L'America

by Martha McPhee

  "Just once," Cat repeated, and Elena burned again, an ember receiving a blast of air, "that love that rips through like a knife." And Elena nodded with a warm smile, hoping that Cat would not understand the depths of her ignorance.

  "Is that a claw?" Cat asked, and the subject changed to a debate about iconography: was it God's hand or Zeus's hand or simply the hand of fate. "Oh, think," Cat said, "if those artists, all of them, Raphael and da Vinci and Michelangelo, Cellini even, if they could only have felt the freedom to paint secular subjects. Just imagine what their imaginations would have created. That ache, that pain, it is subject enough."

  "It's fate all the same," Elena said suddenly, surprising herself. She was usually not so bold with her opinions. "If it is God's hand or Zeus's claw or the will of the boy to leave or be left—it is fate." And for an instant she imagined the world without the great religious works of all those artists and in that moment of emptiness she was certain that Cat did not attend mass every Sunday.

  What Elena also knew was that her son would inflict that pain upon Cat's daughter. Francesca was the kind of daughter-in-law the Cellinis would expect and want, but Elena knew that Cesare and Francesca had found each other too young and their relationship would not last. She knew the outcome. She knew good-looking boys always had the advantage. In some small way, though Elena was not malicious, this knowledge made her feel triumphant.

  The exquisite pain: the early hours of the morning, a calm Sardinian sea, a hundred little boats rowing off to the horizon, eager for the daily catch, all the faint noises of such movement, the bells of buoys, the swish and clunk of sailboats rocking in the sway of the water, the creak of ropes. It is a green Smeralda morning: seagulls ride on the back of a light breeze, calling sharply; the forno smell of brioche floods the dawn with the promise of something warm and a little sweet. Francesca is looking for Cesare. She has been up all night. Barefoot, she wears only her nightgown. Her round face and enormous eyes are marred by worry and exhaustion. It has occurred to her slowly through the night, the thought rising like the break of day, that this is the end. Eight years—a long run. She is innocent but no fool. He will be cold and mean because who knows how to end love well? It is the Dutch girl, Francesca knows, from last night's party. The one with the short black pixie and the strappy black dress and all the height, the one who spoke English to Cesare as they drank a little too much wine. The one who cocked her head with flirtatious drunken sloppiness. The one who laughed pre-posterously. The beauty of him, of Cesare, his smile widening for another girl—Francesca had studied it, noting his black hair receding at the temples, his dimples deepening with the curl of his lips as he bowed toward the Dutch girl.

  Francesca's feet ache, the right one is scratched above the instep, enough to cause a little bit of blood to pearl. This romance will be insignificant for Cesare, for the Dutch girl, too, but not for Francesca. For Francesca it will mark the threshold of her adulthood. She sits down on the steps leading to the marina. Her hair is a mess. She has not brushed her teeth. She remembers being fourteen, imagining extraterrestrials finding Pioneer 10, the ship shipwrecked on some gorgeous star, the plaque inside with the picture of Man and Woman designed by Carl Sagan. The naked man waving his hand, inviting aliens to realize he is friendly. They had laughed, she and Cesare, at this simple notion and all the potential of such an expedition. Their futures rose just as bright and grand, full of the places they could someday be. All admiration and curiosity was she for Cesare's passion for America.

  She has found him. She knows where he is. Down there in the marina, among the hundreds of yachts, in the sailboat belonging to her family, the cabin light is on. And he is inside with the Dutch girl, both naked like the figures on the Pioneer plaque, but intertwined, ruining everything and nothing. She sits on the cold cement steps, bougainvillea flowering hopefully all about, and the world smelling of brioche and honey, and she knows any ecstasy they enjoy is because of her, because of her sitting here watching them, their knowledge of her eyes on them, the pain of it ripping in her, how intense that makes their lust. She'll wait. She'll sit here until they have the courage to emerge from the boat into the bright Sardegna morning, the long limbs of the Dutch girl draping Cesare—her sly smile mocking innocence. And then Francesca will stand up so that Cesare can see her, rise above them and ride the back of a gentle breeze.

