“Perhaps I have, too,” Opal agreed. “And perhaps blaming ourselves is very self-indulgent. Disrespectful of Terry, too.”
Roberta continued to look into Opal’s eyes. “It is easier to feel guilt than pain, isn’t it?”
Opal nodded. “Yes.” She paused. “It’s also easier to feel responsible than to feel powerless.” Roberta looked away, then nodded.
After a moment Opal reached into her own battered purse and took out the letters, all of Terry’s rejection letters. “If anyone is responsible, here are the culprits. But I think we have to give Terry the dignity of making a choice. She was tired of all this. They’d worn her down.”
Roberta took the pile of letters and began to thumb through them. She pulled out her glasses, put them on, and read one letter after another, shaking her head and making small clicking noises with her tongue. “Oh, really!” she said to one letter and pushed it to the bottom of the stack. At another one she silently shook her head. After a few more, she looked back at Opal. “But I had no idea,” she said. “I mean, I knew about Terry’s work, but I had no idea…Do you know the trick Doris Lessing pulled?”
Opal shook her head. “Doris Lessing submitted a new manuscript of her own to four or five publishers. But she used a different name. And she was rejected by all of them.” She paused. Then, gently, she asked, “Is the book any good?”
Now Opal felt tears rising in her own eyes. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The parts I read were brilliant, but I never read the whole thing.”
“Well, read it now,” Roberta urged.
Then Opal’s tears overflowed, and though she kept calm and could speak, she couldn’t wipe her eyes quickly enough to hide them. She sniffed. “I can’t read it now. Terry has destroyed it. There’s nothing left but ashes in her fireplace.” Opal looked down into her lap. “There’s nothing left of her life except for ashes.”
Roberta reached out and patted Opal’s arm, briefly and with the lightest touch imaginable. Opal could tell that—like herself—Roberta was not a huggy person. “Tragic,” was all that Roberta said for a few minutes. And then, “You must, you must bring those ashes of the manuscript back with you as well,” Roberta said. “They are as much a part of Terry as whatever is left in that box.”
Opal looked up, and—for the first time since she had gotten the call, the phone call from the lady detective with the terrible news—she smiled. “Yes. Of course. That’s what I’ll do.” And somehow the thought of mingling her daughter’s ashes with the manuscript ashes not only made perfect sense but also gave some small comfort to Opal O’Neal.
“Do you want any help?” Roberta asked. “Is there anything I can do?”
“You’ve already done a lot for me,” Opal told her.
“And you for me,” Roberta responded. Then she took out a card and handed it to Opal. “My shop is only a few blocks away,” she said. “Come by, or call, or write. And let me know if you need any help or want a ride to the airport.”
Opal thanked her, and then, somehow, she found the strength to stand. Together the two women walked slowly out of the graceless parlor.
Opal had finished packing, and her suitcases stood by the door. She had given away all of those things of Terry’s that could be of any use to the homeless, then carried out two large bags of garbage, which she left in the rubber containers at the side of the door. Last, she had swept up the ashes from the fireplace grate and carefully added them to the contents of the metal box. She had washed her face and hands, put on some lipstick, combed her gray, permed curls, and made two final telephone calls, to ConEd and Nynex to terminate service. Then she took one last look around the room and went to the door, ready to leave.
But it seemed that, despite the few belongings of Terry’s that she’d saved, there was more luggage than Opal could handle. She tried to lift a suitcase and a bag in each hand, but that was too heavy and awkward. She couldn’t get through the door. She would have to make two trips, and she was afraid to leave anything on the New York sidewalk—even for a moment—while she went back in to get the remaining baggage. She reached into her purse for the keys and pushed all the luggage into the hall. She thought for a moment of calling Roberta Fine for help, but that was silly. She would just have to inch it all out, rather like a sheepdog moving a flock. But as Opal got to the front of the hallway, one of the bags she was pushing fell against the super’s door. And, surprisingly quickly, he flung it open.
“Oh. It’s you.” He looked down at the little herd of luggage and back at Opal. “You leaving?” he asked. He was a master at stating the obvious. Opal merely nodded. “You clean out the apartment?”
Really, he was beneath contempt. But Opal merely nodded again. What was his name? Some name unknown in Indiana. Aiello. That was it. But she didn’t know if it was his first name or his last. Well, she didn’t have to speak to the brute.
“I gotta get those keys back,” Aiello told her. Wordlessly Opal reached into her bag and handed them to him.
“Ya might wanna take a cab, what with all that luggage and all.”
He didn’t even offer to help her, but Opal was not surprised. She just kept sliding the bags toward the front door.
“And you might wanna clean out the mailbox,” he continued, in his very limited attempt to be helpful.
“Mailbox?” Opal asked. “Where is the mailbox?” She imagined a row of rural tin canisters on posts, each with its little flag raised or lowered, but surely they didn’t have mailboxes like that here. Aiello shrugged and with a twitch of his shoulder indicated the tarnished brass fronts inserted into the wall behind him. The whole affair looked like the grates of a heat register to Opal.
“These are the mailboxes,” he said. “Hers was number two.”
