The Last Will of Moira Leahy: A Novel

by Therese Walsh

I wrinkled my nose at him. "How did it go today?"

  "Remind me never to take the bus again."

  "That good?"

  "Better. And I'm sure my wallet's history. Working with the law was a challenge, even with Giovanni's help, but at least I learned a lot about passeggiata."

  "Silly, isn't it?"

  "Silly. Effing insane. Whatever."

  "Where'd he send you?"

  "A leather shop. Do you want lunch?"

  My mouth fell open, and then I laughed so hard that I sent myself into a coughing fit. "I'd pay to see you in leather pants! Seriously, oh, my God--"

  "Go on. Murder my self-respect."

  I gasped for breath. "It's just so not you. Noel Ryan in leather pants, riding a Harley."

  "We're in Rome. How about a Vespa?"

  I laughed harder.

  "First, I didn't buy any pants. Second, I did own a motorcycle once. Third, I'm hungry, so let's go." He tossed my coat to me, a curveball I barely caught.

  "What? When did you have a bike?"

  "Oh, you know, when I was a pain in the ass adolescent, around the time I grew my hair long. The girls loved long hair."

  "Did they?"

  "Definitely," he said, and winked at me. His hair was still on the long side, sleek and dark like mink. "But it wasn't something my grandfather thought was appropriate for life at the shop. I exploded. Told him I didn't want to run the bloody shop my entire life. I wasn't his son, why did he care what my hair looked like?"

  "Wow." I found the whole scene hard to imagine--arguments between two of the most gentle men I'd ever met.

  "He gave me the bike the next day. I knew I didn't deserve it, but I took it anyway. I just wanted the choice to be mine, you know--stay or go." He shrugged. "Things got better after that. Truth was, I did want to be his son. I was just pissed I wasn't."

  I nodded. Moira and I had struggled just as hard over our identity. Identities, rather; my mother made sure they were separate. Skirts and books and gardening and piano for Moira. Jeans and comic books and football and saxophone for me. How different things might've been for us if we'd had a Garrick in our lives to offer what we didn't know we craved--freedom of choice. Especially Moira. Especially her.

  I stirred from my musings to find Noel excavating me with his gaze. I suggested pizza, and we headed for the elevators.

  "Let's try a club tomorrow night," he said as he pushed the button to the lobby. "Giovanni said he'd take us, even got his mother to give him the night off. It's underground--sounds interesting. You up for it?"

  "Yeah, it's intriguing," I said. "The idea to go to Il Sotto Abbasso came from me, actually."

  Silence, then, "You've been to Putra's, haven't you?"

  How had he known? He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, exactly like mine; "Visit Il Sotto Abbasso," it read. We spoke over each other.

  "You didn't tell me about a note with my name on it?"

  "You went back after what happened with that landlord?"

  "Yes." I hardened my jaw. "And he's not the landlord, smarty; he's the landlady's son--and Sri Putra's brother."

  "Brother?"

  "Half brother. Ermanno's weird, granted, but--"

  "You know his name? Did you talk to him? Did--"

  "Stop! It doesn't matter!" My fingers made ten exclamation points between us. "You're missing the point."

  "No, you are. The note you found--let me see it."

  "Why, starting a collection?"

  The elevator stopped. The door opened. Neither of us moved.

  He spoke intensely. "There are things you don't know, Maeve, things I've learned about that guy--"

  "You mean his love of black magic?" I laughed humorlessly when he reared back. "This response from the man who doesn't believe in myths!"

  "I don't," he said. "But you shouldn't go anywhere near that guy alone. He's a whack job. He could be dangerous."

  "I've done plenty of things in my life alone, Noel. I've faced danger. Whatever delusion you have that I'm a weakling woman is wrong. I won't let you lie to me."

  "I've never lied to you."

  "Not telling the truth then. Dissembling. Whatever you want to call it. That note was meant for me. This is my journey."

  "Then why am I here?" The door closed again.

  "How many times have you gone back there?" I asked.

  "A few. How many times have you gone by yourself?"

  "Just once. Today."

  Noel continued looking at me like I'd let him down. I hated feeling like a scolded child; it made me angry. "Any other notes with my name on them? Did you take anything else?"

