The Infinite Now

by Mindy Tarquini

  Benedetta ripped off her mask and plucked at my sleeve. “Don’t you leave me, Fiora Vicente. Do you hear? Don’t you dare leave. Please.”

  I looked in her eyes, dark and deep and rich as hot chocolate, without worry she’d think I was casting her a curse. For the first and only time in my life.

  Please stay. Please don’t leave. Please help me because I’m scared. I’m panicked. I’m frightened.

  And more than that.

  Please make sure my baby is all right. Care for him. Feed him. Give him a warm place to sleep. Keep him safe for the day you can hand him to his father.

  “Benedetta,” I whispered. “You will be all right.”

  The nun looked up from between Benedetta’s knees. “Ready, young lady? Deep breath and push.”

  I had no expectation of this last part. No more than I’d had for the first part. Or for anything that happened in the middle. Benedetta took the biggest breath I’d ever imagined, a breath like I’d wished I could take in the bubble, a breath like what must have happened at the creation of the world, a breath like what would happen at the world’s ending. A breath like no other. Filled with faith, filled with hope, filled with the promise of tomorrow.

  Then she hollered.

  Long and loud. Really, really loud. I’m pretty sure the window-panes rattled.

  Then her holler cut off, ending in a great whoosh, her face red, body trembling. I heard a cry, wet and lusty and oh so indignant coming from a purplish lump smeared with what looked to me like fruit mostarda.

  The nurses wrapped the lump quickly, and I grabbed my friend’s shoulder. “You have a girl, Benedetta.” My excitement edged out every other emotion. Every emotion I’d ever had. Every emotion I thought I would ever have. “A girl. A sloppy, sticky, full of mozzarella girl.”

  This was life, how it should be, squalling and flailing, then wrapped into a bundle and placed in my arms. Well, Benedetta’s arms.

  The sister smiled, or so I presumed from the way her cheeks lifted under her mask. “Say hello to her, Mamma.”

  Benedetta leaned over the baby, touching each tiny finger. “Une, due, tres . . .”

  “We already counted,” the sister told her. “She’s perfect. Now relax. We need a few more minutes.”

  The nurses could have removed Benedetta’s tonsils at that moment, and I doubt she would have noticed.

  Not so for me. Every image, every movement, every uncomfortable and embarrassing aspect of the experience was to be forever seared in my soul. Again the hands and the instruments went diving under the bedsheet. “What are you doing?”

  “The afterbirth, sweetheart. It comes after the baby. Then we must clean your friend up. She will stay here a few days. Then you or her husband must come to collect her.”

  “Oh that’s not her husband waiting out there. Her husband is away in the war.”

  “You then. And him, if you like.” The nurses brought out a giant needle and thread, and I all but lost my knees.

  “I’ll be back,” I mumbled and was out the door and down the hall past the room marked FAMILIES, seeking out the water fountain. I splashed handful after handful onto my face, unconcerned most of it ended up on my shoes. Carlo found me there. He soaked a handkerchief and laid it on the back of my neck. I slumped against the wall and imagined how the next weeks and months would go.

  Benedetta holding the baby while I made soup in her kitchen. Benedetta, Carlo, and I walking the baby to the park. Perhaps Carlo would hold the baby on his shoulders the way he’d held Etti the other day.

  Hmmm. The baby would have to be older for that. I waved Carlo away, to let him know I was fine. Then told him about the baby. “She’s beautiful. Perfect. She has a lot of hair.”

  “Because your friend was so overdue.” One of the sisters stood beside me. “You did a fine job in there. You’d make a fine nurse.”

  I waited for the trailing remark, the sideways glance that really said, “I’m saying that to be polite. You are the daughter of the fortune-teller. No nursing school would ever consider letting you attend.”

  But the comment didn’t come. The sister stood before me, her eyes as open and honest as Carlo’s.

  “I almost fell over,” I told her.

