Linda Cardillo - Dancing On Sunday Afternoons (20 page)

I didn't know when he was expected elsewhere. He did not inquire when Flora and Giorgio were returning.

Neither one of us tried to calculate how long Rosina might doze.

I think we both imagined that by not asking, by not recognizing time, we could, for once, ignore it. The sheer luxury of holding him without the ever-present knowledge that we might have to break away at a second's notice was exhilarating.

I felt every inch of him: the rough wool of his jacket, the starched cotton of his shirt; his arms around my waist, not poised to release but stil , firm, a brace against everything that battered at me and pul ed me away from him. I was aware, as wel , of the firmness between his legs.

I was no longer afraid. I welcomed this moment and what it promised. We made love slowly, not in a crazed and frenzied way, although that was how I had felt al the times before, when we'd been able to capture only fragments of our passion for each other. He undressed me one button at a time, a kiss placed on each inch of flesh revealed with each succeeding button.

When he took off his own shirt I saw and felt the curling red-blond hair and pressed my face into his chest. We lay on the floor, stretched out upon a patterned red carpet fil ed with flowers of many colors twisting and entwining themselves. We faced each other, bel y against bel y, hands clasped, in relief, in disbelief.

For the first time since I'd known him, Paolo was wordless. Instead of creating eloquence with pen on paper, he wrote that morning on me, his fingers describing his love on my skin. When he stopped I took the hand and kissed each of his fingertips, fingering on the third, the ink-stained sign of his writing life.

"Your lips wil turn blue," he murmured.

"My family wil simply believe that I'm crazier than ever for you, kissing the letters that you write to me, trying to swal ow your words."

Down the hal , Rosina's voice mewled plaintively.

I kissed Paolo one more time and then gathered my clothes together.

CHAPTER 30

Anna's Advice

It was my mother's intervention that final y stil ed the voices of my family and dismissed Yolanda's objections to Paolo as if they were the mutterings of a fool. Even from a great distance, her voice and her decisions carried weight. She wrote to me as soon as she knew what was going on.

Figlia Mia,

I have just received a letter from Zi'Yolanda concerning your recent attachment to Claudio's business partner, Serafini. She wrote—or rather, your sister Pip has written for her, because poor Yolanda didn't have the advantages you girls have had—that everyone, your uncle Antonio and herself, your sisters and your cousins—disapproves of your rushing into Paolo's arms.

Zi'Yolanda entreated me to write to you as a mother. How else would I have, except as a mother?

Whether you wil heed me as a daughter is another question entirely. As I said, Zi'Yolanda claimed to have the support of the entire family. She said you have been foolishly swayed by Paolo's courtship, besieged daily by his love poems. You listen to no one, apparently, stomping from the kitchen with hands over your ears, seeking refuge in the home of his sister Flora instead of among your own sisters. You have always been the defiant one, never linking yourself, even as a little girl, to any of the others. Perhaps I shouldn't have let Giuseppina take you when she did, or keep you so long. But what was I to do at the time, forced to my bed to prevent the twins from coming too soon, and then losing Giovanni when he and Frankie were only three months old. My worry for him and my helplessness and grief when he died were overwhelming. Mark my words: you cannot know greater pain as a woman than to have a child die before you do. May you never experience it.

May you also never experience the pain of a daughter who thinks she can find her own way, unheeding the advice and wisdom of family in the matter of men. May you not know the ingratitude and shame of a daughter who whirls from one man to the next, not knowing what she seeks.

However, as disappointed as I am in your flightiness, I am extremely reluctant to rely upon the judgment of Yolanda. She is a fool, and you will be more of a fool if you heed the yammering around you. In this Papa and I concur—one of the few times in twenty years that we have agreed on something.

I do trust Claudio. He obviously has great respect for Paolo. It would certainly be good for the partnership to bring Paolo into the family.

We have heard through Claudio that Paolo has asked for your hand. Papa and I are prepared to accept.

