Page 102 of The Husband Diet
When I finally managed to see through my tears, Zia Maria nudged me softly.
‘Go on, open it,’ she whispered, her voice shattered, her eyes red.
On either side of her, my aunts nodded.
The first gift, the one for my own home one day, was a large set of white linen hand-embroidered curtains, enough for an entire house, signed at the bottom in linen thread by Nonna herself.
I stared up at my aunts, who were now in tears, patting me. This stuff was worth thousands and thousands of dollars. But to me it was priceless, because I knew what an endless feat it was once you started the work, assuming you had the talent to do so. I lightly touched the linen, waves of sorrow passing through me.Nonna. My one and only Nonna.
‘Go on – this one next,’ Zia Martina said, passing me the medium-size parcel.
I opened it to find a matching linen sheet, pillowcases and coverlet, again all hand-embroidered. The linen was smooth and the embroidery flawless. As a child I’d seen this stuff in my nonna’s Italian magazines. I also remembered that year in, year out I’d seen her working on them. But I hadn’t realized they were forme.
‘And now for your third gift,’ Zia Monica whispered, sniffling.
‘But what did I do to—’
‘You don’t know?’ Zia Maria chuckled. ‘You’re one of us, Erica. Absolutely nothing like Marcy. And Nonna wanted you to know that.’
‘But I’m not! I’m nothing like you!’ I protested under my breath, and they all laughed at me, patting me on the back and handing me the smallest parcel that fit in my hands.
Despite my doubts, I tore at the plain brown paper and stared. Inside was a rectangular blue velvet box. With tight lips and shaky hands, I opened it and peered inside. It was a beautiful pearl necklace, identical to the ones my aunts – and Nonna Silvia – wore on special occasions, but with a gold E hanging from the clasp at the back. Zia Monica slipped it around my neck and the cool pearls nestled under my collarbone.
‘E for Erica,’ I choked, and my aunts all looked at one another.
I sat there like an idiot, trying to make some sense of what had happened, as if from one day to another I’d magically become someone else, someone who deserved something so precious, something so rare.
‘There’s still your fourth gift, Erica,’ Zia Monica said softly, glancing at her sisters, who winced. ‘Well, we have to. Don’t you remember the pact?’
Zia Martina nodded and sighed. ‘I knew this was going to happen.’
‘Pact? What pact?’ I asked, raising my eyebrow. Was it true that they really were sorceresses or fairies of some kind? I always knew there was a special magical bond there and that Nonna Silvia was at the heart of it.
‘Well, we thought Marcy and your father would have taken care of it by now,’ Zia Maria explained.
‘Well, they didn’t,’ Zia Monica answered and then turned to me, a hand on my knee. ‘Your Nonna must have forgotten to do this. She wasn’t well toward the end and it must have slipped her mind.’
‘What? What must’ve slipped her mind?’
At that point, Zia Maria reached into the box and pulled out another parcel. I unwrapped it to find an old leather-bound family album. One I’d never seen before. Now pictures of Marcy I’ve seen amilliontimes, but family pictures, where they were all together, were a rarity, because Nonna had always taken them but never been in them. But she was in many here, I noticed with satisfaction as I flipped through the album.
There were pictures of a beautiful medieval town, San Gimignano, from where the Bettarinis had originated. I recognized the old towers that the most powerful families had built to assert their commercial and financial prowess among their rival families.
There were pictures of their large farmhouse, the stables and stalls, the cheeses and hanging prosciuttos. A family that had been doing well. And then the war had come, taking my grandfather away from Nonna, leaving her no choice but to sell up and go.
But something made me stop and go back to page one, as if I already unconsciously knew that there was more. One particular picture had caught my eye. The women were there in their Sunday best, all pretty and frilly, between five and fifteen years of age, standing on the steps of an old medieval church in Tuscany. I smiled, recognizing younger versions of Marcy (whose name back then was Marcella), Zia Maria, Zia Monica, Zia Martina and… Marcy again?
I looked back at the Marcy on the left, then at the Marcy on the right. It was an old photo that had been folded and had a crease down the middle to show for it. Had the image on the left bled onto the background of the right-hand side, producing a copy of Marcy?
I now know that in my mind, I was trying to come up with the easiest, less painful solution.
I took a closer look. There was no mistaking it. Thereweretwo Marcys.Twins.
‘What’s going on here?’ I asked my aunts, who were all holding their breath. ‘How come we were never told we had another aunt? Where is she now?’
‘Her name was Emanuela. And she had a baby.’
I stared at them. ‘We have a cousin and we didn’t know? Where do they live? In Tuscany?’
