“I’m fine. Yes, I want the baby. Things with Joe are better now, Mom. They’re fine.”
“Things are fine now? How can that be? Things don’t just get fine.”
“Well they did.” Lily knew to say any more, to tell her about Christ Covenant Church or PTW was to invite a debate that would begin with Adam in the Garden of Eden and take them to Pope John Paul II’s doorstep.
“Well, I hope so,” said her mother. “It’s your best bet to work things out. I’ve worked with so many women like you who’ve gone through divorce in the past couple years – and let me tell you, it’s a crime the way New York State treats women in divorce. It’s legalized rape, I tell you.”
“I just thought you’d want to know, Mom. About the baby.”
“If that’s what you want, then I’m happy for you.”
Don’t trip over yourself congratulating me, Lily thought. Lily wondered what she might have to do - short of getting raped by the New York State divorce laws - to get her mother’s attention. At least that conversation was out of the way. It was enough for one day. Word would get out. She didn’t care to invite the lukewarm congratulations from her sisters, and she definitely couldn’t handle one more ‘poor Iris!’ from Auntie Rosa.
At six months, Joe insisted that Lily quit her job. On a chilly sunny day in November, Joseph Michael Diotallevi was delivered by Cesarean section, three weeks past his due date. He had the look of an old man when he was born, the result of a ten pound person crammed into tight moist quarters for too long. His skin was wrinkled, and his face had already developed beyond that of a newborn, complete with a decidedly Diotallevi nose.
As the nurse wheeled the bassinet into Lily’s room for Joseph’s first nursing, Joe stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, nervously jingling the piles of quarters he’d collected for the pay phone.
“A son,” Joe said to Lily. “I can’t believe I have a son!”
“Promise me we can call him Joseph?” Lily asked, looking down in awe at her newborn baby.
“I promise,” said Joe.
At least “Joseph” was more classic and sophisticated than “Joe Jr.” Anyway, it was clear to Lily in that moment, holding her son in the slanted sunlight of an autumn afternoon, that this was her child. No matter what Lucy called him, she could not call him her own.
“I have to go call everyone, Lil. I’ll be back in a few minutes, OK?”
“Sure,” said Lily, slipping her arm out of her hospital gown. She was glad to have some time alone with her new baby, and as the sound of Joe’s quarters disappeared down the hall, she offered her breast to Joseph, and he attacked it with gusto. Lily was exhausted from the surgery, and her whole body throbbed in pain; thankfully, breastfeeding was mostly Joseph’s job.
The afternoon sun streamed into the room, cut into slices by the mini-blinds before falling in stripes across Lily’s bed. Lily drew in a breath and softly sang to her son, “Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One...”
Lily cupped Joseph’s spongy scalp in her palm, and explored the curvature of his head.
“And now, let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich, because of what the Lord has done, for us...”
She traced the delicate shell of his ear with her index finger, in awe of this handiwork of God. She stroked his soft cheek as he sucked away.
“You really beat me up there, little man,” she whispered.
Joseph stopped sucking, and a tiny stream of milk dribbled from his mouth. If Lily hadn’t known better, she would have sworn he was smiling.
By the time she got settled back at home, Lily could not remember what life had been like before Joseph arrived. Breastfeeding had become the greatest joy of her life, an intimacy that gave her pleasure at a level she’d never known. Nursing was a comfort to them both. No matter where they were or what was going on around them, they could simply and quickly retreat, no questions asked.
“I tried that once,” said Lucy, scrunching up her nose and motioning her hand to her own breast. “When Alfonso was first born. It made me sick to my stomach.”
“Why?” Lily asked.
“Oh, grabbing my own boob like that and stickin’ it in his mouth so he could suck it the same way his father sucked on it... it just felt wrong.” With a shudder she added, “How long do you plan on doin’ it, anyway?”
“They say that breast milk is the best food for a newborn,” said Lily. “At least six months - maybe longer.”
