November 2, 2001

All the Dead

Not everyone can go to a cemetery.

Becky winced every time she saw the bright chrysanthemums that vendors were selling from their tiny little trucks throughout the city. The only place she could put chrysanthemums was inside her house, in front of her parents’ picture. There were no bodies that could have been neatly embalmed, beautifully dressed, and quietly buried away under a clean white stone you could visit when you wanted to.

Becky pulled back the curtains and turned to look at her living room. Everything was perfect, just as she liked it. When Becky met Giangiacomo’s wife Emilia last year, Becky immediately took note of Emilia’s unerring good taste in the comfort and elegance this very living room. Becky enjoyed the vestiges of that good taste now that she had taken over not only Emilia’s living room, but the rest of her home as well.

After Emilia left Giangiacomo, he had not been willing to do forgo two things: his Nanny Gepa, nor this apartment which his father had bought for him after Giangiacomo graduated from the university. Over the years, Giangi had expanded it, buying the apartments next door and downstairs so that he could walk down through his own apartment into the basement and inspect his wines without using the building’s common stairs. When Emilia and Giangi separated, Emilia had not put up much of a fight about the house; she was mainly interested in getting custody of the children and a very large monthly payment that would keep the kids and her handsomely in style. Giangiacomo gladly sent Emilia the money in lieu of alimony, child support, court and legal costs, and a costly settlement that Giangiacomo could have easily afforded.

Another man, another house, another life. Becky was a sexual gypsy and though to many it might seem little enough to be a tramp, she did it with particularly alluring finesse. She never dressed provocatively or in a manner that anyone could call cheap. She never showed any cleavage and all of her skirts ended below the knee as a rule that she would break for the very occasional miniskirt. Her gorgeous auburn hair was rarely in perfect order and she wore almost no make-up on her amazingly angelskin coral complexion. All the same, her forms fairly exploded inside the long dresses she wrapped around the mandorla of her hips, eternally elevated to luscious elegance by the high-heeled shoes she always wore when she left the house. When Becky menstruated, her breasts swelled to luscious fullness; she seldom failed to remark with disarming candor on what was happening to her body “down there” and “up above,” lest either change go unnoticed.

Becky’s real tools of seduction though, were her eyes and her laughter. Nothing was ever too much of a problem, she was always willing to do things for almost nothing and perform any task given her cheerfully. Whenever she landed in a new city, country or continent, everyone fell hard for her, for she was also generous, kind, cultured, and discreet.

Becky had reared herself a Cosmo girl, acquiring most of her wiles while growing up in Chicago. Her mother was a progressive Episcopalian married to a Portuguese Jew, and Mummy’s monthly subscription to Cosmopolitan endlessly fascinated Becky as a child. Becky easily learned that men were there for the taking, she was there for the getting, and there was no reason she should not use all of her charms to get ahead. Or get money. Or get away when the time came. Becky did not exactly realize how to do all of this without looking like a total slut until she saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s her senior year in high school. Holly Golightly illuminated her.

While Becky was studying at Northwestern, older men (in their late twenties) would take her out to dinner. Like Holly Golightly without Hubert Givenchy, Becky quickly figured out how to get a ten-spot when she went to the little girl’s room (she would have liked Holly’s fifty, but her sugar daddies were younger and not as well off). When the evening was over at the restaurant, Becky never went home with them, so they insisted on paying her cab fare. That meant another 20 spot, which she gleefully accepted, got into the cab, rounded the corner, and got out. She gave the cabbie five, kept fifteen, and took the bus back to her student apartment. Becky was living proof that “bad girls go everywhere.” Her string of men paid for all her transportation, theater tickets and restaurant tabs.

Unlike Holly however, Becky was a bona fide tramp as opposed to a professional one. She had wrecked six or seven healthy relationships and broken one home in Evanston and one in Sao Paolo. Her legal husband in Switzerland never bothered to contact her any more, and Becky never expected to get alimony from anyone (his Helvetian pension at death would surely be more than enough reward when that day came). Indeed, Becky didn’t care to get married again. She just wanted to live comfortably and enjoy life. That would be easy enough to achieve as long as her looks held up.

