The Liar's Wife

by Mary Gordon

  “Promise,” she said, knowing she sounded like a child. She put her arms around his neck.

  She felt odd sitting on the toilet that she knew his wife had sat on. On the rack across from it, a bra and underpants were drying. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself touching them. They were white cotton, stiff from the wash. She picked up the brassiere. The cups were small; she checked the size: 34A, it said. She stopped herself from holding her own bra against it so that she could compare.

  “What’s happened to you in there? Are you all right?”

  Did he know she might not be all right? Did he know how many times she went into the bathroom to check if her period had come? It was nine days late. She told herself she would wait till day ten, then buy a pregnancy test at the drugstore.

  He was sitting at his desk in the study. He’d put what had been their bed together; now it was an innocent monkish couch. For the first time, she looked at what was on the walls; they were covered with pen and ink drawings. A woman with the body of a bird carried the tiny body of a terrified-looking man in her beak. In another, she pecked at his intestines. In another, the bird carried wool in her beak, the remainder of what she’d used to tie up the helpless male.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Very well done,” she said, her voice tight with anxiety. She thought they were ugly, almost wicked in their ugliness.

  “Are you saying that just because you know they’re mine?”

  “I didn’t know they were yours.”

  “Are you too formalist a critic to comment on the subject matter?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Don’t be a coward.”

  “I don’t have any thoughts.”

  “You always have thoughts.”

  “I don’t, Tom, honestly.”

  “I call them ‘Portrait of a Marriage.’ ”

  “Don’t, Tom please,” she said.

  “Why not? Amaryllis is crazy about them. She’s always after me to do more.”

  “She’s not hurt by them?”

  “She thinks they’re hilarious. She’s a terrific sport, you know.”

  No one should have to be that good a sport, she thought, feeling, for the first time, a withdrawal from him.

  He told her to sit on the couch and read something while he made coffee. The couch was covered by one of Amaryllis’s weavings, reddish brown, like everything else she made. Theresa was trying not to look at the drawings. She saw on the shelf a book about Simone Martini, which she’d wanted to take from the library. She thought she’d ask him if she could borrow it for a while.

  Focusing on the Assisi Freschi, she felt, quite suddenly, a loosening in her lower body. A wetness. Then a gushing. And she knew she had to move quickly. Her period had come. She stood up. Her underpants were drenched in blood. She was horrified at what she knew was a disgusting sight. Then a new horror overtook her. She looked down at the weaving that covered the couch. It, too, was drenched.

  She felt covered in panic, wanting to run to the bathroom but afraid she’d leave a trail of blood. He appeared at the door, holding two mugs of coffee.

  “Tom,” she said. “I need your help.”

  She extended her hand, then beckoned for him to come closer. But he stayed in the doorway, as if he were poised for a quick escape.

  “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to worry you. But my period was late. I was afraid I was pregnant.”

  “Oh, God, darling, oh, my poor sweet dear. We must do something about it. You weren’t thinking of keeping it. I know how Catholics are, of course it would be a wonderful dream, we would make a beautiful child and it would be a whole new lease on life for me. But you understand it would be impossible.”

  “Tom,” she said calmly, as if she had to quiet a child on the verge of hysterics. “I’m not pregnant. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I just got my period. But, I’m afraid it came kind of dramatically and I need help cleaning up. Or, no, I don’t. But I need you to get me some towels, just so I can make my way to the bathroom.”

  “Of course, darling, of course. Are you all right? Are you feeling weak or faint or anything?”

  “No, I’m fine, just the towels please.”

  She sat on the couch feeling the blood seeping out of her, pressing her legs together in a useless attempt to keep more blood from seeping into the fabrics on which she sat. He came into the room, finally, with not only towels but a basin filled with soapy water. She had forgotten that he had been a father, or still was, the two children at boarding school. Putney was the name of it, someplace in Vermont. Or New Hampshire. He had told her how wonderful it was the boys were learning about nature and animals. And that they had learned to knit.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

  She knew he was glad to be out of the room, and she was glad to have him gone. She made a kind of diaper for herself out of one of the towels, and waddled to the bathroom, holding the towel closed with one hand, the bowl of soapy water in another. She took off her underpants. They were saturated in blood as if she’d been stabbed. She put them in a sink full of cold water, and got into the shower, watching the blood stream down her legs, mesmerized by watching it spiral down the drain. She washed her hair, uneasy at using Amaryllis’s shampoo but feeling the need to cleanse herself fully.

