The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

She tried to stand, pressing her palm on the cold wet cement of the floor, pushing herself up. The world rolled over her in a swirl of pain and simultaneous nausea. But now here she was, she was standing, she was supporting herself on the wooden shelving, she was pulling on the beaded aluminum cord of the light. The sharp brightness of the bulb provoked another roll of disorientation.

  Her head cramped as she looked down at the floor. The blood was everywhere—a flat, dark puddle that spread across the slanting floor and toward the drain. What a mess she had to clean, and with this awful pain. She took a roll of paper towels from the shelf of cleaning supplies right in front of her—at least she didn’t have to go back upstairs in this condition—and then she took a second roll, because she was afraid to get back down to her knees. But she did. She got back down. The sickness was worse than any nausea she had ever felt, worse than the boat over the Atlantic, worse than the morning sickness of any of her pregnancies.

  The end of the paper towel roll eluded her, and she struggled for too long, who knows how long, to unwrap it. She found it finally and tugged the first sheet free of its gentle adhesive, then ripped off a sheet and put it to the puddle on the floor. The paper towel was instantly a cardinal red square, redder and brighter than the shadowy blood around it. It will never be enough, Stella thought. She unwound the roll, one loop and then again, and balled up what she had removed. She pressed it into the blood puddle and it was instantly soaked through.

  Bad, it was bad. She would never get it all. She pulled more paper towel free, as much as she could, but her arms were heavy and tired. She was hyperventilating—why? She was acting like an idiot. But the paper towels, they were no good, they did nothing. A second wad, and then a third, and still they just turned red, and her hands were covered in blood, bright red like she was wearing a pair of gloves made of fine red leather. A fourth wad, and it was still no good, and then the final wave came over her and she was falling forward into the floor, her cheek coming down on a wet pile of paper towel.

  It was cold now, much colder than before. Her skin crawled with tremors. Even the sticky blood was cooling under her fingers. She couldn’t call out, because there was no one to hear her this time.

  WHEN CARMELO CAME HOME from his closing shift at Charlie’s in half an hour, he would sit in the brown armchair in the front room, pull the wooden bar to raise the footrest, and fall asleep there with his shoes on. It wouldn’t occur to him that Stella would be anywhere but upstairs in her bed.

  TOMMY MAGLIERI WORKED THE 4 A.M. to noon shift at the electric company. At 3:15 A.M. on Friday, December 9, he came over to his parents’ house, as he often did before work, to do a walk-through to make sure everything was as it should be. Who does that kind of thing? Well, Tommy does. He is the reason Stella was rushed to the hospital, why she did not die for the last time on the basement floor.

  YOU KNOW THIS PART of the story already. Stella’s brain was hemorrhaging inside her cracked skull; they needed to find a way to relieve pressure. The doctors had one idea—an experimental procedure, which the patient had a slender chance of surviving—they would cut damaged tissue away from the frontal lobe to make space. The lead surgeon was eager to attempt the procedure for academic reasons, although he did not misrepresent it to the Maglieri children who were keeping vigil in the visitors’ lounge. Even if the surgery were a success, their mother would be a vegetable for the rest of her shortened life.

  Insurance would not cover the unapproved procedure. It would be $100,000 out of pocket. But who is going to be the one to say, No, we didn’t do everything we could?

  “That’s eleven grand each,” Tommy said. “For Mommy. You got eleven grand for your mother, don’t you?”

  Tommy, Bernie, Guy, Freddy, and Richie could come up with eleven grand each. Mingo had his share—this was before the heroin problems. Artie and his new wife had four grand between them; Artie borrowed the rest against wages from his brother Guy, who was also his boss. Nicky had nothing but his disability checks, but Tommy had always known he was going to cover Nicky, like he always did. Johnny didn’t show up for the family meeting. Tommy covered Johnny’s share and pretended he thought Johnny would pay him back someday. Well, maybe that was how it was meant to work out; it wasn’t like Tommy needed that money to support a family of his own.

  AS YOU ALREADY KNOW, the doctors were wrong about Stella’s prognosis. Maybe their science was better than they thought. Maybe they had never met a patient like Stella, with her stubborn immortality.

  * * *

  THIS IS THE BEGINNING of the longest thirty years.

