Free The Saint of Lost Things by Christopher Castellani Page B

the same. Maddalena is the professor in the family. She likes her romances.” She reaches under the desk, pulls out Il Sogno della Principessa from Maddalena’s purse, and hands it to Mr. Gold.
“Ida!” Maddalena reaches for the book, but it’s already in Mr.Gold’s hands. On the cover is a watercolor drawing of a castle and moat, with a man crossing the drawbridge on a white horse.
“How does the title translate?” he asks, as he thumbs through it.
“The Dream of the Princess,” says Ida.
Maddalena blushes. “It’s about a princess,” she says. Mr. Gold hands it back to her and winks.
“Reading is very important, Ida,” he says. “The secret to a long life is to escape it as often as you can.” He thinks a moment, then takes out his notebook and scribbles. “My heart is with poets and historians. Not dressmakers. Not accountants and shopkeepers.”
“My heart is still in Kavala,” says Stavroula, tossing a handful of stockings onto the far side of her table.
“My heart is with my babies,” says Ida. “May they outlive me!”
They look to Maddalena, but she offers no report on the location of her heart. It lives in many places, she could tell them, if she wanted them to know. It beats with the child’s inside her; it tumbles down the hills of Santa Cecilia; it quickens when Antonio lays his hand on her hip. To try and catch up with it leaves her breathless. When she first arrived in this country, she thought her heart had broken, but no broken thing can propel itself so forcefully in so many directions. At work the demands of the machines and the endless yards of fabric numb her; for hours she forgets she has a heart at all. Then, without warning, it leaps inside her, and a daydream begins: Antonio kneels on the thick living-room carpet in their new house, his arms outstretched to welcome the child as he wobbles toward him; she turns on the record player, and the three of them join hands and dance in a circle around the coffee table. If Ida has this much, why can’t she?
“And so my wish is to live long enough to learn every fact,” says Mr. Gold, the end of a speech Maddalena has missed. He hops down from the table and walks toward the next group of ladies. “Imagine that! Every fact!”
“What a chiacchierone,” Ida whispers, when he’s out of earshot. She’s got a pin between her teeth. She fluffs her pile of stockings, and for a moment, it looks as tall as Maddalena’s. Then it deflates. “He talk-talk-talks like this is a party, but he expects us to get done the same work?” She stands, grabs a handful of stockings from Maddalena’s side and transfers it to hers. “I don’t know how you keep up,” she says, shaking her head. “But I’m glad you do.” She kisses Maddalena on the back of the head. “I’ll be in the ladies’ room. All this talking makes me have to go.”
T HAT EVENING , M ADDALENA and her family stand at the corner of Union and Eighth, gazing at a glorious display. The lampposts on both sides of the street are wrapped with gold garland and strings of colored bulbs. At the top of each lamppost, a plastic Babbo Natale, his white beard illuminated, waves his red-gloved hand and smiles. If they stand in a certain spot and look at him, he grows brighter and blurrier as the street curves out of the city, as if refracted through a mirror. In the twenty years the Grassos have lived in Wilmington, no one has decorated Union Street so elaborately. A few lights on trees here and there, a plastic star atop a chimney maybe, but nothing like this. Maddalena takes it as a sign that her daydreams, which seemed impossible as recently as this afternoon, might come true after all. Amid this beauty, maybe Antonio will forget the crazy game they’re playing.
Maddalena loops her arm through her mother-in-law’s and rests her head on the fur collar of her coat. For a long time they stand motionless, gazing up and down the street. Nobody says anything. Antonio rubs his chin, his eyes