  She would have to go home without underwear. And she would have to fold a washcloth into eighths to make a temporary sanitary pad. Thank God she had been wearing her jeans. She would make it home, carrying her filthy underpants, rinsed but still telltale, in a plastic bag.

  As she dried her hair in a yellow towel she was moved by tenderness at his having brought her a bowl of soapy water. And almost giddy with relief: she wasn’t pregnant. Not for a minute had she considered having a child, but the practical implications of an abortion had distressed her when she allowed herself to think of them, and she realized now that she’d expended a lot of energy pushing these thoughts away. She was light with gratitude and relief, and although she knew they couldn’t make love, she walked quickly into the study, eager to embrace him.

  He was on his knees in front of the couch, and when he looked up, she saw that he would not be pleased at the offer of an embrace.

  “This is a disaster, an absolute disaster. Look at what you’ve done to Amaryllis’s beautiful blanket. It’s one of her favorites. I think it’s ruined, completely ruined. I’ll have to make up a story, say I spilt coffee on it. She’ll be furious. And I don’t blame her. All her wonderful work … the design, the execution. All those hours. She’ll be absolutely livid. I just don’t know what to do.”

  She was standing above him. He was on his knees, and her greater height accentuated her feelings of contempt for this frightened, groveling child, terrified of his punitive mother. She knew that he meant her to feel shame, to share his shame, but there was no room in her for shame, so taken over was she by contempt. And the clanging ring tone of the end of love.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tom, I’ll deal with it. It’s only blood. It will come out with cold water.”

  “It isn’t a cover for a motorboat, Theresa, for God’s sake. The wool is very special, very delicate.”

  “Just go away. I’ll take care of everything.”

  She took the blanket into the bathroom. She filled the bathtub with cold water and dropped the blanket into the full tub. The water quickly grew red. She gently rubbed, squeezed, wrung, emptying the tub and filling it with fresh water, then rubbing, squeezing, wringing again and again, until the water was clear. She was grateful that Amaryllis favored earth tones; even if some residue remained, her blood was so much the color of the wool that she knew it wouldn’t be visible.

  She looked under the sink for a blow dryer. She sat on the floor and held the dryer, at its lowest setting, blowing warm air onto the sodden wool. She didn’t know how long she sat there; she allowed the whirr of the dryer to hypnotize her. Was it an hour, or tw
o, later that she walked out of the bathroom carrying a perfectly clean, perfectly dry blanket?

  “Oh, darling, you’re wonderful, wonderful,” he said. “And most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, in Shakespeare’s words. Let me drive you home.”

  She would have liked to walk, but the bunched-up washcloth between her legs would have made it too uncomfortable.

  That ought to have been the end of everything, she thought, looking out at the Tuscan countryside. But it wasn’t. Because although she no longer loved him, although her dominant feeling for him was contempt, she still desired him.

  And whatever else he was, he was her advisor. And a good one. It was he who’d recommend Civitali, he who coaxed and prodded and lightened her stiff prose, he who pointed her in the direction of a nineteenth-century biography, the proceedings of a conference on Civitali in the year 1912. And he who arranged the travel grant so she could go to Lucca for a month. And when he suggested that he come with her because he could introduce her to a great friend who actually owned two Civitalis, there was no reason for her to allow her contempt to loom large enough to stand in the way.

  He said he would meet her in a week, after she was settled. “Goodbye, my beauty,” he said, his hair damp from the Days Inn shower, smelling of the inferior motel soap. He handed her an envelope. “Euros,” he said. “To tide you over.”

