by Anbara Salam
One day after lunch when Isabella wasn’t in her room as she was supposed to be, I realized she must have slipped off without telling me. I rifled through her bag and took her green notebook back to my room. I only meant to flip through it, to check for clues, scribbles, messages from Sister Teresa. But she came into my bedroom after dinner, half in tears, for her book had gone missing, and with it, all her notes. And so as she went through the common room, desperately turning over cushions and looking behind chairs, I tucked it away. And together we went from room to room, asking girls if they had seen it, and could they just check their bags anyway. And with sympathetic eyes, the girls pretended to search their bags, knowing it wasn’t in there, and I pretended to wait hopefully, knowing it wasn’t in there. But I told her not to worry. That she could copy from my own notes, themselves copied from Nancy’s. That she could sit with me in the library, and together we would make a fresh set. I would help her, I said. She could rely on me.
29.
February
With the beginning of February, all we talked about was our trip to Rome. Girls pulled down books about the Vatican and the Borgheses and discussed what they would wear and speculated about how cold it would be and debated if spring would have begun by then. I was nervously thrilled about the trip, since it would be a whole week away from the academy. And the sisters didn’t come with us, not even Sister Teresa. Instead, Elena and her husband, Signor Moretti, were leading the trip. It would be a proper vacation, with no one to get in between me and Isabella.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, many of the girls were expecting to receive parcels from their beaus. They crowded in the staircase, bugging Donna Maria about letters twice a day. And so, while Isabella was in the bathroom, I opened her bag and slipped in my own Valentine’s note. I had drawn it myself—it was a picture of a swimming pool in the shape of a heart, and I had written Dive in across the top. It was a reference to the day we had gone swimming in the lake, but also somehow the day we had crawled into that bathtub. It was a code between us, I decided.
As I tucked the note in her bag, I took a moment to flick through the pages of her new notebook. It was becoming a habit—flipping through whenever I had the opportunity. Just to check. And stuck in the middle was an envelope with Ralph’s handwriting on it, with a card shoved halfway back into it. My pulse racing, I slid it from the paper. It had a heart on the front, and Ralph had scribbled a line drawing of the Eiffel Tower through it.
Dear Izzles, I miss you terribly. It’s awful cold here and I can’t wait for you to get back and keep things warm for me! I miss you babe. Happy Valentino’s Day as they call it in Italy. Love from your Ralphy.
I replaced the card inside her new notebook and sat for a moment with a strange tumbling feeling in my stomach, like my belly was a raffle drum with bits of paper churning in it.
Ralph. I had forgotten about Ralph. I mean, I hadn’t forgotten him. He came up occasionally in conversation. Isabella had a pile of papers about the wedding, a brochure for his club, a bridal magazine she had ordered in the mail from Milan. But I had forgotten about the meaning of him. I felt a surge of gratitude to Ralph. To his bouncy brown hair and his pug nose and the robust way he always clapped me on the back. God bless Ralph, I thought. God bless his stupid ring and all the stupid promises that came with it.
When Valentine’s Day came, I asked Isabella if she’d received anything, and she said, “Oh yeah, I got a note from Ralph,” and then she smiled. “And yours, of course, Briddie,” she added, and blew me a kiss. And never said anything more about it. But it had been a sort of test. For surely she wouldn’t have mentioned Ralph so easily if Sister Teresa meant anything more to her.
I received a shiny card from Mama with a cartoon elephant holding out a box of chocolates. She’d written a distracted note inside, sending me kisses and asking if the Leaning Tower of Pisa truly leaned. I read it twice, confused. She evidently thought, for some reason, I was going to Pisa. I had a separate card from Rhona. Even the envelope was in her own handwriting, which was a good sign, because it meant Mama wouldn’t have had a chance to peek in before mailing it. I had sent “Cousin” Rhona a long, self-pitying letter during a moment of depression after the New Year’s fiasco, and I’d been dreading her response. I wished I could have unsent my original letter to her—I had no idea what I’d said.
