The Infinite Now

by Mindy Tarquini

  I went after her, implored her to stay, to maybe find a seat, hang on a little longer. I thought the baby was coming then. I thought I’d be pushing everybody aside, telling them to make room, and then I’d . . . what?

  I had no idea. I hadn’t read the booklet and I wasn’t going to read it then. It lay, an accusatory crackle in my pocket, and there it would stay. I tried to tell Benedetta that, but she didn’t listen.

  We stood by the tracks, and watched the trolley cross the boundary without us.

  “Benedetta? What are we doing?”

  She lurched toward the sidewalk, and headed down an alley. “I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t have this baby. Can’t be a mother.”

  I followed after. “Of course you can. I mean you have to. This baby is coming. You said so yourself. You don’t have a choice.” I ran ahead and got in front of her, spurred by a hopeful thought. “Do you?”

  I didn’t know. Maybe the bubble would kick in again. Make it all stop. Send the baby back from wherever it was coming.

  Benedetta made a tight little sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “I don’t know anything, haven’t been anywhere. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  Well neither did I.

  She carried on a while longer, moving deeper into the alley. I pulled on her sleeve, tried to move her toward the street, but she clawed along the building bricks, a mouse caught in a maze.

  My Benedetta was a practical, cheerful young woman. She kept her house neat, and her conscience clean, and knew exactly the right thing to say to everybody. I didn’t know the Benedetta who ignored my pleas, blubbering and flustered and sobbing so much her eyeballs must have been ready to slide out of their sockets. She was a changeling, a substitute, a stopgap sent to suffer for the real Benedetta. The woman who’d crocheted every article a baby could possibly want with love and with kindness could not possibly cower in a doorway, choking and tearful and declaring louder than was wise. “I do not want this baby.”

  I clapped a hand over her mouth. Not quite over her mouth, over her mask which was still over her mouth. “Watch your words. You don’t know who might be listening.”

  I looked up the alley. I looked down. I looked harder. I knew the place. I’d been there before. The side door to the pharmacy. The door from which the guaritrice had let me exit when I’d gone to the pharmacy with Carlo.

  The guaritrice was a midwife.

  She could help.

  All the reasons I shouldn’t battled with all the reasons I should.

  Benedetta let out another whimper. She clutched at the underside of her belly with the dazed expression of someone who’d been given a gift they didn’t much like, then looked up, the distress in her eyes real. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  Anger, blistering and volatile, steamed beneath my skull. The doctor was crazy. How did he expect me to help my friend? I’d done enough nursing with the flu to understand pain, but I didn’t understand what to do about it if there was a baby attached.

  My mouth, always on a short fuse, exploded. “Shut up, Benedetta. Nobody’s going to die. Not today. Stop bawling. You’re making it impossible to think.”

  The sky darkened. The air grew stifling and impossibly hot.

  Benedetta unbuttoned her coat, then removed it, then flapped the collar of her shirtwaist. “I can’t stand it. I need air. Is this because of the bubble?”

  I shouldn’t have told her. The bubble was my burden to bear. It belonged to no other. I unbuttoned my own coat and pounded on the entrance. “My friend is having a baby. Please, you must help.”

  A clump of something, stalks and leaves cascaded to the cobbles. Benedetta scooped it up. “Verbena?”

  From the iron ring over the door. Placed there by the old man. To keep things in. Or keep them out.

  What in the world were we doing there?

  I nudged Benedetta, poking her shoulder. “Get up, Benedetta. We have to go.”

  “Go where?”

  Anywhere. Anywhere at all. Just not there.

  From behind the door came a shuffling, and a growl. Fear tendriled around Benedetta like smoke. “Is that a dog?”

  The shuffling sound from the other side of the door got louder; the growl transformed to a howl. Something skittered in the shadows. A mouse. Or a rat. Burrowing in the trash piles.

  I hauled Benedetta off the cobbles. Put my back to hers. We had to get out of that alley. Had to get back to the street. Had to find a house with occupants. Maybe a telephone.

  Benedetta pointed. “Fiora.” Her voice sounded happy. “We are saved.”

  A patch of brightness broke on the edges of my vision. I heard my name. “Who is that?”

