The Train to Orvieto

by Novelli, Rebecca J. ;

  “I’m not sure.” It was best not to tell Signora Lucarelli anything definite. She carried tales that she invented to fit her prejudices and could make it seem that you had said something you didn’t say or mean.

  Signora Lucarelli looked aggrieved. She reached for another chocolate and took a bite, exposing its soft center. “Willa and I were very close,” she said, examining the morsel, “but she kept to herself.” Signora Lucarelli shrugged and took the last bite. “I never knew why.” She inclined her head toward Silvana, whose status as ragazza madre, a woman who had given birth to illegitimate children, had scandalized all of Orvieto. More than that, she took them out in public. “Silvana didn’t put any of her children up for adoption, did she? I wonder why.” I didn’t respond. “Willa should have done something about it.” She gave me a knowing look. “After all, your marriage prospects are involved.” She took another chocolate. “You are Gabriele’s true daughter, his best child, aren’t you?”

  Signora Carmina Santori, Signora Lucarelli’s sister and the wife of a successful merchant, nodded in agreement. “Assolutamente. His only true daughter.” She relished the spotlight and repeated assolutamente several times.

  Silvana overheard their conversation and approached the two women. “Fina is an imposter,” she said with a cackle and sailed off to refill her wine glass. Silvana would say anything if she felt she had been slighted. It was better not to provoke her.

  “Gabriele needs you even more now,” Signora Lucarelli continued. She glanced at Bruno. “How long has Bruno been working for your father?” Any response would have led Signora Lucarelli to new questions. “Edgardo owns his own business, of course, but I believe Bruno can still be a good husband and a good provider, don’t you?” Signora Lucarelli pressed her hands against my cheeks. “You deserve a nice husband, and it will be good if he is involved in your family’s business.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think he’ll marry you, and he’ll be a much better husband than someone in your circumstances could realistically expect.” I knew Signora Lucarelli was just voicing what everyone else thought. I offered her the tray with Grazia’s tiny, cream-filled cannoli. She selected one, regarded its vulnerability, and then bit into it. “When you marry,” she added, her mouth full, “you and Bruno will live in this house and take care of your father.” Signora Lucarelli leaned closer and whispered. “I hope you’re not still thinking about going to university. You must be careful about asserting your own interests before your wedding. Bruno has other choices.”

  She extended her index finger toward the antique cameo at my throat and ran her finger over its carved surfaces. “What a charming little cameo.”

  “It was mamma’s,” I said.

  “I suppose it’s something Willa got on one of those trips of hers. She was always traveling. Always wearing her hats.”

  6

  At dawn the next morning, the morning of mamma’s burial, the sun had already cut golden gashes in the pink clouds, formed stark shadows next to bright planes, and turned the edges of buildings and roofs into thin flames. I slipped mamma’s rosary into my pocket. Outside, I had to shield my eyes despite my black veil. Already, my dark clothes felt too warm. Silvana put on her sunglasses and pulled at her dress, distorting the diagonal black and white stripes that encircled her torso like a boa constrictor. Despite the early hour, she smelled of vermouth and cigarettes. In the car, papà wedged himself between Bruno, who drove, and Monsignor Enrico. Raffaele, Silvana, and I pressed into the back seat. The cart, driven by one of the gravediggers, followed behind us, carrying mamma’s casket, Silvana’s children, and Grazia.

  “I brought Willa home in that cart the first time she came to Orvieto,” papà told Monsignor Enrico, his voice raspy with emotion. “She never accepted our life here.” He shook his head and fanned himself with his straw hat. “Never accepted losing Etto. She was always a mother first and a wife second.” He shrugged. “Well, she’s with her Etto now.”

  “Che stupidaggini!” Silvana muttered. What stupid stuff!

  At the cemetery, Monsignor Enrico waited while Raffaele, Bruno, papà, and the three gravediggers carried mamma’s coffin along the dirt path to the open grave. Silvana and I walked behind them, then Grazia and the children. Silvana’s daughters, aged four and five, and her son, just seven, skipped along, stopping to throw rocks or to reach into snake holes. The children resembled their respective fathers, indeed, so much so that together they left the impression that Silvana wasn’t their mother at all, an impression furthered by her evident lack of interest in them and her insistence that they call her “Silvana.” Holding onto her large, black hat, Silvana swayed along the uneven path. Suddenly, the heel of one of her stilettos broke; she stumbled and fell to the ground. Laughing and shouting, the children formed a circle around her. “Look! Silvana fell down again!”

