This Crumbling Pageant Page 10

  “It is where I was raised,” he said. “When I think of home, I think of this place.”

  “Are you quite sure we won’t be disturbing her?” Arpi asked in reverent tones. This talk of family history seemed to impress her.

  “Oh, quite.”

  Signora San Michele lived at the end of an unmarked lane in an antique little building with a front garden and flower boxes in the windows. Even though they were in the middle of the city, it was eerily calm.

  Luca pressed the brass doorbell.

  “Jesus, look!” Scott said. “It’s a wooden house! Holly, do you see this?”

  “Mm-hm,” she said, curtly.

  “It’s a house made of wood! I almost forgot you could build houses out of this material.”

  “Mm.”

  “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Holly?”

  “Yes!” she said, jumping down his throat.

  Scott was taken by surprise. “I’m sorry. Am I annoying you?”

  Holly forced a laugh. “No, honey! Of course not! Why do you say that?”

  He was going to pursue it, but stopped when he saw that she’d turned to face the door again. She was patting down her ponytail looking for loose strands, over and over. In fact, both women—she and Arpi—were primping themselves compulsively as they waited at the door.

  San Michele’s mother was a woman in her early seventies with snow-white hair, crisp English, and an Italian translation of Wolf Hall in her arms. Standing in the doorway, she had stared at the arrivals one by one, while her son talked to her in their northern dialect, before at last receiving the guests politely and admitting them into the comfortably shabby house. In the snug foyer, Scott hung his jacket on a coat tree and kicked an umbrella stand so that it gonged. The woman showed them into the kitchen, where they were seated at a rustic trestle table.

  She prepared coffee. They discussed the eccentric house, a Queen Anne-style Victorian, and she answered questions about the village up in the mountains where she was from, which naturally led to her disparaging the stagnant, pestilence-breeding air of the plains during the summer. She served the coffee with brown sugar. Despite the icy, watchful quality of her blue eyes, the lady showed a measure of human warmth, particularly toward Holly. In fact, Scott sat rooted in horror as she showered his wife with sentimental gifts. She gave her an old, tarnished ring, right off her finger. She produced a little wooden box, opened it, and selected heirloom recipes for her. She waved off Holly’s continual protests, saying, “It’s nothing, my dear. It’s nothing,” but giving her, at the same time, a meaningful look. Was he required to make his status known?

  “Well!” Holly said helplessly. “It’s awfully generous of you.”

  “Yes,” Scott concurred. “Terribly generous.”

  And why was everyone acting so deferential around this old broad? His wife was the worst. At the door, when they were saying good-bye and Luca’s mother told her arrivederci, Holly repeated the informal arrivederci by accident and became beet red.

  The woman then glanced up over her shoulder at Scott as he put on his jacket.

  “A pleasure,” she said.

  He wrung her by the hand. “Nice meetin’ ya, Mrs. S!”

  &

  At long last, they set off for home.

  “That was fun,” Holly said.

  “Yeah,” said Scott. Even though what she’d said was preposterous, he left it at that. Now that it was all over, there was no point in picking a fight.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked, with a hint of trepidation.

  “Sure,” he drawled, feeling charitable and smiling upon all the townspeople.

  They walked lazily. Holly frowned at her shoes, ruminating. Then her face lit up. “I can’t believe how good that hot chocolate was!” Her voice had a false ring to it. “Can you, Scott? Can you believe how good it was?”

  She was peering up at him solicitously.

  “Oh!” he said, when he realized she was expecting an answer. He agreed wholeheartedly. “Yeah! It was tremendous.”

  She kept her eyes on him a little longer, as if sensing that he wasn’t being completely forthright about the hateful hot chocolate. He smiled at her. She pondered her shoes again. So, Scott thought, she did notice what an ordeal this day was for me. Good. Now I’m truly content. All I ask is that she appreciates the sacrifices I make for her.

  This time Holly touched his shoulder and didn’t try to disguise her worry. “Are you sure you had a good time?”

  He stopped her on the arcade.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, and held her face in his hands. “Yes. It was fine. I had a ton of fun.”

  She melted in his hands in dopey happiness. “Really?”

  “Really,” he said, and cleared his throat.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  They continued walking.

  “I’m so glad you enjoyed yourself!” Holly burst out with relief. “I had a great time, too. And it was nice to be able to practice my Italian.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I was afraid,” she went on, “you were going to be mad when we made plans for this evening.”

  “When we did what?”

  “When we made plans to meet up with them again tonight. Remember?”

  “No,” he said, nice and slow. “I think I’d remember that.”

  “Oh. Maybe you weren’t around when we talked about it. But it’s okay with you, isn’t it?” She looked at him anxiously again. “Honey?”

  Mastering himself, Scott said, “Of course, baby. Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

  Before Holly could reply, a man stepped out from behind a column and barred their way. He was black, strapping, and wore an immaculate Yankees baseball cap. In pidgin Italian, he tried to interest Scott in buying something from the blanket spread out next to them on the portico floor. Scott glimpsed a glitzy display of cheap knockoff watches.