Her parents’ dramatic demise had been the trump card that won Giangiacomo’s hand. She could tell he was ripening, making overtures to her, and conveniently bumping into her when Emilia wasn’t with him. No one else ever thought twice about a liaison between them, because Becky still lived with her “boyfriend” at that point, an unassuming and unattractive intellectual of the left and leading gerontologist at a hospital in the country near Godo. She definitely liked men to be smart, hardworking, and high earning; looks were not even a tertiary consideration. She got what she wanted in the end, and what she didn’t need or want was anyone’s approval. All she needed to get was to create a “reaction” as she coyly put it, and she didn’t even need that for her own pleasure. She delighted in her tactics because when she “wielded” the reaction, she knew had complete control of the situation. When things got too bad in a relationship, she simply moved on: to another country, another land, another time zone, all bursting with new zippers waiting to be opened, and fortunes to be plundered.
           She hit the candy store when she crossed Lake Maggiore to Italy. Italian men were the easiest to work of all; they were little boys who loved looking at the counters of pastries even if they couldn’t afford what they saw. Becky wore a dark red crushed velvet suit to her interviews and was treated like an expensive box of truffles and pralines. One of her interviewers introduced her to the CEO of a forklift concern and she began giving wildly popular English lessons at Giangiacomo’s office. It wasn‘t long before the office manager offered her a part-time job in the secretarial pool. 
         Becky felt like she had opened a branch of Godiva Chocolates right there at the offices outside Godo. The men all but drooled when she walked into a room and when she walked out, she occasionally heard the subtle wolf howls and soft whistles. If the testosterone in their veins had turned to glucose, she would have left them all lying on the floors in diabetic shock. This was exactly the situation she thrived on.

Becky was not however, really interested in men. She liked them well enough to put up with them and let them flirt with her. Nothing was quite as satisfying as a little attention. She didn’t want jewelry or a fur thrown in here or there, or even really good handbags. She just wanted luxurious ease and someone to look after her and take care of all the financial details of survival. She could do the rest. What really interested Becky romantically was her friend Fabiana who had suggested they both move from Lugano to Godo.

Fabiana was not much inclined to the idea of being a lesbian; indeed, that was the last thing on her mind, but Fabiana adored Becky all the same and the two best girlfriends had a grand time together. Becky never made a second pass at Fabiana. Becky was just happy to have Fabiana around and sleep over at her house when Giangiacomo was away on business. Fabiana thoroughly enjoyed being around Becky but Becky was just a fun best girlfriend for her; they laughed and ate too many American brownies and had a ripping good time together. Fabiana and Becky were truly bosom buddies.

Becky settled for this. She knew that her “arrangement” with Fabiana was going to be the sexless, sentimental love affair that had been common in the 19^th century and way into the 20^th century. Sex was all right, but Becky’s main interest in sex was employing it as a social tool rather than a romantic expression. She just wanted to have Fabiana around to gaze upon and spoil. Becky knew exactly how to attain this and make everyone around her as happy as possible.

Becky looked out the living room window. The baker’s window across the street glowed with the “Beans of the Dead:” brightly colored, misshapen lumps of egg white tinted in pastel hues of pink and green and azure, beige and white. They tasted of anise, and Becky really wasn’t quite wild about them, but they were the typical food for “The Dead.” This was what the Romagnols brutally called “All Soul’s Day” in the Episcopalian calendar, the Second of November. Old women would take a big bag of the Beans of the Dead to the cemetery, sit on their husbands’ tombs and munch on their festive cookies. They offered their open white paper bags to passersby, while they spent the day outdoors among the bright clean blooms of “The Dead.”

Becky couldn’t do that for her parents. They had disappeared. She was supposed to meet them in Paris, but the flight they were on burst into flame and disintegrated right off the coast of Brazil right as it was gaining altitude after it took off on that stormy February day last winter. Nothing was ever found of Mummy and Papa, not a suitcase, not a watch, not a shoelace, not a femur. They simply vaporized. If they hadn’t been coming to visit Becky, they wouldn’t have died. Everyone thought this, but no one of course said it. Becky pondered it deep in her heart and wept big ploshy tears which drizzled down her lovely cheeks, her eyes brimming with water, deepening the gleam of her emerald green irises, and making her look other-worldly. 
          There was no consoling her. Her parents were just gone, and they would not be back. Becky would never know where her mother hid her pin money, she would never know if her father had had an affair. She would never be able to ask them questions about their courtship, because that tale no longer existed; it had exploded with them. Mummy and Papa took it with them as the fuselage swelled bright red, the oxygen inside the cabin exploded, and a hundred tourists, old women and little children, college students and businessmen in first class screamed and lost their earthly existence, taking their bank account numbers with them, forgoing their next fattening little treat, missing their history homework, never again to see their mothers come to pick them up after school. In the twinkling of any eye, everything was gone.

Everything vanished except for the living who can only live for themselves and their dead.

