Sweet Life (13 page)

She ties back the chenille cords for the night, shuts and locks the door. On her way to the back of the house, she passes the storage room stocked with bottles of water and wine, jars of pickles and brandied cherries she has canned over the years. Draining in a colander in the back sink are white mushrooms, a gift from Rita, who picked them during her usual morning hike into the hills.

Most of the neighbours have known the Bozzas for more than thirty years, and whenever they see Cristina, they inquire about her mother’s health, give advice and recount their own experiences with illness. Sometimes Rita will sit with her mother while Cristina runs errands, but she uses her mother’s worsening condition to discourage visitors. This is not difficult. Her mother’s sharp tongue and affectations during her second marriage put people off, and now she doesn’t have many friends. Except for nieces and nephews in other countries, there is no family left.

It was Giorgio Bozza who saved Cristina and her mother from the reluctant charity of relatives. Her mother arranged to be introduced to him, a newly retired broker who had moved to Manna to spend his retirement years in rural tranquillity. The man was flattered by the attention of a pretty
widow. Until the day he died of cancer, he believed the whirlwind courtship and marriage had been his own idea.

From the beginning, Cristina’s mother often fell into long bouts of melancholy, spent days in bed, crying and sleeping. The doctor explained to Giorgio how one could expect such behaviour from a woman who had suffered much. This was a young Doctor Rossi. “
Signor
Bozza, you must have patience and understanding.”

Giorgio Bozza had too much pride to tell the doctor how his wife shrieked out commands from her bed until she got up, then she rushed about in a manic fury, screaming, “Why isn’t this done, why isn’t that?” He soon learned to grab his hat and desert to one of the neighbourhood bars, leaving Cristina to bear her mother’s tantrums.

Now Cristina steps onto the back pavement made from ochre-red stones. Clay pots, like chubby soldiers, stand in a straight line with red or pink ivy geraniums cascading over their brims. Other plant pots contain oregano and basil and laurel. A square yard with a garden separates the patio from the rear wall of the neighbour’s house, which looms against the darkening sky.

She crouches on the patio to break off dead leaves and pinch faded blossoms she then tosses into a pail. In a corner grows her mother’s belladonna with the bell-shaped flowers, and from it Cristina takes a few black berries and drops them into her apron pocket. Finally, she waters the pots with a hose, returns inside and locks the heavy oak door.

It takes longer to climb the stairs this time of day when she is tired and her leg aches. She stops at the bathroom and runs warm water into an enamel basin.

Her mother, dozing in the shivering light of the television, doesn’t acknowledge the sound of a drawer opening and closing. Cristina tugs her mother from her nightgown and unfastens the diaper. She dabs a sponge across her mother’s shrivelled skin before fastening another diaper. Lastly, her mother’s favourite cotton nightdress with rose-coloured ribbons and white lace. A pretty gown for a healthy woman, it now resembles finery on a corpse.

Cristina takes her mother’s wasted hand into her own. “
Mamma
.”

Her mother’s eyelids twitch.

“You must believe this is for the best. Soon you will be in heaven with Alessio.”

Her mother’s imprisoned hand quivers. “Yes. I know you still miss him.

“Do you remember my first Mass after the accident? After you finally brought me home from the hospital?
Because
of my knee, I couldn’t stand or kneel. I stayed sitting and watched how the stained glass windows held the light, saw how the apostles sparkled in a circle around the high dome. I felt a draft against my face and when I looked at the statue of Jesus near me, I wondered if it was His breath I felt.

“And the pink-and-gold cherubs. Flying high about the arched ceiling, carrying banners among the fluffy
clouds. Someone told me that Alessio became an angel in heaven and watched over us. When I saw the boy angels with their round
cheeks and blond hair, I asked if one of them was Alessio. In
stead of answering, you pinched my arm. It was like being bitten by a snake.

