Page 113 of Two Chances With You

I leave the ward, and I find the bathroom. After letting the tap run for a while, the way my mother had taught me, I fill the glass with water, just a little more than halfway full. I return to the ward. It’s a short walk, just a few steps. I see her there, peaceful, in repose. In Bed 114. With a faint smile on her face and her eyes shut, exactly as I’d left her. But she’s decided not to wait for my return. Mamma always hated saying goodbye. And I don’t know why, but I’m reminded of the time that I took the train on my first school field trip to Florence. The other mothers were all there, waving their handkerchiefs, variously white or colorful, saying farewell to the kids crowding the windows of the train compartments. I stuck my head out. I scanned the crowd packed along the platform under the canopy, a teeming mass of waving mothers, but she was gone. She was already gone. Just like right now. She’d already departed. Oh, Mamma.

I set the glass of water down on the side table next to her.I brought you your water, Mamma. I filled it just the way you taught me. Mamma.The only woman I’ll never stop loving. The one woman I wish I’d never lost. But whom I lost twice. Forgive me.

And so I leave the ward in silence, walking past numbered beds, amid strangers. Distracted by their pain, they ignore my pain.

An alarm sounds in the distance. Two male nurses go running past me. One of them slams into me unintentionally, but I pay them no mind. They’re going to tend to my mother. Stupid fools, they don’t know that she’s already left. Don’t bother her. That’s just the way she is. She doesn’t like saying goodbye, she doesn’t look back, she doesn’t wave farewell. Mamma. I’ll miss you, more than I’ve already missed you in all these years. “If what wounded me also wounded you, I think of you in a field of strawberries, I think of you happy there, dancing, lightly, so beautiful, so free…” The words of an old song surface in my mind. For you, Mamma, only for you. Carry them with you, hold them tight wherever you’re going now. Dance, beautiful one, in that field of strawberries, finally free from whatever it was that had imprisoned you here.

I’m crying now. I go downstairs. The male nurse isn’t there at the workstation. There’s a woman, instead. She looks at me, curious for a moment, but says nothing. She must have seen people leave that ward, unable to conceal their brutal grief. She doesn’t even notice it anymore. We all seem the same to her, she’s practically bored by now with all our stupid tears that can do nothing.

I leave. It’s afternoon by now. The sun is still high, the sky is clear and blue. A day like any other, but different from all other days, and forever. I see my father and my brother arriving. They’re far away. They’re chatting, relaxed, with smiles on their faces. Who knows what they’re talking about. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Lucky souls, who don’t know yet. Let them go on enjoying it. Still carefree and happy, blithe in their ignorance.

I change direction and head off. I let myself drift; I wander in the wind. I’d like to let my grief become light and airy. But that’s not what happens.

Then I think about Mamma, her last words, her advice. I smile. Yes, Mamma. And obedient as I’ve never been before, like the son I so wished I could have been, I enter the closest flower shop.

Chapter 49

Ginevra, may I come in?” Gin opens the door to her room and speaks to her mother. “What is it, Mamma?”

“This afternoon they delivered this for you.”

Peering through a large bouquet of red roses, her mother peeks into the bedroom and smiles at her as she lays them on the bed.

“You see how beautiful? And just look. There’s a white rose in the middle. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“No, what does it mean?”

“It’s a way of asking for forgiveness, a floral apology. Is there someone who’s done something wrong, someone who’s sorry for something?”

“No, Mamma. Everything’s fine.” But mothers never miss a thing. There’s no doubt her mother observes Gin’s reddened, bloodshot eyes.

“Here.” She hands Gin a handkerchief and smiles at her.

“Whenever you like, dinner is on the table.”

“Thanks, Mamma, but I don’t feel like eating right now.”

“All right. But don’t take it too hard. It’s not worth it.”

Gin smiles at her mother. “Maybe it isn’t.”

Before she leaves the room, Gin’s mother gives her a card. “Here, this was in among the roses. Maybe it’s an explanation of that white rose.”

Gin’s mother exits the room, leaving her alone with her sorrow, alone with her flowers, alone with her card. Gin opens it. Curiously, she reads the beginning.

You’ve asked me to do this so many times, but I’ve always said no. However, I was planning to do it for you on your birthday, or for Christmas, or just any special occasion. But never as a way of asking your forgiveness. But if it does any good, even if it’s not enough, even if I have to write another thousand and then another thousand and then yet another thousand more, I’d gladly do that because I can’t live without you.

And Gin continues reading.Here is what you wanted. My poetry.She slides through the words, tears coming to her eyes, she sniffs, and she laughs again.

She gets up and continues reading. About their moments, their passion, the trip, the excitement. And she continues smiling, sniffing again, wiping at her eyes, smearing one of the words with a runaway tear.

And she goes on like that, all the way to the end.I’ll wait for you. And I’ll go on waiting. And I’ll go on waiting even longer. To see you, to have you, to feel happy again. Happy as the sky at sunset.

Then she has a sudden, strange sensation. She turns around rapidly and looks at her desk. There in the corner where she has always kept them, hidden. And suddenly she understands. And she feels herself die a little bit inside.

She jumps and runs into the other room. “Mamma! Did you let him come into my room?”

“Why, it was that nice boy, the one who sent us the champagne, no? He seemed so kind and respectable. And after all, he’d brought those beautiful flowers. I couldn’t tell him no. It would have seemed rude.”

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