Chapter 25 Loretta
L ORETTA
‘Mammina, you look pale. Let me take that from you.’ Marina reaches for the tablecloths in Loretta’s arms.
Loretta shoos her away. ‘I swear on all the saints, Marina, if you don’t stop nagging me, I’ll find a train to throw myself under!’ She loads the laundry into the industrial washer in the restaurant kitchen.
Marina swears under her breath and walks through to the office.
Through the doorway, Loretta watches Alberto lift the blackboard with a grunt. Writing the menu is the one job she’s allowing him to do today before she banishes him back upstairs.
Her husband, who’s always had the strength to hold Hotel Il Cuore on his shoulders, who’s always been robust and indestructible, seems frail as he hunches over the blackboard, holding a long piece of white chalk. Her heart lurches.
Marina slides into the seat next to Alberto, her back to Loretta. ‘Papà, can I talk to you about something?’ she asks.
Loretta cranes her neck to listen.
‘Of course, vita mia, anything,’ Alberto replies.
‘The hotel has an excellent name, business is solid. We can afford to employ good chefs. Mamma can pass on her recipes. Don’t you agree it’s time for you and Mamma to retire? Think about your heart and the rest it needs, Papà.’
Alberto puts the chalk down and rubs his eyes. ‘It’s not just my heart that needs rest. My bones are old, Marina. I’m tired and aching all over. In four years I’ll be eighty. Do you think I enjoy setting an alarm before dawn every morning and trudging in the rain and the sleet across the canal to haggle with thieves? And then spend my days being yelled at by your mother in the kitchen for doing everything wrong? But you know as well as I do that the restaurant is the blood in your mother’s veins. You’re convincing the wrong person to retire. I’d be happy to never work again if I had Loretta to pass the time with me. But she’s ten years younger than I am. If I retire now, she’ll leave me to rot alone while she carries on working all day.’
‘So, insist she retires too.’
‘Insist? Insist nothing.’ His tone hardens. ‘You think she doesn’t know I’ve had enough? You think I haven’t told her every day for the last five years? What I say makes no difference to your mother. It never has and it never will.’
He picks up the sign and walks out to the front of the hotel with his head hanging forward and his shoulders slumped. The chalk residue stains his black pants.
Loretta watches as he puts the sign up on the landing. Immediately, passers-by stop to read the daily menu. He walks back in and heads for the lift, his face reflecting the sense of hopelessness of his words. Marina didn’t argue with him, didn’t convince him that he had it all wrong, that Loretta put his needs above hers. Of course she didn’t argue, she can see for herself he’s right.
On the other hand, Marina and Rocco have grown up witnessing Alberto’s adoration for Loretta, which is obvious to everyone. Whenever he introduces himself as Signora Bianchi’s husband, he almost grows in height.
Loretta has to get out of the hotel for some fresh air; she’s being choked by her guilt in there. She hurries into the cloakroom and grabs her coat, sunglasses and headscarf.
In the lobby, Marina’s mid-conversation with Chiara and Salvatore, who have just arrived. Loretta walks past them.
‘Mamma! Where are you going? It’s twenty minutes until breakfast,’ Marina calls.
‘Out!’ she replies without turning. ‘You keep telling me to rest. You do breakfast!’
Outside, she ignores the voice in her head that tells her to go to Flavia. There have been no text messages so far from her today. Loretta expected to be relieved, but all she feels is bereft.
Instead of heading towards San Zaccaria, she walks as quickly as her arthritic knees will let her to Piazza San Marco, where she stands behind the crowd to watch Magdalena shivering, hip deep in the water.
Magdalena stares out at the crowd, her eyes lingering on Loretta when she spots her, even at the back with her hair covered and her sunglasses on. It’s been over twenty years since Loretta and Magdalena were in the same space, but every second of that encounter is burned in Loretta’s mind forever, and it’s become apparent that it’s the same for Magdalena.
She watches Magdalena for a few minutes before the current inside her pulls her away from the piazza, not towards Flavia but towards home. The pull of home is always strongest, no matter what her heart wants.
Marina’s standing over the stove in a cloud of steam, lifting eggs out of a pot of boiling water. Loretta takes the slotted spoon from Marina’s hands and continues the task herself.
Marina tilts her head. ‘I’m so worried about you, Mamma. You’re not yourself.’
Loretta smiles at her intuitive daughter, feeling regretful about the way she snapped at her earlier. ‘I’m okay, cara mia. Here, carry these out there for me.’
Before she walks into the restaurant, Loretta looks herself over in the office mirror, pins back flyaway hairs and activates Signora Bianchi mode, fixing a smile on her face.
Breakfast service passes in its usual busy blur, but nothing dulls her ache for Flavia, her guilt and worry over Alberto, and the unstoppable thought that with every minute, she’s drowning more and more.