‘I’m sorry,’ he insists, ‘but I do. There’s always way too much food, and you never eat it, because it’s all stuff like olives. I mean, I like olives, in moderation. But to tell you the truth, I think sandwiches are really overrated.’
‘I don’t know.’ I am remembering the deli around the corner from our apartment in Philadelphia. ‘I never went for cheese steaks,’ I confess. ‘But I have a serious weakness for Ruebens.’
‘Well, that’s different! A Rueben isn’t a sandwich. It’s an institution. With a pickle.’ We raise our glasses to this idea as the waiter comes to take our order, which in neither case is tripe. I have pasta, and Henry has a good old-fashioned steak.
The food arrives and we eat for a few minutes in companionable silence. Then Henry says, ‘Tell me about your husband.’
He is cutting his steak as he says this, concentrating on the pink slab of meat, and for a second I stop chewing. In the normal course of things I would probably demur, or change the subject, or maybe even flatly refuse. But Ty has been so on my mind in the last twenty-four hours that I don’t.
‘What do you want to know?’
Henry shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Whatever you want to tell me. I mean, what was he like?’
I consider this for a second, then pour myself some more wine. The truth is, I don’t know how to answer. I had known Ty for so long by the time we got married, since our senior year at Penn, that I can’t remember when I last thought about ‘what he was like’. He just ‘was.’ Which, I suppose, means I took him for granted. ‘He was a teacher,’ I say finally. ‘And a good person. Some people thought he was virtually a saint.’
Henry glances at me. ‘Saints don’t exist.’
I smile. ‘What about angels?’
‘Oy Vey! Mary, I’m Jewish, the jury’s out.’ Henry waves his fork in the air. ‘How about we settle for human beings?’ he asks, and for some reason we both find this funny. Our laughter mingles with the cloud of conversation that fills the little room. Then I tell Henry about Ty.
I tell him about the Warren family, who were nice, philanthropic Philadelphia Quakers, and about how we met, unremarkably, in a seminar on ‘William Faulkner and the Genesis of the American Novel’ in the fall of our senior year. I tell him how Ty asked me out, picking me from the hundreds of other girls he could have chosen, which to this day puzzles me, because he didn’t know me at the time, and now I think the truth is, he never knew me. Not that it seemed to matter to him. Ty claimed he loved me. From the very beginning. Sometimes he’d sing a little song that went, ‘No, honestly, you know you belong to me.’ And eventually it became true because Ty decided it was.
‘Sometimes,’ I find myself saying, ‘I felt as if I was standing outside the whole thing, watching a movie about two people, one of whom bore a passing resemblance to me. I think I was sleepwalking, for the better part of a decade. Which is kind of scary. But I did it.’
Henry does not watch me too closely while I say all this. He eats, and nods, orders more wine and smiles occasionally. And I understand now why he probably has an awful lot of clients who pay him enough so he can afford to take three months off to learn bad jokes about Brunelleschi’s dome. In the end, I even tell him about my parents and Mamaw.
‘Your great-aunt sounds like she was just that,’ he says, when I finally stop to attend to my pasta. ‘Great.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘She was.’ And then without really intending to, I explain how Mamaw died, and how afterwards it really did feel as if Ty might be the only person in the world.
I describe how she called, and her voice had a new huskiness underneath it, and a cough that wouldn’t quit. I thought it was a cold, but Mamaw said, ‘I have to talk to you, honey. I have bad news.’
As I tell it, the house in Pennsylvania swims up like something in a dream. Leaves collect on the lawn, drift against the maple tree, and skitter like birds across the frozen grass while I hold the car door open and Ty helps Mamaw into the back seat. He adjusts a pillow under her feet, tucks a blanket over her knees because, even though we have put her parka and lined jeans on, she’s cold now all the time. The engine turns over, roaring in the chilly air, and Ty reaches out and squeezes my hand. His wide, tanned fingers close over mine, and both of us try not to look, not to intrude as Mamaw presses her face to the glass of the car window so she can keep looking and looking, so she can hold on to the white clapboard and ugly black shutters until the last possible moment, until we round the corner by the gas station and the house her daddy left her slips out of sight, lost amid the bare branches and scraggly untrimmed hedges of November.
