“Don’t you?” he whispers. “Don’t you want to come with me?”
“Yes.” The word comes out as barely more than a breath, barely more than a single beat of her heart. Angela lifts her head away and looks at him. “Yes,” she says, louder this time. “Yes, I want to come with you.”
Later her mind would keep skittering back to the bicycle. To the way its wheels bumped over the cobbles. To how its fender rattled as he pedaled across the bridge and down Corso d’Este, leaving the castle and the lights and the dancers and music behind them.
Angela sat on the crossbar, holding her dress up so it wouldn’t get caught in the spokes. Dust stirred and rode on the hot air, the faint grit of the summer night brushed her cheeks. The palazzos were pale and still. No lights burned in their windows and there were no street lamps. In the soft blackness ahead Angela could sense the shapes of the trees, and the house with the glossy front door where she looked for the memory of her mother.
The cobbles eddied into broken pavement. The Angels’ Gate loomed, and for a split second she wanted to let go of the crossbar and stretch out her arms and give the huge doors a mighty shove. She wanted to break the rusted chains and push them open so she and Antonio could ride like this forever, into the emptiness beyond.
The bike judders on the grass tufts between the patches of rubble, and Angela jumps down. She wobbles on her sandals. Antonio laughs, and catches her, and offers her the flask. The grappa does taste of cherries. It makes her cough. He pats her on the back, then slips his arm around her and guides her up the track onto the ramparts where a wide path runs through the avenue of trees that leads to the Montagnola.
When they get there, he hides the bike in a thicket. As they climb the steep path, twigs snatch at Angela’s dress and reach for strands of her hair. She slips and trips on a root, but Antonio has her arm. When they reach the top, he pushes a bush aside, and guides her down the slope a few steps until they are standing on a patch of grass.
They are up so high that, over the feathered tops of the trees, Angela can see the square tower of the Certosa guarding its field of the dead. Colored lights shimmer above the Castello a mile away. The noise of the band, a tune she can’t quite make out, floats on distant beams of pink and green. Antonio’s lips brush her ear. His arms are around her waist.
“You don’t have to,” he whispers. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
She can feel his hips. The heat of his chest against her back.
“I want to.”
She turns around and looks at him, as sure of this as she has ever been of anything. Antonio reaches into his pocket. He hands her the flask. This time she takes less. He takes a swallow of his own, then lays it on the grass and reaches up and pushes her cardigan off her shoulders.
Afterward, Antonio’s leg is heavy across her. He slithers down, his lips fastening, teeth smooth against her breast. When he raises himself on his elbow, she can feel his eyes, and follows his fingers, as they walk the pale contours of her body.
“Was it?” he asks. “Was it your first time?” His hand moves across her belly, the jut of her hip. “It was,” he says. “Wasn’t it?”
Antonio traces a slippery pattern on the inside of her thigh. Angela nods and closes her eyes. In this new place where there is nothing except the feel of him, she loses track of time. Her fingers lace through his hair. She cradles his head, back arching, while his mouth feathers her stomach. She folds her legs around him, and feels her breath leave her body as he lifts her up and moves inside her.
“Do something for me,” he murmurs, and turns her over.
Antonio pushes her hair up. She feels his lips on the back of her neck. He kneels between her legs, runs his hands down her back. A moment later, Angela’s mouth flies open. Her eyes tear. She bites down and tastes dirt. Earth under grass. Her hand clutches at the rolled ball of her cardigan. At a stone. At Antonio, as he reaches for her, and their fingers twine, and lock.
“Ti possiedo,” “I own you,” he whispers. “Ora, tu sei mia. Per sempre.” “Now you’re mine. Forever.”
* * *
The next morning when she wakes up, Angela is dizzy. It takes her a moment to realize where she is. Not on the Montagnola, but in her room. Turning her head on the pillow, she sees slats of sun coming through the shutters. Bright bars wobble and tilt. The room feels unbearably hot. And close, as if the walls are inching in and will crush her. She moves her legs gingerly. Pain rolls up her in waves.
