The Infinite Now

by Mindy Tarquini

  The guaritrice whimpered.

  I stopped. The old man knew where the curtain was. He knew what the curtain was doing. He knew the exchange had been made. And he knew I had a choice.

  I handed the baby to Tizi. Benedetta’s baby. “Hold her. Keep her safe.”

  “No. Don’t help her. Let the curtain destroy her.” Tizi transfixed on the guaritrice, her expression impassive. “Don’t you understand? She’s not human.”

  I didn’t. Still, even then. All I saw was a struggling bundle of misery, alive, and suffering.

  I scuttled in close, held my nose, held my breath, got hold of the curtain’s edge, and yanked.

  The guaritrice was gone, replaced by a spindly creature with a bulbous center. Horrible, misshapen, making grunty little huffing noises. It glared up at me, then skittered into the shadows, moving like a spider. Slime trailed in its wake.

  I dropped the curtain.

  From behind me came a creak, like that of new shoe leather. Another creaked to my left, more like a lugnut loosening around a rusty screw. A third followed, and a fourth, the sounds growing staccato and stressed.

  The walls shook. The floor shimmied. The flower-wrapped bower swayed. A fake tree pillar, then another, toppled onto the carpet’s scarlet poppies. Thunder clapped across the painted sky. I looked up. The ceiling cracked.

  Tizi grabbed hold of my arm, she dragged me back, all the way to the strings of beads covering the doorway behind the guaritrice’s counter. She hefted Benedetta’s baby, and shoved me into the darkening passage. “Fiora. Stop daydreaming. Let’s go.”

  Go. Of course.

  Plaster fell from the edges in great strips, raising dust thick enough to bury us. The guaritrice’s world was crumbling by chunks and my one defense against the darkness splayed across a poppy-woven carpet in a room held together with malfeasance and bad intentions. The curtain was my way back, my trail of yarn, the map that could negotiate the guaritrice’s web of passages leading back to the alley behind the pharmacy. “Tizi, stop. We need that curtain.”

  “We can’t go back.” Tizi’s panic, raw and real, reached out to slap me. “What’s done is done.”

  Everything collapses, every petty thought laid bare. Every well-meaning act is tested.

  And every good thing I needed in order to be what I was to become was already provided, alive, within me. Forever, for always. All I had to do was find it.

  The curtain formed in my mind, the velvet fresh, the spare areas patched, the embroidery chain-stitching a path through the chaos. The passage behind us fell to ruin; the floor beneath gave way. The ceiling shifted; the supports wobbled.

  I stopped Tizi, took Benedetta’s baby from her, and turned us down the path the curtain intended, a short walk down a hall, then out an everyday exit into an alley filled with smoke and the fire brigade.

  The white-masked men arced around us, a half dozen in all. One pulled down his mask, talked to somebody I couldn’t see who it was. “Are these the people you were talking about?” Then he turned to me. “Are you all right, miss?”

  Equipment crowded the alley, buckets and hoses. A crowd gathered in the street at the end.

  The druggist broke through, relief rising over the edges of his white mask. “I’m so glad you’re safe. I was in my workroom when the fire broke out. I couldn’t find the don’s prescription. I didn’t know if you were safe, didn’t know if you were still back there.” He gazed at Tizi, young and beautiful in the light of a half dozen lanterns. He pulled off his mask, revealing a man still in his prime, serious and reserved. “Ah. You must be Don Sebastiano’s daughter. He told me to expect you.”

  One of the fire brigade approached the druggist. “The damage in the back room is bad, but repairable. It looks like an electrical switch sparked. We found this.” He held up Mamma’s curtain.

  Whatever I believed had happened, a cover story had already been conveyed. I put out my hand. “That’s mine.”

  Tizi scooted in front of me. “No. I believe that is mine.”

  Only one person could decide this dilemma. And whatever he decided, the curtain would make it come out all right. I turned to Tizi. “Let’s go see your father.”

  We found the don in Benedetta’s apartment, seated beside the cradle. Milk already warmed on the stove; fresh diapers waited on the bed. He stood when we entered, his calm neutrality gone. “Tizi?”

