love. So go ahead and be angry, but I wish, I wish—” And then Mary’s anger left her; she felt terrible. She felt absolutely awful at how Angelina looked. “Say something, honey,” Mary said. “Say anything.”
Angelina said nothing. It did not occur to Mary that her daughter did not know what to say. For many minutes they were silent, Angelina staring at the floor, Mary staring at her child. Finally Mary spoke. She said quietly, “Did I ever tell you that when the doctor handed you to me, I recognized you?”
Angelina looked at her then. She shook her head slightly.
“It didn’t happen with the others. Oh, I loved them immediately, of course. But it was different with you. When the doctor said, ‘Take your daughter, Mary,’ I took you and I looked at you, and it was the strangest thing, Angelina, because I thought, Oh, it’s you. It didn’t even seem surprising. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, but I recognized you, honey. I don’t understand why I recognized you, but I did.”
Angelina walked to her mother’s side of the bed and sat next to her. Angelina said, “Tell me what you mean.”
“Well, I looked at you and I thought—this is exactly what I thought, honey—Oh, it’s you, of course it’s you. That’s what I thought. I just knew you, but it was more that I recognized you.” Mary touched her daughter’s hair, still damp and smelling of shampoo. “And when I was carrying you, I knew I was carrying—”
“A little angel.” Angelina spoke the words with her mother. They were quiet for a while, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding hands. Mary eventually said, “Do you remember how you loved those books about that girl on the prairie? And then we saw it on television too?”
“I remember.” Angelina turned to her. “Mostly, though, I remember how you put me to bed. Every night. I couldn’t bear you to leave. Every night I’d say, Not yet!”
Mary said, “Sometimes I’d be so tired I’d lie down right next to you, and if my head went below yours you couldn’t stand it. Do you remember that?”
Angelina said, “It was like you became the child. I needed you to be the grown-up.”
Mary said, “I understand.” Again they were silent. Then Mary said, holding her girl’s wrist, “Don’t tell your sisters how I recognized you when you were born, and how I didn’t recognize them—I don’t like secrets. But you should know.”
Angelina said, sitting up straighter, “Then it must mean—”
“We don’t know what it means,” her mother said. “We don’t know what anything means in this whole world. But I know what I knew when I saw you. And I know you have always made me so happy. I know you are my dearest little angel.” (She did not say, and only fleetingly did she think: And you have always taken up so much space in my heart that it has sometimes felt to be a burden.)
In the kitchen, while they found the pans and pots and boiled the water and heated the sauce, Mary was close to ecstatic. Happiness thrummed through her—she could eat it like bread! To be in the kitchen with her girl, to speak of ordinary things, the children, Angelina’s job as a teacher—oh, it was wonderful. She turned the lamps on in the dining space and they ate the pasta and talked of Angelina’s sisters. A glass of wine in her and Mary said, “My word, what you said about those Nicely girls. My goodness.”
“Oh.” Angelina wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Want to hear some gossip?”
“Oh yes,” said Mary.
“Remember Charlie Macauley? Come on, you have to remember him.”
“I do remember him. He was tall, a nice man. Then he went to Vietnam. Boy, that was so sad.”
“Yes, that’s him. Well, it turns out he’d been seeing a prostitute in Peoria, all the while telling his wife that he was going to a veterans’ support group thing. Wait, wait— Well, apparently he gave this prostitute ten thousand dollars and his wife found out and she kicked him out.”
“Angelina.”
“She did. She kicked him out. And guess who he’s with now? Come on, Mom, guess!”
“Angel, I can’t.”
“Patty Nicely!”
“No.”
“Yes! Okay, Patty won’t come right out and tell me, but she’s lost weight, did I tell you she’d gained weight and the kids at school call her Fatty Patty? Well, she’s certainly been very nice to Charlie, she looks wonderful, and they were friends anyway, kind of. So there you go.” Angelina gave her mother a meaningful nod. “You never know.”
