The Complete Series

by Angela Scipioni

  She had to stop reading, as the words on the page became blurred through tears.

  “How many of these things does your husband do on a regular basis?” Marilyn asked the question with detachment similar to that of the man at the deli counter when he asked Lily how many slices of turkey she wanted.

  Lily wiped her eyes with the tissue Marilyn offered. “All of them.” She cleared her throat. “All of them.”

  “Your husband broke the law tonight, Mrs. Diotallevi.”

  “Please call me Lily.”

  “Officer Schickler ticketed him for the traffic violation, and there’s a new law that will allow us to press charges on your behalf, but you’ll have to sign a complaint to enable us to do that.”

  “Press charges? Wouldn’t he get into serious trouble?”

  “He’s already in serious trouble, Mrs. Diotallevi. And from the way you’ve described his behavior, he is on the fast track to something much worse if someone doesn’t stop him now.”

  Lily blew her nose.

  “What would happen if I did that? Would he be arrested or something?”

  “There would be a hearing. In Family Court. Most likely, you would be awarded an Order of Protection and he would have to get court mandated counseling. There’s an anger management class the judge will probably send him to.”

  Anger management sounded good. It would almost be like doing him a favor or something.

  “How does an Order of Protection work, exactly?”

  “It’s a court order, signed by a judge, stipulating that your husband cannot come within fifty feet of you. If he does, all you have to do is call nine-one-one or come in here and file a complaint. He would be arrested, no questions asked.”

  “How long is it good for?”

  “It’s usually six months, sometimes longer. Let me ask you this. In light of what happened tonight, do you feel safe going home now and being alone with him?”

  “Well, I’ll have my kids...”

  “Even worse - would they feel safe?”

  Lily recalled the look in Joe’s eyes when she saw him in her rearview mirror. She remembered the way his rage erupted when she first brought up recording the demo, how it was like he couldn’t even hear what she was saying. She thought of the way he attacked her tree the morning after he came to hear her sing at the Easter vigil. She remembered the wild look in his eyes, his violent determination.

  “No,” said Lily. “I would not feel safe tonight.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? I’ve seen women in your position who tell themselves that they will wait until next time. Some of them don’t get a next time. If they’re lucky, they end up in the hospital, or at the shelter. This is your chance if you want to minimize the trauma to yourself and your children. We’ll help you.”

  “What do I do about my kids?”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They were with my next door neighbor, but I’m sure my husband has picked them up by now.” Terror swept through her body. He wouldn’t hurt the boys, would he? He wouldn’t punish them for her actions. Would he?

  “Officer Schickler will follow you home, and when he gets there, he will ask your husband to collect a few things for the night, and he’ll wait and then he’ll escort him out of the house, and present him with a temporary order to stay away from you until after the Family Court hearing.”

  “It seems so harsh,” Lily said.

  “Wouldn’t you say that having your husband intentionally rear-end you into traffic is harsh as well?”

  Lily caught a glimpse of what it must look like to Marilyn. But it’s just Joe, after all. The two women sat in silence. Arrest, Family Court, Order of Protection. All she’d wanted to do was sing. How the hell did she get here? Lily considered her other choices. Go home? What else was there? Even if Joe was calmed by the time she arrived, he would grill her about what had happened here, and there would be another endless sleepless night of tortuous argument ahead. She couldn’t bear another night of that. She needed a little space, a little time to think. None of this even seemed real.

  Lily looked up as Officer Schickler escorted a woman down the hall, just on the other side of the glass from where Lily sat. Her skin was the color of caramel, except around her eyes, which was blue and purple. Her lower lip was split down the center and a trickle of blood had dried upon her chin. Her arms were behind her back. Time slowed as her gaze locked with Lily’s. Lily wondered how many times the woman had been here before, how many chances she’d had. The woman closed her eyes and hung her head, as she was escorted out of sight.

  I’m not like her.

