by Delia Ephron
Finn could go to dinner without me. He could take Snow. He could amuse himself with Lizzie on this last night since obviously that’s what this whole entire trip was about, not Lizzie’s father. Does she think I’m stupid? Her New York superiority makes me nauseous. I grew up there. I’m as sophisticated as she is. I was sorry not to be seeing Michael again, and I liked to think, him, me. But as long as Snow had a final dinner with Michael, that was all that mattered. It was important for her to spend as much time as she could with such an impressive man.
After going to the room long enough to use the bathroom and fix my top, I went back downstairs to the hotel’s lone computer, located in an alcove off the lobby, and after wiping the mouse and keys with Purell, I confided all in a long e-mail to April and felt much better. The computer had a European keyboard and it kept making capitals. I could not figure out how to stop it. “April,” I wrote, “this keyboard has a mind of its own.” Then I Googled Maine’s requirements for homeschooling and they didn’t seem daunting, filing forms, of course, and yearly tests Snow would have to take. There were even curriculums available. I had just gotten up from the desk when Lizzie ran by. Ran. How inappropriate to streak through a hotel, even one as puny as this. Thank God, I didn’t get up from the computer a moment sooner or I would have bumped into her.
I recoiled at the thought. It was then I realized how much I had grown to dislike her.
Back I went to the room. It amazes me to recall how peaceful I was just then, which proves you never know what’s coming. Now that we were leaving, knowing we would be out of Siracusa in less than twenty-four hours, I had to concede the room had a nice view, early for a sunset, maybe four in the afternoon, but the sky was dark and glamorously threatening. A wind was up, I could see because the ocean was all afroth and atumble, smashing against the rocks.
Even the room had its charms: the wall, a blue-gray halfway up, then a little strip of stenciling, and cream above. The window was tall with a satisfactory drape of striped cotton. As you can tell, I was in a forgiving mood.
I started packing, a serious activity, since we had dirty clothes now, and I had packed in anticipation of visiting four cities. I needed to rotate things to the top of the suitcase and relegate the dirty clothes to the bottom. I designate certain compartments for each.
I was rolling Finn’s cranberry crewneck—sweaters are best rolled, not folded—when I realized my hands were a bit gritty. I examined my palms. Specks of dirt. How funny, there is no dirt in Siracusa. I went into the bathroom. I was about to rinse my hands when I thought, That’s right, there is no dirt in Siracusa. It’s wall-to-wall stone. What I mean is, if you found yourself with dirt on your hands in a cell block, you’d have to assume someone was digging a tunnel. You’d figure, Hey, something fishy is going on. Those brown bits looked familiar. I smelled them. Tobacco.
I rifled the pockets of Finn’s cargo shorts. Then his Dockers. I pulled the pockets inside out and did the same with his sports jacket. Flecks were everywhere.
He’d promised. He’d sworn, I think he’d sworn. He did. With Snow in my arms, he’d sworn on the grave of his father that he would never smoke again. His dad had died from it or would have if he hadn’t had a heart attack. Doesn’t smoking cause heart attacks? I believe so. He did die from it.
I expected to be crying but I wasn’t. I felt hard and angry and so unlike myself. Should I confront Finn the minute he gets here, in front of Snow? That would upset Snow. I try never to argue in front of her. Finn and I sometimes go days without speaking, but raise our voices? That’s a no-no. The smell in the taxi to Siracusa must have been him. Perhaps not. Perhaps the driver. As you can tell, I was questioning everything. One time I told Finn never to let his brother in the car because he had stunk it up with his Camels. I bet it wasn’t his brother, but Finn.
Now I understood his friendship with Jessa. They were smoking buddies. That woman smoked while she breast-fed, and I don’t mean during the time she was breast-feeding, I mean at the very moment I’m guessing but I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s the only lobsterman, excuse me, lobsterperson who reeks of cigarettes. That is not easy to accomplish—to spend all day in the brine and smell of tobacco.
