A Roman Rhapsody by Sara Alexander

Author:Sara Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

20

Con dolore

with sadness

The sensation of her body falling away like scurries of sand began at her feet. It traveled up her spine, dissipating her form until all she could feel was the thud in her ears and the steady crescendo squeal of a thin high C. The voices along the corridor fogged into muffle. Familiar faces looked up at her now, friends and other family members who held guard outside her mother’s room. She walked past her brother. Zia Grazietta’s face sharpened into view. Alba turned away from her. She stepped into the room. There were hands reaching out to her, consoling or forbidding, Alba couldn’t tell.

Her brother Salvatore looked up from beside the bed and locked eyes with her. His face was wet. Alba looked down at her father, his head buried in her mother’s limp hand. His sobs pierced the violent silence, body shaking. One of her uncles was beside him, holding his shoulder. Her grandfather stood with his back to her, blocking any view of her mother. The room was dipped in a blue light, as it fought through the pale blue curtains. It sharpened the sensation of watching everything unfold before her as if through a pane of glass more tangible still. This was an enactment of grief, someone else’s room, a perfect composition of a family torn. Perhaps if she blinked the figures would disperse, disappear.

Her father looked up. His expression struck her with a brutal blow of sadness. Alba watched the men around him straighten, as if he might charge across the bed, across his dead wife, and send his daughter to join her. Words fired out of his mouth now, sparks of sound that enveloped Alba in a hurricane of grief.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered, taut.

“Mamma,” is all she could manage before her own tears fought out.

“Go home, Alba.” A friend beside Bruno placed a gentle hand on his back.

“You’ve come to gloat?”

His tear-stained face folded into a grimace that made the volume of Alba’s drumming heart pound louder in her ears. Her tears felt cold on her cheeks. Someone moved in front of her now, blocking her mother’s body further still, forcing Alba into a web of memories that interlaced through childhood, the silence of her time in Rome, the look of Giovanna’s face when she’d first heard her play, the realization that her mother never deemed her enough, always less than what a daughter should be. The thoughts cloyed; a spider’s sticky silk.

She was ushered outside the room. “Your father is very upset, Alba,” she heard a voice say. “Leave him now, you’ll have your own time to say goodbye.”

The door closed behind her.

“You should go, Alba,” Marcellino murmured.

Alba looked at him, the stubble prickling his chin with newfound manhood, which he wore with as much grace as his adolescence.

“I came as soon as I knew.” Her words trickled out, the last droplets after a tap has been twisted shut.

“She never recovered after you left, Alba. You should leave now before Babbo starts into you.

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