  Scott groveled his apologies and attempted to walk on, but the man sidled up and stopped Holly. In a smooth voice and in clear Italian—so clear, even Scott understood—he fed her a rote pick-up line. How’s it going, beautiful? Then he gave her elevator eyes, and wiped the saliva from the corners of his mouth with a practiced hand.

  This conduct set Holly in quite a flutter. She blushed, and was positively batting her eyelashes at the stranger, when Scott stepped in and grabbed the man by the throat.

  “Scott!” Holly cried out in horror. She seized him by the shoulder. “What are you doing!”

  He backed the African up against the brick wall, squeezing his neck with his left hand while waiting to give the signal to his right, crouched all the way back in the shape of a fist.

  “Honey!” Holly pleaded at his side. “Please stop it!”

  He looked down at her, and then back at the stunned African. A maniacal grin was frozen on the young man’s face, yet his throat was swallowing convulsively. Recovering some of his senses then, Scott let go of the immigrant and took Holly away by force.

  After they had gone half a block, she said “Let go of me!” and fought free. She stormed ahead of him. Then she wheeled around. “What is wrong with you?”

  It was an interesting question, but one which he was in no frame of mind to answer.

  His wife stomped off again, and again she wheeled. “Seriously!”

  He followed her down the long avenue. Eventually she let him catch up. They pursued their way home in silence. Holly was mortified. Scott was asking himself if, just perhaps, he had overreacted. The immigrant was young, he allowed. A kid, really. He was probably behaving as he was trained to: first, engage the man in polite discourse; and if that fails, charm the white woman. She will feel inferior when faced with a poor black man, and will be eager to appear inviting. Scott shook his head. Holly had played right into it.

  “So what should we do for lunch?” he asked, as a declaration of truce.r />
  Holly ignored him. They went down some steps to cross over to the next arcade.

  “Watch out for that puddle!” he warned her.

  She waded right through it, soaking her flats and purposely creating a great splash.

  He tried to tease her about this. “Aw, come on. You’re acting like a little girl. That water must’ve been freezing.”

  She fumed in silence.

  Finally he tried to take her hand.

  She recoiled, snakebit.

  Going through one quaint little square, they were forced to slow down almost to a standstill as they joined a procession of shoppers browsing through a Christmas fair. Scott’s eyes strayed over the table of a bookseller, and he called Holly’s attention to one title in particular. He held it up for her.

  “Look, Holly,” he said, wickedly. “It’s a book about you.”

  She tried to ignore him, but her curiosity got the better of her. She looked over at the book. It was Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad.

  It was, under the circumstances, the worst possible joke he could have made, and he knew it.

  “I’m sorry,” he quickly said. “I didn’t mean it.”

  They didn’t say anything for the rest of the walk. Then, at home, with the puppy frisking about, he said, “I really am sorry. It’s just that I had a rough day.”

  She turned on her heels and stamped her foot. “I thought you said you had fun!”

  All day long Scott had been spoiling for a fight, so it felt good when he spat out, “Fun! Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “You said you did.”

  “What was so fun about it? It was horrible, wrenching, mind-shattering. It was a watershed moment, a red-letter day of Godawfulness. Forget about going out tonight—I need at least six weeks to recuperate.”

  “Well, I had a good time.”

  “Of course you did. Because all three of them are in love with you. I’d have a rollicking good time, too, if I were being wooed all day.”

  “So tell me what they did that upset you so much.”

  “First of all, I had that girl Arpi taking potshots at me the whole time. Don’t make that face. She was.”

  “Like what? I didn’t see anything.”

  “You were never around when she did it. In fact, I think she waited on purpose for you not to be around before insulting me.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Second of all, don’t ever try to tell me again that Luca and Luca are only being friendly.”

  “Now don’t start that again,” she said in a menacing voice.

  “You almost had me convinced, you know that? You almost had me convinced that I was being a jealous lunatic. But no: I was right, and you were wrong. I know what goes on in men’s heads, and you have no goddamn clue. So please, do me a favor, will ya? Don’t try to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me, like I’m some sort of crazy possessive freak, and everyone else around me is so fine and noble.”

  “You’re really starting to piss me off.”

  “And another thing. Don’t give me that warning tone anymore. Alright? I don’t like it. You’re my wife, not my mother or elementary school teacher. And I’m not doing anything. I’m just speaking truth to power.”

  “Oh, get out of here. That doesn’t even make any sense. And what does it matter if they are hitting on me? Who cares what’s going on in their heads! What matters is how I feel, what’s going on in my head. And you know I would never do anything. You’re the one I love.”

  It was sweet, yet full of italics. It was her way of reaching out to him.

  “Now,” she said, “let’s think about lunch.”

  But Scott was too scandalized to move on. “So you admit that they’re after you?”

  Holly looked at him in disbelief. “Did you hear what I just said!” she cried.

  “I heard. But I don’t agree. It’s not like you live in a vacuum, Holly. What you do has an impact.” He groped for his meaning. “The signals you send out can set things in motion.”

  “Signals! What signals? I’m not sending out any signals!”