  WHEN THEY CUT OUT your frontal lobe to stop your brain from crushing itself, they cut out forever parts of who you are. They cut out your inhibitions, although they do not cut out your fear. They cut out the part that lets you access your facial muscles, so afterward you smile all the time, even when you are angry. They cut out your empathy, although not your affection.

  They cut out some parts of your memory, but they also root up other parts that you’d buried or denied, and they leave those pieces sitting right on the top, like potatoes that have just been pulled out of the ground by their vines and are lying in their garden rows, waiting for you to come shake the dirt off.

  THESE ARE THE THINGS that filled Stella’s mind during her coma, when her remembered world was whittled down.

  So fresh, the memory—tumbling down the basement stairs.

  Sixty years earlier—the ghostly arms pushing against the door of the Ievoli schoolhouse—her little sister’s foot tripping her as she fell out of the way of the swinging wood.

  That sticky summer morning of 1941, waking up from her nightmare on the floor of the Front Street bedroom with Tina’s hands wrapped around her throbbing arm.

  Her mother’s kitchen on Bedford Street, Tony bashing her head into Assunta’s altar to the dead baby when Tina revealed Stella’s secret stash.

  The rain-wet lane on via Fontana, January 1926—the invisible hand clutched around her own as the pigs tipped her over into the icy mud—little Cettina’s wide eyes silently staring.

  The cold tiled floor of her dark Alder Street kitchen as she choked on a chicken bone—Tina, kneeling behind her.

  Tina sobbing on Stella’s arm—Can you ever forgive me? For being jealous?—at the funeral of baby Bob. You don’t really believe any of that old-world bullshit, Stella had said.

  All her life, Stella had believed she was haunted by the ghost of her dead sister. Now, finally, she saw the truth—she was haunted by her living one.

  * * *

  AT FIRST, SHE CAN’T SAY ANYTHING. She wakes up in that hospital room—her second time—and she cannot move, she has to lie there and watch her sister’s sweaty pink crying face hang over her, let her sister dab her with sponges and grip her fingers. It takes a long time—maybe days—before Stella is in charge of herself enough to say, Get out.

  Her children are there, different combinations of them, always Tommy and Artie and Bernie and sometimes Freddy and Guy and Richie, the boys’ wives, her sister-in-law Queenie, they hold her hand and pat her leg. They are so happy to hear her speak that they don’t listen to what she says. Stella says again, Get out.

  Then she has to make them understand her—make them believe.

  Get out.

  She reclaims use of her arm, lifts it to point at Tina. You. Get out.

  The children tell her, You don’t mean that, Mommy. She took care of you the whole time. She slept on the hospital floor. She loves you more than anyone else in the world.

  Get out.

  Tina is agonized; she sobs, she shouts, She doesn’t know what she means! But Stella sees guilt in her sister’s eyes. Tina knows what she did. That is why Tina slept on the hospital floor, sponged Stella’s unconscious body. That is why Tina fed Stella’s children and poured wine for Stella’s husband. Because for sixty-seven years Tina has tried to stifle her jealousy—has tried to hide it under good deeds. But she is poisonous, she is dangerous, and she knows it.
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br />   Get out, Stella says. You know what you did.

  FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE, no one believes Stella, that Tina knows what she did. Her addled brain is wrong, and cruel. But Stella’s conviction has replaced all her other convictions. All her life, Tina has wanted Stella’s life. When they were girls, Stella’s pretty face and cleverness and charisma. When they were young women, Stella’s admirers. Stella’s kind, handsome husband; Stella’s multitude of children. Every selfless thing Tina has ever done for Stella has been a resentful attempt to stuff down her own jealousy.

  To point a finger at a sinner is to have known the sin yourself, Nonna Maria had taught Stella. But the surgery has removed this ingrained life lesson. In the murk of her mind, Stella no longer can see the finger of accusation turning on herself.

  THEY LET HER GO HOME on New Year’s Day, 1989.

  There is a birthday party.

  Look at this woman here. Look at this beautiful woman.

  Everyone is cheering and clapping.

  You know what the doctors said? They said she would never walk or talk again.

  He’s trying not to cry, her son. Like his sentimental father. And there’s Bernadette, crying openly, just like her grandmother would have.

