Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Positano, Italy
I t had been a few months since Alessandra learned that she wouldn’t live longer than six years, and Alessandra continued to carry the secret alone.
With winter crashing in on Italy, gray weather and illness had returned.
COVID was back in full force, and the schools were closed.
Panic was everywhere. Federico usually went to the grocery store, and he always wore two masks and plastic gloves.
He stayed away from the rest of the family for a few hours after he returned.
They’d already had COVID, of course, but there was talk that the virus was evolving.
No telling what would happen next. Alessandra didn’t want to tell him that COVID was the least of their worries.
She was grateful that her parents hadn’t moved back in this time. She wasn’t sure she could take her mother breathing down her neck.
Dr. Vincento was still singing the same tune.
The cancer was back, and it would kill her.
But there were ways of extending her life, things to be done to keep her around as long as possible, and Alessandra had agreed to a hormonal treatment that wouldn’t do anything funky to her hair.
The struggle was getting out of the house to go to appointments, at least at first. But Federico was busy slinging pots in his workshop, and Elena had a new boyfriend that she wanted to talk to on the phone for what felt like five hours a day.
Alessandra might have cared about her screen time, or whatever, but she wasn’t keen on having those kinds of fights, not now.
Perhaps Federico could deal with it later, after Alessandra was gone.
If and only if Alessandra lived the full six years (or longer!
Miracles could happen!), then maybe she’d live long enough to see Elena graduate from high school and go to college.
But it wasn’t likely that she’d be present for her wedding, or meet her first grandchild, or anything like that.
These thoughts weren’t useful, but Alessandra wanted to prepare herself for the full breadth of reality.
With the time she had left, she wanted to do what she pleased.
Most of all, she wanted to work.
A few nights before Christmas, Alessandra approached Federico with three projects meant for the following year of 2021.
Now that the flights were up and running again (which you could board if you took the requisite COVID tests), Alessandra could technically go anywhere.
She could go to New York City. She could go to Los Angeles.
She could go to Buenos Aires if she wanted to travel that far.
She’d already drawn several sketches and mapped out where she wanted to put her newest murals.
“I don’t want CAT to quiet down,” she told Federico, trying to hide the urgency in her voice. “People need her more than ever.”
Federico looked at her with love in his eyes. “It’s a long way to go by yourself,” he said finally. “It’s a lot of work.”
“I know that,” she said. “But I promise, I won’t be gone long.
” She reminded him that all of the locations she’d picked had money involved.
She also reminded him that 2020 and the subsequent years had been some of the most politically charged ever.
She wanted to make more statements. She sought to stand up for what she thought was right.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Federico asked in a joking voice, then kissed her. He knew that was exactly the kind of question that would drive her nuts.
Throughout Christmas—an elaborate affair, as always, with Alessandra’s parents braving COVID to come over—Alessandra kept mum on her travel plans.
She cooked and baked herself into a tizzy and bickered with her mother and took the medication that had begun to make her feel like her body was made of stone.
Frequently, she had to take naps in the next room and always set an alarm to ensure she didn’t sleep the day away, alerting everyone that her body was not all right.
Alessandra felt like the most brilliant of actresses, fooling all of her loved ones.
Maybe they would hate her for this one day.
But in her mind, she was giving them more time together. More normal time.
Normal time was the only time she really wanted.
But during the Christmas feast, Alessandra had to bite her tongue to keep from crying.
It was hard for her to fathom that all of this joy, the fights with her mother, her daughter’s teenage attitude, the delicious foods, the flowing wine, and the beautiful view out the window might not belong to her any longer.
“What’s gotten into you, Alessandra?” her mother asked pointedly. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I’m fine,” she told her, putting an edge to her voice. She poured her mother more wine and ordered her to keep eating. “You’re making me feel bad about my food.”
“It isn’t your best,” her mother said of the pasta.
Alessandra rolled her eyes as her father and Federico interjected to say that, actually, it was the best pasta they’d had all year.
“Don’t flatter me.” She laughed.
“Your mother is being cruel because it’s Christmas and it’s tradition,” her father teased, then pressed a kiss onto her mother’s cheek. “It’s what a family does.”