  And yet she wasn’t surprised when, checking her email in the airport, she read the words “Darling, it was all so wonderful, so perfect, let’s not take the chance of diminishment. A clean break, shall we? I know you’ll be so absorbed in your new work, the new world you’ll be discovering, that there’ll be no room for thoughts of your always ardent but rather exhausted lover, who will always be grateful for your luminous presence in his life and at your side, observing with pride and pleasure what I know will be your brilliant career.”

  The conductor came by and she handed him her ticket. He had an untidy-looking red goatee and smelt of cigarettes; in his right ear was a diamond stud.

  “Non ha convalidata,” he said.

  She had no idea what he was saying. She looked at him dumbly, like a dog whose food dish has just been snatched away.

  “Parla italiano?” he asked.

  “Un po,” she answered, knowing that she’d forgotten every word she’d learned, that not one word would come to her mind now no matter how hard she tried. “I am American,” she said.

  “You have to validate,” the conductor said, flapping the ticket and then putting it down on the tray in front of her. “You not validate.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Non capisco.” Those two words at least had floated up.

  A very short man with round glasses walked down the aisle and stood next to the conductor.

  “You’re supposed to validate your ticket, stamp it in a little machine in the railroad station. Otherwise they can fine you. But they usually don’t.”

  The conductor shrugged his shoulders as a sign of his helplessness.

  “Fifty euros,” he said, “is rule.”

  She felt sick. Fifty euros. Almost seventy dollars. Why in all the instructions Tom had given her—don’t order cappuccino after noon, don’t dip your bread in olive oil or ask for butter, don’t say “Ciao” to someone you don’t know, especially if they’re older than you—why didn’t he tell her about validating her ticket?

  “It’s things like this that make you understand the success of Mussolini,” said the young man, having tried, and failed, to reason with the conductor. “It’s not all sun and wine and olive oil and dolce far niente. They also have a fantastic love of bureaucracy.”

  She reached into her bag for her envelope of euros. She was determined not to cry. She couldn’t say anything to the young man, except to thank him, because words would have released her tears. She waved to him from the platform.

  “Enjoy Lucca,” he said, through the window. “It’s very beautiful. It’s as civilized as you can get.”

  “That’s a nice place you’re going to,” said the taxi driver in English. “You’ll be happy.”

  “I hope so,” she said, thinking she needed at least to try to use her Italian. “Spero che si.”

  Tom had explained that the place she’d be staying—although when he first told her about it she thought they’d be staying together—wasn’t really a hotel, it was a residence, an apartment with very basic necessities: coffeemaker, microwave, and that her room would be cleaned and her bed made every day.

  She didn’t know what she expected, but the lobby was disappointing. The desk was modern, functional, undistinguished; there were mauve-colored silk flowers in a cream-colored vase; on a glass-topped table were brochures advertising language courses and olive oil, and a pile of cards that said “Google si.” On the landing going up the stairs was a Roman head, white marble, on a black marble table with gilded legs.

  A young woman walked through turquoise silk curtains to the reception desk. Her hair was dark brown, long and curly. Her scarf, grey with a black stripe, was cunningly arranged in a soft series of waves that Theresa knew to be entirely beyond her. Her skirt was grey; her T-shirt long-sleeved and white; she wore black stockings and black ankle boots, which Theresa thought odd for July, and then felt foolish in her flowered sundress and sandals.

  “I know you will be happy here,” she said, when Theresa had filled out the registration form and handed over her passport.

  Theresa wondered if everyone in Italy believed that everyone would be happy, that happiness was the expected thing, ordinary, unexceptional as food or air.

  “I will be glad to carry your bag up the stairs,” she said. “There is no elevator.”

  “Oh, no, you mustn’t,” Theresa said.

  “But it’s my job.”

  “Well, let’s do it together then.”

  “You are clearly not a spoiled American. What is the new word, ‘entitled’?”

  Theresa laughed. “I never think I’m entitled to anything. I’m always afraid I’ve been given too much by mistake and a terrible price will be exacted that I’ll never be able to pay.”

  She didn’t know why she was babbling like this. It wasn’t like her. Was it that she was very tired, or was it that being in this new, strange, but long-desired place had brought a kind of wild freedom?

