Worn Masks by Phyllis Carito Page A

explained that it is not the children’s
fault that the parent sometimes doesn’t know or understand, and the child
suffers because of it. Elena said that Guiseppe had relayed to her that their mother, Elenora, had al ways told
them, Guiseppe and Teresa, that they could be something and they could go to
America and have a good life. Teresa had tried to live that but she was so full
of anger from her losses she couldn’t find that happiness. Mary Grace shuddered
with a strange sense that she knew this already. She had heard the phrase or
seen it, or there was something about the putting together of it. It was
probably just that she was exhausted from all of this, feeling one moment angry
with her mother, and the next sad for her.
    The house was almost ready to put on the market. She sat at the piano, playing the old tunes Aunt
Mag gie had taught her, and deciding if she should take the piano or sell
it along with everything else.

 
    Finding Home
    Chapter 21
     
    MARY GRACE’S FEELINGS about seeing Elena, the effort between them
each time they would Skype, when they spoke together, half in Italian and half
in English, coaxing each other with smiles and pantomime, left her feeling
uneasy.
    Was this a resistance to belonging? Was it what her mother could
never find, a feeling of belonging in her life in Italy or in America, with
either family?
    One night, as Mary Grace became more comfortable to ask questions,
she broached the subject of her father again.
“Why was your father so against your sis ter, my mother, marrying my
father, just because he was from the south?”
    Elena took a long gulp from a glass of wine before answering. “My
father, Giovanni, he couldn’t accept it. There is so much. He had a sorella who had married a man from the south, and it didn’t go well, and then he didn’t
want his daughter to do the same. He felt they are not good enough. In the end
I do the same, too.” 
    Mary Grace could see that for the first time it was Elena who was
uncomfortable. She pushed further. “Did he know anything about my father’s
family?”
    “It is complicated. We need to talk with Giuseppe again, and maybe
you understand more.”
    “What? Does Giuseppe know about my father’s family?” Mary Grace
was using the little information that Aunt Maggie had told her. Now she wanted
to see what Elena knew about her Uncle Paul.
    Elena hesitated, filling her glass again. “When your mother turned
Uncle Giuseppe away when he came to America,
he had to find a way to know his beloved Te resa was well, do you capsici ?”
    “Yes, it sounds like you all cared very much for her.” The pieces of Mary Grace’s mother’s life story were
fi nally coming together, but how did this part of about her father’s
family fit in?
    Elena talked about how Teresa had taken care of her siblings when
her mother, Elenora, died. “So much for a young girl, when her mother, and then
her dear twins were gone. She couldn’t accept my Momma, Christina.”
    Elena felt that Teresa never forgave herself, although, of course,
there was nothing she could have done to save her mother or the twins. She had
sat with the twins through the time of their fevers, and tended to their every
need. She was just devastated when they, Maria e Graziella , died. 
    Then the rift between her and their papa began and grew. Teresa
never forgave him, and he never forgave her, both mad about things they had no
control over, sickness and death, and the pain of living.
    Mary Grace felt a new mix of feelings tearing at her. Her mother
had loved the twins, but couldn’t love her. Her head was swimming.
    That night she couldn’t sleep, and the next day after work she
went to talk to Aunt Maggie, but Aunt Maggie didn’t want to hear about, or
didn’t understand, that she had “seen” Elena. 
    All she would say was, “We did it for you, Gra cie. First Uncle
Paul, and then, well, I promised him I wouldn’t let the families lose you too.”
Mary Grace realized