A faint greasy slick meets the tip of her tongue when she runs it across her lips. Saltiness and the taste of copper mixed with the sweet aftertaste of the grappa rises in her throat. Her head spins. She rolls sideways, closing her eyes. Breathing in the familiar smell of her sheets and pillow, Angela slides her hand between her legs and fingers the bruised, swollen skin and realizes that she’s crying. That tears are seeping under her lids and clotting her eyelashes and wetting the pillowcase—not because it hurt, or because it still hurts. But because she’s just remembered that it’s tomorrow and he’s gone.
* * *
Barbara came back a week later.
The heat hadn’t budged. It pressed down like a hard bullying hand, threatening to melt the stones and ramparts back into the marshy delta they had risen from. With no rain and almost no dew at night, the pavements and cobbles were dull in the morning sun. The smell of garbage hung in the air.
Around the city the fields spread away, flat and green. Nothing moved on them in the daytime. The harvest workers, pickers who migrated south to north with the crop and slept in barns and tents, started before dawn and stopped just after sunrise, their tiny figures vanishing like mirages. Standing on the Montagnola, Angela could smell the sour stink of the irrigation ditches on the evening wind and the drying mud of the Po as it lay withering in its banks.
She went almost every day. Walked at sunset like a pilgrim along the path, then climbed the mound and slithered down to the spot where they had lain. At first she thought she could still see an imprint in the scraggy grass. But little by little it faded, and after that she found no sign of Antonio. No hint that he had ever brought her there. If it hadn’t been for the soreness, for the raw skin and the spots of blood, she might have thought she’d imagined the whole thing.
At first she was sure he’d write, or maybe even telephone. Ask her to come and visit him in Padua, which was hardly far away. Or come home. Show up outside her door on a Sunday morning with a bouquet of flowers. But after the second week, then finally the third, she knew he wouldn’t. By the time she started school again, Angela felt an emptiness so large it became a weight. A leaden nothingness she dragged behind her.
She would not hear from him because he did not love her. Or even want to remember her. Having her had been the same as getting drunk or fulfilling a dare. She tortured herself by wondering if he had thought of it already when he stopped to help her clean the shop sign. If he had planned it that far back, or if it was just an impulse on the night. If it had been his idea, or Piero’s—Have fun, little brother—for no more than the price of a bracelet.
When, right on time, she got her period, she slid the blue beads off her wrist and buried them in the bottom of a drawer.
“What’s the matter with you?”
Barbara peers at her through a veil of cigarette smoke. They have finished classes and are sitting at a table outside a dingy café near the market that Barbara has chosen because she says her mother, who would have a fit if she saw her smoking, never comes to this side of town.
Smoking is Barbara’s new thing. She picked it up while she was visiting the college campus where her father teaches summer school in America where, she told Angela, everyone smokes. Everyone, apparently, also drinks beer and listens to Neil Young and a band called The Grateful Dead.
Sitting below the open window of Angela’s room so Barbara can blow smoke straight outside and not enrage Nonna Franchi, they have played Barbara’s new Harvest album over and over. And listened again
and again to Carole King singing “You’ve Got a Friend.” And to The Dead—as Barbara reminds her sternly they must be called—singing “Casey Jones.” The stack of records Barbara brought back with her also includes James Taylor. But Angela’s banned him. She’s insisted that he’s a sop and she hates him. But the truth is, she can’t bear to hear “Fire and Rain.”
Now she looks at her friend through the haze that always seems to surround her. Barbara prefers American cigarettes. Marlboros, if she can get them. The smell makes Angela queasy. The taste of the smoke Barbara breathes out through her nose like a dragon makes her mouth dry. It gets in her clothes and in her hair. She can’t believe that even Barbara’s mother is so indifferent that she doesn’t catch on. But Barbara insists it’s the case, and Angela doesn’t have the energy to argue. She doesn’t have the energy for anything anymore. She feels like she hasn’t been alive since Antonio dropped her off at the top of her street that Sunday morning, smoothed her stained dress, and handed her her ruined cardigan. Lifted her hair and kissed her on the forehead, then rode away as the first light snaked across the August sky.