  The patch grew stronger. Every bit of Benedetta relaxed. She leaned against the jamb, her features stopped angling every which way and fell into their normal pleasant proportions. She shaded her eyes, her relief patent in the easy way she draped her fingers over her brow. “It’s Carlo.”

  The noises stopped, the shadows fled. We were good. We were fine. We were going to get Benedetta to the hospital.

  The door behind us, the door which I’d once exited as the side door to the pharmacy, opened. A set of strong hands pulled Benedetta and me through the entrance.

  I saw Carlo advancing. He was right there, his face white-masked like ours. Then the door slammed shut. Leaving Benedetta and I in darkness darker than the darkness that happens when I close my eyes.

  The shuffling returned, scraping and scratchy. Other sounds followed. Metal on metal. The click of a door bolt sliding into place. And the striking of a match.

  A light flared. Benedetta held my hand. She squeezed tight. I blinked and blinked again. A shadow, fuzzy-edged and female-shaped, coalesced before me.

  Tizi.

  Holding an oil lamp.

  Hand on hip, mask gone, her features cold and calculating and not in the least welcoming. “Mamma said you’d come.”

  Twenty-One

  I’d pounded on the guaritrice’s door because Benedetta got off the trolley. She got off the trolley because I made her get on. Because she was in labor and I hadn’t read the doctor’s booklet. Because the guaritrice told me she knew about how to bring children into the world. Because I’d been talking to her about Benedetta. Because Benedetta was worried she was long past her due date. Because I’d used Mamma’s curtain to make a bubble of stagnant time. Because I’d wanted to save the old man’s life. Because I didn’t want to marry a man I didn’t know to avoid an orphanage. Because my parents died.

  Both of them.

  Rapidly, without appeal and without guidance as to what I was supposed to do next.

  Mamma used to tell me every moment is the sum of the moments before. Like an arithmetic problem, except instead of three plus five making eight, the sum of my becauses brought me here, trapped me on the wrong side of the guaritrice’s door from Carlo.

  Because Tizi closed the door on him. Within steps of his crossing the threshold.

  Because whatever the reason Tizi’s mamma said Benedetta and I would come, Carlo wasn’t part of her plans.

  I pounded on the door again. Not to be let in, to be let out.

  Benedetta pounded with me—“Carlo. Carlo!”—for what felt like minutes, hours, days.

  Yes. Days. In the bubble world, all time felt like the same time, and possessed of infinite possibility.

  The guaritrice stopped us, appearing out of the shadows and shoving Tizi to the side, her maskless smile so full of teeth, she looked like—

  “—the Cheshire cat.” Benedetta whispered the words through motionless lips, her gaze fixed on the guaritrice. “Like in Mr. Carroll’s story.”

  Tizi ran her palm over her tummy, expression bemused, then reached a finger and traced along Benedetta’s. “How did it get inside you?”

  The guaritrice pulled Tizi’s hand away. “Don’t. Some things are personal.”

  Tizi’s palm flew to her cheek. Like she’d been slapped. The air got electric, snappy and spiked
. Tizi tucked her chin and raised grumpy eyes to her mother, lips tight and tensed for battle. “Why can’t I know?”

  “You will, my sweet. When the time is right.” The guaritrice held up a vial and shook a drop onto her forefingers, first one, then the other, then rubbed across both our foreheads. Lavender. And cinnamon. The scents enveloped me, raising memories of comfort, of warmth, of safety in a world that had always been certain and would always remain. The electricity subsided, my tension drained away.

  The guaritrice touched my chin. “Everything is fine, little one. It is late. We do not want to wake the house.”

  Yes, yes. It was late. That’s why the sky had grown so dark. People were sleeping. The druggist above the store. Maybe another neighbor on the floor above him. There had been the growling, the shuffling. No doubt his dog already scampered back to him, once it saw Benedetta and I were not a threat.

  The door pounding started again, the sound distant. “Fiora, Benedetta. Open up.”

  Benedetta fumbled at the knob. “We should answer that.”

  Tizi picked up her lamp. “Why? He can’t do anything to help.”

