Milan
June 1960
Maria decorated a nursery at her home in Milan, choosing pale lemon for the walls, hedging her bets, although she was positive the baby was a girl. She bought heaps of toys: a wooden rocking horse with a thick wool mane and leather saddle; a Steiff teddy bear; a music box that played Swan Lake and had a revolving silver-skirted ballerina. She hired a nurse, who would come and live in the house straight after the birth and accompany them to the Christina later.
She and Ari discussed names, and he accepted her hunch that it was a girl.
“I would like a name from opera,” she said. “Perhaps Elvira or Isolde.”
“Didn’t they all commit suicide or have their hearts broken?” Ari asked. “Why not a classic Greek name, like Polyxeni or Vassiliki?”
“Vassiliki!” She laughed. “Do you want her to sound like a grandmother?”
“Okay,” he conceded. “Perhaps you should choose the name if it is a girl and I will choose for a boy. Do we have a deal?”
Maria was so sure it was a girl that she agreed.
Ari showed her how he shook hands on a business deal, squeezing firmly with his right hand and grasping his associate’s elbow with his left.
He had not yet told his children that they were to have a new sibling; he said he feared it would give Tina ammunition in the ongoing divorce negotiations. Maria squirmed when she imagined Tina’s reaction to their news.
The legal processes were moving at a snail’s pace and it became apparent that they could not be married before the birth, but Maria decided it was only a minor setback. God would forgive them. By wearing her swing coat whenever she left the house, she had succeeded in keeping any hint of her pregnancy out of the press. When the news eventually leaked, as it surely would, she hoped the wedding date would have been set.
As the weeks passed, she marveled at the changes to her body. She had feared she might get fat again, but although her weight rose by twenty pounds, all of it was in her breasts and her belly. The doctor was pleased with her health. The only ill effect she suffered was low blood pressure, which caused occasional dizzy spells, but they passed after a rest and a light snack. She often sang to the baby, hoping to instill a love of music while it was in the womb. Both she and Ari noticed that the little one seemed to stop squirming when it heard her sing, as if it had paused to listen.
On the twenty-sixth of June, the day the baby was to be delivered, Maria traveled to the hospital with Bruna, clutching a bag that contained two of her nightgowns and some newborn-baby clothes, soft and fine as gossamer. Ari would remain at her house until after the Caesarean, then visit mother and child later. He had ordered Montecristo cigars, which he claimed were essential for a proud father—that and some bottles of Maria’s favorite vintage of Dom Pérignon.
Maria was nervous as she was prepped for the operation. She didn’t like the idea of being unconscious, or the knife that would slit open her belly, but it would all be worthwhile later in the day when she could kiss her child for the first time. She closed her eyes and breathed as instructed when the rubber mask was placed over her mouth and nose, aware of a sickly sweet scent as she went under.
WHEN MARIA OPENED her eyes, she was in bed, and Bruna was sitting beside her, fiddling with her rosary beads. She glanced at the window and saw the light outside fading. It must be early evening.
“Where’s the baby?” she asked, her voice husky.
Then she noticed that Bruna looked as if she had been crying, and felt a glimmer of fear.
“There’s a problem,” Bruna said, standing up. “Let me get the doctor.”
Maria pushed herself up on her elbows despite the tearing sensation in her belly. “What kind of problem?” she croaked, but Bruna was halfway out the door.
Was there something wrong with the baby? Why wasn’t it in the room? She lifted the sheet and saw a dressing on her abdomen. The operation had been carried out. She couldn’t feel much when she lay still, so perhaps the anesthetic was still numbing her.
Minutes later Ari came into the room, followed by the doctor, and she knew it was bad news when they couldn’t meet her eyes.
“Where is my baby?” she demanded. Ari came to sit beside her and took her hand, but still he wouldn’t look at her.
The doctor spoke slowly, as if reluctant to tell her. “The child—a boy—was delivered at four-thirty this afternoon.”
“A boy!” She registered this with surprise.
“But I’m afraid he failed to breathe. It seems the lungs were not developed. We tried to assist him but all our efforts failed and he died twenty minutes later.”
