A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  * * *

  Signora Elias’s piano room smelled of vanilla and almond. Giovanna agreed to let Alba go ahead of her, whilst she waited for Bruno to accompany her a little later. Alba arrived to practice finding the kitchen counters topped with several baking trays. There was a neat parade of fig jam–filled tiricche, fine white pastry twists cut with a serrated wooden wheel leaving edges like lace. In a ceramic dish Signora Elias’s famed sospiri were laid in a circle with a tiny space between each so that the heat wouldn’t melt them and make them stick together. These were Bruno’s favorite, but Alba knew no amount of sugar would sweeten the betrayal they were about to reveal.

  “Don’t hover in your nerves, Alba. You leave this all to me. All you must do is warm up and play. Everything else rests on my shoulders, do you understand?”

  Alba wanted to but she knew her father better than that.

  “At some point our secret had to come out, no? This is the nature of secrets. They have a lifespan of their own. Eventually they too must die, as they shift from the dark into the light.”

  Alba felt her eyebrows squeeze into a frown.

  “Goodness, my metaphors will do nothing to ease your mind, I’m sure. Off you go, I have things to do here now.”

  Alba let herself be shooed back out toward the piano. She took her seat as she had done for all those mornings up till today. Her scales began a little slower than usual. Her mind began to percuss the fragment of space between the notes, the middle quiet where one note ends and another begins, the subtle shifts in frequency urging her toward the instrument and away from her rattling nerves. As her fingers spidered up and down the keyboard Alba felt the warmth of that wordless place, one she was always being criticized by her father for living in most of the time but the very strength this instrument required. She didn’t hear the bell ring until it jangled for what must have been the fourth time. Her fingers lifted off the keys as if scalded. Signora Elias appeared at the kitchen doorway wiping hers.

  “You stay exactly where you are, Signorina. I will let your parents in.”

  Every sound thrummed like a chord cutting across a silence: the creak of the door, its solemn close, her mother’s footsteps along the shiny floors, tentative clips toward the piano room. Giovanna entered. She registered Alba seated upon the ottoman.

  “Please, do get comfortable, Signora Giovanna,” Signora Elias said, leading her into the room she cleaned once a week. “The coffee is just about ready. Alba, do help me with the sweets, si?”

  Alba was relieved to be asked to do something other than sit beside her mother, who looked stiff. She scooped up two plates and returned to the table in front of the ottoman. Giovanna gave her a peculiar look, swerving embarrassment or perhaps pride, Alba couldn’t decide which.

  “And Signore Bruno?” Signora Elias asked without a trace of emotion, though his absence made Alba feel more uneasy than before. She placed the coffeepot on a holder and poured Giovanna a dainty china cup and handed it over.

  “He’s got caught with a terrible customer, Signora,” Giovanna replied, breathy. “I stopped by at the officina. It’s awfully busy. There was simply no way he could get away. He sends his apologies. It’s just us women together. Probably best. You know how he is, Signora.”

  Signora Elias smiled, unruffled. Alba shifted along the velvet, which prickled her bare legs below the hem of her cutoff shorts.

  “Do have a sweet, Signora Giovanna, I made them especially. It’s wonderful to have someone to bake for. Try one of each.”

  Signora Elias and Giovanna performed the ritual dance of refusal and insistence, and, as always, age won out and Giovanna ate as ordered. Watching her mother do as she was told filled Alba with hope that what was about to happen might not be the disaster she anticipated.

  “Very well, Signora Giovanna.”

  “Please, Signora, just call me Giovanna.”

  “You’re not working today, Signora, today you are the respected mother of this wonderful young woman. What I would like you to enjoy now, is the fruit of my time with Alba. She has helped me a great deal, and I know there have been times over the years where you have considered taking her job away as punishment, an understandable measure considering, but I first of all want to thank you, from the deepest part of my heart, for not doing so. When I came to you after the Mario debacle you listened to my plea, and, as an old woman living alone, I can’t tell you what that meant.”