“After Mass, when you stood with the priest, a lady took my hand.
Led me to the table with the votive candles inside the red glass cups. She gave me a burning taper and said, ‘Light a candle in memory of your poor little brother.’ She held a candle close enough for me to reach. ‘Good girl. Now light one for your poor father.
’

“Before I could light that candle, you took it from me. You pressed your hand against your waist where the baby had been, the one you lost after the accident. And you said, ‘We will light candles for Alessio, but never for the man who killed him.
’”

Cristina traces a cord-like vein, blue beneath her mother’s transparent skin. “When the priest gives you the last rites, all your sins will be forgiven. Your anger against
Papà
, your cruelty to me. You will have Alessio and I will have my life.”

Cristina is about to let go of her mother’s hand when, with an unexpected energy, she grabs Cristina’s wrist. The grip is loose and lasts a heartbeat; yet it is enough to make Cristina leap from her chair. She looks down to see her mother’s eyes alive with hatred.

The look stops Cristina, but only for a moment. She yanks one of the two pillows from beneath her mother’s head, and then roughly sets her mother’s head straight on the other. Although
Cristina has strict orders from Dr. Rossi to keep her mother covered during the night, Cristina folds the blanket to the bottom of the bed and sets her mother’s feet on top of it. Television off, shutters pulled in and fastened.

The fan. Cristina takes it from the bureau, sets it on the bedside table, aims it at her mother and turns it on. The ribbons on her mother’s nightgown ripple and leap.

And all the while Cristina’s mother watches in silence.

In the bathroom, Cristina begins her own ablutions by hanging her clothes on the door and covering her hair with a plastic cap. She moves with caution inside the narrow shower cubicle, keeps her feet planted on the rubber mat. Her breasts are tender when she soaps them. Dr. Rossi had explained
she had the symptoms of early menopause. She wanted to tell him he was an idiot and that she was far too young. But she stood in his yard a long time afterward and watched the leaves of the acacia tree drip moisture from the morning’s fog.

Cristina fastens the buttons of her nightgown and again climbs the one flight of stairs to the second floor. The only sound from her mother’s room is the fan dragging in the air in one sustained breath.

She crosses the hall to her room, where light from the street lamp drifts through the window, strikes bits of gold on the dark tiles. She leans her arms on the marble window ledge. The night air feels soft and warm as an animal’s pelt. Bats launch themselves in and out of the lamp’s gleam across the street, and beyond, the dark shadows of grapevines stretch like silent ranks of soldiers waiting for the call to march. She can almost see the shimmering richness of the autumn air, cumbrous with the incense of harvest. Ripe with possibilities.

She yawns, and closes the shutters.

In bed her eyes adjust to the dark. The dresser hunkers its long shadow against the wall and she thinks of the box she left on its top, the box with the slip. She reaches for the bedside light, and then pads to the dresser. The mauve tissue paper whispers when she lifts out the black silk.

The only full-length mirror in the house is in her mother’s room. Cristina opens the bedroom door and flips on the overhead light. When she approaches the
guardaroba
, she sees, beneath the slip’s hem, how her scar glows white. She sucks in her stomach and turns sideways, holds her breath for as long as she can.

Sexy.

Perhaps if she dyed her hair, got rid of the grey. She could lose weight, take a bus to the city and buy new clothes.

And then?

Who will see the silk slip? Dr. Rossi, in his examination room? No doubt he would laugh the moment she left. She places the palm of her hand onto the glass and covers her reflected chin. There. That’s better. Yet when she takes her hand away, she’s surprised. Her chin doesn’t make her look much different from the other women she knows. How is it she did not notice this before? For the first time in a long, long while she can look at herself without the old fury clawing for a way out.

She’s calm when she turns to the bed, touches a button on the fan and watches the whirring gradually subside. With a fingertip, she lightly touches the white stripe across her mother’s hair. Then she rolls her mother’s blanket upward, covering her arms and shoulders. Unaware, her mother sleeps on, her breath faint, but steady.

