From Sand and Ash(28)

“I sat shivah after you were ordained,” Eva blurted out suddenly. “I didn’t realize that was what I was doing. But for a week I didn’t leave the house. I couldn’t. I covered the mirror in my room so I wouldn’t have to look at myself. And I slept on the floor. You left me behind, and I was grieving.” She laughed hollowly and let go of his hand. Angelo didn’t know what to say, but somehow she’d given him some of her pain to bear, because all at once his heart was heavy with shared sorrow.

She had come to his ordination. She, Camillo, Felix, Santino, and Fabia. His family. He had wondered often about her impressions of that day. What had she thought as he lay, prostrate on the floor, his arms folded beneath him, his forehead pressed to the ground, his eyes closed, letting the litany of the saints roll over him, through him?

Kyrie, eléison. Lord have mercy. Christe, eléison. Christ have mercy.

O God, make me worthy. Make me better. Help me to be a valiant servant. Help me to be more than I am, he had silently prayed, wanting only to be better, to be worthy.

Donatello’s Saint George had risen in his mind and moisture had fallen from his eyes. “Help me slay my dragons,” he had whispered. “Help me resist the serpent. Help me resist. Help me. Help me.”

“O God the Father of Heaven, have mercy upon us. O God the Son, Redeemer of the World, have mercy upon us. O God the Holy Ghost, have mercy upon us,” the voices around him had intoned.

His hands were anointed and bound, consecrating them, sanctifying them, that whatsoever they blessed would in turn be blessed by God. The bishop had placed his hands upon his head, asking him if he could swear obedience. He had said yes. Yes to obedience. The bishop asked him if he could give his life to God and forsake personal wealth. He had said yes. Yes to poverty. And finally, he had said yes to celibacy. Forsaking the pleasure of the flesh for the joys of the kingdom of God. He had said yes. He had promised his life and his heart and his loyalty.

Yet still, he had wondered. He had wondered if, as Eva watched, she felt the same stirrings that moved him whenever the Eucharist was raised and voices were lifted in worship. He wondered if she saw the beauty and understood. He had wanted so badly for her to understand. And he desperately needed to stop caring.

She leaned toward him suddenly, and Angelo thought for a moment that she was reaching for his hand once more. Instead, she tugged on a loose thread hanging from the sleeve of his cassock and tore it free. She held the little string between her fingers, smoothing it over and over.

When he left for Rome the next morning, the string from his cassock was tied around the piece of fabric from Felix’s shirt and pinned to her blouse.



In August, two months after Felix’s death, Eva’s father took her to the beach—a day trip, he called it. That’s all they were allowed anymore. Day trips. They couldn’t stay at the resorts or rent a cottage. So they took the train from Florence to Viareggio, walked the ten minutes from the train station, and kicked off their shoes and walked in the sand, pretending it was all the vacation they really needed.

Camillo’s ankles were skinny knobs sticking out below his rolled slacks. He took off his hat and let the breeze sift through his salt-and-pepper hair as the sun glinted off his spectacles. Eva shouldered their lunch and tucked her shoes inside the hamper so she wouldn’t have to carry them. The beach was crowded, a forest of umbrellas and laughing children, and Eva longed for the beaches of Maremma with stretches so isolated you could walk and never see another soul.

Eventually, they found a place to sit and spread their lunch on a blanket, watching everything and nothing, trying to enjoy the change of scenery, if only for each other. The wind kicked up once, spraying them with sand and surf, and their lunch became decidedly crunchier.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Camillo said vaguely, his eyes on his feet.

“What’s funny, Babbo?”

“There is sand in my sandwich and sand between my toes.” He shook one foot and then the other, as if verifying that there was, indeed, sand between his toes.

“That isn’t terribly funny,” Eva teased.

“It is irritating me. Sand everywhere, in my food, in my clothes, rubbing against soft skin, every crack and crevice. I don’t think I like eating on the beach. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to avoid it.” His voice was thoughtful, like he was puzzling something out, solving a riddle. Eva just waited, accustomed to her father’s roundabout way of expressing himself.

“But sand is my business. Sand, soda ash, and lime. Without sand, there wouldn’t be glass. My father named the company Ostrica—oyster—because the oyster takes the sand and makes it into something beautiful. Like we do. We take the sand and make it into glass.”

“I didn’t know that! Grandfather Rosselli was a romantic.”

“We want to make the mundane beautiful. Isn’t that right?” he asked. Eva remembered the conversation she’d had with Angelo in the cemetery, when she’d explained what a mitzvah was.

“Everything is a mitzvah to you,” she said softly, and wrapped her arm through Camillo’s, her eyes on the horizon, her thoughts on Angelo and oysters. No matter how hard she tried, everything reminded her of Angelo.

“Not so. I am just an oyster, hiding in my shell, turning sand into glass.” His voice was so melancholy, the ache beneath it so audible, that she pulled her eyes and thoughts back to his face.