CHAPTER 2
The village of Viareggio was set on the shores of the Liguarian Sea, on the cusp of Il Tirreno Mare, south of the Gulf of Genoaand north of the Amalfi coast. The candy-colored villas with a view of the sea were shaded by a grove of pine trees with tall, spindly trunks topped by bouffants of green foliage. Viareggio Beach unfurled on the west coast of Italy like a rope of emeralds.
The scents of charred eucalyptus wood and sulfur lingered inthe air as Matelda climbed the rickety steps to the boardwalk. Carnevale had officially ended the night before when the fireworks turned to ash in the black sky. The last of the tourists had left the beach before sunrise. The pink Ferris wheel was still. The carousel horses were frozen in midair. The only sound she heard was the flap of the tarps over the empty vendor stands.
Alone on the boardwalk, Matelda leaned against the railing, where she observed curls of smoke from the abandoned firepits onthe beach drifting up to the heavens like offerings. The overcast sky blurred into the horizon, where it became one with the silver sea. She heard the blare of a foghorn as a sleek ocean liner appeared in the distance, rippling the surf in streaks of foam. The graceful ship glided past, pulling the banner of daybreak over the water. All her life, Matelda waited for the great ships and considered spotting one good luck. She couldn’t remember where she learned it; it was something she always knew.
Come back, Matelda thought as the white ship with a maroon hull and midnight blue trim sailed south. Too late. The ship was on its way to somewhere warm. Matelda was done with winter. It would not be long until the turquoise waves returned under a cloudless sky in springtime. How she looked forward to walks on the beach when the weather was warm.
Matelda typically took a short stroll after church in the morning to shop for the day’s meals, and a long walk in the afternoon to think. These rituals had shaped her days in the last chapter of her life, after she retired from her book keeping position at Cabrelli Jewelers. Matelda took the time to get her house in order. She didn’t want to leave her children with the stacks of paperwork and rooms of furniture her parents had left behind after they died. She wanted to prepare her children for the inevitable as best she could.
Perhaps Matelda felt blessed having dodged the virus that had hobbled Bergamo to the north—after all, a virus that targets the elderly certainly had her number. She was sanguine about the situation because she had no choice. Fate was a wrecking ball. She didn’t know when it would swing through to do its damage; she was only certain, from experience, that it would.
The habit of examining her conscience, instilled by the nuns when she was a child, hadn’t left her. Matelda reflected on past hurts done to her and took stock of those she had perpetrated on others. Toscans might live in the moment, but the past lived in them. Even if that weren’t true, there were reminders tucked in every corner of her hometown. She knew Viareggio and its people as well as she knew her own body; in a sense, they were one.
The mood turned grim in the village as the revelry of Carnevale ended and Lent began. The next forty days would be a somber time of reflection, fasting, and penance. Lent had felt like it lasted an eternity when she was a girl. Easter Sunday could not come soon enough. The day of relief. “You cannot have the joy of Easter Sunday without the agony of Good Friday,” her mother reminded them. “No cross, no crown,” she’d say in a dialect only her children understood.
The resurrection of the Lord redeemed the village and set the children free. Black sacks were pulled off the statues of the saints.The bare altar was decorated anew with myrtle and daisies. Plain broth for sustenance during the fast was replaced with sweet bread.The scents of butter, orange zest, and honey as Mama kneaded the dough for Easter bread during Holy Week lifted their spirits. The taste of the soft egg bread, braided into loaves served hot from the oven and drenched in honey, meant the sacrifice was over, at least until next year. Matelda recalled a particular Pranzo di Pasqua with every member from both sides of the family in attendance. Papa constructed one long dining table out of wooden doors so the entire family could sit together at the meal. Mama had covered the table in a yellow cloth and decorated it with baskets of her fresh bread.
