by Mary Gordon
“But can you live perfectly well without dancing?”
“Well, I still dance. But more formal dances,” she says. She doesn’t want to go on about this. It’s connected to something about her marriage that she imagines would give him an opportunity for, if not contempt (Adam is not by nature contemptuous), then condescension of which he is, she knows, entirely capable. She’s glad Adam hasn’t asked about her and her husband, How did you meet?
They met, or rather they recognized each other, while taking a class in salsa dancing. Among the middle-aged hopefuls and the brilliant peacocks who by day flipped burgers or pushed clothes down the street on garment racks, they acknowledged they had seen each other at public health meetings. She was two years older; thirty-three to his thirty-one, though she wouldn’t have guessed it: he was almost completely bald. Neither of them had been married.
For their tenth anniversary, Yonatan had a dancing floor built in their basement. Two nights a week they dance; they are clear with each other that, in twenty-six years, they had, as dancing partners, not improved enough to be taken seriously by the serious dancers. Which makes them very glad. She loves what Yonatan had said about it: “All day we are brilliant and accomplished. Two nights a week we are both pleased to be mediocre.” She understands that this would offend Adam: he would never allow himself even a temporary sojourn into the mediocre, especially if it were willed. She wouldn’t want Adam to see her in her dancing outfit: purposely cheap with a low back and ruffled hem, a clinging top, high-heeled shoes with straps, and, her favorite pair: scarlet with red, blue, and purple sequins. She feels herself falling back into the idea of her husband, as if, exhausted, she is allowing herself to fall back into her own bed, their bed: a king-sized bed, with four king-sized pillows. She imagines that Adam and Clare wouldn’t consider a king-sized bed.
“You seem much more aware of being looked at than you were when you were younger,” Adam says.
She would like to tell him that he’s both right and wrong, but to explain the ways he’s wrong, she’d have to talk about Yonatan. She thinks of herself dancing, her backless dress. Her sequined high-heeled slippers. Dancing with Yonatan, she’s perfectly happy to be looked at. Perhaps because Yonatan never thinks of being looked at. The unease happens when she is looked at on her own. To be looked at alone, as an older woman, she thinks, is to be unsafe, in danger. In danger from what? From ridicule, she understands. Pity, perhaps. Perhaps: contempt. With Yonatan the two categories—pity, contempt—seem entirely remote.
“It’s one of those differences between men and women. As a young woman, you’re looked at all the time. You can’t choose the nature of the looking. It’s abundant, almost a natural event like rain or thunder. A problem sometimes also, like heavy rain, dangerous thunder. Anonymous desire. Anonymous censure. Then you age, and you realize you’ve become invisible. You hunger for the element you once despised or took for granted. But now there’s a new understanding. Being looked at, as a rare commodity, has to be considered carefully. You can no longer afford to be occasionally looked at with contempt, because the other salvaging looks—approbation, admiration—may not be coming your way any time that you can count on. Sometimes you appreciate the invisibility. You’re newly free. But embarrassment, the look that says, Don’t you know who you are? You’re too old for that, I fear it like, I don’t know, food poisoning maybe.
“More than anything, though, I fear being thought of as a ‘game girl.’ Those women traveling around in groups wearing red hats. Or maybe they’re purple hats. In cafés or museums or national parks. Some game girl wrote a book, When I Grow Old I Shall Wear Purple. Well, the truth is, no one gives a shit what you wear when you’re old unless they’re embarrassed by it. So better not wear purple, just in case. Subtle, neutral shades: blacks, taupes. A bit of mourning for the end of youth is called for. A muter palette. More explorations of shades of gray. Dove. Pearl. A nice alternative to the blush of mortification. Just the right degree of blondness; a blondness that understands its relationship to gray.”
“I don’t want to think of you as never dancing.”
She won’t tell him that it’s something he needn’t worry about. “When was the last time you danced, Adam?”
“With you, I think.”
With an entirely pleasant wifely pride, she thinks of Yonatan. “But if you danced me down this row of magnolias it would be embarrassing. Even these two wrapped around each other on the bench would be embarrassed. And then we would have to be embarrassed. And to be embarrassed, and embarrassing here, in Rome, in front of all these Europeans, no, that wouldn’t do.”
