The Infinite Now

by Mindy Tarquini

  Temper took hold of my tongue. “The tailor and his wife will die without the guaritrice’s tea. Their lips are blue. But for my bubble, their skin would follow. Just like my parents. You don’t know how it is downstairs. You don’t care. You send me, day after day. Tell me to cook and clean and scrub, but you never come to see for yourself. Never ask how you can help. You sit up here and repair luggage handles, change out the worn sections of belts, replace shoe soles. You tell me what to do. You tell me what I can’t do. But you do not tell me how to bear it.”

  The old man shoved the bag which had contained the tea into the burner. He opened the window to let out the smoke, his movements precise, and pronounced, and overflowing with conviction. “Whatever that curtain shows you, up there in the dark, you are not the Almighty, Fiora Vicente. You cannot make such statements.”

  All that curtain showed me was the world five minutes into the future. Whatever happened, for whatever reason, if I were going to see it, it had to happen on the street in front of the stoop, and I’d have five minutes to change it. “I don’t need to peer into the dark to know the Lattanzis will die. I have two good eyes.”

  “And what of your heart? Can you make no room in your certainty for miracles?”

  “Miracles are for the faithful. The faithful have no room for me. You heard the doctor. This sickness overwhelms. There’s no time to fight it. There has to be time enough for things and all I’m doing is giving everybody time. Time to build—what does he call it?—resistance.”

  “You haven’t given us time. You’ve delayed what must be. And while we exist, in this time, in this place, none of us are living.”

  “I’m trying to fix it. Trying to figure out how to collapse the bubble. Without killing everything I’m trying to save.”

  “You can’t figure out anything until you are willing to see beyond your own small needs. I did not ask you to do this for me. If I go, you will not be alone.”

  “So long as I marry Carlo.” Became dependent on him as I was on the old man.

  “Would that be such a terrible thing? Here, take this.” He threw something at me.

  I picked it out of my hair. “What should I do with a shoelace?”

  “Tie it around your finger. To remind yourself. You gave me your trust. Now you take it back. Because of that, we are all prisoners.”

  Downstairs, on our stoop, I took off my scarf. I hadn’t worn it because I needed it; I’d worn it for convention, because the calendar in the old man’s apartment, the one advertising castor oil, showed a date in the middle of October. And Carlo still had my coat.

  Filth covered the cobbles, uncollected for days. Stalls were closed. Signs tacked to several stated: NOT OPENING TODAY. NOTHING TO SELL. Carts and horses, trolleys and wagons, the lifeblood of the market, moving people and goods where they needed to be, were scarce, the market quiet, its pulse muted.

  Somebody tugged at my skirt.

  “You’re too old to suck your thumb, Etti.”

  He wiped it on his jacket, then picked up his ball, which had rolled into the corner, and bounced it. “I don’t want to stay inside. Can I come with you?”

  I closed the door behind us. “I’m going to the grocer’s. That’s one hundred and seven steps. You do the counting.”

  “I can only count to eleven.”

  “Count to eleven ten times. Use your ball to keep your rhythm.” I put out my hand. “Ready?”

  We did fine for the first two rounds, then Etti’s ball bounced hay-wire, moving in a slow, exaggerated arc. Etti’s fingers grazed mine, then slid away. He darted after the ball, his exuberance too much for the bubble. I went after him, hoisting myself across cobbles which seemed to clutch at my shoes. A cart trundled onto the street, and in that same instinctive way I’d known on Parade Day I had time to grab the girl before she crossed her cart’s path, I knew I wouldn’t be there in time to catch Etti.

  The seconds slowed to a near standstill. My feet stuttered in my shock. Waiting, waiting, waiting, for that moment to move to the next, when the wheel would turn, and crush Etti.

  The moment did not come. A hand shot out from nowhere, a body crossed our paths, diverting Etti, and catching the ball.

  Carlo.

