PAINTED RED

PART I

ONE

Mill Valley, January of 2005

“Ciao Laura. Your mother is dying. You’d better come now if you want to see her alive.”

I am not fully awake as my stepfather Domenico delivers the news through the scratchy, long-distance phone call. I had expected this call, and yet in a way one never expects such a call. I slouch forward on the bed and shake my head. This can’t be happening. The clock on my nightstand reads 2:00 am. My husband Greg snores gently next to me, his clogged sinuses producing the usual, rhythmic wheezing, and my twelve-year old daughter, Isabella, is also asleep in another room. I stand up, shuffle half-blindly in my worn-out slippers to the kitchen and make some coffee.

My mother has emphysema. This is not the first time that smoking three packs a day has done my mom in. When my aunt Gabriella called two years ago, the priest had already administered the last rites, but somehow mom made it through, even after a tube the size of a garden hose was stuck down her throat for two weeks and her voice was transformed to that of a longshoreman. I only have a few hours to decide, but I would hate a repeat of what happened before; after waiting for fifteen days to find out if she was going to pull through, she woke up, thanked me with her new manly voice, and then sat back on the bed to read the paper, as if I hadn’t left my young daughter behind in California and traveled the ten thousand or so miles to see her!

I drink my coffee as if it were ginger ale, gulping it down my throat trying to wake up. Could I forgive her for what she had done? It would be just as easy to continue as I have for the last twenty-five years I have been away from Italy, pretending that I don’t really care. After all that has happened, I don’t owe her anything, I tell myself. The kitchen’s silence is interrupted by the buzzing sound of the refrigerator recharging itself as if demanding a decision.

By 5 a.m. I am at the airport in San Francisco buying a very expensive ticket to Milan, Italy. I request a window seat and luckily this time is available. Once seated, I plug my ears with loud orange, foamy stubs, rest my head against the moist, fluted window and close my eyes. I am hoping to go back to my interrupted night’s sleep, but instead the memories come.

I wonder if this is really the end.

After three years in Florence with my maternal grandparents I moved to Pavia to live with Quirina, my primary caretaker, her mother Serena and her partner Claudio at the age of three and a half. My mother, a smuggler of cigarettes and a single mom after my father left us for another woman, found Quirina on a street in the industrial part of town where the truck drivers, weary of their long journey, stopped for rest and a cheap fuck. She offered her a job as a nanny and a fully furnished apartment for her and her family in the Calcinara district.

Calcinara in Italian means debris, a name well deserved since the buildings in the courtyard we occupied were covered with large pieces of rubble and cobwebs providing shelter to gigantic spiders, and an abandoned, maimed bicycle complemented the décor. Calcinara was the poorest part of Pavia—a chimerical, medieval town—and it was below sea level; had the nearby river overflowed it would have certainly been submerged in water.

The courtyard resembled a cloister, a small enclosure blanketed by scraps of trash through which one could catch a glimpse of authentic cobblestones. Because of the humidity and the dirt, rank-smelling weeds grew on one side and cockroaches the size of chicks scurried around in undisciplined ways. Our flat was one floor below the ground and consisted of a kitchen, two bedrooms and a dim narrow hallway at the end of which was a broken, topless toilet and a cracked sink. The windows were cheap, one pane only, and although the shutters were vaguely reminiscent of Venetian blinds, they were so scraped and rusty they reminded me more of the bars on an abandoned jail.

Quirina was blond and had crooked teeth. She also smelled funny, a mixture of cheap lavender with rancid cheese, which caused me to turn my head away every time I was near her. Her mother, Serena, spoke fast and cooked the same thing every day: lumpy mashed potatoes, greasy meats and flatulent-producing Brussels sprouts. She had crooked teeth like Quirina and wore similar bright red lipstick, but her hair was of a pallid, dull brown. She had a deep, hoarse voice that reminded me of the witch in Snow White—a movie my mother had taken me to see once during one of her visits—and I could never tell whether she liked me or not because she hardly ever spoke to me, busy as she was concocting smelly vegetables and slimy meat dishes in the kitchen.

Unlike the females in the household, Claudio was charming, with straight dark hair, black eyes like those of a Mafioso and a baritone voice that startled me every time he called my name.

“Lauretta, come here! Give me a kiss!” He cajoled me, his beaming teeth overshadowing every other part of his face. Unsure, I leapt on his lap. After rocking on his knees for a little while, he became quiet and serious, as if annoyed.