“Because to be American is always to run the risk of being embarrassing.”
“I envy people from small republics whose history no one knows and therefore could never resent.”
“So, let’s sit here quietly, like people from a quiet country, so no one will know where we were born.”
“A man and a woman, here in Rome, in this lovely place, under these old wonderful trees that have seen so much. Causing no problems. Embarrassing no one.”
“Especially, thank God, ourselves.”
Friday, October 19
VIA DELLE CINQUE
“Wine and Chocolates”
They meet for lunch at a small trattoria in Trastevere. Perhaps not the best choice; she is nearly vegetarian, and the specialty is grilled meats. There is another unwisdom in this choice; the restaurant isn’t far from where Valerie lives, and they both glance furtively up the small streets, afraid of seeing her.
She orders pasta peperoncini, wanting the simplicity, the sharpness: garlic and crushed red pepper. She will not, like him, allow herself lombata di vitello, for which the place is famous. Veal chops: no, she knows how veal chops come to be.
He cuts into his chop, and the anticipation of the taste of residual blood makes his mouth water. He wishes Clare were here. He wishes he were with Clare instead of Miranda. Clare loves meat. If he were with Clare, he would not have to be thinking of the suffering of animals.
“My colleagues and I were out for dinner last night,” she says. “We started talking about some great health problem, tuberculosis, I think, but the food was so good we got distracted from whatever it was we were talking about. Malaria. Avian flu.”
“Mussolini wanted Italians to give up eating pasta. He thought it was a distraction; he thought it made them weaker, less willing to put their shoulders to the Fascist wheel.”
He sees she isn’t listening to him. Her attention has shifted to a shop across the narrow street, a shop that sells wine and chocolates. A shift of attention he would never feel with Clare.
The bells of the basilica strike one. The girl closes the store; she’s going for her lunch.
“Isn’t she pretty, and isn’t it great she’s locking up that lovely store so she can go home for lunch. Her hair is just marvelous, look at those curls, so dark and rich, and that wonderful skirt: there must be a hundred pleats. I wonder if her mother irons her skirt for her.”
He sees Miranda has made up a life for her. “You haven’t given that up, I’m glad to say.”
“Sometimes I was worried that you didn’t like it when I did that.”
“I didn’t like it when I thought you were getting carried away, forgetting that you’d made the whole thing up. But usually I enjoyed it. I’d enjoy it now. So: make a life for this young girl.”
“All right,” she says, putting down her fork. “She’s going home to her father and mother for lunch. She has a pesky younger brother. For lunch her mother is serving ravioli with spinach and ricotta. Then an omelet. She’s pouring water from a decanter that’s made of light green glass. The girl mixes the water with her wine: she has to go back to work. The mother puts a plate on the table: the plate is white, the grapes are light green, they almost match the decanter, but they have a russet tinge. Muscat, the grapes are called. They’re in season now.”
“Muscata,” he says.
“Yes,” she says, n
ot liking to be interrupted. Resenting, as she sometimes did, his precisions, which stopped her flow.
“She goes back to work at three. She has a pleasant afternoon full of good-natured and moderately profitable exchanges. She wraps the chocolates prettily in purple paper with that red-purple ribbon that she curls with the blade of her scissors. She puts the wine in silver bags, actually more like envelopes. She will close the store at six. Her boyfriend will meet her on his Vespa. She’ll cover her perfect hair with an emerald-colored helmet; his is dark blue. He’s blond, and also curly haired. Tall, perhaps a bit too thin. Maybe he takes drugs or maybe he’s a runner. He stops the Vespa on a dime at a little café. They meet their friends. She takes her helmet off and her curls spring perfectly into formation. They have beer and pizza until it’s time for the disco. At one they go back to his apartment where he has a tiny room; he shares the apartment with four other young men; they are all architects. The chocolate seller and her boyfriend make love for three hours. He drives her home on his Vespa. She sneaks in. Her mother hears and calls out from her bed, ‘Are you all right?’ She doesn’t answer.”