Did Lizzie know Finn smoked? Did all of Portland know? Had it been going on for years?
Most important, he didn’t care enough about his daughter to stop.
Where were they? Why weren’t they back yet?
I went down to the balustrade overlooking the sea to phone my mother and wait for Snow and Finn. Since it was windy and Siracusa is in a perpetual state of disintegration, specks of plaster and dust swirled in the air. Waves crashed with a roar. I had my phone out, about to press call, when I thought, Don’t. With the wind and those waves, you won’t be able to hear a thing. Besides, Finn’s smoking will make Mother happy. Proof I shouldn’t have married him. April always points out that Penelope makes me feel worse. “Has your mother ever made you feel better? Ever? In your entire life?” she asked.
Just then, as I was about to cross back to the hotel, Michael came around the corner. I started to wave, but he took a quick look in both directions, furtive looks, it seemed. I might have imagined it. Waving felt wrong, an intrusion, but then he saw me and strolled over.
“Just trying my mother,” I said, turning off my phone. You’d think I’d have been comfortable with him after these days together, but if anything, I was shyer. “How was the boat ride?”
“Oh, fine,” he said.
“Have you seen Finn and Snow?”
“Not since.”
“He’s smoking.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t know what to do.” It surprised me I told him.
“Cigarettes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you smoke?” he asked.
“At Vassar, I used to do it now and then, but it didn’t take. I must not be an addictive type even though my roommate, MaryPat, she was southern from the same town Harper Lee was from, and . . .” I realized I’d started a story I didn’t know the end of. “Finn’s so—”
“What?”
“Immature.”
“Yeah, he is a little.” His eyes were twinkling and he had a flirty grin. I think he was attracted to me. At that moment, I felt a definite charge. “Don’t tell Finn you know.”
“Why not?”
“Ammunition,” he said.
“Ammunition?”
“You’ve got something on him, something he thinks you don’t know but you do. It gives you power. Like having an ace up your sleeve or a gun in your boot. The only kind of power worth having is secret power. When you lose it, you’re screwed.”
I was so self-conscious that I was thinking, He’s talking to me, while he was talking to me, you know, aware that I was having this intimate fun conversation with Michael and wishing my mother could see. I was standing awkwardly, my hand up to keep debris out of my eyes. Certainly I wasn’t my most graceful. Still, secret power? I didn’t know what he was talking about.
It stumped April too. How can you have power if no one knows about it?
“Smoking’s a vile habit,” I said. “It can kill you. It smells. He’s a father. He has responsibilities.”
“Why I’m not one. I’m going up to the room.” He looked grim now. “Last night here, thank God.”
“Do you hate Siracusa too?”
Michael burst out laughing. I joined in although I didn’t know why. He gave me a kiss on the cheek. “See you at dinner.”
“I’m not coming,” I started to say, but, as he walked away, I realized the hotel was in shadow. This was the east side of Siracusa, I should explain, which meant that the sun in the west had sunk out of sight below the height of the buildings. Where were Finn and Snow? What in the world could they be doing? Snow had no patience for her dad. He would have driven her crazy by now. She would want to be with me. I checked f
or a text. When I looked up, Michael was gone.
I followed him to the lobby, at least I assumed that was where he went. “Any messages?” I asked Dani.
“No.”
“Did my husband and daughter come in while I was outside?”
She shook her head.
For all I knew they had hopped a bus to Mount Etna. Finn might jump on whatever passed by. I went back outside to wait for them but instead of crossing to the water, turned left and peered around the nearest corner. Most tourist destinations—restaurants, Piazza Duomo, the churches—were this way.