  Marilyn held a pen out to Lily. “You still have choices, Lily. She doesn’t.”

  Lily read over the Power and Control Wheel again. She thought of the boys, of Pierce taking a stance between Lily and Joe as they screamed, his only regard for an end to the fighting. She thought of the dark cars that continued to crawl by the house at night, of the ringing phone, she unable to answer for fear of encountering yet another bill collector. She thought of Owen, of James, of George the drummer. She thought about what tomorrow might be like if she just got up and went home.

  “What do I have to do?” Lily asked.

  “Fill this out,” said Marilyn, placing a blank form in front of her.

  Lily tossed her tissue into the garbage pail and positioned the tip of the pen next to the line that read, “Enter victim name here.”

  3. Iris

  The hands she clasped were still warm, the fingers supple. Maybe if she just stayed there like that, holding them real tight, she could stave off the cold, stop the stiffness from setting in. But no, death was greedy; it would suck the warmth from the flesh, the way it froze the features on the face. The face she could no longer recognize. Grief came in great, swelling waves, washing over her, dragging her down to where it was deep and dark, drowning her in a sea of a blank, dead faces.

  “Who are you?” she cried. “Who are you?”

  Iris was drenched in sweat, her cheeks wet with tears. Gregorio was sitting next to her in his striped pajamas, gently jostling her shoulder, softly slapping her face. “Wake up, Piccolina,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m here with you.”

  Iris blinked her eyes with the confusion of a newborn, unsure of which world she belonged in. Ragged sobs pumped air in and out of her lungs as the images blurred and faded from her waking mind. Dreams mixed with reality, relief with despair.

  “You were having another bad dream,” Gregorio said, pushing her hair back from her damp brow. “Here, drink this.” He took a glass of water from the bedside table, and handed it to her.

  Like a wave washing over a rock, one dimension slipped away, and another remained: the solid, the real, the immovable. She blinked again, in the dim light of the reading lamp. Gregorio was still there, and so was their bed, and their home. She gulped the water down. “Piano, Piccolina, piano,” Gregorio said, taking the glass away from her.

  “There was a dead man, but I couldn’t see his face,” she whispered, knowing the few words would suffice as an explanation. Her husband would not encourage her to share the details of the dream, he never did. No one was really interested in anyone else’s dreams anyway, and no one’s dreams meant anything to anyone else.

  “We can’t go on like this, Piccolina,” he sighed, his hands smoothing his pajama top to straighten out the stripes. “We haven’t slept through the night in months.” He rose from the bed, put on his slippers, and shuffled out of the room. He was right. She couldn’t go on this way, dreading her dreams and dreaming of dread.

  Ever since sleeping with Max that night in Sabaudia, Iris found herself with two uninvited bedfellows: the insomnia that snatched away her sleep like a blanket too skimpy to be shared, and the nightmares that trampled the territory once belonging to sweet dreams. She buried her face in her pillow, thinking back on the morning she had traveled back north after that encounter. Determined to use the train ride to process her feelings, she had postponed de
aling with the guilt, knowing all too well it would still be there later. Punchy from the tension and excitement, giddy from the lack of sleep, she had sat back in her seat to relive the adventures crammed into the twelve hours spent with Max. Her head lolling as she stared out the window, she was filled with the sensations of the strange, intense evening. Her pulse quickened when she recalled that peculiar way Max had of looking at her, how he could make her blush or giggle without saying one word. Replaying the scene of the nighttime boat ride from the safety of her train seat, she thought it one of the most romantic things that had ever happened to her. Max made her laugh, he surprised her, he took her by the hand and led her through uncharted territories to places deep inside herself that no one had ever dared explore, not even she.

