When he originally matriculated at the University of Milan, at eighteen, Vincenzo slogged—with increasing discomfort—through Petrarch, Cecco Angiolieri, Dante, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli. In the early winter, when he was starting to be sure that he’d made a serious mistake, he met the legendary and legendarily tetchy economist Federico Caffè at a bookstore where Vincenzo worked nights. Caffè was in Milan giving a series of lectures at Bocconi and Vincenzo, immediately taken with him, went to several of these lectures. Soon, Vincenzo was submitting his application to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Caffè had recommended to him, brusquely telling him that there was nowhere else to study economics, not even Roma Tre, where he taught.
He thought about it for a month but, despite thorough contemplation, found himself still facing a choice between two absolute unknowns. Still, he applied to MIT, as if to test the hypothesis, and when they accepted him he viewed it as a sign. By the time the first flowers were budding on the azaleas, Vincenzo had dropped out of Milan, forfeiting all of his exams, and accepted their invitation to study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dante and Machiavelli were each concerned principally with the political machinations of their times. The Italian Renaissance was bookended by the two—a poet at the start, a philosopher at the end, both Florentines, both men whose minds were not lost in any abstract clouds, but were stuck intractably in the thick mud of politics. Dante spent much of the Commedia flaying and trumpeting the villains and heroes of his political era, while Machiavelli did much the same in his plays; even his philosophical works were designed to appease the ascendant regimes (as those powers changed, so—subtly—did his philosophies). Both men chased the favor of the leaders in Florence and both missed the mark completely, with ruinous results for their lives.
But Vincenzo had trouble sustaining even the slightest interest in Dante. The decision to allow his lack of interest in Dante and Dante’s peers to rearrange his plan was, in a way, the first truly pivotal decision of his life. It was made blindly, madly, with no sense of what it might mean for him.
Of the Commedia’s three sections, only Purgatorio was, for young Vincenzo, of anything resembling an abiding interest. Paradiso and Inferno were unreadable—so morally neat, so didactic and certain: the horrendous being treated horrendously and the righteous being rewarded. Vincenzo, already an eager atheist by the time he encountered the Commedia at seventeen, was especially off-put by the savage medieval logic and the gleeful sadism.
At least, on the mountain of Purgatory, souls were in a more complicated position. These venial sinners suffered only a partial loss of grace. The only of the three books set on earth proper, it offered a glimpse of people as flawed as the reader and, for that matter, the writer.
All of those undergoing their purgation had to overcome an absurd and arbitrary punishment to locate the solution to the problem of their sin. The sin would be abstract, indelible, and unmoving, but the punishment clear, finite. In the end, the victims would find salvation in escape from their present circumstances, from literally climbing the mountain toward heaven.
The lesson, weighed out properly, was nothing more than a florid insanity, chaotic as the coastline. Saints were tossed into heaven on a series of misplaced whims. Paradise was geography. To hear the heavenly trumpets sounding, you should arrange your body skyward and commence marching. The lesson was that God was capricious and unthinking and that salvation could be located only by force, by unthinking exertion, by way of celestial topography, by walking uphill.
And, yes, Vincenzo thought, maybe that was it, after all. At a loss for other explanations: why not.
On his last morning in New York, Vincenzo sat on the futon sofa in Leonora and Sam’s minuscule one-bedroom walk-up in Brooklyn while she brewed coffee. She’d cleaned up in preparation for his arrival; the smell of stale cigarette smoke was still palpable, if mingling noxiously with Ajax and chlorine. There was a squeaky-clean ashtray on a side table. Sitting with Sam, Vincenzo labored to keep the conversation focused on snow. The snow had melted and then there had been more, but it wasn’t as heavy. This dialogue was difficult to sustain.
“I wonder if it will ever melt,” Vincenzo said.
“Totally, I know what you mean.”
“Some of it seems to have hardened into these iceberglike protrusions that are, I think, attached, or welded to the pavement, or something. I feel I am walking on slippery rock formations.”
