The Saint of Lost Things (10 page)

“Think about it like this,” Mamma Nunzia tells her. “If you have Ida and me, you don’t need Antonio so much. Even the good fathers are never much help with a baby. They pick him up, kiss him on the forehead when he has a fever, and say, ‘Wife, you know my son has a fever?’ All you have to worry about is whether Antonio has a good job. And he does. The rest you put up with.”

They walk to the top of the hill and stop in silence before the
presepio
at St. Anthony’s. Maddalena’s legs are weak, her stomach hollow. She kneels in front of the statue of Mary and rests her forehead on her folded hands. She closes her eyes and prays again—for a healthy baby, a son if she’s allowed to choose; for Antonio to surprise them all with a change of heart; for the health of her family in the village. In her mind, she sees her mother carrying the wash up the hill from the river. Then a field of olive trees flashes before her, then children running over cracked stone steps. There are torches, a donkey kicking its legs. She smells rosemary and smoke and snow.

A hand shakes her shoulders. She wakes to a red and green blur, the Christ Child’s chubby face, the stare of the plastic animals. Ida helps her to her feet. But it is not until she says, “I told you—you have to eat!” that Maddalena remembers which country she is in.

M
ADDALENA’S BODY IS CHANGING.
Once thin and taut, it has softened noticeably in the last month alone. She can do nothing to hide this, she thinks, as she turns from side to side in front of her bedroom mirror. When she was a teenager, people said she could have been an actress or a dancer with legs like hers, but look at them now: trunky and bloated and mannish. Overnight. Even her neck and cheeks are fleshy. Her straw-colored hair has darkened over the years, ordinary as any other Italian woman’s.

She lies in bed, another night without Antonio, and remembers a time when she knew she was beautiful. There was a Sunday afternoon three years ago, not long after their fourth Christmas together, when Antonio sat in the kitchen reading the newspaper out loud. Maddalena sat beside him and looked over his shoulder, trying to follow the sentences as he spoke them. It was another of Sister Clark’s suggestions, a way to meet new English words “where they lived and breathed,” to get to know them so as not to fear them. It didn’t work. How could it? Maddalena was continually confronted with words like “enough,” at which she stared utterly baffled. Only the
n
was where it should be, and maybe the
u
; the other letters existed only to mock her.

“Pain and Loneliness Only Reward to Hero of Auto Explosion,” Antonio announced and proceeded to read an article about a forty-four-year-old bachelor named Orville, who rescued three strangers from a burning car, then spent eleven days in the hospital without a single visitor. He had burns all over his body, no insurance, and no one to help him, but still, he said, he’d “do it again in a heartbeat.” Antonio admired this. Maddalena wouldn’t have done it in the first place, she said, let alone a second time, but like her husband, she was grateful for the Orvilles of the world, good, selfless people God rarely rewarded on earth but would shower with riches in heaven.

Her mind wandered as Antonio read, but this Maddalena remembered very clearly: beneath the explosion article was a photo of a pretty young woman with a flirtatious grin, her hair arranged in a bun, her hand resting lightly at her throat. Above the photo was written
Bianca
—the Italian word—and other words Maddalena didn’t recognize.

“Who is Bianca?” Maddalena asked. “An actress?”

“I don’t think so,” said Antonio, and read: “‘Bianca Talent Agency. Think You Have What It Takes to Become a Professional Model?
We Will Teach You How to Make It in New York and Hollywood. Free Consultations.’” He snapped the newspaper, folded it over, and set it on the table with the photo facing out. “You’re better-looking than this girl.”

Maddalena studied her. She had a superior nose (without the bump in the middle that Maddalena had inherited from her grandmother), long lashes, and a slim heart-shaped face. But she did not have Maddalena’s full lips or wide, deep-set eyes. If she received as much help with her hair and makeup as this woman had, it was possible Maddalena could defeat her in a beauty pageant. The race would be close, at least. Still she said to Antonio, “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I do,” he said. He pointed to the photo. “Look at her. If she’s the best the Bianca Talent Agency has to offer, they’d faint if they saw you.”

