Free Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) by Elaine D Walsh Page A

are
certain emotions only infants seem to inspire, and it seems by the time we’re
older and we can retain and recall, we don’t remember the time when we were
most vulnerable and our mother’s love was the most pure.  I saw that so clearly
in Raphael’s painting.
    “I forgot to tell you this is why I do what I do; so
paintings like Raphael’s can live on.”
    When Tess finished spewing her words, the sound of her own
labored breathing filled her ears.  Francesca gazed at her for a moment before
finally saying, “Tomorrow we learn a little about chemistry and a little more
about each other.”

     

CHAPTER 7
    The lunchtime restaurant chatter resembled the continual
hum reverberating from electrical power lines, noticed at first before slowly
fading into white noise in the background.  Francesca dabbed the corner of her
mouth with her napkin and pushed her empty salad plate away.  Tess had hardly
touched her club sandwich.  She’d been too busy recounting the same story she’d
shared with Ben about her mother’s desertion and marriage to Randall Wright,
except it was easier this time.  She didn’t know if that was because of
Francesca or because it was her second retelling.
    “Your mother has caused you great pain,” Francesca said at
the end of Tess’s monologue.
    “She’s taught me a few things as well.  A person has to be
an individual with boundaries, unlike her.  You can’t tell the difference
between where Wright’s life ends and hers begins.  They’re like one big
organism feeding off of each other.”  Tess shuddered and picked at her potato
salad with her fork.
    “Boundaries delineate as well as keep others out.” 
    She nodded.  “So I have a few walls.  But if you’d lived
my life, you’d understand.”
    “Sometimes it is possible to be so focused on avoiding the
mistakes others have made in their lives that we create a mess of our own.” 
Francesca placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on the bridge of
her folded hands before continuing. 
    “My mother’s parents were very mean people and
uneducated.  They drank too much and cared too little for their children. 
Especially her father, who beat them all: his wife, his children, even the
animals on their small farm were not immune.  It was all my mother could do to
grow up in a hurry and leave home.  She learned to read and write, and she
dreamed of life in the city, far away from her life on that farm.  She was
determined not to live the life of her parents, so as soon as she was able, she
ran away and headed for the city. 
    “Indeed, her life was very different from her parents’ but
not necessarily better.”
    “Is that it?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You started out with a lesson and never finished it.”
    “It is not my intention to lecture you.”
    “You misunderstood.  Conversations with my sister usually
sound like a lecture and yours like a lesson.  One annoys and one teaches.  I’d
like to hear the rest.”
    Francesca chuckled.  “I see.”
    “So tell me about her.”
    Francesca sighed as she settled back into the memories of
her mother.  “When she left her home, it was not a good time for Italy or her
people.  The war was going on, and the Fascists were in control.  Options for
women were not like they are today and even less so during the war, but she was
determined to be on her own and free of her family. 
    “She ended up as a prostitute catering to the Nazi
officers stationed in Rome.  She was a beautiful woman and became the lover of
one of the highest-ranking Nazis there.  For a while, she had a very good
life.  But when the Allies were coming and Mussolini’s hold was slipping, the
people sought revenge on those who they considered enemies of Italy, and that
included those who had collaborated and fraternized with the Nazis and
Fascists.  There were many women like my mother who were hunted down and
killed, strung up like animals.  They could not just kill them;