There are poinsettias at her funeral because it’s Christmas. And gold-coloured chrysanthemums, which Mamaw loved but I still think are ugly. Ty’s parents drive up from Philadelphia, meaning well, but are too sleek and smooth-edged for Mamaw’s avocado carpet and the smell of cigarette smoke. His mother asks and asks if there is anything she can do, but it is Ty who shakes hands and talks. He is the one who listens to people cry, who pays the caterers and thanks the priest. And it is Ty who drives back up with me one Sunday in January to pack woollen blankets in plastic bags and mothballs, and pour anti-freeze down the drains, and check that the storm windows are locked.
And it is Ty who, a week after that, picks a dog out of the city pound to make me feel better. He brings it home on a red leash and we call it Leo, and when it gets hit by a car one afternoon the next summer both of us cry. Then, one rainy day in December when Mamaw has been dead for almost exactly two years, Ty comes home early and tells me that someone has dropped out of a teaching exchange programme sponsored by his school. It’s a comparative study, teaching in other religious education systems, and they’ve offered him the space. Italy. Six months in a school in Florence. There’s an apartment and everything, and he can take a spouse.
Rain pours down the window above my desk making wormy shadows crawl across the piles of paper stacked on the sill. ‘Marry me,’ Ty says. It is not the first time he’s asked, but now he gets down on one knee. He produces a diamond ring in a velvet box. ‘Come on, Mary,’ he says. ‘Marry me and come to Florence.’
When I stop talking, my half-eaten pasta is cold and the waiter is glaring at us because he wants us to order dessert. Henry is mopping bread around the edge of his empty plate, his brow furrowed as if this is very important work.
‘So what happened?’ he asks. ‘I mean with the two of you?’
I shrug, surprised I’ve said all this. ‘I fell in love with someone else.’
‘So, you got divorced.’ It wasn’t a question, but I shake my head.
‘No. He died.’
Henry doesn’t look up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That must have been awful.’
‘Yeah.’
He swallows his bread, and the waiter pounces on our plates. Do we want crème caramel? Tiramisù? A pear with Gorgonzola? We both ask instead for coffee.
‘I did too,’ Henry says suddenly. ‘Fall in love with someone else, I mean. She didn’t love me, but it didn’t particularly matter. I couldn’t go back to my wife afterwards. Not ’cause she threw me out. I mean, she wanted me to come back, said she still loved me. But I couldn’t. It just wasn’t possible.’
He shakes his head and stirs the thimbleful of espresso that has just been put down in front of him. ‘People are different.’ Henry shrugs. ‘It doesn’t work the same way for everybody,’ he says. ‘But, personally, I don’t think it’s fair to ask a bird to fly back into a cage.’
By the time we leave, there is no longer a line. The dessert display is pretty much empty. Couples are scraping spoons around the inside of glass dishes and pouring the last of their wine while the waiter snuffs out candles and strips red and white cloths off of the tables. Out on the street, people walk arm in arm, savouring the memory of the first warm day.
‘Sure you don’t want me to walk you home?’ Henry asks. But I tell him, no, I’m fine.
He kisses me on the cheek before we part, splitting in
opposite directions. Henry shuffles off towards the apartment he shares with Kirk in Torquato Tasso, his big bear figure merging into the shadows.
I don’t know this part of town that well, but I’m not concerned. If I head in the right direction, I’ll hit the Carmine or Santo Spirito sooner or later. A couple drifts past me, languid and leaning into each other. Their whispers hang in the dark and the woman’s perfume trails behind her like smoke. Looking at them makes me miss Pierangelo, suddenly, like a pain in my stomach. The city seems bigger than it is, and strange, without him in it.
I cut down a side street that I’m pretty sure is leading the right way, and find myself in a tiny piazza. There are dozens and dozens of these in Florence. Like this one, they are often just a widening of an alley fronted by a forgotten church. The space is almost entirely filled by municipal garbage bins, and by the empty deck of a wine bar, its windows thick with condensation. Lights from inside glint off the stainless-steel chairs stacked and chained to the outdoor tables. I am skirting around them when a hissing sound comes from behind me. I didn’t notice them before, but when I look into the shadows I see a pair of young men, both in tight jeans and leather jackets, lounging in the portico of the church.
