The Sonnet Lover

by Carol Goodman

  “Oh, it doesn’t have a number, but you can’t miss it. It’s at the end of the hall on the second floor. The one with the picture of a woman with a face like a cocker spaniel.” The rest of the girls double over in spasms of laughter that crease their bare, taut midriffs, and then they practically run from the courtyard, shrieking that they hear the bus coming.

  Whatever would the nuns of Santa Catalina make of them? I wonder as I enter the cool stone foyer and pass the old refectory, which is now used as the student dining room. What would they have made of the strains of Coldplay that drift down the worn stone steps where once the nuns would have chanted hymns as they made their way to chapel? Or the torn-out magazine pictures of bare-chested boys on the doors of what were once convent cells? Teen idols vying with the ceramic saints that remain from the period in the 1960s when the nuns of Santa Catalina were housed here after their convent in the Valdarno was flooded.

  No wonder Zoe had complained about being stuck on this stuffy hall. It’s hot and airless and smells yeasty—a brew of overactive hormones, greasy snack foods, and Noxema. I easily identify Zoe’s door by the postcard of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who does, I have to admit as I raise my hand to knock on Zoe’s door, bear a certain doggy resemblance to some kind of spaniel. When I knock, though, no one answers. I try again, knocking harder in case she’s asleep—or worse—until the door next to hers opens and a girl in sweatpants and rumpled T-shirt appears rubbing her eyes.

  “She’s not here,” the girl tells me in a groggy but pleasant voice. “She got called down to the main villa while she was getting ready for tonight’s dress rehearsal. She looked pretty upset.”

  “Do you know who asked to see her?”

  “The message said President Abrams wanted to see her in the archive room. Zoe said she was afraid that something was missing and that she was going to get blamed for it. Which wouldn’t be fair”—the girl stops to yawn—“because, Zoe said, all that stuff went missing last year.”

  “Okay, thanks, sorry I woke you up,” I say, heading down the stairs and outside as fast as I can. The viale stretches in front of me impossibly long. I wonder whether the trip felt this long to Ginevra de Laura when she ran it in the opposite direction. I tell myself that there’s no need to run, that Zoe’s safe as long as she’s with Mark, but I’m unable to dismiss the sense of urgency that’s taken hold of me—a sense that I’m figuring everything out a step too late. I should have questioned Zoe more about the documents Robin sorted through last year and not taken her word when she said they didn’t find anything in the archives and that Robin never told her where he found the poems. Clearly Orlando thinks she knows something, and now so does Mark.

  When I reach the villa I go straight into the library and start up the spiral staircase, but a sound from below brings me back down into the library. It’s a plaintive, half-strangled weeping, as if someone were trying very hard not to cry but couldn’t stop himself. The sound is coming from the club chair in the shadowy corner where I found Cyril last night, but when I get close enough I see it’s not Cyril; it’s Gene. He’s got Cyril’s silver decanter of absinthe, though, and one of Leo Balthasar’s Cuban cigars.

  “Gene,” I say, “I’m so sorry about Mara.” He looks up so that the light from the pomerino falls on his face, and I’m shocked at the damage grief has done there. Although I never shared his infatuated students’ regard for Gene’s looks (he always seemed a little too pretty to me), I’d recognized in an abstract way that he was a handsome man—toothy and blond, tan even in winter—but now his face looks like a piece of paper that’s been crumpled, his eyes bloodshot and puffy, and his nose as pink as a rabbit’s. He holds up a silver tumbler full of cloudy liquid. I think he is going to make a toast to Mara, but instead he makes one to me. “Here’s to kindhearted Rose. You were the only one of the faculty who gave Mara the time of day.” He swallows the entire glass in one gulp. “Oh, ex-scuthe my bad manners,” he slurs. “You don’t have a drink. Here, let me pour you one. This stuff will knock the socks off you.”

  “No, thanks, Gene, I had some last night. I think it has an unusually high alcohol content. Perhaps you should go easy—”

  “Yeah, trust Cyril to get the real thing. Everything’s got to be authentic. Can’t do a movie about Shakespeare without finding the real Dark Lady.”