“We are one,” her father said as he lifted his glass. Soon, the cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings raised their glasses with him.There had been many happy moments in Matelda’s life, but that particular Easter Sunday after the war was significant. If her memory ever failed her completely, Matelda was certain she would still remember her family in the garden under a glittering sun as they broke the fast together. When Matelda was young, she chased time to get what she wanted. Now she chased time to hold on to it.
The wooden slats of the boardwalk creaked beneath her feet asshe walked down the promenade. She turned when she reached the midpoint of the pier and looked back at the wide gray runway. Why had it seemed endless when she was a girl?
Matelda recalled a summer evening on the boardwalk when she was a girl and walked beside her brother’s pram during La Passeggiata Mare. Nino was born in 1949. (She retained numbers—bookkeepers usually do.) The war was over. Her mother wore a dress of apricot organza, and her father wore a straw boater with a wide band of raspberry silk. Matelda placed her hand on her heart as the details came together in her mind’s eye. Soon the ghosts joined her on the walk, filling the drab boardwalk with color. She imagined men wearing taffy-colored suits and women preening in hats spiked with peacock plumes. Her mother slowly twirled a linen parasol bleached white by the sun. When Matelda stopped to rest on a bench, she closed her eyes and swore she could hear her mother’s voice. Domenica Cabrelli had taught her daughter to love the sea by her example. Matelda could feel the warmth of her mother’s presence whenever she walked along the water under the coral sun.
Matelda wondered why it was so easy to return to her childhood in particular detail, and yet she struggled to remember what she ate for dinner the night before. Maybe Ida’s probiotics would help! She’d have to ask her doctor. When her husband took her to her last appointment, the nurse conducted a memory test. There was not a single question about her past; instead, the doctor and nurse were obsessed with the here and now. Who is the president of Italy? What day of the week is it? How old are you? Matelda longed to respond “Who cares?” But she knew better than to get on the wrong side of her doctor. The doctor assured her that her visions and dreams of the past were normal but completely irrelevant when it came to the current assessment of the health of her brain. “The past and the present aren’t connected in the human brain,” he had explained to her. Matelda wasn’t so sure.
She crossed the boulevard and approached the original storefront of her family business, now a dress shop. It gave her a senseof pride to see Cabrelli Jewelers still painted on the building, even though the letters were faded. It had been twenty years since her husband moved the shop to Lucca, a bustling small city just a few miles inland from Viareggio.
Matelda shaded her eyes and peered into the shop through the wide storefront window. She could see that the door to the back room was open. The workroom that housed the bruting wheel where her grandfather cut the gems was now filled with racks of clothing.
The shopkeepers on the boulevard were busy taking down the decorations for Carnevale. They lowered the garlands, loosened festoons, and took down strings of lights while another man balanced on a ladder and unhooked red, white, and green bunting along the route where the parade had passed. The grocer swept confetti into the gutter and nodded a silent greeting as she passed.
Matelda cupped her hands and sipped the icy water that flowed down the mountain to ancient cisterns. The spigots were attached to the hands of carved angels whose faces had been worn away by time. The water was loaded with precious minerals that shored up the people who drank it. Matelda thought of her mother as she dried her hands on the handkerchief she kept in her pocket. Not only had Domenica Cabrelli insisted her children drink the water for their health, she also taught Matelda how to count as they passed a series of angel fountains on her way to school. Viareggio had also been her first primer.
Matelda opened her purse to pay the fruit vendor as he selected six unbruised golden apples from his display and gently placed them in a paper sack.
“How’s business?” Matelda asked as she paid. “Buona festa?”
“Not like the old days,” he complained.
Matelda passed a team of six men on Via Firenze as they folded an enormous blue-striped tent corner to corner like a bedsheet. The Cabrelli cousins had occupied the brightly painted houses that lined the street, stacked one on top of the other, like books on a shelf. Matelda had learned the homes of her relatives by the color of their front doors: rosa for the Mamaci cousins, giallo for the Biagettis, and verde for the Gregorios. Color also signaled retreat. Matelda was not welcome at the house with the porta azzurra because of a long-standing feud between the Cabrelli and the Nichini families, calcified in history long before she was born. The standoff continued after the Nichinis moved to Livorno, leaving the house with the blue door behind. Matelda remembered the summers of her childhood when she stood at the bottom of the hill and whistled to gather her cousins to go to the beach. The front doors would snap open at once, creating a colorful enfilade as the children ran down the street to join her.
