One Summer Day in Rome

by Mark Lamprell

  Lizzie could feel that Constance was getting herself into a state. “Everything okay there, girlie?” she asked. “Shout out when you think it might be time for the bridge.”

  “I was just thinking of Gina and Barbara.”

  “Who’s Barbara?”

  “Saint Barbara,” said Constance. “I was wondering if she did anything when she was demoted.”

  “Who?”

  “Gina.”

  “Why was Gina demoted?”

  “No, Barbara was,” said Constance.

  Lizzie wondered whether she had suffered one of those ministrokes and missed a beat in the conversation.

  Constance suddenly froze.

  “What?” said Lizzie.

  “Gina,” said Constance. “I could go and see Gina.”

  “Whatever for?” said Lizzie, then, as the penny dropped, added, “You’re not going to ask her if she was having an affair with Henry?”

  “Why not?”

  “What?” said Lizzie, warming to her subject. “Hello, have you been having an affair with my husband for the last thirty years?”

  “Not like that.”

  “You’re not seriously considering this?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s bonkers,” said Lizzie. “And besides, how do you even know she’s alive? How would you even begin to find her?”

  Constance paused; they were pertinent questions. “Well, if she’s dead, I guess that answers my question,” she said. “And if she’s alive she probably still lives in the family palazzo. She was there thirty years ago. Romans never move. I won’t make a fuss. I’ll just ask her.”

  “And what if she says, ‘Yes, I’ve been having an affair with your husband for the last thirty years’?”

  “Then I shall know the truth, and I’ll be able to move on.”

  “Really!” exclaimed Lizzie. “How very evolved of you.”

  Lizzie could feel her heart racing and could see that Constance’s cheeks were coloring. Constance shifted the Henry bag at her feet, moving it slightly left, then right, as if she were placing a vase of flowers, just so. The door to the church opened, and a group entered, speaking quietly in a language with a lot of hard consonants. The old ladies listened to work out where they were from.

  “German?” whispered Constance.

  “Further north,” whispered Lizzie. “One of those smorgen-vorgen languages.”

  “Smorgen-vorgen?”

  “You know, from the IKEA countries.”

  They returned to the matter at hand.

  “I have no doubt it would be unsettling,” said Constance.

  “Unsettling? What’s going on? Why are you even thinking this?”

  “Why are you getting upset?”

  “It’s upsetting.”

  They paused while the Smorgen-Vorgens passed behind them.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” asked Constance so quietly that Lizzie had to ask her to repeat it.

  “Not telling you about what?”

  “I’d be devastated to learn something from Gina that I might have found out from you,” said Constance.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why are you avoiding my question?”

  Forgetting herself, Lizzie shot to her feet. “Oh really, Constance, this is too much!” Looking around, she realized all the Smorgen-Vorgens were looking at her.

  “Answer me,” said Constance icily.

  Lizzie sat back down. She understood that grief could strike strangely, but Constance was not the only one suffering bereavement. She did not want to cry but could feel tears welling. Lizzie took a deep breath and managed to speak, quietly but clearly. “Are we going to the bridge or not?”

  “No,” said Constance, “I’m going to find Gina.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you at the hotel.”

  “Fine.”

  Lizzie began to move away but stopped and came back. “You wouldn’t go to the bridge without me?” she said.

  “Of course not,” said Constance as if Lizzie was the one who was behaving outlandishly.

  Out in the Largo dei Librari, Lizzie felt the warm air embrace her. She was very, very upset, and she was lost. She had no idea how to get back to the hotel, but then she was not afraid to ask directions either.

  Inside the church, Constance tried to think back over half a century to where Gina lived. She had been there a number of times, for lunch, and had once stayed overnight, she recalled. She closed her eyes and thought back to walking with Gina. An emerald dress came to her. Gina, laughing. A man ogling and whistling; in those days they did. Then the Virgin Mary appeared, followed by the face of Harpocrates, the Greek god of silence. That was it! Gina’s palazzo was in the same piazza as the ancient basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.