“How do you open them?” Opal asked.
“With the key, the little key.”
“Oh, yes, one of the ones you’ve just taken,” Opal said coolly.
Aiello shrugged and handed the keys back to her. “There’s a lot of stuff in there,” he said, looking through the grate.
With a sigh, Opal took the key chain and turned to the boxes. She inserted the smaller key into the round keyhole at the bottom of the box but could not get it to turn.
“Sometimes they’re a little tricky,” Aiello said. “Ya gotta dick around with it.” He stopped, embarrassed, “I mean ya have to screw around with it.” He felt the inadequacy of his correction. “You know,” he said, exasperated. “You know what I mean.”
Opal pushed the key in a little deeper, but it still wouldn’t turn, so she pulled it out a bit, jiggled it, and found the place where it began to rotate. What was it with New York City locks? None of them seemed cooperative. Finally, the key turned 180 degrees. She felt the lock disengage, and by pulling on the key itself, she lifted the front of the box.
A couple of envelopes fell onto the dirty tiled floor. There was also some kind of newsprint circular and two magazines, The Writer and Poets & Writers, but both of them were badly bent and torn because the major space in the box was taken up by a large jiffy bag, a huge padded envelope sealed with packing tape. It was wedged into the box so tightly that Opal, her hands shaking, couldn’t pull it free.
“Here. Let me.” Aiello pulled out the heavy package, tearing the wrapper and then handing it to Opal. He turned back to extricate the other mail and pick up the pieces that had fallen. But Opal didn’t care about any of that. Right there, right there in the dirty, dark hallway, she tore into the big envelope and pulled out the manuscript inside. It was like being a midwife at a birth. Opal let the caul drop to the floor, exposing the gift inside. She voraciously read the cover letter.
Dear Ms. O’Neal,
In going through our files, we have found this photocopy of your submission from last year and, although I see in my records that we returned the original to you, I thought you might want to have this copy.
Opal didn’t bother to look at the signature. Instead she tore the letter off the pile and looked.
Yes! There was the title page. The Duplicity of Men by Terry O’Neal. The manuscript! Terry may not have meant to leave it behind, but here it was. Opal clutched it to her chest, a prize far more exciting, far more precious, than buried treasure or a winning lottery ticket. She could resubmit it. She would resubmit it, and she would get these jaspers in New York to pay attention. She didn’t care if they’d said no to Terry, or even to Doris Lessing. She would get them to read and publish her daughter’s masterpiece. Terry would not have lived her life in vain after all. Opal hadn’t misled her. And she would prove it. While the publishers may have ignored Terry in life, they would acknowledge her now. Though Terry may have lived in obscurity, in death she would be known.
“It’s something good?” Aiello asked. And, to his astonishment, the middle-aged woman kissed him.
12
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.
—Graham Greene
Camilla returned to Firenze with her finished manuscript and the promise from Frederick Ashton that he would look her up. She had a tour to meet, and good docent that she was, she arrived early and crossed the Piazza della Repubblica at a slower-than-usual pace. She never enjoyed the moments before she met a new group. Some groups were very pleasant, eager to learn what she knew and as delighted by the city as she was. But others never seemed to coalesce or were made up of difficult or apparently stupid individuals who were either too shy or too disinterested to respond to her. She hoped she didn’t have one of those on her hands. It would be so dispiriting just now when Camilla was pleased with herself, with her book, and with her new friend.
And then, almost at the door to the Hotel Excelsior, she saw Gianfranco. He was walking along the far side of the square with an older woman—perhaps his mother or his aunt. He was walking in her direction, facing her, but then he turned. Camilla was almost certain that he had seen her and, though it was he who should be ashamed, she felt her own face redden.
Gianfranco’s family were well-off but certainly not among the oldest of Florentine families. They owned several hotels. Not the enormous ones, or the very best, like the Excelsior, but they were large enough and good enough to keep the family comfortable. His father was a judge, and Gianfranco himself was an avvocato. He would probably, in the fullness of time, be a judge as well. In the meanwhile, he spent as little time in the office as he could get away with and quite a bit of time in the bars and cafés of Firenze.
He had the dark good looks of an Italian film star—his features a little less regular than an American hero’s but still incredibly attractive. Camilla had been surprised when he approached her at one of the few Florentine parties she had been invited to. Gianfranco had seduced her with his charm, his attentiveness, and his good looks, but while she had taken all of that as a sign of romantic and perhaps marital interest, he had meant it as the almost formal announcement of his interest in her—as a mistress. And only as a mistress. I had been stupid, Camilla thought. It was only after she had been dazzled by him, after she had slept with him, that she had realized her mistake. She thought they were in love, but he had laughed when she had asked about meeting his family. “Whatever for?” he had said, and she had realized that the rules of the game were very different among his class. Here you romanced a mistress while you married into the best family you could possibly manage. Rather like England, but Englishmen often omitted the bother of a mistress altogether.
Realizing her mistake, Camilla had tried to break up with him, but he was always so sweet, so sexual, and so clearly astonished by her pain. He cried with her and called her “tesauro.” His treasure. And she—who had never been anybody’s treasure—was touched, and found it impossible to go back to the emptiness of her life before she slept in his arms.
