L'America Read Free Page B

soles and heels. His father's big success, in collaboration with Signor Marconi, Francesca's grandfather, and later with her father, was with panty hose. Cesare's big success in collaboration with Signor Agnelli, husband of Francesca, as it turns out, has been with nonskid socks for toddlers. The Cellinis have mastered the art of money making more money, though the world is now in an economic slump and terrorism spreads like a cancer, metastasizing around the globe. And Beth, gone from him for fifteen years, is gone once again and permanently. Unwittingly he has watched her go many times. Behind her she has left a husband, a daughter, and a father. In their bedrooms, Cesare's wife and son are asleep. From time to time he peers in on them just to observe the gentle rhythm of their breathing, the rise and fall of their chests beneath the blankets. His wife's head, haloed by curly black hair, rests on her pillow, knowing only comfort. She peels her grapes, has the leisure to think of such stuff, the small silver knife and fork working intricately with the skin, slipping it off like a dress. She is the heir to an empire of fruit, ordinary fruits, exotic fruits, exported fruits, imported fruits—kumquats and kiwis and mangosteens, durians, and rambutans (favorites of the orangutan, as it happens). She breathes. In the morning, they will drive together to Fiori to oversee the construction of a swimming pool.
Pioneer
10 has long made it past the edge of our solar system. He wonders what Beth imagined as she died? Did she know she was about to die? For how long, how many minutes, did she anticipate it? Who is her daughter screaming for now? The e-mail had been matter-of-fact: "
I wanted you to know...
" Did her husband know Cesare loved Beth still?
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    It is past midnight, September, a thick night of fog, the sort that Lombardy is famous for. The fog shrouds the Pianura Padana, dangerously suspended over the entire plain. From the Alps to the Dolomites, the fog is so dense it would seem you could cut it, so dense it makes the whole world dark. Zero visibility and highway pileups involving dozens upon dozens of cars and deaths, caused by a fatal combination of warm earth and cold air and a plain of land that creates stillness. Cesare can feel Beth; the soft smell of her fills his living room. His parents are out and it is late and she is there. His parents do not like her, or rather they indulge her as a whim of Cesare's. He is a student at the Bocconi in Milan. He fails his exams regularly because he doesn't study. He doesn't study because he doesn't care about economics, as he knows it must come to bear, eventually, upon socks and shoes. He does not want to spend his life thinking about feet.
    Elena assures Giovanni Paolo the American is just a phase. Regularly (and in front of the American) he asks Cesare what happened to Francesca, why doesn't she come around anymore? It takes his parents months to learn Beth's name, to stop referring to her as the American. No matter that two years have passed since the Sardegna morning, no matter that Francesca is long since involved with (and intended to) the Agnelli relation.
    Cesare's wife sleeps, breathing peace. He hears his son rise, five years old, a year older than Beth's daughter. Listens to the boy tiptoe to his mother's bed, listens to the boy lift himself onto the mattress. Imagines Beth's little girl tiptoeing to her mother's bed, each night, every night. He can hear her, her voice like his son's, howling for mama when she has only gone away for a day. For how long? How long before a child forgets? Cesare's father is dead now, a good ten years, died of lung cancer in bed at home. The last thing he said to Cesare was to put out his cigarette; he said it dismissively, offended by his son smoking a cigarette as he lay dying of lung cancer. Cesare was not smoking; he was not a smoker. Never is the answer. You never forget.
    Not so many months after Giovanni Paolo died, Elena died,