Sacred Time (18 page)

Twenty-seven years ago, but she can still see him, a toddler in an orange jacket, playing with Bianca and Belinda at the St. James Park playground, patting sand into cakes, digging holes for his car. When he clambered out of the sandbox, he smiled angelically and wobbled toward the monkey bars, where a little boy was playing with a toy truck. In his outstretched hands, Anthony offered his yellow metal car, but the moment the boy reached for it, Anthony seized the truck.

He howled when Floria took it from him. “Wherever did you learn to offer something just to get something bigger?” To distract him, she plopped him back into the sandbox, and for a few minutes he played with Belinda and Bianca, but soon he clambered out again and—with that same angelic expression—headed for the monkey bars, extending his car. He was about to grab the boy's truck when Floria scooped him up, and while he squirmed and kicked, she worried about him beyond that hour, that day.

Some days, Floria eats in small trattorias, where her aloneness spreads beyond her body, so visible that it makes couples and families at other tables uncomfortable. It's not at all like the aloneness she felt that long-ago spring when she took a vacation without Malcolm and the twins. Five days in Montauk, in a small hotel near the ocean. How she relished sitting by herself in a restaurant, ordering only what she alone craved, that very instant, without having to plan, to prepare, for her family. And since she knew she would return home in five days, her aloneness clothed her, strengthened her. Because this aloneness was what she'd chosen, she felt a fierce connection to Malcolm and her daughters that did not take away from her aloneness.

But one evening, when she feels glances of pity from people at other tables, even from the waiter, it strikes Floria that here, in Liguria, she carries that aloneness without the connection: a woman who has only one child left; a woman uncertain about staying with her husband.
Without Malcolm?
It's the first time she's thought it, like this, so directly, but it doesn't shock her, that thought, is already familiar as though it formed itself inside her over years.

Without

Malcolm

Without Malcolm

The waiter crosses the room, a large tray on one shoulder. He wears expensive shoes without socks. Looks like an actor who could play a lover or a thug, fuck your brains out, as Leonora would say, or cut your throat in an alley, with equal passion and skill. When he stops to look at Floria, probably because he's felt her staring at him, he smiles, shifts his tray from his shoulder, raises it with both hands, and drops it, startling everyone in the restaurant. But he bows as if indeed an actor, sweeps one arm across his chest and into the air, invites applause. Floria laughs and claps her hands, certain that it's not an accident, that he's done this before, his way of flirting; and already a man at the next table is applauding, then others, applauding and laughing with her, while the actor is sweeping his stage. Afterwards the hum of conversations, animated before, becomes livelier, encompasses her, now.

At the hotel, the lightbulb by her bed has burned out. When she calls the desk, the signora comes up to her room, argues that Floria has enough other lamps.

“But this is the lamp I use for reading in bed.”

With a quick swish-swish of nylon thighs, the signora exits, and when she returns, her sullenness is like a coating against Floria's skin, and she doesn't bother with words while the signora replaces the bulb.

Toward dawn, half awakened by soft snoring, Floria stretches to reach for her first smoke. She likes that velvety rattle high in her throat just before she wakes fully, savors the vibration of the snore where it tickles the roof of her mouth. Occasionally it goes away as soon as she listens to it, as though it had an identity of its own, but usually she can spy on it, let its delicate strength fan into her voice. Mornings when she wakes up snoring, her voice feels stronger, and that strength affects her walk, her thoughts for the entire day.

On her way to breakfast, Floria is prepared to ignore the signora, but she already stands by the holy water and greets Floria, palms raised as if about to absolve her. I can do this, too, Floria thinks, raise my palms like that. And she does. The signora smiles, guides her to one of the elaborate tables where each white napkin is folded into the shape of a bishop's hat. As every morning, Floria is the only guest. It's obvious that the signora likes this work better than her maintenance duties. So would I, Floria thinks, suddenly ashamed for insisting the signora climb back up all those stairs, for one lightbulb.

When she returns to the trattoria a few nights later, the lover-thug-waiter is not there. Two women and a small girl arrive after her, but grab the table she's been waiting for. All in ivory, they're like characters from
The Great Gatsby:
ivory hats and skin; ivory dresses and hair. Their profiles: studied elegance and indifference. Reluctantly, Floria lets the waitress seat her at their table. Without glancing at the menu, she orders a plate of
trofie.
But the women are discussing the menu in rapid Italian, choosing
antipasti, primi piatti, piatti secondi,
practicing their indifference on Floria and on the girl, who's playing with a rubber shark and a Barbie doll.