Sam nodded somberly, revealing no appreciation of Vincenzo’s charming banter. “Maybe I’m just used to it, because I’m from . . .” and Sam went on for a little while, but Vincenzo was not quite there.
At the next pause, he said, “In Italy, we had no snow.”
Sam nodded again, as before, very methodical.
Vincenzo glanced at the door to the kitchen, where Leonora was supposedly making coffee. What he wanted to do was grab her and explain what a waste of space Sam was, to kick Sam out of that apartment right away; he’d tell her what a waste of time her job was, and tell her that she should come with him to Bolivia. Come with him to Italy when he went to repair the house. This had been the problem for several years: he wanted, desperately, for Leonora to step into the role of pseudo wife—a platonic wife who was half daughter, half wife, half sister, and half friend.
But Leonora was avoiding him and had been ever since their conversation at Saks. Instead, he had Sam. When Vincenzo finally let the conversation wander away from urban ice floes, Sam put forward a challenging combination of puffed-up confidence and deference. No doubt, Sam’s understanding of his identity was jumbled by circumstances, too. Sam seemed as if he wanted to impress him, but instead of being flagrantly obeisant or withdrawn (either of which would have been perfectly fine, under the circumstances), he forced himself forward brashly.
“You relieved to be done with the Bank?” he asked, adopting an amazingly overfamiliar posture in one of the early salvos.
“Relieved? No. I think I made the right decision, but I’m not relieved. It’s actually very unsettling.” Vincenzo was distinctly aware that Leonora, in the kitchen, was only a few feet away and absolutely within hearing range.
There was an excruciating pause and then Sam spoke again, saying, “Leo told me you’re thinking of working for a nonprofit.” Leo? Vincenzo didn’t like that at all. “That’s what I’d do if I were you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He heard Leonora clear her throat as she poured the boiling water from the kettle into the French press.
“It was a think tank. I think,” Sam said. Then, maybe unsettled by his embarrassment, he added, “It sounds interesting?” Doubtlessly, he had wanted this to be a declaration, but it misfired and came off like a question.
“They call themselves think tanks, but thinking is many times removed from their main priority. It could be stupendous—especially if I were given autonomy. That would be wonderful. And it would be great to focus on issues, instead of working around internal politics. It would be nice to give my most honest opinions oxygen. But these think tanks each have their own stable of projects and their own prejudices, they all have their own biases, so they will each want me to stay on the story that they have.” He wondered why Leonora was being so quiet, why she wasn’t coming through. What did she think?
“Why not just retire?” Sam said.
“Because I’m fifty-four.” Vincenzo stared at him incredulously until Sam nodded and looked away, and from his shrinking expression it was clear he had been caught off guard by the severity in Vincenzo’s voice. Everyone, it seemed, was having a hard time controlling their innuendo. Then Sam, implying that maybe he had not actually understood why he’d just been spanked, pressed the point, saying, “But you have that house in Italy?”
Leonora returned then with the coffees and shot a wide-eyed look at Sam, indicating that he should shut the hell up about her father being ripe for retirement. She no doubt remembered what happened the last time she’d suggested Vincenzo go to Piedmont and
clean house. Then again, maybe it wasn’t self-serving: Maybe she and this person Sam really wanted him to keep himself occupied with that house? That it was, probably, the nicest vacation house in their collective grasp, however, did give their persistence an unfortunate implication.
Vincenzo said, “It seems like the only thing people want to do with me now is talk about my plans. It is as if people are picking over my bones, you know, before I’m—” He left it there.
“Don’t be dramatic, Dad,” she said and tucked an escaped lock of hair behind her ear. She’d been just about that tense since he’d lashed out at her, and that was understandable.
“Let’s talk about your plans,” Vincenzo said. “What do you have planned, Sam?” he said.
Leonora wilted slightly. But Sam, to his credit, didn’t flinch. He said, “I’m writing plays for now and working a stupid day job at AOL. Is that good enough?”