  As views of the same Mediterranean coast she had first seen on another train trip with Auntie Rosa so many years earlier flashed in and out of view, as people entered and exited her compartment, as stops were made and the whistle blown, Iris reflected on her final pre-dawn hours with Max, when he had clung to her in the musty darkness of the Countess’s bedroom, and whispered confessions of his profound loneliness and battles with depression. She had always sensed that there was a deeper side to Max than met the eye, and that he wanted more from a woman than someone to have fun with. She had always known that beneath the willfulness and sensuality of this apparently self-assured man lay a sensitive soul, a vulnerable boy who needed someone to bring happiness into his life, just as much as she did.

  In the ensuing weeks, communication with Max had been sporadic. She couldn’t really blame him if she was never available to talk when he was, he being constantly on the road, and she sandwiched between the duties of home and hotel and the demands of their respective residents. Each time she was sure she would not hear from him again, a message or email arrived, describing an incredibly romantic sunset or inspiring seascape, a spectacular mountaintop or a picturesque countryside that he wanted to share with her. Though joining him was for the most part out of the question, they did pull off the occasional encounter - brief, spur-of-the-moment escapades she conceded to when Max was within range. Each time she managed to join him, Iris was astonished by how conniving and inventive she could be when it came to overcoming obstacles to her adventures, in particular one named Gregorio. Like an undercover agent, she kept all channels of communication open at all times. Her cell phone never left her side: it was in her pocket when she ate, under her pillow when she slept, on the ledge of the sink when she went to the bathroom. She was obsessive about constantly checking for instructions regarding her next secret assignment. One last look at her computer before going to bed revealed an email suggesting skinny-dipping at sunrise in Sestri Levante, followed by freshly baked croissants on the beach. One buzz of the cell phone in her suit pocket during a business luncheon announced dinner reservations at a chic new pieds-dans-l’eau restaurant being filmed in Tellaro. One message received while she was at the green grocer’s, debating over whether Isabella would still want the cantaloupe she had ordered even if it wasn’t ripe, unsettled Iris with the touching news that Max was feeling lonely. The frustration she felt at knowing he must miss her as much as she missed him, the resentment she bore toward the responsibilities and commitments that did not allow her to be with Max when he needed her most, inspired her to drop the hard green melon into her shopping basket without further thought.

  The emotional anticipation and last-minute strategies that preceded their clandestine encounters, the doubts about what she was doing and where it would lead that followed each rendezvous, the bouts of growing guilt that pounced on her unannounced at all hours of the day or night, the impenetrable silence that accompanied Max’s downward mood swings - those were the real culprits responsible for robbing Iris of her sleep. Never knowing if and when Max would contact her, in which soon-to-be-televised restaurant he would invite her to dine, or on which borrowed bed or boat or beach they would make illicit love, infused their affair with an excitement that exceeded all supportable limits. Iris was ecstatic, desperate, confused. If losing your dreams could make you lose your mind, so could pursuing them drive you crazy.

  Feeling a presence in the bedroom, she rolled over onto her back, and saw Gregorio looming over her. She rubbed her puffy eyes, sighed, blinked.

  “Open your mouth,” he ordered.

  She did; he popped something inside.

  “What is it?” She stretched her tongue out below her nose, her eyes crossing to take a look for themselves.

  “A little something to help us both sleep.”

  “But I don’t want a sleeping pill.”

  “I’m afraid I have to insist, Piccolina. Now be a good girl, and swallow. We need to get you under control, and the first step is proper rest. Leave it up to me. I’ll find a way to bring our old Iris back.”

  “Signora Iris, I know you said not to disturb you, but your brother is on the phone.”

  “My brother? Which one? I have seven of them.” None of whom would ever call her at the hotel. No one in her family had ever phoned her there, not even Auntie Rosa, or Lily, or any of her sisters.

  “I’m sorry, he didn’t tell me his name, just that he was your brother,” the receptionist replied. “He said it was urgent.”

