“A moment, please. This friend.”
“A woman who was the other cook.”
“A friend of yours.”
“Yes.”
“Onward.”
“And I decided I was going to come back here.”
“Why.”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
“I don’t know.”
“Turn your eyes inward toward the soul and describe what you see,” the old woman said in a rage.
“I decided. That’s all. I wanted to come back.”
“And yet you didn’t come back.”
“I–I sent Enzo a telegram about Can I come home, I’ll be arriving at this time and place; but he wasn’t at the station and I thought that meant—”
“What telegram?”
“I sent a telegram but I thought he got it but he didn’t come but I talked to him later on the phone but he didn’t get it. You see. He didn’t get the telegram. But I — but I could’ve said, I’d sent this telegram about Could I come, I will be arriving; but you weren’t there, but the telegram didn’t arrive, but I want to come home now. But I kept my mouth shut. But I could’ve. He would’ve come to get me. I know. But I was too afraid to ask him. Because what if he said no? But I was only in Pittsburgh by then. And I could have said please. And he might have said yes.”
“I know what he would have said.”
“Stop it, Costanza. Stop it right now,” Patrizia said.
“And you know what he would have said, too.”
“Stop it,” Patrizia said.
“You would have talked him awake or driven him home yourself.”
“That’s enough,” Lina said.
“You’re a fool. I love you. You’re a fool.”
“Shut your decrepit mouth,” Lina said.
“Why did you stay in Pittsburgh.”
“I got a job.”
“Coffee grinder. Monkey salesman.”
“I was sewing drapes in a department store.”
“How often did you write to your husband or to the boy — shut up, Patrizia, and let her answer the question.”
“Twice.”
“One time and then one more time.”
“Yes.”
“Are you experiencing the change of life?”
“Maybe, I’m not sure. My heart races.”
“Why did you leave Wyoming — you know you know you know.”
“Why was I in Wyoming to begin with? is what you mean.”
“Unstitch. Disassemble piece by piece.”
“Why was I in Wyoming.”
“Why were you in Wyoming.”
“Why did I take the job.”
“Why.”
“Why did I look for the job. Why did I stop in Douglas. Why did I sleep in the wayside in Wisconsin.”
“Don’t you want to know? If you don’t know, who knows?”
“Why wasn’t I here.”
“First one foot, then the other.”
“Why did I leave.”
“Yes.”
“It was humid out.”
“And then?”
“Why did I get in the car?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“It was humid and I didn’t want to get in the car, which would be more humid. Why was I getting in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I can tell you, but it isn’t what you want. It was insignificant.”
“It was? I bet it was.”
“Yes, but it was an insignificant errand, and afterward I got back in the car and thought, Wouldn’t it be nice to drive awhile with the window open? It had nothing to do with youse two or Enzo or Cheech or anyone.”
“This errand—”
“It was nothing — I was making cheese, but there was no rennet left. You see?”
Silence.
“And then I kept on driving.”
The plow veered onto a highway. Where they were, most of the streetlights were broken. Snow was falling. The snow cover was blue. The truck crawled up a hill. Lina’s face was stiff from the cold of the window. She remembered she still had the girl’s handkerchief in her dress pocket.
“How long are you staying?” Mrs. Marini asked.
“I have all my things.”
“Are you staying staying, then?”
“Maybe.”
“Nobody will beg you now,” Patrizia said.
“Me, or a piece of cheese?” Mrs. Marini said.
“You can’t make me ashamed.”
“Shame is useless,” Mrs. Marini said. “Get rid of shame.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Just get rid of it.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
“It is debilitating and ex post facto and useless.”
“You won’t make me apologize,” said Lina.
“You will, though.”
“I absolutely will do no such thing.”
Mrs. Marini said, “I ask that you give me that.”
“Go ahead.”
“Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please apologize to me,” Mrs. Marini said.
“No.”
“Good, fine, thank you. I accept. But apologies never kept me company. Apologies never tied your shoes.”
Her house — rather, Vincenzo’s house — looked as though it had recently been in order but then an extremely fastidious person had been directed to turn it into a pigsty. Newspapers, schoolbooks, and a table lamp formed an inelegant obelisk in a corner of the front room. The dining-room and kitchen chairs had been left upturned on the tabletops, as in a restaurant after hours. Twine strung around brass tacks in the window jambs held back the dusty curtains. The air was thick with bleach.
They found a note from Ciccio on the icebox beginning, To Whom It May Concern, saying that he planned to spend the night at Ricky’s.
Mrs. Marini went home. Lina and her mother rolled off their stockings and got on their knees to scrub the kitchen floor. Midnight came, and it was 1953. Evidently her husband’s hair had gone white; she found it on the pillow of his bed.
The next morning, the three women spread out the contents of Lina’s bags on the kitchen table. A snowstorm whistled about the house. Her mother said, “Where are the rest?”
“These are the rest,” she said.
“Where are the rest of your clothes, Carmelina,” Mrs. Marini said.
“These are all the clothes I have.”
They boiled water in three pots on the stove. Mrs. Marini measured the black dye powder and dumped a cup of salt into the pot for the cotton and another into the pot for the wool.
Lina had made nearly all the clothes from the leavings of the home-economics room at the school in Casper, and none of the patterns or colors mattered to her.
They did not dye her nylons or handkerchiefs.
You want a why. But there is no why. You want a depiction complete with flora, sunsets, How deep was the snow in the blizzard of ’49? How was the furniture arranged in the cell where I slept in the dormitory? These are the faces of the friends I knew there; but no such depiction is forthcoming, too bad, no artifacts by which in later years to verify that I was there and my recollections are credible, no way to disprove your suspicion that I simply was, then was not, and now am again since I departed the train onto the platform. I want to be a line that extends and ravels and at length intersects itself again, a path that can be retraced stepwise, but I am not, I am discontinuous.
Another cavelike day elapsed before the snow broke and she was able to climb Vermilion Avenue to the mortuary carrying two suits of Enzo’s, one of which was for the father, who was to be cremated in it and sent home in a steel urn. As she left the mortician’s office, the blaze of white winter sun on the snow was like a chemical explosion that left spots on her field of vision, so that she could hardly make her way for squinting and could not tell if the commercial district of the neighborhood had decayed or been revived in her absence. Peering through a gap in her fingers, she noticed a familiar storefront, lacking a sign but evidently open in spite of the storm, and went in.