But she never got to sleep in his arms for long. Gianfranco would meet her at an apartment he kept only for his assignations. He never stayed overnight, nor did she. They met there at five and left around seven, he to have dinner with his mother and father, to take his place as the only son, the beloved only child, while she went home to her single room and her cold plate. Camilla had begun writing because of the long nights she spent awake, longing for Gianfranco. Yet when she was with him, every kiss, every stroke of his hand on her hair, was enough to cause her pain, pain that came from the knowledge that he might love her but never marry her.
“But why should you care about this?” he asked her reasonably. “It is you I love now. My father had a mistress for twenty-two years. Tesauro, why should you not be happy?”
She was too proud and too shy to explain that she did not want to be one of his loves: that for her he was an only love, and she wanted him to feel that way as well. But he didn’t.
And so her book got written in the nights she spent alone, first as a distraction and then as an end in itself. Slowly, Camilla had been drawn into the web of words she was creating, rather like a spider getting trapped in its own grid. The power that writing gave her, the power to create a character, an event, a whole world, seduced her more deeply than Gianfranco had. She found herself obsessed, challenged, and despairing—fascinated by both the problems and the triumphs that came as she doggedly moved forward.
And now her book was finished, and so was her affair with Gianfranco. She had told him so before she had left for San Gimignano. He had laughed at her, as he had when she’d told him that before. But for her, this time it was different. Now she had something to keep her from being alone in that room. She would not go back to Gianfranco.
Still, seeing him there was enough to both humiliate her and set off a longing for him that she knew was dangerous. Camilla straightened her shoulders and walked into the Hotel Excelsior. She would guide these people through the wonders of Firenze, and if, like Dante before her, she was also a guide leading them through her own personal hell, she would not show it.
The group was not a good one, and it made Camilla all the more ready to accept Frederick’s invitation to dinner when it came. He took her to a pleasant restaurant not far from the Palazzo Vecchio, something Gianfranco would never do for fear of being seen. She enjoyed the way Frederick took her arm and seemed pleased to be seen with her. But then, he was very plain. There was none of the sleekness, the feral but flashingly attractive looks of Gianfranco. Frederick’s physical awkwardness with her was complimentary, though anything but sexy. Camilla smiled when he fumbled at the table and pulled out her chair too far. She was the one who had the power in this relationship. If there was any relationship. The French, those masters of orchestrated love, had once defined each member of a couple as “the one who kissed or who was kissed.” With Gianfranco, Camilla had been the one who did the kissing. Now, if there was any kissing to be done, it would be Frederick’s job. She looked across the table at him calmly. This was not a man to raise your temperature. But he seemed a nice man. And no one else had shown any interest in her. His eyes, which seemed very vague and almost unfocused, were the color of sherry. Camilla liked his eyes.
They ordered dinner, and he asked her about the tour group. She inquired about his mother, who was, apparently, leaving Italy the following morning. “But don’t you want to have dinner with her on her last night?” Camilla asked.
“No. I’ll see her in New York soon enough.”
“I thought she lived in Larchmont.”
“She lives in two places, actually. Larchmont and East Eighty-sixth Street and the park,” he told her. That must mean Central Park and that they were wealthy. Camilla knew the rents in New York. “It’s actually my apartment.” Frederick explained. “But Mother is staying there to oversee some work that’s being done to it.”
Camilla nodded. They were unusually close, this man and his mother.
“How did you wind up in school in New York?” Frederick asked.
“Divine intervention.” Camilla laughed. But now, years lat
er, even joking about it was still painful. She had never spoken about the misadventure. Yet, tonight, under the influence of a fine bottle of Montepulciano, she felt as if she might. Frederick was easy to talk to. He seemed to have no expectations of her. She need not entertain or work to charm, as she did with Gianfranco, but if she did, she felt as if Frederick would like it, rather than being put off (as some men were when a plain brown wren became a more outgoing bird).
“I was meant to go to Cambridge,” Camilla began to explain, and the words, spoken aloud for the first time in her life, actually hurt her throat. She picked up her wineglass and took another sip. “I was a scholarship girl at the convent school. The nuns took an interest in me, and when I seemed about to do very well on my A levels we filed an application with their written reports. The mother superior helped me get an interview at Cambridge.” She paused, remembering back to the preparations for that day.
She hadn’t known what to wear, and that was one way Sister Agnus had failed her. After all, how could a nun be expected to keep up with university fashions? So Camilla had worn her bright blue crimpolene Sunday suit and gone up to Cambridge with her mother. But despite her convent studies in Latin and Greek, despite her mastery of European history and her strong background in English literature, Camilla had been woefully unprepared for Cambridge.
The colleges on the banks of the Cam were more beautiful than she had ever imagined, and more bewildering. She smiled at Frederick, but the smile cost her. “It’s existed for more than five hundred years, and it’s based on an assumption that those who were about to be initiated were those in the know, while those who are uninitiated should remain so. Do you understand?”
Frederick nodded. “Despite propaganda to the contrary, we do have a class structure in America,” he said.
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