Rhona had written an acerbic yet encouraging note, including bombastic quotes from Virgil annotated with actual footnotes. She said, Quit moping, would you? And Why not try to learn some German? And so on. Thankfully, I had obviously not gone into much detail about my despair. The caustic way she tried to pep up my spirits made me chuckle, and I put it with Mama’s card on my bedside table.
We were leaving on the trip the next day, so we were excused from classes while everyone packed. There were lost bags and loose buttons and rips in seams and moths in the closets. Donna Maria ran around from room to room, handing out tags for our luggage, and Elena appeared to remind us we were permitted only one suitcase each.
* * *
The next day, Donna Maria woke us by walking through the corridors ringing a brass handbell. The bus had pulled up outside, its engine running white steam in the cold air. We lugged our suitcases down the academy steps, where the driver, a mustachioed man wearing a navy dinner jacket, hauled them into the luggage compartment. We stood outside the bus, patting our furs and stamping our feet and smoking cigarettes and rubbing our hands together. I looked around for any sign Sister Teresa had come to say good-bye, but she wasn’t there.
We piled into the bus and I took a window seat so Isabella could sit across from Sylvia. The metal seat was icy even through my skirt, and we practiced blowing vapor into the frigid air.
The trip to Rome was to take at least five hours, so we settled in with a thermos of tea and a paper bag filled with brioche rolls. And as the bus started, we turned and waved at Donna Maria on the steps of the academy. Joan began singing “You Send Me” and we all joined in, even Ruth. As we drove down the hill we passed the train coming the other way from Switzerland, and it released a feather of smoke that shot straight into the still, cold air. As we followed the lake and drove through La Pentola and past the square and down the narrow little streets, we cried out to each other.
“Oh, that’s where Sally cut her foot.”
“Look, Katherine—didn’t that old man try to grab a feel?”
And as the bus pulled farther away from La Pentola, we drove through winding lanes, bouncing over the uneven roadway, past tilting slate walls, through rows of plum trees, and then Nancy’s voice was the only one to call out.
“There’s a great farm back there,” she said, pointing through a line of chestnut trees to a white building. “And there, there’s a Baroque fountain; it’s beautiful.” And on she went, until she was no longer speaking, and we sat in silence, the tiredness ringing in our ears, and girls rested their heads on their neighbors’ shoulders and dozed.
When we finally arrived in Rome, we were all cranky and saddlesore. I had a headache, and Patricia had come down with a cold that made her sniffle every two seconds, which was infuriating to listen to. We were to be housed in a Pentilan convent, and everyone groaned as they climbed out of the coach. We’d all had enough of nuns by then. Me especially.
I looked around our surroundings without much enthusiasm. My thighs were numb and my breath was sour from all the cigarettes I had smoked on the bus. Wet snow in the roads had been churned into a gray slurry, and melting frost from the eaves of buildings dripped grimy water onto the sidewalks. The whole city smelled of burned chicory and engine oil and had the dank, cool humidity of a train station.
I was put into a narrow coffin of a room with a pipe behind the wall that ticked through the night, but in the morning it gurgled and pinged and became warm, and I squirmed around in bed until I could press my cold feet against the warm spot on the plaster. Lucky nun, I thought, who’d b
een allocated that room.
Our first day in Rome was a free day for exploration. Isabella and I went down to breakfast late, since I had taken my time getting dressed and putting on lipstick. We drank weak coffee in the Pentilan refectory, with crescent-shaped hazelnut pastries that had been delivered in white cardboard boxes. Along with Sylvia and Katherine, we walked to the Spanish Steps. I still hadn’t shaken off my headache and wasn’t in the mood to run up and down the stairs, so I took pictures with Katherine’s camera while the girls posed like movie stars.
We marched through the streets arm in arm, dodging glamorous women swathed in mink, children kicking soccer balls, drips of icy water falling from window ledges.
“We’re in Rome, girls!” shouted Katherine as we entered Piazza Barberini, and we cheered. A man sweeping trash on the other side of the square cheered back, then ran across, broom in hand, to jig across our path, and Katherine broke out of line to dance with him.
