Things should be relatively calm at the Dimora after the hectic weekend, and by rearranging her schedule, Iris had managed to clear the time needed to set up those long overdue meetings in Rome. That had been her sole intention right along, that Wednesday when she obtained Signora Mangiagallo’s permission to go away for two days. That had still been her intention when she introduced the topic of her planned trip to Gregorio on Thursday, surprising him with his favorite dinner of swordfish steaks (“so rich in protein and Omega-3!” he always commented), which she usually served on Fridays. It had been that same intention which suggested she pop into the hairdresser’s for a trim and root touch-up that Saturday. (Appearances may not be everything, but the people she planned to meet expected the class of a luxury hotel to be reflected in its manager; if she made a good impression, so did the Dimora.) That intention had still been intact when, walking back to her car, she spotted in a shop window a pretty pink push-up bra with black lace trim and matching bikini panties, justifying their purchase with Auntie Rosa’s theory that fine lingerie bolstered both a woman’s morale and her self-confidence.
Going to Rome for those meetings had been her intention, all along. Up until the untimely arrival of a text message heralded by the vibration of her silenced cell phone as it sashayed across her nightstand while she and Gregorio were propped up on pillows, reading in bed at a quarter to midnight (they switched off the lights a bit later on Saturdays). Citing as a cause for her full bladder the second cup of chamomile tea Gregorio had forced on her, Iris palmed her phone and ducked into the bathroom. The message was from Max. He was in Rome.
“I honestly don’t know what’s come over you, Piccolina,” Gregorio said the next day to Iris, who darted back and forth between the dining room, where she was serving Sunday dinner to the Leale family, and the kitchen, where she scanned the stream of text messages that had begun flooding her cell phone as soon as she had stepped away from the stove, gulped down a glass of wine, and informed Max that she also had plans to be in Rome.
“What do you mean?” she said, her smile twitching as she set down yet another bottle of mineral water in front of Gregorio, though there were already two on the table.
“I mean that you seem unusually agitated for a Sunday. And I’m quite certain it has something to do with that trip to Rome tomorrow.”
Beatrix always said that when trying to defuse a potentially dangerous conversation, the best reaction is no reaction, and Iris had witnessed that behavior in her own mother for many years, until she had that one big reaction and walked out. Taking a deep breath, Iris sat down, poured herself some water, and raised the glass to her lips. As she drank, a spurt of vibrations from the cell phone in her hip pocket sent waves of panic up her torso and down her arm to her hand, causing her to spill water down the V-neck of her shirt.
“Look at the mess you’re making!” Gregorio said, reaching to take the glass from her.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, though the cool water felt quite nice on her thumping chest. Had all the eyes in the room not been focused on her, she might have grabbed the glass back from him, and thrown the rest of the water in her face to douse the burning in her cheeks.
“I’m not interested in apologies, Iris. I’m interested in your well-being. We all are. Just look at yourself. First, you burned the meat, then you can’t sit still for five minutes, now you’re spilling things. You are over-extending yourself. I’ve always said you’ve taken on more than you can handle with that job.”
“I can handle my job fine. Really.” Her lips quivered as she smiled, her eyes traveling from the parts of her life she was starting to have a hard time handling: Gregorio and Isabella, Cinzia and her sons, the plates on the table, the meat on the plates. Her stomach churned as she stared at her untouched slice of steak. Cinzia insisted her “boys,” who now towered over Gregorio, must eat their fettina before going to play soccer, and Iris had cooked the thin, flavorless slices of lean beef in a skillet, just the way they liked it. So what if it was a little overdone. Big fucking deal.
“And while we’re on the subject,” Gregorio cleared his voice, paused, then continued, “I’ve been thinking about a few things, and talking them over with Mamma.”
“What things?” Iris stabbed the bloodless slab of meat with her fork, and began sawing off pieces she would later give to Zenzero. She glanced up at Isabella, who sat with raised eyebrows, nodding with the gravity of a nurse standing by a physician’s side as he reveals his fatal diagnosis to a doomed patient.
Gregorio set down his silverware, placing his knife and fork side by side, their tips resting on the edge of his plate, then dabbed at his mouth and goatee with his napkin. “Important things. Such as, that you should have had your fill of this hotel nonsense by now. You’ve achieved your little success - and I’m not saying you don’t deserve credit for that. But you’ve proven your point, Piccolina.”
“What point?” Iris said, interrupting her cutting, dropping her hands to her lap. She would bet her new lace panties their little talk had been initiated by Isabella. Gregorio hadn’t voiced any objections to her trip to Rome, up until just now.
He continued on as if she hadn’t spoken, looking at his mother, then at Cinzia, before looking back at Iris. “One thing is keeping yourself busy, but depriving your family of your presence is another story altogether. Where is your sense of duty?”
How could he say that when her whole life had become one big, fucking duty? Didn’t she cater to their every need? Didn’t she spend every evening at home? Didn’t she cook for them all every Sunday? Besides, they were his family, not hers. Anger bubbled in her belly, too heavy to rise to the surface. She sat and stared at Gregorio in silence, fists clenched in her lap.
