Illness is in part what the world has done to a victim, but in a larger part it is what the victim has done with their world.

Karl A. Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990)

 

Think of it like a fairy tale, as told by the Grimm brothers.

 

Catherine and Silvio Marchesi didn’t have Mia right away; they planned for her, allowing time to savor married life as a couple before bringing a precious third party into it. Still, when Mia came, Catherine was conflicted.

 

Theirs was a working class family. Blue collar. Silvio was employed in various diverse businesses, from hawking life insurance door-to-door to owning a failed convenience store in a neighborhood prone to burglaries. Catherine was a stay-at-home housewife, as were most suburban white women during the 1950s and ‘60s.

 

Maria Marchesi was a lovely wildflower of a child, cocooned by her father until Michael was born seven years later. Nothing was the same for Maria after that. Silvio naturally gravitated toward his son, away from the daughter. It wouldn’t do to be petulant anymore to get what she wanted. Silvio wasn’t as invested and Catherine carried a grudge.

 

Incapable of pronouncing her given name, it was toddler Michael who pinned ‘Mia’ on his sister. Because Catherine made such a hullabaloo of the abbreviated moniker, he grew up thinking he’d assigned her identity. For his part, Silvio stressed to Michael from an early age that even though Mia was older, he was the Marchesi boy who’d one day be a man and it was therefore his “job,” to respect and protect her. Both notions never left him.

 

By high school—Cardinal O’Malley, Catholic School for girls—Mia had grown into an overlooked, overweight weed, made to wear thick, dark-rimmed glasses which seemed to magnify all her features, especially her arresting hazel eyes, into one unglamorous form.

 

Everything changed during the summer of Mia’s junior year when she shed the extra pounds and was fitted for contact lenses. Catherine and Silvio and Michael had a good laugh when she inserted both the left and right lens into one eye, in her nervousness forgetting which went first. When done correctly, they had the desired effect.

 

Startlingly transformed—into Elizabeth Taylor from A Place in the Sun—she suddenly acquired popularity. Italian mothers and daughters so highly placed on the pedestal scale, Mia became the cherished child again, compounded by the realization that Michael had yet to show any demonstrative signs of masculinity, maybe never would.

 

At a relative’s wedding, where too many infatuations between Italian boys and girls are cultivated, Mia met a handsome blue-eyed graduate of the public school system. Not quite Taylor’s Montgomery Clift, but close. Because Mia wasn’t allowed to date until senior year, the besotted pair had to content themselves with long-distance flirting and hushed conversations over the telephone.

 

When Mia finally brought him home, Rob presented himself well to Silvio and Catherine, but what impressed them most was that he was in his second year of the local junior college. No one on either side of their family had yet achieved a college diploma, so this made him a catch for their only daughter. It wasn’t quite obligatory, but it pleased them that he was of their Mediterranean culture and Catholic faith.

 

Rob’s plan was to continue his education at an institution that offered a degree in his chosen field—juvenile justice—some sixty miles away. Weeks after Mia’s graduation, Rob paid Silvio the requisite visit to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

 

“What’s the hurry?” Silvio wanted to know after asking if Rob’s parents were on board. (They were.) He would not permit the impulse to enter his mind that virtuous Mia could be expecting. (She was not.) Still, he preferred that the couple wait until Rob graduated with the appropriate credentials for a proper career.

 

“We love each other,” was Rob’s short answer. The longer one was more to the point: “I want her with me at school.” It was plausible to presume the young man would do better with coursework if he weren’t preoccupied by Mia’s absence. Believing in the importance of education, their own not extending beyond high school, and fearing that without Rob their daughter could revert any minute to backward, “big-boned” Mia, the Marchesis reluctantly gave them the green light to marry.

 

Which they did in an elaborate church wedding with several bridesmaids in burgundy ruffled dresses and black-tuxedoed groomsmen. It rained that September morning. Mia associated the inclement weather with bad luck but superstitious Catherine lied to keep her spirits up and in the game.

 

“No, it’s bad luck when it rains on your funeral,” Catherine assured her.

 

Mia trusted her mother. What could be worse luck than death, after all?

 

Too young to be a groomsman, too old to be the ring bearer, Mia chose Michael and a cousin to serve the priest as altar boys at the matrimonial Mass. The betrothed looked so pretty that morning, all grown up, but really no more than stupid lovesick kids, insensible to the seriousness of their commitment vows.

 

Silvio donned a happy face to give his precious daughter away. Catherine could be heard sniveling throughout the ceremony; grief or relief, who knew? Michael had the best seat (kneeler) in the house. From his perch at the altar, he saw Rob’s father’s big smile, his mother’s frozen countenance.

 

The service was followed by a catered breakfast and later, a four-course dinner and reception for three hundred people, paid for in large part by the father of the bride, typical protocol of the day. Mia’s picture appeared on the Sunday society page of the local newspaper, accompanied by a blow-by-blow of: her gown (‘accented by Alençon lace and seed pearls’); the ceremony (officiated by their parish pastor); the names of the primary attendants (maid of honor and best man).

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