Vincenzo liked that, a lot. He liked the growling life in it, the bluntness. In it, he saw that Sam, in his enthusiasm to be perceived a certain way, had hopefully sold himself short—that he was, actually, capable of being defiant and bright.
“If it’s good enough for Leonora,” Vincenzo said, “it’s definitely good enough for me.” Vincenzo turned to Leonora, who was turning red with something—anger or embarrassment. She didn’t realize he sincerely liked Sam’s response, of course, and how could she? Ultimately, he wasn’t sure why he was so furious with her, but he was, and it was getting worse. Ever since Thanksgiving, he’d been incrementally angrier with her with almost every interaction. Or, maybe it went back further than that?
Outside, later, after a surprisingly delicious vegan lunch, the three trudged along the snowy path that cut across McCarren Park, listening to their own crunching feet. Leonora had brought a hiking pole, and was stabbing the snow as they went. By now, Vincenzo was quite sure that he was being unfair to Sam, but that, either way, Sam was not up to par. The sky was clear and the sun set the snow crystals alight so that the whole snowy field sparkled blindingly, all the more so when a strong gust kicked up dusty ice particles in mini-tornadoes. Leonora offered her sunglasses but Vincenzo declined. Of course, he shouldn’t be so angry with her, but he couldn’t help himself. It was a peculiar state of mind for him, this angriness. He’d felt that way often when young, with his mother, and with his siblings, and even with Cristina, in their early years, but he’d relaxed in his middle years, or so he’d thought.
“Jesus, it’s freezing,” Sam said and stopped walking, took a cigarette out of his jacket.
Leonora and Vincenzo stopped while Sam tried to light up in the gusting wind.
“Have you started smoking again, too?” Vincenzo asked her, squinting at the harsh air.
“No,” she shot back. And then, after a second, she stared at him searchingly, and said, “Would you hate me?”
He shook his head and looked at Sam, who had managed to get a small flame going, enough to light the lip of his cigarette. “You can smoke if you want to,” he said.
She stared at him briefly, assessing his sincerity. Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t smoke.” She and Sam exchanged a look.
“You really don’t have to lie to me,” Vincenzo said.
“Why would I lie to you?” she said.
“Because I’m your father.” He grinned at her.
She returned his smile, delivering it just as emptily, and they both laughed a little. Then she lifted her hiking pole and pointed it at him as if it were a fencing blade. “En garde,” she said. But it wasn’t a challenge, it was a distraction.
“Mercy,” he said, “you killed me.”
“That was easy,” she said, and he wanted to hug her, to tackle her with affection, but it would be too odd. So he waved them onward. And the three of them set off again, the wind and snow lashing their exposed faces.
When they came to the United States, Vincenzo and Cristina had both been isolated, but Cristina, unemployed and friendless, had been more so. Then Leonora was born and Cristina adored the infant too much, or so Vincenzo had thought at the time. The baby screeched nonstop and forever needed a new diaper, or more milk, or more sleep. The cycle was relentless: diaper, feed, cry, diaper, feed, cry, and it didn’t improve for almost a year. And because Leonora’s late-night wailing was too much for Vincenzo, and because they had four bedrooms in their house, he took to sleeping upstairs in the sweaty second-floor master bedroom (this was before they had their central air-conditioning installed), while Leonora and Cristina were downstairs, where it was cooler.
And while Vincenzo adored looking at his young daughter and she smiled at him, too—a sunburst of a smile that ignited circuits in new sectors of his soul—and he felt warmer around her than he did around anyone else, including Cristina, time was a harsh mistress. Time strained them until there was a good fissure and it was clear that Leonora was Cristina’s baby. Diaper, feed, cry—it was really up to Cristina, since Vincenzo was forever at work. Leonora was fascinated with her father, inescapably, had a daughter’s crush on him. But the rest, the deeper needs, all of that became locked deep within the path between Leonora and Cristina.