  Constance picked up the Harrods bag. Its weight had grown exponentially against the time she had been sitting without holding it. She headed toward the Via dei Pettinari and crossed the Ponte Sisto, over the river, into the neighborhood of Trastevere. Twice she got lost in the labyrinth of laneways and was forced to ask directions.

  When she finally arrived at the basilica, some kind of fracas had erupted on the other side of the piazza. A crowd had gathered around a young man who was standing on top of a taxi, gesticulating wildly at a young woman who was perched on the stone balustrade of a balcony above him. The young woman was weeping loudly and beating her breast. Constance remained unfazed by the spectacle. This was, after all, Italy. She positioned herself in front of Santa Maria to get her bearings, put Henry down, and looked up at one of her favorite mosaics in Rome.

  At the top of the building, the Madonna and Child were flanked by ten women bearing lamps, all realized in tiny, glittering tessellations, embedded in a sea of golden tiles. She remembered from her studies—God, that all seemed a century ago—that the basilica was much older than this twelfth-century façade and was the very first place where Mass was openly celebrated in the city.

  The last time she had been inside, Henry had taken her specifically to see the columns, purloined from the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla and the Temple of Isis. She remembered him telling her that when some bright spark realized that the faces carved in the capitals belonged to the pagan gods Isis, Harpocrates, and Serapis, Pope Pius IX had had them hammered off. A flash came: Henry smiling and shaking his head at the idiocy of this archeological catastrophe.

  Constance scanned the piazza, and there it was: Gina’s palazzo, she was certain. The walls were painted the same pale brown, although the shutters were a different color. On the roof, she could see the terrace of hardy old potted palms and remembered that she had once admired how they echoed the mosaic palms on the façade of Santa Maria.

  A restaurant and bar occupied the ground floor of the palazzo, where it faced the piazza. Constance picked Henry up and walked to the towering double-entry doors at the side of the building. She felt herself overheating, but mercifully the entrance was in the shade. She rang the buzzer. Eventually, a thin, middle-aged woman wearing jeans and a dirty T-shirt answered. Constance inquired about Gina. Gina’s family had sold the palazzo almost a decade previously. No, she did not know where they went, sorry, but she could ask. She was only a housekeeper, but perhaps her employers could help. They were away on holidays at the moment, but if Constance cared to leave her details …

  Constance thanked the woman but, no, she did not want to leave her details. She had come to the end of the road, and she knew it. The woman said good-bye, and the tall door closed in front of her. Constance wavered on her feet for a moment, buffeted by the heat. She noticed a woman standing in the little street, staring at her.

  It was Lizzie.

  Lizzie approached holding two bottles of acqua naturale. She handed one to Constance, who put down the Harrods bag and gulped the cool water gratefully.

  “You followed me,” said Constance.

  Lizzie nodded.

  Constance paused. “What am I doing, girlie?”
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  “You’re working very hard to avoid doing what you know you must,” said Lizzie.

  Lizzie reached down and picked up the Harrods bag. For the first time in their journey, Constance did not try to stop her.

  “Come,” said Lizzie. “Let’s go to the bridge.”

  TWENTY

  Vaticano

  I CANNOT FIX ON THE HOUR, OR THE SPOT, OR THE LOOK, OR THE WORDS, WHICH LAID THE FOUNDATION. IT IS TOO LONG AGO. I WAS IN THE MIDDLE BEFORE I KNEW THAT I HAD BEGUN.

  —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  Monsters and despots have ruled Rome, inflicting death and misery upon their people throughout the millennia. The upside of intermittent psychopathic dictators is that they get things done, architecturally speaking. Many of the great buildings and monuments around here were initiated by dreadful people—and I mean dreadful—seeking to establish some kind of immortality for themselves.