“Is everything OK Claudio?” I asked him. I couldn’t understand his modd changes and he never answered, but somehow I knew that it was the signal for me to leave.

Quirina never discontinued her other business and took me along on her lustful encounters.

The first time I went with her, I sat on the bed, careful to fold under my legs the new dress with sunflowers that my mamma gave me the last time she had come to visit, and watched while she covered her face with a pinkish liquid cream, lined her eyelids with a thick black pencil, and smeared bright red lipstick on her mouth.

“Quirina, why do you do that?”

“Do what?” She replied while pressing her lips together on a piece of paper.

“Put so much red on your lips.”

“Because in my line of business it’s necessary.”

“What’s your line of business?” I asked, although I didn’t really know what the words meant.

“It’s none of your business, mia cara (my dear).” She replaced the top of the lipstick and left the room. I jumped down from the bed and followed her into the kitchen. I stopped and stared at her as she frantically searched for something in her purse.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded.

“Nothing… I was just curious,” I replied.

She took the keys out of her purse and grabbed my hand.

“Well, stop being curious and let’s go. Ready?”

“Go where?”

“To see a friend,” she replied, shoving me forward. I didn’t want to go anywhere.

I picked my blanket off the floor and headed for the bedroom.

“Come back you!” She shouted behind me. “Come back now or I will spank you and not buy you a Popsicle on the way back, is that clear?”

I knew she meant it as she had spanked me before. I went back to the kitchen, my head lowered.

“Oh, stop it!” she yanked me out the door and locked it behind us.

We crossed the yard with me a step or two behind and exited the building. Once outside we turned right at the end of the street and then left onto the main thoroughfare where the shops were.

Quirina cockily strode ahead, her large behind tightly contained in a cheap red fake leather skirt, bouncing left and right with each step. Her transparent black top with frills and large shiny silvery buttons in the front made each step sound like that of a donkey at the state fair. Her towering heels caused her to trip on the uneven cobblestone.

I had a tough time keeping up with her, stumbling on the blanket I carried. We passed by Giovanni, the milkman.

“Hey, Quirina!” he whistled. She threw a kiss at him and marched forward.

“You are being a total nuisance. Hurry up!” Quirina shouted a few times when she turned around and saw how far behind I was. I gathered my blanket and tripped forward, afraid of what was to come.

At the end of the street Quirina entered a dingy, reeking hallway and climbed a set of stairs. It smelled of pee and there were no lights. I stayed behind hoping she wouldn’t force me up.

“What’s your problem?” She yelled from the top. I had my thumb in my mouth and clutched my blanket even tighter to my chest.

“You are going to get it if you don’t move right this minute!” She shouted. I inched my way up the stinky stairway and waited for her to unfasten the large lock. The door squeaked as it opened.

The room had a dusty, mud-bricked floor made of pale green walls. Across from the entrance was a bed with a stained gray bedspread and to its right, a couch with faded pink, floral fabric with huge, square cushions that were ripped down the middle, exposing its fluffy white filling and springs. I whimpered.

“Stop making such a fuss!” Quirina reprimanded me. She grabbed me by my armpits and threw me on the couch. I began to cry.

“Please don’t do this now. Nothing is going to happen to you,” she said in a gentler tone. I forced myself to be quiet, because the few times I hadn’t in the past she had hit me hard and not bought me any treats.

My feet couldn’t reach the floor. I was stuck on the couch.

Quirina walked to the bed, threw her purse across and began undressing. First she removed the top, then the skirt, and finally the necklace made of plastic beads. She left her black bra, underwear and fishnets on. She hopped under the covers and lit a cigarette.

“Are you upset?” she asked, exhaling a whiff of smoke.

“A little,” I whispered while pulling the threads out of the couch. We faced each other in silence for what seemed like an eternity. I felt uneasy.

After a few long minutes we heard a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Quirina asked.

“It’s me, Paolo,” replied the visitor.

“Come on in.”

A short man with long unkempt hair entered the room. He smelled strongly of mold and I tried not to look at him, but saw him anyway. He wore black pants and a black turtleneck that was covered with hair. I noticed that his shoes had a hole on one side.Without speaking he approached the bed and took off his clothes just like Quirina had done, one by one, beginning with the sweater. Neither one of them said anything, but my heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest. Dear God, please don’t let them hear it!Almost immediately they began making smacking noises and moaning. I can’t remember how long it lasted, but suddenly I couldn’t stay in the room any longer. I crawled down from the couch with my blanket and went outside.