I shal write to Yolanda myself. Be a good girl. Write to me. Your loving and concerned mother

CHAPTER 31

The Veil

Standing in front of the altar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I saw a flash of light, as if there were a halo around my head. Til y, at my side, screamed. And then Paolo's hands were upon me, ripping the veil from my hair, my face. I breathed a choking smoke. My eyes fil ed with water and a searing pain. I gagged on the smel —acrid, bitter. Then I heard the wailing behind me, the mutterings of the old women. I had been too close to the candles.

I turned to where Paolo had flung the veil, where he was stamping out the flames on the marble steps by the Madonna's altar. It was a blackened tangle of strands, like an old cobweb hanging from the rafters of a barn.

Ashes. I felt the color, the life, seep out of my face, slowly dripping into a puddle of fear at my feet. Paolo saw me, took two strides to my side and caught me as I began to sink, to crumple. He cradled me, surrounded me, whispered into my ear, kissed the singed ends of my curls. I noticed the black smudges on his fingertips, the fine, powdery soot on his white shirt cuffs.

Til y was whimpering. The priest was fumbling with his spectacles and his prayer book. He had just risen to his feet after checking the damage to the carpet.

Paolo coughed, stil holding me tightly, and said quietly to the priest, "Father, I think we can continue now."

The words droned past me without any meaning. I felt Paolo squeeze me gently when I was supposed to answer. Til y composed herself enough to help me take off my glove and Paolo caressed the ring onto my trembling finger.

I could not think. I could not rejoice. I heard only the terrified gasp reverberating through the church, the hum of prayers trying to dispel the evil omens hovering amid the candles. I saw only the consuming flash that fol owed the thousand glimmering filaments embracing my head. I smel ed only candle wax, burning silk, charred hair. I buried my face in the white roses and lilies that I carried, but their fragrance was denied to me, overpowered by this memory that I also carried out of the church, into my life.

Somehow, Paolo propel ed me away from the priest, down the aisle, out into the fresh air. At the foot of the steps waited the carriage. Two white horses. Paolo had ordered them especial y for today, with flowers entwined in their harness. Paolo lifted me into the carriage and kissed my ankle as he settled me against the cushions. He climbed up next to me, and in this moment of repose, removed his handkerchief from his jacket to wipe first my forehead and then his own fingers. He signaled the driver to start. Behind us were the carriages of our families, other people on foot. It wasn't far to the grand salon of the Hil crest Hotel, just across the railroad bridge on Gramatan Avenue.

We moved forward slowly. I hid my head in Paolo's shoulder. I had no desire to rise up, to display myself to the family behind us, to the strangers who lined the road, to the children waving. Because my head was down I did not see the speeding truck that suddenly startled the horses. I only heard the frantic neighing of first one and then the other animal, the rough, angry shout of the driver, the grating of the wheels, the lurching and twisting of the carriage and then a frenzy of movement, a loss of control, the carriage hurtling, the clatter of the wooden bridge under us, the carriage lifting, straining, shouts, wood splintering. Paolo's body was tense, once again surrounding me, protecting me.

Suddenly, we came to a jolting, thudding stil ness. There were more shouts, the shuddering, heaving sound of the horses panting. In one swift, unwavering movement, Paolo lifted me from the carriage and into the urgent arms of Claudio, who had rushed up from the carriage behind us.

Paolo stepped down and together the two men flanked me, walked me around the carriage to the other side of the bridge. I turned and looked back. The bridge was beginning to swarm with people—the families who had fol owed us, the onlookers along the road. The driver unhitched the horses. The carriage was tilted against the shattered railing of the bridge, halted in its plunge by a single metal post.

I turned away from this vision of what might have been, from the erupting hysteria of my sisters and aunt, from the horror of my uncle. Up ahead, through the windows of the Hil crest Hotel, wafted the music of a piano.

My wedding day.

From the very first days of our marriage, Paolo brought us out of the shadows where we had been hiding our love for one another. On Sunday afternoons I'd put on my red dress and take his arm as we walked down the hil to Hartley Park, retracing our steps on that Sunday long before when he had escorted Pip and Til y and me to the band concert for the first time.

