Page 14 of Nantucket Reflections
2016, 2017, 2018
Between Italy and Japan
Now that Federico knew about Alessandra’s alter ego as CAT, and now that her cancer was again in remission, Alessandra felt as free as a bird. She was ready to take on the world, ready to plan more CAT murals, ready to draw from her inner power and become what she was always meant to become. Before cancer. Before life got in the way.
The next CAT mural she planned was for the spring of 2016 in Venice, Italy. The plan this time was to remain in her home country, but in a city that echoed with mystery and would probably one day be submerged deep underwater. There was a lot of romance in that devastation. Nothing was permanent—this was to be the vibe of her newest art piece. This time, for many family and work reasons, she couldn’t take Federico with her, so she opted for a smaller mural, one that would take her the span of a few hours. She left Positano for just one night and returned to Naples via train the following morning. Her parents and her friends didn’t even know she was gone.
The Venice mural was even more popular than her Paris mural, to the extent that Italians made a documentary about it, citing her as an environmental muralist who sought to effect change. This filled her heart. She wanted to be seen as someone who believed in a better world, who thought humans could be better than how they currently acted.
When she returned from Venice, Federico hurried back from his pottery workshop, cooked her a massive feast, and demanded she tell him everything. “I want to feel like I was there with you,” he said, kissing her hand.
But Alessandra could only tell him about the rush of it. She didn’t want to get into the boring details, the lines she’d drawn, the paint colors she’d chosen. This time, she had almost been caught by a very old woman who’d told her to stop making so much noise.
“Do you think she knew it was you?” Federico asked.
Alessandra laughed. “No way. She doesn’t care about muralists. I don’t blame her.”
Federico’s eyes were filled with love.
Among friends and family, speculation continued about CAT’s identity. People were no longer sure that CAT was from Positano, since it seemed she’d moved on. Mothers were mostly keen on the mother-child mural, but some didn’t like the act of graffitiing beautiful walls. Arguments circled Alessandra continually, and to avoid people thinking it was her, she had to add her own input. “I think it’s a woman,” she couldn’t help but say. “But I think she’s like me, in some ways. I think she’s tired of the traditional art world. I think she wants to make her mark.”
“Why doesn’t she paint like you? You make beautiful landscapes of the coastline,” her mother told her. “That’s what people want to buy.”
“It shouldn’t always be about what people want to buy, Mama,” she tried to say.
But her mother didn’t know how to listen. She’d been raised during a different time, with very little wealth, in a post-war Italy. Alessandra was conscious of that. But it didn’t mean she wanted to change her own mind about her life.
One question Alessandra did have for Federico was how often she should paint a mural. Timing was everything, and she didn’t want to overexpose CAT. She needed people to be fascinated with her, to wait around for her. But she needed it to remain a hot commodity.
Together with Federico, she decided to do another mural late that summer on the Amalfi Coast. Like Banksy with England, she wanted to be loyal to her home. She wanted to be known as an Italian artist, with no speculation about where CAT was from, even if she never revealed her name. This time, she and Federico decided to go big with the mural and spent weeks gathering supplies and planning how they would access the desired area. Obviously, someone would need to be at their place, watching over things until they got back. Because of this, they invented a reason to go out of town together. Alessandra’s mother was always keen to babysit because it gave her a reason to make Alessandra feel guilty. (It went without saying that Alessandra’s mother adored Alessandra’s daughter.) So, as Alessandra packed up her things, her mother sat on the bed with her arms crossed and accused her in not so many words of being a bad mother.
“She needs her mother and her father here,” her mother was saying, her forehead creased with anger. “She needs to know that you’re both down the hall!”
“Mama, we’re always right down the hall,” Alessandra said.
“Not tonight, you won’t be.”
“And you’ll be here instead!” Alessandra reminded her. “It’s just like when we went to Paris. You took care of things so that we could have a break. And didn’t you have a break when you were raising children? Weren’t you allowed a few days off, sometimes?” Alessandra remembered when her uncles, aunts, and grandparents would occasionally take responsibility for her and her siblings, while her parents traipsed off to Rome or wherever. But her mother wasn’t so keen to remember that.
And then, her mother went for the jugular. “It was already so hard for Elena to see her mother go through cancer treatments. She thought she was going to lose you!”
Alessandra stopped folding a tank top and glared at her mother with as much vitriol as she could muster. She wanted to say,How dare you? But she didn’t want to take it so far. Instead, she said, “Elena was a wonderful part of my healing. Because of my daughter, I forced myself through chemo treatment after chemo treatment, never allowing myself to give up because I wanted to be alive for Elena. But I also don’t want Elena to see her mother live in fear. I want her to know that I’m alive enough to go away for one night with my husband, Elena’s father, whom I love.” Alessandra was fuming. “It’s one night with your granddaughter. She’s nine years old. If this is really too hard for you, I can ask someone else.”
Her mother grumbled to herself, got off the bed, and walked down the hall. A moment later, she was giggling and playing with Elena, who had the very same dollhouse that Alessandra had loved as a girl. Alessandra took a breath and reminded herself that this was just her mother’s way. Guilt was a love language in Italy. Maybe it was everywhere.
That first mural trip was a raging success. By the time Federico and Alessandra were back home with Elena, the news was in a full-blown discussion about CAT’s newest mural and what it meant for the Amalfi Coast. Because Alessandra and Federico had told their parents they were going somewhere else for their overnight stay, their parents thought nothing of it.
Elena, too, was curious, peppering her mother and father with questions about the muralist—why the artist wanted to stay anonymous and how long it would take to paint a big mural like that. Alessandra was overjoyed that her daughter took notice of Alessandra’s operation. She answered as many questions as she could without giving the game away.
“Do you want to paint your own murals?” she asked her daughter.
Elena said she did. That afternoon, Alessandra helped Elena paint a large picture directly on the wall of her bedroom. Like her parents before her, Elena had always had a remarkable artistic eye, and the colors she selected were glowing and deep, blending beautifully. The shapes she constructed were abstract but seemed to tell a story, one that Federico and Alessandra mused over as they watched her from Elena’s bed, holding hands. They were watching their daughter perform exactly what they’d spent all night doing on the coast. It was like they were passing on their gifts.
Despite Alessandra’s CAT-based fame, they were still struggling with money. This needed to be rectified, somehow. Federico wanted her to come out and identify herself. “Maybe they’ll pay you to make more murals!” he suggested late one night, propped up on his elbow in bed.
But Alessandra reminded him that one of the things that made CAT so inspiring for people was her anonymity. Federico said she was right. For a few months, they lost the initial passion for the murals they’d shared, throwing themselves back into their moneymaking schemes of Federico’s pottery workshop and Alessandra’s coastline paintings.
Christmas came and went again.