  “Zitti!” she hissed. Be quiet! The children froze. Raffaele picked up Silvana’s hat and helped her to her feet. She reached for her shoe, then tried but failed to put the heel back. “Accidenti!” Damn! She put the heel in her purse. Holding Raffaele’s arm, she limped toward mamma’s grave. Despite the heat, the freshly turned earth smelled heavy and damp. The gravediggers retreated a short distance to the thin shade of an olive tree, where they squatted and smoked. Silvana’s children formed a knot around their mother, pulling her arms and vying for her attention. Silvana brushed them away. Undiscouraged, they returned.

  “Mamma, we want to look inside the box,” Lucio, the eldest child, whispered. “Please, can we see if Nonna Willa is smiling because she’s in heaven?” Silvana ignored their pleas. I fingered mamma’s rosary and tried not to think about being buried alive. Is it possible that I could have lived my whole life with mamma and have nothing more of her than this rosary? I thought about my promise to return the letters. If mamma was someone I didn’t really know, what else about my life might be false? I felt chilled and provisional, as if a shrieking wind whirled around me, spinning me out of my own existence.

  “Let us pray,” Monsignor Enrico said. Grazia clasped her gnarled hands together. Once I asked Grazia why mamma always seemed sad.

  “Fortuna,” Grazia said. Fate. I tried to keep my mind on Monsignor Enrico’s words. I wanted to remember everything about that day, remember it as it truly was.

  “We know that as Christ gave his spirit to his disciples, so we, too, can be filled with His spirit and manifest it in everything that we do. Guide us, Lord, as we lay our beloved Willa to rest. Return us to our lives to do as You would have us do. Amen.” Everyone except Silvana made the sign of the cross.

  Raffaele signaled to the gravediggers, who helped to lower mamma’s plain wooden coffin into the ground. Just as they finished, papà lurched toward the grave with a sob. “Willa! No!” he cried out. His hat fell onto the coffin. Monsignor Enrico and Bruno held him so that he wouldn’t fall into the pit. Did he tell mamma how much he cared for her when she was alive?

  “Silvana! See? Nonno Gabriele is going to look inside the box now,” Beatrice said to her mother. “Let us look, too! Please!” Bruno climbed into the pit, retrieved papà’s hat, and held it up. I leaned down to take it, and mamma’s rosary slipped out of my hand and fell on the ground.

  Silvana saw it before I could pick it up. “You took mamma’s rosary!”

  “Mamma gave it to me.” It was a thoughtless answer, and I knew it would only make Silvana feel more neglected than she already did.

  “It’s time to go,” papà said. He put on his hat. The children shrieked and ran in circles around the adults. Raffaele offered his arm to Silvana.

  “I prefer to walk alone,” Silvana said so everyone could hear her. “That way I’ll be with someone I can trust.” She put on her dark glasses and turned away from us.

  “Please, Silvana, not today,” papà said. The bright sun burned our skins and bleached the hillsides. Papà took off his jacket, handed it to me; he rolled up his shirtsleeves and unbuttoned his collar. I looked back. The gravediggers we
re whistling as they pushed their shovels into the pile of fresh earth and threw it on mamma’s grave.

  “Silvana, are they done yet? Lucio asked. “You promised we could get gelato when everyone is done with their crocodile tears.”

  “Basta!” Silvana waved them off. The children retreated, and Raffaele lifted them into the cart next to Grazia.

  As Bruno opened the doors of the car, his curly hair caught the light like a kind of halo. He moved easily and rhythmically, unimpeded by the secrets and questions that so often troubled me. We all got back in the car, including Silvana, and Bruno drove back toward town. Near the station, a group of tourists with a guide waited to cross the roadway. Bruno stopped for them.

  “Let the stranieri wait!” papà said.