  He didn't answer right away, but then he pulled a slip of paper from his other pocket. I took it.

  Visit Villa Borghese

  "Any more?"

  "No," he said, with just as much snap. He punched a button and the doors reopened. I matched him step for step when he strode out.

  "I'm not the bad guy here," I said.

  "Guess that means I am. I'll stop trying to protect you."

  "Jesus, God, there's no reason to protect me! Do I seem like some fragile little wisp of a girl to you? Nothing I own is pink! I didn't even own a purse before today!"

  We rounded the bend, the front desk in sight. Giovanni waved to us.

  "I tried to ring you in your room," he told Noel. "A thing rimarchevole has happened. Your wallet has been returned. It was left by someone unanimously."

  "How--?" Noel took the bag Giovanni held out to him, and pulled out a wallet.

  "Yours?"

  He opened it. "Christ. It really is mine." He dumped the bag's contents on the counter: traveler's checks, cards, a key, and several golden coins fell out; yellow, blue, red, and gray euro notes drifted to the floor. "Unbelievable," he said. "What the bloody hell?"

  Within the rubble, I spied a picture of Garrick snoozing in a chair at Time After Time, his glasses teetering on his nose. "What a great shot," I said, pointing to it, trying to put the bad feelings behind us.

  My words triggered something in Noel. He pulled the photo from the rubble with unseeing eyes, then began searching through the pile with new vigor. Bills scattered across the counter. Business cards fell to the floor. I asked what he was looking for, if I could help, but he ignored me. Finally, he stopped.

  "He stole it," he said in a voice that struck me as dangerously calm, placid as the water in the eye of a storm.

  "What? Who?"

  "Your photograph--the one I took last year at the maple festival. It's gone. That bastard."

  "Who are you talking about?"

  "Your new buddy, Ermanno. He stole my wallet."

  "Wait, wait, back up. You saw him at the apartment? He was there when you took the note? What happened?"

  "I went to the apartment after I bought the tarts," he said, hard-focused on the counter. "I'll bet he followed me when I left. Or maybe he took it right there, in the hall."

  "Did you two argue?"

  "No, I never saw him. But the hall was full of people, kids showing off their presents, that sort of thing. He could've been anywhere. He seems to be everywhere at once."

  I wanted to shake him. "Seriously, Noel, do you hear yourself? You were in a hall full of kids and maybe one of them did take your wallet, yet you blame Ermanno--someone you didn't see. Why? Because he can appear out of thin air, thanks to his astounding skill in dark magic?"

  Giovanni made a sign of the cross.

  "Listen." Noel gripped my shoulders. "Who knew we were staying here? Kit, my grandfather, and him--this Ermanno."

  I remembered the information Noel left on Putra's door that first day, the information Ermanno had seen. Maybe Ermanno had taken it. But there were a hundred better, more rational explanations. "You probably had a card in your wallet with the hotel's address."

  "No. I kept details about your flight and the hotel information in an inside pocket. Here." He opened his jacket, pulled out a paper, and waved it in my face.

  I tried reasoning wi
th him. "You probably dropped your wallet just outside the hotel and someone brought it back in."

  "After sitting on it for two days? No. Everything was returned. My cards. The key to my flat in Paris. My euros and traveler's checks. The only thing missing is your photograph. How many coincidences can there be?"

  "I think you're a little obsessed over trying to find fault with the keris and with Sri Putra and Ermanno. Really," I said when he glared at me. "It's not healthy. In fact, it's a little paranoid." He deserved the dig.

  I turned to Giovanni, who'd just placed a handful of fallen euros on the counter. "Giovanni, how far is Villa Borghese?"

  "Christ all-freaking mighty," Noel said. "Now?"

  "Yes," I said. "Villa Borghese now, and tomorrow night Il Sotto Abbasso. I'll go with or without you."

  His eyes lost a little of their spark. Despite everything--my anger and his questionable behavior--I knew he meant well. I gentled my tone.

  "I read about a gallery in Villa Borghese. Let's go look at beautiful things and try to unravel this mystery. It's not like Ermanno will be hiding out behind a painting with his sledge."