For fun, Matelda put two fingers in her mouth and blew. The loud trill got the attention of the tent folders on the street, but not a single door flew open. Sadly, her cousins had migrated to Lucca too. Matelda and Olimpio were now the old timers in the village. The last of the Cabrelli-Roffos of Viareggio.
Matelda’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She stopped to read thetext.
Happy Birthday Matelda! Thank you for the lovely visit.
She texted her sister‑in‑law, Thank you. It was fun. Not long enough!
Matelda genuinely liked her sister‑in‑law, Patrizia. She was a peacemaker and had encouraged Nino to get along with Matelda; after all, they only had each other. Matelda hadn’t had a single argument with her brother when he and his wife last visited.
Can you ask Nino if he remembers Nonno Cabrelli’s elephant story? Matelda texted.
Patrizia sent back an emoji of a winking face.
Matelda hated emojis. Soon enough, human beings would not need language to communicate, animated small heads with bug eyes would do the talking for them.
Matelda stopped at the gate of the communal garden planted a hundred years earlier by the Boncourso family. Decades later, the lot remained in their name even though the family had died out after the First World War. The fallow garden was carpeted in muck. A few perennial plants were hooded in burlap to protect them against the frost. The white pergola stood alone in the center of the garden like a bridal carriage marooned in mud.
Matelda remembered her first kiss under the pergola. It was summer; she had closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the grapes that draped over the arch. Rocco Tiburzi took that as a sign and stole the moment to kiss her. Matelda was fourteen years old and thought that nothing more wonderful would ever happen to her again; she practically floated home. When Matelda arrived, her grandmother Netta reprimanded her because she’d forgotten the sack of chestnuts she had been sent to collect. Tenderness and shame would remain closely tied in Matelda’s heart until she learned the combination blocked her ability to truly love.
The chestnut trees that lined the back wall of the garden still bore plenty of fruit. Her neighbors continued to collect them in burlap sacks during the harvest, but Matelda chose not to take her share. She had eaten enough chestnuts in pastes, fillings, and dough when there was a scarcity of food after the war; she’d promised herself she would not eat another when she grew up and was in charge of the family kitchen. The current popularity of Italian dishes made with chestnuts befuddled Matelda and reminded her how quickly people forgot hardship and suffering once they’d moved through them.
Matelda and her husband, Olimpio, lived in the attico of Villa Cabrelli angled in the crook of Viale Giosuè Carducci. The Roffos were the third generation to live in the family home. After Matelda’s parents died, and her grown children had moved out, she and Olimpio reconfigured the house. They took the penthouse apartment. “We finally made it to the top,” Olimpio would joke, “but we had to lose everyone we love to do it.”
Matelda had experienced life from every view from Villa Cabrelli. It was too bad that generations no longer lived in one house separated by a few steps between floors. Her own children had moved out as soon as they married. Her daughter lived in nearby Lucca, and her son was farther up the coast. For many years, they were close enough, but not anymore. Matelda wished her entire famiglia had remained under one roof.
The village evolved as the families changed over time. Most of the neighbors who owned homes with a view of the sea had them repurposed into apartments as their owners died and their heirs, intent to hold on to the family homes, found much-needed income in lucrative summer rentals. Villa Cabrelli had been broken into apartments to rent too, but this was more a function of the aging Roffos needing less space to look after than it was financial need. The renovation included the installation of the building’s first elevator, which Olimpio insisted they would need one day. He was right. A house renovation at the age of sixty should keep an eye on eighty. It came around quickly.
Once Matelda reached the top of the hill, she fished inside her purse for the key. Arancione meant she was home. The orange door had not changed since she was a girl.
