Two years ago, when Floria turned fifty, her parents gave her this trip to Liguria, but it’s taken her this long to get here because her father asked her to visit the grave of his grandparents, because she has already enough dead people in her life.
“In many of these villages,” her father told her, “the cemeteries are situated where the earth rises to its highest point. To make it easier for the dead to start their way to heaven. By carrying them up as far as earth will allow it, we can be part of their journey for as long as possible, and we ease that part of the journey they will have to take alone. But first we have to leave the dead.”
Floria knows that from burying her daughter. At Bianca’s grave, her father took her hands, his face parched, his eyes glistening as though they hoarded every drop of moisture from his body. “When I was a boy—” His voice clogged. “All that separates Bianca from heaven is that layer of earth. The dead can only ascend when no mortals watch. And we must let them….”
Floria takes out the photo of her father she’s brought to Italy: the day of his first communion, and he stands in front of the stone church, the ground one large mosaic of widening circles. His eyes are turned toward the cemetery high above, and his hands hold his communion candle as if it were the string to his kite. Floria props the photo against the television on the desk next to her bed, picks up the vase with mimosas, their tiny yellow globes wilting.
“Not yet,” she tells the boy in the photo.
In the bathroom, she throws the mimosas into the wastebasket, and as she rinses the vase, her body heats in a sudden blush that leaves her damp from thighs to hairline. Ever since she stopped bleeding, these flushes have come to feel like a trade-off she prefers over the days of blood. She knows how to let it pass, by yielding, by reminding herself that the abrupt heat will be over for her in fifty seconds at most and that the dampness—especially beneath her breasts, where the soft weight of flesh against flesh hides her sweat as if it were forbidden—will dry.
She imagines Malcolm next to her, curved sideways, not spooning, but toward her, knees against her knees, palms against her palms. And she envisions herself taking her husband’s hand and guiding it to the damp skin beneath her breasts, whispering, “Feel this. Just feel this, Malcolm,” letting him warm himself on her mysterious fire.
The husband of her youth would be fascinated by her scent, her taste.
The husband of her youth would touch her without hesitation.
But the husband Malcolm has become in the sum of their years together would pull away from her, no longer curious, no longer inventive.
The husband Malcolm has become would be repulsed by her sudden heat.
Floria wonders if the nuns, too, were they too seized by this sudden heat? Did they speak of it to each other? Would they, in a community of women? Floria can feel the nuns, praying and sleeping within the walls of this convent, walking across the terra-cotta tiles of the courtyard, leaning against the white columns, sitting on the edge of the marble fountain, where water dribbles from the hands of naked baby angels. Some of the nuns are still young girls. Not a loss to their mothers, but a blessing. At least some mothers pretend. A daughter in the convent. A son in the clergy. Blessed art thou among women. Blessed for losing your child. Young girls falling or drowning or walking from villages where they grew up, away from stone houses the colors of dunes and of earth, stacked against the hills amidst deep-green vineyards. Echoes of pigeons—their purring, their claws on tile roofs—crawl along stone walls, stalk the girls through narrow streets that smell of mangoes and recently gutted fish.
When Floria was a girl, the nuns at her school feared the passion of flesh and converted the girls’ passion to a chaste ecstasy that was as pristine as the white gowns of the young postulants, who floated toward their eternal bridegroom on the cross above the altar. Like many of her classmates, Floria dreamed of becoming a postulant, but she found two reasons against that. One: she was afraid of turning into a nun like Sister Gabriella, who believed she’d been carrying the baby of the Archangel Gabriel inside her for eighteen years because the other sisters were jealous and wouldn’t let her give birth to the Archangel’s baby. And two: she couldn’t imagine what she would be like after she’d shed the white robe of the postulants. Not that it had anything to do with wearing black forever. Black made her feel elegant. Most of her clothes were black, as much a part of her as the scent of her skin. Or her name.
“You’re named after Floria in Tosca,” her father told her when she was old enough to understand, and Floria imagined Puccini and her father deliberating names, while sitting knee to knee in her father’s music room, where he had just enough space for two chairs. Singing swelled the curves of his Victrola, streamed through golden threads, and slid down the angled ceiling toward the window that faced the alley.
When her father was at work, he kept the door locked; but in the evening he’d let Floria in—not her brother, though she was two years younger than Victor. “Because you know how to be quiet around music,” he told her. What she loved even more than the music was to look at his face go wide as he listened to his operas, so wide that light poured from his skin.
No one touched dinner, not even guests, till he emerged from his music room, and even if Floria’s saliva pooled around her tongue, she knew not to eat until he’d sat down, nodded toward her mother, and raised his soup spoon.
This early in February, the hotel is empty except for Floria and the signora behind the reception desk, who is Floria’s age and has a strong face with broad lips that are closed in a mysterious and evocative pout. The signora wears suits like the ones Jackie Kennedy had when she still lived in the White House, but, unlike Jackie Kennedy, who owned many short jackets with matching fitted skirts, the signora has two: a stone-colored tweed with silver buttons, and a red wool the shade of strawberries before they’re entirely ripe. For three days the signora wears the same suit, then the other suit for three days. That’s how Floria is reminded of time passing.