  Giovanna shifted in her seat. Alba saw her eye the sospiri. Signora Elias lifted the dish right away and insisted she take another. Her mother never told Alba it was Signora Elias who had saved her lessons from her father’s threat to terminate them. Alba clung on to the belief that he’d spat it in the heat of a temper, nothing more. Giovanna had let Alba believe that she’d permitted her to continue working for Signora Elias out of the goodness of her heart, and for a while, Alba had believed her mother understood her friendship with Signora Elias was the most important part of her life. Now she watched the subtle shadow of betrayal cast a gray over her mother’s face. It made her own lighten for a breath.

  “But enough prattling from me, I invited you and Signore Bruno to hear something quite marvelous this morning and I can only say that I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do. It is my wish, that when Alba has finished what she has prepared, you will understand what a wonder it has been working with your daughter.”

  Giovanna took a breath to speak. Signora Elias interrupted. “Do get comfortable. And enjoy.”

  Signora Elias nodded at Alba. The metallic ache in her stomach piqued. She stood up and took her seat at the stool. As she pushed it a little farther away with her feet she caught sight of her canvas pumps. They were the ones she’d worn that day she’d had sex with Raffaele in the pineta. Giovanna forced her to scrub them clean once a week, but Alba felt like a little of the pine dust always remained. No amount of water could take that away.

  She caught Signora Elias’s eye. It sent a wave of calm over her. She let her breath leave her chest and deepen into her lower back. The soles of her feet rooted onto the floor. The room shifted into her periphery. Her fingers sunk down onto Chopin’s notes she had played countless times. A purple melancholy swept over her. Wave after wave of measures rolled on with ease, the notes a cocoon around her and the piano, dancing light. The mournful melody swirled out from her, weighted, familiar, describing the longing and silence she could not articulate with words alone. The ending trickled into view, an unstoppable tide urging toward the shore.

  And then it was over.

  Alba lifted her fingers with reluctance, holding on to the space before reality would have to be confronted. She placed them on her lap and looked at her mother.

  Giovanna’s eyes were wet. Her breath seemed to catch somewhere high in her chest. Signora Elias didn’t fill her silence. Alba looked at her teacher. Her eyes glistened with pride. Whatever happened now, that expression was one Alba would cling to. In the golden gap between this moment and their next, Alba felt like her mother cradled her life in her lap, petals of possibility that might tumble and crush underfoot if she rose too quick, or be thrown into the air, fragrant confetti of celebration.

  “Signora Giovanna,” Signora Elias began at last, “in return for all the errands your daughter does for me I offered what I could, besides money, in return. You see, the moment she sat at my instrument I knew I would be failing my duty as a teacher if I didn’t protect and nurture her talent.”

  Giovanna opened her mouth to speak but her thoughts remained choked.

  “Your daughter has become an exceptional student and pianist.”

  “I’ve never heard anything like that,” Giovanna murmured.

  “Alba has been offered a full scholarship in Rome to pursue her studies further. She has what it takes to become a professional, Signora Giovanna.”

  Her mother’s expression crinkled through confusion, pride, concern, a troubled spring day between showers.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Giovanna
replied after a beat.

  “I can’t tell you what to say, Signora, but in my professional capacity I would urge you to permit her to go. I have friends there who will be able to arrange her accommodation, it will be simple of course, but clean.”

  “In Rome you say?”

  Signora Elias nodded.

  “Alone? A girl alone in Rome? She’s going to be married.”

  Alba’s eyes slit to Signora Elias, the prickle of panic creeping up her middle.

  “Take some time to think about it, Signora, but I can reassure you that I know people who can help her in the early days and that many young people make the same pilgrimage every year. For their art. For talent that they have a duty to share with the world.”

  Giovanna looked at her daughter. Alba persuaded herself that the flicker she caught in her eye was one of a mother almost convinced.