  The guaritrice wrapped an arm around Benedetta’s shoulder. “Besides, we are closed. Whoever it is will come back tomorrow.” She drew Benedetta down the passage. “Tizi, why don’t you get Fiora some tea?”

  My ears rang, my insides flip-flopped. Carlo’s knocking fell off to the dullest of concussions, like wood striking wool and echoing from some disconnected place. Benedetta was gone, walled off from me as the guaritrice had walled off Carlo.

  Call it instinct, memory from my traumatic encounters with the curtain world, but some deep part of me didn’t want to go somewhere from which I couldn’t exit. I unwound my scarf and pulled at the crochet. I bit at the end knot, gave it a pull, then tied the yarn to the doorknob. Tizi watched me, a finger playing along a birthmark in the hollow of her cheek, a mark dark and familiar, a mark much like the old man’s.

  Maybe she liked strawberries. I didn’t know where the idea came from. At the time, I thought the notion sprang from my conversation with my strawberry-loving friend. That could be it. Maybe the guaritrice loved strawberries and touched her face while she was expecting.

  Tizi raised the lamp high. “Let’s go. Mamma has a new blend.” She disappeared down the hall, the lamp glow receding with her.

  I followed after, the way twisty and turny and much too dark, the scarf unraveling as I went. Marking my place, marking my path, marking my way back.

  The passage seemed longer than last time, the bends sharper. Hollows opened at regular intervals, unremembered and mysterious, narrower than the main passage, offering breaths of breeze, and tantalizing smells. Gravy. And sausage. And the almond nougat Mamma made at Christmas. I detoured into one, took three steps, then six, then stumbled, my shoe slipping in something crunchy and crackly and, oddly, a little bit slimy.

  Something scurried over my foot, then scrabbled near my ear. I scrambled to my feet, followed the thread back to the passage. I was good. I was fine. The yarn hadn’t snapped; my ankle hadn’t twisted. I continued, hand to wall, heart fluttering in my throat, slow and cautious. I listened for Tizi’s footfalls, strained for Benedetta’s voice, very sorry I hadn’t thought to count the turns, count my steps, create one solid reference from which I could tick off my progress.

  The pharmacy was a storefront, a shop, like so many other shops on the street. Big enough for business, a few displays, but it seemed I walked miles, the scarf unraveling to the size of a tea towel, then a napkin. I always turned to the right in what my sense of direction told me was a giant spiral. Like the curtain, like the old man’s map, like the guaritrice’s illustration. A spiral connected crossways by the hollows, spokes in a wheel. Narrowing from an arm span, to an arm’s length, until there was no more than a hand span between me and the wall. Drawing me in, leading me to a center.

  Like a web.

  “Help me, Mamma.” My voice sounded whispery and wistful. “I’m right here.”

  The passage stopped its inward collapse, and pushed me through the guaritrice’s familiar beaded curtain. But instead of opening into the guaritrice’s alcove, the beads opened into a wide area, with carpet which looked like soft grass dotted with scarlet poppies. The walls were edged by pillars which resembled giant tree trunks, and the ceiling a sky of deepening purple. Here and there a bright spot peeked out from behind the painted cloud cover, like stars. I wished upon one, then the other, the way Mamma used to, fancying I saw them twinkle.

  Tizi swept in from wherever she’d been and grabbed my hand. “Took you long enough.” She pulled me to a chair at the room’s center, backless and covered in velvet. The chair’s base was mushroom-colored, its top red with spots, and the longer I stared at it the more it looked like a toadstool. Tizi pushed me toward Benedetta, perched along its rim. “She won’t let Mamma do anything without you.”

  Benedetta clutched at her stomach, her white mask hanging loose and useless. Her face went pale, then red, then purple. She lurched toward me, threw her arms around my neck, and for an insane moment I imagined she and I were under a real purple twilight, dancing to a tune beautiful and deep and only for us. I even wrapped my arms around her, happy for the bubble’s elongation, wanting to linger. For a minute, maybe two, maybe forever.

  Benedetta’s breath blew hot and accusing on my ear. “Help me.”

  The imagining broke. I wasn’t in a woodland glade. I was in the darkest recesses of the pharmacy, and Benedetta was caught in a full-blown contraction. I looked over her shoulder at the guaritrice, her smile grown to impossible proportions. “Help her.”