  He stepped toward her. “Tizi.”

  She closed the space between them. “Poppa. I’m here.”

  The old man picked a packet off the table. His pills. He slipped the packet into his shirt pocket, close to his heart. From then on they’d always be there, because from then on, the old man had a reason to live.

  Thirty

  My mother was the neighborhood fortune-teller. People came to see her, asked their questions. Mamma would disappear into her bedroom, and when she emerged, Mamma told them not to worry, to be strong. Sometimes she warned there would be a change, but assured, in the end, everything would work out.

  I sat at the old man’s table and poured a little more milk into my espresso, and another heaping spoonful of sugar. Babyish, yes. For children, yes. But I didn’t like the taste of it without. I still don’t. “Her fortune-telling was all for show. Mamma didn’t really know anything. She just knew people wanted to have hope.”

  The old man measured a piece of leather flattened out before him. He marked it, then measured it one more time. “Belief is powerful.”

  “You despised her.”

  “I didn’t despise her.” The old man picked a knife from the collection at his elbow. He made one cut, then another. “I despised myself. For not recognizing the danger, not being there when I was needed, for not rescuing your mother myself. I knew something was wrong, but was not brave enough to fix it. The curtain offered no guidance, and I did not trust myself to figure it out.”

  “The curtain is a fraud. A five-minute-forward-looking fraud.”

  The old man looked to the ceiling. Maybe he thought he’d find his next words there. “You are not like me, Fiora Vicente. You are so much better. You did not wait on Benedetta’s baby. You went right to rescue her, then found the compassion to rescue my daughter. You are being shortsighted. You do not understand. The curtain is powerful and profound, but it only possesses the power you give it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe you can only look forward for five minutes because that is all you need. Maybe you can only look forward for five minutes because you are afraid to look further. Or maybe you only look for five minutes because telling fortunes doesn’t really interest you all that much.” He returned to his work. “Where is Tizi?”

  Finally, a bit of conversation I could engage in without feeling like my brain were doing backflips. “She’s with the baby. She says we should give her a name. She doesn’t know.”

  It was Thursday. The day I was supposed to meet Benedetta’s aunt at the train station. The day I had to say goodbye to Benedetta’s baby. “Have you . . . heard anything?”

  “You mean from the Children’s Bureau.” He slid an envelope across to me. “They will not let us have the boys. You’re not married, a child yourself in the eyes of the law. I’m an old man. Benedetta’s aunt will have enough responsibility with her own child and Benedetta’s baby. The Bureau says they will revisit the situation in a few months, once the sickness dies down, after Nicco returns. In the meantime, the boys may be adopted. They said they will let us know what happens.”

  I didn’t feel young. I felt old. Really, really old. “What about Tizi? She’s not married, but she’s old enough. All we have to do is find a place for her on Benedetta’s illustration, the one that shows how we are all related.”

  “Tizi would not be a good choice. In many ways she is younger than you.”

  “The druggist doesn’t seem to think so.” He’d already been to visit. Several times. Tizi enjoyed his company and did pretty well at hiding that she’d been within steps of him
for weeks. The druggist didn’t remember Tizi, appeared to know nothing of the guaritrice. Nobody did.

  Still, the old man looked worried, the lines of his face going deeper and more drawn down. “We shall see how that works out. I do not know how anything will go. Tizi has no papers. I have her birth certificate, but that does not prove much beyond that she is my child. I don’t even know how Tizi arrived in this country.”

  “She arrived by boat, like the rest of us.”

  “So we all presume, but without an immigration record, Tizi may as well have arrived by broomstick. Or magic carpet.” He drove a nail, then drove another. “Without records. Without proof the guaritrice emigrated with her from Italy to this country, as far as the authorities, as far as anybody who cares about paperwork, is concerned, Tizi does not exist.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “You knew this. You knew all of it. You knew the guaritrice was at the pharmacy. You knew Tizi was also. My mother was there. She would have told you.”

  The old man’s face smoothed out at that last bit. “Your mother didn’t tell me. Did she drink the guaritrice’s tea?”

  She had. I leaned toward him. “Then you didn’t know. But you sent me to the pharmacy, said you were sending me because Carlo forgot to go.”

