From Ashes to Song by
Italy, 1911. Pietro's life on the family vineyard is idyllic. He has at last captured the melody of the grape harvest on his clarinet and can't wait to share his composition with his grandfather, but before he can play, news arrives of a deadly disease sweeping the countryside. They have no choice but to burn the vineyard to stop its spread. The loss is too much for Pietro's grandfather, and by morning Pietro has lost two of the most precious things in his life-his grandfather and the vineyard. All he has left is his music, but a disastrous performance at his grandfather's funeral suggests that music, too, is now beyond his reach.
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Excerpt From Ashes to Song
Assunta had reconciled her heart to the fact that Nandy had
married another woman in America. Mary, her name was. She’d even borne his child—may
they both rest in peace. She would not remain bitter about it. He’d been far from home,
alone, and he’d
already paid the worst price by losing them both
What she was having a harder time accepting was how he’d let Beatrice dig her
seductive claws into him when he had returned to Italy.
“I would have come
straight to you,” he’d
said. “But I was too
embarrassed. I didn’t
know how to tell you about Mary.”
They could put this all behind them soon. By the end of the
day, she and Nandy would be married as they’d intended eight years
earlier, and they would travel a world away from the clutches of Beatrice.
Assunta’s wedding dress was an
elegant yellow, not bright like a sunflower, more like a rose that grew on a
balcony overlooking the piazza in Verona.
Mamma had surprised her with the fabric the same day Nandy
had shown up to propose. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she’d asked. “I
came across it at the market one time when your father was still alive. It’s been tucked hidden away
all this time.”
Mamma had spent the ensuing weeks industriously planning and
incessantly cleaning, appearing wholly confident that Assunta’s life had always meant
to take this direction, despite Papà’s decree. Mamma even had
the style of Assunta’s
dress decided, and being so sure of her plan, she had very nearly forgotten to
take Assunta to the dressmakers with her.
“You always look out for
me,” Assunta had told her. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
“You’ll do just fine, that’s how you’ll do” Mamma had taken
the fabric from the dressmaker’s
hands and adjusted the folds. “Wider pleats, this wide,
all the way down the front to the hem.”
Assunta would be eternally grateful to her mother, but for
all the love in the world—and she’d
never break her mother’s
heart by telling her this—it was high time she started to make decisions for
herself.
She planned to start small. She might decide to have morning
coffee before making the beds and sweeping the floor. It’d be up to her whether
they had pasta or rice or minestra on what day of the week. And to think, no
more mornings spent kneading the dough to make gnocchi for her brother, Vito,
to sell in his shop. Perhaps she’d
make them to sell elsewhere, and if she did, it would not be when and how her
brother decided. She’d
make sure her gnocchi looked as good as they tasted, and she wouldn’t use the plain tubs her brother
used. She’d
choose wooden or copper bowls, oval like the gnocchi themselves, and worthy in
their own right of being on show.
She’d
sell her homemade tagliatelle, and once a week, she’d make pasta al forno and
serve it hot mid-morning, none of which Vito had agreed to do. Then again, she
barely made a lira on the work she did for him, so it was probably just as
well.
Yes, this marriage and the journey ahead of them was the
launch of a new and everlasting chapter, one where she would run the home, care
for her husband, for their children. The final piece of the puzzle that was
this life.
“Here, they’re real silk,” Mamma held
up a garland of white flowers. “To pin to your veil. They
can’t blemish. That’s my wish for you, a
marriage with no blemish.”
Mamma’s intention might have
been to ward off troubles. Still, the only blemish—the enormous blemish that
everyone had so far avoided talking about these past weeks would be the wife
and the girlfriend Nandy had had since he’d first proposed to
Assunta.
“I couldn’t be happier.” Even to
Assunta, her words sounded forced. “With the flowers, I mean,
not—” Not what? His women? She wouldn’t
say that out loud.
“Crying shame, your
father, not being here.” Mamma had either taken Assunta’s hesitation as a moment of
sorrow or was deliberately redirecting the subject.
Assunta resisted the urge to set her straight and point out
that if Papà had been here, she wouldn’t be marrying Nandy at
all, but there was little point opening that old wound today.
Despite her intention, Assunta spent the entire walk to
church thinking about how, if Papà had let them marry eight years ago, Nandy
would never have ended up with another wife and girlfriend in the first place.
And following on from that thought, she reminded herself that she had forgiven
him, and therefore those two women had no business being on her mind today. And
yet they were.
Vito was waiting for them outside the church door, looking
dashing though a little uncomfortable in a silk topper.
“Papà would have been
proud to walk you down the aisle,” Mamma said.
“He wouldn’t be walking me to Nandy,
though, would he?” Assunta said without thinking. There, she’d blown it. “Sorry,”
she murmured.
If Mamma reacted to the paltry apology, Assunta didn’t see because her brother
pulled her in for a swift kiss on both cheeks.
