Domenica was resigned when she looked down the beach, no longer the pristine playground of her youth. The white sand she remembered was now ashen with flecks of hardened black char where the tanks had rolled over it, leaking oil.
There were monuments to destruction up and down the shore. The rusting shard of a blasted gangplank was marooned in the sand. There were deep pits where fires had been built by the enemy to signal their bomber jets. The sandbags of the abandoned dugouts where German soldiers had sheltered, in their futile last stand against the Allies, remained stacked by the pier, at the ready for nothing. The seawall had been blown apart. Hunks of ancient stone that anchored the pier were shattered by the shells. The smooth wooden planks on the boardwalk were splintered and missing where the soldiers had sliced them open to create entries for soldiers who entrenched beneath them. The steps to the boardwalk were loose and missing, like a prizefighter’s teeth after a brutal battle. In the end, it was all stagecraft, as flimsy as a magician’s handkerchief. As if the greatest general could keep anyone or anything off an open beach! By the end of the war, the Italians had no bullets, not even a kitchen knife to use in self-defense. Mussolini had stripped them of everything they had and would need to save themselves in order to save himself. He had been a failure at that too. What a waste. Poor Viareggio. The war had stolen her beauty for an enemy who did not value it. The time wasted was incalculable.
Viareggio was home, but every corner was filled with disappointment, when it wasn’t filled with hunger and despair.
Matelda ran to her mother.
“Look.” Matelda went up on her toes and held a seashell close to her mother’s face. “Scungilli!” she said proudly. The white conch was streaked with pale blue like an opal. “Bella!”
“Bella, bella,” her mother agreed. “Let’s go up to the boardwalk.” Domenica took her daughter’s hand once more. “Someday you’ll see this beach as I remember it. When I was a girl, I played on the white sand. It was smooth, like a silk coverlet. There were red-and-white-striped umbrellas, as far as you could see. The beach looked like a field of peppermint candy. When I stood on the water’s edge in the shallow ripples during low tide, little pink fish would swim around my feet in the blue water and tickle me.”
“I haven’t seen any pink fish,” Matelda admitted before she ran ahead to the steps to climb up to the boardwalk. Luckily, the little girl was still young enough to see magic in the world. The rusted equipment that had been abandoned on the beach became kingdoms in Matelda’s imagination, while they were shapes of grief for her mother. As Matelda climbed the rickety steps, she knelt down and picked up a small, thick piece of glass wedged between the slats. “Mama! A clock!” Matelda shouted.
Domenica ran to her daughter. “What did you find?” Domenica held her hand out. Matelda dropped the thick shard of glass into her mother’s hand. “Matelda, you cannot pick up anything on the beach but seashells. You have to be careful when you walk.”
“It was sticking up,” the child said defiantly.
“Walk around it from now on.”
“Yes, Mama.” Matelda climbed up the rest of the steps.
Domenica turned the glass over in her hand. It appeared to be a timepiece from the equipment panel of a fallen airplane—or was it a small clock of some sort? She couldn’t tell. There were numbers and a small shank of metal protruding from the thick glass. She pulled her handkerchief from the strap of her camisole and wrapped the glass in it. She would ask her father the origins of the clock that no longer told time.
* * *
There had been too much death and dying in Matelda’s storytelling but there was no way around it. Anina couldn’t let go of Matelda and dreamt about her at night. Her dreams, unlike Matelda’s, were not about the past, but set in the future. New faces drifted in and out announcing themselves. There were flying dreams as Anina sailed over rooftops and oceans. She was looking for something in the dreams and woke up before she found it. Mostly, Anina wanted to reach into the years ahead and bring her children into the present so her grandmother would know them. She wanted them to hear the family stories from the source. After all, her grandmother didn’t just tell the family stories; she was the story. Matelda had lived a rich life that should not be lost or forgotten. Her life was the treasure—all she had learned and experienced—not the objects of beauty she had collected. At long last Anina was paying attention to that life and learning from it. She would not dismiss an elder’s wisdom ever again. Going forward, Anina would pay attention. This life lesson was more important than how much salt her grandmother put in the tomato sauce. Anina felt the family history begin to slip through her hands like a satin rope. She had to find a way to hold on. Anina dressed quickly that morning to go to the hospital.
She skipped putting on makeup and fussing with her hair. There wasn’t a moment to waste.
* * *
Matelda woke with her fists clenched. She released her fingers and rubbed her knuckles. The dream of her mother floated through her consciousness as she tried to retrieve her mother’s words and their conversation. It was still dark outside. She never knew what time it was in the hospital.