And she will remind herself: Now it’s six days since I arrived here.
Now it’s nine days.
In the breakfast room that used to be the chapel, a holy-water basin still hangs by the door. On the marble altar, the signora has set out enough food for a dozen people who will never arrive—cheeses and wafer-thin slices of ham; flaky pastry spun around air; juice squeezed from blood oranges—as though she were waiting for the nuns to return.
As Floria eats, she wonders if the signora owns the hotel. If so, how can she afford to operate it for just one guest, providing all this food and the fresh flowers? The floors between the lobby and her room below the roof seem to be empty. Perhaps the hotel is only open for repairs, and any guest is incidental. Yesterday, an old man replaced some tiles in the lobby, and this morning, two men are erecting scaffolding in the courtyard. They shove and hammer scuffed rods into brassy couplings, lay boards across each width of two rods. The shorter of the two, heavyset and deliberate, scales the layers of boards like a gymnast, with much grace and little effort, while the other man moves with a self-consciousness that reminds Floria of Anthony. He, too, has that habit of touching his face or neck as if to make sure he’s still there.
She used to love Anthony as if he were her own, and through him, learned to love his mother, too. When she met Leonora, she didn’t like her at all—too thin; too irreverent—but once they both became mothers, a friendship grew between them, impulsive and confident. And this is another loss for Floria: no longer loving Anthony as if he were her own. Instead: feeling uneasy around him. Not knowing for sure what he had to do with Bianca’s fall. And yet knowing. Feeling ashamed of that knowing. And keeping that knowing her secret. So many things to keep secret in this family. Things-we-don’t-talk-about. Not talking about the first time she felt uneasy around Anthony.
Twenty-seven years ago, but she can still see him, a toddler in an orange jacket, playing with Bianca and Belinda at the St. James Park playground, patting sand into cakes, dig
ging holes for his car. When he clambered out of the sandbox, he smiled angelically and wobbled toward the monkey bars, where a little boy was playing with a toy truck. In his outstretched hands, Anthony offered his yellow metal car, but the moment the boy reached for it, Anthony seized the truck.
He howled when Floria took it from him. “Wherever did you learn to offer something just to get something bigger?” To distract him, she plopped him back into the sandbox, and for a few minutes he played with Belinda and Bianca, but soon he clambered out again and—with that same angelic expression—headed for the monkey bars, extending his car. He was about to grab the boy’s truck when Floria scooped him up, and while he squirmed and kicked, she worried about him beyond that hour, that day.
Some days, Floria eats in small trattorias, where her aloneness spreads beyond her body, so visible that it makes couples and families at other tables uncomfortable. It’s not at all like the aloneness she felt that long-ago spring when she took a vacation without Malcolm and the twins. Five days in Montauk, in a small hotel near the ocean. How she relished sitting by herself in a restaurant, ordering only what she alone craved, that very instant, without having to plan, to prepare, for her family. And since she knew she would return home in five days, her aloneness clothed her, strengthened her. Because this aloneness was what she’d chosen, she felt a fierce connection to Malcolm and her daughters that did not take away from her aloneness.
But one evening, when she feels glances of pity from people at other tables, even from the waiter, it strikes Floria that here, in Liguria, she carries that aloneness without the connection: a woman who has only one child left; a woman uncertain about staying with her husband. Without Malcolm? It’s the first time she’s thought it, like this, so directly, but it doesn’t shock her, that thought, is already familiar as though it formed itself inside her over years.
Without
Malcolm
Without Malcolm
The waiter crosses the room, a large tray on one shoulder. He wears expensive shoes without socks. Looks like an actor who could play a lover or a thug, fuck your brains out, as Leonora would say, or cut your throat in an alley, with equal passion and skill. When he stops to look at Floria, probably because he’s felt her staring at him, he smiles, shifts his tray from his shoulder, raises it with both hands, and drops it, startling everyone in the restaurant. But he bows as if indeed an actor, sweeps one arm across his chest and into the air, invites applause. Floria laughs and claps her hands, certain that it’s not an accident, that he’s done this before, his way of flirting; and already a man at the next table is applauding, then others, applauding and laughing with her, while the actor is sweeping his stage. Afterwards the hum of conversations, animated before, becomes livelier, encompasses her, now.
At the hotel, the lightbulb by her bed has burned out. When she calls the desk, the signora comes up to her room, argues that Floria has enough other lamps.
“But this is the lamp I use for reading in bed.”
With a quick swish-swish of nylon thighs, the signora exits, and when she returns, her sullenness is like a coating against Floria’s skin, and she doesn’t bother with words while the signora replaces the bulb.
Toward dawn, half awakened by soft snoring, Floria stretches to reach for her first smoke. She likes that velvety rattle high in her throat just before she wakes fully, savors the vibration of the snore where it tickles the roof of her mouth. Occasionally it goes away as soon as she listens to it, as though it had an identity of its own, but usually she can spy on it, let its delicate strength fan into her voice. Mornings when she wakes up snoring, her voice feels stronger, and that strength affects her walk, her thoughts for the entire day.