  “But you didn’t. You were brave. Very, very brave. You got her to the hospital all the way from your house. You kept her as safe and comfortable as you could. Childbirth can be dangerous, but because of you, this child has been brought safely into this world. Be proud of that and proud of yourself.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. Just exhausted. She’s asking for you. Come back when your stomach’s settled.” She turned. “And comb your hair. It’s a mess.”

  I watched her go, my heart light, then followed on angel wings. Benedetta was already cleaned up, on fresh sheets, and nursing. She put out her hand. “Come, see our baby.”

  A new set of imaginings replaced the others: How happy Nicco would be when he came home from the war. How proud Benedetta would be to place their daughter in his arms. How she would put an arm about my shoulders. “And this is my best friend, Fiora Vicente. She helped bring our baby into this world, so I want her to be godmother.”

  And I would become a permanent part of the scene because that would make Benedetta and me family. I took her hand, felt the blush creep up my neck.

  The bubble must go. Life must be allowed to continue. The guaritrice was wrong. Benedetta was fine. The baby was fine. They were outside the bubble and they were fine. I hadn’t killed her, hadn’t hurt her baby. The guaritrice was wrong, and I was never going to listen to the guaritrice again.

  I leaned over, took Benedetta’s face between my palms, drew her toward me.

  And kissed her.

  Twenty-Three

  I kissed her. Kissed Benedetta. Not the kiss I’d give a friend, or my mother, or my father, or my brother. Not prim and sweet and safely on the cheek.

  Oh no.

  I kissed Benedetta like I didn’t know a girl could kiss another girl. Like I didn’t know I could kiss anyone. Full on the lips, mouth open, aware of her breath, her scent, how her hair tickled my forehead, how her face fit my hands. I kissed Benedetta and little pricklies rose—on the back of my neck, in the back of my throat, directly below my sternum. I kissed Benedetta and came away hungry, came away searching, came away longing for more. I kissed Benedetta with all my heart, with all my soul, with sudden knowledge a kiss like that happened only once because it happened first, so could never happen again. Not like that. Not with her. Accidentally intimate. Unintentionally intriguing. And not at all chaste.

  It was the rush, the excitement, the sense that, in helping Benedetta bring her baby into the world, in all that horrible time since my parents died, I’d finally done something right.

  And it was exactly the wrong thing to do.

  Benedetta didn’t like it. She jerked her head back, her expression befuddled. She wiped her hand across her mouth. “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t know, hadn’t meant anything bad. She was so beautiful, so triumphant, her baby in her arms. Our baby she’d called her. Like we were . . .

  together. One. My imaginings of the last few minutes and hours. My imaginings in the days and weeks of our friendship. Coffee and cookies and picnics at the seashore. She and I alone. She and I with the baby. My brothers come home. All of us together, around a table. Family.

  Crumbled.

  “I . . . I just wanted to wish you congratulations.”

  She kept her gaze on mine, the accusation clear, but I wasn’t certain of what I was being accused. Exactly what I’d done. My action made no sense to me. I had no stitch with which it could be circumscribed, no piece of cloth to which it could be attached. I was free-floating, my act raw between us, flapping in an ill wind.

  “May I also congratulate the new mother?” Carlo peeked in. Smiling, but somber. The light in his eye as focused as the day the Lattanzis died. “Brava! Benedetta. Your baby is beautiful. God bl
ess her.” He put out a hand. “Fiora. Come. We should go.”

  “Go?” The suggestion was welcome, a fix to my predicament. Yet, I bristled. “Why should we go?”

  “We have work to do. The families in the neighborhood still need us. And now we’re one musketeer shy. Let our friend rest. We will return and collect her in a few days.”

  Yes. We’d leave. Return in a few days. Give things time to settle. Let everything go back to as it had been. I followed Carlo out the door.

  Had he seen me kiss Benedetta?

  I didn’t ask, and Carlo didn’t say. He behaved as he always did on the way home, didn’t seem to notice when we were sucked back into the bubble. His step barely slowed, his mood barely faltered.