I ventured down the street hoping to encounter them but kept looking back in case they pulled up in a taxi. There was a cat sitting in front of a door. An elegant cat. Way too elegant for Siracusa. This cat wants to move to Rome, I thought, which amused me. Slender, with a snow-white face and chest and a slate-gray back, it looked unexpectedly chic against a cocoa-colored door that, while peeling and in need of repair, still provided a lovely contrast. This cat was female, it simply had to be, with its delicate face and pointed ears, sitting with its head tilted just so as if a photographer might have positioned it. Her large gray eyes—nearly colorless—were rimmed in a thin line of black as if precisely drawn. I do my own eyes like that but prefer a smudgy look. Seeing that cat was like encountering someone from my family. I mean the Seddley side: elegant, opaque, and standoffish. I slipped my hand under its belly and lifted it to my chest. In a sudden motion, its paw shot out.
I screamed and dropped it. The cat ran off.
Very gingerly, I patted my cheek. The tips of my fingers came away dotted with blood.
I pulled out my phone for the mirror. There were three long scratches across my cheek, and here and there, as if stitched with a needle, pinpoints of blood. My face. My poor beautiful face.
I rushed back to the hotel, colliding with Finn coming in. “What the hell happened to you?” he said.
“Where’s Snow?”
“She went for a gelato with Kathy. What happened, babe?”
I started crying. “A cat scratched me.”
He patted my shoulder in an awkward way. “You should put something on that. Witch hazel.”
“Witch hazel! The only person who uses that is your mother. What are you thinking? Who’s Kathy?”
“That woman Lizzie knows. The one at breakfast.”
“But they’re not back yet. When did they go?”
“Around three. When we got off the boat.”
“But they’re not back, is she back?” I asked Dani. “You know, the young blond American woman. Always going swimming.”
“Signorina Bicks?” said Dani. “No, I haven’t seen her. I will get you some ice.”
“It’s six thirty. Snow isn’t here.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Finn. He followed me into the restroom.
“Oh my God, my face.” I dabbed at it with a towel and water. “I picked up a cat. It clawed me. This is awful. Where were you?”
“I went to Montavi Brothers.”
“What’s that?”
“Gina knows the owner. Mario Montavi, a face like a growl, sets out a glass and a bottle, a plate of tasties, crosses his arms, plants them on the table, and leans over like he’s giving them shade.”
“But I fired Gina.”
“She set me up with a wine tasting.” He stuck out his tongue, cherry red. “Fichera, a red liqueur. How to make ice cream lethal.”
“You left Snow with a stranger?”
“Michael and Lizzie know this woman.”
“They don’t know her. She works at a restaurant they go to.”
We stopped back at the desk to pick up the ice. Dani spread out a cloth napkin, plopped on some ice cubes, folded up the corners, and tied them together.
“Êtes-vous une infirmière?” said Finn.
Dani smiled.
I gave him a look.
“What, Penelope?”
We got in the elevator, where the mirror was huge and unavoidable. Along my right cheek, the scratches were blossoming into bright pink welts. I started to cry again.
“Use the ice.”
“I can’t feel anything through the napkin. It’s too thick. ‘Are you a nurse?’ Is that what you said? How ridiculous. And stop acting as if Penelope is the worst thing you can call me. Why are you friendly to a hotel employee when something awful is happening?”
“You got scratched, babe. It’ll heal.”
“Snow is missing.”
“She’s having fun. She’s not missing.”
An hour later, he had to admit I might be right.
Michael
PACKING, THE MAN ASSUMED. How she found it. Found him out. A quick thumb through Stendhal, perhaps the book engaged her and then, reading, she found his margin notes.
That sort of thing interested him, the how of it. He tried to cast this catastrophe as a plot problem, and Lizzie, an unwieldy character that he hadn’t properly writ.
I lingered over the fantasy, a perverse amusement. Lizzie settling into the comfy chair, one leg slung over the arm. She flipped through The Red and the Black while tugging at a curl. She was a book lover, the sort to fall into or get caught up in an unlikely read.
Although what the fuck was she doing in my suitcase?