“What?” She turned to Ari and he nodded, gripping her hand so tightly she thought he would crush the bones.
Maria turned to the doctor again. “My child was alive this morning. I could feel him moving. How can he be dead now?”
“It seems there was a disorder affecting the lungs. We’re not sure what.”
She couldn’t take it in. How could her child have underdeveloped lungs, when hers were so powerful? She would have given the baby one of her own, were such a thing possible.
“Was it my fault?” she asked. She needed to know. “Was it because of my malformed uterus?”
The doctor shook his head. “Not at all. There’s nothing anyone could have done differently. It’s just nature’s way sometimes.”
She looked at Ari again. He was fighting back tears. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’ve let you down.”
He made a strangled noise in his throat and shook his head.
There was a ringing sound in Maria’s ears, and for a moment she thought this might be a nightmare. Maybe she was still under anesthesia and would awaken to find the baby was fine. Or maybe they had made a mistake, and when they checked again they would find he was breathing.
“Can I see him?” she asked.
They didn’t like that idea. The doctor frowned. “We don’t encourage it. You might find his appearance upsetting.”
“Of course I must see him. I insist!” She knew she would never believe this without seeing him with her own eyes. It was so sudden, so surreal.
The doctor asked a nurse to fetch him and she closed her eyes to pray. Dear God, please have mercy. Let my baby live. Please don’t take away the thing I wanted most in the world.
The nurse brought in a bundle swaddled in white muslin, and she unwrapped a little so Maria could see tufts of dark hair above a high forehead. Maria reached for him and snuggled the bundle close, finding him heavier than she’d expected. When she pulled back the muslin, there was his face, eyelids shut tight, plump cheeks, lips a little blue. She kissed his forehead and it wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either.
Ari stood and walked to the window. He couldn’t look, but Maria wanted to see everything. She asked Bruna for her glasses, then unwrapped the muslin completely. Her baby was perfectly formed, with funny frog legs, a roll of fat around each thigh, miraculously tiny fingers and toes, a rounded belly with the sprout of cord still attached, dimples in his elbows, a chubby penis. Everything was perfect—everything, except his chest was not moving.
“I want a proper funeral,” she told Ari. “With an Orthodox priest. Can that be done even though he was not baptized?”
“I will arrange it,” he said, the first words he had uttered in a long time.
“What shall we call him? He is a boy so you must choose.”
“Omero,” he said straightaway. “After the author of the Odyssey.”
“Omero.” Maria nodded. She liked that name.
She tried to decide which of them he looked like. Was there a hint of Ari’s chin? At least he didn’t have her big nose. His skin was smooth and as downy as a peach. She kissed him again.
“Let me take him now,” the nurse said, reaching out.
Maria shoved her hand away. “Get off! You will not take him. You will not!”
She must have sounded fierce, because the nurse leapt backward.
Grief was beginning to swell within, wild and unfathomable, but she wouldn’t let it out, not yet. She wanted to spend time with her little boy and memorize every inch of him before they took him away forever.
THE DAY AFTER she was discharged from the hospital there was a funeral service, attended only by Maria, Ari, Bruna, and a priest. Afterward Maria’s legs gave way and she collapsed.
Most of the next days were spent in bed like an invalid, with Ari beside her, cradling her. He murmured words of love and comfort but she was too far away for him to reach. It wasn’t the same for him, couldn’t possibly be: he had children already; he hadn’t carried Omero inside him for nine months.
When the tears came, they were unstoppable. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, her entire being consumed by sobbing. Her chest hurt; her throat, nose, and eyes stung; and her heart ached with an intolerable pain.
Ari stroked her hair, kissed her tears, held her close. “We will try again,” he whispered. “We will have another child. I promise.”
“A baby was all I ever wanted,” she sobbed. “I didn’t want to sing. I didn’t want to be famous. I wanted a child. How could God be so cruel?”
“I will fix it,” he told her. “I promise.”
He wanted to feel in control, Maria thought. As if he had a say in this. But there were some things money couldn’t fix, and this was one.
Perhaps it was punishment for their sin of breaking up two marriages to be together. If so, it was the harshest punishment imaginable. She felt broken in ways that she knew could never be fixed.