Where the Broken Lie (28 page)

“Where … where am I?” I asked.

“Campania,” he said.

“Campania?”

“Si. Campania.” He smiled. His teeth were Clorox white against his skin, which was the color of toasted almonds. “Ho pensato che fosse morto. Non ha bisogno di un medico?”

I propped myself up enough to notice where I was. Some strange garden. Someplace I’d never been or even seen. Not Nebraska. Not remotely close to Nebraska. Campania?

“No, I’m not morto, not dead. At least I don’t think so. Don’t you speak any English?”

He lifted one hand in the air and pinched his thumb and pointer together. “Solo un po’.”

“Just a little?”

“Si. Just … a … little. Sei caduta?”

“I don’t know if I fell … I think I passed out.” There I was, again. Understanding his forked tongue. And it wasn’t Spanish he was speaking. It was Italian. “I don’t … I can’t remember. This Campania. This is Italy, no?”

“Italia, si, miss, Italia.”

“But I was just climbing the water tower.”

The man pressed his knees into the soft earth and tilted his head to one side. His shoeblack hair was combed straight back and looked like freshly set tar. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth.

“Il serbatoio idrico a torre,” came flowing out like an easy river on a spring afternoon.

He nodded wildly but then drew in his brows. “No, miss. Not … here.”

To be sure, I pitched my neck, checking behind me. He was correct. And I was utterly confused. Perhaps I was dreaming or hyper-hallucinating.

The man straightened his spine and gathered his words. “What … is … your … name?”

“Ann Leigh.”

“Ana,” he said, but it came out like this “Ahhhnah.” Then he went on. “Mi chiamo Martino.”

“Martino? I’m not sure how I got here. The last thing I recall …” I was losing him quickly. His eyes gathered in closer to the bridge of his nose. “I was in Nebraska, I think. Nebraska.”

“Nebraska? No, Signorina. Campania in Portici. Dovresti farti visitare da un dottore.”

“See a doctor? I don’t know.”

I pushed to my feet, and he did the same. He was taller than he had looked when he was folded beside me, and he hovered close—possibly in the event I was to wind up on the lawn again. It was likely.

The landscape grew watery, and my scalp tingled. The air was thinner than it ought to have been. He checked me over with a quick nod and took two steps back. That’s when his heel landed on something that sent him down, too—a hasty slip that he swiftly corrected. Our gaze met the culprit at the exact same moment. It was one of those tiny wrist bags—the kind you store loose change inside.

“Signorina,” he began and reached for it, only I beat him to the punch.

If it belonged to me, I would be the first to claim it. I slid the zipper and spread the leather, so it resembled a giant mouth, wide-open and ready to scream.
Ann Leigh!

“Shane,” I whispered.

“Scusi?”

“Nothing.” I rooted two fingers inside the bag and dug for clues. I kept my breath as even as I could. Martino swept the loose groundcover from his pant legs. I withdrew a key and business card. I read aloud, “La Pasticceria Tartoni.”

“Ah-hah! La Pasticceria Tartoni. Si! Trova a solo un chilometro e mezzo da qui.”

I shook my head, the flip side of which was still swimming round and round. “I don’t follow.”

Martino searched the sky. “About one … kilometer … from … here. We go?”

I looked off into the distance. A border of pristine emerald green hedges outlined a grass walkway which led to what appeared to be a castle or something regal like that. Martino followed my gaze.

“Where am I, exactly? I mean … what is
this
place?”

He smiled. “The Palace of Portici.”

“A palace?” I squinted, then flipped the hair off of my face.

I was Ann Leigh, wasn’t I? Ann Leigh, strawberry blonde, five-foot-four, dreadfully allergic to cats. I grabbed the ends of my hair again and looked down at it. It wasn’t yellow-red at all but more like brown butter pecan. My head hummed. Martino was still grinning, as if he was more amused by me now that he was sure I wasn’t dead. He spoke again.

“Orto Botanico.”

“Botanical garden?”

“Si, yes. Ana, ora andiamo? La Pasticceria Tartoni?”

“Yes. We’ll go to the pastry shop now.”

And I went with him. Even though, for all I knew, he could have been one of those freaks who got his jollies from attacking innocent young girls. But then, for all I knew, I wasn’t an innocent young girl.

The sky in Campania, Italy, looked familiar; the clouds were funny cotton ball shapes that could be giant sheep—
pecore?
If I were Ann Leigh from Nebraska, then how did I know those clouds, those words?

Martino led me through an endless, seamless carpet of grass and flowers and perfect vegetation. The further along I walked, the more my teeny, tiny memory grew thinner and foggier—like wax paper.

I was going to be married. I think. Though my fingers were bare—no evidence of an engagement. I had a family back in the states. Maybe.

At long last, we approached his car. A woman’s voice filtered into my brain.

“Don’t accept rides from strangers,” the voice said.

My mother? It was probable. Yet I tried to squeeze out a shot of her, of this boy I was supposed to be in love with, of anyone else, even of me with my long, loopy curls. If there were any pictures left inside my head, they were nowhere to be found.

