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 on the 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 in the 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 set for 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.”