Only after she was gone did Carmen cry. She went to her room and sobbed and sobbed, but not for the slap. She had never felt such regret as she did for what she had said. It tore at her heart and the image of the dreadful pain in her mother’s eyes seared her brain.
Now it was Carmen who lay in the dark and worried for her mother. Where could she have gone? Where could she run to in the middle of the night?
Leo had moved his blanket around to the west side of the hut so he would be shaded from the morning sun and that’s why he didn’t hear Marta approach. Only when she was pounding on the door with her fists and shouting his name did he rouse himself at about the same time Nonno opened the door with a lantern in his hand. Marta had forgotten that Nonno was living there and in the dim lantern light Leo could see that this midnight trip from town had apparently been impulsive. Her pale nightgown was torn and thistles clung to her hair and her bare arms showed scrapes from some painful falls. Her dirty face also showed the streaks of tears as she apologized to Nonno, “I’m sorry . . . I need to talk to Leo.”
Nonno pointed toward where Leo was standing at the corner. Marta stepped away from the door apologizing, embarrassed at what the old man must think. “I’m sorry . . . It’s late . . .”
Nonno felt he should say something to the poor girl, but from the shadows at the corner he saw Leo shake his head, so he went back inside and closed the door.
Except for the distant murmur of the sea, it was quiet. Marta walked toward the cliff and Leo followed. He would wait until she was ready.
“I want you to . . . to do something for me. A favor.”
A favor? A favor is something one asks of a friend, Leo thought. These were hard words for Marta to speak.
“There’s . . . this boy. He’s . . . He’s no good. Carmen . . . I think she’s . . . I don’t know if . . . she has or not.”
In the light of the waxing moon Leo could see Marta turn her face away from him. He could see the way she held herself, her arms clinched around her own shoulders in a despairing embrace. He could even see the way her chest and shoulders rose and fell as she tried to control her breathing. But he couldn’t see her eyes and her eyes were what he needed to see.
“What do you want from me?”
He tried to make his voice as gentle as possible, but he regretted speaking even before he was done asking the question. He knew that the Marta he had known was gone. The girl had become a woman filled with bitterness, but tonight she was again different—more like a desperate animal drowning in a sea of despair and refusing to sink beneath the dark surface without a struggle.
“I don’t know,” she shot back at him. “Something! I want you to do something . . . or . . . or I swear, Leo . . .”
“What? You’ll turn me in to the police?”
“Maybe? I might!”
“Then do it! What do you want? Another miracle? I’m sorry, but I’ve still got my hands full with your last miracle, and I’m not having a lot of luck with that.”
“Talk to her! Just . . . talk to her!”
“Why?”
“Because! You owe me!” Marta’s voice broke and Leo could see her bury her long fingers into her black mane of hair and then press, as if attempting to keep her head from exploding.
“. . . You stood in my bedroom, in the dark, the night before my wedding . . . and you said . . . things! You said things you had no right to say! You told me things . . . you shouldn’t have! Not then! The night before my wedding! You owe me!”
“That was a long time ago,” Leo whispered.
“It was yesterday!”
She was crying and Leo found himself wanting to say things to her again. He wanted words that would explain that night and the years before that night, and the years since that night. But those words didn’t exist. And so, because he didn’t have words and she was in such pain, he reached out and touched her arm. But she pulled back as if he had burned her with a flame and he could see her hands held up to him, ordering him to stop.
“. . . Don’t touch me . . . Don’t . . .”
But there was no anger in her voice. Now it was the voice of a frightened girl, one he’d heard before. As he had stood in her bedroom so many years ago and said things he had no right to say, that was the voice that came pleading out of the darkness, “Don’t say that . . . Please stop . . .”
Marta wrapped the moonlight around her and calmed herself. When she spoke again it was as this new creature, this woman he’d come to know since his return.
“You had a friend once. You betrayed him. Carmen is his daughter. I want you to do this thing for Franco.” She turned and walked up the trail that would take her back to town and Leo was able to watch her shadowy form for a long time before it eventually disappeared into the moonlight.
Why the hell hadn’t he stayed in Chicago?