  “Mark my words, these stranieri will be very good for Vino Marcheschi and for Orvieto,” Monsignor Enrico said. He folded his hands over his belly. Despite his Irish origins, Monsignor Enrico’s knowledge of Italy, Umbria in particular, had brought him a measure of fame even among the members of surrounding parishes. Despite his spiritual calling, it was for his business acumen that merchants sought his counsel, and when they did, Monsignor Enrico offered more than prayers for their success.

  Papà sighed. “For an ordinary winemaker like me, Orvieto—this town and these valleys—are life itself. A reason to go on.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief.

  “Che stupidaggini,” Silvana muttered. Nonsense.

  Monsignor Enrico put a sympathetic hand on papà’s arm. “One’s family is also a reason to go on.”

  “And your friends,” Bruno added, “and, of course, the new vintage.”

  “Tanti stupidaggini,” Silvana said. Such nonsense!

  The car labored upward along the steep, dirt road toward the town, its black hood shimmering in the heat. A workman stepped onto the road in front of us and waved two red flags. Bruno stopped and set the brake. Silvana removed her hat and fanned herself, filling the car with the scent of spices. Bruno sneezed. Papà and Raffaele coughed. I turned my face toward the open window and inhaled the hot, still air. The children wiggled out of the cart and came to the window.

  “Silvana, now can we have gelato?”

  “Where do you see gelato here?” Silvana said, waving her arm in their direction. The children shook their heads and returned to the shade of the cart where they traced pictures in the dusty road with sticks.

  Papà turned to Monsignor Enrico. “Some of the women here were very jealous when I married Willa, you know.” He glanced at Bruno then looked down at this lap and covered his face with his thick, tanned hands. “I miss her so much,” he sobbed.

  “Sometimes God’s will exceeds our understanding,” Monsignor Enrico replied.

  “Che stupidaggini!” Silvana muttered.

  “Willa thought that Orvieto would be like America,” papà continued. His steely hair curled over the back of his wilted shirt collar like smoke. “Americans believe they can control their fate. We Italians know better.” Monsignor Enrico nodded.

  “Even now I feel torn between your Italian state of mind and mamma’s American one,” Raffaele said. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am.” I thought that Raffaele’s observation applied equally to me. The workman signaled for us to continue. By the time these workmen are done with their work I’ll be finished with university, and Bruno and I will be married with children of our own, I thought. Bruno started the car.

  “Have I told you that I’m retiring?” Monsignor Enrico asked.

  “When will you be going?” Bruno asked.

  “Very soon,” I said, thinking of Cattolicà and of my promise to return Michel Losine’s letters to him. Bruno glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, several months,” Monsignor Enrico said.

  “Well, I must leave as soon as we get back,” Raffaele said.

  “The children are restless,” Silvana said, but I knew she was talking about herself.

  Papà wiped his brow with his handkerchief again. “Willa would have wanted us to be together today.”

  “We’re all still here with you,” I said, hoping to forestall a brewing argument about our filial duty, “but we aren’t children any more.”

  Papà wiped his eyes with his damp handkerchief. “You don’t want to be my children now that Willa is gone. I know that.”

  “Che boiate,” Silvana said. Bullshit. “Papà, don’t you remember when we all came home for the Feast of Corpus Domini, and you told us to leave and never come back?” Even on the day of mamma’s burial, Silvana reminds papà of their ugly disagreement. If only they could forgive one another.

  Papà lowered his head like a bull. “This isn’t the day to talk about such things.” Once, I had overheard him tell mamma that he would disown Silvana for dishonoring him and our family. Mamma said that she would leave him forever if he cut Silvana or Raffaele off. I thought mamma was right to stand up for Silvana and Raffaele. Making a mistake isn’t a reason to abandon someone, especially your own child.

  “We’re nearby if you need us,” Raffaele told papà, “and Fina is still here with you.”

  Silvana peeled a bit of red lacquer from a fingernail. “If we leave now, papà, you won’t have to talk about what mamma left me,”

  Raffaele glanced at papà and laughed nervously. “Are you sure you want us to stay?”

  “Mamma left things for you, too, Silvana,” I said.

  “Well, you certainly wasted no time,” Silvana hissed. “What else did you get besides her rosary?”

