An Italian Wife

He looked at her face and imagined she was Eva Peretsky. “Come here,” he said, pulling her face down to meet his. He kissed her, and tried on his own to simulate that movement that had made Eva say, “I am here.” He clutched onto Anna’s ass, trying to get her to that same place. But she didn’t. When he came, he thought of Eva, and groaned so loud that Anna told him to shut up.

The next morning, as he lay in bed, he heard her calling him. Carmine went to the window and saw Anna, still in her nightdress, shivering. She had the same brown sweater on as before, and her shoes and stockings. The sky was still dark, with distant hints of pink and red. He pulled on his pants and a shirt and met her outside under the cherry tree. He lit a cigarette and offered her one, but she shook her head.

“Please don’t die,” she said.

“I won’t,” he told her. She was the type of girl who took comfort in empty promises like this. Girls around the world were asking this same thing of men, knowing there was no choice in it. Perhaps Eva had asked her husband not to die, but he had anyway, killing her, too.

“Promise?” Anna said.

Carmine nodded.

“I thought,” Anna said, working out a snarl in her hair, “I thought you might want to do it one more time before you go. Men like it, I know that.”

It struck him that perhaps she believed he would die, to offer herself again like this.

Carmine took her face in his hands and kissed her. He knew a man and woman could kiss for hours. He knew that kissing built passion. Maybe if he kissed her until the sun came up fully, she would enjoy it too. But she was fidgeting, eager to get it done.

He unbuttoned her sweater and reached his hand inside her nightgown to touch her breasts.

He pushed her against the cherry tree too roughly, and bent her over, moving his hand under her nightgown. There. The Garden of Eden. He found the spot and began to rub, slowly and methodically.

She protested, but he kept up the same rhythm. He felt her growing wet. He heard her breathing come in small, short breaths. Carmine pressed against her and kept rubbing.

“Stop,” she said, and as soon as she said it, he felt it, that shiver running right through her. She pressed against his hand, as if begging for more.

“What’s wrong with you?” he heard her say. “What happened to you on Coney Island?”

Smiling, Carmine pushed into her.



EVA TOOK HIM in her hands and began to move up and down. Carmine closed his eyes and gave a final thrust, coming at last.

“Eva,” he said.

He reached out for her, but nothing was there.

“Eva?” he said, hearing the panic rise in his voice. Sticky and hot and wet, he got out of bed. The sun had started to rise. He could see it from here.

In the hallway, he saw his niece, Francesca. So many people lived in this house. So many women. He hated them all.

“Puttana,” he snarled at her.

She wrinkled her face as if she might cry.

“Puttana,” he said again, softer now.

His mother appeared, pushing the girl out of his way. “Basta, Carmine,” she told him. “Enough.”

He went downstairs to the sink and began to wash the brains and bones and bits of skin from his face. He scrubbed with the rough towel and the fat bar of soap. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get clean.





Moonlight in Vermont





VERMONT COMES FROM THE FRENCH—VERT MONT. Green mountain. Josephine knows this because her daughter, Elisabetta, the one so smart that she got to go to college, where she slept with her English professor, got pregnant, dropped out to marry him, and became a faculty wife, tells her things like this. Elisabetta lives in Iowa now. Iowa, which was named for the Iowa River, which was named for the Ayuhwa Indian tribe, which the English called the Ioway, which means one who puts to sleep.

“This is an appropriate name for Iowa, Ma,” Elisabetta writes to her. “It is dull, dull, dull here.”

Elisabetta calls herself Betsy, her husband Kip and her son Eugene. The boy peers out at Josephine from a black-and-white photograph, its edges cut in a zigzag pattern like someone put garden shears to them. He is too skinny. His black glasses appear to be taped together on one side. He is holding a rabbit or a fat cat, Josephine can’t be certain. Behind him, a lot of grass and a barn in the distance. This is Iowa, the place that puts you to sleep.

But Vermont. Green Mountain. Josephine goes there to visit her daughter Chiara, the one who is becoming a nun. This is how she has come to think of her daughters. Concetta, the responsible one who has moved her family in with Josephine; Giulia, the one who can’t stop having babies even though her husband is not a good provider; Isabella, the slow one who married a man who is also not quite right; Valentina, the one she lost, the daughter she gave away.

Is it a coincidence that of all the convents where Chiara could have been placed, she ended up at this one near Montpelier, Vermont? Montpelier, which means nothing except that it is the capital of Vermont. When Josephine got the letter from Chiara telling her where she was being sent, Josephine thought it was a sign. The daughter she gave away, the one lost to her, her Valentina, is somewhere in Vermont. That is all she knows about the girl, but surely it is no accident that Chiara is there too. Surely Josephine is meant to find her daughter.