Maddalena shook her head, dismissing Antonio’s exaggerated faith in her beauty, but he went on to explain the meaning of “Free Consultation” and told her nothing would please him more than to show her off to Bianca herself.

Then, the next day, without telling anyone, he called the number in the newspaper and scheduled a consultation for the following weekend. He told Maddalena that they’d been invited to his friend Giovanni’s house for an early dinner. He bought her a new dress, black with strips of crinkled red velvet at the sleeves and waist, and though she found it overly showy, she agreed to wear it as long as they were only going to Giovanni’s. From the doorway of the bathroom he watched her apply her makeup and remove the curlers from her hair, more anxious than usual about arriving on time.

She had not paid much attention during the short drive, but when he pulled over and parked on Delaware Avenue, she realized she’d been tricked. There, on the second floor of an office building,
between a hair salon and a dentist, was a small sign for the Bianca Talent Agency.
Since 1934,
it said. Its logo was a pink cartoon of a Greek goddess wearing cat-eye glasses.

“O
Dio!
” Maddalena said. She saw Antonio’s grin, shook her head, and gripped the edges of her seat. “I’m not going in there!”

A group of women in fur coats passed in front of the car. One paused, peered through the windshield, and gave Antonio a curious look before rushing into a dress shop called Minuet.

His face softened. He reminded Maddalena of the promise he’d made to her parents in Santa Cecilia: that he would take their daughter to the United States and give her the chance to become an actress. Wilmington wasn’t Hollywood, but it wasn’t a nowhere village either; it was still America. Everyone had to start somewhere, and, according to the woman he talked to at the agency, Maddalena would probably start with modeling, for the Sears or Wanamaker’s catalog, or ads in the
Wilmington Morning News.
In the meantime, she could learn English well enough to read and understand her lines. She was only twenty-three years old, with most of her career ahead of her. The agency girls performed on a regular basis in Philadelphia, for big money, and one of them had emigrated all the way from Russia just to study with Bianca herself. The best part, said Antonio, was that the modeling and acting classes didn’t cost a penny. The agency got a reasonable cut of every dollar their girls made after they finished their training, which seemed like a small price to pay for making them stars.

Maddalena listened. It sounded like a good system—fair, without risk. She relaxed her grip on the seat. Now that she was here, in a new dress she wouldn’t have chosen but which flattered her chest and waistline, the appointment made and confirmed, she had no excuse not to try. She imagined them sitting her in front of a mirror, admiring her cheekbones, parading her into a studio in Philadelphia with the declaration: “Meet the next Anna Magnani!”
If she never learned English well enough to earn a part in a play, that would be fine; she could live with that; modeling the newest fashions in Philadelphia came close enough.

It was the walk from the car to the office that she dreaded. The ladies in their minks, the policeman in the window of the coffee shop, the snobby clerks at the Minuet—what would they think of her? Would they laugh when she walked not into the hair salon, but the agency? Would they shake their heads and say,
“She
thinks she has what it takes to become a professional model?”

So she kept her head down—a habit of hers Bianca would surely attempt to break. Antonio took her hand and led her up the stairs, making nervous small talk about the new asphalt on the street. It was a windy day, bleak and cold, the sun a sliver of lemony yellow hanging low in the sky. On the top step Maddalena stopped, took out her bottle of Nina Ricci perfume, and sprayed a quick mist on her neck.

The waiting room was small and empty. They were the last interview of the day, or so the pretty young receptionist informed them, and a woman named Lorraine would be with them in a moment. They sat on a leather sofa between a tasteful imitation fern and the door Lorraine would eventually open. On the end table lay a stack of
LOOK
magazines, from which Ava Gardner watched them in her strapless black dress, beside the headline “Divorce: A Woman’s Tragedy.” The walls featured wood paneling and, just above eye height, a row of framed glossy photographs. Some were black and white shots of beautiful women and a few handsome men, all with perfect teeth; they smiled or stared seductively at the camera. Other shots were taken directly from plays or films: an adorable child in a bunny suit; an older woman peeking menacingly from under the hood of a cloak; a man holding a football above his head, his arm flexed to display his muscles.

