“I have one or two pieces I’d really like him to see.”
“The Ponti?”
She nodded. “And Jean Nugent’s new work.”
Noonan shrugged. “The Ponti’s good. Hugh might like it.” Probably not, though. And he couldn’t think of a single reason for Hugh or anyone else to like the Nugent.
Evangeline must have read his mind and, perhaps, even shared his assessment, because when she looked away there was just enough light from a nearby streetlamp to see that her eyes were moist. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stay open,” she said, her voice full of terrible resignation. “Some days I can’t even remember why I want to. Most of what I do anymore is just habit, starting with getting out of bed in the morning.”
Getting into bed with him was another example, clearly—no need even to state it.
“People get into ruts,” Noonan said. And ruts weren’t always a bad thing. Maybe an artist’s discipline, process and routine—habit, if you will—were just ruts with a purpose, and if you were talented and lucky they paid off in a kind of freedom, at least within the borders of canvas. Counterintuitive, granted, but there you were. The danger was that the purpose of your regimen would be lost, leaving mere habit to explain and justify itself if it could. And when it couldn’t? Well, maybe you were done. Going through the motions, those motions a feeble prayer that was unanswered, unanswerable. Why had he become a nocturnal walker, taking the same route night after night? All five sestieri: San Marco, Castello, Cannaregio, San Polo, Dorsoduro, always in that order, never the reverse, gauging time by space and vice versa. In the end, how different was he from his father, whose strict discipline had never been rooted in anything more profound than a selfish need to be in control.
“I do love Venice,” Evangeline continued, “but it’s absurd living here.”
“Where would you go?”
“Yes, well, there you are.”
“What does your husband want?”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to know? If I could figure that out, I could want the opposite.”
“Try changing something small,” he suggested. “Something that doesn’t matter. See how it feels.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, actually. The small thing I’ve been thinking about changing is you.”
“If you’re trying to hurt my feelings—”
“I’m not,” she said, tears really starting to flow now. “I’m really not. I mean…did you enjoy it tonight? Us? Did it speak to you in any way?”
The question was fair enough. The exhausted orgasm he’d finally achieved, while pleasurable enough, had seemed remote, something happening on a parallel track, vibrations half absorbed by the ground, no danger of collision. Was it just age? The law of diminishing emotional returns played out in the flesh? “I’m glad you came over,” he said, which was true, though it was also true he was now just as happy to return her to her husband and her life.
“Want to hear something crazy?”
“I guess?”
She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt, smudging it with eye shadow. “Here’s what I seem to want from you, Noonan. I want to not see you again for a very long while. That’s the first thing. The second is if Hugh comes tomorrow, I’d like you to come with him.”
“I think you just summed up about forty years’ worth of my relationships with women,” he smiled. “It’s not a new ambivalence. It’s just new to you.”
“Do you want to come up?”
“Now? Christ, no.”
And then she was gone, the slamming door echoing out into the canal. He said her name, then tried the door, but it had locked behind her. Lucky that, for he might’ve followed her inside. He lingered a moment in the doorway, then stepped back a few paces to the water’s edge and looked up, waiting for a light to come on inside, which eventually it did, reflecting off the shimmering water and the dark brick walls that framed the canal. A painting, Noonan recognized. And also a memory? A moment later Eve appeared at the window, reaching outside to pull the shutters closed. He didn’t think she saw him standing in the shadows below, but then her voice came down, barely audible. “Go home, Noonan.” With the shutters closed, the canal was dark again, the painting gone.
