Whispering Bones. Rita Vetere
was remembering the daughter she had lost forty-five years ago.
“You’re going today to the grave?” she asked Anna absently.
“Yes. I’m booked on a flight tomorrow. That’s why I stopped by to see you now. A job’s come up—a very important one,” she added. “I’ll bring some flowers for you, too, when I go to the cemetery, all right?”
The faraway look in her grandmother’s eyes vanished and she returned her attention to Anna. “What kind of job?”
“Well,” she said, relieved to change the subject, “it turns out I’ve been put in charge of a very big project. I’m to head up the design of a luxury hotel.”
“Big-shot architect, eh?” A spark of pride lit up her grandmother’s ancient eyes.
“Enough that I got written up in Architectural Digest last month,” Anna said. Aside from the startling news of her latest assignment, that article had been the feather in her cap.
“What is this, Archi—Cos’e?”
“A magazine. It’s kind of a big deal.”
“Good. Brava. Where is the hotel you’re making?”
“Italy. Venice, in fact.” She waited for her grandmother’s reaction. Nonna hailed from Venice, as had Anna’s mother, and she suspected the fact she’d be designing a hotel there would please her no end. Instead, she was met with stony silence.
Finally, her grandmother said, “What, they have no architects in Italy? They need you to go there?”
Her cutting remark took Anna by surprise. “I thought you’d be pleased, seeing as it’s your birthplace.”
“I have no good memories from there. Why would I be pleased?”
Anna said nothing, more than a little taken aback by her grandmother’s disagreeable reaction. True, Nonna seldom spoke of her life back in Venice, and had never expressed a desire to return to her homeland. But this project was an important one. She should have been happy for her.
Perhaps her grandmother sensed Anna’s resentment, because her voice softened a bit when she asked, “Where in Venice are you making the hotel?”
Anna decided not to take umbrage at the old woman’s remark. “An island, just off the coast of Venice. I’m flying out tomorrow to have a look at the site.”
A look of confusion, and something else, crossed her grandmother’s face at the words. “Which island?” she asked.
“It’s called Poveglia. Do you know it?”
Tears sprang into the old woman’s eyes.
“Nonna, what’s the matter? Why are you upset?” For the first time in memory, her grandmother looked truly old and defeated.
“Do not take this job, Anna. You must not go,” she said in a tremulous voice.
Maybe Nonna was less well than she let on, and concerned that Anna wouldn’t be around to visit.
“I’ll only be gone for ten days, no more. And I’ll be back to visit the minute I return.”
“No,” the old woman declared, her voice turning imperious. “I forbid you to go.”
Her grandmother’s choice of words caused Anna to become irritated again. “Forbid me? What’s this nonsense? It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. Of course I’m going.”
“Do not go,” she repeated. “There will be other jobs... Leave this one to someone else.”
Anna bit back her rising anger and remained patient, knowing her grandmother’s mental condition might finally be deteriorating.
“I’ve already committed to the job. I’m going. Now, I don’t want you to worry, I’ll be back to see you the minute I return. In ten days.”
Her grandmother attempted to stare her down with a granite look, a tactic she had employed many times in the past. She almost succeeded. Confused and disheartened by her grandmother’s remarks and the way she continued to glare at her, Anna rose. “I’d better go now, let you get some rest. I’ll see you as soon as I get back, all right?”
She kissed the old woman’s cheek and, before another argument could get underway, walked briskly out of the room. Once in the hallway, Anna peeked back in. Her grandmother sat with slumped shoulders, staring out the window, looking sad and lost. Anna almost went back, but decided not to. Once her grandmother fixated on an idea, there was no talking to her. She didn’t want to engage in the silly argument again. Instead, she sent the thought she’d not been able to say out loud. I love you. Stay well until I get home.
As she stepped out of the building into the muggy heat of the parking lot, Anna looked up at the second floor window of her grandmother’s room. She waved to the motionless form in the wheelchair, but received no acknowledgement in return. Upset by her grandmother’s obvious anger, she turned away and got into her car, the interior of which had already become explosively hot. After rolling down the windows, she rummaged through the dashboard compartment and located the cigarette she kept for emergencies, even though she had quit smoking last year. She looked for a moment at the cigarette then lit it, deciding she needed one before her next stop, her mother’s gravesite.
The glaring sun burned her bare thighs through the open window and the smoke only made her dizzy. She tossed the cigarette before pulling out of the parking lot without a backward glance.
* * * *
Anna crouched and placed two bundles of fresh flowers onto the grave. She ran her fingers across the engraved letters forming her mother’s name on the headstone. It was all she had—a name carved in stone. That, and a vague and terrifying flashback that always haunted her whenever she visited her mother’s grave—a memory of being lifted over a casket by her grandmother to kiss the cheek of her dead mother’s face.
She’d been just three years old when her mother died, but somehow that frightening memory had stuck with her. The disturbing image returned of an unnaturally pale face made whiter by the waves of dark hair surrounding it, a flash of cream-colored silk and rosary beads entwined in dead fingers. Childish terror came rushing back to Anna as she recalled the cold, waxy skin her lips had brushed against, and how she had burst into tears immediately afterward, rendering the remaining memory a blur.
She rose, feeling awkward, like she always did whenever she came here, embarrassed by the conflicting emotions that still ran through her. As a young girl, she’d harbored only feelings of resentment for her dead mother, who had abandoned her so early in life. Her father’s death following a car accident just before her tenth birthday had only amplified that sense of abandonment. It was not until after her twelfth birthday, while visiting her mother’s grave with her grandmother, that Anna had learned the truth about how her mother had died.
“Why isn’t Mamma buried next to Daddy, at St. Michael’s?”
Her grandmother had looked at her for a long while before answering.
“The Catholic church did not permit her to be buried at St. Michael’s,” she finally said.
“Why not?”
Her grandmother remained silent, but her eyes took on a troubled expression.
“Why not, Nonna?” she repeated.
After a moment her grandmother looked down at her and said, “Because she took her own life, Anna. This is a grave sin in the eyes of the Church. Because of it, she was denied a Catholic burial.”
“My mamma killed herself?” Anna felt the shock right down to her feet. “Why? Why did she do that?”
Her grandmother sighed, her face painted with sadness as she drew Anna close. “Your mother was ill, Anna. Her mind, it...”
Nonna’s voice broke, and tears welled up in her