It took her all the distance to the cellar door to get her bearings. Her heart was pounding, all that settled blood circulating once again. Her head spun as she braced herself against the doorframe. But the swirl ended quickly—she was not as drunk as she’d thought. What did it mean, this light-headedness? Was her heart about to give out, as her mother’s had, and her mother’s father before her? Sixty-eight was not a bad age to die.
Nevertheless. She crossed the kitchen and drank two short glasses of tap water out of the glass that had been upended in the dish drainer. Should she eat something? She felt the water sloshing against the wine-pickled lining of her stomach. But if she ate, that would keep her up even later. Should she just go to bed?
No. A piece of bread, a slice of American cheese from the frosted plastic deli bag. She collected her crumbs in a cupped hand and dropped them in the sink. That was better. Her head felt soft and liquid, but the spinning sensation was gone. Now she would go get her next bottle.
The uneven cement steps to the basement were narrow, like all the stairs in the house, not long enough to support the whole of Stella’s short, wide foot. It was not the first time Stella had wished for a light fixture at the top of the stairs, instead of the lone bare bulb whose chain she could only pull when she got to the bottom.
The stumble happened when she was already two-thirds of the way to the bottom. This time there was no invisible ghostly hand trying to shove her toward her fate; this time, there was no one to blame for the Accident but Stella herself, grief-drunk, alcoholic, pathetic old Stella. She put her foot down poorly, too far forward, so that the front half of her bunion curled unsupported over the edge. She should have been able to reclaim her balance—there was the rail, the walls—but her hands flew out in vain, and she was careening down the stairs. Herhead made first contact, her forehead smashing open against the corner of the wooden shelf at the bottom of the stairs, blinding her with pain stars. Staggering once, she fell again, backward this time. Too stunned to manage her own limbs, she hit the ground, her cranium bouncing once against the cement floor. Her ear registered the sound of the crack even as inside her head a roar of pain was swelling, deafening.
She had made this journey ten thousand times—what had gone wrong this time? Her last splatter of consciousness was to turn her head to see who had pushed her. But there was no one there on the steps, only the dim blue flicker of the television reflected on the gray wall.
STELLA’S EYES OPENED TO DARKNESS.Her head was pulsing with a wave like a very loud sound, but without any sound at all. She knew where she was—she was in the basement, she had tripped on the stairs, or something like that—something had happened and she...
She tried to stand, pressing her palm on the cold wet cement of the floor, pushing herself up. The world rolled over her in a swirl of pain and simultaneous nausea. But now here she was, she was standing, she was supporting herself on the wooden shelving, she was pulling on the beaded aluminum cord of the light. The sharp brightness of the bulb provoked another roll of disorientation.
Her head cramped as she looked down at the floor. The blood was everywhere—a flat, dark puddle that spread across the slanting floor and toward the drain. What a mess she had to clean, and with this awful pain. She took a roll of paper towels from the shelf of cleaning supplies right in front of her—at least she didn’t have to go back upstairs in this condition—and then she took a second roll, because she was afraid to get back down to her knees. But she did. She got back down. The sickness was worse than any nausea she had ever felt, worse than the boat over the Atlantic, worse than the morning sickness of any of her pregnancies.
The end of the paper towel roll eluded her, and she struggledfor too long, who knows how long, to unwrap it. She found it finally and tugged the first sheet free of its gentle adhesive, then ripped off a sheet and put it to the puddle on the floor. The paper towel was instantly a cardinal red square, redder and brighter than the shadowy blood around it. It will never be enough, Stella thought. She unwound the roll, one loop and then again, and balled up what she had removed. She pressed it into the blood puddle and it was instantly soaked through.
Bad, it was bad. She would never get it all. She pulled more paper towel free, as much as she could, but her arms were heavy and tired. She was hyperventilating—why? She was acting like an idiot. But the paper towels, they were no good, they did nothing. A second wad, and then a third, and still they just turned red, and her hands were covered in blood, bright red like she was wearing a pair of gloves made of fine red leather. A fourth wad, and it was still no good, and then the final wave came over her and she was falling forward into the floor, her cheek coming down on a wet pile of paper towel.