  I crumpled to the cobbles, caught between a sob and a scream, my relief painful. I think I bruised a knee, maybe an elbow. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Etti was alive. The cart had moved on. And if time never moved another moment beyond that one, if I were forced to spend eternity in that exact place, experiencing that exact emotion, I’d be happy.

  Carlo had other ideas. He grabbed my hand and lifted me up. He handed Etti the ball. “Is it all right if I borrow Signorina Vicente?”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “Give her back her coat for one. Fresh smelling and clean.”

  I took it from him. It smelled of lilacs. “How did you do that?”

  “Magic.” He put a finger to his lips. “But don’t tell anybody.”

  Etti smiled. He held up a finger. “That’s one thing. What else did you want from Signorina Vicente?”

  “A walk.” He offered me his arm. “If she’ll let me.”

  The relief had faded. My elbow ached, my knee throbbed, and my scalp felt itchy under my headscarf. “Tomorrow might be better.”

  “And so might today.”

  Inside there were dishes to do, laundry to soak, and floors to mop. Inside was Benedetta, rolling out pasta, maybe as bored as Etti, as eager to walk as Carlo. My life had choices; there were still decisions I could make. “I’m not going to marry you, Carlo.”

  “Good. Excellent. I’m not going to marry you, either. Not today. Not even tomorrow. Now that we have that clear, may I please show you something?”

  “What?”

  He put out a hand. “All the world has to offer.”

  His tone, light and encouraging, had the effect of a breeze at my back. “Go see Signora Bruni, Etti. She may have a fresh loaf for you.” I took Carlo’s hand, then took a step. Into a world of light and color.

  He walked me one block, then two, heading east. We went one more block, stopping in front of a storefront dressed with a banner far too blue for the insipid colors inside the bubble.

  Carlo swept an arm. “This is where I live.”

  “In a shoe repair shop?”

  “No, over it. I work in the shop. The owner is often not here. His children have settled in Wilmington, and he wants to join them. When he does, this will be mine.”

  “You’re taking over his lease.”

  “No, Fiora Vicente. I am purchasing the whole building. Top to bottom.”

  At the time, I had no idea of his age, but guessed he couldn’t have been more than twenty. “I thought you worked for Signor Minora.”

  His eyes moved down and to the right, like he’d forgotten an item on a list, then he bounced his finger off his forehead. “Oh. You mean that day outside his shop. I was only picking up supplies for Don Sebastiano. He keeps me moving.”

  Light dawned. “You’re the one who keeps delivering all the mending.”

  He nodded. “Don Sebastiano has negotiated very good rates for your work.”

  Rates. It hadn’t occurred to me I’d actually get paid, despite the terms dictated by the old man. I’d presumed it his way to keep me busy and part of my duty to the signora, for plucking me out of the rain and planting me in his apartment. “The work is not coming through the Lattanzis?”

  “How? The Lattanzis are so ill. The current work comes from seam-stresses in the neighborhood. With so many sick, you would think the work would diminish, but the war department has taken over all normal industry. Work for everyday people is piling up.”

  My face went hot. “Those seamstresses would not hire me.”

  “People can be shortsighted. Do not take it to heart. You have great ambition, I see that.” He slid his cap off his head again. Held it in both his hands. “Well, I have great ambition, also.”

  Typewriting scho
ol was an idea, a dream, a place my mind went when Mamma complained my gravy was too thin, or my pasta too thick, a place removed from tradition, from expectation, from Life’s. Awful. Dailyness. “I always wanted to escape who I am, become something better. And now, everything I do is the same.”

  He took my hand, closed his fingers over mine, and the dread which followed me like an unwelcome relative disintegrated. “Right now, the world seems dark, but the darkness will end. I brought you here so you would see I have a future.”

  My gaze met his, that beautiful, dark-rimmed, light blue pool of possibilities. “But only if you marry me.”

  I backed away, then turned and sprinted toward the market, or what could pass for sprinting along a street which grabbed at the soles of my shoes harder than cleats.

  Carlo sprinted beside. “Signorina, I am not trying to marry you. I’m only trying to get to know you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Don Sebastiano never makes a suggestion without reason.”

