by Mary Gordon
“Only a small mind is afraid of generalization, my son,” says Giancarlo’s mother, Signora Rinaldi. Miranda realizes she doesn’t know her first name. “It’s like being afraid to build a house with more than one story. What would Rome be if people had been afraid of gestures that might seen too large, that took in what might at first appear too much.”
No one has the courage, the will, the impulse, the energy, to contradict her. For one thing, she is just too old.
At the same moment, Adam and Miranda grasp the tone of Valerie’s life. Between them stretches out a cord of simultaneous understanding. They are attached by a shared sympathy. For Valerie, the victim of a woman who never once considered that her gestures might be overlarge, who sees destruction as inevitable, unworthy of comment, certainly of surprise.
“And so, as I was saying, before I was interrupted by my son making a point beside the point, after the war, the first war, I mean, with Italy in disarray, my father, who was a physician, he treated many of Rome’s first families, he was a very great ophthalmologist, my father decided I should go to America for my education. I came back home in 1932. Mussolini had come to power. I was twenty years old. Still something of a flapper. Famous for my legs.”
She crosses and uncrosses her legs, thinking them, perhaps, still fetching. But Miranda can only be worried by them; to her they suggest nothing but potential fractures.
“I married Giancarlo’s father the next year. He was a press attaché for Mussolini. Very idealistic. He’d been a poor boy, and he saw how Mussolini had made his life better. People like to forget how bad most people’s lives were before Fascism, how badly things were run, and how much better it was for Italy to have a strong leader. You know, Mussolini came to power as a socialist.”
Miranda feels a half-dollar-sized pain in the back of her skull. She knows that it is rage. She believes in the concept of evil, though not being metaphysically inclined in the least, she does not know or feel the impulse to name its source. But the old woman, with her hooded eyes, her flat feet in their canvas shoes, her blade-thin crossed ankles, seems to her, if not evil, at least to be speaking evil words.
Valerie is passing crackers with a thin layer of pâté on each, and what Adam thinks must be capers, although they are the size of large pearls, bigger than any capers he has ever seen. Their bitterness is pleasing, and cuts satisfyingly through the meaty richness of the pâté, the dryness of the crackers. He wonders if, after all these years, Miranda will have changed enough to be able to keep silence in the face of the old lady’s words. If not, she will soon be saying something that will make a disaster of the evening, that will turn the room into a wreck.
Miranda is biting slowly at her cracker. She is saying nothing.
But the old woman wants something, Adam knows. She taps her cane. Valerie brings her a glass of water. Adam knows this is not what she wants; she wants something else. Discord: her thirst for it is much much stronger than her desire for the water that she demands, as if she were signaling a servant, wordlessly. Her spiteful mouth, blind seeming too because of the hooded eyes, is hungry; the dry lips are licked with relish for what she thinks she can make happen soon.
“When the Americans came, my husband was imprisoned. Twice. Once for three months, right here in Regina Coeli prison. Six months here, then nearly a year in the South. It was dreadfully unfair. My husband was punished for doing what he believed to help his country. I moved heaven and earth to have him released. I wrote to the pope. Finally, because of me, or because of my father, who had made the pope’s eyeglasses personally, my husband was released.”
“And afterward?” Miranda asks, engaged, despite her determination not to be.
“He became a lawyer. He was through with politics.”
Adam sees fear flicker in Valerie’s eyes. He remembers that the apartment belongs to her mother-in-law. That Giancarlo doesn’t have a job. Valerie confessed, just yesterday, that he’d been hospitalized for depression. That she is frightened, because she is in a country where family matters, and her family isn’t here. Her eyes are asking him to rescue the situation. But the situation is her fault. Why did she think Miranda and Signora Rinaldi could be in a room together without a good chance of disaster? But it would never have occurred to Valerie that there were people who should not be in the same room.
He knows she is looking to him for rescue, but he can’t think of a thing that he might do. What should he talk about? The weather? The new influx of Russian tourists? The weak dollar? The progress of the repairs on the Piazza Navona? His daughter’s progress with the violin?
