The Laundress

by Barbara Sapienza

  “I’m eager to hear about your visit with George,” Mario says. “What happened?”

  She slips out of his arms, takes his hand, and walks with him to her favorite table in the back, grateful Falcone is still empty. She tells him about George’s working showroom—how he’s chronicled her mother’s life in clay, solidified now in stone.

  “It was all there for me to see, Mario. My beautiful mother in the stages of life—as a youth, as a young girl in love, as a woman pregnant, as a mother nursing me.” She has to catch her breath before telling him how she kneeled before her casket. “She’s a dead angel,” she says.

  “And this is what George has spent his life doing?”

  “All of it. He devoted his youth and adult years to Angela, living to keep her alive. Can you imagine? He gave up his life to make clay images of her. It seems we are both still mourning these deaths. You know, spending that time with him yesterday made me feel a lot better. Seeing his heart like that has made me feel closer to him.”

  “Did you say ‘heart’?”

  “Yeah. I guess both his art and heart were exposed. We both lost her. We both feel the grief.”

  Mario and Lavinia sit quietly. She’s thinking about George, the sad clay thrower, and his devotion to her mother. But somehow giving up his life to a clay image seems wrong, too sacrificial. “He’s been recreating what he lost. With each statue he mourns my birth, my infancy, and Angela’s death.” She looks at Mario. “It also occurred to me that he’s doing some kind of a penance for leaving us behind.”

  “Maybe he feels responsible for her death?” Mario says, holding her hand.

  “But aren’t we supposed to live our lives as well?” she asks. “And what about me?”

  “Maybe he’s into sacrificial living.”

  She sees Iphigenia carried to her funeral pyre by her king father, Agamemnon, and she cries for her own sacrificed mother, her rage-filled grandfather, and George, who she now sees as scarred by this loss. She cries for herself, too, and for all the children, the soldier boys, who have been sacrificed by their elders for some sin of pride and hubris. All of us!

  “Bubblicious, I’m here.” Mario places two croissants in front of her. She eats one and gives the other to him.

  “I want to have a relationship with George,” she says.

  Mario puts out his hands to her. She takes them. They sit in silence.

  “It’s only been a day since yesterday,” she says eventually, feeling the world has turned.

  His warm eyes invite her to continue.

  “And such an amazing day. Encompassing everything. Starting with you and me and now circling back to us. It’s like I’ve been around the world in twenty-four hours.”

  “Lavinia. I need you to be by my side.” His eyes sparkle. “Let’s dance tonight.”

  “Okay.” She smiles back at him.

  Lavinia takes a corner of his croissant into her mouth and feeds him the rest. When he’s finished, he has to return to his counter. The place is filling up with eager customers—quiet, thirsty-for-caffeine customers. He waves good-bye.

  “I’ll be back after I see Zack,” she calls to him before slipping out the door.

  Leaving the café, she heads down Chestnut Street to Zack’s. He doesn’t mind that she missed her Monday. He greets her just as eight cuckoos sound off, along with other chiming bells. On a long coffee table he has set up maps, guidebooks, a compass, a Swiss Army knife, water bottles, and rain gear. Hiking boots with heavy socks sticking out the tops sit on the plush carpet, next to a series of open maps.

  “Aren’t you going swimming today?” Lavinia asks.

  “Later. Let’s look at the maps together.” He points to Bishop, California.

  She’s never heard of Bishop, but his slow speech grounds her as she takes a seat next to the outstretched maps, upon which he has made many circles. On closer inspection, she realizes the circles are depicting the gradations on various altitudes of forest and mountains. Bishop is the closest town to the bristlecone forest. It’s not flatland, as she imagined. The Eastern Sierra, where he plans to visit, has high altitudes.

  “You’re so organized,” she says. He seems like a Boy Scout to her, a mountain man for sure.

  “That reminds me.” He gets up, grabs a navy duffel bag from the couch, and brings it over to her. “Open it.”

  Inside is a brand-new rainproof down jacket with a hood trimmed in fake fur, tags still on. “Ripstop nylon fabric,” the label says.