  “Put him through, Monica,” Iris said. Ever since her father’s sudden death, unexpected overseas calls from family immediately made her panic. She turned to Signora Mangiagallo and said, “Mi scusi, Signora. I have a call from America.” Her voice was curt, but still on the right side of courteous, despite the fact that the old woman had been sitting in her office for the past hour, complaining about the color of the new uniforms Iris had selected for the chambermaids, while stroking the constantly yelping mini Maltese terrier her son had given her for her birthday.

  “Hello?” Iris said into the receiver.

  “Hi, Iris,” said the man on the line. The connection was good, but she couldn’t figure out which brother the voice belonged to.

  “Who is this?” she asked, purposely ignoring Signora Mangiagallo, who rolled her eyes, stuffed the squirming puppy into her Louis Vuitton Speedy Bag, and walked out of the office in a huff.

  “Sono io, Capo.”

  “Max! Why did you say you were my brother?” Iris asked. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “How would I know the girl would believe me? I wasn’t even speaking English.”

  Hearing Max’s voice instead of bad news from home did not calm the thumping in her chest. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you call my cell phone?”

  “Because the goddamn number of your goddamn cell phone is on my goddamn cell phone, which I can’t fucking find. I got a girl here to look up the hotel. I know, I know, I promised not to call you at work, but like they say, promises are made to be broken, right? Anyway, are you coming or not?”

  “Coming where?” Iris asked, not sure whether to laugh or bang her head against the wall. No one on the face of the earth confused her like Max.

  “Here, that’s where. We should be done shooting in about an hour. If you leave now, you should get here right about that time. Don’t make me watch the sunset alone again.” Once Max had sent an email to Iris telling her he remembered every sunset they had seen together, and although they weren’t all that many, he had surprised her by describing every single one in minute detail: where they had been, what they had been drinking or eating, what she had been wearing. She had reread the message dozens of times.

  “But where is ‘here’?”

  “Monterosso.”

  “Monterosso? You didn’t tell me you were going to be in the Cinque Terre!” In fact, she knew precious little about what Max had been up to lately. She hadn’t heard from him in over a week, and was beginning to worry he was suffering from one of his depressions. She had caught her finger hovering over his phone number more than once, but already knew that Max wouldn’t answer her calls or messages when he was down, which would only make her worry more. Besides, she had worked out
a deal with herself to limit her sense of guilt. One thing was caving into his crazy proposals, another was actively seeking him out. She promised herself she wouldn’t. For now.

  “I thought you liked surprises,” Max said.

  “You know I do, Max,” Iris said. “But you also know I need a little lead time. How long will you be there?”

  “Only till tomorrow morning. I have to be in Positano by dinnertime.”

  “Positano?” The Amalfi coast was so lovely, so romantic - so far away. She would never be able to meet him there for the day, like she had when he was working in San Remo, or in Fiesole. Not that it had been an easy trick to pull those times, either; it never was. But she didn’t want to think about that now: she didn’t want to pop open the lid of the jack-in-the-box where the all lies and scheming were coiled up, ready to jump out at her. Another promise she had made to herself was that she would stop lying, very soon. She just had to figure out how.

  “Yep, Positano. But that’s not until tomorrow. Tonight there’s still a sunset in Monterosso. I have a table and a complimentary seafood dinner awaiting me and my guest at this spectacular place where we shot Tuesday’s segment. Are you in?” Iris glanced at her watch; soon the Signora would be retreating to her villa for the evening. She looked at her cluttered desk; how urgent could next year’s advertising budget be, when compared to a sunset that would be here and gone within a few short hours? And how would she ever be able to sit through dinner at home, thinking of Max all alone at that romantic restaurant? Or worse, not alone. The invitation was for two; she wondered who he might share his table with if she did not go.

  “I’ll be there,” she said, her pulse quickening, the wheels of her mind spinning. “Give me an hour an a half.” That should be enough time to wrap things up and drive the sixty-some kilometers to the fishing village turned tourist town, just in time for sunset. And, of course, figure out what to do about Gregorio.

  “Where are you?” Iris asked Bea as soon as she answered her phone.