“Did you take it?”
“No, I didn’t steal it,” she says, automatically. But I ripped it up and flushed it, she says to herself, biting her lip. When her lip trembles, she lifts her drink to her mouth, trying to hide the twitch behind the small cup. But did I steal it? Isn’t that her job—to check the pockets before submerging the pants into water? She sees herself checking Don’s pockets, a standard procedure; finding the folded paper note, which had the same quality as the first; feeling alarmed, as if there were an urgency; wanting not to read it, but at the same time needing to know if it was meant for her. Then, in her desperate need to clear her mind, to drop the nagging question, to find an abdication or a plea of innocence of any involvement with Don, doing the deed—taking it and reading it and then disposing of it in the toilet.
She knows he saw her do it. He was lurking like a snake in the corner. She knows it by the way he smirked. In some twisted way of thinking, that makes her an accomplice.
She feels a sticky involvement with Don. And now she’s lied to Mario. Ugh!
She hears Mario talking; he’s asking her something. She puts the small cup down, uncovering her lips.
“Why don’t you tell her?” he’s asking.
“That’s a hard thing to do. She already seems so irritated with me. I feel like I could be fired any day, if I don’t quit first.” She sighs, looking into Mario’s kind brown eyes. “I’ve had some weirdos lately. Maybe it’s me?”
She tells Mario about having the bag of tarps stolen and returning to George’s studio and finding busts of women who looked like her; how strange to feel her employer was sculpting her without her permission; how she quit.
Mario takes her hands, rubbing them. “You’re so cold.”
“I’ve taken to sipping tequila to warm me up,” Lavinia confides. They sit close together in the corner of the café, away from the eyes of the others. “I loved dancing with you on Friday night,” she whispers.
Mario smiles. “Me too. What did you like most?”
“Our pas de deux. Did we really float across the room?”
“We did.”
“And you?”
“Pushing hands with you,” he says.
“Yeah, that was amazing. I love what we had together.”
“And what about that vibration at the end?” he asks.
“A hum.”
“That’s it exactly,” he says. “It was palpable.”
“Yes, just a hum and the tingling in my hands and feet. I feel it now with you and me, like this.”
“You rock, Lavinia. I love the way you moved your arms and your hips and shoulders, like a beautiful windmill.” Mario puts his nose close to her mouth, inhaling her breath.
She moves closer in to feel his breath on her upper lip.
“I smell your gum,” he says.
Lavinia reaches into her pocket, pulls out two pieces, and hands them to him. “A double for the barista,” she says as they move away from this moment of closeness.
He walks back to his station. She waves and then leaves for home.
Chapter 10:
A LETTER FROM SAL
When Lavinia opens her door, she sees mail scattered on the floor. Immediately she spies Italian stamps and Uncle Sal’s unique script. Her heart skips at the sight of the formal letter, having only received monthly postcards announcing his travels since he left. She puts away the thought that he might be ill.
She misses him, and can hardly make sense of a letter from him lying on the wooden floor in front of her foot. A bit of Uncle Sal right here in her studio makes her feel frozen. She hates him for leaving her, yet she loves him, too. She surveys her apartment as if looking for something to hold onto, but the walls in the long, empty front room are bare. Her eyes survey the tiny back living space with its small couch and coffee table, but there’s nothing there. Only the darkened bedroom with the mattress on the floor and the old fig tree outside ground her.
She kneels on the floor close to the letter and carefully picks it up as if it is too fragile to withstand the heat of her hands. The silky paper slides into her palm; she stares at it as if it is alive. Then she carries it out to the patio and sits by the tree.
“We’ll read it together,” she says, fingering the curved letters of her name. She notes how his ones have little flags on top of them and the sevens have lines through them. She smells the waxed paper and carefully opens the letter, not wanting to tear into the body of the work for fear she might lose one of his words.
November 9
Dear Lavinia Lavinia,
I am writing to you from my new home on Via Toledo in the old part of Naples. You probably are wondering why I haven’t communicated sooner, and I don’t blame you. It’s been too long since we talked.