  “I hope you like red. I ordered it from REI.”

  “It’s beautiful, Zack. Thank you.”

  “There’s more in there.”

  She feels around the cushioned bottom of the bag and finds a soft cashmere scarf. She pulls it out and puts it up to her face. The wool is softer than her Raggedy. She covers her eyes with the scarf, to dab the tears growing in there. No one has ever given her such a thoughtful gift.

  “Mario said it could get as low as 18 degrees,” Zack says, chuckling and not commenting on the tears that have sprung to her eyes. “The weather will be a crapshoot, but I thought you should be prepared.”

  “Thank you, Zack. You are so kind.” She gets up, unzips the jacket, and tries it on.

  “Beautiful,” he says. “Red’s your color.”

  Her eyes fall to the map with the route he’s highlighted, expanding in concentric circles as the cuckoo sings the half hour. She watches his steady hand drawing with a Sharpie a straight line easterly toward the Sierra, and then south. Her pulse rises and her skin prickles, like when Mercedes sings her beautiful, deep rondas. His dream, his three wishes, pull her in and toward this ancient forest adventure.

  “Where will we sleep?” she asks.

  “I’ve reserved motels for us. Two rooms.”

  She looks around at all his gear. The maps of the Owens Valley, the White Mountains area, and Highway 395; the socks, the boots, snowshoes, poles, hats, and gloves. She touches the front of her new jacket.

  “I have things around here of Elsa’s or Margaret’s, and what you don’t have we can rent. There will be lots of mountaineering stores in the mountains for tourists.”

  “I have hiking stuff, too. I’ll get everything together this afternoon,” she says, “and be ready. It’s two days from now.”

  “Good, sounds like we’re on our way.”

  Zack gets up and begins to gather his swim bag and leaves the apartment with Lavinia sitting in her shiny red jacket. Whenever have I been treated so kindly? she thinks. It feels like Christmas morning to her.

  She opens the door to the room holding the replica Millennium clock with its tungsten parts. The moving parts—a wheel of time. The books call out from the library shelf—The Oldest Living Things in the World, Deep Time, The Story of Time.

  “Time and more time,” Lavinia says aloud. It’s time to live the good time, to open the door, to face my beautiful life.

  She looks in at the machine with the pendulum at its base in the form of a three-pronged wheel, at the clock dial on the top, made of multiple spirals of solid tungsten. Zack said tungsten, of all metals in their purest form, has the highest tensile strength, even stronger than uranium. Her mother did not go to high school or college to learn about the periodic table of elements. Her mother was not indestructible like tungsten but in George’s mind she lives. Carved in stone, if not in blood.

  Lavinia closes the door to the room where the model of the 10,000-year clock resides. The cuckoos in the living room sing out ten.

  She washes the swimsuits by hand and places clothes in the washer and then the drier. She can hear the noon bells of St. Peter and Paul’s in North Beach chiming in the distance as she finishes.

  It’s time now. She grabs her money and puts a now dried fig leaf on the blue linen tablecloth, which Elsa used to fuss over in her life. People and events from the long past seem to rush together in her life, emerging with new vigor as people rise from the dead. She lets herself out into the late-morning sunshine of North Beach
.

  When she reaches Falcone, it’s quiet. Mario is standing at the counter, looking at his cell. When he looks up, he smiles. “Lavinia, you look beautiful in red!”

  “A Christmas present, she says. “He wants me to be warm in the mountains as well as help with the driving.”

  “That’s Zack.”

  “I’m ready to go.”

  “You’ll love the high desert. The open, vast spaces of stars and mountains, deserts like an ancient ocean—there’s an openness there that clears out the cobwebs.”

  “And I have some cobwebs to clear.” She laughs, considering the idea that her cobwebs were made by the spider whose web she saw glistening with diamonds in her yard this morning. “It’s settled, then. I’m leaving on Thanksgiving morning. Only two days away.”