As a rule she didn’t pack for me and, as for herself, left it until the last minute. She was hunting either for the book or for evidence. What made her suspicious? Was it something I said? Or she saw? Was it something about the encounter with K at breakfast that tipped her? Had K sent another note, one Lizzie intercepted? That I doubted. Had Finn told Taylor, and Taylor told her? Or had Finn told Lizzie? No. Finn would never hurt Lizzie.
But I would. I’m her husband.
Betrayal of this magnitude is the exclusive province of married couples.
Perhaps Lizzie had phoned home or checked e-mail and found a message from American Express. “Alert. Unusual activity. Call.”
Why would she assume that a charge from Artesa Jewels wasn’t a present for her?
I’d entered the room relieved not to have encountered K in the hotel. Relieved it was my last evening in this stone city in the company of the Dolans. I was near to being back in New York and thus able to resolve the mess where we lived, where we were entrenched, and everything would seem less unhinged and manageable. Where I had a chance of holding on to Lizzie. We weren’t rich enough for a decent divorce, were worth more as two and not just socially. Neither could continue his or her life on half the money.
Had Snow told Lizzie about K, whispering, hesitant, her eyes darting nervously? All Lizzie would want to do, all anyone ever wanted, was to ease this vulnerable girl’s anxiety. “I can’t hear you,” Lizzie would say sweetly, leaning down.
In that soft poisonous voice, what would Snow say? She specialized in nuggets. Queen of the short and cruel.
Of everyone who had victimized him on this trip, the man decided, she had been the cleverest. The most seductive. It was strange that in thinking of the collision of Lizzie and Kath, this Italian romp gone south, he now blamed Snow for all of it.
Although it made no sense to do so.
But he was a writer. He trusted his subconscious. He was used to letting unlikely truths float to the surface and then figuring out why they had.
How could I get rid of Kath? Get rid of her and not lose Lizzie? Eventually Lizzie would return to the room. Her clothes were here. Her passport.
When I’d walked in, the door swinging back had caused several pages to fly up off the tiles. They were scattered everywhere, some whole, some in shreds. Like a dead body, the hardcover lay there flat now, disemboweled.
Finn
MICHAEL HAD OFFERED LIZZIE like she was a plate of sardines.
I can’t say I didn’t ruminate on that on my way over to Mario’s. Gina had set
me up with him, a sad-eyed Sicilian with a feast of a shop not far from the dock. She’d talked him into letting me sample his wines. He knew the best. I fell hard for the Planeta vineyard and, with Gina translating, arranged for export. Gina was fun. Second night in Siracusa, after Tay had fired her, I’d spotted Gina while on my night prowl. She was with her friend Carina. They squeezed over. I squeezed in.
“I am un restaurateur,” I told Gina, with a pretentious little wave of the hand. “I am looking for some cheap Sicilians to import. Wines, not waiters.” It was late enough that only the desperate or drugged were still out, Gina a little of both, and even a joke that bad got a laugh.
What haunts me—Snow’s hand in Kathy’s as they sashayed off down the street. I remember wondering if Kathy was Catholic. How she came by that forgiving nature. Thinking, if I could stand Michael, I’d ask.
“You let her go with a stranger?” said Taylor, so rigid she was vibrating.
“She’s not a stranger.”
“When did you last see them?”
“At three or so.”
She burst into tears.
“Babe, stop it. It’s what—not even seven. That’s noon Sicilian time. Maybe they’re with Michael.”
She was shaking her head, her nose running and she didn’t even know.
“Hey, she’s okay.”
“Not with Michael. I saw him.”
She sank down on a chair and clasped her hands. “God, bring her back. God, please.”
First time she’d ever mentioned God. I noticed that. Tay doesn’t pray. On Christmas Eve we go to church and she sits with her arms folded, head swiveling, taking in the architecture, never opening a Bible even to sing. Snow’s being missing—soon I was freaking too—split me in two, part of me right there scared shitless and knowing it was all on me, the other part making dumb observations, disconnected like I’m on the other side of the world because that was where I wanted to be.
“Where were you?” she asked.
