“Why did youdo that?” Iris said.
“Do what?” Gregorio asked, the guilty hand frozen in midair, still holding the cream-covered knife.
“Why did you cut the cake?” Iris screamed.
“What’s all the fuss about?” Gregorio said. “We all know you’re as bad at cutting as you are good at baking.”
”That’s not the point!” Iris yelled.
“For heaven’s sake, Iris! What is the point?” Gregorio’s eyes darted from Iris, to the cake, to the rest of his family, whose heads bounced back and forth to follow the exchange.
“The point is, it’s mybirthday, andI have to cut the first slice, or my wish won’t come true!” Iris replied. “Everybody knows that!”
“Honestly, Iris. That may be how you did it in your family, but you’re a bit old for that nonsense now, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t! And no matter what you think, I’m telling you that’s the way it’s done! You blow out the candles, then you slice the cake. Is that so hard for you to understand?”
“And just what did you wish for that’s so important, if I may ask?” Gregorio placed the knife on the table, next to his mother, out of his wife’s reach.
“I can’t tell you!” Iris said, her chin quivering. “Wishes have to be kept secret. Otherwise, they won’t come true.”
Gregorio rolled his eyes, then dropped his arms to his sides, palms facing forward, a Saint Sebastian slain by invisible arrows.
“Piccolina, there’s only one thing you could have wished for, and we all know what that is. But you know what the specialist said. You’re not getting any younger.”
Iris detested his condescending tone of voice; it made her feel like a stupid child, made her want to pound him, the way she had wished she could have pounded her big brothers when they picked on her. She knew she looked silly standing there, a forty-one-year-old girl ranting on about the power of wishes, pegging her dreams on birthday cakes and candles. For the first time, she didn’t care. She had plenty to be ashamed of, but she wasn’t going to be ashamed of this.
“You know nothing about my wishes!” she said, her voice shaking as it dragged the words over her surprised tongue.
She could not look at Gregorio. She could not look at the others sitting with their mouths agape. The only thing she could look at was her birthday cake, hoping it could still make her wishes come true. She thought she might go get a spoon to smooth the whipped cream over the knife wound. She thought she might serve the cake before she vomited the rest of the words on top of it. She might have, but she didn’t want to.
“People get separated every day,” Max said. “It’s no big deal.”
“I know, but I’m not ‘people,’ and it’s never happened to me before.” Cradling the phone on her shoulder, Iris grabbed a fistful of tissues from one of the cardboard boxes that shared the Ikea sofa bed with her, just in time to scoop up the gob of snot bungee-jumping from the tip of her raw nose. The sofa bed and the one-room apartment of which it filled half were courtesy of an ex-classmate of Beatrix’s who used the flat on weekends in the summer, and had agreed to rent it to Iris until she could figure out her next move. Why anyone would want a pied-à-terre overlooking the railroad bridge in Recco was beyond Iris, but then again, the fact that she herself was living there was pretty unbelievable, too. Bea had been her salvation that first night, letting her cry, but keeping her calm, imposing a twenty-four hour moratorium on contact with either Gregorio or Max while she thought things through, then pouring her a stiff whiskey. Iris wished she could have stayed with Bea for a while, but the proximity of her house to the Leale villa did not make that a viable option. She wished she could talk to Lily or one of her other sisters. She wished she could see Max.
She found it hard to believe it was her voice talking about the end of her marriage when she phoned Max the following day to tell him about her impromptu birthday performance. She found it even harder to believe when he burst out laughing, and told her she was overreacting. Even if he couldn’t drop everything and run to her side, couldn’t he just reassure her that everything would be all right, that he would always be there for her, even when they could not be together?
“I have to go, Capo,” he said.
“Already?” Before she had walked out on Gregorio, their phone conversations had been brief and to the point. Last minute plans were volleyed back and forth, decisions reached rapidly, desires expressed in feverish whispers. Now she had plenty of serious things to discuss with Max, and no one from whom she must hide their conversations.