It took me a while to settle into this place again after my long absence. I wasn’t even sure my decision to leave was the right one, and each day I considered hopping on a plane and coming home. So, I’m slowly trying to find my ground here on my native soil like a cat staking out his territory.
I tried and tried to pick up the phone, but every time I went near it I felt a magnet repelling my hand away. You see, what I was afraid of was that you would hear the sadness in my voice. I didn’t want you to hear my voice for fear that you would hear me cry.
When I first arrived here, I had to pick up the pieces of the crumbling life I had left when everything had crashed and was in ruins. Pa was gone and Ma, your nonna, was one lonely cookie. Your grandma looks old. It’s been over twenty years since I last saw her. She lives in Salerno on the Amalfi Coast, a beautiful place, historic town, too, from WWII. She lives with her younger sister, Giuseppa.
When I found her, she was sitting on a balcony of her sister’s apartment decked out in a shroud. She looked like the ghost of herself, but when she saw me, her eyes lit up. That made me so happy.
You know what she said, Vinnie, when she reached to hug me? She said, “What a waste, Salvia!”
I said, “No, Ma, it’s not a waste. Vinnie’s a teacher now.” She smiled and repeated your name as if it were a song.
I miss you, but I know that you are settled in your studio with the Payne Gray walls, ragazza. I see you teaching school. I see how those children adore you, your beautiful face. “Faccia mia,” the face I love. I hope you are not ruining those teeth with that bubblegum you chew. Ha! Ha! Just a joke.
Lavinia gets up with the letter, shakes it at the tree, then goes to get a glass of wine. Back on the patio, she resumes reading.
Soon after I got here I found the house where you were born, where I first met you. It was not an easy thing to come by but there it was on a narrow cobblestone street in the old section. Not exactly as it had been when I was here last, when I first laid eyes on you, ragazza. Time had grown the house, and I half-expected to see my mother and father and sister still living there. But all was gone and the house had been sold.
The new owners, a young couple, took down the balcony on the second level, changed the small window with the white lace curtains for a large, expansive window with double sliding doors. Your mama wouldn’t have liked to see the balcony gone, nor that clothesline, the one strung between your house and Malvina’s across the way.
But the new owners were nice enough and they let me come inside to see the apartment. The place has been divided up into several units, so it’s smaller than I remembered. What struck me is the way the dining room and living room were all one room and the kitchen so small. I guess something like the one you have now. In there I remembered your mama making pastry on a wooden pastry board she placed on the sink. Gone!
What a baker she was! Mamma mia! That sister of mine fried dough and then dipped it into honey, piled high. She called it struffoli. She liked to bake late at night after you were asleep so that when you woke up you could pull off a dough ball smothered in honey and chew it, smacking your lips, Lavinia Lavinia.
I guess I never told you about her being a baker. I’d forgotten until I saw
the old kitchen in my mind as it had once been, before all that happened. All that ugly stuff I pulled you away from. I wanted to save you from any of it!
That’s what I remembered when I was in the flat. I could see you and your mama, my beautiful sister, Angela, making struffoli. But it was just my imagination, because the place was remodeled so that the very small kitchen now has every convenience, even marble pastry board counters, a microwave oven, and a grill on the stovetop.
But I am writing so much my hands and my fingers are stiff. I guess I could’ve gone to the internet café and dictated this letter. But I’m a little private about my thoughts.
Now I have a small apartment near all the restaurants. I even hooked up with an old school chum, Giovanni. He knew your mama and your father. He wanted to talk about her accident and told me his own feelings about this sad misfortune. He’s a storyteller, too, and a widower. We hang out together and drink espresso and play cards at the sidewalk tables. Gamble a little, too. Have you gotten to Las Vegas yet? You’ll love it.
Well, let me put a little something in this letter for your chewing habits. My new address is Via Toledo, #9, Napoli Italy 84121. I don’t have a telephone yet. Love from your uncle,
Zio Salvatore.
PS: Are you still dancing? Watering the fig?