He had just rounded the corner and started to descend the three steps into the narrow calle that opened into Campo San Stefano when something hit him in the chest, hard. Before he could make sense of that, there was the inexplicable sound of coins dancing on the stones at his feet. Todd Lichtner’s pale face momentarily swam into view and, when Noonan blinked, was gone. He stepped back, rubbing his breastbone, the pain there the only thing he could be certain was real. Then he saw the other man again, gathering up the scattered coins as best he could in the dark and muttering, “What a rotten bastard you are, Noonan.” It seemed not to occur to Lichtner that a truly rotten bastard might just kick Todd Lichtner in the head as he scrabbled around on his knees, and Noonan might have done just that if he hadn’t been so puzzled by the coins. The punch and the simultaneous explosion of coins illogically suggested that his chest had been full of them, freed by the blow, like candy from a piñata. He would’ve preferred another explanation, but when he tried to form a question, he discovered he had no breath, that Lichtner had hit him harder and with more conviction than Noonan would have ever guessed he possessed. It was all deeply puzzling, so he sat down on the step to watch him grope around in the dark for coins he seemed to think belonged to him. One had come to rest between Noonan’s feet, and he picked it up to examine it. Poor light, but he could have sworn it was an American quarter.
Finally Lichtner got to his feet and came over to glare down at him with a mixture of anger and, unless Noonan was mistaken, dawning embarrassment. Evangeline had apparently been wrong about at least one thing. Her husband did have clue one. Noonan handed him the quarter, which he promptly threw in the canal. “You shitheel,” he said, still shaking, though his pique seemed to wane as his embarrassment waxed.
Noonan’s breath was returning, and with it an idea. Lichtner must’ve had a roll of coins in his fist, to heighten the impact, but the blow had ruptured it. And with that realization, the world, which had momentarily tilted, righted itself. “You’re home early,” he said, his voice little more than a croak.
“Since yesterday,” Lichtner said. “I’ve been staying in a goddamn hotel in case you’re interested.”
“Where were you before?”
“Las Vegas.”
Noonan smiled, the roll of coins making sense now. He’d been playing the quarter slots. How perfectly Lichtner.
“I knew there was somebody. I knew it.” He was still standing over Noonan, his fists clenched.
“If you punch me again, I’m going to throw you in the canal.”
Lichtner took a step back. “Hey, I’m the one with the grievance here,” he said indignantly.
“Nevertheless,” Noonan said, still massaging his breastbone, “fair warning.”
To Lichtner, Noonan’s resolve not to be punched a second time seemed to limit the proceedings unfairly. Still, there could be little doubt that he’d carry out his threat, so he shrugged and said, “You all right?”
“I guess,” Noonan said, though he wasn’t sure and remained seated for the moment. His breathing was returning to normal, but it felt like the other man’s fist was still inside his chest cavity, heaving and flexing. “That hurt, if it makes you feel better.”
“Good,” Lichtner said, offering him a hand. “I’m glad.”
Noonan allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. “What now?”
Lichtner shrugged again, fully embarrassed now. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “This didn’t go the way I imagined. I guess I didn’t think much past punching you in the face.”
“You punched me in the chest.”
“You were on a step. My timing was off. I guess I was impatient.”
Noonan went over to the water’s edge, raised some phlegm and spat into the canal.
“That’s all students over there,” Noonan reminded him. “Kids.”
“What the hell,” Lichtner said. “We’re behaving like children, we might as well drink with them.” He actually seemed disappointed that Noonan wasn’t more enthusiastic. “I probably shouldn’t go home yet. Not until I’ve calmed down.”
To Noonan, he looked calm and then some, like a man more afraid of getting punched by his wife than of punching her. He seemed to comprehend utterly that he was good for about one punch a decade, and he’d thrown it not two minutes ago. “I thought you were staying in a hotel.”
“Just the two nights. If I didn’t find out who it was tonight, I was just going to ask her.”
The bar they found in Campo Santa Margherita was, as Noonan predicted, full of university students, several of whom—recognizable by their outlandish costumes—were celebrating the completion of their final exams. They took a table as far from them as possible, which wasn’t far enough. “Dottore…dottore,” they chanted while a boy dressed as a penis chugged from a pitcher. Noonan ordered a beer, Lichtner a Campari. By the time the drinks came, some of the latter’s indignation had returned. “I knew it had to be you,” he said. “I just knew it.”
“How?” Noonan wondered, curious about his logic. Evangeline, he happened to know, had had several lovers before himself. How had they been ruled out?