“And now, what with the hospital, and the university, and the clinic, my responsibilities - and my earnings, I might add - have greatly increased. It simply makes more sense for you to devote your energy to our home, to us. I would like what little leisure time I have to be enjoyed in the company of a well-rested, smiling wife, not an exhausted neurotic.”
Iris saw herself jumping to her feet, maybe even making her chair topple over when she rose. She saw herself throwing back her shoulders and telling them all that she was earning more now, too. She saw herself looking them in the eye, one by one, and asking them what the hell more they wanted from her. But she just sat there, her legs too weak to stand on, the words trapped in her throat, a cluster of hapless bystanders unwilling to get involved. “The best reaction is no reaction,” they murmured. “The best reaction is no reaction.”
“Have some of these, Caro,” Isabella said to Gregorio, passing him the zucchini.
If the phone vibrating again in her pocket flustered her, she was certain no one would suspect the cause; her crimson cheeks were sure to be blamed on the slap of disloyalty delivered so masterfully, in front of everyone, by Gregorio.
One thing she had to say about Max Vanesi was that he was optimistic. “Near Rome” turned out to be a hundred kilometers south of the city, and the “hour at the most” it would take to reach Sabaudia from the capital mushroomed with each delay accrued on the public transportation system until it had doubled. Evidently, Max’s estimate that the location checks would be wrapped up “by six-thirty at the latest,” at which time he would be free to meet her in Piazza Regina Margherita, had also been calculated on that same scale of optimism. There was still no sight of him, and she had been standing right there, in front of the boxy-looking brick church he had described to her, ever since a quarter past. She had even had time to stop at a café to use the ladies’ room and drink an herbal tea in the hope it would calm her nerves, and take a short stroll around the center of this unusual town she had never heard of until the previous day, when she had finally agreed to the rendezvous. Pacing back and forth in front of their designated meeting point, she studied the impressive mosaic depicting the Annunciation at the entrance to the church.
If Rome and its splendors had not been built in
a day, the construction of this city had come close to that time frame. Iris had read on a plaque by the tower at the town hall that Sabaudia was inaugurated in 1934, less than a year after its foundation upon the malaria-infested swampland that had rendered the territory uninhabitable since the times of the ancient Romans. In over two decades in Italy, Iris had never seen anything like this city, so eerily devoid of ancient history, intrinsic charm and decorative elements. The rationalist architecture had an unsettling effect on her; the linear, unadorned forms staring stonily down at her laid bare the premeditated motives for her presence there, stripped of any possible mitigating factors in the form of romantic vistas, rosy sunsets and candlelit dinners that might justify a slow surrender to temptation.
At six forty-five, Max sent her a text message saying he would arrive in “about five minutes.” She realized he was working, of course, and didn’t want to rush him, but the longer she waited, the more she wondered what she was doing there. She was weary from traveling six hundred kilometers after a night of fitful sleep, and frazzled from the surges of adrenalin which had been pumping through her body since early morning. A drizzle was starting to fall when the church bells began ringing in the tower. As she debated whether to seek shelter inside, her phone rang. “Numero privato” flashed on the display. Max must be calling from another phone.
“Finalmente!” she answered, hunching over to shield her face and phone from the sprinkle that was quickly turning into a shower, just as a black scooter whizzed by her to overtake a orange bus, which blared its horn in reprimand.
“Piccolina!” said the voice at the other end. “I was expecting you to call.”
“Gregorio! Hello … sorry… yes, of course.”
“I assume you got there all right?”
“The train was late, but yes, I got finally here.” Never mind that his “there” did not coincide with her “here”. She quickly added, “Where are you calling from?” Better to be the one asking the questions than answering them, that was what Beatrix always told her.
Gregorio said something, but she could not make out his words among the din of the bells striking the hour of seven.
“What did you say?” she said in a loud voice, huddled over the phone, her left hand covering her left ear.
“I said, never mind where I’m calling from. But I know where you are.” Gregorio’s voice came over the line plenty loud this time, and his words rang clear in her ear as the bells fell silent. She was a rotten liar, and out of practice as well, but she had said she was taking the train to Rome, and she had. How could she have possibly screwed that up? She scanned the square, half expecting to see her husband walk out from behind a building. Her pulse accelerated, as she searched for something to say. She recalled Claudio’s golden rule in matters of conjugal deception: Always deny everything; if your husband wants to believe you, he will.
“Of course you do,” she blurted out. “I told you where I was going.”
“Rome, yes. And right now? I know you, you might as well confess.”
She jerked the phone away from her ear and stared at it. She wanted to smash it against the church, then run and hide inside. She heard Claudio’s voice again, offering another nugget of advice: Never volunteer information; let him do the explaining. She brought the phone to her ear again.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“Hearing that crazy traffic and all those church bells, I can picture you perfectly. You’re window-shopping in Via del Corso.”