  Lorenzo Bernini had originally designed the vast basilica and forecourt of San Pietro in Vaticano to surprise and astonish pilgrims, after they had negotiated the dark maze of narrow lanes that twisted and turned from the Tiber, but thanks to the dictator Mussolini, there were no surprises when August and Alice turned off the Lungotevere and parked the motorino. The buildings had been cleared away in the 1930s to create a wide avenue, and they could see Saint Peter’s a mile off.

  August watched carefully as Alice unfastened her helmet, transfixed by the mighty edifice at the end of the Via della Conciliazione. He had studied the basilica, as well as much of the art within, in ARC 325 Architecture in History. He especially admired Michelangelo’s Pietá but made no mention of this because he considered it was a little like declaring you liked chocolate. Who didn’t?

  The thing that August wanted to show Alice was not the basilica itself but the piazza in front of it. He had read about a kind of geometrical magic trick that the piazza performs if you stand in just the right spot and had planned to see this for himself. When Alice had left him at the station, for some reason that was not clear to him, he was filled with regret that he had not shown it to her.

  “So what’s this trick?” said Alice, handing him her helmet.

  “You have to wait till we get there,” he said. “Can I take your backpack?”

  “No, thanks.” She wanted to carry it herself, to remind herself that she was on an excursion; that this was not her real life.

  Chaining their helmets to the motorino, August’s certainty swept away like the sea receding before a tsunami. Why had it seemed like such a good idea to bring her here? Was he showing off? Look what I know about that you don’t know about. He gestured authoritatively toward the Vatican. “This way.”

  “Really?” she said dryly.

  He strode out in front of her, hoping she hadn’t noticed the flush blossoming across his cheeks. Had she noticed? Of course she had noticed. She trotted a little to catch up and fell in next to him. He could sense her looking at him. Any minute now she would ask why he was blushing or what was wrong.

  “So how do you know you’re in love with someone enough to want to marry them?” he said.

  Alice stopped. August looked back at her, surprised. No internal guidance system had warned him that he had been about to blurt that question.

  “I don’t want to talk about Daniel,” Alice said. As soon she said “Daniel,” they simultaneously registered that she had named her fiancé.

  “Daniel?” he said.

  “We’re not discussing him,” she said, and she strode off at full-tilt.

  August scrambled after her. “Sorry, I don’t mean him. I don’t mean you and him,” he said. “I just mean in general.” August had no idea what he meant; he was clawing at the crumbling edges of the hole into which he had inexplicably hurled himself. “I mean, how does anyone know they love someone?” An alien life-form appeared to be forcing August to ask daft questions.

  Alice had not agreed to spend the rest of her life with Daniel without carefully considering the whys and wherefores of such a commitment and was perfectly prepared to provide August with an answer. “You don’t fall in love,” she said. “You choose to love a particular person. Humor, brains, eye-color, smile, there’s a huge list of things that click, that tell you this is the match for you.”

  “It’s a list?”

  “It’s a list,” she said, feeling pleased that her answer had surprised him as she had hoped it would. “For most people it’s an unconscious list, but if you actually write down a list of all the pros and cons that you can think of, then you have a much better chance of making an informed decision.”

  “So you write a list?”

  “Yes,” said Alice plainly.

  It had been Daniel himself who had laid the path for her to find a way to him. He had taught her to make lists to conquer her habit of procrastination, and in the end she had used his methodology to make a list and choose him. Alice reminded herself now that the list had been long and gravely considered. She had not come to her decision, or made her commitment, lightly.

  “What about the magic?” asked August. “What about the voosh?”

  “I guess there’s the illusion of magic, of voosh,” she said, “but really it’s just common sense.”

  “Oh, come on!” said August. He reeled around in front of her with his arms out, like a seagull turning the air. “You sound like a … I dunno … very sad person.”

  “Well, magic and voosh are there, but they’re on the list,” she conceded. “They’re part of the things you consider.”

  “So this guy is magic, but this guy earns more money,” said August, weighing the two scenarios in his hands.

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “It’s not about comparisons.”

