TE22 Potpourri

Antonella Lattanzi

This Looming Day

hair tied back. She had stopped sweeping and was holding the broom, staring at them.

“My wife, Agata.” Vito pointed to the woman with the broom. Agata stopped sweeping. She nodded her head, which meant: welcome. Vito walked over. “What a beautiful child,” he said, and ruffled Emma’s hair. She opened her eyes wide and screeched. She always did that. That was why her mother and father would laughingly call her Psycho. Vito didn’t drop his smile. “What character,” and he said, withdrawing his hand cautiously. “She’s hungry…” Francesca looked at her daughter, embarrassed. “Massimo?” Massimo came back disheveled and cheerful, his hair full of jasmine flowers that Angela had sprinkled on his head. The eldestdaughterwas still crouchingamong theplants. Francesca smiled. She suddenly seemed like the baby she was before Emma was born. From a very young age, Angela laughed like crazy about anything, she smeared the apple baby food over her face, hands and clothes, blinked her eyes spattered with baby food in front of everything, always astonished, as if she had just made the craziest discovery. And it was all crazy. To see it with Angela’s eyes, the world was wonderful. Then suddenly, when Emma arrived, Angela had taken on that inquisitive look. The evening before the birth shedrew the blue sea, the red house, the yellow sun, humming Frère Jacques or an Afterhours song – she especially liked “Ballad for My Little Hyena,” which she sang with her dad – and she constantly asked her mother to put on The Aristocats , “again, mom, again.” The next morning, at the age of four, standing next to her father in the clinic, she 195

She wouldn’t move, as if to block their way.

“We’re the Ferrario family,” Francesca said. She extended her free hand, but then remembered the wound and withdrew it. “The new tenants.” The woman looked at her hand, weighed those words for a long time. Francesca turned for reassurance to her husband, who was trailing a little behind. Angela joined her. She pressed herself against her mother’s leg. “Let them go by, Agata.” Behind the thin woman a short man appeared with thick white hair combed back with water or gel, a light blue shirt and a pair of gray trousers. At those words, Angela broke away from her. Out of the corner of her eye Francesca saw the little girl and Massimo walking into the courtyard without stopping, having fun. The short man looked at Francesca, very seriously, while the woman resumed her sweeping, keeping an eye on father and daughter. Francesca was waiting, she didn’t even know what for. Then the man broke into an affable smile. “You’re the Ferrarios,” he said, “staircase B, fifth floor, number 8. You’re early, we were expecting you in the afternoon. I’m Vito, the doorman.” He held out his hand. Francesca shook it with her left. The man’s hand was warm, soft, unexpectedly smooth. 194