These Italians and their rites of death! They were stubbornly tradition-bound even in their behavior at death. The Neapolitan woman named Carmen who came to iron Giangiacomo’s shirts (and the rest of his clothing for that matter), repulsed and fascinated Becky. Carmen explained to Becky one day as she was ironing Giangi’s gym socks, that every year she returned to a small town near Pozzuoli to take care of her mother. The oddity was that Carmen’s mother hadn’t been alive for the last fifteen years. Each year all the same, Carmen took the last week of October and the first week of November off and traveled by train so she could open her Mother’s tomb and get her ready for the Feast of the Dead as she called it. She would brush her mother’s hair and sponge bathe her body, change her underwear and sweep out the coffin, before she fluffed the pillow and laid her mother back to rest. The cemetery guardian would come and push the coffin back into the wall, and remount the tombstone with a little grout, just enough to make it easy to pry the tombstone off again the next year.

Becky sincerely thought the woman was trying to scare her, until Giangiacomo told her that this sort of “Fall Cleaning” was not at all unheard of in the south of Italy. In the north, the women busied themselves with scrubbing the tombstones and putting out fresh flowers. Then they would go to the hairdresser’s themselves, put on a nice fresh dress, and go take a walk in the cemetery for The Dead, noticing whose tomb was gleaming and whose wasn’t. At this point, The Dead had become social event that reflected none of the hideous anguish and histrionic pain that poured out at Italian funerals. This had been a year for funerals: Becky had really had enough of them.

Giangiacomo’s mother had been the first to pass away in the dead of winter, amidst the cold and sleet and snow and rain. It came as no surprise to anyone; Mamma Zaira’s husband had “found relief” two years before and Zaira quickly went downhill without someone to reprimand morning, noon, and night. A couple of weeks after Christmas Zaira landed in the hospital with uterine cancer for a mercifully short two weeks; every day she got weaker and weaker. Becky did her best to go and help which was very much appreciated, since Giangiacomo’s wife had never gotten along with her mother-in-law. Giangiacomo’s sister Marilena was the real caretaker in the family, and she was always at home cooking and cleaning and in the hospital tending to Mamma Zaira. Though Becky would gladly have spent hours in the hospital looking after Zaira (it really wasn’t hard work and would definitely get her major brownie points with the family), she usually only relieved Marilena so she could go get a quick bite of something to eat at the hospital cafe. The old lady generally slept the entire time Becky was there, so Becky read her magazines and smiled at the nurses as they padded by.

Until the day before she died. Marilena had been gone no more than ten minutes, when Mamma Zaira sat bolt upright in bed as if she had sprung from a jack-in-the-box. Her head rolled from side to side, her eyes wildly flashed and she violently waved her scrawny chicken wing arms as she shouted: “Anacleto! I’m coming! Anacleto, I’m coming! Anacleto! I’m coming!” Becky tried to calm her down, but to no effect and she rang for the nurses who were having lunch too, and in no hurry to help with the old woman.

“This means she’ll last maybe one day more,” said the nurse as he tightened the restraints around the old woman’s ankles. “When they start talking about seeing their dead husbands, that means they’re ready to pass. It always happens just before a full moon. It pulls them away from the Earth.”

The next day was indeed spent at the mortuary chamber. Becky was working but she managed to go as soon as she had her lunch break, just in time for the dramatic entrance of Nonna Egle, Mamma Zaira’s mother, who was over ninety, still ambulatory, and lucid. The room was cold, the coffin was closed, and everyone was standing around scuffling their feet among the gelid banks of flowers.
           Zaira’s mother Nonna Egle hobbled in, her white hair starkly framed by a black astrakhan hat that rose dramatically up from her forehead, like a Renaissance beret that Jane Jetson might wear. Nonna Egle opened her mouth as she walked towards the coffin but no sound issued. She knelt before the coffin on its marble bier and pounded the lid with one fist, while she buried her face in her other hand. She did not cry, she did not speak, she did not make a sound except for her feeble hand thudding against the varnished wood. This high theater left no doubt as to the depth of Nonna Egle’s pain and loss. Seeing your daughter pass away before you did was a perverse tragedy. Becky was however glad that Giangiacomo had not been there to see it. It would have ripped him in two.

The funeral the following day was far easier to deal with. Mamma Zaira had been a fierce priest eater and wanted very little to do with the church, so the family could not even get the parish priest to come and perform the service for old acquaintance or considerable donation. Giangiacomo was having dinner at home the night before the service with his children, and Becky was walking out the door lest she be there when they all arrived. The maid Gepa came up to Becky, grabbed her roughly by the arm, shook her, and looked into her eye sternly inveighing: “The mortuary chamber. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Be there!” Then Gepa marched off to lay the table.