“Oh…!” she whinnied. “You do know me! But I’m not really in the mood for shopping.” In fact, her legs felt weak, and she felt like throwing up. Stick as close to the truth as possible, Claudio would say. (Or was it Bea who said that?) “It’s been a long day, now all I want is a nice hot shower, then have something to eat.”
“See? I knew all that travel would exhaust you. Are you having dinner all alone?”
“Um, I’m not really sure yet. I did have plans to meet someone I’ve been talking to about an affiliation, but maybe I’ll just grab a bite on my own.” True again. Especially if that someone never turned up.
“Well, if you’re eating all by yourself, why don’t you go to that trattoria we had dinner at last time we were in Rome? It was just off that little piazza, behind the Temple of Hadrian, remember? You loved the bucatini all’amatriciana, and they had delicious artichokes alla romana. Almost as good as the ones Mamma used to make before we got married. Plus, it was well frequented, as I recall - lots of clergy. I think there must be a seminary or something in the area. You should be safe enough there.”
“Good idea. I’ll keep it in mind.” She was so relieved by Gregorio’s small talk that it didn’t even annoy her. He tended to grow quite chatty after coming down hard on her, and although she hadn’t responded to his comments at the dinner table the day before, she knew he knew that they had upset her.
“What are you having for dinner?” she asked, glancing up at the passing traffic, again on the lookout for Max, now that she knew Gregorio was not lurking in the shadows. She wasn’t really concerned about what her husband would eat, but Gregorio would be reassured by this type of question, asked by mothers and wives and sisters and girlfriends all across the country. It showed men that you really cared if you reminded them to eat, or asked what they had eaten, or whether it had been cooked to their taste, and digested in a satisfactory manner. The rain was coming down harder now, the drops pelting her neck, chilling her spine.
“Mamma is making tripe today. She knows you can’t bear to look at it, let alone cook it, so she figured it would be a treat for me.” As he launched into an explanation of the little shop in the old backstreets of Genoa where he had procured the very best tripe, which he had delivered to Isabella on his lunch break, and how enthusiastic his mother had been about locating the old recipe she used to prepare for Gregorio’s father, a beep in Iris’s ear signaled another incoming call. Never having mastered the skill of swapping calls without hanging up on one or both of the parties, she felt pressured by the beeping and grew curt with Gregorio. She danced impatiently in the rain as he summarized more of the day’s non-events in the Leale household, sparing her the Policlinico chronicles, which he was probably saving for Isabella, always his most rapt audience. By the time Iris managed to terminate the call, the beeping had ceased, and the rain had begun to fall steadily. She scanned the square again: no cars flashed lights at her, no male figure rushed toward her with an open umbrella. The doors to the church must be unlocked at this hour, she had seen people going in. She made a dash for the entrance and ducked into the vestibule to wait, before the rain could soak through her clothes to her new underwear.
Though it was a mild evening, the combination of the unexpected rain and Gregorio’s unnerving phone call made her shiver. She shook the drops from her bare arms, wiped her phone across the front of her shirt, checked the display; the missed call had been from Max. She tried calling back, but a recording informed her that his phone was switched off. She wondered what criteria had led her to conclude that a man she barely knew would be reliable, considerate or even punctual. She would give him another ten minutes, then she would catch the first bus to the station and head straight back to Rome. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that the best thing now would be for him to not show up at all.
Iris had a low threshold for inactivity, and in moments of stress, not being able to do anything added to her agitation. Drawn by the drone of low voices, she inched open the massive wooden door to the sanctuary. A couple dozen heads, prevalently snowy, female heads, were scattered in the pews closest to the raised altar. A few turned stiffly at the sound of the groaning door. Iris dipped her fingers in the holy water font and made the sign of the cross. She recognized the words to the Confiteor being recited by the superannuated congregation gathered for the evening service. Her lips began moving automatically as her voice pronounced the Italian words to the Act of Contrition, which she had learned years a
go at the church in Santa Ida “… ho molto peccato in pensieri, parole, opere e omissioni, per mia colpa, mia colpa, mia grandissima colpa.” She beat her chest with a clenched fist each time she said the words “colpa,” then dropped her head as the prayer finished. She wandered over to a side aisle, pausing by a statue of the Madonna. In keeping with a promise made to Auntie Rosa when she had first moved to Italy, she dropped a coin into the offerings box, lit a votive candle, and said a prayer for her. “Please God, watch over Auntie Rosa,” was the best she could manage, what with all confusion churning around inside her, and all the noise of the soon-to-be-committed sins of the flesh and already committed sins of lust and false witness pounding nails into her soul. She quickly touched the fingers of her right hand to her forehead, to her heart, to her left and right shoulders, then turned to leave. She had been wrong to come to Sabaudia, and more wrong to enter the church in such a state. But the rain had been providential: it was God’s way of telling her what she must do. She pushed open the door, stepped outside, and hurried down the steps toward the road, just as a white van with a blue RAI logo on its side pulled up to the curb through a puddle, splashing her with rainwater.
“Hey, there!” Max shouted from the open window of the passenger seat. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” He unlatched the back door from inside without getting out of the van.
The Complete Series Page 103