For lunch we drank seltzer water and ate cheese and tomato pizza, toasting each other with all manner of silly and improbable toasts: “To Modess”; “To Elena’s earrings.” After lunch, Katherine found a blind cat sleeping outside on the still-warm saddle of a scooter, and we stood about and stroked it until Sylvia spied a flea.
My headache was getting worse, and it now felt like there was a boiled egg pressing behind my left eye. “You know, I think I might give the Trevi Fountain a miss,” I said, as Isabella stopped at a kiosk to buy cigarettes. I tried to sound bright, uncomplaining. “I can feel a headache coming on.”
“Oh no, really?” Sylvia pulled off one of her gloves and pressed her hand to my forehead. She laughed. “My hands are too cold to tell if you’re sick!”
“I’m fine,” I said, smiling. “I have some aspirin in my room.” I crossed my fingers and hoped nobody would volunteer headache pills from their own purse. Now I’d said it out loud, I desperately wanted to be lying down somewhere dark and warm.
“OK, darling.” Katherine leaned in and kissed my cheek. “We’ll miss you. Feel better soon.”
Isabella hugged me, a lit cigarette between her teeth. I waved good-bye as cheerily as I could. As soon as I turned away from them, it was a relief to let myself wallow in the headache. I walked back to the convent feeling sluggish and miserable. Despite all the glories we’d been promised, Rome wasn’t so different from Milan. There were newspapers soaking ink into the gutters, and mounds of dirty snow on street corners. Men on scooters drove over the edges of the sidewalks and called after me. I stepped into a puddle and icy, filthy water leaked through the lining of my boot and into my sock. I peered into store windows through foggy glass and watched black-haired women in turtlenecks laughing, a barber snipping a toddler’s hair as his father yawned on a bench. And as I watched the warm happiness of these Italians, tucked indoors with their families, having lunch, children chasing each other under table legs, I felt keenly their coziness, and, outdoors in the cold, my own uncoziness. I wondered if there had ever been a time when I’d been indoors, sipping cocoa with Granny, or laughing with Isabella, and there had been others passing by the window, marveling at my air of easy belonging.
I arrived back at the convent, stiff and miserable with the sort of wet cold that creeps into your bones and makes your jaw ache. I took two aspirin, wiped off my lipstick, and crawled into bed to warm up. The blankets were flimsy and the mattress hard. For the first time, I wished I was back in Connecticut. I wanted to be in my own bed with a hot-water bottle. And then I would be allowed downstairs wrapped in my comforter to watch TV while Mama made chicken noodle soup.
I allowed myself a few doleful tears. I was longing for home. For snowball fights with Flora in Bloomsville Park, and browsing department stores with Granny. For Mama’s Nat King Cole records, and the sound of the washing machine running, and getting into the bath, my own bath, with the ceramic fish still stuck on the tiles.
* * *
The next morning I felt stiff and sickly, and it was Greta, in the end, who came to find me. She brought me the blanket from her own bed, and although I wasn’t much warmer, the extra weight was reassuring. I slept, and woke later when Sally and Greta sat on the edge of the mattress, rustling paper shopping bags.
“Bridge, are you OK?”
I murmured something, but my tongue was thick and hot.
“Should we get Izzy?” Greta said, touching my forehead.
“Is she here?” I said with some effort.
Sally shot Greta a look. “Uh, no, honey. She’s with Katherine and Sylvia, trying on bridesmaid dresses.”
I pictured the three of them lined up on a wedding cake, adorned with swirls of fondant icing. “Oh, I didn’t know.” My voice sounded mournful, even to me.
Sally patted my hand. “We’ll leave a note under her door.”
Greta rooted around in one of her paper bags and pulled out a glass jar of fresh orange juice, which she handed to me. My wrist was floppy and weak and I struggled to hold the bottle. I drank half the orange juice in one go, thinking as the pulp stuck between my teeth that there had never been anything more delicious ever created in the world.