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “Nothing’s wrong with me, I’m just tired.”
When she first knew Barbara, Angela hadn’t told her about Antonio because she’d wanted to hoard him, to keep him like a treat she was too selfish to share. Now she doesn’t tell her because she’s ashamed.
Barbara reaches across the small rickety table and touches her hand. She had her hair cut in America, too. Her long braid is gone. Barbara’s new bangs fall in her eyes. Sometimes Angela has the disturbing feeling she’s someone else.
“Angie.” The tips of her fingers press the back of Angela’s hand. “Angie, come on,” she says. “Tell me. I’m your friend. Remember? What is it?” Barbara leans forward. “Is it your father?”
Angela shakes her head again. Then she can’t stop shaking it. She goes on and on, as if she can rattle loose the memories that have latched on to her and are sucking her dry, slurping her blood and even her tears like vampires.
Suds billowing and streaking on glass. Antonio’s arms below the rolled-up white of his sleeves. His wet footsteps, and the bounce and jolt of his bicycle. The soft dark and the looming shape of the Angels’ Gate. The thwap of bushes. And distant music. And lights. And Antonio’s hands as they untie the knot behind her neck, and rock her backward, and push her dress up, wadding the slithery nylon into a belt around her naked waist.
Grass. Her legs. The taste of his skin.
Tears streak the eyeliner she is not supposed to wear to school. They pool in the cleft of her chin and drip onto her hands and her lap.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Barbara’s fingers wind around hers. “It’s the factory boy? It’s what’s-his-name? Antonio?”
Barbara gets up, leaving her cigarette burning in the colored tinfoil ashtray. Somehow she circles the rickety table without either tipping it over or letting go of Angela’s hand. She puts her arm around her shoulder.
“That bastard!” she says. “That fucking bastard.”
Barbara squeezes, and Angela feels the silky expensive cotton of her blouse. She smells the sandalwood oil Barbara has taken to rubbing behind her ears and into the hollows of her collarbones.
“Are you pregnant?” Barbara whispers. “Is that it?”
Angela shakes her head.
“Are you sure? Because if you are, my sisters can, there’s—”
Angela shakes her head again, vicious and hard this time, her forehead knocking against Barbara’s jaw.
“Well, thank God for that!”
Barbara wraps both arms around her and Angela presses her face into her friend’s shoulder. She doesn’t care that people walking past are looking at them, or turning away and deliberately not looking at them. She grabs and holds on as if Barbara’s a raft and she’s in danger of slipping off. Of going under and being swept away, drowned in all the pictures she can’t get out of her head.
Barbara’s mother is away teaching a master class in Vicenza. Her father is not coming home from the university these days until well after dark, and sometimes not even then.
“They sleep in different rooms,” Barbara hisses. “Like it’s a hotel.”
Guiding Angela up the stairs and across the landing as if she’s an invalid, Barbara pushes open the door to her bedroom, which is pale blue and white and three times as big as Angela’s, and looks over at the park across the street. She goes and makes tea and brings it back in two white mugs. Then, curled on the bed and clutching a plush velour cat, one of Barbara’s huge collection of stuffed animals, Angela takes the tissues Barbara hands her. Balling them up and dropping them onto the floor until they make a sodden snowy drift, she tells Barbara everything. Every single moment she can remember since the first time she ever saw Antonio. Angela talks until her throat is hoarse. She even tells about the apple.
When she’s finally done, Barbara, who is sitting beside her on the bed, leans forward and brushes the hair off Angela’s forehead. Angela would like to tell her not to do that because that’s what Antonio did, but she doesn’t. Silence eddies around them.
“He’s scum,” Barbara whispers. “I don’t care how handsome they are. Or how well they play football. They’re scum.”
She stands up and walks across the room, her bare feet silent on the white shag rug.