  “Do you do everything Don Sebastiano suggests?”

  “Only those things which make sense.”

  “Only because you don’t want to wait for your inheritance.”

  He snagged me by the elbow, forced me to stop. “Is that what Don Sebastiano told you?”

  “Yes. No. Not exactly.” Not at all.

  “Then may I know exactly what he did say?”

  Maybe the time I stood there was minutes in the outside world. Maybe it was hours. To me, it was an eternity, leading to a place I couldn’t avoid, and which hadn’t, until that point, served me well.

  The truth. “He didn’t say anything.”

  To say Carlo looked confused would be correct, but not accurate. The undersides of his eyes moved up, the insides of his eyebrows inched inward. His lips pressed together in a twist, and he peered at me, ear cocked in my direction, like he wasn’t quite sure what I’d just said was what he’d heard, and was running through all the other possibilities for those syllables in case he maybe should have heard something else. “Don Sebastiano didn’t say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, he said nothing? Or yes, he said something?”

  “Yes, he said nothing. He said nothing at all. The only time he talks about you is to tell me you’ve delivered something, or you’re coming to deliver something, or you forgot to deliver something. I thought you were one of the neighbor kids.”

  Carlo scratched his head. “Then why do you think I’m trying to marry you?”

  “Because everybody says you are.” I started to feel kind of stupid. “You mean you’re not?”

  “I don’t even know you. Do you want to marry a man you don’t even know?”

  I didn’t. I didn’t even want to marry a man I did know. I didn’t want to marry a man. They were big, and coarse, and scratched at body parts I didn’t want to think about.

  He let go of my elbow. “The don’s inheritance will be very nice, but my negotiation with the building is the work of years. Every penny, every day, ever since I can remember.”

  Oh.

  He slid his cap back onto his head. “This was fun. Very enlightening. May we walk again tomorrow?”

  Fifteen

  Mamma used to tell me the dog barks, but the caravan moves on. Wise words for normal times. But in the bubble world my caravan was parked, its wheels dismantled, its axles broken. Day in, day out, my dog barked, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, about any food bits left on the dishes, how poorly I’d scoured the pots, the stains I couldn’t get out of the laundry. Two days after my walk with Carlo, my dog did not like the soup. “A light hand with the garlic invites colds. Ask the don, he will tell you I’m correct.”

  Whether to go into business. Who should marry whom. Soup. The don sure had a lot to say about everything. “I think we are past that worry, Signora Lattanzi.”

  Her hands were shaky, her voice shrill. “These are things you need to know, or people will think you do not care.”

  We sat at the table, during a rare time when she felt able. I took the bowl from her. “Not care about what?”

  “Your house, your home. Your life will be easier if you do not call attention to yourself. Carlo works so hard. He deserves a clean tablecloth at dinner.”

  She wasn’t talking about laundry. “Is this what you always wanted, signora? The life you planned when you were young?”

  “It’s a good life. I’m content.”

  “But are you happy?”

  “Life requires care and constant attention. Happiness is not so important when there are other considerations.”

  Care and constant attention. The nuns at my school would have loved Signora Lattanzi. “What considerations?”

  “Helping your husband, raising good children, being a friend, a neighbor, doing what is right even if it feels wrong.”

  “Like taking in a stray you think will curse you?”

  The question sloshed between us, growing tepid in the bubble’s overly humid warmth.

  The signora smacked her spoon to the table. “You resent taking help from somebody you think doesn’t like you, Fiora Vicente. We are the same. I have no choice who helps me now because without help, my sheets do not get washed, my floors do not get swept, and my children do not eat.”

  My face went hot, intolerable in the bubble. My fists clenched. I opened one window, then another, smashing the sashes to their lintels and speaking much too loud. “You don’t want me here. I don’t want to be here. Maybe soon we will both get our wish.”

  “I don’t want you here because of what you’ve done.”