“Six months? Jesus Christ - that means no one else can ever feed the kid for you - and think of all the time you’re gonna spend at Sunday dinner up in the bedroom alone.”
Kinda the point, thought Lily. Joe’s parents and his brothers and his brothers’ wives exemplified everything that troubled Lily about her relationship with Joe, even more so when they were all together at Sunday dinner. The inclusion they’d offered Lily in the early years had transmogrified into an expectation of her unwavering acceptance and unquestioning loyalty. Discussing “family business” with outsiders was strictly forbidden, and anyone who challenged the family morality challenged every member personally.
Since the family collectively agreed that nudity in any degree was unbearable (with the apparent exception of porno actresses), Lily happily escaped to a vacant bedroom or den anytime Joseph began to fuss, or anytime the dinner table became too volatile for him. Or for her.
The difficulty with which Joseph came into the world was reflected in his personality, as if he knew exactly when to sleep or eat, but considered such rules pointless and stupid.
Precocious in every way, Joseph rolled over at four months, took his first steps at ten, and had learned to peddle a Big Wheels tricycle by his first birthday. The more he grew, the stronger his will became. If Lily took him to the store, he cried to go home. If they stayed home, he cried to go out and play. By two years of age, Joseph had developed the vocabulary of a four-year-old, and Lily imagined that his difficult personality was the result of a frustrated old soul trapped in a baby’s limited and powerless body. He demanded everything of Lily. Or at least all that was left.
Yet for all the struggles of his toddlerhood, Joseph possessed a capricious underlying sweetness. At unpredictable and unexpected times, he would present himself to Lily with outstretched arms. “Pick me up, Mommy,” he would say, and Lily would take him into her arms, and he would hug her with his entire body, nestle his face into her neck and say, “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you too, my sweetness,” Lily would reply, and then Joseph would wriggle himself free, and toddle off to some new adventure. Lily stood in awe of his sturdiness, amazed at his lack of appreciation for his status as a child. He seemed to have no awareness that he was a very small person who stood face-to-kneecap with the rest of the world. He would haul off and slap one of his cousins for refusing to relinquish a cookie or a toy, and would boldly announce, “Asshole!” if his father tried to put him into bed before he was ready. Lily knew he was destined to be something great - perhaps a lawyer or an entrepreneur - but she definitely would not have to worry about him surviving in the world. She wished she were a little more like him.
11. Iris
The seeds of attraction planted during her first tête-à-tête with Claudio found fertile soil in Iris’s imagination, where they were sprinkled generously with curiosity and desire, and quickly sprouted fantasies of future private encounters. In the same elegant style in which he had provided Iris with an excuse compelling enough to shirk her sense of conjugal duty for a few hours to partake in that first dinner with him, step by subtle step he initiated her into a world where business mixed with pleasure as naturally as champagne with caviar.
She was both thrilled and frightened as opportunities for such encounters arose during bona fide business engagements, first in Milan, then in Florence. On each occasion, Claudio’s refined manners and chivalrous treatment persuaded her that no harm could come of two respectable professionals such as themselves indulgin
g in a bit of pleasure while fulfilling their obligations. How ridiculously virtuous would she seem if she refused an invitation to dinner at the end of a conference to discuss a keynote speaker’s comments, before driving back to Rapallo in Claudio’s Mercedes SL500 convertible? How pathetically provincial would she look, really, if she were to ask Claudio to mind the manicured hand he placed gently on her knee during the drive home, when it wandered ever so slowly up her thigh, as she sank deeper and deeper into the soft black leather of the bucket seat? How hopelessly hypocritical would she feel if she pushed him away and hurried home without tasting the lips he made her crave, when he drew her close for a kiss before retiring to his suite, where, despite his entreaties, she could not find the courage to enter?