‘Ciao, ciao, bella,’ they mew, sounding like the hungry feral cats that slink across the rooftops and drop into the sleeping streets.
I shrug off a tinge of unease, telling myself this isn’t a threat, just a pastime so routine it doesn’t even qualify as a compliment. Then I realize I’m wrong. One of them detaches himself from the wall and saunters towards me, his shape gaining bulk as he comes into the light.
‘Ciao, ciao,’ he mews. ‘Mi chiamo Gianni, dimmi chi sei.’ Tell me who you are.
I feel a throb of panic and start to step backwards when I realize that the other one has circled around behind me. The railing of the wine-bar deck is at my side, hemming me in, and suddenly my bag seems huge and ostentatious and obviously filled with money. Shit, I think, I’m about to get mugged.
I open my mouth to scream, but before I do there’s a burst of noise, people talking. A wedge of light streams into the piazza, and Gianni falters. Confusion flashes across the weaselly features of his face, and I realize something’s happening behind me. Turning round I see his friend staggering unnaturally backwards. Unnaturally because someone has hooked an arm around his neck and is tipping him sideways as though he’s a life-sized wooden doll.
‘Get the hell out of here, scumbag,’ my saviour says in Italian. Two other guys who have just appeared are looking on and they start to clap. Gianni flashes them the finger and says something unsavoury about their mothers, but the bravado’s fake. Already, he and his pal are slithering into the shadows of the alley. My heart thumps as I watch them melt away, then I feel a hand on my shoulder and a voice says: ‘Signora Maria, are you OK?’
I realize with a shock that my saviour is Marcello from the grocery store. He looks older and suddenly more substantial in the requisite leather jacket. There’s no hunch to his shoulders now, and if he’s blushing, it’s lost in the dark.
‘I’m fine.’ It takes me a second to find my voice. ‘Really,’ I add, nodding. ‘Thank you. I’m fine. They didn’t even touch me.’ Relief and nerves mingle in the words. ‘They didn’t have a chance,’ I add.
The door of the wine bar bursts open again, and now there’s a small crowd coming and going. People nudge past us. The sound of laughter shoots up and bounces off the high walls of the piazza. A lighter flares in the dark and there’s the smell of cigarette smoke. Marcello takes his hand off my shoulder, some of the awkwardness returning. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘are you going home? I’ll walk you.’
I start to insist, as usual, that I’m perfectly OK alone, but when I look at the alley I can almost feel the slithering shadows. Marcello must see the hesitation in my face because he adds, ‘Really. I’m going that way.’
The people around us, mostly young men, indistinguishable in a uniform of jeans and leathers, are dispersing. They move off in groups down the alley. The owner pulls down the blind on the wine bar’s door as Marcello and I follow them. He has his hands dug deep in his pockets, his head ducked. His shyness grows with every step we take away from the piazza. I can feel it walling him in. It’s practically a physical disability, and it makes me ache for him.
‘Thanks,’ I say again, trying to crack the silence. ‘Really. That was pretty impressive.’
I feel rather than see him shrug. ‘They taught us in the academy. I was going to be in the police.’
‘Wow.’ I glance at him sideways. We’ve just come out onto Santo Spirito, and the fine lines of his face, the round cheeks and soft boyish curve of his chin, are caught in the wash of the church floodlights. ‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘You change your mind?’
He shakes his head, a lock of hair coming loose, and I hope I haven’t put my foot in it and embarrassed him further because he was kicked out or something.
‘An accident,’ he says. ‘On a scooter. I broke my leg. There are four pins in it.’ He looks down as he speaks, as if we might see the pins through his jeans, and I notice for the first time that he walks with a slight limp. ‘I was in hospital a long time,’ he adds. ‘The police gave me disability. Now I’m trying to figure out what to do.’
Damn, I think. No wonder he’s embarrassed to be riding around on a Vespa covered in vegetables.
‘Well, hey, you’ve got lots of choices, right? Whole new start.’ I try to sound as though this is really great, and it looks as if maybe I succeed, because Marcello actually glances at me and smiles.