  Stella smiles and raises her hand at them. She sees her fingernails are painted red.

  Well, they were wrong, weren’t they?

  Clapping again. All these roaring people in her living room, all her children, their now grown-up childhood friends who used to eat olive loaf sandwiches in her kitchen.

  Stand up, Ma! Show them how wrong they were!

  That place in the back of her head pulses with that low-grade heat. She grasps Tommy’s hand and stands like he says. They are whooping and clapping, all these tall dark-haired children towering over her, with their white-blond children looking up with their wide light-colored eyes from where they’re playing on the floor. How funny that her own children’s children have nothing left in them of her, just one generation removed.

  But the whooping has turned into the tarantella, and the clapping has broken into a rhythm. DUH-duh DUH-duh DUHN . . .

  Stella waves her arms. She won’t do the whole dance today. She smiles.

  What a woman! It’s the tallest one shouting—Freddy. What a woman you’ve got yourself, Dad! And they change tune, her sons bellowing in Calabrese, which not all of them speak very well. Ai jai jai chi mugliere mi capitai!

  There is Carmelo, crying of course. He kisses Stella very gently on her cheekbone, just below the bandage. What a woman I married, he says.

  SOME THINGS GET BETTER, some things don’t.

  SHE STANDS, SHE WALKS, SHE DANCES.

  Her language comes back to her. Not always the right language.

  She crochets—fast. She can make anything—spreads, hats, scarves. They don’t always look very nice. She combines colors like Christmas Blend with Valentine Pink.

  The grandchildren watch TV with her while she crochets. She loves them. None of them are old enough to remember what she was like before. The Maglieri grandchildren will grow up thinking it is standard to have an unintelligible crocheting grandmother engaged in a blood feud with her sister, and who might at any time stop strangers in the street and hand them Mardi Gras beads or miniature sticks of deodorant she hides in her red purse. The Maglieri youth will be so conditioned by the Accident that even as adults, when they are old enough to be used to the world, they will marvel at their friends’ alternate grandmother experiences.

  AT MASS, STELLA TRIES TO PRAY, but all the words are gone. She tries to think of God and the Virgin, but she can’t concentrate.

  She doesn’t speak of her mother. Maybe Assunta was one of the parts they cut out of her mind with their surgical knives.

  SHE DOESN’T DRINK ANYMORE, EITHER. The doctors say not to let her, but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t want to drink anymore, or maybe she does, but she doesn’t correctly identify what wanting to drink feels like.

  CAN AUNTIE TINA COME OVER for Christmas dinner, at least? Stella’s children beg her.

  They don’t understand. They don’t understand the danger.

  “She’s jealous,” Stella tells them, over and over. She killed my baby, she wants to say, she almost killed me seven times because of the evil in her heart. But when she tries to explain why, she can’t find the words.

  SHE CAN’T REMEMBER THE MAL’OICCH’ unfascination spell, because she never believed in it enough to learn it back then and now she believes and it’s too late. Instead she makes the sign to ward off the invidia when she sees her sister, a fist with index finger and pinky sticking out, two horns to pierce the Evil Eye.

  “Stop that, Ma,” her children say. “That’s rude.”

  These children, who have never had to fight for their lives, who have never struggled for anything, are worried about rudeness.

  THEY START HAVING TWO DIFFERENT Mother’s Day parties, one pink and white cake at 3 Alder Street for Stella, then a second at 5 Alder Street for Tina. They have pasta at the first party, coffee at the second. Tina makes the pasta for the first party, which she isn’t allowed to attend. Stella pretends she doesn’t know about the pasta’s provenance.

  Stella has eleven grandchildren now. Tina has none.

  MARIO AND CAROLINA PERRI COME to visit from Las Vegas, where they moved when Mario retired. They can only visit one of the Fortuna sisters at a time, because of the rules.

  She’s still angry, five years later? Carolina asks. She was Stella’s maid of honor forty-five years ago.

  You can’t take her seriously, Tommy tells her. She’s not right in her head.

  She always was very stubborn, Carolina says, reaching over to pat Stella’s knee.

  Stella smiles and pinches Carolina’s arm so hard, Carolina shrieks and pulls away.