  “Carlo would forget his own name if we didn’t keep using it to remind him.”

  “You’re making up stories. Carlo didn’t forget to go. Carlo was there. I ran into him. One door down from the pharmacy. You sent me instead of Carlo because you knew the guaritrice would be there. You sent me hoping someday, somehow, I’d return your daughter. I’ll bet that’s why you took me in that first night. You looked in my eyes. And you knew.”

  The old man waved an awl in my direction, pointing it at me like the nuns did when they were trying to make me hear more than their words. “I sent you to pick up my pills.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “So that’s it? That’s all the explanation I get?”

  “Fine, signorina. Maybe I sent you because I planned to send Carlo, also. Because I wanted him to get a look at you. Because . . .” He clasped his hands together, then threw them wide. “Because even if you and Carlo are not the best fit, you may find you’re perfectly suited to one another.”

  The old man wanted me to expand my expectations, consider alternatives I normally wouldn’t. I felt old, wiser than I should have had to have felt, but I was still only sixteen years old, and I wasn’t going to think about anything just because somebody wanted me to.

  I tossed the letter from the Children’s Bureau to the tabletop. “The guaritrice is gone. You tell me the curtain only possesses the power I give it.” I stood, took a big breath of air, still moist and lazy, and far too heavy. “Yet the bubble persists.”

  The old man returned the awl to its proper place. “That, Fiora Vicente, is a mystery you alone can uncover.”

  Benedetta’s baby made a tiny little sucking sound, halfway between a coo and a complaint. I adjusted the sling I’d fashioned from my scarf. I adjusted her bottle. “Go back to sleep, baby. Soon you’ll be with your zia, with your cousin. Soon your poppa will be home.”

  I felt ridiculous talking to a baby like she were a grown person, but I didn’t know what else to do. I felt more ridiculous talking to her with baby talk. And I wanted to talk to her. Wanted to look into her eyes, eyes quickly darkening to the color of Benedetta’s, and tell Benedetta’s baby all the worlds I’d imagined, the dreams I’d let go, the hopes that no longer seemed all that important.

  Like typewriting school. “I was looking for something different from sewing, something interesting. Something . . . acceptable that my parents would agree to. Mostly I wanted something that wasn’t something here. I wanted to see the real world.” I waved my arm to show the baby what I meant. “The world beyond this neighborhood. I wanted to see the way life was.” I dropped my arm back to my side. “Instead, I created this.”

  I touched the bubble’s edge, not quite so tense as it had been, the border a little crinkly, dried out and tired. Like day-old bread. “I needed the old man. Needed him for meals, for shelter. I went to the guaritrice because nobody would hire me. The old man made me care for the Lattanzis, made me care for the boys. The guaritrice always offered me the easy way. To make money fast. To make the landlord suffer for being mean to me. To help you be born.”

  I looked to my side, kept my gaze to the cobbles, ashamed to confess what I needed and relieved Benedetta’s baby couldn’t understand any of it. “I used them both. The guaritrice and the old man. Tried to, anyway. People got hurt. The Lattanzis, the neighbors, the old man. Even your mother. And when things didn’t work out, I blamed the Lattanzis. I blamed the neighbors. I blamed the old man. I blamed your mother. I even blamed that stupid curtain.” I gave the baby a little bounce. “Yes, me, Fiora Vicente, Rosina Vicente’s daughter. My life was not going the way I wanted, so I blamed a piece of fabric.”

  Mamma hadn’t taught me how to use the curtain because she hadn’t wanted to pass on that burden. She never meant that I should know. She hadn’t wanted to chain me to any tradition other than the ones I chose to take on. Mamma had loved me. Had wanted the best for me. She’d wanted me to choose my own way. And I’d been too centered on myself to see.

  I straightened my shoulders. “I have to accept. The old man has his daughter. Carlo’s off pursuing his own ambitions.” And I was alone. Uncertain. Afraid to move forward, unable to look back.

  And due at the train station in less than an hour.

  Misery, deeper than any well, threatened to swallow me whole.