On her way to breakfast, Floria is prepared to ignore the signora, but she already stands by the holy water and greets Floria, palms raised as if about to absolve her. I can do this, too, Floria thinks, raise my palms like that. And she does. The signora smiles, guides her to one of the elaborate tables where each white napkin is folded into the shape of a bishop’s hat. As every morning, Floria is the only guest. It’s obvious that the signora likes this work better than her maintenance duties. So would I, Floria thinks, suddenly ashamed for insisting the signora climb back up all those stairs, for one lightbulb.
When she returns to the trattoria a few nights later, the lover-thug-waiter is not there. Two women and a small girl arrive after her, but grab the table she’s been waiting for. All in ivory, they’re like characters from The Great Gatsby: ivory hats and skin; ivory dresses and hair. Their profiles: studied elegance and indifference. Reluctantly, Floria lets the waitress seat her at their table. Without glancing at the menu, she orders a plate of trofie. But the women are discussing the menu in rapid Italian, choosing antipasti, primi piatti, piatti secondi, practicing their indifference on Floria and on the girl, who’s playing with a rubber shark and a Barbie doll.
While lamplight bounces off bottles with olive oil and peppers lined up on the bar, the girl is shoving Barbie’s legs into the shark’s jaw. Like elements of different centuries colliding, Floria thinks. When her pasta with green beans in basil sauce arrives, she eats hastily. The women are passing binoculars between them, peering through the window into the deep-blue night, while the small girl tries various shark-and-Barbie combinations: Barbie’s hair between the shark’s rubber teeth; one of Barbie’s legs down the shark’s throat.
After finishing barely half of her food, Floria pays and steps into the dark street. All at once, the familiar fear is back. Afraid of being afraid. She walks faster, trying to fight it off. Ahead of her is a woman, her hair covered, and when she enters a church, Floria follows her. She dips her fingers into the stone basin of holy water, crosses herself—“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”—and kneels to pray as one should in places that are holy. But ever since Bianca’s death, prayer has eluded her. Church has become bad theater: repetitive gestures and words without meaning. Still, she is not like Leonora, who cultivates irreverence and loves to rant against the church. She wishes Leonora were with her, now. Then she wouldn’t be so afraid.
Another woman enters. Genuflects and begins to cry. Floria’s father has told her about women like that in Italy. “They enter a church, any church, and start crying instantly. For them it’s a reflex, like salivating before eating.” But Floria envies that ability to cry. She cannot cry. Cannot pray. Cannot return to what she knows now—but did not know while Bianca still lived—was a state of grace. Afterwards, the dark sadness set in. Not being able to get out of bed, to put on her slippers, to dress. She could envision exactly what to do:
slide my legs out of bed
push my feet into slippers
stand up
walk to the closet
pull my bathrobe from the hook
lift one arm into a sleeve
then the other
button the front—
But it was too much to do. Too much to consider doing. Over and over, she pictured the sequence, but the link between her will and her body had snapped. Overwhelmed by all she couldn’t do, she stayed in bed. Deciding if she wanted a pillow was a major task. Some days it was the only decision she could make. To get from her bed to the door was an insurmountable distance. And even during those hours when she managed to get up, everything she used to enjoy—sewing, listening to music, reading, shopping for fabrics—became a mountain to whittle down. And for what? She had nothing to look forward to. Except to keep whittling down that mountain of all she hadn’t done so that it would not fall on her.
Unless it had already fallen on her. Because she felt as though she lived beneath it—without air; without light. Not every hour, though. She was not like that every hour. Sometimes she crawled from beneath that mountain with tremendous effort, forcing herself to slide her legs out of bed; push her feet into slippers; stand up; walk to the closet; pull her bathrobe from the hook; lift one arm into a sleeve, then the other; button the front; brush her teeth; wash her
face; cook; sew, even.
She discovered that when she was away from home, she could sometimes follow through on what she needed to do. Other days, all she accomplished was to get out of the apartment, and she’d wander her neighborhood, farther and farther away from home, relieved when it rained, so that others wouldn’t see her face.
What mattered was to get from one hour to the next. From one day to the next. In the beginning it was because of Belinda. Who forced her to get up. Who demanded that she read to her, or at least string words together. Though Floria tried, she forgot the beginning of a sentence before she got to its end. She reread it. Forgot it. Stared past the book. Past her daughter.
“Try again,” Belinda tugged at her.
“Don’t…I am so tired.”
“Read to me, Mama. Now!”
But she didn’t trust herself to take care of her daughter. Was afraid. Afraid of being afraid. Afraid of others’ seeing her afraid of being afraid. The fear was unlike anything she’d felt before, and she didn’t know if her life would ever be ordinary again. With sleep and silence she shielded herself from others. Sewing orders were not completed. A wedding had to be delayed. She was bad luck.
The mother of the bride told her so: “You are bad luck. Don’t you know that a wedding postponed means the marriage won’t last?” She took the unfinished wedding gown from Floria, pins and all, though Floria had fretted which neckline would be best for this bride with the bony chest who wanted a neckline far too low. “I’ll find another seamstress to finish the gown,” the mother of the bride informed Floria. “Your reputation is ruined. I’ll see to that. Because you’re ruining my daughter’s life.”