Instead of bringing her comfort, Sal’s jokes make her mad. Her body agitated and her mind restless, her stomach contracts. She gets up from her chair and paces around the patio, holding the letter in one hand and her stomach with the other, but she can’t stay mad at him. If she stays mad at Sal, he’ll dissolve. He’ll cry. Worse, he’ll leave her. There won’t be any more letters—at least, that’s what she believes. She takes the letter to her chest and holds it there, trying to keep the buzzing of his words alive. He’s the only connection she has to her mother. She feels like a bee on a summer day inhaling a flower. She smells the paper, rubs her fingers over the carefully written words, tracing the small, round letters.
A check for five hundred dollars falls from the sheets.
Lavinia savors the image of the piled volcano of fried dough dipped in honey—struffoli, he called it. He said her mother baked for her as a child. Her mouth waters as she thinks of the sweet pillows of dough. She wishes she could remember.
Closing her eyes and borrowing Sal’s imagination, she sees the kitchen he remembered: small, like hers, he said, but with a pastry board sitting on the sink. She pictures the volcano of sugared dough prepared at night. Then she sees herself, little Lavinia.
It’s morning. She’s just woken up in a twin-sized bed. A wing of light shines through the half-opened door to her bedroom. It’s a pretty room. She imagines herself barefoot, wearing a nightdress with butterfly patterns and tiny smooth buttons on it. Her mama will have slept nearby, in the bed next to her, but in her reverie, Lavinia wakes up and Mama’s not there. She listens and hears her humming a pretty song. She slips out of her bed and goes toward the sweet voice.
“Lavinia, you’re just in time. I have a surprise for you,” her mamma says, “something to go with your latte.” Mama peels off a small piece of fried dough from the top of a mound of pastry in the shape of a peaked mountain. “La cima,” she says, placing the tip of the mountain on Lavinia’s tongue.
The sweet, buttery pastry melts in her mouth. She chews and sticks out her tongue for more.
Lavinia smiles. She can almost smell the dough, feel the sweet honey sticking to her lips and fingers. She slips to her knees in front of the fig, now grateful for having had a lovingly sweet mother.
She thinks about Sal, imagines him sitting on the old, narrow street with his buddy, sipping wine and weaving stories. He loved to tell stories, and yet he’s never told her anything about her mother or her father before now. The sweetness dissolves into a big zero—like Sal, who kept her in the dark. This is the first time he’s ever mentioned Giovanni, a man who knew her father. Fear and thrill grip at her. Questions pile up. Sal knew her father all these years and never told her? And what is the sad misfortune—the accident—that Giovanni alludes to? And her poor Nonna, what did she call it? A waste? She wants to know every detail. Sal’s going slowly, still keeping this secret from her. Yet again! Damn!
She takes the watering pail, fills it, and waters the fig, talking to it as if it is a person. “Seems to me he made the big transition from a man who lost his wife to a boy-man, playing cards with friends in his hometown, six thousand miles away from us. At least he’s thinking of us.” She looks at the soft spray wetting the thick layer of mulch. “Could he get any farther away?” she asks. “There he is, living in my hometown that I know so little about. I don’t feel connected to that place. Home is here in San Francisco, with you, and Kinky, and Mario, and Mercedes.” She looks at the tree, then pictures Sal sitting at the table, sipping and eating and playing chess with his old friend, perhaps wearing his woolen fisherman hat, like the one he wore when he lived here. She misses him.
She kneels down again in front of the tree. “I wish he and Giovanni were here sitting with us, gabbing and eating. Then we could ask them all our questions.” She hugs the base of the fig.
Chapter 11:
UPSTAIRS
“Upstairs, go upstairs,” she hears. She swivels around, accidently kicking over the watering can.
Again, the voice, “Upstairs, in the bureau. Rose. Go.”
She looks up at the tree. The broad leaves shimmer in the light breeze.
“Don’t be afraid, Lavinia.”
“But I am afraid!” she says aloud.
She’s flooded by new memories, helping her to understand the complex relationship between Sal and his father, her grandfather.