  Giovanni looked between us. "There is the gallery and also a museum. There is much to see."

  "Can we walk?" I asked. "I have a thing against cabbies who try to match the speed of light."

  Giovanni shot Noel an apologetic look. "There is the bus."

  THE CLOUDLESS DAY seemed ideal for a visit to Borghese Park, and it would've been if not for the tension between Noel and me. We ate pizza in near silence. Walked to the bus in absolute silence. Took our seats among people who chatted about the holiday and the museum and where they would eat dinner. The couple before us kissed.

  I leaned against a rattling window and stared out. We traveled a grand avenue, past headless statues, and some who'd kept their heads over hundreds of years. When we arrived, we debarked and purchased admission into the gallery for later that day. There was time, we were told by an attendant, to visit the National Etruscan Museum if we so desired. Noel said he'd like to go, which I took for progress.

  A bunch of us headed up hills, then down again to reach Villa Giulia and the National Etruscan Museum. I couldn't contain my excitement. I don't know if my poppy ever went to Rome, but his enthusiasm for artifacts had rubbed off on me as I grew, and I wanted to see what the Etruscans--who predated the Romans and whose language predated Latin--had left behind.

  Once inside, our group divided, some going straightaway to see the reconstructed temple and famous Nymphaeum on display in the courtyard, while others decided to walk the halls first, as Noel and I did. We stopped to take in the various coffers, vases and terra-cotta sculptures, even a surprisingly well-preserved sarcophagus of a married couple--their facial features clear and smiles broad, despite being over twenty-six hundred years old.

  "I wonder if they'll ever decipher it," Noel said when we stepped before a display of three golden tablets. The writings, Etruscan and Phoenician, provided one of the rare clues in existence about the Etruscan language. The lettering had always looked backward to me, though, like words viewed in a mirror.

  "I doubt it," I said. "That language died over two thousand years ago, and there are so many variables--regional dialects, phonetic spellings, abbreviations."

  "A lost language." Noel's tone was thoughtful. I would've asked what was on his mind, but my head filled just then with long-buried sounds.

  Vinah way pleshee myna.

  I flashed to a time barely within memory's grasp--a day when I stumbled with pudge-toddle feet over rocks on the beach beside my sister. I could hear my mother call behind us, "Slow down, girls. Be careful." Moira tittered in her hand and I held tight to her other one. We ran.

  Vinah way pleshee myna.

  I could not recall what the words meant, but I knew without doubt they were from our language, the language my mother had called Trying Twin. We'd forgotten it by age six.

  I suppose I had more knowledge than most about lost languages, and lost people. But that day in Villa Borghese marked the first time that I seriously wondered if I'd lost myself--not just my music or my sister or a mother who'd call on Christmas. Me. I feared I'd lost my essence, that it was so far gone in the wrong direction that I'd never get it back.

  WE ARRIVED AT the Borghese Gallery at our appointed time and went inside. I appreciated the vivid artwork, the sculptures, the essential dedication needed to accrue all of that splendor in one place. Noel, though, was enraptured. I couldn't tear my eyes from him as he touched, examined, even sketched in the book I'd given him. His brows crushed and lips pursed as he honed in on particulars. I thought his eyes might've misted once.

  He was a beautiful man, I acknowledged, as sculpted as anything around us. I don't know why I found it so difficult to admit that I was simply and strongly attracted to him, and probably always had been. For that moment it was enough to know that I admired his spirit and liked being with him--maybe because he was an artist, as I'd once been, maybe because I fed off his passion in some nameless way. Or maybe just because he was fine.

  "Christ, here's a classic. Look at that press of flesh. So bloody real."

  I turned toward the statue he admired. A man's hand on a woman's thigh, dug deep in her flesh. Yes, that did seem real. But the woman didn't want his attentions. She fought him. Suddenly, my lungs felt heavy. Like marble.

  "Maeve, you okay?" I'm not sure what he saw in my face, but the joy in his eyes vanished as, somewhere, a crow cawed.

  I ran. People stared at me, scowled at such improper conduct inside a renowned art gallery. I kept on, escaped out the door, down the stairs, onto the pavement. The cawing bird flew above me. The bus drew near.