I slept fitfully again through the whole day, tossing with a fretful, looping dream in which I had to drive to a grocery store before it closed, only my keys were missing. The following morning, I woke as the pipe next to the bed gurgled and, carefully minding my aching bones, crept to the bathroom and lay in a hot tub until the water went chill, then filled it up again and again, not caring at all about the others. Rather, I thought of my bathroom at home, and the little ceramic fish, and felt I was somehow owed all the hot water, since my own bathroom was so far away.
Back in bed I had another hectic dream where I was eating layers of white fondant, forcing it into my mouth, where it stuck, heaving and cloying in my throat like I was swallowing gauze. I sweated and shivered in the thin convent sheets, thinking of Isabella as Sylvia’s bridesmaid. Wouldn’t Sylvia be worried about Katherine and Isabella as her bridesmaids? With both of them flanking her, she would look like the ugly stepsister. Perhaps this meant Isabella would have to extend the same invitation and ask Katherine to be her bridesmaid? Absurdly, I thought, I wouldn’t show her up. With my thick ankles and frizzy hair, Sylvia should choose me as a bridesmaid, and I would let her shine like I was a dumpling in white crepe.
At six I made my way out of the bed, sitting on the edge of the frame for five minutes before dressing slowly, my fingers numb and clumsy. The convent bathroom had no mirror on the wall, but one of the girls had set up her makeup mirror on a wooden sideboard. In the lipstick mirror my eyes were bright, my cheeks pink. I took a seat on one of the bucket chairs in the lobby and waited for the girls to arrive and change for dinner. I stared into the distance for some time, transfixed by the velvet of a small moth on the edge of the visitors’ book. The girls came bustling through the door of the convent a little before seven, bringing a great blast of icy, wet air. One by one, the girls embraced me, their cold cheeks pressed against my hot ones.
“Darling, are you feeling better?”
“We missed you today!”
“Do you want some Tylenol?”
“I have Alka-Seltzer.”
“That’s not going to help her!”
Isabella came in behind the others. “Briddie!” she said, waving. “Oh, you missed the Vatican! I can’t believe what bad luck it is for you!”
I couldn’t help it at all but began to cry right there in the lobby.
“Briddie, shit, I’m sorry—that was so tactless of me.” She grimaced, putting the damp wool arm of her overcoat around my shoulders.
“It’s OK,” I said, snuffling and thinking it was the worst tragedy to ever befall anyone.
“Well, we can go again, can’t we?” Greta slipped her arm through mine on the other side. She was looking around as if for someone to confirm with her.
“Sure we can,�
� crooned Sally. “We’ll ask Elena. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“And you didn’t miss much anyway,” Katherine said. “Tourists—so many tourists everywhere. Joan fell on the stairs and grazed her knee and it was wretched. And you could hardly see anything. You know—you can see everything better in the catalog.”
“When we get back, we’ll make it up to you,” Isabella said. “Right, Sylvia?”
“Of course, darling,” Sylvia said.
“Come, let’s get you washed up.” Isabella pulled me along the hallway to her room.
“How was the bridesmaid dress fitting?” I said bitterly, trying not to trip on the uneven flagstones that lined the corridors.
“What?” Isabella looked surprised. “Oh.” She gripped my wrist right over my pulse. “Briddie, the dresses were divine. Silk organza. Of course, Sylvia’s not going to order it from here.” She unlocked her room, turned on the spare bulb, and tossed her coat carelessly onto the floor. With a groan, she threw herself on the bed, which squeaked dangerously. She slipped her shoes off her heels and dangled them from her toes over the edge of the bed. “I’m going to write to Ralphy about that organza—it was like being wrapped in a cloud.”
I blinked at her. “Will you invite Katherine?” I said.
“Hmm?” Isabella was examining her nails.
“Will you invite Katherine to be your bridesmaid, do you think?”
Isabella blinked up at me. “Briddie.” She grinned. “You’re a genius!” She sat up on the bed. “That’s a marvelous idea. Oh, won’t she scream when she finds out I’ve been engaged all along?” She laughed.
I was happy that she had declared me a genius; my body was strumming feverish and frosty.
“I suppose you’ll be practicing together for Sylvia’s wedding. You’ll have to attend rehearsals and fittings and stuff.”