Such rationalizations scattered like fallen leaves in a brisk autumn wind when the opportunity for what was bound to happen sooner or later had jumped, unbeckoned, right into her lap. Weeks earlier, Iris had signed up to attend a two-day event in Rome, and the day before she was to leave, Claudio sent her thoughts into a tailspin and her conscience into a dither by announcing he would accompany her. The sigh of relief she heaved when he asked her to reserve a second room for him seemed soft as a baby’s breath compared to the moans he expertly elicited from her the following evening at their hotel, as he treated her to his lover’s menu of irresistible appetizers and sensuous desserts (with an interlude of champagne and smoked salmon delivered by room service), far more exquisite than anything she had ever tasted in all her years of marital sex. Replete with satisfaction but wallowing in unease when she awoke the following morning next to the only man she had ever slept with besides her husband, Iris reflected on how the value of impeccable manners increased in direct proportion to the awkwardness of the situation. As she crept out of bed to brush away her night breath before Claudio stirred and tried to kiss her, she was very grateful to him indeed for knowing how to make something so wrong feel so right, at least long enough for her to enjoy it.
Iris’s rational side soon realized she was not cut out for the conniving entailed by an extramarital affair, however well-conducted, but was overruled by her renegade sensual side, no longer prepared to endure a slow and painful death by suffocation. Claudio intrigued and amused her, and she was exhilarated to be living out a tiny portion of her life in a secret place, where the pursuit of pleasure was not thwarted, but encouraged; where she was admired as an industrious young professional free from the demands of children who would steal time and energy from her job, rather than tolerated as an inept child-woman whose foreignness and lack of ability to reproduce made her a misfit for the life that had been so lovingly and meticulously laid out for her.
Although Iris was quick enough to sense that Claudio’s savoir faire had not been achieved through his devotion to fidelity, he had never given her the impression she was one in a long string of casual relationships. Theirs was no sordid love affair; they weren’t seeing each other for the sole purpose of engaging in sex, nor was she a mistress, expecting to be showered with expensive gifts or whisked away on exotic vacations. Their relationship was different, because they shared more than a passion for each other: they were both madly in love with the hotel business.
On the job, Claudio helped Iris accumulate valuable experience by involving her in management strategies with the Direttore, who was strongly encouraged to delegate more responsibility to her. Claudio openly praised her merits as she evolved professionally, but was implacable in his criticism of any crucial mistakes or errors in judgment she made along the way. She had been content with the modest bonus she received at the end of the season, even though she secretly felt her performance and commitment deserved more. But asking for more was not something Iris did, especially if it could give rise to the suspicion that she was reaping undeserved benefits by sleeping with the boss. Besides, as Gregorio said, they didn’t need the money.
The evening prior to her scheduled business trip to London to attend an important travel fair, Claudio phoned her at her office, instructing her to leave for the day and sneak into the suite he kept at the hotel. Due to a series of pressing problems and conflicting schedules, she hadn’t seen him for ten days, and their hunger was satiated in a matter of minutes. When they finished, she lay on her back, immobilized by the afterglow and by the thought of the evening that awaited her at home, where she should already be cooking dinner.
“Ti voglio bene,” she heard herself say. She had said the words to him in her mind many times before, but never out loud. Though they frequently conversed in English, she spoke the words in Italian, a language which offered two options for telling someone you loved them. Unlike “I love you” in English, the words “ti amo” were reserved exclusively for romantic love, whereas “ti voglio bene” had a wider range of applications. Literally, “I wish you well” was an expression that could be used to tell the person you were in love with that you cared deeply for him or her, but it could also be directed at a dear friend, a relative, a child. The words could be accompanied by a kiss on the lips, a peck on the cheek, a squeeze of the arm, a tousle of the hair.