  Giovanna said nothing on the walk home, nor as they prepared lunch. She cut the cured sausage into thin precise slices without a word. She handed Alba the six plates to set the table without even looking Alba in the eye. She washed the fresh tomatoes and placed them in a bowl without the slightest evidence of emotion of any kind, other than a robotic repetition of their regular rhythms. Only when she tipped the salt into a tiny ramekin for the table and it overflowed onto the counter did Alba spy any nerves. When Giovanna made no move to clear up the salt flakes Alba’s sense of impending storm peaked. She gave the linguini a swirl in the simmering water.

  Salvatore came in soon after, world-weary and hungry as he always was after Saturday mornings at the officina. He slumped onto his chair.

  “Why all the plates?” he grumbled.

  “Marcellino and Lucia are coming,” Giovanna shouted from the kitchen.

  “When’s Babbo back?” he called back.

  “Didn’t he say at the officina?” Alba said, laying down a bowl of chicory on the table.

  “He wasn’t at work today.”

  Alba wanted to check her mother’s face for a reply as she brought out a hunk of Parmesan and a grater, dropping them onto the table with a thud, then thought better of it.

  The door opened. Marcellino and Lucia strode in, taking over the space as they always did. Lucia stepped toward Giovanna and greeted her like her second mother. Then she swished over to Alba and gave a dutiful kiss on each cheek, almost touching the skin.

  “Nearly ready, Ma?” Marcellino harangued his mother.

  Lucia gave him a playful tap on his belly.

  “What?” he guffawed. “A boy’s hungry!”

  “Not a boy for long,” Lucia purred, her blue eyes flashing with something Alba struggled to identify. She did look different today, but it was hard to pinpoint why. She sashayed across the tiles with her usual perky sway, her jet-black hair lustrous even in the dim light of the shady room.

  Giovanna yelled for Alba and handed her the pasta pot. The family took their seats. Bruno stepped in just as the first bowl was filled.

  “Buon appetito!” he called, his walk a playful swagger.

  “Get changed, amore, si?” Giovanna insisted. Bruno stopped and grinned at his daughter-in-law. “Don’t get any ideas now, Lucia? You see how old married men are? Do what their little wives say at all times, si? Watch out, Marcellino, it’s the beginning of the end.”

  Alba thought her father sounded a little drunk. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to have an aperitivo at the bar with his cronies after the morning at the officina, or to drum up more business over a Campari soda or two, but there was more sway than usual about him that afternoon. Only when he turned for upstairs did Alba spy a fleck of lipstick on his collar. The clang of the metal serving fork upon the bowls as her mother tipped another portion of the pasta brought her back into the room. She watched the steam ribbon off the strands, fragrant with anchovy, garlic, chili, and fresh tomatoes.

  Just before the figs were brought out at the end of the meal, Lucia asked for everyone’s attention and announced she was pregnant. Alba’s father needed no excuse to crack open a bottle of moscato and the sweet wine frothed six glasses like it was Christmas. When Lucia was asked her due date, she shied around a direct answer. It wasn’t until Alba brought out the coffee that she understood Lucia’s pregnancy was almost five months along. Women on the cusp of marriage were granted different rules, it seemed.

  When everyone left, the house dipped into a sleepy quiet. Bruno snored upstairs. Salvatore lay on the couch. Only the percussive sloppy grating of Giovanna washing at the tub outside cut through the stillness. Alba stepped outside into the narrow courtyard garden. Above a canopy of wisteria wept purple blooms. Giovanna plunged a shirt into the sudsy cement tub, then lifted it and began attacking it along the ridges of the washboard, which lifted out at an angle. Her mother’s knuckles were red.

  “When are you going to tell Babbo?” Alba asked, before realizing that it was her father’s shirt Giovanna was waging war on.

  Her mother looked up at her, eyes bloodshot from dried tears.

  “Leave me now. I’ve had quite the morning, don’t you think? Sending me up there to be shamed by my daughter who has become a charity case? Have you any idea how I felt? I told you loud and clear what I thought about imposing on that kind woman. After everything she did for me when we were struggling? All those years I’ve been cleaning her house. Meanwhile you’ve been pretending to work there when all you’ve been doing is plonking that instrument. And now you stand here, silent as a cave telling me to tell your father. You’ve got another thing coming.”