“You are shocked because I don’t express shame when speaking of my husband’s Fascist past. But I have no shame; I have pride. I have pride because I have understanding. My husband was punished for doing what everyone of his generation did. Now what do you think of all this, Miss Miranda? You see, I know about you and your politics and your past. That you, like so many of the naïfs of your generation, thought you would change the world, poof, like that. And then were shocked that you did not. I know from Valerie that you were political, and the young Adam was going to be a great pianist, and everyone thought you would be together forever and ever but that somehow the differences between art and politics were too great, and here you are now, forty years later, wondering what to say to each other. There is probably more to it, the kind of thing Valerie enjoys keeping from me, I would guess another woman, but we won’t go into that. But you see I know about you and your political past, so I can only imagine what you think.”
“I don’t have an opinion,” Miranda says.
“From what I know of you, this is a falsehood. Don’t condescend to me because I’m old. I can take your ideas. I’m not afraid of what you have to say.”
“I didn’t think you were afraid for a minute,” Miranda says.
“What did you think, then?”
“That you believe that I don’t know enough to have an opinion that’s worth anything to you.”
“I can just imagine what you’re really thinking, what you’re afraid to say for fear of making a scene. You think that everyone who was not your idea of a hero should be punished as a criminal. This is an American arrogance spoken by a people who have never had to resort to difficult choices.”
There is a sound of breakage, a sound that almost comically expresses what everyone feels. Only gradually, Miranda understands that she has broken her glass by grasping it in the effort not to say what she really means.
“What has happened?” the old lady asks.
Adam is sure she knows, but wants to hear the words. Her lips have disappeared with a spite or pleasure she feels no need to hide.
“Miranda has cut herself,” Valerie says, her hands fluttering, as if she’d never seen anything like this before.
“Valerie, Valerie, che succede,” Giancarlo shouts, running out of the room. “Non po sopporla.”
“Niente, caro,” Valerie says, running after him to some room whose entrance is invisible.
Adam sees that no one intends to do anything about what has happened to Miranda. He takes his handkerchief and wraps Miranda’s fingers. Her fingertips are bleeding, but he sees she isn’t severely hurt.
“Take her to the bathroom, she mustn’t stain the furniture,” the old lady says.
He can hear Giancarlo weeping in the kitchen. “Non ti preoccupare,” he hears Valerie saying.
“Valerie, are there Band-Aids in the bathroom?” Adam asks, sticking his head into the room into which she and Giancarlo have disappeared.
She nods and points, holding her husband halfway on her lap.
Adam takes Miranda’s hand and leads her into the bathroom. He opens the medicine cabinet, takes out a tube of antiseptic ointment, puts her hand under the water, spreads the ointment, and bandages each of her wounded fingers. He sees that she is crying, and he knows that she hates that she is crying and hates that he sees.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says.
She nods.
“I’ll see Miranda home,” he says to Valerie, who nods, still absorbed in her weeping, trembling husband.
“I’m taking Miranda back to her apartment,” he says to the old woman, who is holding in her hand a half-eaten cracker.
“Such a shame,” she says. “I was looking forward to the evening.”
Miranda and Adam don’t speak or look at each other in the brass cage of the elevator. Silently, they walk to the massive door leading to the street. It slams behind them like a door in a room constructed for the Inquisition. They press on the outer door. It doesn’t open. They press again. Nothing.
Miranda begins to laugh.
“I remember what Valerie said now. In order to open this outer door you first have to press a button outside the inner one.”
“So we’re here for the rest of our lives?”
“Or until someone comes in.”
“Jesus, poor Valerie,” he says.
“And here I was imagining her living la dolce vita. And I was irritated by her chirpiness. Now it seems heroic. Is there such a thing as heroic chirpiness?”
“And the mother. Dear God.”
“Do you think she’s evil? Or just batty.”
“We always disagreed about that, whether things were signs of madness or wickedness.”