“We’ve been on the phone for fifteen minutes. I have people waiting for me.”
“Sorry for keeping you, Max,” she said, feeling hurt. “You go ahead, don’t worry about me.”
“What’s with that tone of voice, now? If the weather improves, I’ll be up there next week. No sense coming with this rain, when all we can do is sit inside.”
“Right,” Iris said.
“I should be able to wrap up this project by then. I have lots of trips coming up. We’ll make plans. How does that sound?”
“Sure, we’ll make plans,” Iris said. She was in desperate need of a plan, but not just for another trip. A plan for working out some sort of arrangement with Gregorio (she hated the word separation; it sounded so drastic), who after a week of listening to her sob into the phone, begging to be left alone, had done just that. A plan for finding a decent place to live. A plan for telling her family about the nightmare she had made out of her fairytale marriage. A plan for her new life with Max.
“Now that you’re free, it will be easier for you to travel with me,” Max said.
“Sure,” Iris said, sniffling; she alternated blowing her snot onto tissues with snorting it back up into her nose. She sensed this was not the time to remind Max that she still had a job, and better hold on to it tight, now that she had to support herself.
“I’ll try to call you later, Capo. Ciao.”
“Ciao, Max,” she said. “I love you.” Her voice was drowned out by the rumble and roar of the eight o’clock Milan-bound rapido speeding over the bridge, rattling the window panes, her teacup, and her nerves so violently she thought they would shatter. When the noise subsided, Max was no longer on the line. She wondered whether he had heard; what, if anything, he had replied.
Iris screwed her fists into her itching, burning eyes. She still had a hard time believing that she had found the strength to leave home, yet could not force herself to explain why. Her action, for all its apparent courage, had been a vile act of cowardice. She had preferred to run away from Gregorio, rather than confess her true feelings to him. Sometimes she wished she had a more serious reason for leaving, like Lily did. But no: Gregorio was the perfect husband, just not for her. She was the one with the problem.
Iris recalled the hurt camouflaged as anger in Gregorio’s voice, how he had pleaded with her to explain. All she had been able to do was cry, and all he had been able to do was flog her with words of reason, in a desperate attempt to convince both of them that her current state was the result of a series of traumatic events, which would quite naturally overwhelm anyone of fragile disposition: the sudden death of her brother, the falling-out with Lily, the stress and strain of her job. She had been tempted, for a moment, to succumb when he begged her to consent to a hospital stay, so that her precarious mental condition might be tended to by professionals before she capitulated to a complete breakdown. He did not think or perhaps dare to ask whether another man was behind her motives, nor did she volunteer the information. It wasn’t just about Max, she told herself. Still, she would be mortified if her infidelity were to be discovered. She knew that if the facts were revealed, she would be instantly and irrevocably demoted from the honest albeit pitiable status of “povera Iris” going through a breakdown, to Iris “la sgualdrina,.” And a slut must be shunned by a such respectable man as Gregorio, and such a respectable family as the Leales.
Iris walked the few steps to the tiny,
windowless bathroom where, after hours of scrubbing, she had transformed the dingy, cheap white tiles into clean, cheap white tiles. She opened the hot water tap to fill the half-size bathtub, and after staring at the water trickle into the tub for a while, she squeezed past the sofa bed to the kitchenette, where she washed down a little blue pill with a sip of leftover green tea, before dumping the rest into the stained porcelain sink.
She opened the cupboard and took out an old Nutella jar living its second life as a glass, and poured some red wine into it. Judging by the number of jars lining the shelf, Bea’s friend, like many women starved for affection, must suffer from an addiction to the nutty chocolate spread. Iris switched on the portable stereo she had bought from a Moroccan down on the boardwalk for twenty thousand lire, but she felt too confused to decide which of the two old CDs she had retrieved from her car best suited her mood. It was only by resorting to a game of eeny meeny miny moe that she was able to pick the Rolling Stones over Béla Fleck. She popped in the CD, then took off her clothes, practicing at being a new Iris by leaving each item wherever it fell, as the beat of “Paint It Black” hammered the air. Another train roared past, causing the compact disc to skip to “Ruby Tuesday,” and a nerve-wracked Iris to gulp down her jar of wine. She poured a refill, turned up the volume on the stereo, and returned to the bathroom, where a cloud of steam hovered over the half-full half-tub.