“Signora! I have something for you.” Giusto Figliolo, Matelda’s white-haired neighbor, waved to her from behind his gate before joining her. “My daughter took a drive to Pietrasanta.” He gave Matelda a large triangle of parmesan cheese wrapped in waxed paper. “I have more when you need it.”
Matelda lifted the cheese like a barbell. “Are you sure you can spare it?”
“Sì, sì.” He chuckled. “She brought me a wheel. It will last us until the next Carnevale.”
“Thank you, Signore. Please, take a few apples.” Matelda opened the paper sack.
“I’ll take one.”
“Are you sure? I have plenty.”
“One is all I need. Buon compleanno.” Figliolo smiled.
It would be like a Figliolo to remember her birthday with a hunk of cheese. They once owned the most popular restaurant in town, where families in the village went to celebrate. The mother had been a good cook, the father a fine manager. All the Figliolo children had worked in the restaurant. They were good-looking people, which helped when you wanted to attract customers. Figliolo’s sisters were long gone, but Matelda remembered their black hair, slim figures, and red-polished nails.
“Do you have plans to celebrate your birthday?” Figliolo asked her.
“With great humility. My goal is to be alive this time tomorrow morning. And the one after that, if God is kind.”
“May God bless you and give you what you need because what you want will get you in trouble.” Figliolo blessed himself. “The Cabrellis have always been fighters. You’ll be all right.”
Matelda picked up the newspaper. “Here, you take it.”
“You sure?”
“There’s no news anymore, just obituaries. I don’t need any reminders of what’s coming.”
“You’re a kid, Matelda.” Giusto was ninety-three years old. “You’re just getting started.”
.
The final apple peel fell like a gold ribbon into the sink. Matelda sliced the meat of the apple into slivers with her paring knife. She patted the dough on the cookie sheet before artfully placing the apple slices on top of the dough. She scattered pats of butter on top of the apple and sprinkled the mixture with sugar. Matelda dusted cinnamon over the sugar before pulling the four corners of the dough to the center, making a purse as her mother had taught her. She slid the strudel di mele into the oven.
Matelda fed the pets. Their mutt, Beppe, ate quickly and fell asleep under the sofa. “You’re just like your master. Eat. Nap. Eat,” she teased the dog. Argento walked along the top of the bookcase in the living room, performing her daily circus act. “And you!” She shook her finger at the cat. “You are crazy! You’re too old for heights.” The cat ignored her, but that was nothing new. Argento acted like the Roffos lived with her, instead of the other way around.
Matelda pulled off her apron and straightened the living room.
Four gray sofas with low, modern lines formed a square around the coffee table, enough to accommodate the entire family when they visited. A vintage Leica camera, a primitive sculpture, and glass jars filled with seashells collected by their grandchildren were tucked among Matelda’s bookshelves. She brushed a feather duster over the books.
Satisfied, Matelda pulled a yellowed scrap of paper out of the Capodimonte vase on the table. She lifted a small painting off its hook under the stairs, revealing the hidden metal door to a wallsafe. She cocked her good ear against it, followed the sequence of numbers on the slip of paper, and spun the dial like a seasoned safecracker. She heard the click of the wheel. The door of the safe snapped open. She reached inside and removed a velvet jewelry case. Leaving the safe open, she put the case on the table on her way to the kitchen.
Matelda lifted the strudel out of the oven and placed it on the counter to cool. Steam rose from the golden folds of crust dusted with sugar. Matelda opened her notebook on the counter and wrote the list of ingredients and instructions to make the pastry. Her daughter, Nicolina, was collecting the family recipes. Matelda never used recipes; she made the dishes as her grandmother and mother had taught her: Assemble the best ingredients. No measuring. Use your instincts.
Matelda unscrewed the top off the moka pot. She lifted out the strainer and measured freshly ground espresso beans into the strainer cup. She filled the bottom chamber with water. Using the blunt end of the spoon, she patted the grounds across the top of the rim to make them level before gently twisting the top onto the pot. She placed it on the stove and lit the burner.