Becky made it to the mortuary chamber in the bleak fog of an early February day. The room was empty except for the casket; they had moved all the flowers into the mortuary chapel, since Mamma Zaira specifically stated that she did not want her body going in and out of the portals of a church. Becky had not slept well; she was particularly concerned about how Emilia would behave at the funeral. Becky did however know she needed to be there for Giangiacomo and discreetly ingratiate herself with Marilena and perhaps Marilena’s daughter and Giangiacomo’s children. Becky would stay in the background as invisibly as possible. She was quite surprised that Gepa had insisted on Becky’s being at the mortuary chamber this morning, but Becky knew Gepa was on her side. Giangiacomo’s wife had not been an easy person to get along with in general and Gepa wasn’t going to miss taking orders from her former mistress who had moved out with the children just the week before.

Becky sat and stared at the coffin in the glum light of the concrete and glass brick room. Everything was cold and grey and she wrapped her black overcoat tighter around her. Mamma Zaira meant nothing to her. Becky had no feeling for the woman, she was not sorry she had died; she was not going to miss her at all. But funerals were not for the dead, or at least that was what her mother had always taught her. Funerals were for the living.

Gepa waddled in, her head was wrapped in a black silk headscarf, framing her white face and glasses. Gepa too was bundled up in a maroon overcoat and she sat down next to Becky on the cold grey plastic chair with her best pocketbook on her lap and her feet dangling six inches above the ground. Gepa was quite short, and shaped like a champagne cork.

“Poor thing, thanks for coming. I know it wasn’t easy and today isn’t going to be easy for you, but il Signorino is going to need you nearby at a certain point. La Signora won’t be much fun today, and the children are too young to care a whole lot about what happens. They won’t understand grief for a while. Marilena will be glad to see you in the background, and I’ll make sure nothing happens. You don’t need to worry. You’re in. You don’t need to lord it over anybody today and it’s not worth your time to rub anyone’s nose in it.”

Becky had won another person over to her side, one of the strategic presences in Giangi’s life. Italian men could get along without their girlfriends, they could get along without their wives or their mistresses, but they were completely lost without their mothers and their nannies. Becky just recently seen an advertisement that ran: “You can change your car or you can change your girlfriend, but your soccer team and Mamma are forever.”

Still it was cold and grey and bleak. They both sat there staring at the coffin. Gepa finally broke the silence again.

“It’s kind of nice though that Mamma Zaira decided to be cremated, doncha think?”

“Nice? Why do you think it’s nice?”

“Well, because this way, there won’t be all those worms crawling in and out of her body.”

“I suppose you have a point there, Gepa.”

Such sheer lack of any sensitivity actually made the funeral easier to deal with. Becky left the mortuary chamber just as she saw Emilia drive up with the kids and went to stand in the chapel. This room was a little warmer, and they had put out about twenty chairs for a crowd that ended up being around eighty. When the mourners assembled, Emilia took over the seating arrangements, refusing to let Mamma Zaira’s elderly country cousins have a place to sit, arguing that her children needed to have Emilia near them, as did Giangiacomo and Marilena, and they would all be standing too long. It was appalling behavior.

They wheeled the coffin in, a large spray of daffodils on the lid, with glittering ribbons announcing tributes from Zaira’s son and daughter and the grandchildren. Giangiacomo and Marilena followed the “rented” priest in behind the casket and sat down and took their places as the priest started to read from his breviary. After the first prayers were over, he started to speak about the dearly departed and advancing towards the coffin, moved one of the ribbons to see what her name was so he could repeat it. It gave new meaning to the phrase “being prepared.” This shocked everyone. Then he launched in a dreadfully tedious sermon about the sanctity of marriage and the crime of abortion that was obviously aimed at Giangiacomo and his niece; the priest had prepared this part of his service with pitiless aim. The temporary congregation had forgotten their grief by the end of the ceremony.

As the casket was being wheeled out, people started chatting before getting in their cars to go to the crematorium, and Becky stayed in the back. Several people came up to speak to her, but she didn’t budge. She was not going to put herself in the way of any trouble whatsoever which was rather likely. She waited until everyone was gone and then wandered out the back door to the Mortuary Hall’s service rooms.

Giangiacomo was standing there, bent over a bouquet of roses, trying to smell them. Tears were running down his cheeks. He turned to Becky and said: “I just, I just, I just need to find one beautiful thing and then I can go to the crematorium.” Becky threw her arms around him, held him tight, and walked him out to the parking lot. His brother-in-law Lauro was waiting for him in the car, with Lauro’s spinster sister, Tonina. Lauro flashed a broad smile at Becky.

“Becky, you come with us.”

“Oh, I really shouldn’t. I’m …”

“Going to be my new sister-in-law at least in practice, so you might as well come. Everybody’s left and no one’s going to see you arrive with Giangi, now will they? If his children had been less interested in how the seating arrangements broadcast their social standing and more interested in their father’s well-being, they certainly wouldn’t have left without him. Now, come on, get in.”