  I slept that night in fits and starts, the air too dense, bothered by images of Benedetta. In her bathrobe on her landing. Twisting my braid into a bun. The feel of her hand in mine, her touch on my elbow, the way bits of her hair were always escaping her pins. My bedcovers were too close, my mood too heavy, my attitude sour, and my way forward not clear. I woke cranky and confused and in no mood to deal with the old man.

  I didn’t have to. He’d left me a note: “Downstairs with the boys.”

  Good. I packed up my rags and soaps, hoped Carlo had charmed something out of the grocer and left, my gaze lingering longingly on Benedetta’s door. She’d be home soon enough. And so busy with the baby, she wouldn’t have time to think about what had happened at the school turned infirmary. We’d start fresh.

  I continued to street level and tiptoed past the Lattanzis’, past the sound of the boys playing, the old man speaking over them, his voice sonorous and steady.

  It was really too bad he’d lost his children.

  I let myself out the street door.

  The sheet was sopping and still soapy. I fed it through the wringer, two rollers attached to a tub we fed laundry through to get out the worst of the moisture. We’d crank the handle, the rollers compressed, and the water squeezed into the tub. Like a pasta maker, but for fabric.

  Carlo pulled the sheet out the other side. I should have rinsed it better, put a little more time in on the stains, but Carlo and I were only at our third house on the street and already my knees ached, my fingers were pruned, and the memory of my incomprehensible behavior with Benedetta nibbled at me like a goat.

  Carlo shook out the sheet. “So you look at the upside-down projection and everything you see is what will happen in five minutes?”

  “Yes.” I took the sheet from him and put it through the wringer again.

  Carlo again pulled it out the other side. “And that’s how you knew to get Grazia . . .” he glanced to the little girl, silent at the table, her hair washed and braided, her dress clean and ironed, her eyes watchful, a tiny figure in a kitchen long unoccupied by either of her parents. Her doll, likewise washed and braided, sat silent on the seat beside her. Carlo lowered his voice. “That’s how you knew she was in danger, knew to get her out of the way of the horse’s hooves.”

  “And how I knew the Children’s Bureau was coming. Benedetta saw them first. Saw them crossing the market and knew we had five minutes until they arrived.” I left him to hang the sheet and went to stir the soup. I picked up Grazia’s bowl. “I’ll get you more.”

  After so many hours outside, in the regular world, the bubble’s warm compactness had settled in my chest. It stuffed my nose, fuzzed my thinking, and caught in my every crevice and pore. I pushed a streak of hair off my forehead, ladled up the soup, and placed it in front of Grazia. Then I placed another bowl before her brother. Then I went to check on her parents, coughing and hacking and too weak to eat.

  I made them drink a little water, laid cool compresses across their foreheads, and returned to the kitchen.

  The bulb burned dimly in the bubble’s ever-present gloom. Carlo made shadow animals with his fingers for the children. They laughed. I moved the soup pot off the burners and onto the table. I lifted Grazia’s chin, made sure she was paying attention. “Eat the soup cold the next time you’re hungry. I’ll stop by tomorrow to check on you. If you need something that can’t wait, come knock on my door. You know where. The tailor’s shop. Ring the top bell. The top bell for the top apartment. All right?”

  She nodded. Carlo and I let ourselves out.

  We went to the next house. Washed, and mopped, cooked and laundered. Weighted by my responsibility and sweating in the artificial summer.

  Carlo gathered the signore’s and signora’s basins, holding them high to avoid the stench and zigzagging through the children to get to the bathroom. He returned, expression thoughtful. “But anybody can see the projection, correct? You said Benedetta could, and the don. And myself, if I went up to your attic and looked.”

  His suggestion, while holding the emptied basins, felt too familiar. As did his every glance, his every touch, his every probing remark. When he looked too long at me, I blushed. When he passed too close, I trembled. When he made a suggestion, I wanted to argue. When he agreed with me, I asked what was wrong. I was sorry I’d tried to explain about the curtain. Sorry I hadn’t let him think I had magical powers. I wished I had enough talent to read his mind, enough understanding to read his emotions, enough confidence to convince myself the answer to my single, overwhelming question didn’t matter—had he seen me kiss Benedetta?

