The Good Left Undone(96)

“It was sticking up,” the child said defiantly.

“Walk around it from now on.”

“Yes, Mama.” Matelda climbed up the rest of the steps.

Domenica turned the glass over in her hand. It appeared to be a timepiece from the equipment panel of a fallen airplane—or was it a small clock of some sort? She couldn’t tell. There were numbers and a small shank of metal protruding from the thick glass. She pulled her handkerchief from the strap of her camisole and wrapped the glass in it. She would ask her father the origins of the clock that no longer told time.



* * *





There had been too much death and dying in Matelda’s storytelling but there was no way around it. Anina couldn’t let go of Matelda and dreamt about her at night. Her dreams, unlike Matelda’s, were not about the past, but set in the future. New faces drifted in and out announcing themselves. There were flying dreams as Anina sailed over rooftops and oceans. She was looking for something in the dreams and woke up before she found it. Mostly, Anina wanted to reach into the years ahead and bring her children into the present so her grandmother would know them. She wanted them to hear the family stories from the source. After all, her grandmother didn’t just tell the family stories; she was the story. Matelda had lived a rich life that should not be lost or forgotten. Her life was the treasure—all she had learned and experienced—not the objects of beauty she had collected. At long last Anina was paying attention to that life and learning from it. She would not dismiss an elder’s wisdom ever again. Going forward, Anina would pay attention. This life lesson was more important than how much salt her grandmother put in the tomato sauce. Anina felt the family history begin to slip through her hands like a satin rope. She had to find a way to hold on. Anina dressed quickly that morning to go to the hospital.

She skipped putting on makeup and fussing with her hair. There wasn’t a moment to waste.



* * *





Matelda woke with her fists clenched. She released her fingers and rubbed her knuckles. The dream of her mother floated through her consciousness as she tried to retrieve her mother’s words and their conversation. It was still dark outside. She never knew what time it was in the hospital.

Matelda hadn’t had a good night’s rest since she’d entered the hospital. She would have liked to have slept, but there was perpetual drama on the third floor once the sun went down. Patients would yell for nurses. Some were in pain, God bless them, but others didn’t know how to operate their phones or the television remote. It wasn’t worth it to try to rest on this particularly noisy night on the third floor, so Matelda raised her bed to the sitting position.

Matelda’s phone was charging on the nightstand. She reached for it. She scrolled through the apps and tapped on Classic Movies. The titles of the movies of her youth in 1950s Italy were listed. There were star ratings next to their titles. She paid no mind to the reviews. Instead, she scrolled through, looking for the first movie she had ever seen in a theater. She remembered her father taking her to Lucca for a treat.

She became giddy when she found Sciuscià on the queue. She tapped on it, slipped in her earbuds, and lay back on the pillow. Shoeshine. She had thought about the film through the years but could never find it. Matelda could not believe how many of the scenes she remembered. The boys shining shoes to buy a horse, the boys riding on the horse, the juvenile prison. The bad boy who got the good ones in trouble. As the scenes played out, her thoughts took her back to her childhood in Viareggio. Her mother and father had tried to make her feel safe in the world. Matelda naturally felt dread so much more easily than courage, as if fear was her primary emotion.

Matelda turned the movie off. She felt her chest tighten. She thought of her doctor’s conversation with her. Who knew the heart was the cause of memory loss? It seemed to Matelda that the heart should hold every experience, making the muscle stronger. Instead it was revealed that the heart, like any good machine, could only take the stress of age, use, and disappointment until it no longer could. Eventually, the parts would wear out. She lay still and listened to her own heartbeat as she drifted off to sleep. When she woke, the breakfast tray was untouched and her doctor was looking at her.

“Oh, Dottore, it’s you. What time is it?”

“Nine a.m. How are you feeling, Matelda?”

“Better. I’d like to go home.”

“I don’t advise that.”

“I knew you wouldn’t. But I’m not trying to get well, because I can’t get well. You and I both know I’m at the end.”

“We don’t know that, Matelda.”

“It’s harder for me to breathe. I can’t walk. Sometimes I can hear my heartbeat in my ear, and I know that’s not good. So let’s make a deal. I’ll wear my oxygen tank and I’ll do my exercises and anything else you ask of me at home. Please let me go. I have lots of help, meals, and so forth. Dottore, I have a terrace that looks out over the sea. It’s so blue this time of year—there’s no jewel plucked from the earth as spectacular. I don’t want the last thing I taste to be your broth, the last thing I see to be this pressboard ceiling, and the last thing I hear to be the beeps of these machines. I want to see the waves and the sky. I want to hear the birds and feel the breeze from the ocean, and I want to take a shot of whiskey whenever I please.”