T
he next morning began, as always, with a pale glow over the eastern mountains, which quickly turned to crimson as the sun approached. When it finally peeked over Santo Fico’s edge of the world, the eastern half of the sky flared yellow-white and that brightness quickly spread as the sun climbed, until, at last, it lifted above the rim of the earth and rolled upward. Then the sky changed to a deep blue and all the fire was in the sun. It was a typical summer sunrise along this section of the Toscana coast. But those who rose to greet it found something new in the west. Clouds puffed slowly along the distant horizon, low and heavy. Also, the night before there had been a breeze that carried the smell of something new. Today there would be a heaviness to the hot air and for those who could read such signs, it was obvious that somewhere, not far away, storms were deciding which direction to go.
Marta slept late. When she’d returned home from her moonlit dash down the coast, she was embarrassed to discover the way she looked and she was glad it had been too dark for Leo to see her like that—her wild hair, the scrapes, the torn nightgown, the dirt, and the tears. She sank into a warm bath and soaked much of it away. It was her mind that was still in torment as she slipped naked between the cool sheets. She was sure she wouldn’t sleep; she wondered how she would ever sleep again. Then her head was on the pillow and almost instantly she was unconscious. When, at last, she rolled over again the sun was already high. She felt as if she had been given a powerful drug and she had to force herself out of the bed.
All the time she was dressing she wondered why she was hurrying. It was just another day. The regulars would be coming by for their morning coffee. She had enough fresh fruit. Nina was probably up and already at the
panetteria
picking up the breads. When she opened her bedroom door and smelled fresh-brewed coffee she knew that Carmen was up too and Marta wanted to go back inside her bedroom, close the door, and crawl back beneath the sheets. But she and Carmen were going to have to be around each other eventually. She prayed that Carmen would come to her first, and that she would say something that would make everything all right. It was unlikely, but it didn’t hurt to pray.
The kitchen had been cleaned. It wasn’t as if the place had been particularly messy, but with everything going on the night before, Marta had left many small chores to finish in the morning. Now, they were done; it must have been Carmen. Marta knew her stubborn daughter probably wasn’t going to apologize, but the work she’d done in the kitchen said a great deal. Then the aroma of the coffee seized her and she poured a cup and was surprised to hear voices in the dining room. She slipped quietly through the swinging door and into a shadow at the back of the room.
Sitting at a table near the verandah doors, Leo Pizzola was drinking coffee and picking at some fresh fruit. Carmen leaned against the wall with her arms folded across her chest, listening to whatever it was Leo was saying, but her face was an enigmatic mask of disdain. Marta stood silently in the shadows, watching Leo casually explain something to Carmen and she wished she could make out his words, but he talked too softly. Then he finished talking and sipped his coffee, waiting for Carmen to respond. But when she did, Marta couldn’t hear her either . . . so she slipped out of the shadow a bit.
The swinging door behind Marta suddenly whacked her on the behind and she squeaked as hot coffee slopped out of the cup and across her hand. Nina came through the door carrying a plate of bread and jam and apologizing to whoever it was she had struck with the door. As Nina served Leo, Carmen approached Marta, looking uncomfortable— nothing like the picture of defiance she’d presented just hours ago.
“He wants me to work for him.”
“What?”
“He says he needs to get his father’s house cleaned up so he can sell it. He wants me to work for him, cleaning the house. I told him it was stupid. I told him you wouldn’t allow it, but he said I should ask you anyway.”
Leo sat at the table, spreading jam across the thick bread and pointedly ignoring them.
“When does he want you to start?”
“Today.”
“Did he offer you a fair wage?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care. It’s up to you. Do what you want.”
Marta put on her best air of nonchalant indifference and returned to the kitchen. Carmen was beyond bewildered, but money is money, so she went back and agreed to his proposal. Leo only nodded and plopped some coins on the table for breakfast, picked up his bread and jam, and walked from the hotel.