  “You can stay at my place on Wednesday night, and I’ll walk you over to his place with your stuff,” Mario suggests.

  She smiles and nods. “And tonight we’ll celebrate—go dancing. But first I have to pack. I’ll come here tonight about seven o’clock.” She gives him a kiss, kicks up her heels, and heads for home.

  Chapter 27:

  LONG DISTANCE

  A note in her mailbox from George. His writing is very small and legible, like he took time to write it. She reads it at the entryway to her long room.

  Yesterday. Thanks for your questions. I wonder how you’re sitting with all this. We’ll talk some more when you’re ready. I may have gone too fast. Please forgive me for not starting this conversation earlier, but I didn’t know how. Not sure I even can do it now.

  Lavinia sticks the note in her top drawer next to the photo of five-year-old Lavinia with Sal crouched over her as she examines her first-ever bubblegum. The fig tree is whispering—or is the wind swishing the leaves?

  She closes the drawer and searches for some heavy clothes from her closet—woolen socks, corduroy slacks, a North Face pullover, a raincoat, a ski hat, and mittens. Hiking boots. Sunglasses and case. Eyeglass strap for them. A bandanna, a sunhat, and sunscreen. All stuff she’s used hiking on Mt. Tam. She folds the new cashmere scarf and the red jacket on top of her gear.

  Leaving town now, just when what seem like harmonic conversions are occurring with the loves of her life, must be some kind of ritual.

  But Sal, he’s missing. She wants to talk to him before she leaves. She picks up her cell. She looks at the world clock: time in Naples, 10:00 p.m. She dials his old cell phone number, not remembering whether he’s given her a new number.

  He picks up the phone. “Pronto, pronto,” he says.

  “Uncle Sal?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Lavinia Lavinia. Where are you?”

  “What?”

  “You sound so near, Uncle.”

  “I’m in bed in Naples. What time is it there?”

  “Early afternoon in San Francisco.”

  Sal seems to be waking up now and sounds less hassled. “How are you, Lavinia?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you kept the same cell number sooner?” She can’t believe she never tried it before.

  “Is that why you called?”

  She can see him wrinkling up his nose. “You never told me I had a father, Uncle Sal. Why was Giovanni the one to tell me about George? Did you know that George lived on Folsom Street?”

  A long silence.

  “Sal, answer me! Did you know my father lived here in our neighborhood?”

  “I could never find the right time to tell you.”

  “That’s so lame, Sal.”

  “Did you meet him?” Sal says.

  “Of course, I met him. I bet before you left you arranged with Dr. Brady for me to work for him.”

  More silence.

  “Well, did you?”

  “I’m a coward, Lavinia. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t even introduce you to him. I never wanted to see George. I blamed him for what happened to my sister.”

  “Excuse me, Sal.” Lavinia’s voice rises to a fever pitch. “What, exactly, did he do to my mother?”

  “He loved her and that made her do strange things,” he says.

  “Like what?”

  Again, silence.

  “Answer me!”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Sal! Sal, what did his love make her do?”

  “Die.”

  Stunned, she shouts, “But he still loves her.”

  “That love killed her, and our father, too. How could I ever let that happen to you?”

  “Sal, that doesn’t make any sense. It was your father who killed them both, not George.”

  He doesn’t answer. She hears some hissing or gasping sounds.

  “Lavinia, can we talk about this later? I’m exhausted right now. Please, Vinnie, calm yourself down.”

  She hates when he closes down like he just did. Just like when she was a kid and he said, “Stop asking, stop asking, Vinnie.”

  She hangs up on him.

  Continuing with her packing, she thinks of Zack and his kind gestures toward her. And what was it he told her? Didn’t he say she has something to do—fill in the pieces of the puzzle, or something like that?

  Chapter 28:

  BEAUTIFUL SAD EYES

  She walks out to the patio and touches the earth mulch beneath the tree.

  “Lavinia Lavinia, come upstairs,” she hears. Is that the fig tree calling her now? She ignores the voice, worrying that it is Aunt Rose waking up from the dead. A bird chirps and chirps again. A wind breezes through the fig tree. She succumbs to its call and takes the key and once again heads to the upstairs apartment.

