Free White Shotgun by April Smith Page B

sent my brothers and me to private Catholic school, and then to the university—with no support from the government. My aunts and their husbands gave money to pitch in with my studies, so I had to do well.”
    “And our father? Miguel Sanchez?”
    “He wasn’t there,” Cecilia reminds me quietly. “He was in America, remember? Married to your mother.”
    “Not for very long.”
    I am struck with a pang of envy. What if my absent father did spend more time with his El Salvadoran family? What difference can it make now?
    “I guess we have that in common.”
    “What?”
    She asks this kindly, as a question.
    “It’s funny, but we both grew up without the same father. I have virtually no memory of him. Except for one blurry image … He’s just not there. And you didn’t get much of him, either.”
    “A little more, perhaps. I know his face. He was very friendly-looking. I’ll find that picture. He was playful, and he enjoyed making jokes, like you.”
    “You and I, we each have pieces missing.”
    After a silence, Cecilia says, “True.”
    “And we’re both half-and-half. You’re from El Salvador, but you might as well be Italian.”
    “I am not one thing or another,” Cecilia says.
    Around the tourist attraction of the Church of Sant’ Antonio Abate there are stores with bombastic windows crowded with cheeses, chocolates, sausage, and mountains of gorgeously wrapped panfòrte , the signature fruitcake of Siena, with seventeen ingredients—one for each contrada —and hard as the brick of the houses that surround us in an almond-colored maze. The old lanes tilt and curve, go uphill and down and return to the starting point, like the meandering talk between us.
    “What made you search for me?” I venture. “Why now?”
    “Didn’t you read my letters?” Cecilia asks. “I thought you knew about the inheritance.”
    “Yes, you mentioned it, but I wasn’t sure.”
    “You have an inheritance coming from the family. It’s small—a couple of thousand euros. It came when we sold the fish market, after my mother died.”
    “Thank you,” I say. “That’s very honorable of you to seek me out.”
    “I did want to meet you, after all these years.”
    “You made a big effort.”
    “It was the right thing to do,” she says. “The money belongs to you.”
    She sounds awfully matter-of-fact, compared to the emotion in the letters, in which she begged for information about the American relation she had held in her heart for many years. Is she disappointed in what she found? Or, faced with it, has she reconsidered whatever bold moves she imagined?
    As we walk, I’m figuring out how to go deeper. It is afternoon, and from the rows of houses, scores of green shutters have opened to the breeze. Old people are everywhere. And happy, too. They watch from doorways or perch on wooden fruit crates that they pick up and move as the sun moves. Cecilia introduces me to each and every nonna , it seems, and they respond with sweet attempts at English. “Hear you soon!”
    Finally we come to a small square with a fountain and another church.
    “Fontebranda is the oldest fountain in Siena. Here I was baptized into Oca when we got married. If I was not baptized to the contrada , the marriage would be impossible.”
    “Can sisters tell each other absolutely anything?” I ask.
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I noticed that you and your husband are very affectionate—but you don’t sleep in the same room.”
    “We do sleep together, but not every night,” Cecilia replies tartly. “He starts snoring like a train and then I have to leave. I get emergency calls, I need my sleep.”
    “What does that do for your marriage?”
    “Probably saves it.”
    We turn away from the fountain, down a steep side street.
    “Did you want to be baptized into Oca?”
    “It was a bit strange, but they consider it an honor.”
    “That’s what I mean. You’re obviously a smart, independent woman, but it seems like Nicoli runs your