  She plunged the shirt into the tub again, though Alba sensed Giovanna was picturing submerging something, or someone else.

  “That’s it, stand there like a rock. I’m used to it now. I could have lost my son that night with your father. Do you know that? Or was it just a game to you? You think you’re the only one who has nightmares of that time? I did everything I could to raise you right. Do you know what your little secret means for me?”

  Now her mother wrung the shirt as if it were her daughter’s neck. Alba stepped inside. She sat at the deserted table fingering her letter. When her father came back down an hour later, dressed in a new shirt and smelling of sandalwood, she asked him to sit down. He did. Alba put the letter in front of him.

  When he finished, he folded it and handed it back to her.

  “Giova’!” he yelled.

  She stepped inside wiping her suds on her apron.

  “What do you know about this?”

  Giovanna looked at the letter and then at her daughter.

  “I haven’t read it.”

  “Tell him, Mamma,” Alba interrupted.

  “You be quiet, I’m talking to your mother.”

  “It’s what Signora Elias wanted to talk to us about today,” Giovanna replied. “I know you were busy. I told her that.”

  Bruno twisted away from Giovanna and ran a hand over his beard.

  “Why did they write to you, Alba?” he asked, flames flickering the fringes of his tone.

  Giovanna stepped in and took a seat.

  “Tell your father, Alba.”

  She looked between her parents’ faces. For a moment a spark of optimism; a fast-fading firework.

  “I have had lessons. They want me to study in Rome.”

  “I can read, Alba, I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”

  Alba’s swallow felt hollow. “Signora Elias taught me.”

  Her father’s smile was crooked. “Took pity on the poor town mute, did she?”

  Alba took a breath, but her stomach clasped tight.

  “And you sit here, telling me you’ve spent all these years studying music, wasting your time at the old woman’s when your father has been building a business that will take care of you and your unborn children? Is that what you’re saying? Are you actually telling me you think it’s a good idea to run to Rome and play an instrument? Now I’ve heard it all. You are even crazier than they tell me. What do you have to say about this, Giovanna? You sitting there wringing your hands
? You going to sit there mute as well?”

  The corners of Giovanna’s lips stretched as if she were clamping whatever words were fighting their way out.

  “This is all your fault, you know that, don’t you? I said so when she nearly killed that boy! And did you listen? You both sit there with no words! You’re the most stupid women I know! My own family, imbeciles! What happened to this family? Everything I do, and this is how you thank me. Selfish, stupid little women.”

  “I had no idea!” Giovanna blurted.

  “Even worse!” His voice rose, a crescendo, sweeping treble notes that ascended into a painful octave. “The girl’s mother not knowing what’s going on under her eyes! How did that feel? Watching that old woman shame you like that?”

  Giovanna took a breath to speak, but Bruno swung his hand across her face. She cried out. Alba stood up. Bruno grabbed her chin.

  “See what you did? That’s all you. You and your surly little game. Over my dead body you go. You’re not going to make a mockery of me like that.”

  He pushed her down. The wood thwacked the crease between her calves and the back of her thigh.

  “I won’t hear another word of it.” He scuffed his chair back, swung his sweater over his shoulder, and slammed the door shut.

  The silence could not suffocate Giovanna’s swallowed sobs.

  7

  Piu mosso

  a directive to a performer that the music of the indicated passage should have more motion, it should move more quickly

  Rena Majore was a small town tucked inland of a blustery, rocky coast and a winding drive north of Ozieri. Alba and her family had visited many of the smaller sheltered coves along the eastern coast before Bruno and his brothers had settled on this place for their shared second home. The sea was rough, unpredictable, and uninviting. The town was sleepy and woke up, groggy, during the summer months with a half-forgotten piazza that whispered the promise of a town center. It was a town that attracted those in search of shelter from holiday crowds. Alba hated the place, more so now, because it was where her parents had decided to celebrate Alba and Raffaele’s engagement and graduation.