Once Upon a Time in West Toronto

by Terri Favro

  Ida sits back on her heels in astonishment, anger expanding inside her chest like a balloon about to burst.

  “You want me to respect you?” she snorts. “Do other fathers speak to their children only in darkness, surrounded by sins and lies? That’s it! Close the door.”

  Paolo hesitates. She can see, very faintly, his profile outlined by a faint light. His face is in his hands. He feels bad. Good!

  “Aspetta! Wait. Don’t go. You know nothing of this man you marry.”

  “On the contrary, I know a great deal about him! His name is Marcello Trovato Senior,” says Ida. “A widower. A rich businessman with a ranch and a little boy for me to look after, also named Marcello. Marcello Senior and Junior. That’s my family now. That’s where I go tomorrow.”

  “God forgive me,” whispers Paolo.

  “Close the door,” orders Ida again. “A sinner is waiting for you on the other side.”

  Paolo mumbles a blessing and slides shut the door.

  She can’t believe he actually did it. He closed the door in her face. She sits in stunned disbelief. He loves her so little that he will simply let her go without a fight.

  That settles it. La donna é mobile. She is moving.

  As she leaves the box, an old woman kneeling in the pews gives her the eye. What took you so long? When she sees Ida, she lowers her head and fingers her beads.

  Everyone knows her face now. She’s “the priest’s girl”—that was the headline in Oggi a month ago. Something intriguing and amusing and a bit scandalous for the Italians to enjoy along with their morning espresso. A priest, a brothel-keeper’s daughter, and their beautiful child, a knock-out, a stewardess, no less—could there be any better combination for a titillating story? It’s almost a comic opera.

  There was a photo of her in her trainee uniform, another of Paolo at his ordination, a third of the pensione, formerly The Gilt Rose, the article explained, until the Vatican made the government change the rules, pulling the rug out from beneath their feet. Now the girls walk the streets and lurk in alleyways, and Casa Rosa loosens its robes for silly tourists instead of lustful men.

  Zara and the old lady who owned the place were embarrassed by the news story, and Paolo’s bishop is furious. But Ida is humiliated to the point of self-banishment. She must escape, she insists to Rico, and become someone entirely new. I will re-invent myself in the New World.

  Rico says nothing. He knows she can do it.

  Ida stands in the middle of San Rocco. Tintoretto masterpieces everywhere you look. A baptismal font that has anointed the infant heads of composers, courtesans, artists, assassins, even Ida herself, over the shrill criticism of Signora Bellini. So much history, you could choke on it.

  She stares at the confession box. Paolo is still in there, giving ear to the penitents, while out under the apse his daughter stands disrespectfully, her back to the altar. She leaves without genuflecting or dipping her fingers into holy water to make the Sign of the Cross. Once outside, she pulls off her ugly black headscarf and stuffs it into a trash barrel beside the scuola.

  At home, she packs her bag. The red skirt, white blouse, and best shoes go in last. As she has been taught to pack in stewardess school, the thing you wear next is the thing you pack last.

  Next door an argument is raging between Zara and the old lady, as usual. She’s already said her goodbyes to them both so now they’re tearing into one another. “Why does she go? The guests like her. And this stupid newspaper story—it’s all good publicity! It’s just another thing to bring them to Ca’Rosa.”

  “Why are you shouting at me? I’m not the one sending the girl away!”

  “No, no. We only have your priest to blame for that!”

  “Paolo and I have always loved one another. Can I help it if he has a calling?”

  Et cetera. Et cetera. The generation gap again, thinks Ida. Surely the older ones are totally crazy. It’s up to her generation to change these ridiculous attitudes toward love and sex and religion.

  She has one last place to go.

  Downstairs, she enters the kitchen. As blonde as Ida, but tall like Paolo, Rico stands at the stove, his broad shoulders in a white shirt, slim hips in black pants. When he turns to look at her, Ida’s heart melts a little. Her handsome brother, sweet as sugar. The only one she’ll miss.

  “I’m ready,” she announces.

  Rico wipes his eyes with his sleeve. He’s chopping onions but she can see that he’s also crying a little.

  “I’ll take your bag to the station.”

  At noon, Rico carries her white suitcase to Stazione Santa Lucia. From here, her ticket takes her to Milano where she will spend the night, then on to Malpensa Aeroporto for the flight the next morning. Everything all set up and paid for by her husband in Canada, even the chaperone, an old woman hired to guard her from the advances of men on the train and to see her safely on her way. It wouldn’t do to have the virgin bride lose her purity before she meets her new husband! His people have also supplied doctored papers that add five years to her age. Ida shrugged at this suggestion: she finds no advantage in youth, so why not? From this day on, she will say she was born in forty-seven, not fifty-two.