While lamplight bounces off bottles with olive oil and peppers lined up on the bar, the girl is shoving Barbie's legs into the shark's jaw. Like elements of different centuries colliding, Floria thinks. When her pasta with green beans in basil sauce arrives, she eats hastily. The women are passing binoculars between them, peering through the window into the deep-blue night, while the small girl tries various shark-and-Barbie combinations: Barbie's hair between the shark's rubber teeth; one of Barbie's legs down the shark's throat.

After finishing barely half of her food, Floria pays and steps into the dark street. All at once, the familiar fear is back.
Afraid of being afraid.
She walks faster, trying to fight it off. Ahead of her is a woman, her hair covered, and when she enters a church, Floria follows her. She dips her fingers into the stone basin of holy water, crosses herself—“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”—and kneels to pray as one should in places that are holy. But ever since Bianca's death, prayer has eluded her. Church has become bad theater: repetitive gestures and words without meaning. Still, she is not like Leonora, who cultivates irreverence and loves to rant against the church. She wishes Leonora were with her, now. Then she wouldn't be so afraid.

Another woman enters. Genuflects and begins to cry. Floria's father has told her about women like that in Italy. “They enter a church, any church, and start crying instantly. For them it's a reflex, like salivating before eating.” But Floria envies that ability to cry. She cannot cry. Cannot pray. Cannot return to what she knows now—but did not know while Bianca still lived—was a state of grace. Afterwards, the dark sadness set in. Not being able to get out of bed, to put on her slippers, to dress. She could envision exactly what to do:

 

slide my legs out of bed

push my feet into slippers

stand up

walk to the closet

pull my bathrobe from the hook

lift one arm into a sleeve

then the other

button the front—

But it was too much to do. Too much to consider doing. Over and over, she pictured the sequence, but the link between her will and her body had snapped. Overwhelmed by all she couldn't do, she stayed in bed. Deciding if she wanted a pillow was a major task. Some days it was the only decision she could make. To get from her bed to the door was an insurmountable distance. And even during those hours when she managed to get up, everything she used to enjoy—sewing, listening to music, reading, shopping for fabrics—became a mountain to whittle down. And for what? She had nothing to look forward to. Except to keep whittling down that mountain of all she hadn't done so that it would not fall on her.

Unless it had already fallen on her. Because she felt as though she lived beneath it—without air; without light. Not every hour, though. She was not like that every hour. Sometimes she crawled from beneath that mountain with tremendous effort, forcing herself to slide her legs out of bed; push her feet into slippers; stand up; walk to the closet; pull her bathrobe from the hook; lift one arm into a sleeve, then the other; button the front; brush her teeth; wash her face; cook; sew, even.

She discovered that when she was away from home, she could sometimes follow through on what she needed to do. Other days, all she accomplished was to get out of the apartment, and she'd wander her neighborhood, farther and farther away from home, relieved when it rained, so that others wouldn't see her face.

What mattered was to get from one hour to the next. From one day to the next. In the beginning it was because of Belinda. Who forced her to get up. Who demanded that she read to her, or at least string words together. Though Floria tried, she forgot the beginning of a sentence before she got to its end. She reread it. Forgot it. Stared past the book. Past her daughter.

“Try again,” Belinda tugged at her.

“Don't…I am so tired.”

“Read to me, Mama. Now!”

But she didn't trust herself to take care of her daughter. Was afraid.
Afraid of being afraid.
Afraid of others' seeing her afraid of being afraid. The fear was unlike anything she'd felt before, and she didn't know if her life would ever be ordinary again. With sleep and silence she shielded herself from others. Sewing orders were not completed. A wedding had to be delayed. She was bad luck.

The mother of the bride told her so: “You are bad luck. Don't you know that a wedding postponed means the marriage won't last?” She took the unfinished wedding gown from Floria, pins and all, though Floria had fretted which neckline would be best for this bride with the bony chest who wanted a neckline far too low. “I'll find another seamstress to finish the gown,” the mother of the bride informed Floria. “Your reputation is ruined. I'll see to that. Because you're ruining my daughter's life.”

“Be grateful,” Floria whispered.

“For what?”

“Be grateful your daughter is alive.”

“Don't you threaten me.”

“Grateful. Be grateful.” Floria slipped past the bride's mother and the bride's half-finished gown, leaving her door open.

When Malcolm found her, she was sitting on a swing in Slattery Park, clutching a pebble. “Hey.” He sat down next to her, laid one palm against the rigid valley between her shoulders. “What do you have there?”

As she tightened her fingers around the pebble, she felt its shape, its color, imprinting itself forever into her skin.

He bent closer. “Tell me.” His voice kind, urgent.

She let him peel back each finger to open her hand. Listened to herself as she told him how she'd walked from the bride's mother, how suddenly she'd had the thought how much easier it would be to not be alive. “That's when I picked up the stone. Because it scared me, the thought. And I held on to the stone and promised myself to live.”