  The guaritrice went to a cupboard, opened it, and selected a vial from a selection of many. She pulled the cork and handed it to Benedetta. “Drink this.”

  I grabbed it away. “Wait. What is it?”

  The guaritrice smiled all the harder, her form seeming to fade around it. Like the cat. “It is only a little medicine. Something harmless that will take away your friend’s contraction. Dull the pain.”

  “Keep the baby from coming?” Benedetta’s words exited in stutters and strains. “Fiora. Shut up. Give me the medicine.”

  “But—”

  Benedetta pitched toward me. She swiped the vial from my grip, put it to her lips, gulped the contents, then crumpled to the poppy-covered carpet, curled like a roly-poly.

  I turned on the guaritrice, my fear spitting fire. “What did you do to her?”

  “Your friend is having a baby. Having a baby hurts. Did your mother never tell you? It is prolonged and tedious with pain that can make you wish you’d never been born.” She recited the words with the calmness of reading a list from a dictionary, her face neutral and her demeanor unconcerned.

  Benedetta clawed her fingernails into the carpet pile, her breaths coming in bursts. I raced to the guaritrice’s cabinet, rattled my way through the vials and bags. “You must be able to dull the pain. Maybe you didn’t give her enough.”

  “I gave her plenty. It doesn’t always work. She is very emotional.”

  “Then give her something else.”

  The guaritrice clapped her hands. Tizi ducked behind the beads.

  The beads I remembered from my previous visits. I squinted. The counter was there also. And the map. Hidden beneath the impression of forests and flowers.

  Benedetta pulled herself across the floor, her sounds mewling and mousy. I crawled along with her. “Benedetta. Listen to me. You’re all right. You’re fine. The guaritrice can help. But you have to help, too. You have to relax.” I thought of Mamma, what she used to say to me when I got to be too much. “Stop fighting yourself.”

  Another contraction took hold. The guaritrice held Benedetta’s hand and rubbed at her forehead. “Breathe through it. It will ease. You were going to tell me the baby’s name.”

  “Nicco. For my husband.”

  “But what if it’s a girl?”

  Benedetta traced a curlicue along the top of her bulg
e. “How could it be a girl? Nicco wants a boy.”

  “Men always want a boy. And boys can be . . . useful.” The guaritrice let go of Benedetta and picked the vial off the carpet. She returned it to the cupboard. “Without them, there’d be no babies at all.”

  “No, it has to be a boy. For Nicco. He’s in the war.”

  “Ah. You are alone then.”

  “No. There’s an aunt. In Coatesville.”

  “An aunt. How nice.” The guaritrice licked at her lips. “Especially after the loss of the Lattanzis. Such a good soul, the signora, so kind. Always thinking of others. But now she’s gone and your husband is in the war. Men, they are never there when we need them, are they? Always off to fight. Women are so much smarter. We find better ways to get what we want.”

  “Nicco gets what he wants. He signed up and left. Expected there to be a son here when he returned. A wife and a son. Waiting.” The last word slipped past Benedetta’s lips with a fistful of complaint bundled under its coat.

  The guaritrice turned, hands clasped under her chin, her face taking on the animation of an adolescent. “And you thought it would be funny to have a girl instead. How very clever, my pretty.”

  Benedetta screeched. I grabbed at the guaritrice, at her sleeve, pulled it like a child begging for a treat. “You said you could help. She’s getting worse.”

  The guaritrice’s face went sharp, like chipped flint. She shook me off. “You didn’t bring the curtain. Always you want something from me, never do you bring what I need. I am powerful. I want to help. But without the proper tools, I cannot properly do my work.”

  Everything constrained within me let loose. “What tools? What work? What do you do here? You make tea. Expensive, expensive tea. That you sell to people with choking children, feverish wives or husbands. How would my mother’s curtain help you with that? Help you help Benedetta?”

  “You are a stupid, silly girl. Your friend is in trouble. Her pains won’t stop, but the baby is not progressing. It is stuck, like everything else in your stinking stagnant bubble. I can save your friend. I can save the baby, but I must have the curtain.”