The kitchen filled with the earthy scent of morning when Matelda realized she had spilled coffee onto the scatter rug under the sink. Matelda bent over, cursed, and rolled the rug like a cigar. She carried the rug out to the terrace and shook it over the side. She hung it on the railing.
Matelda shivered in the cold, pulled her sweater tightly around herself without buttoning it, and crossed her arms over her chest.The surf had begun to churn along the coastline. The brisk winds that blew over the peaks of the Alpi Apuane and whistled through the Pania della Croce practically guaranteed there would be at least one more storm before spring. Matelda could not recall a Toscano winter more severe than the one they had just endured. She gave the rug one more shake before folding it.
She turned to go back inside when she heard a screeching sound from the sky. She looked up and saw a fat seagull dive through the fog. “Shoo!” she shouted, unfurling the rug toward the bird. But instead of flying off, the bird veered toward her, so close the sharp tip of its hooked yellow beak nipped her cheek.
“Beppe!” Matelda shouted for the dog. The dog leapt through the open glass door and barked at the bird. The cat slunk out onto the terrace, curious about the fuss. The seagull swooped down to taunt the cat, who arched his back and hissed.
“Argento! Inside!” She scooped the cat up in the rug. “Beppe! Andiamo!” The dog bounded back into the apartment. Matelda snapped the sliding glass door shut. She placed the cat on the chair, pulling the rug away, while the dog jumped up on her legs, tongue wagging.
Matelda reached inside her blouse for the handkerchief she kept tucked under the strap of her brassiere. She gently dabbed the perspiration on her forehead and rested her hand on her racing heart. She peered out the glass door, searched the sky, but the seagull was gone. She had a funny feeling as she sat down to catch her breath.
Too much excitement for an old lady, she said to herself. “And for you too,” she mumbled to the dog and the cat.
CHAPTER 3
"Nonna?” The sound of her granddaughter Anina’s voice onthe intercom startled her as it echoed through the apartment. “It’s me. I’ve got my key.”
Anina was talking on her cell phone when she stepped off the elevator and into the apartment. She mouthed Ciao, Nonna, pursed her lips in an air-kiss, handed her grandmother a sack of fresh fruit, and motioned that she needed to finish the call. She pulled off her coat and threw it over a chair before sinking down onto the sofa and continuing her conversation.
Anina Tizzi at twenty-five years old was a dazzler. She had the Cabrelli mouth, straight nose, tawny complexion, and trim figure. Her hair was thick and brown, like Matelda’s used to be, and while Anina’s eyes were wide-set like her grandmother’s, they weren’t brown but green, favoring her father Giorgio’s side, the Tizzis from Sestri Levante.
Anina wore white denim jeans that had a series of small rips inthe fabric from the tops of the thighs to the ankles. The pants showed so much leg, her grandmother wondered why Anina bothered to wear pants at all. Anina’s navel was also on display. The cropped pale blue sweater barely grazed her waist. Matelda wondered how Anina hadn’t frozen to death.
Anina twisted her hair into a topknot as she carried on the conversation on the phone. Her engagement ring, a simple emerald-cut diamond on a platinum band, sparkled in the light. From Matelda’s perspective, the ring was the only note of refinement on a young woman who should have been nothing but elegant—after all, Anina had been exposed to the best; the Cabrellis were the town artisans.
Matelda brought the fruit into the kitchen. Her cell phone buzzed on the counter. She put it on speaker. “Pronto,” she greeted her husband.
“What did Anina choose?” Olimpio wanted to know.
“Nothing. Yet. She’s on the phone. When a young person visits an old person, they assume that the old person has nothing to do all day but sit around watching the clock, waiting to die.”
Olimpio laughed. “Tell her to get off the phone. Take a breath. Relax.”
“It’s not easy for me to do.”
“I know. I haven’t seen you take a breath in fifty-three years. Not a deep one anyway.”