“You’re the only man I know who’d punch a woman. That’s repellent. I can’t forgive that,” Lichtner added, in case Noonan asked him to.
“That was an accident, actually. Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”
Clearly he did, though his resentment was such that he couldn’t admit to it. “How about fucking her? I suppose that was an accident, too.”
“Well, there was an accidental quality to the whole thing, now that you mention it. It’s probably over, if that’s of any interest.”
“It isn’t,” Lichtner said petulantly. “It isn’t of interest and it isn’t over, not for me. I’m the one who has to imagine the two of you going at it. How can I stay here in Venice knowing what I know?”
Noonan was tempted to tell him this was just being silly, that if it wasn’t him in Venice it would be another man in Paris, or London, or Davenport, Iowa. Lichtner’s problem, or one of them, was that his wife was unhappy, a condition that, if not universal, was nearly so. She wanted more. More than Todd Lichtner, for one. More than Noonan, for another. Who the hell didn’t? “Maybe you should divorce,” he suggested.
Lichtner polished off his Campari with a sneer. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
“Actually,” Noonan said, summoning as much sincerity as he could muster, “I don’t care one way or the other. Leave or stay. Divorce or stay married. Do what makes you least miserable.”
“I never said I was miserable,” Lichtner replied, his back up now.
“I’m sorry, I thought you did.”
“Maybe right this second,” he conceded miserably. “But Eve and I have weathered worse than you. Far worse.”
“You aren’t going to tell me about it, I hope.”
“And it’s not like I’ve been a hundred percent faithful to her,” he added proudly.
“What percentage would you estimate?”
Lichtner ignored this. “I’ve never screwed the wife of a friend, though. That’s where I draw the line.”
“We’re friends, you and I?” Noonan said.
“We’re not?”
It was amazing to watch a man so all over the emotional map, each new feeling at war with the preceding as well as the subsequent, each important without being satisfying, sustainable or, for that matter, even reliable. Noonan couldn’t be sure whether he was observing a person or a condition common to men their age. “It hadn’t occurred to me, I guess,” Noonan said. Not that it would have mattered.
“That day in church, you broke my heart, Noonan. I felt really close to you then.”
“How close were you? How many pews?”
Lichtner shrugged, looking pitiful. “Hey, you don’t want to be friends? Nobody’s forcing you.”
When the waiter came by, Noonan shook his head. A second drink would reinforce Lichtner’s notion that they were friends, something he was determined to avoid. The other man took out some money. “I’m sorry I punched you,” he said.
“Me, too,” Noonan said. It still felt like the other man’s fist was trapped in his chest.
“You’re sorry you screwed my wife, or you’re sorry I punched you?”
Just sorry, Noonan thought, no more able to pin it down now than he’d been earlier with Evangeline. Did you get credit for being sorry if you couldn’t explain what you were sorry about? Noonan had spent enough time in catechism as a kid to doubt it. There you learned to diagram sins like sentences, and unless you could explain what you’d done wrong and why, forgiveness was withheld.
The students were still chanting when they rose to leave. “Dottore! Dottore!” they shouted. “Fuck yourself! Fuck yourself!” A girl dressed like a wood nymph chugged her flagon of beer, then set it down triumphantly. Nearby, the penis who’d been chugging when they entered was now slumped forward in his chair, flaccid.
Outside in the campo, Lichtner looked like he might cry. “I can’t go home.”
“Sure you can,” Noonan said. He’d gone out for a drink with a man who’d just bushwhacked him because it seemed like the decent thing to do, but enough was enough. “Just don’t punch Evangeline, because then you will be sorry. That I can pretty much guarantee.”
“The thing is, I’m not supposed to be here. In Venice. My plane doesn’t land until morning. How about letting me crash on your sofa? It’s really the least you can do, if you think about it.”
Noonan did think about it, and arrived at the opposite conclusion. Still. “How come you don’t have a suitcase?”
“It’s in a locker at the Ferrovia.”
“Go get it, if you want. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
“Yeah, right,” Lichtner said. “Like I can trust you.”
