Tina sobbing on Stella’s arm—Can you ever forgive me? For being jealous?—at the funeral of baby Bob.You don’t really believe any of that old-world bullshit,Stella had said.
All her life, Stella had believed she was haunted by the ghost of her dead sister. Now, finally, she saw the truth—she was haunted by her living one.
***
AT FIRST, SHE CAN’T SAY ANYTHING.She wakes up in that hospital room—her second time—and she cannot move, she has to lie there and watch her sister’s sweaty pink crying face hang over her, let her sister dab her with sponges and grip her fingers. It takes a long time—maybe days—before Stella is in charge of herself enough to say,Get out.
Her children are there, different combinations of them, always Tommy and Artie and Bernie and sometimes Freddy and Guy and Richie, the boys’ wives, her sister-in-law Queenie, they hold her hand and pat her leg. They are so happy to hear her speak that they don’t listen to what she says. Stella says again,Get out.
Then she has to make them understand her—make them believe.
Get out.
She reclaims use of her arm, lifts it to point at Tina.You. Get out.
The children tell her,You don’t mean that, Mommy. She took care of you the whole time. She slept on the hospital floor. She loves you more than anyone else in the world.
Get out.
Tina is agonized; she sobs, she shouts,She doesn’t know what she means!But Stella sees guilt in her sister’s eyes. Tina knows what she did. That is why Tina slept on the hospital floor, sponged Stella’s unconscious body. That is why Tina fed Stella’s children and poured wine for Stella’s husband. Because for sixty-seven years Tina has tried to stifle her jealousy—has tried to hide it under good deeds. But she is poisonous, she is dangerous, and she knows it.
Get out,Stella says.You know what you did.
FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE,no one believes Stella, that Tina knows what she did. Her addled brain is wrong, and cruel. But Stella’s conviction has replaced all her other convictions. All her life, Tina has wanted Stella’s life. When they were girls, Stella’s pretty face and cleverness and charisma. When they were young women, Stella’s admirers. Stella’s kind, handsome husband; Stella’s multitude of children. Every selfless thing Tina has ever done for Stella has been a resentful attempt to stuff down her own jealousy.
To point a finger at a sinner is to have known the sin yourself, Nonna Maria had taught Stella. But the surgery has removed this ingrained life lesson. In the murk of her mind, Stella no longer can see the finger of accusation turning on herself.
THEY LET HER GO HOMEon New Year’s Day, 1989.
There is a birthday party.
Look at this woman here. Look at this beautiful woman.
Everyone is cheering and clapping.
You know what the doctors said? They said she would never walk or talk again.
He’s trying not to cry, her son. Like his sentimental father. And there’s Bernadette, crying openly, just like her grandmother would have.
Stella smiles and raises her hand at them. She sees her fingernails are painted red.
Well, they were wrong, weren’t they?
Clapping again. All these roaring people in her living room, all her children, their now grown-up childhood friends who used to eat olive loaf sandwiches in her kitchen.
Stand up, Ma! Show them how wrong they were!
That place in the back of her head pulses with that low-grade heat. She grasps Tommy’s hand and stands like he says. They are whooping and clapping, all these tall dark-haired children towering over her, with their white-blond children looking up with their wide light-colored eyes from where they’re playing on the floor. How funny that her own children’s children have nothing left in them of her, just one generation removed.
But the whooping has turned into the tarantella, and the clapping has broken into a rhythm.DUH-duh DUH-duh DUHN...
Stella waves her arms. She won’t do the whole dance today. She smiles.
What a woman!It’s the tallest one shouting—Freddy.What a woman you’ve got yourself, Dad!And they change tune, her sons bellowing in Calabrese, which not all of them speak very well.Uai uai uai chi mugliera mi capitai!
There is Carmelo, crying of course. He kisses Stella very gently on her cheekbone, just below the bandage.What a woman I married,he says.
SOME THINGS GET BETTER,some things don’t.