  “Lists are all about comparisons,” he said. “That’s exactly what lists are about.”

  “You’re oversimplifying it.”

  August didn’t know what he was doing, but there was something so bleak about Alice’s assertion that he suddenly felt very old. He hunched his shoulders and walked along in front of her with his arms swinging in front of him like a gorilla. She laughed.

  Both wanted to escape the muddy depths where they now found themselves, but both were unsure how to do it. They walked along for a while and passed an old gypsy woman kneeling with her forehead touching the pavement. She was murmuring a prayer, clutching a paper cup containing a holy card of the Virgin and a few coins. A man in a striped blue tracksuit began taking photos of the old woman with his phone.

  “Tell me something stupid,” said August.

  Alice turned to him, wondering what he meant.

  “What’s your favorite color?” he said, giving her an idea of how to play this game that he was suddenly making up.

  “Fire-engine red,” said Alice. “No, Venetian red.”

  “Huge difference, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Shut up. You?”

  “Um … don’t have one.”

  “Sad little man.”

  “Okay, green.”

  “Which green?”

  “Leprechaun-armpit green.”

  Alice lifted her shoulders in a question. Were they playing this game or not?

  “Okay, English-lawn green on a sunny summer morning,” he said, “after a night of rain.”

  Alice nodded; she could see precisely the color he was describing.

  “First pet?” he said.

  “Sam the sausage dog,” she fired back.

  “Alive or dead?”

  “Long dead. You?”

  “My condolences. Boris the frog.”

  “Thank you. Alive or dead?”

  “Eaten by Arthur the Labrador. Can’t talk about it or I’ll cry. First, um, house? No, boring. Love. First love?”

  “Matthew McMahon. Oh no. Joshua Vogelman,” she said, correcting herself. “I loved him first. I was five; he was four.”

  “An older woman?”

  Alice nodded solemnly. “The scandal broke us up. You?”

  “Emi
ly Winterbottom. We were eight, I think. She was my first kiss too.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind the girl’s bathroom.”

  Alice groaned. “Where did you kiss her?” she said. “On the cheek? On the lips?”

  “Oh. On the lips.”

  “Slut.”

  “Me or her?”

  “You.”

  They started to laugh, mostly with relief that they had been able to negotiate their way out of the gloom. Passersby smiled, enjoying the young couple enjoying themselves.

  “Don’t you love the way, whenever you talk about people from grade school, you always use their full names?” she said. “It’s never just ‘Matthew’ or ‘Josh.’ It’s always ‘Matthew McMahon’ or ‘Joshua Vogelman’ or ‘Emily Wildbottom.’”

  “Winterbottom,” he corrected.

  “Winterbottom, sorry,” she said. “Great name, by the way. I’m going to call my first child Winterbottom. ‘Winterbottom! Come and show Mommy what you did at school today!’”

  “What if it’s a girl?” he said.

  “Winterbottom. I’ll call her Winterbottom,” she said. “Winterbottom is bisexual as far as I’m concerned. The name, not the child. Although if the child were bisexual, that would be okay too.”

  “So you’re planning on being quite a liberal parent?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re not going to be one of those cool mums who wants to smoke a spliff with her teen kids, are you?”

  “Oh, God, no!” she exclaimed vehemently, simultaneously colliding with a young nun in a white habit with blue stripes edging her veil.

  Alice apologized, and the nun smiled her forgiveness. August tried not to laugh but could not help himself. When he had chuckled himself out, he asked her why she had reacted so strongly to his question about being a cool mum. They entered a conversation about Alice’s mother.

  Alice outlined her mother’s rise from broken ballerina to super-lawyer. Although she tried her best to portray her mother in positive terms, or perhaps because Alice was working so hard to be nice about her, August got the distinct impression that Alice’s mother was not nice, that she was, in fact, a bitch on wheels. He refrained from sharing this summary with Alice, but he did feel quite sad that Alice was clearly in painful territory when talking about her family in general and her mother in particular.