  Ida tries to imagine what her husband looks like. At the proxy wedding the previous Saturday, in an ugly modern church in suburban Mestre, a rumpled old man turned up to act as proxy groom, smelling of wine; she assumed he was her husband’s uncle or great-uncle, but he turned out to be his brother. Well, of course, the real husband, the one in Canada, might have started out as a rough-edged abruzzese, but clearly he’s hit it big in the New World with a ranch and an Oriental cook. Ida tries to comfort herself with these thoughts but doubts keep crowding in; she decides against sharing them with Rico. He’s already worried enough. Besides, if things don’t work out, she has a little money of her own—enough, perhaps, to provide her with a means of escape, should she need it.

  “I’m thinking of leaving someday too,” confides Rico, taking her hand as they wait to board the train. After satisfying herself that Rico was really Ida’s brother, the old chaperone has already embarked to ensure that their seats are spotless and free from the eyes of curious men.

  “Come with me,” Ida says to her brother.

  He shakes his head. “Not yet. I can’t let Zara and Paolo lose both of us at once. And anyway I’m thinking of Inghilterra, not America.”

  “England, why?”

  Rico shrugs. “I hear the restaurants like Italian cooking and the women like Italian men.”

  “I suspect this is also true in Canada,” offers Ida.

  “What sort of a name is ‘Toronto’?” asks Rico, dubiously.

  “An Indian name.”

  Rico laughs. “Of course! For you, of course, it would have to be an Indian name.”

  “But this is just the landing point. My husband will pick me up there and takes me to Shipman’s Corners.”

  Rico frowns. “Sheep-a-man Corona?”

  “Yes, yes. A town in the countryside. Like those pretty villages in Tuscany! Very good horse country. No doubt where he has his ranch. Perhaps I will live there with the little boy while he works in the city.”

  “You, a mamma. Hard to imagine.” Rico puts his arms around her. “Leave this husband in the lurch. Stay here another year, then go back to Alitalia when all the publicity settles, you will still see the world….”

  “No.” Ida is firm. “In one more year, I’ll be dead. It’s too much Rico. I want to start again. Without Paolo, without Ca’Rosa, without Signora Bellini singing out insults at me every time I walk by her hanging her laundry.”

  “Everyone will forget. The airline will forget.”

  “Rico, they said to me, ‘We only take good girls. Alitalia doesn’t want scandal.’ They won’t forget and I won’t forget.”

  Around them a crowd of hippie tourists, fresh off the
train, shout to one another in English, Swedish, German, mouths gaping—Oh wow!—as they gaze at the unbelievable storybook city spread before them, already visible from the square fronting Santa Lucia Station. The canals, the cathedrals, the gondolas, the palazzi! Ida doesn’t even take a last look.

  Rico places the white suitcase on the top step of the coach, where a porter picks up it up to take to Ida’s seat. The stone-faced chaperone reads her prayer book. Ida pushes past her to sit by the open window and look out at her brother. Their eyes meet, blue on blue.

  Too many things to say, brother, thinks Ida. So say nothing at all, eh?

  As the train starts moving, she waves, her hands in demure white gloves, the ones they gave her in stewardess training.

  Rico has one last glimpse of his sister’s beautiful, pale face, watching him, waving to him, before she turns her eyes to the west.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council Writers’ Reserve Program for financial assistance in writing Once Upon a Time in West Toronto.

  My heartfelt thanks go out to my editor Luciana Ricciutelli and publicist Renée Knapp at Inanna Publications. I also want to thank friends who took the time to read early drafts and give feedback: Diane Bracuk, Chris Caswell, Eufemia Fantetti, Izzy Ferguson, Glen Petrie, Kris Rothstein, Heather McCulloch, and Maria Meindl. Special thanks to Lisa de Nikolits for her friendship, and to Rick Favro and Izzy Ferguson for technical advice about car crashes and house collapses, and to my language experts Guingo Sylwan and Annalisa Magnini (Italian), Andy Drakopolous (Greek), and Marianne and Ana Marusic (Croatian).

  A different version of the chapter, “A Shout From God”, originally appeared as a story in the 2011 Diaspora Dialogues anthology TOK 6: Writing the New Toronto. Thank you, DD, for the valuable mentorship of David Layton.

  Finally, to my husband and creative partner Ron Edding: thank you for your love, encouragement, and sense of humour. Ti amo.

  Photo: Ayelet Tsabari

  Terri Favro is a novelist, essayist, storyteller, and graphic novel collaborator. Once Upon a Time in West Toronto is the sequel to her award-winning novella, The Proxy Bride. Terri is also the author of the novel, Sputnik’s Children, co-creator of the “Bella” graphic novel series, and a CBC Literary Prize finalist in Creative Non-Fiction. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Terri grew up in the Niagara area and now lives in Toronto.