“You look beautiful.” Vito
let go of Assunta just in time for her to glimpse Mamma pressing her handkerchief
to her nose with uncharacteristic drama and disappear into the church.
“She’s taking this hard,” Vito
said, tilting his chin after Mamma.
Assunta lifted her veil, careful not to dislodge the silk
flowers.
“Is Nandy here?” Assunta asked.
“I can’t see around corners, but
as he’s the groom, I would
presume so.
Another thing I can’t
see around the corner is your future. It bothers me.”
“I can tell
you the future—we’re
getting married, and we’re
going to live happily ever after.” Vito had chosen a fine time to cast his
doubts. Well, if everyone intended to focus on what would hinder rather than
nurture this marriage, she might as well not hold back. “Did Beatrice show up? Is
she in there?”
“She wouldn’t dare, and you shouldn’t think of her. Not
today, not ever again. As for your future, I have no doubt you’ll make a perfect home
and a happy husband. It’s
where you’re
going that worries us all.”
America had always been the worry. Papà hadn’t doubted Nandy’s character so much as
his destination. “We’re not the first to go.
Besides, Nandy can provide well for us in America.”
“I’m sure he can. Thing’s will work out for you,
I know it.”
Far from helping, her brother’s sudden change in tone
and certainty unsettled her. Now she felt uncertain again. She should
send Vito inside the church, have him explain that she needed a bit more time
to think about this marriage, not pulling out necessarily, just needing a bit
of time alone. But knowing her brother, he would do it his way. He’d call out their other
siblings, Mamma too, and make everyone else wait in the pews while they decided
her fate as a family.
No, she’d
got herself into this. Nandy couldn’t
be blamed for straying; he’d
been a free man. Now Assunta needed to focus on how this was her time,
and Nandy had always been the right man for her.
The organist switched to play the Wedding March. Assunta did
not move. “Our home will be joyous
with the sound of children,” she told Vito.
“We are
supposed to walk, not talk when the music starts,” Vito said. Assunta felt the
tug of his arm on hers but held still. This was meant to be.
It was time to take her place at Nandy’s side, the conclusion of
a long path to a fulfilled adulthood.
“You want to leave?” Vito
asked.
“I’m okay,” she said,
wishing she meant it.
She didn’t
look up to see if Nandy was there, nor to either side and into the faces of the
congregation.
At the top of the aisle, she kept her eyes firmly on the
stone floor. If Mamma was crying, Assunta would cry, too. If Mamma were stoic,
Assunta would cry anyway because Mamma would be putting a brave face on the
fact that this marriage meant a ticket to a life a world away.
She saw Nandy’s
feet first. They were big. She should have checked them.
She was grateful for the veil that hid her smile at the
memory of just a few months ago after Nandy had turned back up, but before he
drummed up the courage to speak to her, Assunta had asked Mamma to find her
another man to marry. One who hadn’t
returned from his world travels, a widower to boot, and proceeded to walk out
with another—Beatrice of all people—with not so much as a courtesy call to
Assunta. She’d
specified that the new version of husband Mamma was to find should not have
smelly feet, nor a brood of ready-made children like the man her aunt had
married.
Assunta kept her eyes down as Vito kissed her cheek. She
clung tighter to his arm, but he pulled her fingers away from his sleeve. There
was a moment of shuffling and silence, then Assunta let her brother go.
She knelt next to Nandy, and without greeting or welcome, the
priest began his ritual. Someone in the congregation coughed, Assunta
stiffened. Was this someone clearing their throat to speak, to call out that
she couldn’t,
after all, have him? Nobody spoke. The priest carried on.
Someone sneezed. A sneeze didn’t mean the start of an
objection, but still, it made Assunta want to turn and look. She wouldn’t put it past Beatrice to
show up. Or for someone else to say it was all a big mistake, that he was still
married, that his other wife had not died after all. Assunta clasped her hands
tight through the liturgies and rites, her white gloves bunching around the
fingers. Then the priest asked if anyone knew any reason why the two people
standing before him should not be joined in holy matrimony—Assunta was surely
going to choke—but the priest was talking again. Did that mean nobody had
spoken? He was talking about man and wife—they were truly married.
She turned to look at Nandy for the first time today.
Kneeling, they were equal height, the extra few inches he had on her must be in
the length of his legs. His profile was important, his brown-black mustache
freshly oiled, chin jutting forward slightly, clearly focused on the solemnity
of the service. If she thought hard enough, perhaps she could make him turn and
look at her, but he kept his gaze firmly on the altar. He was taking this so
seriously, reverent in the face of their future—a comforting sign.
They stood up and were permitted to kiss. At last, Nandy
turned, his eyes like something that would melt solid bronze. He took her in
his arms, turned her, and bent her backward so she’d have toppled to the
ground if he hadn’t
held her so tightly, and he kissed her like there was nobody watching.
Excerpted
from From Ashes to Song by Hilary Hauck. Copyright © 2021 by Hilary Hauck.
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