EPILOGUE

Tuesday, October 23, 2001, 6:30 p.m.

After that first call to Bob’s parents, after saying those words, “Bob’s dead,” I must have called others because my brother and my cousins were at the house. My father-in-law, wearing his sunglasses, was standing in the living room; my cousin Nancy was sitting beside me on the couch, holding my hand. We were drinking whisky and the phone kept ringing.

Some men came from the funeral parlour to pick up Bob’s body; our children were all in the bedroom and the men said it might be better if they left, but Kathryn and I stayed. We watched them zip Bob’s body into a burgundy plastic body bag — I can still hear the sound of the zipper — and we stood in the doorway and watched them wheel the gurney down the hallway. We heard the sound of the back door closing, the car doors closing, the car heading down the long driveway, and, when we couldn’t hear anything more, we went back into the living room to make plans for the next day.

I dressed in black for the funeral-parlour visitation. When I opened the jewellery box to take out the gold earrings Bob had given me, I saw his wedding band nestled there. His fingers had grown so thin that the band kept slipping off and he’d asked me to put it away. Once I’d put on the earrings, it didn’t seem right to close up the gold band all alone in the box, so I strung his wedding band on my gold chain and wore it around my neck.

“Ready,” said Kathryn. She had the car keys in her hand, but neither of us moved. We knew that once we got into the car, we were beginning a journey that neither of us wanted to take.

We heard a knock on the door. The flower deliveryman stood on our doorstep once again. Kathryn put the small wicker basket stuffed with miniature roses on the kitchen table and pulled out the card: “From your neighbours on via condotto vecchio.”

I remembered Peppe’s message: “We are with you ogni momento, ogni giorno, every moment, every day.”

Kathryn and I got into the car. Eight hours later, we were back at the house, and the answering machine was blinking as usual.

“Maria? Sono Peppe. Mi dispiace. Bob, my friend.”

“Maria? Sono Liounna. Guido can’t speak. Mi dispiace.”

“Maria? Sono Joe. That bloody cancer. The neighbours ask me to phone and say mi dispiace.”

“Maria,” said the president of the Supino Social Club. “Everyone is welcome to come to the club after the funeral on Saturday. We’ll take care of the food. Your brother phoned and offered to pay for the drinks, but I told him, ‘For Bob McLean, we take care of everything. Son of Supino, you understand?’”

Months passed. I thought about selling the little house in Supino, but I couldn’t do that without solving the hydro issue and the constantly disappearing patio. We might have a terra cotta patio now; Bob would never see it.

“We should plan our trip to Supino,” said Kathryn.

“I don’t want to go. I can’t bear the idea of seeing Guido and Joe and Peppe and all of them. They’ll all want to say sorry and shake my hand.”

“What’s wrong with that? You’d be pretty upset if they didn’t want to.”

“That’s the thing. I don’t want them to say sorry, and I don’t want them to say nothing, so I don’t want to go.”

“I think that’s a little crazy, Mom.”

“Me too.”

But my life was a little crazy. The original shock had worn off, and I was hanging on to an idea that I’d read and heard over and over again: that if you could get through the first year, things got easier. Peppe had sent a Christmas card that year, and inside he’d written a note, assuring me that, in time, I’d remember only the good memories. Since Peppe’s wife had died of cancer years ago, I believed him, and I tried to hold on to the good memories. But somehow those good memories were the very thing that kept me from wanting to return to the village. I tried to imagine myself in Supino without Bob. Would I walk down to the Bar Italia every morning by myself? Bianca would have to reach for one cup, instead of two. I’d have to try not to cry.

Then my friend Netta called me one day. She works in publicity and marketing.

“Jeanne Marshall from the National Post wants to do an interview with you.”

“I’ve cancelled all my book publicity stuff,” I said.

“I know, but Jeanne’s currently living in Rome and would like to do the interview there. I figured you could do it en route to Supino.”

“I’m not going to Supino.”

“Why not? Supino’s always good for you.”

“Let me think about it.”

“You should go,” said Kathryn when I told her about the call. “I can drive us into Rome from the airport, you can do the interview. We’ll stay overnight and drive down to Supino the next day.”

A decade before, when we’d bought the house, Bob had said that we’d always have it as a part of my father’s village and our village. Now I’d have to see Supino as my village, if I could. I began to visualize myself alone in Supino, but I was never alone. The memory of my father, the memory of Bob, all the good memories accompanied me. I imagined the villagers still watching out for my little house, and me. When the president of the Supino Social Club called me to talk about the proposed National Post interview in Rome, I never even considered how he knew about it.

“After the interview in Rome,” he began, “we want to make a little festa in the village. Father Antonio will bless the book. Will you donate a signed copy for the Supino library? Afterwards, we’ll have a little dinner at the restaurant in the woods. The journalist can be the guest of honour. Bring the photographer. We’ll make them honorary Supino Social Club members. What’s the date of the interview, Maria?”

In the end, a letter from Sergio Coletta in Moss Point, Mississippi, helped me to decide. He wrote that he remembered that this was the time of year when Bob and I would be planning our trip to Supino:

Thank you for the cedar branch that you sent with your letter. You have no idea how much that meant to me. You’re very kind. Maybe I can do something for you. I don’t know if you stop in Rome when you go to Supino, but my son-in-law’s cousin owns a small hotel and restaurant in Rome near the Vatican and I am sending his business card. They are looking forward to meeting you.

In Supino, there’s a question our neighbours often ask — a kind of Supinese version of “How are things going?” Tutto a posto? literally means Is everything in place? And so it seemed that everything was in place that summer for me to return to the village. I found myself sitting in the departure lounge at the Toronto airport. Once we landed in Rome and picked up our rental car, I’d meet the journalist at Osteria dei Pontefici, Sergio Coletta’s son-in-law’s cousin’s restaurant in Rome, and the following day we’d head down the autostrada until we reached the blue sign pointing to Supino.

The news of Bob’s death would have rung from the bell tower of San Sebastiano and sprung from the fountain in a hundred icy teardrops. The wind would have already carried his name beyond the village and up the mountain path to Santa Serena to put down roots among the clouds. The village would open her arms to me, and I would walk right into them, as if I had come home.