“My goodness,” Mary said. “Angel, that is wonderful gossip, my word. They call her Fatty Patty, the kids at school? To her face?”
“No. I don’t think she even knows. Just once.” Angelina sighed, pushing her plate back. “She’s awfully nice.”
—
When they finished eating, Mary went and sat on the sofa. She patted the place next to her and Angelina joined her, bringing her wineglass with her. “Listen to me,” Mary said. “Listen to what I have to tell you.”
Angelina sat up straight and looked at her mother’s feet. She felt that only now did she see that her mother’s ankles were no longer tiny, as they had always been.
“You were thirteen. I came to pick you up at the library. And I yelled at you—” Mary’s voice suddenly quavered, and Angelina looked at her, saying, “Mommy—” But her mother shook her head and said, “No, honey, let me go on. I only want to say I yelled at you, I really yelled at you, I have no idea what about, but I yelled and you were frightened, and I was yelling because I had found out about your father and Aileen, but I never told you about that—until, well, you know, a million years later, but the point is, honey, I frightened you, I yelled at you, and you were frightened.” Mary looked past Angelina toward the window, and her face moved. “And I am so, so sorry,” she said.
After a moment, Angelina asked, “Is that it?”
Mary looked at her. “Well, yes, honey. I’ve felt terrible about it for years.”
“I don’t remember it. It doesn’t matter.” But Angelina thought she did remember, and inside her now she cried, Mom, he was a stupid pig, but so what, Mom, please, Mom—Please don’t leave, Mommy! After many moments, Angelina said, “Mom, it was so long ago, that stuff with Aileen. Did you leave Daddy because of that? Because it sure took you long enough.” She could hear the coldness of her tone. It was as if the wine had turned on her; she felt that cold toward her mother, suddenly.
Mary said thoughtfully, “I just don’t know, honey, but I think I would not have left.”
“We’ve never talked about it at all,” Angelina said.
Her mother was silent, and when Angelina looked at her she was stabbed by the look of sadness on her mother’s face. But her mother said, “Well, tell me, honey. Now that you’re finally here. Tell me what it’s like for you. I told you before, I fell in love with Paolo. Your father and I were not compatible in many ways, but, honey—I fell in love. So now you tell me.”
Angelina said, “He’s a bank teller, Mom. And this place is—” She looked around. She wanted to say “squalid” again, but it was not that. It just was not—it was not lovely—and it was a strange place with its high ceilings and chairs that were worn in their upholstery.
Her mother sat up very straight. “This place is beautiful,” she said. “Why, we have the view of the water. We’d never have been able to afford it if Paolo’s wife hadn’t had money.”
“She had money?”
“She has money, some. Yes. And he’s like me, he didn’t come from much.”
Angelina said nothing.
Mary continued, “The point is this. I am comfortable with him. I am in love with him, and I am comfortable with him. Your father’s family, as you very well know, had money, and your father has been very successful. Frankly, Angelina, I don’t give a damn about money. I like not having it, in fact. Except that not having it keeps me from seeing
you.”
“You’ve returned to your roots.” Angelina meant this sarcastically, but she thought it sounded silly.
“My father worked at a filling station. We had nothing. You know that. Paolo does not have money and he does not have huge ideas of how to make it. If that’s what you mean by returning to my roots.”
Angelina stared at her own feet stretched out in front of her; her ankles were thin. “Wait.” She looked up at her mother. “So he lived here with his wife?”
“That’s right. She met someone and took off, and she left him this place, and we’re glad to have it.”
“I don’t understand anything,” Angelina said finally.
“No. I don’t either.”
Mary reached for her daughter’s hand. And yet to Mary came the sudden knowledge—how stupid she had been not to see this before—that her daughter would never forgive her for leaving her father. Not in Mary’s lifetime. And Mary’s lifetime was not very long anymore. But the knowledge was terrible—and yet in Mary’s head was that twang again, she was angry—!
Please.