“You’ll be up there someday,” said Antonio. He nudged her in the side with his elbow. “And we’ll have a house on Easy Street.”

Maddalena crossed and uncrossed her legs. The appointment was for four o’clock, and it was now nearly quarter past. It felt like waiting at the doctor’s office: the same powerlessness, the threat of awful news, of being told the specifics of your body’s many failings. Every time the door opened, Maddalena’s chest tightened. But for the next twenty minutes, no Lorraine; only a succession of skinny girls in heavy makeup and heels clacking toward the exit, not bothering to acknowledge the receptionist or glance in Maddalena’s direction. The best she could tell, none was dramatically prettier than she.

Close to half past, a woman in her fifties, wearing a pink double-breasted business suit and nail polish to match, appeared in the doorway. “Mr. and Mrs. Grasso,” she said, and held her arms out as if she’d known them all her life and merely lost touch. She kissed them on both cheeks, said “Follow me,” and led them down a narrow hallway lined with more framed photos. Lorraine was a few inches shorter than Maddalena but carried herself well; there wasn’t a single crease on the seat of her skirt. She wore her thick auburn curls in a chignon, and a pair of tinted tortoise-shell glasses.

Her office had a view of Delaware Avenue, now softly lit by streetlamps. The radiator knocked awake and began to hiss. Lorraine sat behind a metal desk covered with a scatter of papers held down by coffee mugs, and Maddalena and Antonio faced her from the two chairs that had been set out for them. Lorraine folded her hands in front of her, unleashed a big smile, and looked back and forth between the two of them. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” she said. “Tell me you brought the pictures.”

Maddalena shook her head, then watched in surprise as Antonio pulled two snapshots from his blazer pocket. She recognized
one from their wedding—a profile of her bending to sign the register—and the other from a rainy trip to Atlantic City two years before. She’d worn a one-piece striped bathing suit and stood awkwardly under the boardwalk, one hand on a post, the other on her hip. In both pictures she looked bony and plain, though in the beach shot her legs did appear smooth and supple as a pantyhose model’s.

“Not those!” she said, as Antonio handed them to Lorraine. “We must have better ones.”

Lorraine set them side by side on the desk before her and removed her glasses. “But these are stunning!” she said. Then she placed a small cylindrical object on the wedding shot and peered through it. “Yes,” she said. Then the other. “Yes. Yes!” she repeated. She gazed across at Maddalena and shook her head as if in disbelief. “She has better ones, she says. And here I am asking myself, ‘Lorraine Stetson, is it possible you can be this lucky?’”

“Really?” said Maddalena.

Antonio was beaming. “I tried to tell her, but you know a woman never believes her husband.”

“Most shouldn’t,” Lorraine said. “But in this case! You photograph very well, Mrs. Grasso.
Very
well.” She looked again, with that same amazement, at the pictures. “And these aren’t even quality shots. Not taken by a professional, I’m assuming.”

Simultaneously Maddalena and Antonio shook their heads.

“I have this Russian,” Lorraine said. “Came from Siberia. Siberia! Lived in an igloo or something. Didn’t see a green vegetable her entire life. Anyway, during the war an Italian soldier falls for her and steals her away from that God-forsaken country. The soldier gets killed, but she makes it to a boat and winds up here in the Promised Land. We found her on the street like a hundred-dollar bill in a sewer grate. Spiffed her up, took some pictures, and now you want to know what she earns? Fifty dollars an hour, almost
as much as Dorian Leigh. Lives in Society Hill, Philadelphia, in a penthouse, with a balcony!” Here Lorraine leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “And I tell you: she’s not half as pretty as you.”

Maddalena blushed.

“She didn’t know Bianca before she got here?” Antonio asked. “On the phone, you said she came especially for her.”

“That’s a different Russian girl,” Lorraine said. “You’ll find we work with many internationals. It’s what distinguishes us. The exotic look is always in fashion. Ava Gardner, Gina Lollobrigida, always
la moda.
And they’re not even blonde! Italian women are world-renowned for their beauty—especially the sort of rustic beauty that comes through here.” She pointed again to the pictures. “Your husband told me you once lived in one of those charming villages?”