  “Gene, have the police come to any conclusions about Mara’s death?”

  “Accident,” Gene says, refilling his glass. “She fell down the steps. All the medication she was on upset her balance. Of course, if Cyril had maintained the garden the way he should…Hey, you know, I could probably sue. Why not? Everybody else does! Oh, but no,” Gene slaps his head in an exaggerated display of forgetfulness, “I just rememmembered, I can’t make Cyril unhappy because then we can’t make our film here, and I can’t make Leo Balthasar unhappy or I won’t get my producer’s credit, and I can’t make President Abrams unhappy or I’ll lose my fucking job—”

  “Gene,” I say, kneeling directly in front of him so he has to look at me. “Mara was going to make a number of people unhappy when she told what really happened on the balcony. Do you really believe it was an accident that she fell?”

  Gene places a finger to his lips and makes a shushing sound. Then he points up with his index finger. “The walls have ears,” he says. I look up and meet the yellow gaze of the painted owl on the ceiling, but I realize that Gene’s talking about Mark, who’s supposed to be upstairs in the archive room with Zoe.

  “I’m going to talk to Mark,” I tell Gene. “If someone pushed Mara—” But Gene’s eyes have acquired the same cloudy film as the absinthe in his cup, and I can tell he’s not listening.

  “It was a regrettable accident,” he says loudly, “most regrettable. Poor Mara never had any luck. She was always saying so herself. After all, she could have married the rich orthodontist her parents picked out for her, but instead”—Gene smiles up at me to show me he’s in on the joke—“instead she got stuck with me.”

  I go up the spiral staircase, the metal steps twanging under my feet. I figure a loud approach will give Mark and Zoe a warning that I’m on my way, but when I come up into the archive room they don’t look as if they were aware of my approach. Zoe, attired in her Juliet costume for tonight’s dress rehearsal, is seated in the desk chair by the window, her head—her own ragged pink hair; she hasn’t donned her Juliet wig yet—buried in her hands, weeping. Mark is standing in front of her, his back to me, staring at the ceiling. They could be a tableau from Romeo and Juliet, the part where Juliet’s father threatens to disown her if she won’t marry the man he’s chosen for her.

  This is exactly the kind of scene I didn’t want to come in on. I know that Mark’s manner with students can often be intimidating. He says that I’m too easy on them and that they benefit from a firm authority figure, but I’ve always thought he could be a little rough. It’s too late to back out now, though, so I clear my throat and step forward.

  “President Abrams,” I say, “can I be of any help? Zoe was working for me here in the archives, so if there’s any problem—” I stop because I’ve just noticed that the room is in total disarray. All the portfolios that Zoe had so neatly stacked and dusted are lying in a disordered heap on the floor; some of the pages have even come loose and slipped out of their bindings. They look as if someone had taken each one by the binding and shook hard.

  Mark turns to me, startled and, for just a moment, furious. I’m so stunned by his expression that I freeze on the spot, but then the anger is replaced by an emotion I can’t quite read. I could almost swear that it’s amusement.

  “Ah, Dr. Asher, perhaps you can be of assistance. It turns out that Miss Demarchis was an accomplice in stealing some valuable documents from the villa last year—”

  “But I told you I didn’t take them—”

  “No,” Mark booms the single syllable out so loudly that I hear the stairs behind me vibrate and Zoe gulps back whatever she was going to say next, “bu
t Robin showed you the documents he was stealing and you didn’t tell anyone. That makes you an accomplice.”

  “But it wasn’t a poem. Everybody’s been asking about poems—”

  Mark whips his right hand up in the air between them and Zoe flinches as though he were going to slap her. Of course he’s only motioning for her to be quiet, but for a moment I, too, had flinched.

  “That’s enough,” he says. “We won’t talk about this any longer until you can tell me where Robin found the papers.”

  Zoe seems about to say something else but thinks better of it when she looks up at Mark. I’ve never seen him look this enraged.

  “In the meantime,” Mark says, taking his voice down to a calmer register, “about the play you’re in—”

  “Please, President Abrams, I’ve worked so hard on this part and Ned’s making such an effort to go on with the performance even after what’s happened. He says he wants to do it as a tribute for his mother. How can I not be there for him?”