“You’ll feel better,” she announces a minute later. She looks at Angela and nods. “Now that you’ve said it all. It’s catharsis. It’s what psychiatrists make you do. Get it all out. You’ll feel better.”
Angela isn’t sure she believes this. She’d like to, she really would. But she doubts it. It’s like people saying you’ll feel better if you throw up. You do, for a while. Until you feel sick again.
Standing beside her dressing table, Barbara is toying with her lipsticks. Angela watches in the mirror as her hair falls in her eyes. Barbara brought back a bunch of makeup from America. The best is a whole set of lipsticks packed in a little pink case, each one named for a flower. Peony. Iris. Desert Rose.
“Did it hurt?”
Barbara’s voice drops to a whisper. She meets Angela’s eyes in the mirror. “You know,” she says, “when he did it—”
Angela nods. Outside the two tall windows the sun has dipped, leaving behind a deep hazy gold. She feels herself nod again as she watches the honey light drip across the sill and pool on the white fluffy rug.
“Yes,” she says. “It hurt.”
But what she doesn’t say is that she hadn’t cared. That she had wanted him to go on hurting, and that in the days after he left, she had wanted the hurt to stay. That she wants it even now. That what is worse is that it faded, like his footsteps on the pavement. Because at least the hurt meant that for those few hours, he’d been there. And now it’s gone, and she has nothing left of him.
* * *
It was about a week later that Barbara gave Angela her first pair of running shoes. They were white with blue stripes on the sides, and when Angela opened the box she actually burst out laughing. Or did the closest she’d come to it in the last six weeks.
“Well,” Barbara said, “at least I made you smile.”
She sat back on her haunches and blew a thin stream of smoke out Angela’s window. It was a Saturday afternoon. Angela’s record player clicked, dropping a new record, and Neil Young went off mining for a heart of gold.
“But I don’t run,” Angela protested. “I don’t know how.”
Barbara snorted.
“Yes, you do,” she said. “Everyone runs. Everyone knows how. Besides, I’ll show you. I even got you the right kind of socks.” She pulled the plastic shopping bag she had brought with her across the floor, reached into it, and threw two pairs of ugly thick cotton socks toward Angela. “And sweat pants.” A baggy pair of gray pants followed.
“We’ll have to go in the morning, before school.” Barbara stood up, stubbed her cigarette out on the sole of her shoe, and tossed the butt o
ut the window. “That’s it,” she said. She looked at Angela and grinned. “That’s my last one.”
“What?”
Barbara nodded. “I’m giving them up. For the track scholarship.”
This was Barbara’s latest plan. She had decided that even Rome, or Milan, or Torino were not far enough away. She wanted to go to university in America. Her parents weren’t thrilled by the idea. Her father said America was a sinkhole of capitalist, militarist corruption. Her mother said there were perfectly good universities right here in Italy. For once they agreed. They were not going to pay for her to go to America even if she got into the Ivy League, whatever that was.
Barbara, being Barbara, had retorted that she’d pay for herself. She’d get a scholarship. There were millions. Her sister in Milan was sending her information. The easiest to get were in athletics, even for women. Especially for women. According to Barbara, American universities were practically giving athletic scholarships away. Since something called Title IX, and since Joan Benoit had won the first women’s marathon at the Los Angeles Olympics, all the American universities were falling over themselves to have women’s track teams. The only problem was to decide where you wanted to go.
Angela couldn’t help doubting this. But if Barbara was willing to give up cigarettes, she thought she should do her part by pretending to be enthusiastic. Or at least interested. She’d put the shoes and the ugly baggy pants on and go running, once or twice. Play along until Barbara got tired of the whole thing. Or until someone gave her a new pack of Marlboros, or it simply got too cold.
At first it was hard, hot, panting work that made her head swim and her legs ache. Then, little by little, as the weather grew chillier and November slid into December, the runs Angela shared with Barbara grew easier. Eventually they even became pleasant. As January came on, alternating days of low freezing fog with cold hard sunshine, the two girls ran side by side, saying nothing, their feet falling in time. Breath matching breath.
The Lost Daughter Page 20