Free Begin Again: Short stories from the heart by Mary Campisi Page A

and just as Catholic as the Olivetti’s even though we didn’t wind our hair in tight buns or hang a crucifix in every room.
    “Do they really have a crucifix in every room?” I’d asked my mother as she arranged the cannoli on a Styrofoam tray layered with wax paper.
    She looked up at me and raised a black brow, an Italian black brow. “Go deliver the cannoli,” she’d said. “Then you tell me.”
    The Olivetti house was two blocks from ours, up a hill and around a bend on a patch of land surrounded by clumps of crabgrass and holy statues. There was one of the Virgin Mary tucked in the flower bed by the front door, hands extended, a stone visage of white purity, blessing, and welcome. Another was of Baby Jesus decked out in a scarlet robe and matching crown, two tiny fingers forming a peace sign. He was propped against the opening to a fence that led to the backyard and what looked like grape vines. The house was newly painted to robin’s-egg-blue, the trim a daffodil yellow, except for the screen door that hung at an odd angle, its off-white paint peeling around the edges.
    I’d stood there, half holding my breath against the smell of garlic and burned grease filtering through the screen in a cloud of stale disgust. My eyes were glued to a scrap of chipped paint on the door, the tray of cannoli in my hands, wondering what Mary Alice would say if she knew we took bets on the size and color of her underwear. White, Hanes, number nine had been my guess. Full-cut. When I looked up, she was standing on the other side of the screen.
    “ Vivi , hi.” Her voice was softer than usual, almost a whisper. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t open the door, didn’t step outside either, just stood there, a dull red splashing her olive skin.
    I held out the cannoli, my eyes darting to the door handle, then back to her face. Well? Wasn’t she going to invite me in? I wanted to check out the crucifixes.
    Before I could say anything, Mary Alice’s mother swooped down on us in a rush of oily flesh and rapid Italian.
    Nicolina Olivetti was a big woman with a chest that tucked itself into her waist and disappeared under a grease-splattered white apron. Her hands were long and square, her gray-black hair stretched into a bun so tight her eyes looked half Asian. She wore a housedress that fell just below her knees and was the same blue as the house. The slippers on her swollen feet were soiled to a brown-gray though they might have been white when she bought them.
    My gaze darted back to her face. There were creases on Mrs. Olivetti’s high forehead and around her thin lips but the rest of her skin was pulled tight, stretched over a long nose and broad cheekbones as though there hadn’t been enough flesh to cover the bones.
    But it was those eyes that pulled me in, made me clear my throat twice. They were deep black; onyx, midnight, opaque, the kind that grabbed you tight, held on, x-rayed, scanning layers of brain and memory and secrets. I thought Mrs. Olivetti saw right through me down to the bet I’d made on Mary Alice’s underwear.
    I looked away.
    She turned to Mary Alice, spoke in the same high-pitched, staccato Italian she’d used earlier. Mary Alice answered, her voice soft at first then rising to within a decibel of her mother’s. I heard my name, once, twice, three times. Mrs. Olivetti pointed at me with her left hand, shook her head. The thin gold band on her third finger made me think of Mary Alice’s father, Umberto; small, thin, stoop-shouldered with a shock of white hair and round wire-framed glasses. I never heard him speak, even the one time when Father Charles introduced him after Mass. He’d just stood there and nodded, his thin lips pulling open enough to reveal two crooked front teeth. I figured he’d given up on talking after he married Mary Alice’s mother. Who wouldn’t?
    Mrs. Olivetti gave me one last look, muttered in Italian, then turned and headed back into the house, to her garlic and