‘I’ve tried some other jobs,’ he shrugs. ‘I was a gardener for a while, but that isn’t a career.’
‘Any other ideas yet?’
‘You’ll laugh.’
‘I won’t.’ I hold two fingers up. ‘Swear on my mother’s grave.’
‘I want to do something good.’ He shrugs again. ‘There’s a lot of crap in the world. I think we all have to fight against it, do what we can.’ He glances at me sideways. ‘That’s why I wanted to be a cop. I thought about the lay ministry, but, I don’t know.’
‘You mean, like social work?’
He shakes his head. ‘It didn’t work out. I volunteer for stuff, though.’ I can feel the effort it costs him to say this much, and my heart goes out to him again.
‘Not a lot of young guys think that way.’ This comes out horribly. Patronizing and icky. Not at all what I’d intended. ‘You’ve got all the time in the world,’ I say quickly. ‘You’ll think of something, and it’ll work out because, obviously, your mother raised you right. That’s the expression we use in America,’ I add. ‘You know, when somebody does good.’
‘I’d like to have a family,’ he says. Then he asks abruptly, ‘You’re married?’
‘Not any more,’ I say. ‘I was. My husband died.’
I don’t know if this makes Marcello blush again or not, because it’s dark. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says quickly. And then oddly, ‘He must miss you.’
It’s the sort of inappropriate remark really shy people often make, and it makes me smile in the dark.
‘I don’t know about that,’ I say. ‘He was a much better person than I am. He tried to do good in this life too.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He was a teacher. Little kids. He taught in religious schools, mostly.’
‘I’d like to do that.’
‘You’d be good at it.’
I don’t know why I say this, really. Ty’s ghost, I guess, egging me on, getting me to recruit for the cause. Even so, walking along like this, I can imagine Marcello doing what Ty did. Kids probably wouldn’t embarrass him as much as everyone else seems to. They usually like shy people.
We round the corner and in a few seconds we’ve reached the front of my building. He waits while I grope for my keys, fit them into the lock.
‘Well, listen,’ I say, ‘forget kids, you’re my hero. Really.’
This time he does blush, I
can see it in the security light that blinks on under the archway as I push open the gate. Marcello shrugs as I start to step inside, then his face turns serious. All of a sudden I can see him in uniform, the young knight out protecting damsels in distress.
‘You should be careful, signora,’ he says. ‘Really. You never know who’s on the streets. There are Roma around, gypsies. Not all of them are so good.’ He gives a little bow and turns away as the security gate clicks shut, locking me in.
The night has turned damper and colder, and as I cross the courtyard I realize the mist has come down because I’m leaving footprints on the sidewalk. Inside our entryway the elevator cage is open, and the smell of cooking, of some kind of roasted meat and something tangy, hovers in the stairwell. As a rule, I don’t use the elevator, but tonight I make an exception. The cage slides closed with a bang, the ancient gears grind and whimper, and a few seconds later I step out onto our landing, and slip my key into the heavy locks.
It feels good to be back inside, back in my own lair, safe from slithery shadows and the Giannis of this world. I don’t think the two of them would have hurt me, it was too close to the wine bar, probably what they had in mind was nothing more than a quick theft of opportunity. But, nonetheless, I’m glad Marcello appeared, and I realize I hope he gets his life straightened out, and that the vegetable signora is nice to him.
Our unlit hallway is so still that I assume Billy must have stayed with Kirk over in Torquato Tasso, but I call her name anyways to check. There’s no answer, just a faint glow from the kitchen, so she must have been back and left the little table lamp on for me. My boots sound unnaturally loud on Signora Bardino’s inky-green marble floor as I go down the hallway to turn it off.
Ahead of me the linen panels on the French windows are bright white against the night and as I get closer, I see that the latch hasn’t caught again. I’ll buy some string tomorrow, or find a shoe lace to tie them up. I should tell Signora Bardino, but that would make her come over, and I have to do something about the state of the apartment before that happens. I run my fingers along the half moon of the little hall table and across the top of the absurdly delicate rococo chair outside Billy’s door, leaving tracks in the dust.
The Faces of Angels Page 11
