In the bathtub, Angelina put her head back and smeared her hair with shampoo. She had been happy, swimming with her mother. But now, sitting in this horrible old tub on its clawed feet, trying to hold the odd little shower hose so water didn’t get everywhere, now Angelina felt the worst feeling of all, that of not being able to believe things. She could not believe that her mother looked so different. She could not believe that her mother no longer lived ten miles from her, from her grandchildren. She could not believe that her mother was married to a boring Italian man as young as Tammy. No, she wanted to cry, soaping her hair, No no no! Oh, she had missed her mother terribly. Day after day, week after week, she had talked of her mother incessantly, and Jack had listened, but then Jack had finally and suddenly left, saying, You’re in love with your mother, Angie, you’re not in love with me. And so she had come here to see her mother now, to tell her about her marriage: this woman—her mother—that she was in love with.
To have the pleasant-faced Paolo pick her up at the airport, standing next to this small, old, brown woman, her mother (!), driving them here along these crazy roads, so what if he went to spend a few nights with his son in Genoa so Angelina could have time alone with her mother? Angelina hated everything about this place, the beauty of the dumb village, the high ceilings of this awful apartment, the arrogance of the Italians. In her mind now she pictured her youth, the long stretches of acres of corn beside their home in Illinois. Her father was a yeller, true. And he’d had that stupid relationship with that stupid fat woman for thirteen years, true too. But that was just pathetic, in Angelina’s eyes—painful, of course, but pathetic. Why couldn’t her mother see what she had done by leaving? Why couldn’t she see it? There could be only one reason: that her mother was, behind her daffiness, a little bit dumb; she lacked imagination.
Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo. This is what her father used to say to any of them when he found them crying, putting his face right up to theirs. He really was a mean snake of a man (but he was her father, and she loved him), in favor of guns and shooting anyone who came into your house; he’d been raised that way, and had he had sons instead of daughters they might have been like that too. Angelina hoped he never got himself to Italy, to this awful little village, to find this nothing of a man Paolo who had taken her mother’s affections away from them so very late in life. If her father was sick again, really and truly going to die this time, he’d somehow get himself to this village, find this nothing of a Paolo, and shoot him in public and then shoot himself.
It sounded almost Italian, the craziness of it.
“Why did you think Daddy would help me with the money to get here?” She asked her mother this as she sat on the bed and toweled her hair dry.
“He’s your father. I stand by what I said.” Mary gave one nod.
“Why would he help me come see his ex-wife who left him in the middle of brain cancer?”
Inside her head, Mary felt the kind of electrical twang that meant she was suddenly very angry. She sat up straight, her back against the bed’s headboard. “I did not leave him when he had his brain cancer. That was the whole point. Good God, did you kids not know that? I stayed and took care of him, and when he got better I went on with my life.” She thought: I’m going to have another stroke, young lady, if you don’t stop this nonsense. But Angelina was not a young lady, she had two children almost ready to leave home, and she’d be sensitive because of whatever was happening to her— But Mary was very angry. She had never liked being angry; she didn’t know what to do with it. “What’s the story with Jack?” she asked. “You haven’t mentioned him once.”
Angelina looked at the floor. After a moment she said, “We’ve had a hard time. We’re working on things. We never learned how to fight.” She glanced unpleasantly at her mother, then looked at the floor again. “You and Daddy never fought. Well, Daddy yelled and you let him. But I wouldn’t call that constructive fighting.”
Mary waited. Her anger did not leave her; it had sharpened her wits. She felt coherent, strong. “Constructive fighting,” she said. “Your father and I did not fight constructively. I see, go on.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Angelina was still looking at the floor, absolutely moping. The child could have been twelve years old, sulking, yet Angelina had never been a sulker.
“Angelina.” Mary felt her voice shake with anger. “You listen to me. I have not seen you in four years. The other kids have all come to see me, and you have not. Tammy even came here twice. Now, I know you’re angry with me. I don’t blame you.” Mary sat up so her feet were on the floor. “Wait. I do blame you.”
With alarm, Angelina looked up at her mother.
“I blame you because you’re an adult. I didn’t leave you when you were a child. I did everything I could, and then—I fell in love. So go ahead and be angry, but I wish, I wish—” And then Mary’s anger left her; she felt terrible. She felt absolutely awful at how Angelina looked. “Say something, honey,” Mary said. “Say anything.”
Angelina said nothing. It did not occur to Mary that her daughter did not know what to say. For many minutes they were silent, Angelina staring at the floor, Mary staring at her child. Finally Mary spoke. She said quietly, “Did I ever tell you that when the doctor handed you to me, I recognized you?”
Angelina looked at her then. She shook her head slightly.
“It didn’t happen with the others. Oh, I loved them immediately, of course. But it was different with you. When the doctor said, ‘Take your daughter, Mary,’ I took you and I looked at you, and it was the strangest thing, Angelina, because I thought, Oh, it’s you. It didn’t even seem surprising. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, but I recognized you, honey. I don’t understand why I recognized you, but I did.”
Angelina walked to her mother’s side of the bed and sat next to her. Angelina said, “Tell me what you mean.”
“Well, I looked at you and I thought—this is exactly what I thought, honey—Oh, it’s you, of course it’s you. That’s what I thought. I just knew you, but it was more that I recognized you.” Mary touched her daughter’s hair, still damp and smelling of shampoo. “And when I was carrying you, I knew I was carrying—”
“A little angel.” Angelina spoke the words with her mother. They were quiet for a while, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding hands. Mary eventually said, “Do you remember how you loved those books about that girl on the prairie? And then we saw it on television too?”
“I remember.” Angelina turned to her. “Mostly, though, I remember how you put me to bed. Every night. I couldn’t bear you to leave. Every night I’d say, Not yet!”
Mary said, “Sometimes I’d be so tired I’d lie down right next to you, and if my head went below yours you couldn’t stand it. Do you remember that?”
Angelina said, “It was like you became the child. I needed you to be the grown-up.”
Mary said, “I understand.” Again they were silent. Then Mary said, holding her girl’s wrist, “Don’t tell your sisters how I recognized you when you were born, and how I didn’t recognize them—I don’t like secrets. But you should know.”
Angelina said, sitting up straighter, “Then it must mean—”
“We don’t know what it means,” her mother said. “We don’t know what anything means in this whole world. But I know what I knew when I saw you. And I know you have always made me so happy. I know you are my dearest little angel.” (She did not say, and only fleetingly did she think: And you have always taken up so much space in my heart that it has sometimes felt to be a burden.)
In the kitchen, while they found the pans and pots and boiled the water and heated the sauce, Mary was close to ecstatic. Happiness thrummed through her—she could eat it like bread! To be in the kitchen with her girl, to speak of ordinary things, the children, Angelina’s job as a teacher—oh, it was wonderful. She turned the lamps on in the dining space and they ate the pasta and talked of Angelina’s sisters. A glass of wine in her and Mary said, “My word, what you said about those Nicely girls. My goodness.”
“Oh.” Angelina wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Want to hear some gossip?”
“Oh yes,” said Mary.
“Remember Charlie Macauley? Come on, you have to remember him.”
“I do remember him. He was tall, a nice man. Then he went to Vietnam. Boy, that was so sad.”
“Yes, that’s him. Well, it turns out he’d been seeing a prostitute in Peoria, all the while telling his wife that he was going to a veterans’ support group thing. Wait, wait— Well, apparently he gave this prostitute ten thousand dollars and his wife found out and she kicked him out.”
“Angelina.”
“She did. She kicked him out. And guess who he’s with now? Come on, Mom, guess!”
“Angel, I can’t.”