It was cold now, much colder than before. Her skin crawled with tremors. Even the sticky blood was cooling under her fingers. She couldn’t call out, because there was no one to hear her this time.
WHENCARMELO CAME HOMEfrom his closing shift at Charlie’s in half an hour, he would sit in the brown armchair in the front room, pull the wooden bar to raise the footrest, and fall asleep there with his shoes on. It wouldn’t occur to him that Stella would be anywhere but upstairs in her bed.
TOMMYMAGLIERI WORKED THE 4 A.M.to noon shift at the electric company. At 3:15A.M. on Friday, December 9, he came over to his parents’ house, as he often did before work, to do a walk-through to make sure everything was as it should be. Who does that kind of thing? Well, Tommy does. He is the reason Stella was rushed to the hospital, why she did not die for the last time on the basement floor.
YOU KNOW THIS PARTof the story already. Stella’s brain was hemorrhaging inside her cracked skull; they needed to find a way to relieve pressure. The doctors had one idea—an experimental procedure, which the patient had a slender chance of surviving—they would cut damaged tissue away from the frontal lobe to make space. The lead surgeon was eager to attempt the procedure for academic reasons, although he did not misrepresent it to the Maglieri children who were keeping vigil in the visitors’ lounge. Even if the surgery were a success, their mother would be a vegetable for the rest of her shortened life.
Insurance would not cover the unapproved procedure. It would be $100,000 out of pocket. But who is going to be the one to say,No, we didn’t do everything we could?
“That’s eleven grand each,” Tommy said. “For Mommy. You got eleven grand for your mother, don’t you?”
Tommy, Bernie, Guy, Freddy, and Richie could come up with eleven grand each. Mingo had his share—this was before the heroin problems. Artie and his new wife had four grand between them; Artie borrowed the rest against wages from his brother Guy, who was also his boss. Nicky had nothing but his disability checks, but Tommy had always known he was going to cover Nicky, like he always did. Johnny didn’t show up for the family meeting. Tommy covered Johnny’s share and pretended he thought Johnny would pay him back someday. Well, maybe that was how it was meant to work out; it wasn’t like Tommy needed that money to support a family of his own.
AS YOU ALREADY KNOW,the doctors were wrong about Stella’s prognosis. Maybe their science was better than they thought. Maybe they had never met a patient like Stella, with her stubborn immortality.
***
THIS IS THE BEGINNINGof the longest thirty years.
WHEN THEY CUT OUTyour frontal lobe to stop your brain from crushing itself, they cut out forever parts of who you are. They cut out your inhibitions, although they do not cut out your fear. They cut out the part that lets you access your facial muscles, so afterward you smile all the time, even when you are angry. They cut out your empathy, although not your affection.
They cut out some parts of your memory, but they also root up other parts that you’d buried or denied, and they leave those pieces sitting right on the top, like potatoes that have just been pulled out of the ground by their vines and are lying in their garden rows, waiting for you to come shake the dirt off.
THESE ARE THE THINGSthat filled Stella’s mind during her coma, when her remembered world was whittled down.
So fresh, the memory—tumbling down the basement stairs.
Sixty years earlier—the ghostly arms pushing against the door of the Ievoli schoolhouse—her little sister’s foot tripping her as she fell out of the way of the swinging wood.
That sticky summer morning of 1941, waking up from her nightmare on the floor of the Front Street bedroom with Tina’s hands wrapped around her throbbing arm.
Her mother’s kitchen on Bedford Street, Tony bashing her head into Assunta’s altar to the dead baby when Tina revealed Stella’s secret stash.
The rain-wet lane on via Fontana, January 1926—the invisible hand clutched around her own as the pigs tipped her over into the icy mud—little Cettina’s wide eyes silently staring.
The cold tiled floor of her dark Alder Street kitchen as she choked on a chicken bone—Tina, kneeling behind her.
