“IOWA IS CALLED the Hawkeye State,” Elisabetta tells Josephine. “After the scout, Hawkeye, in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.”
They are on a train to Vermont for Chiara’s graduation from postulate to novice. Elisabetta has come home, without Eugene or Kip, for an unspecified amount of time, claiming vaguely that she wants to accompany her mother on this trip. It is early autumn and as they travel north the leaves are more vivid, scarlet and persimmon and gold.
“Do you think children who grow up in Vermont are happy?” Josephine asks.
Elisabetta gives her a quizzical look. “As happy as anywhere, I suppose,” she says.
She pours herself another small glass of apricot brandy from the flask she keeps in her purse and stares out the window at the landscape rolling slowly by.
“It looks a lot like Iowa here,” she says in a resigned way.
“They have fresh cheese in Vermont,” Josephine says. “And green mountains. And maple syrup right from the trees.”
“I guess,” Elisabetta says, as if she has stopped listening.
When the college learned that Kip had gotten a student pregnant, he was let go. But he keeps finding new positions, first in North Dakota and then in New Mexico and Tennessee and now Iowa. Because he’s an adjunct, Elisabetta told her mother angrily when Josephine asked her why they were always moving here and there and not staying still. He can’t find a tenure-track position after what happened. Josephine had no idea what any of this meant, but she’d nodded thoughtfully and said, Ah, I see.
“Are there any Italians in Vermont?” Josephine asks.
Elisabetta doesn’t look at her. She gives her thin shoulders a little shrug and says, “I don’t know. Probably not.”
Every day, Josephine tries to not think about her lost daughter. But every day she finds herself unable to do this. She wonders if the girl is tall, if she eluded the outbreak of infantile paralysis last summer, if she likes to read or draw or climb trees. She wonders if the girl even knows that she, Josephine, exists. Or does she believe she is the true daughter of this woman who took her home from a hospital in Providence before Josephine got to kiss her good-bye?
Once, Josephine took the streetcar to Providence and walked almost two miles to that hospital. She waited while they found someone who spoke Italian, and then she told her story to this blank-faced stranger, this doctor in a rumpled suit, this man who listened without hearing.
“Records like this,” he said finally, his Italian awkward and halting, “are sealed.” He made a motion with his hands like he was zipping something shut. “Capito?” he said.
“Then unseal them,” Josephine told him. “I am her mother.”
The man frowned and Josephine could almost see him translating in his brain.
“Uh . . .” he said. “Actually, you’re not.”
Josephine took a step back, away from him. How could he say this? She had carried that baby inside her, felt the first butterfly-wing flutterings of life, pushed her out into the world.
“I want to speak to someone who understands Italian,” she said, because surely this man in his wrinkled suit did not.
“You see,” he said, “you signed the papers. You gave her up. You—”
“Stop saying you did this and you did that!” Josephine said, raising her arms in the air and flailing them about. “I made a mistake! I want her back!”
“You can’t,” he said, his eyes growing wide. “You gave her up.”
With each accusation he made, Josephine grew wilder. She pushed him. He was a small man, a nothing man. She pushed him again and this time he lost his balance.
“Where is she?” Josephine screamed.
When he didn’t answer, she fell on top of him, her fists landing on his shoulders.
“Where is she?” she screamed over and over.
Two men came, maybe policemen, she wasn’t sure, and they lifted her up so that her legs kicked at the air and her hands fell on nothing.
“Just get her out of here,” the doctor who spoke terrible Italian said as he got to his feet and smoothed his suit.
“Crazy wop,” one of the men said, laughing.
“Oh, they’re crazy,” the other one said, gripping Josephine harder than was necessary. “That’s for sure.”
Later she found four angry bruises above her collarbone where he’d held on to her so tightly. She watched them turn from purple to green and then yellow until they faded away. But sometimes, even after they were gone, Josephine thought she could still see their imprint there, like the man had marked her.
“HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE IN VERMONT?” Josephine asks Elisabetta.