She pours herself another glass of wine and, not asking Adam, refills his glass. She leans back, very satisfied with her storytelling. It’s been a long time since she’s indulged in this kind of play; when they were together, it was one of their favorite pastimes.
He unbuttons the cuffs of his oxford-cloth shirt and rolls his sleeves up six inches. Did he remember, she wonders, that she found that enormously arousing. That they had agreed that he would never wear short-sleeved shirts, and that any man who did was throwing away an incalculable advantage. Like the hair on his hands, the hair on his forearms has not grayed or coarsened.
He leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the table.
“Suppose your story is all wrong. Suppose she goes home to a family she hates, a shrewish mother who calls her a whore, a little brother who’s a meth addict. Her boyfriend’s getting ready to leave her, he doesn’t know she’s pregnant, no one knows, she hasn’t told anyone. She has to wait her turn for an abortion, which in Italy could take some time, so it might be quite a complicated operation. While she’s waiting for an abortion, she’s thinking, How ridiculous my life is, how ridiculous all of life is. I wouldn’t bring a child into the world. How ridiculous that I spend my days selling overpriced wine and chocolate.”
He is pleased about every aspect of the lunch; the meat, the wine, their conversation. Earlier, he had wished that he was here with Clare. Now he is glad that she’s not here, that he’s here with Miranda. It’s not that Clare has no humor, but it’s a humor based on irony, not story. She would never read stories to Lucy: she has very little taste for the unreal. She says she is a kind of narrative dyslexic. If Clare were here, if he were here with Clare and Lucy, and Miranda had started talking about the chocolate seller, she might have said, But how do you know, you’ve never met her? Blinking in that way that suggests that the light is too much for her eyes. And then he and Lucy would tease her, and she’d pretend to be engaged in the story to show that she is not a fool. It is one of her strengths: she never loses herself in the coil of stories. To her, life is not a story but a long interesting complicated joke. You get on with it as best you can. The joke is, most of the time you don’t. You are walking down the street, dressed to the nines, perfectly coiffed, and there is the banana peel. Landing flat on her back, Clare is quite capable of staying where she is, looking around her, making note of the configuration of the sidewalk. He thinks of his young wife, blinking. He looks over at Miranda, whose eyes are on the chocolate store. Her eyes are not on him. He wonders: Were they ever?
They have taken so long over their lunch that the chocolate seller has returned while they are still at the table. “No, you’re wrong, Adam, I know you’re wrong. Look at that lovely girl, and think of all the people walking out of the shop with those beautifully wrapped packages. I’m thinking of my friends and colleagues talking about avian flu. All my earnest and not-very-good-looking colleagues wanting to make the world a better place. And then there’s this lovely girl, handing beautifully wrapped packages of succulent chocolates to happy people, none of them saying, What is the meaning of life? Only, One hundred grams of truffles, please, or Today I’ll try the ones with almonds. I could only imagine the puzzled expression on the girl’s face if I were handing over my ten euros for the ginger covered in dark chocolate while I asked her, What do you think is the meaning of life? Maybe she’d point to the chocolates, the wine, the people eating at our restaurant, and say, All this.”
“Well, let’s go into the shop. The least we can do is let her take some of our money. After all, she’s provided us with so much entertainment.”
The third glass of wine she allowed herself has made her a bit unsteady, and she feels herself almost falling into him. She feels, too, that her stomach is rumbling. It began to rumble as soon as they entered the shop.
“I’m embarrassed. Can you hear the sound my stomach’s making? The smell of this shop is making my mouth water. What would it be like if I got a job here?”
“You’d be fired in a week. You’d be telling people what kind of chocolate they should buy. You’d be warning them not to eat too many sweets: that it will spoil their appetites.”
“I would not be fired, Adam, I’d be very good. I’d engage people in conversation and make sure they were really happy with what they bought. I’d encourage them to buy more than they originally wanted. I’d make a fortune. Then I’d open another store.”
“Then who would work behind the counter at this one? You’d have to get a Vespa so you could go back and forth between the stores.”
“I think I might like a Vespa.”
“I know you would.”