Angelina said, “Mom. I don’t want you to die. That’s the whole thing. You took from me the ability to care for you in your old age, and I wanted to be with you if you died, when you die. Mom. I wanted that.”
Mary looked at her, this woman with the creases by her mouth.
“Mom, I’m trying to tell you—”
“I know what you’re trying to tell me.” And now Mary had to be careful. She had to be careful because this girl-woman was her daughter. She could not tell her—this child she loved as much as she had loved anything—that she did not dread her death, that she was almost ready for it, not really but getting there, and it was horrifying to realize that—that life had worn her out, worn her down, she was almost ready to die, and she would die, probably not too long from now. Always, there was that grasping for a few more years, Mary had seen this with many people, and she did not feel it—or she did, but she did not. No. She felt tired out, she felt almost ready, and she could not tell her child this. And she also felt terror at the thought. She pictured it—lying here in this very room while Paolo rushed about—and she was terrified, because she would not see her girls again, she would not see her husband again, and she meant their father, that husband, she would not see all of them again and it terrified her. And she could not tell her daughter that had she known what she was doing to her, to her dearest little Angel, she might not have done it.
But this was life! And it was messy! Angelina, my child, please—
“You didn’t even take the money Dad owes you from the divorce—in the state of Illinois, you could have had some money.”
Mary said, “But, honey.” She paused, looking for the words. Finally she said, “When you fall in love you get into some”—Mary waved a hand upward—“bubble or something. You don’t think. But why should I have his money? I never earned a penny of it.”
Angelina thought, You’re a dope, Mom.
Mary shook her head slowly and said, “I’m a dope.”
Angelina said, “Well, if you had taken the money, I could visit you, that’s one thing you could have done with it.”
Mary said, “I understand that. Now.”
“And why do you say you didn’t earn it? You raised five girls, Mom.”
Mary nodded. “I always felt that I was at the mercy of your father and his family. Like I was a kept woman. I should have had a job. But why would I have had a job? I don’t know what you and Jack have done about finances, but I’ll tell you, Angelina, it’s a good thing you’ve always worked. It makes things a lot more fair between two people.”
Angelina said, “Jack’s going to come back.”
“Jack left? I didn’t know he’d left.” Mary pulled back to look at her daughter.
Angelina said, “I don’t want to talk about it, but things were my fault too. So he’s coming back. When I get home.”
“He left?”
“Yes. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
But Mary was really frightened now; her chatty little Angel, who used to tell her everything, all the nights putting her to bed, the baths drawn—whoosh, it was gone, gone! “Honey,” she said after a moment, “it’s none of my business, but was there another woman?”
Angelina looked at her mother with a sudden stoniness. “Yeah.” And then in a moment she added, “You.”
“What do you mean?” Mary said.
“I mean, the other woman was you, Mom. I couldn’t get over your leaving. I couldn’t stop talking about you. And Jack said I was in love with my mother.”
“Oh, honey. Oh dear God,” said Mary.
“He left over a year ago, and I was going to come see you last summer, but he kept saying he might come back, so I stayed home, but now he really is going to come back.”
Angelina allowed her mother to take hold of her, and Angelina wept on her mother’s chest. She wept for a long time. Every so often she made a sound of such terrible pain that Mary felt removed from it. Finally, Angelina lifted her head, wiped at her nose, and said, “I feel better now.”
They sat together on the couch for many minutes, Mary’s arm around her girl. Mary ran her other hand over Angelina’s leg. Then Mary said, “You know, when I first saw you in these jeans I thought maybe you were having an affair.”
Angelina sat up straight. “What?” she said.
“I didn’t know it was with me.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
Mary said, “Well, honey, these jeans are kind of tight for a woman your age, and I just thought—you know, maybe—”
Angelina began to laugh, though her face was still wet. “Mom, I bought these jeans special for this trip. I thought women in Italy wore— I thought they wore sexy things.”
“Oh, the jeans are sexy,” Mary said. She didn’t think they were sexy at all.