  Mark sighs and holds up his hands to me in a gesture of defeat that’s supposed to be a softening. I’ve seen him do this before, though, seen him become conciliatory and gentle at the end of a grueling interview, and it occurs to me now that he does it on purpose. That after wearing down the student he suddenly acts warmly so that the student will feel he’s really a friend. It’s at such moments, he’s told me himself, that he’s most likely to get a confession. It’s a tactic not unlike the methods of medieval inquisitors.

  “Of course you should go ahead with tonight’s dress rehearsal. Especially since Ned is making such a valiant effort to go on. You’re a fine Juliet to his Romeo. I’ve watched you both rehearse.” Zoe practically beams at this crumb of praise. “That is, if you feel up to it.”

  “Oh, yes, President Abrams, I’ll be fine. I’ll just take a Benadryl for the hives,” she says, wiping her face, which is, I notice now, pocked with red spots.

  “Some cool water on your face should do the trick,” Mark says. “Benadryl will just make you sleepy. And we wouldn’t want Juliet falling asleep before the fourth act when she takes the friar’s sleeping potion, would we?”

  Zoe shakes her head and smiles, getting unsteadily to her feet. Mark escorts her to the door, his hand on her elbow. She turns toward me in the doorway and starts to say something, but Mark presses a finger to his lips and says, “You’d better rest your voice now.” The gesture reminds me uncomfortably of the one Gene made a moment ago in the library.

  When Zoe is gone, Mark turns to me in the open doorway, shaking his head. “This job can really get to you after a while. You want to do your best by these kids, but then they go and do such stupid things.” He moves to a shelf and begins reordering the books there. “Here they have an opportunity to live in an authentic Renaissance villa in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and they abuse the privilege by stealing private papers.”

  “How did you guess Zoe had seen the poems?” I ask.

  “Oh, I guessed all along, but last night I happened to catch her and Orlando smoking pot in the limonaia, and so I sent for her today and told her that on top of the pot-smoking I’d noticed that some things were missing from the archives where she worked and that if I thought she’d committed two infractions I’d have to seriously consider expelling her.”

  “So basically you intimidated her into confessing that Robin showed her some of the poems last year.”

  Mark looks up from the jumble of portfolios he’s stacking back on the lower shelves. I wonder whether he really thought he’d find something here among the nuns’ chronicles of Santa Catalina or he just wanted Zoe to witness the effects of his search. I realize that I’ve come to distrust every word Mark says and every gesture he makes.

  “That’s an awfully harsh way of putting it, Rose. It’s not easy being an administrator, you know. I don’t have the luxury of befriending my students. And in the long run you’re not really doing them any favors.”

  “So we’re back to me and Robin again. Are you suggesting, Mark, that I could have prevented Robin from killing himself? But, oh, wait, Robin didn’t kill himself, did he? You and I both know that Orlando pushed him. I thought you were going to tell the police. Did you mention it to them when they came to investigate Mara’s death? It seems unlikely that they would be dismissing her death as an accident if you had.”

  “I’m surprised you’re so anxious to get your lover’s son convicted of murder, Rose. I can’t imagine it will make for a happy reunion with him.”

  I open my mouth to deny that Bruno’s my lover, but then I recognize the implicit threat behind Mark’s words. If I persist in insisting he tell the police what really happened in New York, he’ll tell Bruno that I was the one to seal his son’s fate.

  “So that’s it? You’ve made another deal with Claudia? I imagine with this second potential charge you were able to get her to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. Mara’s death was pretty convenient for you, wasn’t it?”

  “What a truly awful thing to say, Rose. If you want to manufacture a fight so you won’t feel bad about leaving me for your Italian lover—your still-married Italian lover—fine. But accusing me of having something to do with that poor woman’s death—”

  “I didn’t—” I start to object that I hadn’t meant that Mark had caused her death, but then I remember what he just said about catching Orlando and Zoe smoking pot in the limonaia last night. Had Mark evicted them from the limonaia into the pomerino so that Orlando would run into Mara there? Mark must guess at the thoughts forming in my head; I can see him clenching his jaw, something he does when he’s very angry.

