Sweet Life by Linda Biasotto Page A

being soaked, Maria keeps to the gravel drive. The spring brought too much rain and left behind an overlying mantle of mustiness that hovers like an invisible fog, partially obscures the scent of blossoms and leaves.
    She unlocks the gate and steps onto the gravel road, straining to hear the mule or the wagon’s creak. All is still but her outraged heart. When she was a girl, she and her friends chased stray cats with stones or rotten fruit, and she has the same compulsion now to race after the crazy one and clout him on the head. She had no fondness for Carlo when he was an indulged brat or when, as a teen, he slipped girls into his room. She despised him when he swaggered about in his uniform, mouthing propaganda. What would someone like him understand about promises of freedom? Freedom from what, for all those pampered rich boys, those bigheaded idiots?
    Something on the other side of the road scuttles through the ruined corn. Two days ago a hailstorm cruised a straight line along this road and pummelled the fields on one side while leaving the fields on this side untouched.
    It was next to such a whispering cornfield that Maria gave herself to Sandro. Stars glittered overhead while they clung to each other, not even a blanket between them and the grass. He covered her with promises, his manufactured fantasies about how he could see into her soul, see the beauty that others missed. Sì , he loved her so much that two months later he was on a train headed west. Bound for the sea and a ship to New York. He told his parents more lies, about how he was going away to look for work when the truth was he was running away. From Maria.
    She turns to the house that rises square and solid in the dusk. It was the Signorina’ s grandfather who, after returning from a trip abroad, had the house built in the Moorish style. The tall, second-floor windows are arched, but the ground-floor windows are square, set out by grey stucco and pillars dividing each window in half. Next to the palazzo towers a palm with vines entwining its trunk. What would the crazy one do if he lived here? Pile junk all over the lawns and flowers; stack metal and garbage until the lemon and orange trees were crushed?
    Maria locks the front door behind her. The Signorina owns this palazzo and a hotel; she has plenty of money, but she does not have a loving family like Maria’s.

    ~
    Three days later, it’s Maria’s day off. Every Saturday she takes the Signorina’s Fiat to San Daniele, stays overnight with Enzo and his family and doesn’t return until Sunday afternoon.
    Now she lets out the clutch and the car rolls to the end of the driveway before she turns the ignition. In the trunk are her overnight case and gifts, including the usual Swiss chocolate for Roberto and Rico, and Enzo’s favourite almond cake. She also packed half a cheese, a ham, a chicken and several lemons from the Signorina ’s own trees. A few weeks ago she insisted Maria start taking gifts like these, a sudden generosity that still amazes Maria, who expects the offer to be retracted at any time.
    Now she passes acres of corn and wheat, the tumbled stones of farmhouses bombed during the war, trees spreading where roofs once shielded families. A woman in a dress, and riding a bicycle, waves. Maria nods. She also nods to the man atop a small tractor, but she won’t risk lifting a hand; she has become especially cautious since Lidia’s car accident.
    Lidia rode in the front, next to her friend, who drove. The woman took a curve too quickly; the car left the road and hit a tree. The friend flew out when her door opened, but Lidia went through the windshield. Now she tries to hide the marks on her face with headscarves pulled forward, covers the scars on her arms and legs with sleeves and long skirts.
    Lidia’s not a bad wife; but she doesn’t properly respect Enzo and holds herself from him. Maria sees how they don’t touch each other, any more, how there’s no warmth of attraction in