  I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to do anything without Benedetta. I wanted to keep her baby. Not because I had any great desire to raise a baby, even hers. I wanted Benedetta’s baby as a reminder. That Benedetta had lived, that she’d been my friend, that she’d trusted me and I her and we’d meant something to each other.

  I wanted Fipo and Etti for the same reason. Because they represented a last link to Benedetta, to a short span of time when I’d belonged to somebody other than my family, been involved in something other than my own small concerns. When I gave up Benedetta’s baby, the cord would be cut. I’d be the woman I’d always wanted. On my own, able to take care of myself. Needing no one.

  And hating it.

  Benedetta’s baby began to fuss. I got my arms under her and hefted her to my chest, close to my heart. “The Lattanzis are dead, your mamma is gone, the boys have left, and soon you will follow. I tried to hold it all in, but life has moved on, and now the only thing collapsing under the weight of this stupid bubble is me.”

  The tears started. “I need to tell you something, something my mamma told me, something you won’t understand this minute, but maybe someday will remember. Things have purpose, not people. People exist to be respected, to be enjoyed. Use things. Love people. You’ll be all right.”

  I had nothing. No curtain. No money. No tuition for typewriting school. But like Signora Lattanzi’s little silver box, the one that held the photo of the boys, all that was most important was in my arms. Benedetta’s baby, and the knowledge I’d kept her safe for the day her father could take her in his.

  I’d told myself I wanted to give people time. I made up plenty of stories why the bubble persisted. The curtain wouldn’t release it; the guaritrice was making it worse; I didn’t know how to collapse it, decided it was better that I didn’t. I came up with one excuse then the other, hiding from the one thing I’d always least liked to face—the truth.

  Carlo joined me, in cap and coat and stepping right to the bubble’s edge like it wasn’t there. He ran a finger over the baby’s forehead. “You’ve been standing here for ten minutes, talking to yourself. I know because I’ve been standing there watching you.” He pointed behind him, to a lamppost halfway up the block.

  “I’ve been talking to the baby.” I settled her back into the sling. “About things I knew I knew before I knew I knew it. But I was frightened, so I chose belief and called it truth
. But really this is all so simple.”

  I moved my hands toward my middle, fingers splayed, like Benedetta did the first day I met her, the day she gathered the pieces. I meant to encompass Carlo in my gesture. I meant to encompass Benedetta’s baby. I meant to encompass the old man and the Lattanzis, Fipo and Etti, Mamma and Poppa, my brothers and even Tizi. I meant to encompass the selfish, the selfless, the wise, the foolish, the faithless, the trustworthy, the frightened, the brave. I meant to encompass every bit of every piece of everybody who’d helped bring me here, to the bubble’s edge. Me, Fiora Vicente, Rosina Vicente’s daughter, meant to encompass all who’d shared my journey.

  So I could explain to Carlo what all that traveling had taught me, the one truth I’d carry with me from then until the end of my days. “I didn’t understand. I can’t stop the future. It’s always arriving, this day, this hour, this minute, this moment, an unlimited currency we’re free to spend any way we choose. The future is present. Right where we stand.”

  I gestured to our feet, wrapped in shoes mended by the old man, then I moved my hand back and forth between us.

  “The future is here. For me. For you. A beautiful, an expanding, an infinite Now.”

  Thirty-One

  The old man told me the curtain might take me down a path I did not want to tread. He didn’t tell me the curtain was about truth, about making the owner, the bearer of the burden, face their own truths. Mamma faced hers when the guaritrice returned, when Mamma saw her and Tizi in the pharmacy, and saw Tizi grown up and doing for the guaritrice what Mamma used to do.

  I faced my truth in those last moments at the bubble’s edge, the last moments before I had to continue on and take Benedetta’s baby to the train station: I didn’t need Mamma’s curtain, didn’t need it at all. I didn’t need it to save Tizi or Benedetta’s baby, didn’t need it to vanquish the guaritrice, didn’t need it to show me the future, elucidate my path, or enlighten my present. Mamma’s curtain was a piece of fabric, a special piece of fabric that drew its power from people, from all our wants and wishes, from the beliefs we proclaimed, and those we kept out of sight.