  Two ladies passed by the window. Two ladies in white masks with market baskets in their hands. I didn’t care. “What have I done, signora, to earn your permanent and unwavering distrust? I bathe you and feed you, clean up your messes and care for your children. Yet you treat me like a shameful cousin.”

  “I brought you to live here. Under my roof. And now, my children will be orphaned.”

  I stormed out of the kitchen. Fipo followed. “Are you coming back?”

  I clutched him by the collar, much as I’d clutched the little boy in the street, the one I’d caught fighting for a sausage. “I’m coming back. Soon as your mamma cools down. I’m tired. So is she. Keep an eye on your brother. I left a bowl for your father. Make sure he eats. And stay away from the stove.”

  I released him, thinking I’d go upstairs, wash my face, have a good cry. Benedetta met me on the landing. “The boys should come to live with me. There’s room for their cot. Carlo will carry it up if we ask.”

  Oh how I wanted to take her suggestion, to sweep in and let Fipo and Etti know they wouldn’t have to time their days around rushes to the basin for their parents, or in bringing fresh hankies. “Awful as it sounds, they need to be there. Either that, or I have to move in with the Lattanzis.” I looked upstairs. “And I could, but the old man is not as strong as he was.”

  “The world is so topsy-turvy. Children caring for parents. The don took you in. Now he needs your help. I’ll bring the children some dinner. Don’t worry. I’ll leave it outside their door. You get some rest.”

  Rest. Yes. That’s what I needed. Great buckets of it under clean blankets and fresh breezes. And a cup of tea. With plenty of sugar. I thought of the deadline for typewriting school, which, despite the lethargy of the bubble time, approached in giant steps. “Maybe I’ll do a little more on the pile of mending.”

  To think that mending, which had once seemed more onerous than death, should provide relief from my worries stopped me on the tread. The same thought must have occurred to Benedetta because she smiled with me. Then we laughed, our hands clutched to the railing, doubled over and loud enough to chase all the heaviness to the corners.

  A screech, a thud, and a scream halted us both. “Poppa.”

  I rushed down the stairs, plunging against air that thickened with my resistance.

  “Poppa, Popp
a, Poppa.”

  I turned the handle on the Lattanzis’ door, but it felt nailed into place. I pounded. “Fipo. Etti. Open up.”

  Was Benedetta behind me? She must have been, but in those long, torturous seconds, I felt alone, a girl pounding on her apartment door because she forgot the key. Because she’d gone to the roof to look at the stars. Because she was tired of cleaning piss, and puke. Because she wanted it all to be over.

  Benedetta pushed me aside. She opened the door. Etti stood in the kitchen, thumb in mouth, blanket clutched in his hand. Benedetta hurried to him, held him tight to her skirt. She waved me toward the bedroom. “Etti, come with me, I’m baking cookies.”

  She swept him away and out the door, seeming to suck all possibility of hope after. I approached the bedroom, hand to mouth, ears ringing, near screeching myself, terrified of what I might find.

  And came upon the strong, strong aroma of onions.

  The signora sat up in her bed, Fipo curled beside her. She stroked his hair. “There now, it’s only soup. Go with the signorina. I think I heard Signora Bruni say something about cookies.”

  The signore knelt on the floor on the other side of the mattress, mopping at the floor. “My apologies. It slipped from my hand.”

  Fipo took the towel from him. “Signorina Vicente is here, now, Poppa. She’ll clean it. Go back to bed.”

  The next hours were spent scrubbing and washing and imagining what might have happened had Fipo’s father dropped the soup on Fipo instead, if Fipo had brought the soup down on himself when he climbed to the stove. I’d turned off the burner, but left the pot bubbling, trusting an admonishment to be enough.

  I went upstairs, pausing outside Benedetta’s apartment. Happy voices sounded from the other side, Fipo’s followed by Etti’s.

  Pettiness smacked me on the nose, jealous at my inability to elicit such a response. She was so kind, so beautiful, so able. And so past her time. The baby needed to be born, but so long as the bubble persisted, it wouldn’t.