It is 1938. A young girl with a pin-straight bob, adorned in the school uniform that characterizes Mussolini’s rule in Italy (oversized white smock, black bow dangling around the neck) moves in a cluster of schoolchildren down via Acaia. Their heads are swimming with silliness, and the sound of their laughter weaves through the cracks and ditches in the cobblestone streets of Rome.
The year is 1941. A family shepherded into the countryside of Le Marché, where the nights aren’t saturated with the sounds of air raid sirens and troops don’t march through the city like warring ant colonies. The fresh air is good for everybody, her mother insists, and isn’t playing in the garden so much nicer than school anyway? They make sacrifices — everybody does. Stray coins pool the bottom of pocketbooks and in the palms of sweaty fists. Her old, hand-me-down clothes find new life among her sisters when they no longer stretch across her rapidly-growing shoulders or fail to conceal her scraped knees.
The year is 1954. A laurea triennale in law. She’s not the smartest or most outspoken one in the class, but she manages to graduate with honors anyway. The world lies at her feet, cracked open like an egg. She is not content to sit still. She wants to do something great.
She sails to the United States — Boston. She meets a man — a graduate student, another Roman. They go to museums, they go to libraries. They travel, they read books, they return to Rome and have two children and nurture the seeds of a life together.
The year is 1964. She sits in the terminal at Fiumicino Airport, an infant in her arms and two surly toddlers at her haunches. Their whole life has already been packed in boxes, shipped overseas, waiting for them in a strange house in a new city. Customs agents are friendly — issue kind smiles and saccharine welcomes as she flashes her passport upon arrival in Indianapolis. They drive another hour to reach West Lafayette.
Two more babies arrive. He becomes more consumed with his research — more late nights at the university, more papers to grade, more conferences to attend. She changes diapers. She dusts the bannister. She pulls the weeds that slither their little green heads through the topsoil and choke the African violets.
When her daughters answer “cosa hai fatto?” in English, she does not scold. When grocery clerks and pharmacists speak slowly and childishly to her because of her accent, she flushes red with shame and anger but she does not cry. When her sister-in-law with a mansion in Siena and a superiority complex shoots her a murderous glance for the mud that her son has tracked into the house on Easter, she apologizes and she means it.
The year is 1982. Her children are in school. The world chokes within the confines of her living room and basement. She cannot stay all day in this home. She starts to find work — as a crossing guard, as a secretary, as a paralegal. He fights with her about it. He snarls, “And what is this work to me? More taxes to pay.” She doesn’t listen. She doesn’t stop. She works for another 35 years.
The year is 1991. The doctor delivers the diagnosis with tight-lipped sympathy. She will take care of him while his strength deteriorates, while doctors play whack-a-mole with different cocktails of treatments that wreak havoc on his body to try to chase the cancer out. When he can no longer stand for hours, conducting research in his lab. When lifting his arms to grab a new book off the shelf takes all of his strength. When his body fails entirely.
He does not apologize for the things he has said to her in the years before — he doesn’t have to. All is forgiven.
It is an excruciatingly long four years. And yet they evaporate far too quickly.
The year is 1995. His mixture of Portuguese and Italian has disappeared from the corridors of the house. His books no longer litter the tables and his shoes are packed in a box. The house feels so much bigger, so much emptier.
The year is 1996.
The year is 1997.
The year is 2000, 2001, 2002.
The years are pulled like taffy through a sieve. The world recedes at the edges of her front yard, at the bottom of her porch stairs. It’s hard to grow old alone.
The year is 2015. She doesn’t work anymore, and the house on Dehart Street has been sold. She stays up until three, four in the morning speaking to her siblings in Italy. They tell her to come visit, they tell her to see a doctor, to get some medicine that will help her feel better. She doesn’t. The body that carried five children, that folded like copper wire to bend down and prune a vine, that carried her through Europe and la città eterna is spilling out of its confines, becoming softer and wider with every passing day. A trip to the grocery store is exhausting — a trip out of town is unthinkable.
The year is 2019. A urinary tract infection. No — not a urinary tract infection. Something in her kidneys, maybe? A CAT scan. A mass. A biopsy. Malignant. After a decade of waiting, watching, worrying, wondering when death will finally arrive, the prospects are bleak.
Death by cancer. Death by cure. She chooses cancer.
Life becomes a whirlwind of morphine drips and hospice care. The days are unending — exhausting. The visits from nurses are frequent; from family even more so. Five adult children rotate through the house, spending weeks at a time.
She still asks about the grandchildren’s baseball games. She still asks about the stories they’re reading in school. She still asks about the adventures overseas and the last years of college.
She does not want a funeral. Don’t make a big fuss on my account. So a small memorial is held in the West Lafayette Public Library. Friends of family, old classmates, work friends, they all make an appearance. They share laughs, stories. The cousins in Italy are Skype’d in. One ordinary woman bringing so many people together.
The year is 2021. A small plot in the West Lafayette cemetery. Maria Giardini Ascarelli, 1933-2019. Gianni is buried next to her, and a spoonful of her ashes are scattered at Dehart Street. Around her grave, flowers grow.