Becky and Giangiacomo piled into the back seat. She very chastely held his hand on the car seat between them, despite the disapproving glance of Tonina who immediately started and never stopped speaking the entire time they were in the car.

“Well, I must say your mother looked very well just before we screwed the lid down. Her lips were just starting to curl away from her teeth. She hadn’t even wet her clothing the way that happens in the summer, you know when it gets so hot and all that liquid in their skin starts to leak just everywhere. Dying in February, now that’s the way a lady goes, I’ll tell you that! There’s nothing worse than seeing a dampened blouse on a corpse, now is there?”

Becky would have liked to say: “Oh yes, there is. The worms!” but knew better. Tonina’s monologue indeed was so atrocious that Giangiacomo forgot his agony, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling of the car, and clenching Becky’s hand a little tighter. Becky’s undemanding attendance had cemented their future.

Becky abandoned them at the crematorium. She waited until Lauro and Tonina had gotten out of the car and turned to Giangiacomo. “Giangiacomo,” she said, “you need to go and be with your sister and your children now and you might want to have everybody back to the house. I’ll be having dinner at Fabiana’s tonight if you need to give me a call and want me with you; if you don’t I’ll understand.”

Becky walked back by herself as the lovely fog slowly lifted off the fields and the warm yellow ball of the sun dried up the air. She had moved in with Giangiacomo three weeks later at the nadir of her grief. The only thing she had changed in the house was the curtains. Giangiacomo’s wife adored the rich and the expensive, and the heavy brocade drapes she had installed years ago were immediately removed upon Becky’s triumphal entry: she and Gepa replaced them singlehandedly, with simple floor to ceiling white silk sheers. In just one day, it looked like Becky had let the sun into the whole house, only because she had. Giangiacomo loved the new look with his mother’s old family furniture, his wife’s comfortable overstuffed modern sofas and armchairs, and his father’s collection of antique pharmacy jars. Becky was going to work out just fine; she would make Giangi quite happy.

Becky moved one of the sheers to the side to see the street and saw Fabiana get out of her car and ring the doorbell. Becky flew downstairs, threw open the door and gave her bosom buddy a big hug.

“Come in, come in, come in, come in! I’m so glad to see you!”

“Oh, I can’t stay. I have to take Mamma to the cemetery, don’t you know? I was wondering if you wanted to come along. I can . . ..”

“Oh, thanks Fabi, I’m waiting for Giangiacomo any moment now. But give me a call tomorrow. He’ll be out of town until next week, and you can come over. We’ll have a sleepover! I found you the footy pajamas we used to wear when we were kids! And we’ll have hot chocolate and sweet clementines.”

“You are a nut! But I like the idea. Talk to you tomorrow! Bye!”

Fabiana gave Becky a big kiss and walked back to the car. Fabiana really was just as cute as cute could be and Becky gushed every time she saw her. She shouted

“Tell your mother hello from me!”

“Will do. Bye!”

Fabiana’s mother was a real piece of work. You would never imagine that Fabiana had come from such a backward country family. Her mother had worked in a fruit-canning factory and continually entertained them with stories of how they used the oldest, moldiest, rottenest, stinkiest fruit to make marmalade. Fabiana and her mother fought continuously. They were always screaming at one another, slamming doors, throwing kitchen tools and painted figurines at the walls and floors. Yesterday, her mother had threatened to dye all of Fabiana’s clothing black; Fabiana had to mourn for the death of her father! She couldn’t go out for at least a year! Everyone had to see it! Fabiana simply responded: “If you dye my clothes black, then I’ll buy new clothes. And they won’t be black! Do you understand? NOOOOOOO!”

Fabiana had worshipped her father but Becky had never gotten much of a chance to see Alvise; he was always working when Becky and Fabiana first met and Fabiana did not often invite people to her home in Santerno. Then he started to feel poorly, and Alvise was quickly diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys. It was horrible. Becky only remembered meeting him once, one warm evening last June. Alvise was sitting outside their home with a quilted comforter wrapped around his shoulders despite the sweet, balmy air. He didn’t say much, nor did Fabiana’s mother but mainly because everyone was being regaled by running commentary of the little girl from across the street.
          She had just started to notice that women went topless at the beach, and their breasts, high and firm, or saggy and swaying, endlessly fascinated little Lucia. She talked about how the women used shells to protect their nipples, but the Adriatic hardly had shells big enough to cover the nipples of some of the older women, so they resorted to making a rosette of smaller shells on each nipple. Some women, Lucia noticed, would not go bare breasted on the beach, but you just wait until they got out in the water! When no one was looking, PLIF! They’d pull off their tops and their mottled bosoms would roll down their chests to their stomachs, just like squirrels running down a tree! No, they dropped even faster than that!

