AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then there was Marco. I hadn’t seen much of him since we returned from our night in Sciacca six months earlier. He had been away from the village for various political meetings, but I knew he would be in town the day of Stefano Parlate’s funeral and perhaps that was why I took extra care with my hair and dress as I prepared for the procession through the village.
The old ladies wailed and groaned the requisite mourning cries and once we reached the town square Marco gave an eloquent speech honoring Stefano’s life that was mostly lies because everyone, especially his third wife, Gaetana, hated Stefano. We all loved Gaetana, who was closer to my age than to Stefano’s. Though she despised her deceased husband, Gaetana had considered herself lucky to be married to the old man since she was terribly ugly and missing three toes on her left foot from a wheelbarrow accident when she was a girl. The missing toes made her hobble and her lazy eye made it seem like she was never paying you much attention, which most men found unnerving, but she was the loudest and funniest woman all of us knew and we adored her. We walked behind the open casket from the piazza to the church for a mass and then to the Parlate house, where the coffin would remain open for the night so that Stefano’s soul could exit the home and make his way to heaven of his own free will.
By the time the sun had set, it was just us women left in Gaetana’s parlor. Us and Stefano’s body, his skin waxy and yellow, pooled like the folds of a curtain below his chin. His eyes were blessedly closed but his left hand remained tucked into the fold of his pants.
“I would close the wooden box, but then I fear his nasty spirit may be trapped in this house with me forever.” Gaetana scowled down at his body. “Get out of here,” she instructed him like she would shoo away a stray dog. “Leave me be.”
We all laughed when Gaetana bowed her head in mock prayer. When she stood she flicked a fly from Stefano’s forehead before she brought out the good wine and poured us all generous glasses. We sang the old songs while Gaetana accompanied us on the cylinder piano. Paola brought out delicious little collorelle pastries and we dipped them in a brandy she’d been saving since her wedding day.
“We deserve a treat,” she declared. “Let’s put this liquor to good use in our bellies.”
All of us wondered why we didn’t do this more often, why we gathered like this only when someone died. The answer was that we never had the time. We had our children and now we had our work, the butchering, the bricklaying, the baking, and, for me, the medicine.
It was the first time we addressed the men’s absence and our new positions in the town so openly.
With the wine flowing we could say it—we were essentially running the town. Because it had happened slowly, over the course of several years, it had at first seemed unremarkable and also temporary. We had spent our entire lives doing work inside the home, work that was rarely acknowledged. Many of the women had also helped their husbands in their trade, but never in a particularly visible way, always far behind the scenes. But now most of the women in the room were doing all the work out in the open. And for the first time we allowed ourselves to express the proper amazement at this development.
Paola stood. “I make wonderful bread. Better than my husband ever baked. I love running the shop. I also love going to Sciacca for ingredients and getting to see the handsome fishermen coming in from the ports.”
“I like feeling useful outside of my home and you know what?” I chimed in, my tongue loose but not regretful. “I don’t miss my husband.” The room grew deathly silent. I met Cettina’s eyes and she gave me a glimmer of a smile and then looked away. Perhaps I had crossed a line.
Suddenly Gaetana raised her glass high above her head and then smashed it against the floor. “I am so happy my husband is dead.” And everyone laughed and nodded because how many times had we wished for the same forbidden desire.
One by one every woman rose and talked about what was bringing her joy. And to each woman we raised a glass and made a toast or gave a blessing. Salute! and La speranza è l’ultima a morire.
Cetti was the only one who stayed silent, blinking dumbly into the flickering fire. She was separate from us in this, the only one in the room who still had a husband here in town. She devoted all of her time and energy to caring for him and their household. Her brothers had also stayed. They owned many of the grain fields and lemon and olive groves surrounding the village and they needed to stay close to the land to keep it safe, to manage the crops and to deal with the mafiusi, who were now being called by a new name, the Cosa Nostra. Landowners often had to work closely with organized crime or face consequences like torched crops or murdered animals. The mafiusi controlled who bought goods and at what price. They controlled the ships. And because of this they now controlled the men who grew the good golden grain, the lemons, and the ones who made the olive oil, the men like Cettina’s brothers. Cetti was separate from them because of her marriage to Marco, who despised organized crime and everything it represented. Cetti’s father had never been a part of it either. He managed to work their land and protect it without joining any of the syndicates. He was loved, but more important, he was respected and also perhaps a little bit feared. But when her brothers took over the business, they had none of the same grace and they quickly found allies among the criminals to help protect their fields, to sell their products for unforgivable prices and help them make extra money on the side.
Their alliances represented everything Cettina’s first husband, Liuni, had died fighting against. I always wondered what her brothers thought about her two husbands, both of them idealists who wanted nothing to do with the crime families, but somehow they all managed to keep it separate.
Even though Cetti’s life was different from many of ours, she was happy. But that night amid the laughing and drinking and all of the toasts at Gaetana’s I could sense that she felt left out.
I scooted closer to her and slung my arms around her. She leaned her head onto the hollow of my shoulder and whispered, “I should go back to the children.”
“Is Marco home?” I asked.
“He is.”
“Then they are fine.”
“I suppose.” She yawned. “I am also tired. And boring. I don’t have anything to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything at all.” I remembered that feeling, that sense that I was completely uninteresting. I moved behind her and began braiding her hair. One of my favorite things to do was run my fingers through her profusion of thick black curls. When we were small I would do it for hours, twisting the silky strands around each of my fingers and then letting them spring free before doing it all over again. Cetti sighed with pleasure and relaxed her body into mine, content for a minute more.
It was Paola who had the idea of “the Ask.” It started because Paola needed help hauling all the flour and salt up from Sciacca each Friday for the bakery. “If I had another set of hands I could bring twice as much and make twice as much bread and then sell it in Sciacca too and make more money. I am getting less money from my husband, and it would be very helpful.”
The widow Gaetana immediately volunteered. “I have a Stefano-size hole in my time now. I no longer need to help him out of bed and wipe his ass and make his breakfast, praise the Virgin. I will come whenever you need me.”
It was a bright and radiant thing, this meeting of needs, but also not entirely new. It was similar to what we all used to do to manage our domestic labors. I will take your child if you are ill. I can nurse your baby for you if your own milk runs dry. I will put your laundry out if you need to go help in the fields during the harvest. I’ll walk your mother-in-law to church if your monthly cramps keep you in bed. We always did what needed to be done. We did other things too. We ushered girls out of the village who were being beaten by older men in their families. We took the unwanted babies born of incest or infidelity and gave them to our infertile cousins in villages many kilometers away. We did what was necessary to maintain a sort of silent social equilibrium. But these asks were business.
Does anyone have a truck I can borrow to obtain new goats from Trapani?
Do you know a banker who will let me purchase land without my husband present?
I need lessons in basic math to get the accounting at the shop right. Who can help me?
And a final toast.
It is on friends that one depends to get along in life.
