I’m glad I thought of sending Pamela home with the roast. It will be best all way round. Better to be alone with Francesco tonight. And God knows I have no inclination to cook. Not with this pain that seems to have its own schedule, crashing through my head like a freight train, then leaving only to come back with a vengeance. Just the thought of cooking is excruciating—the noise of the knife across the cutting board, the banging of pans.
When Francesco gets here, I’ll ask him to make vegetable soup. There are plenty of vegetables left in the bin. It’s his specialty; he won’t mind a bit.
I’d better write out the recipe for Pamela. She can get muddled when it comes to cooking. Oh . . . and the bay leaf, the spices . . . she may not have those. I’ll wrap them in a bit of cheesecloth for her, put everything in the blue wicker basket.
Do I hear . . . ?
Yes . . . footsteps . . .
Pamela’s awake.
margery
Thank God. Just the miracle I’d prayed for. . . . She’d lost that dreadful look. She almost seemed—it’s too much, really—but she almost seemed cheerful.
“You look awfully serious, Mam,” she said. “A penny for your thoughts!”
I’m sure I saw it, a bit of a twinkle in her eye.
Well. Perhaps, after all, she just needed a nap. Lord, all that worry for nothing! And she positively brightened when I gave her the cut of beef and the potatoes. Sometimes it’s just thinking what to cook that’s the hardest part.
Pamela seems to be herself again.
There’s reason to hope, after all.
How lovely . . . a breeze. . . .
And there, shadows moving. Clouds.
Perhaps we’ll get a storm after all, clear the air. How nice to think it will be cooler tomorrow. A glorious thought.
Is that . . . thunder?
God, my head. . . .
It’s cracking in two.
......................................
September 1, 1944
(Early Evening)
Francesco Bianco is walking down Fifth Avenue. In two blocks he’ll turn east—he likes to take 28th Street so that he can stop by St. Stephen’s. The Brumidi paintings. The Crucifixion that towers over the altar never fails to move him. He is not a religious man, but he loves the paintings in this church, all the saints and angels. And he is proud that the artist, Constantino Brumidi, is a fellow Italian.
Just as he nears the church, he feels the rain, and quickly, deftly, he tucks the handmade book under his coat. He presses it to his heart with his right hand, and pulls down his fedora with his left.
It’s a beautiful book, the most beautiful he has made. He has told Margery it’s a special edition he’s doing for a local poet. He hasn’t told her the whole truth, though—that the local poet is himself, that he’s dedicated this book to Margery.
He’s played out the scene in his head many times. He’ll tell her, The poetry may be no good, Margery, but at least the illustrations are superb. The book is strewn with Pamela’s exquisite woodcuts of flowers. And of course Margery will be astounded, will look at him with those eyes that never fail to reach deep inside him. Tonight they’ll go all soft, fill with happiness. And love, even still.
She will tell him how beautiful the book is, and he will bask in her light. He is savoring the anticipation, as if he were a small child carrying a clay animal or a tin angel he’s made at school, anxious to show his mother, to hear her words of praise. He can barely wait to get to Stuyvesant Square.
He is home.
He pushes open the door, calls out, Margery? And it is this that he will keep going over later, it is this that will keep him up at night, how he knew. How the silence was somehow different. How heavy it all was.
He heads to the kitchen.
Margery!
For the second time in forty years of marriage, Francesco collapses to his knees before his wife.
pamela
I
September 1, 1944: Evening
Thank God Mam wrote out the instructions so I couldn’t go wrong. Something usually does go wrong—I forget to grease the pan, or I set the oven for the wrong temperature. There aren’t any carrots, but that doesn’t matter. Lorenzo isn’t fond of carrots, anyway.
Dinner’s in the oven. I can’t believe it.
I almost laugh as an image comes to me, one I see in the magazines all the time: a pretty woman wearing a cheerful apron, stirring something wonderful atop her new General Electric stove, smiling as if she were having just the best time ever.
I’ve been wondering now, about Robert, about whether to talk to Lorenzo about his father or not. I’m beginning to think that perhaps it isn’t a good idea, after all. I thought, What could be the harm, but now I realize that Lorenzo would be sure to ask, But why did it end? Why did he leave? And I would have no answers.
And, well—I’m afraid it might only make things worse for Lorenzo, make him miss him having a father all over again. He’s had more than enough of that.
Someday I’ll talk to him about Robert. But not tonight. Tonight we’ll just enjoy our lovely roast beef.
What . . . oh—the telephone! The loud, shrill sounds startles me, I’m so lost in my thoughts. But as I scurry out to the hallway I’m lighthearted—I’m sure it’s Mam, it usually is, and I’m anxious to let her know that the roast has survived my ministrations and is safely in the oven.
It’s Daddy’s voice at the other end of the line. I know it is, of course, but it doesn’t really sound like my father, it sounds like a hollow man.
“Pamela . . . your mother. . . .” There is silence.
“My mother what? Is she all right?”
“She fell, I don’t know. . . .”
He says that Mam’s at St. Vincent’s.
I drop the telephone into its cradle, run over to the hospital.
They can’t tell us what is wrong, exactly, not yet. A stroke, perhaps.
My mother lies in the hospital bed, lifeless. Pale and small as a faraway, wispy cloud. Her eyes are closed. The fragile lids lie all limp over her eyes like pie dough rolled too thin. I have a crazy thought, that Mam is a doll, and I can simply prop her up and her eyes will fly open. But she isn’t a doll. She isn’t my mother, either. She is a terrible thing.
I hold her hand, talk to her about Lorenzo, the roast, the weather. I tell her that soon we’ll have her home. But Mam doesn’t respond, she doesn’t even squeeze my hand.
Seeing my mother like this makes me nauseous, dizzy. I’m afraid I might vomit. I don’t know how to deal with this sort of thing, a blow like this, as though someone had kicked me in the stomach but I can’t yell out in pain. This hospital room with my mother all ghostly is incomprehensible to me. And a fear beyond any I’d ever known paralyzes my brain. I am terrified that Mam will never open her eyes again.
Daddy’s face is rigid, and I know he fears it, too. He paces and paces, goes over to Mam’s bed, puts his hand on her cheek, or on her brow, then walks away.
pamela
II
September 2, 1944
I call Cecco. He takes the train up from Washington.
Now we are all in Mam’s hospital room, Cecco and Lorenzo and Daddy and I. The room is quiet, the light dim. There’s a window, but the roll shade is drawn more than halfway down and no one thinks to open it.
We come and go, the nurses won’t allow us to be there all the time. But Mam never seems to notice whether we are there or not. She doesn’t even respond to the sound of Cecco’s voice. We had thought she would, somehow.