“You don’t like chocolate that much, do you? Or have you developed a sweet tooth since I used to know you?”
“No, I haven’t. But caviar! I have been brought to a cold sweat by the possibility that there might not be enough caviar in the bowl when it’s passed to me. Or that I won’t have the courage to take as much as I really want. Or that I’ll take too much.”
“How much is too much?”
“My mother used to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”
“What’s enough? How do we know when we’ve had enough?”
“When we have no more appetite. That’s when we say, ‘I’m full.’ ”
“Well, I am full. And sleepy. Will you get me a taxi, Adam? Is that too self-indulgent?”
“I’m shocked to the core. It will probably be in all the tabloids in the morning.”
He takes her arm and leads her to a taxi rank. “Libero?” he asks the driver.
The driver starts his noisy diesel engine. Miranda gets into the cab; as they drive away, the engine quiets down. Miranda looks out the back window, waves at Adam, closes her eyes, and feels herself drift off to sleep.
Saturday, October 20
THE VILLA BORGHESE
“Money Meant Nothing to Us”
They stop at a café known as La Casina dell’ Orologio in honor of the clock that has, since its construction, never once stopped and never kept anything like the correct time.
“I like it here,” Miranda says. “It’s so exuberant. That enormous brass contraption for making coffee. The musical instruments on the walls. This bugle. This violin. What could they possibly be doing here? And the picture, of course, of Frank Sinatra. With one of his records. Gold: I can’t see which one. Probably My Way.”
“Sometimes I think if I hear ‘My Way’ one more time on the streets of Rome I’m going to throw myself into the Tiber. Or throw whoever is playing it into the Tiber. The street musicians only seem to know two songs: ‘My Way’ and ‘Bésame Mucho.’ ”
“Who’s their target audience? Free market capitalists and lovelorn Spaniards? Do you think they all get together, all the street musicians, have regular meetings, maybe even a newsletter, and vote?”
He isn’t listening to he
r; he can’t even be temporarily amused by what she imagines he thinks of as a misuse of music. He looks around the café, displeased.
“They charge a ridiculous amount to sit here. I’ll get us two coffees, and we can drink them on the bench just there. It’s warm today.”
“Great. Thanks.”
She closes her eyes and lets the sun penetrate the bones of her skull. She allows herself the pleasure of being tired. She falls asleep for a minute and, waking, is surprised to see him. Adam. Standing in front of her, holding two plastic cups and looking terribly unhappy.
“I’m sorry for this,” he says, “I made a stupid mistake.” He hands her the ugly plastic cup, tan, corrugated, a quarter full of dark espresso.
“It’s not important,” she says, “It’s lovely here. I’m happy in the sun.”
“It is important. It was stupid not to take a table in the garden and be served coffee in a proper cup. Here we are in this beautiful place and I bring you something ugly. I had to worry about money, worry quite a lot about it, for such a long time, and now I always worry about it, even when I don’t have to.”
She doesn’t say what they both know: money is something she has never worried about. He doesn’t realize, though, the extent of her financial comfort. That her father—resented, feared, admired grudgingly—had made excellent investments, and at her parents’ death, she was left enough money so that all sorts of possibilities were open to her and her children. A house in the Berkeley Hills. Private schools. Never having to question: Shall I sit at a table or drink on a bench from a plastic cup.
“When we were young together,” she says, “money meant nothing to us. We couldn’t imagine that it would ever be of any importance. That it would make any difference.”
Now there’s something he doesn’t say in return, Yes, it wasn’t important, but the way it was unimportant was different to each of us. It wasn’t important to you because you were never greedy, but also because you never had to think about it. Because your mother had been left quite a lot of money. He remembers a time when Miranda’s father—perhaps he’d had too much to drink—took him aside and said, “You’ll never have to worry about my girl going hungry. My wife, well, my wife’s family was quite well off and I’m proud to say I’ve done well with what she’s been left.” Adam didn’t want to hear it because, Miranda was right, money wasn’t important to him, didn’t interest him, but also because he had a feeling it suggested what her father really thought about him. That Adam couldn’t, on his own, provide for his daughter. That he was a better man than Adam: more a real man.