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A mischievous grin illuminated the old man’s face.
“This is Serafina as she was in America.”
Maybe I was slow from the pain pills the doctor had given me. Maybe his words made no sense. “You imagined what her life would have been like if she had made it to America?”
“This is her as I saw her in America.”
“Excuse me?” I glanced at the pasticceria, wondering how long my sister would be gone.
“Serafina was not murdered,” he said. “She left this village alive.” His revelation knocked me off-balance and I had to sit on the edge of the fountain.
He carried on, seeming to know we were short on time.
“For all of my life, I never expected anyone to buy my artwork. But there are always rich men and women who think your art should be bigger, be appreciated by more people, and they kept introducing me to the people who did that kind of appreciating and in the 1950s a rich patron sponsored me for a show in the United States. We visited five cities in five weeks.”
“Imagine my surprise when I walked into a gallery in Atlanta and I saw her. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, or maybe she was just a woman who bore a striking similarity to the one who saved my life all those years ago. She crossed the distance between us and wrapped me in her arms. She told me how proud she was that I had made such a splash in America, that she had always known I was destined for great things.”
“Serafina?”
“Serafina. She had been living in a small town about an hour’s drive from Atlanta, and she read a big feature article about me and my work, and she came there. I can’t imagine it wasn’t without risk. She’d kept her secret for so long, how did she know I would continue to keep it for her?”
“That’s not possible. She was murdered here. It’s all in the terrible police report.”
“I do not know everything. I only know what she chose to share with me, but she did tell me quite a bit of it and for years I have wondered why she decided to tell me,” Nicolo continued, his voice low and warm. “But as I have gotten older it does make some sense. We want someone to hold on to our stories when we are no longer on this earth. I sketched her face on a napkin as she told me what she had done. I kept that napkin with me for the rest of the American tour. I used it to make this statue. It was my model.” He looked up at the sculpture’s face with a reverence usually reserved for saints or celebrities.
“And no one in town recognized her?”
He shrugged. “We see what we want to see. The town wanted to believe she was dead. And the ones who did know it was her had no reason to tell.”
“But how?” I didn’t even know what questions to ask.
“Like I said, she did not give me all the details. Women are good at keeping their deepest secrets. She did say she knew she could not go to America with her husband, nor could she stay in the village. She seemed to know we were kindred spirits in that way, that we were two souls who longed to escape. I know she had help with staging her murder, but she never revealed who gave her that help. I can guess though.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the emotion the story brought up in me, but it hit me with a suddenness. I reached for Nicolo’s hand and squeezed it hard. “Keep going.”
“She had money to escape, though she didn’t say where it came from. She took a steamship through Rome rather than Naples or Genoa, the routes many from our area traveled when they went to America. She was processed in Baltimore and found it simple to give whatever name she chose.”
“What name?”
“I do not know. She never told me. She said she left Baltimore and boarded a train south to Richmond, Virginia. She had been put in touch with a woman there who could be trusted, a cousin of someone from the village. That woman was a housekeeper for a wealthy old man who needed a private nurse. Serafina cared for him until he died. With a recommendation from the man’s family, Serafina was able to get other nursing commissions and soon it didn’t matter that she had no medical training in America. Her face was filled with a vibrant light as she told me how she began to deliver babies in your country, first for rich women in their homes and then for the poor in city hospitals. She eventually received an actual nursing degree. Her pride at that accomplishment filled the entire room.”
His own face was bathed in awe at the memory, and I realized that I might have been the first person he had ever shared this with.
“Did she remarry?”
“She never mentioned a single man. But she did talk about her children. The women from the village kept her informed about how they had grown and what they were doing. Serafina was especially interested in her daughter. She regretted leaving the little girl. She gave me a sealed envelope with the child’s name on it and asked if I would send it to her once Rosalia was grown into an adult and once her father had passed. I could open it right before I sent it, she told me. It was the deed to the land that is now yours. I sent it to your aunt Rosalia thirty years ago as Serafina asked me. I sent it with a note explaining how her mother had cared for me when I was young and how she gave this to me before her death, which was true, even if I didn’t say when exactly she died or that she did not pass in Caltabellessa.”
Aunt Rosie had known about this family land for three decades, almost as long as I had been alive, but she never did anything about it until the end of her life. Maybe she didn’t believe it was real. Maybe she didn’t want to know the whole truth, or maybe, like many women of her time, she was afraid to venture out of the perfectly constructed world she had created for herself, to discover something that could change everything. I would never know. What I did know was that she gave the land to me, that she passed on her birthright and her mother’s legacy to me, that she chose me even when I was at the lowest point of my life.
Carla appeared then with two steaming paper cups of espresso. She smiled at the old man still holding tightly to my hand.
“Ciao,” she said brightly. “Mi chiamo Carla.” I pictured her practicing her Italian on her Duolingo app on the plane on the way over.
“Carla, this is Nicolo. He is a wonderful sculptor. He created this statue in the middle of the fountain.” I gestured above us.
“Bellissima!” Carla exclaimed. She didn’t see the resemblance. Why would she? Who ever looks closely at the faces or expressions of the women immortalized in stone all around the world? I’d tell her everything eventually, but it wasn’t the time. Nicolo kissed Carla on both of her cheeks, then turned to me.
“You will have a fascinating life ahead of you, Sara Marsala. Just like her.” He nodded up to Serafina’s figure smiling down on us. “She created her own destiny when everything was stacked against her.”