  Of the year 1519, Cesare did not know much. It was the year that Leonardo da Vinci died (in France) and the year that Catherine de Medicis was born to the richest non-royal family in Europe. She was the granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent and would become Queen of France and mother-in-law of Mary, queen of Scots. Among her many contributions to the world would be ballet, she its first patron. Ferdinand Magellan began his voyage around the world, sailing from Seville. The facts of a year knit time to make history. A young goldsmith from Florence fled to Città, was taken in by his uncle who brought him to Fiori, a small village in the hills above Lago Maggiore, and there he fell in love with his cousin Valeria. Her name means Strength. She was fifteen years old with a vitality that Benvenuto wanted to sculpt and make his own. In less than a year she would be married to someone else. The someone else stands among the guests, his eyes trained on Valeria, the only figure not oblivious to her ache. But you must look hard to catch this, the artist playing games, reading the future. Is he telling Valeria she will be all right? Or is he telling himself she will be all right? Trying to excise the pain, remove it as you would a thorn? No good way to end love, is there? That summer of 1519, when the pope and his bishops were carrying on trying to defend Catholicism and Catherine was born to so much privilege and da Vinci died, Benvenuto made a record of the pain, painted his fresco showing Valeria trying to both pull back and set free the ascending man too beautiful for mortal life. The pain would travel across time, being studied and watched and ignored by generations of a family, until in 1972 a gentle woman named Elena removed it from the Fiori villa, restored it, and placed it on the wall of the Città villa, where it still hangs today with a dull lamp suspended above it, illuminating it as gently as possible with the goal of immemorial preservation.

  Now, sitting in a red velvet armchair, the velvet curtains drawn, Cesare studies the fresco. He studies it as he has many times before, pondering the debatable claw, the notion of fate—but tonight he looks at the painting as if for the first time because Beth is dead. He has just learned of Beth's death today in an e-mail sent by her husband. He had watched her death unwittingly and repeatedly on the television, over and over and over and yet again and would be able to do so for years to come. The little light perched above the fresco casts its glow on the anguish of the girl, the exuberance of the rising star, the fleeing artist, driven not by romantic passion or heritage or money, but by a desire to live untethered from the ground. He watches the fleeing artist enviously, watches the girl grab for his leg. Yes, as if to pull him back or be pulled up and taken away by him. "He wanted to be pulled back," Beth would say, standing there. "He wanted her to take a stand. Look at his left hand," she would say. "Just look at it. Look at the left hand." And Cesare did now, the longing curl of it, of the elegant slender fingers, perhaps, indeed, reaching back for hers. Willful American Beth, his beautiful rebellion.

  Cesare is a forty-three-year-old banker in the town of Città. A rich prominent citizen, he lends money—as his father did and as his father's father did and as his father's father's father did, and so on and so forth—to big manufacturers of socks and shoes, who are trying to become bigger by inventing smarter, tighter, slicker, smoother socks and stockings and soles and heels. His father's big success, in collaboration with Signor Marconi, Francesca's grandfather, and later with her father, was with panty hose. Cesare's big success in collaboration with Signor Agnelli, husband of Francesca, as it turns out, has been with nonskid socks for toddlers. The Cellinis have mastered the art of money making more money, though the world is now in an economic slump and terrorism spreads like a cancer, metastasizing around
the globe. And Beth, gone from him for fifteen years, is gone once again and permanently. Unwittingly he has watched her go many times. Behind her she has left a husband, a daughter, and a father. In their bedrooms, Cesare's wife and son are asleep. From time to time he peers in on them just to observe the gentle rhythm of their breathing, the rise and fall of their chests beneath the blankets. His wife's head, haloed by curly black hair, rests on her pillow, knowing only comfort. She peels her grapes, has the leisure to think of such stuff, the small silver knife and fork working intricately with the skin, slipping it off like a dress. She is the heir to an empire of fruit, ordinary fruits, exotic fruits, exported fruits, imported fruits—kumquats and kiwis and mangosteens, durians, and rambutans (favorites of the orangutan, as it happens). She breathes. In the morning, they will drive together to Fiori to oversee the construction of a swimming pool. Pioneer 10 has long made it past the edge of our solar system. He wonders what Beth imagined as she died? Did she know she was about to die? For how long, how many minutes, did she anticipate it? Who is her daughter screaming for now? The e-mail had been matter-of-fact: "I wanted you to know..." Did her husband know Cesare loved Beth still?