The one thing Iris disliked about their relationship, apart from the deceit, was Claudio’s habit of moaning and gasping with pleasure during sex, his exclamations a notch or two more passionate than when he indulged in an exceptional wine or gourmet delicacy, but never expressing any deeper sentiments. It reminded her of the way she used to feel back when her older brothers wiped their plates clean and burped after a meal she had prepared with loving care; sure, she could tell they liked it, but couldn’t they think of something nice to say to her? If Claudio wanted to leave his emotions out of it, she would respect that, but today she was frustrated with the fact that she never felt free to express anything more than satisfaction or gratitude to him. She did care for him, otherwise she wouldn’t have become involved with him in the first place. She decided that the expression “ti voglio bene” would not jeopardize the status quo in any way. It would not raise expectations, pose questions, or demand answers. Above all, it would not constitute a total betrayal of Gregorio, the only man to whom she had ever said the words, “ti amo.”
“You’re quite a special woman,” Claudio said.
It wasn’t exactly the same thing, but it was a start. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’ve done more for me than you can know,” he said.
“I have?”
“Well, yes. You’ve made my visits to the hotel much more interesting and productive. And exciting.” He flicked a finger at her nipple as if it were a fly on her breast. She giggled.
“And you’ve also worked wonders for my marriage.”
“I have?” she said again. She scrunched a pillow under her arm and propped herself up on an elbow to look at him.
“Absolutely. Ask my wife!” he said with the peculiar half-smile smirk she sometimes found endearing, other times irritating. “On second thought, maybe you’d better not.”
Each time Iris saw the framed family portrait of Claudio with his boys and wife prominently displayed upon his polished walnut desk, jealousy shot through her veins, poisoning her blood, making her gut roil with guilt. She had never asked him to remove the portrait, and he had never offered. She told herself she was superior to such requests; plus, the picture exerted some sort of morbid fascination on her. Occasionally, when Claudio wasn’t there, she took the portrait in her hands to study it up close. His wife, Fernanda, heiress to one of Italy’s top textile manufacturers, had at first struck her as pretty, in a snobby Northern Italian sort of way. Upon further scrutiny, Iris eventually decided that her features did not express particular beauty or intelligence. There was no sparkle in the dull, close-set eyes, no smile on the thin, tight lips. She was simply well-preserved. And why shouldn’t she be? With all her family’s money on top of Claudio’s, she probably divided her time between the health club, the aesthetician’s, the hairdresser’s, and the designer boutiques of Via Monte Napoleone. Though Iris could not stop herself from succumbing
to these occasional bouts of jealousy, she did not envy the woman’s life one bit, nor did she envy her three impeccably dressed boys, with their washed-out Milanese complexions and the snotty looks on their doughy faces. Spoiled brats if she had ever seen one.
“I have more patience with my wife than I used to,” Claudio said. “I’ve realized she’s about as good as they come, as wives go.”
“Really?”
“She runs a tight household, and organizes everything for the boys: school, sports, vacations.”
They had never talked about his marriage before, except at the very beginning, when he chuckled away Iris’s fears of being a home-wrecker by assuring her that one of the principal benefits of extramarital affairs was that they made it bearable for one to remain married. He sustained that by providing what the conjugal relationship was lacking, affairs were actually excellent therapy. Everyone in Italy had affairs; that was why marriages lasted so long.
Although Iris sometimes fantasized about leaving Gregorio for Claudio and moving into the suite at the hotel, she had never seriously considered it, and he had never so much as hinted such an option existed. She loved both men, in different ways, and for different things. Maybe there was some truth to Claudio’s theory, after all. She, too, seemed to tolerate Gregorio’s exasperating temperance better now that she had found someone with whom to indulge in the pursuit of pleasure. Still, she thought Claudio’s comments rather cynical. Shouldn’t he at least pretend that he would throw over his wife for Iris if she were free? Wouldn’t that be the romantic thing to say?
“We spent last weekend up in Cortina,” Claudio continued, implacable in his surprise mission to provide her with unwanted details. “It was Fernanda’s birthday. The kids stayed with their grandparents, and we invited another couple of old friends up to the chalet with us. Just a quiet celebration, you know?”
The Complete Series Page 83