Without testing the temperature, she stepped in, taking pleasure in the pain caused by the water scalding her toes and ankles and calves, then her bottom, and her tummy, and everything in between, until she had lowered herself to a sitting position, drawing her long legs to her chest in order to fit her whole body inside. Sweat beaded on her brow, as she reached for the jar of wine she had set on the edge of the tub. She took a few sips, then set it down again.
So, this was it. This was what she had wanted so badly for so long. Finally, she could talk to Max whenever she liked, sit in the bathtub for as long as she liked, use as much hot water as she liked, drink as much wine as she liked, and no one was there to hassle her. She slid lower in the tub, submerging the upper part of her body, until the water covered her pointed breasts, her shoulders, her neck. She formed a tighter ball with her body, sliding lower still, until her hair was a curly halo floating around her head, until her eyes and mouth were under the water, until only her nostrils were barely above its surface. She stared at the ceiling through the lens of the water and the filter of steam, then switched perspective, imagining how she would appear from above. If she were in a film, this might be the scene where she had just stopped flailing her arms and legs while someone held her head under the water, except for the fact that she couldn’t imagine a movie murder taking place in such a pathetically small bathtub. The image fascinated her, in a morbid sort of way, but then it suddenly frightened her. She sat up, gulping for air, her hair dripping, her heart pounding, and reached for the Nutella jar. The heavy glass slipped from her wet hand, falling into the tub, spilling the Chianti into the water, which triggered images of another bathtub scene, one of those where the female character slits her wrist and sits there watching the blood drain from her body, tingeing the water crimson.
Iris just sat there, motionless, watching the wine blend with the water, listening to the final verse of “Ruby Tuesday.” She recalled all the times she had listened to that song and cried, wondering whether her dreams were lost forever, whether she would ever be freed from the chains of her existence. Yet she had managed to break away, after all, and now she had the rest of her life to pursue her dreams. Fat tears rolled down her wet cheeks, making little splashes as they fell into the tainted water.
Hugging her knees, Iris wept for the indecisive-impulsive girl who had fumbled her way into her forties; for Gregorio, as much a victim of his own emotional sterility as of her physical sterility; for her siblings Henry and Lily, both lost to her, in different ways. She wept for Max, whose childhood trauma still caused him suffering, and prevented him from throwing himself into their relationship without reserve. Even though he had not dared to openly ask her to leave Gregorio for him, she knew how he felt; she just wished it were easier for him to tell her.
She sat there sobbing until the water turned cold, then pulled the stopper, and watched the liquid hiccup down the clogged drain. She reached for a towel, thinking she should buy a plunger, and some bubble bath, and that she should only drink white wine in the bathtub.
Iris drove her Seicento slowly through the gate, holding her breath as if to lighten the car’s tread on the gravel crunching beneath its tires. For the first time, she was unable to park in the spot assigned to her car, now occupied by the Aprilia motorbike with off-road tires and big fenders which the family had given to Cinzia’s middle son as a gift for his maturità. She smiled ruefully; despite the implications of the term, the high school diploma could not have been bestowed upon a more immature youth. Switching off the engine, she prayed no one would be home. She had sent Gregorio a message the previous evening saying she needed to pick up some things during her lunch break, and he had replied simply: “Certo.”
Soccer jerseys, shorts, athletic socks and T-shirts hung limply in the cold drizzle from a clothesline in the side garden. Cinzia, who detested accumulating laundry, had apparently washed and hung her Monday morning load before going to work, despite the weather. “Easy for you to wait for the sun, you don’t have three kids,” she had snapped at Iris one day, a month ago, a lifetime ago, when they crossed paths by the clothesline, as Iris retrieved the linens that would bring the scent of the sun and breeze to her tired bed. She’d wait a year to do her wash, rather than stink of mildew like Cinzia.