  A dream, I realized, almost with relief; I was dreaming again. I didn't remember falling asleep or where I'd lain my head, but I knew the keris would be in my hand soon, ready for a fight. I looked for the little girl with the red hair.

  Another bleat, another caw, and then a force hit and my lungs emptied as I landed on the grass. I opened my eyes to Noel, his body pinned over mine. I felt the heat of him, his hard breath as he clasped me close, and a chill air where my silk blouse had opened.

  "Get off me!" I pounded at his chest. "Get off!"

  "What the hell's wrong with you?" he hollered into my face. His was red, raging. "You almost died just now! You almost died!"

  I heard, as if from a great distance, the fading sound of a horn and realized the bus had just passed, that I had--truly, not just in some dream world--almost been killed. That I'd almost let it happen.

  And just beyond Noel's shoulder, I saw the wave of a black wing as the bird flew away.

  I CALLED KIT that night and left a message on her voice mail. Something incoherent. I needed a doctor, needed my brain checked because something was very, very wrong with me, because I'd started dreaming during the day with open eyes fastened against reality.

  I stared at the mirror after I hung up. "I'm not crazy," I informed my reflection. "I refuse to be crazy." The woman in the glass nodded in agreement.

  I couldn't bring myself to answer Kit's call hours later, just listened to the message once the light on my room phone blinked. "The doctor I told you about can get you in as soon as you're back," she said. "I wish you'd told me more about what happened. Was it a flashback? I told you it could be PTSD, I told you that might be it." I heard the frantic worry in her voice. "You should come home now. Call me back."

  The sun set and still I sat alone in my room, sustained by panettone and Italian soap operas. Noel knocked on my door with less frequency as the hours passed--"Come on, Maeve, I know you're there"--but I didn't answer. How could I explain my actions when even I didn't understand them?

  Instead, I retrieved the keris from the safe and did something that might seem truly mad. I placed the blade on the other side of my bed--on the other bed, really--then crawled under the covers on my side and turned off the light.

  That moment marked a turning point for me, though I wouldn't
know it until later. Still, ramshackle as I felt then, I sensed an unloosing as the part of me that should've been keeping guard, looking out for my best interests, suddenly disappeared. Poof. Like magic.

  A NEW SONG debuted the next morning. Very, well, piratey. Alvilda would've approved. And it became the perfect antidote to the gale that had whipped my emotions around the previous day.

  I called Kit and left a message: "Sorry about the confusion. I feel fine. Better than fine. It was just a bad day. Don't worry." If self-determination counted for anything, I would make those words true. I grabbed my coat and left before she could phone back and yell at me.

  The heavy drape of yeast and sweet spice enticed me into a nearby eatery, where I sat at a table for two. I devoured a Danish and three cups of espresso, and read a newspaper full of articles on football scandals and fashion and commerce, soaking up culture as my sister would've a good passage of Jane Eyre.

  Moira.

  The thought of her steeped in me, and I let it. She would've loved Rome. The people. The language. She would've noticed things like plants and the color of people's front doors. She would've noticed babies in carriages and stopped to coo at them. She would've enjoyed gelato.

  After breakfast, I purchased a disposable camera and took pictures. Of plants and babies and front doors, and a woman hanging laundry on a line.

  I RETURNED THAT AFTERNOON TO FIND A NOTE TAPED TO MY DOOR.

  Where are you?!?

  --N

  I pulled it off and knocked on Noel's door there in the hall. "You're behind the times," I bellowed through the wood. "Nails are the latest rage."

  No response. Maybe he'd left for dinner.

  Back in my room, I pulled off my coat, set it on the bed. Stared at the other side. Realized. The keris wasn't there. Had I seen it that morning as I'd swaggered around to Alvilda music? Worst-case scenarios stampeded into my imagination--a greedy maid, the bartender who'd noticed it that first day, Noel trying to prove a point. But when I rounded the end of the bed, I found the keris on the floor, in the slight gap between my two mattresses. Warmth traveled my arm when I picked it up.

  Room temperature, my ass.

  That's when I heard something in the other room. Shuffling sounds. People noises. Noel. Ignoring me. I knocked on his door.