When I first moved out, Nonna Ida bought me a tablecloth with a blue-grey patchwork design. Whenever I sat down to eat, I had to adjust it so it would hang evenly over the edge of my table. On the day Marianne came back from Italy, I was eating a veal sandwich, dripping tomato sauce all over it, when one of the patches caught my attention. It was full of swirling, spiraling lines, almost like an arabesque. Their curves reminded me of a mustache on a cartoon villain. That day – for the first time in all the years I’d been using that cloth – in those familiar swirls and spirals, I saw the hint of a face. It looked like an owl staring at me from the branch of a tree. I wondered if the artist who designed the cloth had intentionally put it there. And then, suddenly, in my head, I began writing a story.
When I saw a face in Nonna’s tablecloth, I set out on a mad journey to track down the artist to prove I didn’t imagine it.
It was all I could think about.
That night, Marianne and I laid in bed, cuddling beneath the covers. The bedroom was filled with the scent of vanilla coming from a candle on our night table. She leaned her head against my shoulder, holding up her phone, scrolling through pictures of Cisternino, the small town in Puglia where her parents were born. I tilted my head towards her, but stared blankly out the window, off into the distance – my thoughts fixed on the tablecloth. When she told me about her cousins taking her to visit the cathedral her parents were married in, it felt like I had headphones on and she was shouting at me over the music.
How would I find the designer? To what lengths would I go? And what did it all mean?
As she swiped away, she finally made it inside the church. Many of the pictures were duplicates; she must have snapped three or four shots without realizing it. Some were blurry; others were clear. “Cisternino really is beautiful,” I said, after struggling for a while to say something.
She looked up at me. “This is Ostuni – not Cisternino,” she said. “It’s another town very close to it.” There was a very distinct bite in her voice.
“Right, Ostuni.”
She reached up and gave me a playful slap. We both laughed. After that though, she swiped more quickly through the photos, especially through the blurry ones. When she spoke, she sounded like she was trying to justify the photos, to apologize for them, even. She must have felt like I’d felt looking at the face in cloth, wondering if I was there, or if she’d just imagined I was. I kept my eyes glued on the screen, as she swiped her way into the church. She had, after all, gone to that church to light a candle for her father. He died the year before.
“Wait,” I said, touching her arm. “Go back to that last one.”
She swiped back. In the photo, there was a pillar decorated with swirling, spiraling black lines, coiling around it like a snake. I took the phone out of her hand and enlarged the image. The lines on the pillar created the hint of an image. A whisper of image. But it was unmistakable.
It was the same face from Nonna’s tablecloth.
It was like someone was staring at me from a crowd, but the moment I look up, they instantly turn away.
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said. “I’ve been working on this story about seeing a face in my Nonna’s tablecloth, and –” I held up the phone with the face taking up the entire screen. “This is that face.”
“Tell me more! Tell me more!” she said, genuinely excited. “What happens?” Then she took the phone out of my hand and put it down on the bed.
The next day, I had to take Nonna Ida to Eddystone Meats. On my way to pick up her up I stopped at a red light at Pine Valley and Highway 7. All my windows were rolled down. My left hand hung outside the window, tapping the door. I was feeling guilty about hijacking the conversation with Marianne. We’d talked about my story until we drifted off to sleep, her trip to Italy all but forgotten.
Out of nowhere, just as the light turned green, a wasp flew into my car. I swatted frantically, trying to get it out. Everyone around me started moving. I hit the gas and kept up with traffic, but the wasp was still buzzing around in the backseat. Then, for a split second, it seemed like it was gone; but a second later, it popped up again in my rearview mirror. With one hand gripping the wheel, I turned around and tried to force it out the window. Finally, I thought it was out, but I wasn’t sure. Eventually I rolled up all the windows.
I took Highway 400 South, towards Finch, constantly checking the rearview mirror. Firmly gripping the wheel, I picked up speed. My jaw was clenched. When my lane ended, I merged into the lane on my left. In next lane, just ahead of me, a white big rig, without a trailer attached to it, ploughed ahead. Glancing at it, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The two windows on back of the sleeper cabin – they were the eyes. A large black hose, curled up, passed beneath the cabin windows – that was the mouth. It was the face from Nonna’s tablecloth. It glared at me as I drove. I checked the mirrors, scanned my blind spots, then kept glancing back at the truck. It picked up speed, merged into another lane, moving farther and farther away from me. Then I took my phone out of the cupholder. I needed to take a picture to show Marianne.
My eyes darted back and forth, jumping rapidly from the face to my rearview mirror, terrified that wasp might startle me any minute now. I struggled to keep track of the truck – which merged into the left lane and sped ahead – while at the same time, swiping my phone open without looking down at it. Using nothing but muscle memory, I maneuvered my thumb to open the camera. I peeked down for a split second to make sure I opened the camera and not another app. Then, eyeing the truck, I help my phone up above the steering wheel, ready to snap a shot. But another car had gotten between me and the truck. I quickly craned my neck, checking the backseat for any sign of the wasp.
I dropped the phone down and rested my hand on my leg. Luckily, the truck merged into the fast lane. Immediately, I switched lanes too, gunning the motor, and ended up right behind it. I held the phone up again and started snapping shots without looking at the screen, my eyes locked on the cars racing by. Eventually, I switched lanes, exited at Finch, and the truck drove off, down the highway. When I made it to Eddystone Road, I wanted to check out the pictures. While I drove, I swiped through them, one after the after, trying to find the best one. And then, in my head, the story continued to unfold in a new and unexpected direction.
After I see the same face in Nonna’s tablecloth and on the pillar from Ostuni, I see it again while driving on the highway, and I try to take a picture of it.
The first one was blurry; it didn’t look like a face at all. I glanced up at the road, then swiped to the next one.
In the process, I crash and end up in a coma.
The second picture was blurry, too, but it was a bit better than the first; the face was slightly warped, but you could still see it. I checked my blind spots, then swiped again. In the third photo, a piece of dirt, which I could see was on my windshield, made it look like there was a wasp flying around. I chuckled.
During the investigation, the police find a wasp buzzing around in the car. They conclude that the accident was caused by the wasp startling me while driving on the highway.
“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes!”
But Marianne sees the picture of the face of my phone and pieces together the truth.
The fourth photo was just a blurrier version of the last, but in the fifth one, you could clearly the see face. As I approached a stop sign, three cars all pulled up at the same time.
She tries to tell everyone – but they all think she’s crazy.
Still looking down at my phone, admiring the picture, I hit the gas and made a left. Then, emboldened by the quality of the shot, I opened a voice note on my phone, taking my eyes entirely off the road. I wanted to record my thoughts before they slipped away. I hit record: “The story came together, with all these seemingly unrelated events weaving into each other – in exactly the same way the lines on the tablecloth weaved into each other to create the face.”
When I started turning, all I could see was a red Jeep barreling down on me. I gasped, bracing for impact. Then I slammed the brakes. The Jeep screeched to a halt, inches away from my car. Without thinking, I rolled down my window and shouted at the driver. It turned out I was still recording; I heard what I’d said later, when I listened to the voice note.
“Oh! You’re lucky I don’t come out there and give you a slap!”
Daniel Scarcello has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Currently, he works for Vaughan Public Libraries where he hosts writing workshops for adults. His first book, I By Fire, about an author who writes a novel by letting coincidences determine the plot and begins to question his reality, is in search of a publisher. His blog, “A Collection of Coincidences,” is available on Substack. Daniel lives in Woodbridge, Ontario.