“I know all about what a family does,” Alessandra said, thinking about herself, about her lies.
For a Christmas present, Elena had miraculously made Alessandra something: a painting of Alessandra, sitting in the sunshine on the porch, drinking a glass of wine and sketching.
When Alessandra opened it, her eyes smarted with tears.
At thirteen going on fourteen, Elena had an incredible eye for detail.
The portrait was exquisite, showing Alessandra just as she’d been at that moment.
“Elena, this is incredible,” Alessandra said, covering her daughter in kisses.
Elena begged her mother to stop, but Alessandra didn’t know how. She felt on the verge of a big, teary breakdown. This was the mother Elena had watched grow sicker and sicker and then recover. This was the mother that, one day soon, Elena would bury in the ground.
It wasn’t fair! Alessandra was on her feet, hurrying to the bathroom to clean herself up.
Hours later, Federico found an unused frame for the painting and hung it in the living room for everyone to see. Elena beamed with happiness.
“I think she’s better than Alessandra was at that age,” Alessandra’s mother said.
“She is,” Alessandra affirmed, choosing not to be angry at her mother’s weirdness. “She has a real career ahead of her.”
“Should she go to London? Like you did?” her mother asked.
“London’s an option,” Federico said.
“But she shouldn’t come back,” her mother said. “There isn’t anything for artists here. Unless you want to make a mockery of art under the cover of darkness. Unless you want to paint on other people’s walls.”
Alessandra rolled her eyes.
“Are you talking about CAT?” Elena asked.
“I am,” her grandmother said, sniffing. “It isn’t right, what that woman does.”
“I think she’s extraordinary,” Elena said.
Alessandra had never heard her daughter talk about CAT before.
Her ears rang, eager to hear more about what her teenage daughter felt about her life’s work.
But Alessandra’s mother soon changed the subject, sweeping them off to more “legal” ideas of Elena’s future.
Federico caught Alessandra’s eye and tried to hide his smile.
How she loved him.
Weeks of terrible cold and blustery wind ushered in 2021.
When Alessandra had to go to the doctor for her various appointments, she struggled to come up with an excuse since nobody in their right mind would go for a walk at that time.
Eventually, she took to slipping out without telling anyone, deciding that they could always call or text her if she was needed.
They would have to get used to living without her.
She hated playing this game with her own life.
While she waited for her name to be called in the doctor’s office, she pulled out her phone and spontaneously booked a flight for her first 2021 CAT venture, which she’d decided would be in Brooklyn.
She’d be gone for three days, not enough time to get adjusted to the time, but time enough to make her mark.
Elena would probably not even notice she was gone.
She planned to leave on February 1st.
She knew it would be frigid cold, that she’d need to bundle up in black clothes and watch herself.
New York City felt more dangerous than other cities.
Her English was good, and she was relatively street-smart, but she didn’t want to be dumb and end up in a bad situation, not before she’d done everything she wanted to do with her brief life.
That day, in the office, Dr. Vincento checked her vital signs and discussed the side effects of her medication with her.
She spoke of fatigue, and he said that was normal.
She forced herself not to ask if everything was normal, so why did she have to come into the clinic so often?
She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with Dr. Vincento. Sorry to say.
Dr. Vincento interrupted her reverie with a question. “Why doesn’t Federico come with you anymore?”
It caught her off guard. But she saw no reason to lie to Dr. Vincento, especially because she didn’t want news of her diagnosis getting around Positano, the city of gossip. “I haven’t told him yet,” she said simply.
Dr. Vincento flinched with surprise and took a step back.
In a city as misogynistic as Italy, it was no surprise that her male doctor hated that his female patient hadn’t informed her husband about her health problems. But legally, he couldn’t do anything about it.
She thought about reminding him of that, but then thought better of it.
“You should,” he said. “You love him, don’t you?”
“More than anything,” she said, which was the truth.
When they wrapped up for the day, Alessandra put on her coat and gloves, adjusted her mask, and walked back into the waiting room, listening to the wind crash against the clinic.
So immersed in her own thoughts, she almost didn’t notice the person sitting in the corner, masked up and looking at Alessandra with horror.
Alessandra froze with alarm. “Mama? What are you doing here?”