Paolo usual y couldn't wait to get to the park, his exuberance infectious and childlike. He'd clipped the concert schedule out of the Daily Argus and always knew exactly what band would be playing. Often, as we walked, he'd be whistling songs he knew to be on the program, entertaining us with a prelude before we even arrived at the park gate. One Sunday he told me he had a surprise for me, a discovery he'd made. I was eager to know what it was and cajoled and pleaded with him al the way down the hil , but he insisted that I had to wait until we were inside the park. Once there, instead of heading toward the band shel , he led me away toward a grove of arborvitae growing in a semicircle. Within the grove he stopped and put his finger to his lips as I started to question him.

"Wait and listen," he said.

Within a few minutes, I heard the tap of the bandleader's baton on the wooden podium and then the opening notes of the tune Paolo had been whistling. The music was as clear as if we had been sitting in front of the bandstand. But instead of being in the midst of a hundred others, we were alone in the grove.

He bowed deeply and said to me, "Signora Serafini, may I have this dance?"

And then he took me in his arms and swept me over the grass in time with the music. I felt his arm around my waist, his hand caressing the smal of my back and sometimes wandering lower. His other hand was tightly entwined with mine, as if he never wanted to let go of me.

We danced that Sunday through the entire concert, until we were breathless and a little dizzy from the warmth generated between us. For the rest of the summer we danced to the concerts from within the grove, alone with each other and the music.

CHAPTER 32

The Strike

Above the Palace were two apartments. Claudio gave Paolo and me one as a wedding gift. We had three rooms—a kitchen in the middle with a room in front that we used as a parlor and one in back that was our bedroom. The toilet was out in the hal between the two apartments. Paolo and I had fixed up the rooms since we'd been there, but they were narrow and dark. I could not see any trees when I looked out the windows. In the summer, I put some pots of begonias on the fire escape.

One morning, I had just returned from the market, my basket heavy with onions and broccoli rabe and peppers, when I found Paolo in the kitchen. We were four months married, my breasts already tender, my bel y slightly swelled with the baby that had taken hold inside me that first time, at Flora's.

I remembered the morning he'd come to Flora's, seeking his sister but finding me, my longing, my readiness.

Was this the reason for his unexpected appearance—was he looking for the same thing now? I put my basket down and went to him. He was seated at the kitchen table, a cigarette in one hand, his pen in the other, a loose sheaf of papers spread across the tablecloth— columns of figures, cryptic words. No poetry this morning.

I put my arms around him, kissing the part of his neck that was exposed above his col ar.

"Buon giorno, Signore Serajini. Come sta?"

He patted my hand and kissed it absentmindedly. This was not a man hungry for his wife's body. His face was pinched and furrowed, and I could detect the signs of an oncoming headache. He crushed the cigarette in a coffee saucer, threw down the pen and pushed back his chair. The pen scattered drops of blue ink across the cloth. I picked up the saucer and brought it to the sink. He knew I hated the stench and the dirt when he brought cigarettes into the apartment.

He paced the floor, moving from the kitchen to the front room and back. He stopped at the windows that overlooked the street, but stood to the side, by the curtains, so that someone looking up couldn't see him.

I rinsed the saucer and pul ed the tablecloth off the table, first gathering his papers together in a pile.

He jumped at me. "What are you doing? Don't touch them. It's business." He grabbed the loose papers from my hand. "They are none of your concern." He stuffed the papers into his pocket.

Tears stung my eyes and I pressed them back with the palm of my hand. His words had been like a slap across my face.

"I'm a businesswoman. I understand business. How can you not talk to me about business, especial y if it affects you? Don't you trust me to understand?"

I saw the pains shoot across his face, the color drain from his skin. Even his copper hair looked dul , leaden.

"Are you in trouble? Do you owe someone? Tel me. Tel me."

I went to him, held his face in my hands. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to caress him. Take away his pain. Take away his false pride. If I could help him, he had to let me.

He took my hands and pul ed them away.