  “I know exactly what you mean,” the woman said, looking at her with eyes that were certainly brown but had within them tiny flecks of orange.

  Each of them took one of the straps of Theresa’s bag. It was a hard climb, forty-one steps, and they stopped in the middle. “I guess this means we are not fit,” said the young woman. “Many more hours in the gym required. Oh, my God, what a thought. Too horrible. I am, by the way, Chiara.”

  She opened the door and put a card attached to the key ring into a slot in the wall near the door. “Now this may make you crazy,” she said. “You must never forget this card. It turns the lights on and you need it to get into the front door, which is a lot. We’re only here from nine to twelve and four to seven. But I’ll give you my mobile number in case you need it.”

  “You’re very kind,” Theresa said. “Molto gentile. Can we speak Italian, so I can practice? I really need to learn.”

  “Certo,” Chiara said. She patted Theresa’s bed and turned down the cover. Theresa remembered Tom’s advice about not saying “ciao.” But it was all right if someone was your age. Or considered you a friend. “Ciao,” she said to Chiara, as a sign that she was hoping they might become friends.

  The room was a combination of ancient elegance and contemporary motel: there were exposed oak beams in the ceiling; the walls were thick plaster, and the floors red tile. But the table and chairs were very like the ones in the Days Inns she went to with Tom. She took a shower in the stall that was like a little phone booth. The water was hot and plentiful, but she wished the towels were thicker. She would unpack later. Now she would begin what she was here for. She would visit her first Civitali. She would start he
r work. Here in Lucca. In Italy. In Europe. In the world.

  It was an easy walk up a street called simply Fillungo to the church of San Frediano. She would have to learn who San Frediano was eventually, but it wasn’t important now. What was important was that she was going to see the Rose Annunciation, which she had studied so carefully in reproductions, knowing they could only give her a hint of the real thing.

  The church was at the end of a square surrounded by quite ordinary establishments: a shop that repaired computers, one that sold sweaters and lingerie, a toy store, a café. And rising above it, the great warm pinkish brick basilica, at the architrave a golden mosaic glistening in the sun. But she would look at all that later; her heart beat fast and hard, as if she were about to meet a lover she had known only through letters and the occasional blurred photograph.

  The light in the church was dim. She had never experienced herself in space in quite this way, never been in a place so large and dark and empty. And yet the darkness and the emptiness didn’t make her feel alone and insignificant. There she was, herself, Theresa, twenty-five years old, her body young and healthy, ardent, warm, and there was the cool darkness, and she took her place in it, content, and yet full of an excited apprehension. Any minute she would see it: the Rose Annunciation. Which she had traveled all these miles to see.

  It was almost hidden in a side altar, halfway up the nave to the main altar, only partially visible in the light from the opaque, white glass window with its series of octagonal panes. She walked up to it with her eyes shut, afraid to look, afraid to be disappointed.

  But it was more wonderful than she had been afraid to hope. The slender girl, her blond hair elegantly coiffed, surprising for a Madonna: you expected either a veil or long flowing hair. Because she was made of wood rather than stone, she seemed more approachable, and the deep rose of her dress provided a warmth that marble would have denied. She was so slender as to be almost boyish; her simple dress was high-waisted, the rose color deepened and then faded as it traveled to her shoes. Up close, the shoes were surprising. The elegance of the hair, the delicacy of the hands were contrasted by the sensible earthbound shoes, peasant shoes. She stood flat-footed on unadorned earth. It was meant to be an Annunciation, but there was no angel. Only the position of her arms and hands suggested an exchange. The arms were bent at the elbow and the hand gestures were self-contradictory, ambiguous. The palm of the left hand faced the imaginary angel, a clear message of refusal: I’m not ready, I will not, go away. The other hand beckoned. The palm was open, facing inwards, towards her body, the middle finger was bent, seductive; the thumb and middle finger touched, suggesting resignation, supplication, assent. The ambivalence of Mary’s position was absolutely clear. I would and I would not. I am willing but I am afraid. And the firmly planted feet. I am where I am. Here.