IKEY’S
I’M UPSTAIRS working in my study when I hear water running outside and realize Owen must be drawing water. And over at the window I see I’m right. My son is down on his knees, surrounded by gallon plastic milk jugs. (How appalled my father would’ve been by those!) His hair is thinning, as my father’s did in that same spot on his crown, and so, of course, has mine. Owen is filling one of the plastic jugs at our outside spigot. When it overflows, he sets it down, screws the plastic cap on tight and places another under the stream. He’s quick and efficient in his motions but doesn’t bother to turn the water off between jugs, so the knees of his pants are soaked. I count seven one-gallon containers, a week’s worth of water for drinking and making coffee and cooking spaghetti and potatoes or whatever.
He and Brindy, his wife, live just over the town line in a tidy, modest house not far from Whitcombe Park. They’ve recently discovered their well is poisoned, its water safe enough to shower in but definitely not potable. Sarah and I urged them to have this tested before they bought the place two years ago, but Brindy had fallen in love with the house, and they waived some inspections once they’d learned that another interested couple was about to make an offer. Apparently, their realtor advised them that in multiple-offer situations, sellers often take the “cleanest,” that is, the offer with the fewest contingencies. Therefore, clean offer, dirty water. State-mandated inspections had already revealed lead-based paint throughout the house, as well as asbestos in the attic and marginally unsafe levels of radon, but Brindy, a West End girl from a large family, loved the idea of living out in the country and couldn’t imagine ever finding another house she’d love as much, so we gave them enough money for a down payment, and they signed on the dotted line. When the other offer never materialized, Sarah
was suspicious. After all, the county’s population has been in steady decline since the sixties. Every third or fourth house in Thomaston has a FOR SALE sign on its terrace and usually stays on the market for two years, even longer out in the country. So what were the odds that Owen and Brindy really had to compete for the place that caught her eye?
I myself had hoped they’d stay in town. Once our Third Street renters’ lease was up, I could’ve put them in there rent-free. The house has been nicely renovated, and it was big enough, even if they had a child, as they were planning back then. And I’ll admit it: I liked the idea of my son and his wife raising a family in the same house where I myself grew up—the symmetry, I guess. But as Sarah pointed out, it was my symmetry, not theirs. Owen grew up in our Borough house, of course, and never spent a minute on Third Street, so it couldn’t possibly mean to him what it did to me. And the neighborhood isn’t, alas, what it once was. I thought they might see the practical side of it, but I don’t think Brindy warmed to the idea of being so close to the store. “It’s their life,” Sarah reminded me when she saw how disappointed I was. “Let them live it.”
Still, when Brindy miscarried last winter, we blamed ourselves for not insisting on complete inspections. We could’ve made it a condition of giving them the down payment, but at the time that seemed unkind and manipulative. Besides which, everyone we’ve talked to since has agreed that while the arsenic discovered in their well might have contributed to Brindy’s miscarriage, it’s impossible to assign a single cause with anything like certainty. Find a well anywhere in the county without arsenic, was how one inspector, an old friend of my father’s, had put it. Find a house over twenty years old without lead-based paint, or an attic that wasn’t insulated with asbestos. Never mind the Cayoga Stream, the real culprit in our lives. Radon and low-level arsenic are the least of our problems.
If my son and his wife were foolish or careless in the purchase of their house, I understand. I do. I remember vividly my father’s pride in our house at the corner of Third and Rawley. Sometimes, early on Sunday mornings, he’d wake up first, get dressed, cross the street and sit there on the curb and just look at the house, as if he couldn’t wrap his mind around it without the necessary distance. Thinking about what I’ve written so far concerning his rivalry with Mr. Marconi, I wonder if I’ve done him a disservice. Like so many men of his generation, he was a creature of postwar optimism who looked around and saw things getting better and not a single reason they shouldn’t continue to do so. Wasn’t our move from Berman Court to the East End proof of how things worked, that such optimism was justified? Not that he’d been unhappy in the West End. I doubt he’d have been unhappy anywhere, as long as we were all together, he and my mother and me. But moving to the East End had changed everything.
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