Everyone laughed. It was more akin to behavioral sociology and journalistic description with a nine-year-old’s enthusiasm for discovering something completely new, rather than prurient interest in sex.

The next time Becky saw Fabiana’s mother, was at her father’s funeral on a golden September afternoon. Mother and daughter had been fighting fiercely since husband and father had died two days earlier. Fabiana refused to go the mortuary chamber. She refused to watch them take the electric drill and screw the lid down on her father’s coffin. She even refused to go into the small octagonal chapel where the funeral mass was to be held. Fabiana waited outside, dry-eyed and gracious.

“Don’t you want to go in? I’ll sit with you. It’ll make your mother happy.”

“I don’t care what makes her happy. She doesn’t care what makes me happy. We both have to put up with each other at home, at least we can get some time away from each other here.”

“Whatever you say.”

Becky entered the church, a handsomely proportioned baroque construction that had remained intact for the last two hundred years, lost as it was in the countryside. Its yellow and white stucco, Stations of the Cross in old engravings, and an altar made of red Veronese marble with white inlay were gently illuminated by eight windows piercing the small octagonal cupola. White lilies lay on the coffin and white lilies stood on the altar. Fabiana’s mother was already seated on the front row, a black scarf over her head despite the warm day, holding her pocketbook in one hand, and wiping her eyes with a handkerchief in her other hand. There were very few men; Becky walked up to say hello and give her condolences.

“Thank you. But my life is over! It’s finished. It’s the end for me!”

Becky tried briefly to console her but quickly realized from the glances of the women sitting around her that perhaps she should go back to her pew. The priest finally came and said mass. Becky was glad when it came time to give the sign of peace to your neighbor. This was the only part of the Catholic Mass she enjoyed, because you actually got to smile and interact with another human being.

No one in the congregation moved. Except Becky. The people around her took her hand without looking at her and averted their gaze to the floor. It was mortifying.

When the mass was over, four pallbearers came forward and inserted poles underneath the wooden casket. They raised it, and walked down the aisle out into the sunlight. Fabiana’s mother walked out as the entire whole congregation followed her, one after another. Becky was among the last out of the church, since she had been sitting towards the back. The little procession slowly ambled through the gentle sun shining on the countryside on a fabulously dappled early autumn day. Grapes were hanging heavy from the vines in the countryside and small white flowers still bloomed on the side of the dirt road that led from the church to the cemetery. Becky was struck by the extraordinary beauty of the moment, the perfect day to leave the Earth; it reminded her of a painting by Corot and something Goethe once wrote. Becky saw Fabiana up ahead walking with her mother, trying to hold her hand or put her arm on her shoulder.

After no more than ten minutes, they arrived at the cemetery. The priest shook the asperser onto the coffin, waved his censer once or twice, and made the sign of the cross. Then he walked over and shook the hands of Fabiana’s mother, Fabiana, and a few of her relatives, before leaving. The pallbearers had rested the coffin on a small accordion-like pedestal, in front of a high mausoleum wall of white cement and glass brick. An open hole at hip level had been recently whitewashed inside and glowed in the afternoon sun. The pallbearers now picked up the coffin by the handles on its sides and slid the casket into the waiting cavity: Alvise’s tomb. They went over and shook Fabiana’s mother’s hand and Fabiana’s and the hands of the relatives and then they walked off. A man in white speckled overalls, sunburnt under a newspaper hat, came from behind the mausoleum carrying a trowel and a bucket full of mortar. 
         He smiled and pulled the tarp off a pile of bricks to one side, and he closed up the tomb methodically, rough red brick after rough red brick, consigning the casket to the dark for eternity. Fabiana’s mother now lost all control, weeping and screaming, her body shaking violently, swooning, and coming to. The brick mason was quick at his work and after he put the last brick in place, he edged up the mortar with his coarse fingers, and placed a marble tablet over it. Then he lined that with mortar too, cleaned it with gritty water, and left. Fabiana’s mother now stumbled over to the tomb, and pounded on the tablet with her fists, screaming and weeping “Alvise! Alvise! Alvise!”

The women around her looked at each other sadly and clucked their tongues. Fabiana had already disappeared, and after five more minutes of this wrenching scene of grief and pain, Becky walked back through the countryside to her car. Did she ever hate funerals! Death! Did we really have to dwell on it? Couldn’t we think about something else? Couldn’t the Italians restrain their emotions and do something positive at funerals?