“What time will you be home?”
“The usual. Say a prayer. I’m going into a meeting with the bankers.”
“Persuade them with your charm.”
“Sì. Sì. I will make them feel special. You do the same for Anina.”
Matelda prepared a tray with dishes, silver, and linen napkins. She placed the strudel di mele in the center, sliding a serving knife under it.
“You’re still on the phone?” Matelda complained as she placed the tray on the table. She ran her hand across the marble top.
When her parents died five months apart, twenty years earlier, they had left four floors of furniture and stuff behind. The marble-top dining table had a history. There had been talk of selling it when money was needed after the war and the shop struggled to remain open. But no one wanted to buy it because the last thing people purchased during hard times was antique furniture.
Matelda had no idea what to do with her parents’ possessions when Signora Ciliberti, a wisewoman who lived on Via Castagna, advised Matelda that she only needed to keep one special object to remind her of her mother. Everything else could go, she told her. Free of the guilt, Matelda unloaded her mother’s gilt without any help from her brother. Nino attended their mother’s funeral, mourned her with the village, and left soon after, leaving his sister to do everything else, including the dishes after the sympathy lunch. When it came to the home, Italian women handled all matters of importance between birth and death.
Matelda positioned the box of jewelry at the place she had setfor her granddaughter. “Anina.”
Anina turned and smiled. She held up her finger, pleading for another minute, and kept talking.
“Anina. Hang up the phone,” Matelda commanded.
“Ciao. Ciao. I must go.” Anina got off the call. “I’m sorry, Nonna. When Paolo wants to talk, I have to drop whatever I’m doing.” Anina joined her grandmother at the table. “Lately, all he wants to do is talk.”
“I made your favorite—” Matelda began.
Anina’s cell phone rang. “Sorry.” Anina reached to answer it.
“Give me your phone.” Matelda extended an open hand.
Anina handed her grandmother the phone as it buzzed. Matelda walked to the safe. She threw the phone into the safe and closed the door, locking it inside. “It’s rude to visit your grandmother and spend the entire time talking on the phone.”
“May I please have my phone back?” Anina was bewildered.
“Later.”
“You’re just going to leave it in there?”
“Sì.” Matelda poured the coffee. “You can call them back later.”
“Nonna, what happened?” Anina squinted at Matelda’s face.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s blood on your cheek.”
“Where?” Matelda got up and looked at her face in the mirror. Anina was right. There was a faint streak of burgundy on her face. “Have I been bleeding this whole time?”
“You must have cut yourself. Didn’t you feel it when it happened?”
“No, I did not. Well, wait. It might have come from a little scuffle I had with a seagull before you got here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was on the balcony waiting for you to arrive. A seagull swooped down out of nowhere. I didn’t think it got me.”
“It got you.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the bird. Maybe I scratched myself.”
“And you didn’t feel that either?” Anina worried about her grandmother, though her mother assured her that Matelda would outlive all of them. It might be true, because it seemed Matelda had not aged like other grandmothers. Like volcanized rubber, her grandmother seemed to get stronger over time. If she fell, she bounced. Matelda was the only nonna Anina knew who didn’t slump. Her upright posture was something out of a military exercise. Her style was classic. Matelda dressed in classic wool skirts and cashmere sweater sets. There was always a tasteful brooch and a string of pearls. Matelda dressed like a woman of means who worked in a city, even though she was now, in retirement, a housewife who lived by the sea.
“Stop staring.” Matelda put her hand to her face and found the cut with the tips of her fingers. It was no thicker than a thread and went from the top of her cheekbone to her ear.
“If a bird attacked you, all those germs got into the cut. They carry disease; plus, it’s bad luck.”
“I wouldn’t worry. It’s my bad luck, not yours.”
Anina opened the jewelry case. The contents glistened like ribbon candy. “I remember this case. When I was little, you’d let me play with the jewelry.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Well, you let me help you polish the pieces. Remember?”
“That sounds more like me. Putting idle c
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