  “I’m sorry, Mark, I didn’t mean to imply you had anything to do with Mara’s death. And I’m sorry things had to end like this.”

  “So it is over between us? Do you really think Brunelli is going to divorce Claudia now? Because you’re wrong about her agreeing to set-tle for free. She’s just come into quite a bit of money, and unlike the money that would have come from the lawsuit, this is solely in her name. Bruno won’t get a cent of it if they divorce.”

  “What happens between me and Bruno now isn’t important,” I say. “I think things were over between us long before this.”

  Mark nods, lowering his head to the stacks of portfolios on the table so that I can’t see the expression on his face. When he lifts it up I see that he’s assumed a mask of concern. “I do wish you the best, Rose, no matter what happens between you and Brunelli. The man’s not all bad. He certainly looked pleased to be reunited with his son just a little while ago.”

  “Orlando’s back?”

  “Oh, yes, there was a little misunderstanding about a credit card, but all seems to be forgiven. He’s spoken with the police and, as it turns out, after I chased him and Zoe out of the limonaia he skulked back to his mother’s apartment in town and spent the rest of the night there. So you see, he couldn’t have had anything to do with poor Mara’s slip down the steps.”

  “But that’s impossible. I saw him in the garden just before we found Mara.”

  “Really? I think you’re mistaken, Rose. Were you, perhaps, drinking Cyril’s absinthe last night? You know that stuff can make you see things.”

  “But you can’t just let Orlando back here. He was harassing Zoe Demarchis earlier at the English Cemetery.”

  Mark raises an eyebrow at me. He looks as if I’ve lost my senses. “I just told Zoe that he’s back in the play tonight and she didn’t seem at all upset about it. And she has a big scene with him. He plays the friar.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WHEN I LEAVE MARK, I CROSS THE HALL TO MY ROOM, BUT ONCE THERE I stand by the window, looking out at the garden, irresolute. What now? Everyone’s made some peace with the situation except me. Claudia and Orlando have their settlement, Bruno has Orlando back, Mark has his villa for Hudson, Zoe has her part in tonight’s play, Cyril has his “legacy” for posterity, Leo Balthasar will have his film, and even poor drunk and grieving Gene s
till has his producer’s credit and one percent of the revenue. I feel like the bad fairy who hasn’t been invited to the party—only I don’t have any power to cast a vindictive spell over the festivities.

  And would I really want to? The sound of laughter from outside draws me out onto the balcony. The simmering heat has dissolved into the cool of evening. The roses and lemon trees are releasing their scent into the air like a secret they’ve been holding to themselves all day. The only jarring note in the scene is the police tape around the top of the stairs to the sunken rose garden. I look away from that reminder of Mara’s fall, toward the teatrino, where I can see stagehands assembling a makeshift balcony for tonight’s dress rehearsal. A few of the students and teachers have already laid out blankets on the terraced slope above the grassy stage. Frieda and Lydia are there with a group of students picnicking on the grass, passing around loaves of bread and salami and cheeses and bottles of wine and mineral water. Laughter rises from the grassy bowl, as effervescent as the scent of flowers and the delicate shade of lavender in the sky. Who am I to disrupt this scene? Why shouldn’t I be a part of it? Why can’t I take my piece of this happiness? I go back inside and open my drawers to pick out something to wear, but the clothes remind me of Mara. Besides, I realize closing the drawer, I’m too sweaty to get dressed. I decide to take a bath first.

  I run a hot bath and pour some of the aqua di rosa into the water before sinking into it. I rest my head on the cool rim of the tub and close my eyes. Immediately I hear Mark’s mocking question: Do you really think Brunelli is going to divorce Claudia now? I slide farther down until the water covers my head and drowns out every sound, but it can’t drown out the memory of my own answer to Mark. What happens between me and Bruno now isn’t important. Had I really meant that? Wasn’t I playing as much of a part as everyone else here at La Civetta? When it came down to it, I was as willing as the rest of them to take my “settlement” in exchange for keeping quiet about Robin’s and Mara’s deaths. All I really want—all I ever wanted—from coming here is Bruno.