  I went back to washing dishes. “If what you’re asking is whether you have to be able to tell fortunes to tell what will happen in the market five minutes from now, the answer is no. You don’t have to be anybody special or do anything special to see five minutes into the future. But people don’t have to know that. And so long as nobody is interested in knowing what will happen six minutes or further into the future, I can make enough money to go to ten typewriting schools.”

  “I didn’t say anything about typewriting school.”

  “I didn’t say you did.” I threw my scrub brush into the bucket. “Grazia’s parents will die. Just like the Lattanzis. The Children’s Bureau will come, and there isn’t a thing I can do. Even if I see them coming.”

  “You don’t know that. Not for sure. And there may be a relative.”

  “You mean an aunt. In Coatesville.” I rung out a rag and went to work on the counter. Carlo brought the basins back to the bedroom. I sliced bread and spooned beans and sat the kids at the table. We ate with them. “We could get married. Adopt Grazia. And her brother.”

  Carlo dropped his fork. The children looked up from their bowls, eyes round.

  I kept going. “Benedetta is taking Fipo and Etti, and she’s by herself. That’s all the Children’s Bureau cares about. If you’re married. If you have a place to live.”

  Carlo picked up his fork and put it into the sink. He turned on the tap and ran the suds. He looked to the children. “Help me get the meal cleared, little ones, and I’ll tell you all a story before I leave.”

  We had time to see to a fifth house and a sixth. And a seventh. We went to an eighth, then called it a day. We headed back across the market. “Listen to me, Fiora. Children are orphaned all the time. We cannot adopt them all. We could get married and the Children’s Bureau may not let us have Grazia and her brother, anyway. Then what do you do? Married to somebody you don’t love.”

  I stopped in front of the fishmonger’s. “I like you fine.”

  “Like is not the same as love.”

  “You love me. That’s enough.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “You’re always around. Always running into me. You must have liked me at first, or you wouldn’t keep coming back. Besides.” I crossed my arms. “Don Sebastiano suggested it.”

  “Then of course we should marry and make each other miserable for the rest of our lives. And why are you going on and on? You don’t even like children.”

  I’d been cooking and mending and cleaning up messes I didn’t want to think what they were for weeks. Children were fine, when they belonged to somebody else. And didn’t get in my way. But I was
n’t about to admit that to Carlo. “What do you mean I don’t like children?”

  He walked off. I chased after. Past the barbershop, the baker’s, and the lady who crocheted the pretty lace collars. I don’t know why. I think now I was trying to prove something to myself, something I wasn’t even sure I needed to prove. “That’s it? Please. I feel responsible for her parents. For them being sick.”

  He pulled up short. “How could you be responsible? They caught a disease. They might die. That has nothing to do with you.”

  One thing to explain about seeing five minutes into the future, another to admit to trapping everybody inside a bubble of time. “Can’t you at least think about it?”

  “There’s nothing to think about. You don’t love me. You don’t even like me much. Except as a friend. Somebody who can help you with your work. Because you feel responsible for what’s happened, because of what happened with your mother. But you don’t need to feel ashamed if you don’t feel for me like a woman might feel for a man. That’s how it is with some people. They are not like everybody else. That doesn’t make them bad. It just makes them different.”

  Different. Because of my mother. There wasn’t anything I could do about that. Surely he knew, surely Don Sebastiano had explained. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you?” He lifted my chin, as I’d done earlier with Grazia, as Don Sebastiano had done on the first day we met. And let me look deep into his eyes. “Do you really not? It is best to be honest. Even when the truth is difficult. You don’t love me, Fiora Vicente. You don’t love any man. You love Benedetta.”

  Carlo was angry, vindictive, making up stories because I didn’t fall at his feet when we met on Parade Day, didn’t stay to chat when I saw him outside the leather shop, wasn’t overwhelmed with appreciation when the don presented him to me as a solution to my need for citizenship, for security. No wonder Benedetta had acted so strangely. Maybe my kiss got a little carried away, but Benedetta might not have cared if Carlo hadn’t been there. Somber. And silent. And watching.