She sees the first house in North Beach. Uncle Sal and Aunt Rose are arguing in the kitchen. She remembers sitting under the table with her new Barbie. She’s listening. Sal enters the flat from the back stairwell off the kitchen and slams the door. He places his briefcase on the counter and bends to give Aunt Rose a smooch, a quick and hard-sounding kiss. Aunt Rose crunches a crisp toast she’s eating in response.
“How’s the kid?” There’s worry in his voice.
“She asks for that raggedy thing. She can’t let it go, Sal.”
“You stole the kid’s doll, Rose!” his voice thuds. Crunching toast cuts the air. “She’s only a kid who lost her mother. Give her a break.” Uncle Sal bangs the table. Thud! Thud! Thud! The legs of the table wobble.
Lavinia sits very still, holding her breath, listening for every word and watching Uncle Sal from under the table. His legs make a whole circle around the table, and stop again in front of Aunt Rose. Lavinia hears only the munching, a staccato beat in her ears.
“My father used to do that to me, take what belonged to me. He’d steal my life if he could. You know what he did, that bastard?” Another pound on the table scares Lavinia. “He insisted I take over the family business. Me, the only son of a garbage collector, should pick up people’s shit. Merda,” he hisses. “Merda. Merda. You know what, Rose? He punched me on the day I told him I was going to study accounting. You know what he said? He said, ‘No son of mine will leave the family!’ Mai! Never, never!”
Lavinia hates to hear her uncle’s voice like that. The way he’s talking, so fast and so very strong, scares her. It’s too loud. She covers her ears, but she can still hear him ranting about his father.
“‘Hit me, Pa. Be a man! Hit me, Pa!’” he’s saying. “‘You want me to carry shit the way you did? Me a shit carrier? Well, forget it, Pa.’”
“It’s okay now, Salvi. You got away from him. Calm yourself, dear husband.” Aunt Rose slides her chair away from the table and Uncle Sal.
The rumble of Uncle Sal’s voice alarms Lavinia under the table. He’s making her upset. She starts hitting the Barbie, rapping her against the floor, spanking her hard, peeling her slim pants off so she might better feel the spanking. Finally, she hits Barbie’s blond head against the wooden floor. Uncle Sal doesn’t hear the drumming because he’s still
yelling.
“You know what he said, Rose?” He stops to catch a breath before he shouts, “My old man kept repeating, ‘On my grave, on my grave.’” Uncle Sal is crying now, shouting and crying. “I should have known, I should have known. Mannagia!”
Under the table little Lavinia is shouting, too, “Man na gia, dolly! On my grave, Dolly!” They don’t seem to hear her. She wonders if Barbie can hear her or if she has shut down, too.
Now Uncle Sal is silent and sitting next to Aunt Rose. Lavinia can see their knees touching from under the table. Aunt Rose is saying, “It’s okay, Salvi. You didn’t do nothing to your sister, you didn’t do nothing to her. You don’t need to damn yourself.”
The argument is over now, and Lavinia uncovers her ears. Aunt Rose is softer, trying to calm him down. She wants him to feel better. After a while, they get up and move to their room. Lavinia watches their legs go away. They aren’t yelling anymore. Lavinia likes when Aunt Rose has that soft voice to help Uncle Sal calm down and stop pounding the table.
But the voices Lavinia hears in her mind now shift. No longer is she in Sal’s and Rose’s North Beach apartment. The house is not even in San Francisco. It is far away, but the sounds are just as strong.
She’s in a different house, the one with the breadboard on the sink. She’s four and hiding behind an older woman who wears a black dress and black tie shoes and smells of garlic and basil. The old woman is making pasta. Lavinia holds her hands over her ears, trying not to hear the gruff voice speaking in Italian—swearing, boiling over, saying mannagia and mamma mia over and over again.
The gruff man is yelling, “Io non ti lascero andare”—I won’t let you go.
The woman, a gentle voice, says, “Non stai in pena per me”— You don’t have to worry about me.
The gruff man says, “You won’t go.”
The Laundress Page 9