  STELLA’S SON TOMMY TAKES HER to the seven thirty mass every day. He walks her to the altar to take Communion, and she lets the priest put the wafer in her mouth. She doesn’t remember what it felt like when she used to believe it became the body of Christ on her tongue. She has not felt absolved of her sins for many years.

  SHE CROCHETS FAST TO DISTRACT HERSELF from the memories that they didn’t cut away, and buried memories that are lying there like potatoes now. Baby Bob, the hotel in Montreal, Nino.

  She makes so many blankets, she can’t give them all away. Tommy leaves them in the Goodwill bin.

  You gonna make me go broke, Ma, he says. Buying all this yarn. But he takes her to Jo-Ann Fabrics three times a week for more.

  When crocheting fails to distract her, she repeats her stories. She can no longer emote, so to her audience they are only words. Maybe to her they are also only words; maybe the doctors cut away her pain and left only her obsession. We’ll never know.

  “My husband raped me on my honeymoon,” Stella says to a young man and woman eating breakfast together at Franklin Diner. They smile at her. She doesn’t realize she spoke in Calabrese.

  “Shhh, Mommy, that’s not true,” her son Freddy says as he guides her away. “You don’t go around saying things like that to people.”

  IN AUGUST 1996 THE MAGLIERIS throw Auntie Tina and Uncle Rocco a surprise fiftieth-anniversary party. They rent out DiMarco’s banquet hall on Franklin Avenue and lure Tina by telling her it’s a baby shower for Franceschina Carapellucci’s granddaughter Angie. The family will joke for years about how Tina brought six trays of angel wing cookies to her own surprise party. Sweet little Mikey Perri brings an extra suit jacket for Rocco, who arrives thinking he’s only dropping off Tina. Tina and Rocco are so stunned, they both cry.

  Almost eight years have passed since Stella and Tina have been in the same room. Carmelo and his children trick Stella into attending by pretending the party is for her. They guide her up to the high table, where, half a century after the event, the entire bridal party has been reassembled for a photo (except, of course, Fiorella Mulino, who died so young, benadic’). Carmelo sits between Stella and Tina, gesticulating jovi
ally to block his crazy wife’s line of sight.

  Stella realizes the truth, but she lets them all think she’s been duped. She doesn’t want to miss the party. She dances to “Pepino Suricillo” and the Chicken Dance. She claps her hands and waves her arms and chews her chicken parmigiano with the new dentures Tommy got her.

  She is careful not to turn her head in her sister’s direction so she can’t see her or her pervert husband, Rocco. Fifty years have passed, but she can only remember his selfish lies and his wandering eye. Happy Anniversary to them.

  “They will rot together in hell,” she tells her son Richie when he brings her a Diet Coke.

  “Sh, Ma,” Richie says. “Be nice for one day, will you?”

  THEY HAVE A FIFTIETH-ANNIVERSARY PARTY for Stella and Carmelo the next year, but it’s much smaller, just dinner at a restaurant.

  STELLA GETS VERY ANGRY IN THE SPRINGTIME, when she becomes stuck in the memory of baby Bob kicking in her belly that gray spring of 1948 when the world was crushing her and he was her only ally. She channels her anger into physical activity. When Carmelo is out helping at his son Guy’s restaurant, Stella finds a pair of hefty garden shears and uses them to fell Carmelo’s grape trellises, the gooseberry bushes, and the young peach tree. God only knows how she hacked through that trunk, her children will say. Who knew Mommy was that strong.

  Why would she do such a terrible thing? they ask each other, and reply, She’s not right in the head. What can you do.

  LATER, STELLA CUTS DOWN CARMELO’S two beautiful fifteen-foot fig trees. No one’s ever seen figs like that before or since, purtroppo.

  IN THE FALL STELLA GETS ANGRY again when the crisp weather reminds her of Montreal, and she carries the feeling of cold marble against the pit of her stomach. She burns all the photos in the kitchen sink. Carmelo comes home from the bar to a house reeking of carbonized plastic. Smears of black and gray smoke have ruined the apple-patterned kitchen wallpaper, which Carmelo will have replaced.

  STELLA’S SON TOMMY SITS IN FRONT OF HER, a folding chair drawn up to her armchair, his knees touching her knees. He moves his mouth like he’s talking. Stella can’t tell if she’s going deaf or if he’s teasing her.