At first, we drove along a coastline, hugging a road that embraced a brilliant blue ocean. That sealed it. This wasn’t Nebraska for shit sure. On the other side of the street, the hills gave way to clusters of homes that pushed up from the land like bright white perennials in soft clay pots. Tall, thin-trunked trees punctuated the neighborhood. The people nodded and waved as we cruised past. I could have seen them anywhere, in travel brochures or something along those lines. Yet as we tucked into a narrow roadway, I began to feel oddly at home, a sensation that started at my toes and slowly toured the rest of my body.

Martino’s face brightened as he steered the car curbside and cut the motor. He tapped my leg and motioned toward the street.

“La Pasticceria Tartoni,” he announced.

The storefront smiled, with its lemony-yellow painted borders surrounding the glass and its name scrawled across the windows. And, in case you missed that, a scalloped yellow awning repeated the message. La Pasticceria Tartoni. Tartoni’s pastry. Directly beside it was a doorway with a door tinted in a neon green.

Home.

Home
?

I fingered the key inside the tiny purse and faced Martino. “I think I live here.”

“Vivi qui? Questa è casa tua?”

“Yes, I think it might be my home.”

We stepped off together, the key cupped in my palm. Martino’s arm brushed mine. A flash sped through me. A movie scene. Starring me and a boy with a crop of dusty blond hair, overgrown and fraying at the ends, his eyes a muddy mix of brown and grey, his sweeping frame bending into his gait. We were walking side by side, practicing for the day we would make that walk count for something big. A man-and-wife walk.

“Ana?”

Martino pulled me back. I nodded, and we went inside, to a hallway no bigger than a flea. My head throbbed. A vanilla scent engulfed the air.

And then a date danced through my mind. August 8th, 2002.

A stairway laid waiting, and we took it. Even though my balance was still suspect, I didn’t grab the soiled handrail. The top of the landing was dark. A pair of doors faced off, numbered 1 and 2. Martino looked to me for advice.

I started for 1 but quickly spun toward 2. I slipped the key into the lock and turned my wrist to the left.

Click
.

I couldn’t decide if going in felt right or wrong. Yet I moved ahead, into an apartment flooded with light from one enormous window without a shade. That light flushed my eyes and rifled through my head with such force it nearly knocked me down. That was when it hit me. Yes, I was home.

And then … 

“Martino. What day is it? What’s the date?”

He labored to understand me, so I took a deep breath and began again. “Che giorno é oggi?”

“Il 15 giugno.”

“June 15th.” I blinked and swallowed hard. “What’s the year? L’ anno?”

Martino released a deep breath, perhaps of concern. Finally, he answered.

“L’ anno … 2004.”

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Beattie’s Bluff, Mississippi 1920

Five minutes after Dr. Mangrove announced that Hadley Crump was going to die, Lucinda walked into the bedroom stirring a cup of chamomile with her finger and smiling as though it was Christmas. Mama had rushed off to the kitchen to fix up a pair of healing socks for his feet, leaving Hadley all alone. Lucinda bumped the door shut with her hip and poked that tea-stirring finger in his mouth as though she meant to feed him the whole cup one lick at a time. 

“I brought you something,” she said, and she wasn’t talking about tea. Hadley followed her gaze to the little strip of violet paper on the rim of the saucer. He didn’t let himself look at it until her daddy called her off to work on funeral plans. 

I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck . . . 

About the time Hadley got to the hot breath part, his fingers let loose, and the words loop-the-looped away with all the devilish momentum of a broken promise. 

Had he not been dying at that particular moment, Mama would have spotted the purple scrap on the floor and wondered why Lucinda Browning was writing notes to her seventeen-year-old son. Then again, had he not been dying at that particular moment, Hadley would have tucked the violet paper in his pocket and hid it away like he hid all of Lucinda’s secrets. As it was, he waited with onions in his socks, curious to see which would take him first, Lucinda or his festering wound.

Because Hadley was the cook’s son and Lucinda Browning was a Browning, she was careful to return later and search for her note under his bed. “Did you read it?” she asked.

Hadley nodded.

Lucinda balled up the words and pitched them in the stove. With a sigh that seemed to say,
Well that’s that then
, she ran her teeth around the curve of his ear.  “I’ll be back after your mama falls asleep.”

A few minutes later, Mama returned in her nightgown, but before she had a chance to fall asleep, Hadley asked her to open up the right-hand door on the washstand. 

“There’s nothing in here, son,” she said. “Nothing but your
Whoops Jar
.”

Whoops Jars
were a Crump family tradition that dated back to slave times. For every misstep he made on the road of life, a Crump was obliged to put a nail in his jar to remind himself that a single moment of poor judgment could amount to another nail in his own coffin. Hadley came from a long line of mis-steppers. 

“Hand me the jar, Mama, and that box of nails, too.” 

Mama reached for his jar like it might sprout teeth and chomp off a piece of her. 

Some Crumps favored jelly glasses. Others liked a soup can. Hadley’s jar was a spiced-fish jar with the word WHOOPS painted across the glass in pale blue egg-yolk tempera. Except for the stink of sardines, it was entirely empty. 

The nail dropped with a doleful clink, spun twice, and settled in under the “OOPS”. Mama wiped her nose on his blanket and cried her ever-loving heart out.

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