Ava came around to sit across from me.
“A head?” Ava said. “Not only is it positively ghoulish, but for a mother to send a postcard of such a thing to her daughter. Well.”
I narrowed my eyes at Ava. What did this woman know about mothers and daughters, anyway? Now that her own daughter was turning into someone, Ava grew more baffled every day. Zoe screamed, “No!” at just about everything Ava gave to her: small perfect tortellini, plump purple figs, focaccia smeared with olive oil and salt. To all of it Zoe screamed, “No!,” often sweeping it off the table with a grand gesture. Whenever she ate pasta in red sauce, Zoe dropped her face right into the bowl and gobbled it like a dog. Ava could only look on, horrified. It was my father who carried Zoe over to the sink and washed the sauce out of her hair and face and from in between her fingers. One of Ava’s favorite things to say lately was, “Scott, do something.”
I turned over the postcard and began to read the message. It was full of details of the churches in Siena, the monastery at La Verna, all the things she knew I would like.
“How is your mother?” Ava asked, trying to sound casual and uninterested.
I pretended I didn’t hear her. My emotions, about Ava and my mother and everything, were all mixed up inside of me. I could feel them bubbling up like one of my mother’s stews.
“Madeline?” Ava said.
I dropped the postcard into my lap. “I thought you weren’t supposed to ask,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Ava said.
“I mean,” I said dramatically, “I thought you weren’t supposed to ask about my mother. She’s off limits, right?”
Ava made a nervous little sound in her throat. Back in New York she seemed confident and in charge. Here, she was a mess. She even looked shorter here.
“No one ever said that,” Ava said.
“Fine,” I said. “Then here’s how she is. She has managed to take care of us and keep writing and run a house that is practically falling on our heads while Daddy ran off with you.” My heart was beating fast. I was saying things that hadn’t seemed to take shape yet in my head, but once I opened my mouth and the words began to spill out they made perfect sense. “Because that’s what happened, isn’t it? Daddy met you before the avalanche and left all of us for you. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Ava opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Footsteps came from down the long hallway that led to the bedrooms. My father was taking Zoe and Cody to the little park up the street, where there was a playground and ponies to ride.
“Madeline,” Ava managed to say, but that was all. And really, what more could she say?
The kitchen door flew open and Cody ran in, followed by our father with Zoe on his shoulders.
“Everyone coming?” he asked.
It was as if I was seeing him for the very first time, someone who had been reckless with my heart, with all of our hearts, my mother’s most importantly. I gulped and shook my head. Downstairs, I knew, old Carmela would be sitting by the window watching Rome go by. She would be sipping one of those terrible drinks she had for her indigestion, and eating stale bread.
“I’m going downstairs,” I said, already moving away from them.
“Honestly, Scott,” Ava said, “I don’t know how she can stand that old woman.”
I swung around to face Ava. “Well, then, you don’t know anything about me, I guess.”
I saw my father’s look of surprise, and the way Ava’s hand with its perfectly painted oval nails went to her mouth. But I turned my back on them and went downstairs.
Carmela toasted yesterday’s bread and drizzled it with olive oil and salt. None of her plates matched, and her cups were chipped. But I didn’t care. I loved her and her things and the way she looked suspiciously at Ava Pomme.
“She’s not my real mother,” I whispered as we watched Ava leave the house alone, a big black leather bag swung carelessly over her shoulder. Without any of us around she regained her New York self. Her hair looked shinier, and she walked with a certainty that she lost under the weight of family life.
“Your father marry younger woman, throw your mother away, eh?” Carmela said, nodding as if she’d known it all along.
“Yes,” I said, realizing that was exactly what he had done. One of my vocabulary words came back to me. “He jettisoned us,” I said.
Ava Pomme walked along the street, pausing to stare into the shop windows, until she finally disappeared from sight. I wished it really was that easy, that by just staring at her she would vanish.
“I hate her,” I sighed. What I knew was that Ava Pomme was not going to vanish anytime soon, no matter how hard I stared.
“Me, too,” Carmela agreed. “She bossy and she stupid.”
We looked at each other and laughed like conspirators.