“You don’t like them?” Angelina looked ready to cry again.
“Honey, I do.”
And then Angelina—oh, bless her soul—began to really laugh. “Well, I don’t like them. I feel like a jerk in them. But I bought them special, so you’d think I was, you know, sophisticated or something.” Angelina added, “In my one-piece bathing suit!” Both of them laughed until they had tears in their eyes, and even then they kept on laughing. But Mary thought: Not one thing lasts forever; still, may Angelina have this moment for the rest of her life.
Mary said that she was going out to sit in the courtyard by the church and have her evening smoke. In fact, Mary had not had a cigarette since she’d moved here. She had told the man in the shop that the cigarettes were for her daughter.
“Okay, Mom,” Angelina said, and her mother went and got her yellow leather pocketbook. In a few minutes, Angelina looked from the window and saw that her mother was sitting on a bench that overlooked the town, and also the sea. She sat beneath a streetlamp, and Angelina could just make out that her earbuds were in, her head moving slightly up and down, a cigarette held to her lips. Then Angelina saw a woman come up to her mother, and Angelina realized it must be Valeria; how happy her mother seemed to see her! Her mother stood, and she and this tiny woman kissed each other on one cheek and then the other, and Angelina watched her mother’s hands gesticulating; at one point she held the cigarette toward her friend and they both laughed. Then the small woman reached up and they kissed on each cheek again, and the small woman went away and Angelina’s mother sat down again. She sat there on the bench, took two more long puffs on her cigarette, then squished it against the ground, but she held the butt and carefully placed it in a small plastic bag she took from her large yellow pocketbook.
Angelina could not stop staring at her, her mother who sat very still, looking out at the water. And then Angelina saw her mother suddenly rise and walk into the street. An old man was crossing, he was weaving—not with drunkenness, it seemed, but with some malady of age. It was surprising to Angelina how quickly her mother moved to him; in the light from
the streetlamp Angelina saw the old man’s face, and it was not just the way he smiled up at her mother, it was the humanness of his expression, the warmth and depth of his appreciation, and as her mother helped him across the street, Angelina saw then her mother’s face briefly in the light as well. Perhaps it was the angle of the light, but her mother’s face had a momentary brilliance upon it—as Angelina saw her mother take the man’s hand, saw her mother help this man across the street; and when they got to the other side they appeared to speak briefly to each other, and then her mother waved as the man went down the sidewalk. Angelina thought, Now she will come back upstairs.
But her mother sat down once again on the bench; she put her earbuds back in, and her head began moving up and down to whatever she was listening to on her phone, it would have to be an Elvis song. She was facing the sea, and seemed to be gazing out at the boats with their lights on.
—
Her mother had read to Angelina all the books about the little girl on the prairie, and when there was a television show about it she would watch the show with Angelina, the two of them curled up on the couch together. Her mother had told Angelina about how they killed the Indians, took their land. Her father had said they deserved it; her mother had told her they did not deserve it, but that is what happened. People always kept moving, her mother had said, it’s the American way. Moving west, moving south, marrying up, marrying down, getting divorced—but moving.
Her mother had recognized her the moment she was born—
“Okay, Mommy,” Angelina whispered. She stepped away from the window and went to the bedroom to get her computer, but she sat on the bed instead, looking around, this bed her mother shared with a man named Paolo.
For eighteen years her mother had put her to bed. Don’t leave yet, Angelina would say, not yet! Her father, from the doorway, would say, ’Night, Lina, go to sleep. Now Angelina gazed through the window at the sea; it was dark, the ships had their lights on. She heard her mother coming up the stairs. And she knew, Angelina knew, that she had seen something important when her mother helped the man who was unsteady crossing the street. Briefly—it would be brief, Angelina knew this, she knew she would always be the child—but briefly a ceiling had been raised; she pictured her mother’s quick and gracious loveliness to that man on the street: A street in a village on the coast of Italy, her mother, a pioneer.