She hoped she had been to her last funeral of the year and then Tonina and Lauro’s father died. He was old and losing his mind, and the time had pretty much come for him to go, so there was no pounding of fists or dramatic black clothing or histrionic weeping. This time you could feel that a life had gone full cycle, and with Tonina’s offhand, completely tasteless running commentary about her father, people were too embarrassed to even be especially mournful, focused as they were on keeping their mouths shut and getting away from her. Gepa had been at the mortuary chamber all morning, since Marilena had asked her if Gepa could help them out and spend a few nights a week at her father-in-law’s home while he slowly passed in the previous weeks. Gepa also seemed resigned and not unduly upset. Indeed, if you get could away from Tonina (and that was not easy to do), the mortuary chamber was actually a pleasant chance to catch up with old acquaintances. 
          Becky wandered back when they pulled the coffin off the bier. Just before the lid was screwed down, the women huddled around the corpse, straightened its hair, checked the clothing for signs of moisture, and left something in the coffin: a flower, a scarf, a model car, a copy of the day’s paper with the obituary in it. As Becky turned the corner, she saw a man with an electric drill preparing to screw the nails into the coffin with a piercingly invasive metallic whine. Tonina was looking tearfully on, but the noise was so shrill and repetitive (there were at least thirty screws to go in; this was one stiff that wouldn’t be walking) that Becky had to leave.

She walked back into the mortuary chamber and saw Emilia on the right, so Becky tacked left and sat down beside Gepa. Becky knew this was the safest place in the room for her. Giangiacomo’s wife wouldn’t come anywhere near Gepa. Gepa was blinking behind her thick eyeglasses, her legs dangling off the chair as she was surveying all the people in the room, people she had known her entire life. Becky tried to initiate some conversation.

“Funerals aren’t much fun, but this one’s not as bad as they other two I’ve been to this year. You know what I hate the most? The people standing around the casket while they take the electric drill and screw the nails into the coffin with that high-pitched wail, one after another. Jhhhinngggg! Jhhhinngggg! Jhhhinngggg! Jhhhinngggg! It’s the last thing I want to hear, especially when at last I’ve started thinking that the dearly departed has achieved some sort of peace.”

“I know just what you mean, Signorina. You know what I hate?”

“No, Gepa. What do you hate?”

“The stench!”

Becky paled as this brought to mind the fact that Italians did not usually embalm bodies. It was likely there would be quite a stench but Becky gratefully had never smelt it. This time Gepa’s comment made Becky wince and then smirk a little bit. Gepa’s comment was one of those things that are in such bad taste they’re wickedly funny.

* * * * *

The front door opened and shook Becky from her thoughts. Giangiacomo walked into the foyer of their home and without taking his coat off, waited for Gepa and Becky to join him. He wasn't impatient, but he was ready to leave. So were they.

“Signorino, do you want me to get some flowers from . . .

“No, no, don’t worry I’ve already got the flowers in the car. Are you two ready?”

Gepa was wrapping her scarf around her head and Becky slipped on a long vintage black astrakhan coat she had bought at the flea market. They rode to the cemetery in silence.

The fog was lifting. To the left, the fields of Romagna stretched flat and broad up towards Venice, turning into marshes and thence to lagoon, having protected the population for centuries and now isolating them for the last dozen decades. An avenue of umbrella pines appeared on the right and then on the left, darkening the road that ran along the edge of the channel to the port. The pine trees arranged themselves into circles and then rows as they arrived at the terracotta wall of the cemetery where hundreds and hundreds of cars had parked on a thick carpet of pine needles. Giangiacomo and Becky and Gepa got out of the car, retrieved their bouquets of daisies and gladioli and mums out of the trunk, and walked through the neogothic gates of the cemetery, headed for the tomb of Giangiacomo’s mother.

There in freshly carved letters was the date of her death; Mamma Zaira lay alongside her husband. Giangiacomo and Marilena had decided to remove the photograph of their father. Mamma Zaira, had taken a Polaroid of him in his casket two years ago and insisted on having it photographically transferred to the ceramic oval she placed on his tomb. Giangi and Marilena had also decided not to use the photograph of Mamma Zaira which she had insisted on preparing last summer, expressly for the purpose of placing it on her tomb to match the picture of her husband. The substitute photograph had been an easy choice: their parents’ engagement double portrait.

In her twenties, Mamma Zaira had a lovely smile, good hair, and a delicate hand poised on her fiancé’s shoulder. Her future husband’s body was solid and unusually elegant in short-sleeved shirt and high waisted trousers as he looked darkly at the camera. The picture had been taken in the hills above Faenza and you could make out a medieval tower in the background.

Becky placed her hand on Giangiacomo’s shoulder, gave Gepa a look, and realized she needed to leave him alone. Gepa nodded yes to her, so Becky bent over and said: “I’ll meet you here in fifteen minutes. Bye.”