He crossed the piazza and was headed for home when something hissed at him. There was Marta, standing on the north side of the church, imitating a snake and waving him toward her. She pressed herself against the wall and refused to step beyond the corner where she might be seen from the hotel. It occurred to him that Marta must have run all the way from her kitchen, across the side yard, around the edge of the piazza, and circled around behind the church to have gotten there before him. She angrily motioned him to her again and he considered ignoring her and walking on home, but then she hissed once more— only a much more insistent sort of hiss this time. With a sigh, he walked to the corner of the church, but not quite close enough for her to actually get her hands on him and still remain concealed from the hotel.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded in a harsh whisper.
“Going home.”
Although Leo was sorry about whatever Marta was going through, he was also in no mood to be upbraided yet again this morning and so his voice was just as brusque as hers, and Marta was startled by his curtness.
“What do you think you’re doing hiring Carmen to work at your house?”
“You told me to do something. I’m doing something.” “What? Clean your house for you? That’s not what I was talking about. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t had a chance to think about it. I had a rough night.”
“Did you say anything to Carmen about my coming to see you?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Behind Marta, down the north side of the church at the new break in the garden wall, an old gray head peeked out to investigate the snippy exchange. When Leo and then Marta turned and looked, Father Elio quickly ducked back out of sight, but after a moment he peeked out again. He was caught; there was no denying it.
“Good morning,” he offered weakly.
Leo and Marta returned a couple of feeble “Good mornings,” and Marta shot a quick glance around the corner. Across the piazza, Carmen was wiping the tables on the hotel’s verandah and chatting with Nina. Marta cursed to herself, hitched up her skirt, and ran back the way she came—hopping through piles of rubble like a rabbit. As she passed her uncle she couldn’t think of anything to say so she just grinned rather stupidly before darting around the corner. Leo wanted to shout something sarcastic after her, but he was too tired to think of anything clever.
“Leo, could you help me with something?” asked Father Elio before disappearing back into the garden. Leo sighed again—he was never going to get home.
Leo found that Father Elio had been busy in the garden. All of the collapsed stones and bricks were carefully stacked and sorted according to type and size; all ready for some handy mason to reuse. And other than the collections of stone and brick, the garden was spotless. The broken fragments had all been removed and the plaster dust had been either swept away or worked into the soil. All the plants had been watered. Even the Miracle looked as if it had received a proper dusting; maybe even a polishing. All in all, the garden was as serene and inviting as ever.
But there was one sight that made Leo’s heart pound and his blood run cold. The transept still stood! The north wall was cracked and near the base it had buckled slightly—but it still stood. In fact, in the bright morning light it looked damn solid! Leo had counted on that transept collapsing and it hadn’t. Father Elio had gone inside and that meant that whatever he wanted Leo to help him with was inside the church. This was the last place he wanted to be and he was considering his chances of quietly slipping back through the broken garden wall when Father Elio called again from inside—“You need to come in here.” It was as if the old man was reading his mind.
Inside, Leo was again astonished at how much Father Elio had accomplished. The church was spotless. If it weren’t for the broken windows and the enormous hole in the ceiling, you couldn’t tell that there had ever been a catastrophe. Father Elio was waiting for him in the damaged northern transept. The lights were on and in their glare Leo could see that the wall had been crushed at the base and the ceiling cracked, but the room was not going to fall. Father Elio had positioned a couple of two-by-fours at each of the corners to act as braces for a third two-by-four that was to span the top, in a puny attempt to hold up the sagging roof beams. All the boards were tilted at odd angles and Father Elio was obviously having trouble setting them in place.
But it wasn’t the frailty of Father Elio’s bracing that disturbed Leo. It was the wall. He couldn’t recall ever seeing anything so markedly naked as the blank gray wall at the end of the transept. For all his life this wall had leapt out at him with colors and light and movement and faces and people he’d grown to know. He thought of them now—cramped and folded on top of each other, wrapped in an old blanket beneath a dirty cot in the shepherd’s hut. The gray wall was dead now and didn’t care anymore—that’s what he told himself. He tried instead to think of the money for those meaningless hunks of painted plaster, but the naked wall stared at him like an accusation. He assured himself, there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. All he needed to do was steal Topo’s truck and drive away. He could go to Roma or Milano—anywhere. Marta would have no way of finding him. It was so easy, all he had to do was leave. Why did he worry so much about Marta?