  Scott spluttered, “Please! You’re flirting with everybody! You’re dropping your handkerchief all over town!” His hand went up and dropped invisible handkerchiefs around him. “And you know what? I bet you anything that bastard is hoping you get the job and I have to go back home.”

  “What bastard?”

  “Luca our landlord.”

  “Okay,” Holly said. “That’s it. I want you to stop it now. This jealousy has got to end, Scott.”

  He gave her a forlorn look. What else could he say? She wasn’t getting it. He felt he had exhausted all of his eloquence on her, for nothing. He turned away and muttered, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  “So are we going out tonight or not?” she called out.

  “Yes!”

  The night was one of those garden-variety Euro party nights. At nine o’ clock, they met up with Luca and Luca and Arpi again in the main piazza, joined a group of their landlord’s vitelloni friends, and went out for a cocktail and snacks. At ten they had dinner in an underground osteria that was like a rabbit warren. Around eleven they went to some other place for coffee and after-dinner drinks. Then they hit the clubs—sleazy nightclubs with mobbed dance floors where Scott, looking around at his dancing companions, saw what he really had no desire to see: everyone’s raunchy sex face.

  And then finally they went home, where a lonely pile of dog poop in the middle of the living room floor rounded out the day. But at least Scott, in his view, had done his husbandly duty. By his reckoning, he shouldn’t have to take part in another social activity until the next blue moon.

  He held open a garbage bag for Holly as she cleaned the floor. “You don’t really want to go with them to that thing tomorrow, do you?” he asked. During dinner, he had overheard Luca San Michele organizing a trip to a nearby sanctuary in the morning. “Not tomorrow, I mean today.”

  “Um…” she said, “I was thinking about it.”

  “Oh no!” Scott broke out weeping.

  “Don’t worry.” She gave a disappointed sigh. “You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course I would like it if you came.” She looked up at him hopefully.

  “No, no…” he said, in a dying voice. “You go on without me.”

  12

  Then, for no reason, Scott was given a glimmer of hope.

  It started with a fortune cookie, in a plush Chinese restaurant near the train station, where Holly had asked to be picked up after interviewing for a job in Modena. She reached across the white tablecloth for the fortune and translated from its corrupt Italian:

  “You are one obstacle away from an outstanding future. Congratulations.”

  At first he thought maybe his agent was finally going to call him. But “obstacle” suggested the Kensett painting. Scott hadn’t seen or heard from Janet in five days, and it wasn’t impossible to imagine that their friendship (already an unlikely one) was fizzling out. Whatever expectations Janet may have entertained, whatever—he quailed—“womanly needs” she had, he knew that ultimately he was bound to disappoint. He couldn’t satisfy her forever merely by schlepping her around town dutifully, and returning all of her impassioned tirades with courtesy replies, and forcing down second helpings of fried ravioli. Even amid the air of general dissatisfaction that was always wafting off of her, he had detected a fresh whiff of unhappiness, a new note of impatience as she realized, however obscurely, that this relationship wasn’t doing it for her.

  And maybe it’s for the best, he thought. (Lately, he’d been indulging in despair). I’m not making any progress with the painting anyway. And, after all, she did beat me to it, fair and square.

  “Listen,” he said to Holly, putting his chopsticks aside and taking out his wallet, “I think we should pay with the credit card.”

  “He
llo, Scott,” said a voice in his ear.

  Scott fought the urge to jump to the ceiling. “Janet,” he said, rising from his chair and turning around. “What a nice surprise!”

  She presented her cheek to him. He had never kissed Janet before. Her cheek was mushy. It gave him a new respect for his mother. Both women, he speculated, were in the same age range. Middle fifties. But his mom’s skin still had a little of the old springiness left in it.

  Janet was looking shiftily at Holly.

  “Oh!” Scott said. “I’m sorry! This is my wife, Holly.”

  Janet gawked at him, and capitalized on his lapse by saying, “Typical man. Such a dumbass.” She bared her two front teeth at Holly. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Hi!” Holly peeped, waving shyly from her seat.

  Janet stared at her with one lip snarled and her nose looking pickled. “I know you,” she said.

  “Me?” said Holly.

  “Yeah. How do I know you?”

  Holly tossed her hair back and feigned courage. “I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen your face before.”

  “Yeah,” Janet said to herself, nodding. She looked deep into the recesses of her mind. “Weren’t you trying to sell me something one time? I think I remember you trying to sell me something.”

  Scott diverted her with a nudge. “Okay, Janet. Now you’re the one being rude not introducing your friend.”

  “Hm?” she said, lost in thought. “Oh, that’s Richard.”

  She gestured behind to her lawyer, who was about to seat himself at an adjacent table. He came over after hearing his name, tucking a beat-up attaché case under his arm and holding out a hand. He had a large frame, hulking yet bony, and one of those nice, homely English faces.

  “How do you do?” he said. He shook Scott’s hand, and then lumbered over to shake Holly’s. “Pleased to meet you.” He looked at the table. “Ah, I see you two ordered the prawns. How were they, if I may ask?”