  “Basta!” Papà nodded toward Silvana. “The devil’s work,” he said to Monsignor Enrico.

  “Now, you call me names,” Silvana said.

  “Out of respect for your mother, I won’t call you by your real name today,” papà answered. He meant puttana. With mamma gone, we all knew he would no longer restrain himself. Bruno swerved to avoid a large pothole.

  “Out of concern for yourself, you mean.” Papà’s words had hurt her, and I knew Silvana meant to hurt him. We were all silent.

  “Each of us feels loss in a different way,” Monsignor Enrico said.” Our faith helps us bear the unbearable.”

  “This heat is unbearable,” Bruno said.

  “I’ve decided to go on living in town,” papà told Monsignor Enrico. “It will be easier for Dottor Lucarelli to come to me if I need him.” I knew that wasn’t his real reason. He simply couldn’t bear to be alone and wanted to be near the piazza where he and his friends gathered every afternoon to talk and play bocce.

  When we came to a stop in front of our home, papà got out of the car, opened the courtyard gate, and then unlocked the front door. In comparison to the car, the interior of our house seemed chilly. Papà noted, as he often did, that the painting next to the door had originally been a wedding gift to his grandparents. It depicted a young man, papà’s grandfather, calling on a young woman, papà’s grandmother, who stood on a balcony. Behind his back, the young man held a bouquet of flowers and beside him his mule waited with an air of indifference. “I thought of this painting when I proposed to Willa,” he reminded us.

  Silvana lit a cigarette. “At least her unhappiness is over.”

  “Is that a way to talk about your mother?” papà said.

  “You don’t care how anyone talks about mamma as long as you look good,” Silvana said. I wanted papà to say something conciliatory.

  “Silvana, papà does care,” I said. I may not have really known mamma, but I believed that in his way papà cared about all of us.

  “Did they give you nonna’s pearls, too?” Silvana said to me. I didn’t know what to say.

  Raffaele put his arms around us. “Come, we’ll all feel better if we have something to eat.” He guided us toward the dining room where Grazia had set the table with our best linens, silver, and glassware.

  At our family meals, each of us had an assigned place that never varied without papà’s express direction. Papà always sat at the head of the table in a tall, wooden armchair upho
lstered in tapestry; open-mouthed lion faces were carved into the wood of each arm. Our guest of honor, Monsignor Enrico, sat to papà’s immediate right, and Bruno, Raffaele, and I to his left. Mamma always sat opposite him at the other end of the table. More than once a guest had observed that mamma planned the meals and supervised the cooking, but ate only leftovers. Papà always laughed. “Willa prefers it this way,” he would say. Mamma always said, “Gabriele lives in a world of his own creation.”

  But on this day, instead of sitting at her customary place to papà’s left, Silvana took mamma’s seat. There was a sudden hush. Everyone, including Silvana, knew that papà would never countenance this change in our dining arrangements, not on the day of mamma’s burial. Silvana removed her dinner plate and set it aside in order to examine the pewter charger underneath. She turned it over and then looked up at papà.

  “What about these?” she said. “Whose are these?” She put the charger back and planted her elbows on the table as if she were staking out her territory. “Mamma won’t be using them anymore.” Papà ignored her question.

  “If you sit in mamma’s seat, you have to do what mamma did,” Raffaele said.

  “You mean weep when she thought no one was looking?” Silvana said, her eyes on papà. Grazia carried a platter into the room and set it on the sideboard.

  “Willa never did that,” papà said to Monsignor Enrico. “She was very happy. She had everything she wanted here with me.”

  Silvana picked up a knife and pointed it at papà. “So you say.” I had seen mamma weeping, too, but I never thought it was because we made her unhappy. She had always been like that. I thought that it was just the way mamma was. Unlike Silvana, I had never considered whether mamma was happy or unhappy. Silvana set her dinner plate back on the charger and began to build a sculpture on it with her silverware. We watched her, anxious. I thought of what mamma said about the letters, that they were from someone she loved very much. Was she happier with her amante than she was with us? The silverware fell with a crash. We all jumped even though we had been watching Silvana’s sculpture the whole time.