  It is past midnight, September, a thick night of fog, the sort that Lombardy is famous for. The fog shrouds the Pianura Padana, dangerously suspended over the entire plain. From the Alps to the Dolomites, the fog is so dense it would seem you could cut it, so dense it makes the whole world dark. Zero visibility and highway pileups involving dozens upon dozens of cars and deaths, caused by a fatal combination of warm earth and cold air and a plain of land that creates stillness. Cesare can feel Beth; the soft smell of her fills his living room. His parents are out and it is late and she is there. His parents do not like her, or rather they indulge her as a whim of Cesare's. He is a student at the Bocconi in Milan. He fails his exams regularly because he doesn't study. He doesn't study because he doesn't care about economics, as he knows it must come to bear, eventually, upon socks and shoes. He does not want to spend his life thinking about feet.

  Elena assures Giovanni Paolo the American is just a phase. Regularly (and in front of the American) he asks Cesare what happened to Francesca, why doesn't she come around anymore? It takes his parents months to learn Beth's name, to stop referring to her as the American. No matter that two years have passed since the Sardegna morning, no matter that Francesca is long since involved with (and intended to) the Agnelli relation.

  Cesare's wife sleeps, breathing peace. He hears his son rise, five years old, a year older than Beth's daughter. Listens to the boy tiptoe to his mother's bed, listens to the boy lift himself onto the mattress. Imagines Beth's little girl tiptoeing to her mother's bed, each night, every night. He can hear her, her voice like his son's, howling for mama when she has only gone away for a day. For how long? How long before a child forgets? Cesare's father is dead now, a good ten years, died of lung cancer in bed at home. The last thing he said to Cesare was to put out his cigarette; he said it dismissively, offended by his son smoking a cigarette as he lay dying of lung cancer. Cesare was not smoking; he was not a smoker. Never is the answer. You never forget.

  Not so many months after Giovanni Paolo died, Elena died, too; no cause but simple sadness. And here was Beth, cornflower blue eyes, short blond hair tucked behind her ears, nostrils that flare ever-so-gently, with her excitement widening the broad plains of her high and dimpled cheeks. He feels the brightness of her in the room with him, declaring that the fresco can be interpreted however we choose. "That's the brilliance of the artist. He leaves it up to us."

  "You're so American," he says.

  "Sei cosi' Italiano," she counters.

  "Benvenuto's father wanted him to play music."

  "But he wanted to make art. He did what he had to do."

  "He was the director of his own life," Cesare says. "Though in the end he returned to Florence."

  "Campanilismo," Beth says. "No matter the depths of his love for Valeria, he would always have yearned for the bell tower of his Florence." She loves that expression, campanilismo, he knows, the intensely local patriotism of it. Campanilismo: love of one's bell tower, to die for one's bell tower. She loves the concept because it does not have an American equivalent and she loves the differences, the contrasts, of their respective traditions. Now, at the beginning, they do not pose a threat for her, but already he fears the chasm they will make. He will not think about that, though, preferring as always to push aside unpleasant truth, save it for a later date. She smiles, an adorable dimpled smile, pushes Cesare into the velvet armchair, and kisses him indulgently with a hundred small kisses. "Do you think they ever..."

  "Signorina," said with feigned shock. Then, "I'm certain they did." And Cesare begins to kiss her, starting at her toes.

  Two

  Exquisite Pain

  She called him from phone booths all across America, standing at the edges of lonely gas stations by the sides of those long endless roads, while James waited patiently in the car, believing that she was only calling home. It was her grandmother's car, a black Lincoln boat with a gold inscription on the dashboard reading MRS. OLIVER CARTER BRANDT, HI. She would watch the car lounging heavily in the hot summer sun. She would shut her eyes and wish that she could emerge from the booth as some sort of Superwoman and transform the world, wish that it were Cesare behind the wheel, acting the cowboy or Jimmy Dean, arm draped easily over the back of the long front seat the way he liked to do, his black-framed sunglasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He had loved driving the car, the sheer size of it, cruising the canyons of New York City, sailing the wide highways. The static crackled through the international line connecting them, reminding her of the distance. Even so she could hear his voice clearly, his accent bringing back all of Italy so that it seemed she was headed toward him, not away. It was a dare, that was all, this trip west. She hardly knew James. She was twenty-three years old and had just graduated from college.