  Why am I going upstairs today? She doesn’t know, but she’s begun to trust this voice—and yet she fears seeing Rose on that deathbed again. She wants to think she’s finally departed and is resting in peace now that she’s returned Raggedy. The whispering leaves of the fig cancel the voice of Sal cussing, accusing George of killing her mother, and soothes her as she enters the upstairs bedroom.

  She stops at the foot of Aunt Rose’s bed, clenching her eyes shut, scared, half expecting Rose will stick out her finger and point her to where she needs to search again. But Rose has gone away now, having redeemed herself. She is finally at peace.

  Lavinia looks at the bed. “I forgive you, Rose. Thank you for providing a home for me.”

  On the opposite wall from where Raggedy lived all those years stands a unit with fifty-odd small drawers—more like an apothecary cabinet, with rectangular pullouts of varying sizes.

  She doesn’t know where to begin and takes a stab in the middle. She opens the small drawer, pinching her nose at the odor. Musty dried hair clings to a white pearl comb, hairpins, a hair net with strings of gray hair, Q-tips. She searches quickly through several more drawers until she finds what she’s looking for—a small discolored photo album about two by three inches sits at the base of the drawer. Sal must have taken it from Italy. Who gave him this album? Nonna Caterina?

  She leafs through the little album of tiny photos and stops at an early picture of her mother. Angela is truly beautiful, just as George described her. Her auburn hair reflects the sun. She wears a sundress, showing off beautifully rounded shoulders. She is voluptuous in a classical way. The faint smudge of her birthmark on her cheek seems to accentuate her beauty rather than detract from it.

  Then Lavinia sees a picture of her pregnant mother with joy in her face; next, a picture of George as a young boy, sketching as Angela dances. Who took this picture? They’re in a park with white flowering trees. Having never seen it before, she wonders how this picture is in Sal’s possession. Was it meant for her? Did her nonna Caterina ask Sal to give it to her so she could see her parents and their love? She snatches the book, closes up the dirty-smelling room, and leaves it—for eternity, she hopes.

  She places the photo album in her small purse and heads for Folsom Street to show George. She wants to erase Sal’s nasty accusation that her father killed her mother. How could such a pure love kill her mother? What k
illed her mother was a maniac.

  Arriving at Folsom Street, she enters the studio, remembering those innocent days when she came here to pick up tarps and then return them and collect the money. That seems so long ago now, yet it has only been a few weeks. She watches George working in his hot clay room near the kiln, throwing clay the way he showed her. He’s in his shorts, shirtless. She stares at the man she doesn’t really know, the man who is her birth father. He works the clay with quick movements—a vertical, a swift diagonal, and then a horizontal throw, like some exquisite tai chi move. Then she hears the music: “The Merry Widow” waltz. She listens to the lyrical melody, which ascends and descends, creating a bittersweet mood. She walks closer. He stops throwing and looks at her.

  “Lavinia!” he says, clearly surprised to see her in his space. “Let me put on something, and I’ll meet you in a moment.”

  She turns toward the larger room from which she entered and walks across it to the center. She is the hub of a wheel that is her mother.

  “Hello, Lavinia.” George returns dressed in slacks and shirt and walks toward her, following the circles she’s making. He stops beside her in the middle of the room. He reaches his hand out to her with affection.

  She looks into his soft eyes and accepts his hand. They stand in the center of the great room, holding hands gently. She lets herself accept the warm, loving affection.

  “I found a picture of you and my mother.”

  She drops her shoulder pack onto the cement floor. Crouching, she removes the small, faded album. She opens to the page where, on a sunlit summer day, a fifteen-year-old Angela poses for a sixteen-year-old boy.

  He takes the photo and brings it to his nose, smelling it. Then he brings it close up to his eyes, steadily stares, and bursts into a joyful smile. He kisses the photo and returns it to the album.

  “She didn’t pose for you in the nude, did she?”