Chapter 2

When she forced her eyes open in the morning, Romina observed a number of things: first, it was very late, almost eleven o'clock, and her mother would have been up several hours ago, already attended morning church services and departed for the youth center where she did volunteer charity work. Her second observation concerned the fact that she was starting the day with a colossal hangover. Her lips felt dry and cracked. Her head thundered with pain and her eyes objected to focusing.

She staggered out of bed, splashed water on her face in the bathroom and caught sight of herself in the mirror. That was quite a session last night, she told herself grimly, observing the scratches on her thighs made with her own fingernails. And it must never happen again!

Feeling aimless and depressed, the girl pulled on a housecoat and wandered into the kitchen to prepare some coffee. As the coffee pot burbled and chortled its way to percolation, she suddenly remembered the newspaper article she had read the night before and decided to read it again while she was having her breakfast of coffee and aspirins. She glanced around the living room and discovered to her annoyance that it was no longer there. The furniture had been dusted and the ashtrays were empty, a fact which suggested that her mother had tidied up and had probably thrown the newspaper into the garbage.

Irritated, she investigated the contents of the garbage pail, feeling nauseated by the smell of grapefruit rinds and coffee grounds. At the bottom of the pail, stained and crumpled, she located the newspaper. Pulling it out to see if it was still in readable condition, she spread the paper on the kitchen table and smoothed it out with her fingers.

With a shock, she saw that the article about the bandit had been neatly clipped out! It was no longer there. For some reason, her mother had wanted to save that article. How strange!

The coffee was ready and she poured herself a cup and drank it black while her mind, still not fully awake, pondered this surprising development. Of what possible interest could an article about a Sicilian robber be to a forty-five year old Italo-American lady who had lived in Boston all of her life?

Mom is a very normal person, Romina thought, but she does have these little secrets. There is that mysterious person who sends her roses once a year, for example. Mom claims she has no idea where they come from, but who believes that! And that gold earring in the shape of a fox which she wears around her neck all the time. I'd like to know what happened to the mate of that set and why she wears it every day. No question about it, there is more to her than she is willing to admit. And what's the big mystery about Dad? Why don't my aunts and uncles ever mention him? Somebody, somewhere, some time must have taken a picture of him, so why isn't there one around? And now she clips articles out of the paper about some Italian bandit: how does this fit into the picture?

No answer immediately presented itself and Romina was still not feeling quite awake, so she decided to take her shower and get the day started. She stripped and stepped into the stream of water, turning it first warm, then scalding hot and finally ice cold. As she jumped out shivering onto the bathroom rug and reached for the towel, the thought suddenly hit her.

Suppose her father was not dead? Suppose he was alive somewhere, having run off with another woman or in jail, convicted of some terrible crime? And the bandit in Sicily, who was he? Her father's brother? Or her mother's old boyfriend? Or ... Or, oh God, even her father?

Stunned by the enormity of what she was thinking, she forgot to turn off the shower or dry herself with the towel. It's impossible, she tried to reassure herself. It simply could not be. And yet, everything pointed to the fact that there was something strange about her father's disappearance and the article about the Sicilian bandit added a whole new dimension to the problem.

Romina walked nakedly into the living room, dripping water on the rug and pondering the dilemma. She had to knew the truth! But how? Asking her mother was clearly out of the question. If the older woman had wanted her to know, she would have told her years ago. She had obviously gone to great lengths to keep her from getting at the truth. Besides, the thought of confronting her mother with a barrage of questions was simply impossible. Mrs. Santini would simply declare, as she had in the past, that the subject was not open for discussion.

So what to do? Attacking the problem logically, the first step was to verify the details of her father's death. With a new sense of determination, Romina called for a cab and then marched into her bedroom to dress.

"The name again, Miss?" asked the official as he bent over his file.

"Antonio Santini."

"Can you spell it?"

"S-a-n-t-i-n-i," obliged Romina.

Mr. Baynes, Assistant Deputy Director of the Boston Branch of the Federal Aeronautics Administration, was not normally sympathetic to the assorted oddballs and nuts who wandered in off the streets asking various strange questions. Just last week there had been that crazy professor who was making a comparative study of plane crashes and the phases of the moon. And a few days before that a student had come in asking for help on a term paper he was writing on the aviation of the Civil War. He had seemed so hurt when Baynes had explained that airplanes had not been invented until after the Civil War. Mr. Baynes had been barely polite to the professor and downright rude to the student, but this girl was different somehow. Even though the answer to her question could only be found after digging through piles of dusty documents, she seemed so sincere and so earnest (and so good-looking) that he did his best to help her.

"And exactly when did this plane crash occur?"

"It would have been either early Christmas morning or possibly the day before. My mother said that she got the telegram on Christmas Day."

"And you don't know the name of the airline?"

"No, only that it was going from Boston to Italy."

"And the year is 1950."

"That's right."

The bureaucrat sighed and pulled open another drawer, wondering when the day would arrive when all this information could be fed into a computer and retrieved by pushing a button. He located a folder for all air crashes which occurred in 1950, together with the passenger lists. He began thumbing through the papers.

"Here's an accident on a New York-London flight in October," he offered helpfully.

"I don't think that could be it."

"Ah, here's December. There was a daily Pan Am flight and a twice-a-week shuttle by Alitalia during this period. Also some American Airlines charter flights."

"Yes?" prompted Romina helpfully.

"But no crashes."

"But no crashes?" repeated the black-haired girl, as if stunned.

"No crashes at all during the last half of December anywhere in the world, Miss. And certainly none on the flights you're talking about. I've double checked this every way I can think of. My only guess is that someone has been telling you a tall story about Mr. Santini's disappearance."

Romina thanked Mr. Baynes for his help and walked out into the bright sunny afternoon, her hangover headache still bothering her, and still incapable of digesting the information she had just received. No plane crashes at Christmas time in 1950. Her mother and her entire family had been lying to her all her life about her father, concealing something. But what?

1950. The date somehow rang a bell in her mind. What else had happened in 1950. It was the year she was conceived, of course, but she had seen the date somewhere else and very recently. Suddenly the words from the newspaper article about Il Volpe came rushing back to her. "And in 1950, he was deported to Italy ... "

Meditating, Romina walked slowly through the Boston Commons towards her bus stop. She had a good deal to consider.