With quick, light steps, Iris walked down the gravel pathway through the small patch of neatly clipped lawn; she could imagine the cool, spongy grass beneath her bare feet, though she could not recall ever straying from the walkway, or wandering through this garden without her shoes on. She let herself in the front door, and tiptoed up the stairs to the second floor. She felt weak-kneed as she turned the key in the lock, then walked through the door she had walked through thousands of other times, in thousands of other states of mind and heart and body, none remotely similar to her current state.
“Zenzero!” Iris jumped, startled by the cat that appeared out of nowhere to run figure eights around her ankles, purring and arching her back, her quivering tail pointing straight at the ceiling. Iris scooped up the cat and held her to her chest, rubbing heads like she always did (used to) when she came home at night. She held her up in front of her, legs and tail dangling: the cat looked well-fed, perhaps even a tad plumper, Iris noted, half relieved, half regretful, then set her back down.
Iris kicked off her shoes by the door, like she always did (used to), but felt no less an intruder as she padded down the hall to the bedroom, where she found the shutters closed and the drapes drawn. Her nostrils twitched at the antiseptic non-odor she associated with Gregorio; her eyes, adjusting to the dim light, saw the bed was neatly made, the dresser devoid of clutter. The room was familiar yet foreign, slightly smaller and stuffier than she recalled, the way it seemed each time she returned from a trip. She switched on the light and filled two suitcases as quickly as possible, then left the room. On an afterthought, she went back to look for the novel she had been reading, which in her haste and mental state when packing her first bag, she hadn’t thought to grab from her night table. But the book was gone. She switched off the light, and dragged the suitcases down the corridor to the door, feeling shaky and thirsty.
She decided to drink a glass of water to calm her nerves, so she went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, hoping that Gregorio had started living dangerously and drinking his mineral water cold. Individual servings of plain, low-fat yogurt in glass jars lined the top shelf of the refrigerator; the remainder of the shelves were empty. A spasm of sadness gripped her as she pictured Gregorio here alone in the morning, his teaspoon clinking against the glass jar as he consumed his plain yogurt in silence
before leaving for the hospital. After work, he would surely dine upstairs with Isabella. Would they talk about Iris? Would they criticize or pity or condemn her? Or would they leave the talking to that same dreadful anchorman with the mole on his face delivering the evening news, while they ate their food from trays balanced on their knees, chewing in silence, pretending everything was the same as before? Maybe, to them, it was. Maybe, for them, it was better.
Iris closed the refrigerator, ran a glass of water from the tap, drank it down, then dried and put away the glass. As she turned to leave, she saw a white envelope on the table, with the name “Iris” scrawled across the front. She picked up the envelope, her bowels churning and cramping. Maybe she was finally getting her period; it was a week overdue, but that was no surprise, what with all the stress and upheaval in her life lately. Her hands trembled as she slipped a finger under the flap of the envelope and opened it, pulling out a single sheet of fine writing paper. She immediately noticed that the letter had been written with the same antique fountain pen Gregorio had used during their long-distance courtship.
Dear Iris,
I took you into my family in the belief that the sweet American girl I kissed on Lago Maggiore that day would be a loving wife for me, a wholesome mother for my children, a second daughter to my mother, a sister to Cinzia.
You were the branch I chose to graft onto our family tree to make it stronger and more vital, to make its fruit sweeter.
Though your branch bore no fruit, I continued to prune it, and water it, and tirelessly tend to its needs. Despite my care, with each passing season, the branch grew more and more crooked, shooting out in a different direction from the rest, as if it wanted nothing to do with the tree.
I should have realized long ago that the branch was affected by a disease that will always prevent it from becoming one with the tree, but I was blind. It wasn’t until you ran off with no explanation that I realized, with Mamma’s help, that I have done all I could do. You have begged me to leave you alone, so I will grant you your wish.
The Complete Series Page 118