Her mother will regain her voice and tell the doctor everything. Will he believe her story and admit he has been incompetent this whole time? Cristina can forestall her mother’s revelations, convince the doctor her mother’s mind has been damaged by the stroke. Cristina knows the symptoms. Besides, Dr. Rossi has witnessed her mother’s irrational tirades many times.

There is one other thing. Her mother knows now what Cristina is capable of.

In her own room again, the fabric hisses when Cristina hauls the slip over her arms. She drops the thing onto the floor, pulls on her nightgown and climbs into bed. She keeps her eyes open until her vision adjusts to the dark and to the indistinct shapes within it.

Para
dise Hotel

The Canadians had eaten all the jam.
Also every packet of soft cheese, leaving the empty plastic sheaths on the white tablecloth. By the time the French and German couples descended to the hotel’s dining room, the only breakfast left was coffee and a few croissants.

Herr Heinemann set a pastry onto a plate. “I am surprised the young Americans left us the pots.”

“They are Canadians.” M. Dupuis was gratified to be able to correct Herr Heinemann, although the German’s English pronunciation was superior.

Mme Dupuis tossed her blonde head as if to gesture toward
the door through which the Canadians had dashed
the moment she set her foot upon the bottom step. She’d
preceded her husband in order to flirt with the young Canadian
and was disappointed to have missed him. “Oh, the young!” she said. “So full of appetite!”

Frau Heinemann dropped onto a chair and grabbed the cream pitcher. She knew about Americans. Karl once booked a holiday apartment on the Italian Riviera without first asking who’d reserved the neighbouring room. An extended family of Americans had kept them awake with loud conversations. During the day, they yelled like hooligans at a soccer match.

Mme Dupuis, noticing Herr Heinemann’s gaze, settled into her chair with a series of languid movements, adjusting the cashmere sweater she’d loosely draped across her shoulders.

Herr Heinemann unfolded a napkin. The sweater –
sehr
chic, was the perfect colour for the woman’s eyes. Her profile was classical, but her complexion was pale and bumpy like the hotel’s over-bleached towels.

M. Dupuis, taking his place across from his wife, set down his plate and waited for her to pour him coffee. She poured her own and set the pot down.

Frau Heinemann’s lips caved into a smile. She disliked
Frenchmen in general and M. Dupuis in particular.
Ein
homosexuell.
Married or not, he couldn’t fool her. She didn’t care, of course; it was the pretence she minded.

“I really do believe,” her husband had told her the night before, “that Frenchwomen have a natural affinity for loveliness.”

Frau Heinemann had tossed her large brassiere aside and grunted in relief when her flesh sagged into its natural shape. She was accustomed to Karl’s remarks about other women. As an art collector and curator, he was attracted to things of an aesthetic nature. She had no need to be jealous, though; he’d lost interest in sex soon after their marriage. For a year, she toyed with the idea of a separation, but he had, by then, become useful. He had an eye for choosing outfits that suited
her figure and noticed which items needed laundering. (Myopic,
she was unable to wear contact lenses and too vain to put on her glasses.) Karl put up with her tempers, amused her with his acerbic comments about their friends, cooked goose stuffed with sauerkraut just the way she liked it and never asked where she went on Saturday nights.

“Yesterday evening, I stood by the pool and saw a rat swimming.” Mme Dupuis lifted her nose toward the far side of the room where a window overlooked the back garden.

Frau Heinemann sucked in her breath. “
Mein Gott.
”

“A large rat.” Mme Dupuis directed her gaze to the top of her husband’s slicked hair. “He seemed to know where he was going.”

Frau Heinemann lurched to her feet and looked about, gripping the shoulder of her husband’s jacket. “Karl, you booked us into a hotel filled with rats.”

Signor Corba, the owner of Albergo Paradiso, charged into the room wearing an apron and braced himself like a man about to launch a spear. “
Kein topo
,” he said, mixing German and Italian. “No rats,” he repeated in English.