  It was 1987, a year like any other. The economy was strong, the Dow bullish. Many of those who had not voted for Reagan were secretly delighted that he was president. "America is too big for small dreams," Reagan declared. Indeed this was the year of Milken and Boesky and Gary Hart and Black Monday. The Iran-Contra scandal raged, making indelible the names of North, Schultz, Weinberger, Poindexter. With perspective and distance we know the outcome, the rise and fall, the tide. On October 1, James would be in his first year of graduate school at UCLA, feeling the earth move beneath his feet, Beth a gnawing memory. On October 19, Beth would be working at Lago, a renowned New York City restaurant, entry level, chopping carrots, watching the stories of people losing everything, glad she had nothing left to lose. But back in June things were heady. Gorbachev worked with Reagan to put an end to the Cold War, while Microsoft worked on CD-ROMs. AZT had entered the market. Yoko Ono was promoting peace around the world. Beth marched across this year with all the importance and obliviousness of youth, aware and unaware, the details and facts of the day seemingly irrelevant, relegated to the hazy background of the bright picture of her future that unfurled like a long red carpet for her to stride upon. The only thing that mattered to her was Cesare. He was in her, a ferocious, permanent love, eating her whole and alive.

  In the beginning, the conversations were the same. "Are you coming?" Cesare would ask. "You know I'm not," she would say, trying on toughness. "You are," he'd respond with his cool confidence—a confidence that loved the conditional tense, the "if" that would make all possible. It was by now that she was supposed to have gone to Italy to marry him. At Christmas, however, Cesare had revealed an infidelity, giving Beth a green silk hat that a milliner lover of his had made. It was an exquisite hat, an oval pillbox with gentle tiers, reminiscent of Valeria's hat. Beth knew its entire story as she opened it, knew as well that the woman would ultimately be insignificant.

  But at Easter, Beth did not go to Italy as planned. Then just before Beth's graduation Elena called to ask when she was coming. Beth could imagine tal
l thin Elena standing at the phone near the villa's kitchen, pressing the receiver to her ear as if to push away the static, her anxious anticipation, not of Beth's arrival but of her son's future. Beth was brave, bold even. She was in her apartment in New York City, fire engines screaming up Sixth Avenue, her roommates taking showers, walking around in towels. "Cesare has another girl," Beth had said to Elena to explain that she would not be coming soon, but also with a hope that Elena would somehow rise to her defense and make everything all right. "O cara," Elena had said with tenderness, missing not a beat as if she had been waiting for some time to say this. "He always has another girl." She sounded exasperated, impatient, not with Beth, but with her son, with the fact that he was impossible, irresistible, that he broke hearts. Beth curled the long phone cord around herself, wrapping it round and round until the plastic pinched her skin. It was not the possibility of girls that concerned Beth most. Rather it was the truth of Elena being able to deliver the message to her.

  In the phone booth now, Beth could see Cesare as if he were in front of her: his long Roman nose, his thick dark hair, his bright onyx eyes, his preppy clothes—docksiders, rolled khakis, oxford shirt—though the way he tucked the shirt, the fine cuff he made of the rolled legs, the unbuttoned collar, the sleeves pushed up his arms, all had nothing to do with the dull familiar look. After he returned from America all his friends in Città began to dress like him. He would write to Beth, in one of his many letters, telling her of his ability to clone Americans. He taught them to throw a football, too, taught them to sail it spinning off their fingers, taught them tackle not touch in a vast field at Fiori, taught them with a determination and a passion as if something quite important depended on their learning the game. His American-ness, the hybrid nature of him, grew like something magical, some sort of beautiful flower tenuously blooming, evolving until natural selection rendered it obsolete: the football was abandoned in a corner, lost to soccer.