One Sunday morning, when Leonora was three, he entered the kitchen and found the two of them whispering and laughing. As soon as he entered they fell silent and looked away, stifling their laughter. There was another world, evidently, one he could not access, and it was marvelous and alive and it took place in rooms in which he was not. That was when he realized that he’d lost his wife to his daughter, in a sense, and lost his daughter to his wife.
There would be no second child, because his sex life with Cristina didn’t recover in time. They talked about having more children, but life had a way of intervening and sex, once ignored for long enough, ceased to interest either of them. After a while, she may as well have been a sibling. They did have occasional periods of intimacy, usually during vacations when life’s patterns were toppled, but they were too intermittent. The rest of the time their life was placid enough. Like any bad habit, it ceased to be a question at some point. He went elsewhere, had affairs that sometimes lasted a few months, but the women were rarely invested because it was clear he had no intention of leaving his wife. His trysts were discreet and she never learned of them. She might have had affairs, too; it was likely that she did, in fact, and he had known when they had probably happened, but he never asked. Better not to know. There came a point when a fight could be spotted from the first step of a conversation and both parties chose not to fight, they surrendered at once, because what was left to accomplish? The muck remained unturned.
Finally, when Leonora went to college, Cristina and Vincenzo started to rediscover each other as human beings. At first, it was awkward, but he found he liked her more once Leonora was not in the house—he had been steadily, if mildly, annoyed by the way she fawned over Leonora, and it was a relief to see Cristina without that distracting issue in the way. They started going on dates again, going to the theater, eating dinner at nice restaurants, alone. At some point, they started making love again, and it was far more exciting and erotic than he’d remembered it being. She had changed while he wasn’t paying attention; she’d grown confident and wickedly funny. He fell in love with her again and she, he thought, even sort of fell in love with him again. It was a less energetic kind of love, less exhausting, too. Eye contact, which had all but vanished between them, returned; an absence discovered only by the rediscovery.
They started taking holidays in deliberately arbitrary places, places they had never been to before—Scotland, Thailand, Russia. When they disagreed, now, they seemed more able to laugh and argue at the same time. They bought the house in Italy with the thought that its restoration would be a project that they’d work on for a few weeks a year, at least, maybe more, into their dotage.
This was all taking shape when, one day in the late winter, when it was horribly cold and overcast, he returned to his office after an exhausting meeting with a boorish delegate from Germany a
nd found a message from a police officer on his voice mail. The officer said that he had something important to talk about and asked Vincenzo to call him back immediately. It was clear from the man’s tone that he had awful news to impart. It was going to be something unimaginably awful.
“This is Palmer,” the voice said. It was a hoarse voice, a shambling voice, laden with a DC drawl.
“Officer Palmer?” Vincenzo said, not wanting his dread to come through.
“Yes. Is this Vin—” The officer halted, evidently trying to remember his name.
“Vincenzo D’Orsi.”
“Right,” he said. “Um . . . I’m—”
“I wanted—” Vincenzo blurted, and then paused because the sentence had nowhere to go; he’d just wanted to shove a wedge into that space. And there, in the moment he’d opened, Vincenzo knew acutely, if obliquely, that this would mark the end of a generous run of good fortune, one that he should have done more to appreciate, even though people never appreciate such things. It had been long. Still, in that way, Vincenzo burrowed into the moment he’d bought, but then he found it didn’t contain him and time was already up and Officer Palmer was speaking, and so Vincenzo reluctantly surrendered his consciousness to the information at hand.
After New York, Vincenzo spent a week at home in Bethesda. By then, the limelight had moved along, more or less. There’d been no word from Ben, either. Walter had relaxed about that question, too, and hadn’t mentioned their awkward conversation the day of Ben’s visit.
On Christmas Eve, he and Walter roasted a chicken and ate it with a loaf of good bread, sitting in his basement and watching The Sopranos, a TV show that Walter rhapsodized about as if it were Hamlet, but about which Vincenzo couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. At one point, when the lead character, a bloated ogre in a bathrobe, confided to his psychiatrist about his difficult daughter, Walter chirped, “Look, it’s you!”
The Dismal Science Page 13