“Which side was I on? I can’t remember now.”
“I can’t either. And now I have no idea which side I’m on.”
“If I ring the buzzer, we’ll get Valerie’s apartment and she can probably buzz us out.”
“No need, someone’s coming,” he says.
A young mother pushing a stroller puts her key into the door. She is model thin and model surly in black jeans, high heels, and a leather bustier. She looks at them impatiently and moves aside to let them out.
“I’ll just get a taxi here,” she says, lifting her arm.
He takes her arm and lowers it. “No,” he says. “I want to talk to you. I want to know about your life.”
The touch of his hand on her arm is shocking. She’s disturbed by it, yet it would be absurd to show any sort of reaction.
“My life,” she says. “My life is fine.”
“I’d like to see you at least once more. There are things I’d like to tell you. And to ask. Perhaps we could go for a walk. Where are you staying?”
“Near Piazza del Popolo. The Via Margutta.”
Ah, he thinks, so she is wealthier than I. Then he remembers: she always was. He wants to indicate that this is of no importance. So he whistles. “Ritzy,” he says, purposely using a joke word to suggest that no one can take money seriously.
“A little too upmarket for my comfort,” Miranda says. “You’d think Val would have been able to figure that out.”
“It was always remarkable what Val seemed not to be taking in. Perhaps that’s how she’s got herself into this situation.”
“Are we fated to always be the people we were? Always making the same mistakes?”
He assumes she knows this is a question with no answer.
“Where you live is near my daughter’s school. I walk her there every morning. She has lessons from ten to three. Are you free in the morning?”
“My meetings begin in the afternoons.”
“Well, then, shall we meet at the top of the Pincio at ten tomorrow morning?”
The request alarms her. She’d wanted to see what he looked like; she told herself it would be just a glimpse. But to see him again: that takes things out of the realm of accident, and curiosity and chance. But to refuse: that, almost, suggests that she is frightened of something, that he is important in her present life in a way that he certainly is not.
“Just for a short walk,” she says.
He is ridiculously pleased that she’s agreed to it.
“A short walk in the Borghese Gardens. Just as long as you like.”
“All right,” she says, not knowing what it is that she’s agreed to.
Monday, October 8
THE PINCIO
“Now We Are Both Orphans”
They both slept badly, and, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, Miranda is distressed at the toll the sleepless night has taken. She can no longer be unmarked by sleepless nights; bruise-colored pouches form below her eyes; it’s impossible that she enjoy the sight of her face. She showers; the hot water helps. She opens the red quilted bag that holds her cosmetics: it is larger than she would ever have predicted, particularly since she prides herself on wearing very little makeup. She wouldn’t dream of wearing eye shadow before six, as some people wouldn’t dream of taking a drink before sundown. But she has invested in an impressive array of moisturizers and creams to even her skin tone. One claims that it can “disappear those telltale signs.” She opens a two-inch-round pot of under-eye cream; it contains aloe, honey, and bee pollen. She knows she’s a sucker for invisible cosmetics that claim to be found in nature.
She applies a light peach-toned foundation, a peach-colored lipstick, changes the small silver ear hoops for her pearl studs. She thinks she looks much better. It is important to her that Adam not think she’s one of those women who always look worn out.
She doesn’t know what she wants him to think, only that it is important that there are some things he doesn’t think about her. But what, exactly, does she want from this meeting today? It was one reason for her sleeplessness: she doesn’t know what she wants, and this is unlike her. Around three, when the heavy Italian furniture began to seem unreal and menacing, she understood that this is one of the important reasons to see him: only he can give her a particular kind of information that at her age seems crucial. Is she the person that she was?
And of course, there’s simple curiosity, not only about him, because her connection to him didn’t begin and end with him, it extended to his family. In the years that she was with him, his parents and his sister were important to her. And she knows nothing of what had happened to them in nearly forty years. Certainly, it’s natural to want to know. Valerie could give her some idea of what turns Adam’s life has taken, but Miranda couldn’t expect her to know about Adam’s sister, Jo.