Becky turned onto the gravel path and took in the whole cemetery for the first time. The graves were all sparkling clean, and as far as the eye could see, pleasing clumps of color indicated the presence of fresh flowers, some fresh botanically, some fresh plastically, but all fresh. The individual graves were petite masterpieces in eclectic architecture that alternated between Flintstone-like rustication and Art Deco flamboyance to space age streamlining and Palladian harmony or Romanesque stateliness. Large mausoleums in the arches of the cemetery’s central brick arms even held Byzantine style sarcophagi sculpted in the nineteenth century for graves in the grand style, with mosaics of stags drinking the waters of life, copied from the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. The tombs were not really quite as grandiose as they were idiosyncratic, reflecting the personality of the deceased or their survivors, whom no one remembered at this point.

Becky turned the corner, and perched on an expansive square of a white tomb rising majestically like a marble sheet cake, sat Tonina. She was wearing a perfectly smart black Versace suit with gold braid, she had just had her hair styled and colored, and her hand was wandering over a new Fendi pocketbook. She beckoned for Becky to come over and Tonina put her hand out to help Becky up so she could also sit on top of the tomb for a better vantage of the graveyard. Tonina even smelled good.

“It’s so nice to see you, Becky. How are things going?”

“Oh, very well, very well.”

“You left Giangiacomo at Zaira’s grave I imagine.”

“Yes, he …”

“He needs a little time alone with his mother. I’ve been here with my Babbo and Mamma a couple of hours. I’ve seen so many old faces, so many new ones. And the cemetery is looking especially nice this year, don’t you think?”

Becky swiveled her head full circle and took in the whole cemetery, people in their Sunday clothes, children playing in the gravel, flowers adorning almost every grave, and the brick walls delimiting the cemetery, ringed on the exterior perimeter by dark green umbrella pines. Above the pine trees, the immense Romagnol sky spread in all directions: east to the sea and Yugoslavia, north to the Alps, west to the fertile plain, and south to Africa.

“It is.”

“Here, want a cookie?”

Tonina opened her new pocketbook to reveal a white paper sack that contained the pastel Beans of the Dead. Becky reached in a pulled out a turquoise one and bit into it. It was sweet, laced with anisette scenting the egg white and sugar. Tonina picked up a feldspar green cookie and closed her pocketbook. She crossed her legs, sheathed in new Christian Dior hose which Becky immediately coveted, and turned her torso towards Becky, cocking her head.

“Is it like this in Chicago? When do you go and visit your grandparents’ graves? Is there a special day?” (Tonina was a boorish woman, but she knew well enough not to mention Becky’s parents).

“Oh no. I’ve never been to their graves.”

Tonina was visibly taken aback.

“Never?”

“No, never. But my mother never went to visit their graves either and they were her parents. ‘My father isn’t there,’ is what she used to tell me.”

Tonina’s teeth had clenched at the thought of Becky not visiting her grandparents’ graves; all of a sudden however, face relaxed.

“I guess it’s just a different way of seeing things.”

Tonina was not terribly clever or worldly, but for the first time Becky realized that Tonina had an understanding nature.

“That’s one way of looking at it, Tonina. But today I do wish I had the graves of my parents to visit.” A lump rose in Rebecca’s throat, she raised her head high looking in the direction of the sea, and her eyes filled with tears. She choked silently, swallowed, and felt Tonina’s hand sliding between hers, grasping them.

“Well Becky, you should just remember; today they’re here all the same, as long as you’re thinking about them. I’m sure that’s what your mother would have told you. Today is the Day of All the Dead, as the calendar says. Romagna is a good place to die, as you can clearly see if you look around you. After the nastiness and horrors of funerals, we all make a considerable effort so that death is as pretty and dignified as it can possibly be.”

Tonina then kept silent until she could feel Becky’s moment of anguish had passed and she relinquished her grip on Becky’s hand.

“Well Becky, I don’t know about you, but my fanny is frozen solid from sitting on this damn tomb for the last two hours. Let’s go find Giangiacomo and Lauro see if they won’t buy us a pastry and a cup of chocolate before lunch. We’ve eaten our Beans of the Dead. We deserve some whipped cream to go on top of them.”

Tonina smiled, stood up, and sauntered away toward Zaira’s grave, leaving Becky still sitting on the spacious white tomb. Becky surveyed the graveyard. This was a good place to die. But to die here, she would have to live here too. Her day was coming: her looks, her body would soon not be quite as desirable as she they needed to be for her to keep up her game. Gravity was inexorably pulling every part of her towards the ground and thence to the graveyard: her face, her bosoms, her thighs. She knew she couldn’t sleep her way any higher to the top. She could resign herself to settling down. She had all the furniture she needed. She could put on a little weight, get a cat, give it a name, and buy a Tiffany choker for it to wear. And maybe one for herself.