Page 28 of Nantucket Reflections
For a Christmas present, Elena had miraculously made Alessandra something: a painting of Alessandra, sitting in the sunshine on the porch, drinking a glass of wine and sketching. When Alessandra opened it, her eyes smarted with tears. At thirteen going on fourteen, Elena had an incredible eye for detail. The portrait was exquisite, showing Alessandra just as she’d been at that moment.
“Elena, this is incredible,” Alessandra said, covering her daughter in kisses.
Elena begged her mother to stop, but Alessandra didn’t know how. She felt on the verge of a big, teary breakdown. This was the mother Elena had watched grow sicker and sicker and then recover. This was the mother that, one day soon, Elena would bury in the ground.
It wasn’t fair! Alessandra was on her feet, hurrying to the bathroom to clean herself up.
Hours later, Federico found an unused frame for the painting and hung it in the living room for everyone to see. Elena beamed with happiness.
“I think she’s better than Alessandra was at that age,” Alessandra’s mother said.
“She is,” Alessandra affirmed, choosing not to be angry at her mother’s weirdness. “She has a real career ahead of her.”
“Should she go to London? Like you did?” her mother asked.
“London’s an option,” Federico said.
“But she shouldn’t come back,” her mother said. “There isn’t anything for artists here. Unless you want to make a mockery of art under the cover of darkness. Unless you want to paint on other people’s walls.”
Alessandra rolled her eyes.
“Are you talking about CAT?” Elena asked.
“I am,” her grandmother said, sniffing. “It isn’t right, what that woman does.”
“I think she’s extraordinary,” Elena said.
Alessandra had never heard her daughter talk about CAT before. Her ears rang, eager to hear more about what her teenage daughter felt about her life’s work. But Alessandra’s mother soon changed the subject, sweeping them off to more “legal” ideas of Elena’s future. Federico caught Alessandra’s eye and tried to hide his smile.
How she loved him.
Weeks of terrible cold and blustery wind ushered in 2021. When Alessandra had to go to the doctor for her various appointments, she struggled to come up with an excuse since nobody in their right mind would go for a walk at that time. Eventually, she took to slipping out without telling anyone, deciding that they could always call or text her if she was needed. They would have to get used to living without her.
She hated playing this game with her own life.
While she waited for her name to be called in the doctor’s office, she pulled out her phone and spontaneously booked a flight for her first 2021 CAT venture, which she’d decided would be in Brooklyn. She’d be gone for three days, not enough time to get adjusted to the time, but time enough to make her mark. Elena would probably not even notice she was gone.
She planned to leave on February 1st.
She knew it would be frigid cold, that she’d need to bundle up in black clothes and watch herself. New York City felt more dangerous than other cities. Her English was good, and she was relatively street-smart, but she didn’t want to be dumb and end up in a bad situation, not before she’d done everything she wanted to do with her brief life.
That day, in the office, Dr. Vincento checked her vital signs and discussed the side effects of her medication with her. She spoke of fatigue, and he said that was normal. She forced herself not to ask if everything was normal, so why did she have to come into the clinic so often? She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with Dr. Vincento. Sorry to say.
Dr. Vincento interrupted her reverie with a question. “Why doesn’t Federico come with you anymore?”
It caught her off guard. But she saw no reason to lie to Dr. Vincento, especially because she didn’t want news of her diagnosis getting around Positano, the city of gossip. “I haven’t told him yet,” she said simply.
Dr. Vincento flinched with surprise and took a step back. In a city as misogynistic as Italy, it was no surprise that her male doctor hated that his female patient hadn’t informed her husband about her health problems. But legally, he couldn’t do anything about it. She thought about reminding him of that, but then thought better of it.
“You should,” he said. “You love him, don’t you?”
“More than anything,” she said, which was the truth.
When they wrapped up for the day, Alessandra put on her coat and gloves, adjusted her mask, and walked back into the waiting room, listening to the wind crash against the clinic. So immersed in her own thoughts, she almost didn’t notice the person sitting in the corner, masked up and looking at Alessandra with horror.
Alessandra froze with alarm. “Mama? What are you doing here?”
ChapterFifteen
