Alone on the boardwalk, Matelda leaned against the railing, where she observed curls of smoke from the abandoned firepits on the 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 bookkeeping 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. Tuscans 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 as she 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.