It would be very good to know about these people whom, whatever had happened to her ideas of Adam, she had never ceased to be fond of. In his mother’s case, to love. This is something anyone would want to do. And they’re just going for a walk in the park. “It’s not just a walk in the park.” That was one of those phrases that people had begun using recently. But it would be just a walk in the park. She has a friend who is a rocket scientist, and he likes to say that people can never say of him, “Well, he’s not a rocket scientist,” because, in fact, he is.
It is, after all, a park, one of the largest in the world, the Villa Borghese, although the name suggests rather a large stone structure than the green expanse, the great varieties of trees—umbrella pine, plane, ilex, magnolia—and the running children and the strolling lovers. And how, she wonders, can the same word apply to this place and to Yosemite, dedicated to the exclusion of the very civilization this place celebrates. She climbs the stairs from the Piazza del Popolo to the Pincian Hill, the high point that marks the park’s beginning.
She looks over the balustrade and sees, written in chalk on the road below, some words that even her inadequate Italian can unlock: E DOPO UN ANNO SIAMO ANCORA QUI A PARLAR D’AMORE. And after a year we are here again to speak of love. “Love,” like “park,” a word inadequate to all its different meanings. What will she and Adam speak about? What will it have to do with love? She wonders who wrote the words on the dangerous road, where cars come whizzing by, alarming the more timid tourists. She imagines that, whoever they were, they must have been young.
She was young the last time she was here. She hasn’t been here for nearly forty years, but she remembers being happy. It made her comfortable, as other parks in great cities, Central Park, the Luxembourg, Hyde or Regent’s Park, did not. It seemed somehow more accommodating, presenting more suggestions than demands. Promi
ses. What did it promise? Something open-minded and expansive. Possibilities.
Of the possibilities connected to her seeing Adam, there did not seem to be many risks. They would simply be catching up. They would be exchanging information. They would be taking a walk in the park.
She mentioned it to her husband, but without much emphasis. There was no need, she thought, to make much of it. She would find out about Adam’s family. Would she be finding out, in addition, something about herself? That would remain to be seen. She wouldn’t think about that now.
• • •
Adam’s sleeplessness was an intermittently pleasurable mixture of anxiety and relief. The relief made a change in the relation of his body to the world: he feels himself lighter, less weighed down, as if he’d been a hit-and-run driver who had, after years, discovered that the crumpled body he left at the side of the road had been seen to leap and dance. What does he want her to do, or say? What does he want her to say to him? What does he want? He wants to know the shape, the texture, of her life. At the same time, he is afraid of some things he can imagine she might want to say. And he wonders if he is foolish to open himself to the scalding shame that once was the medium in which he lived his days. But what can she say that would be worse than what he’s said to himself? Does he want her to say that he has been forgiven, does he want to hear the words “It was so long ago. I never think of it”? That would mean she never thinks of him, and he understands that he doesn’t want that.
He says to his daughter, over breakfast, “I’m going to meet a very old friend. I’m eager to find out what’s happened to her. Do you realize, Lulu, that the amount of time I haven’t seen her is equal to twice the number of years you’ve been alive?”
“Dad, you love making those kind of calculations,” she says, kissing him on the top of his head. “Don’t wear that shirt, it makes you look paunchy.” Has she intuited something: that he was unusually concerned about how he looked all day? “Luckily, I have my fashion adviser with me,” he says, disappearing into the bedroom and presenting himself to her in a light wool rust-colored shirt, looser fitting: a larger size. Then he is gripped by a new anxiety: in meeting Miranda in Rome, has he involved Lucy in a kind of deception, is she a partner in his infidelity? But he’s not being unfaithful; he knows that Clare would want him to speak to Miranda; she always worries that he buries too much of the past. He’ll tell her about it, of course he will, next time they talk, next Saturday. But there’s no need to make a special call to speak about it now. And he will be very careful not to say anything about his morning to his daughter.