by Mary Gordon
For the first time in her life, Theresa thought it was all right to speak about her father. She hadn’t even spoken about her father to Maura.
He nodded, when she had told him about her father’s accident and what followed upon it, as if she’d just been explaining something complex and mentally taxing to him.
“Your mother kept him at home,” he said.
“Yes, for a long time. Until we couldn’t do it anymore.”
“And you grew up with that. You grew up with affliction in the center of your home, in the center of your life.”
“Yes, literally. His bed and all the equipment he needed were in the middle of the living room.”
“I suppose your mother had no choice. I suppose, like so much else, so much more than the likes of us will credit, it was about money.”
“We had to worry about money,” she said, realizing it was the first time she had spoken of it. “We had to worry about money all the time.”
“I have never worried about money,” he said. “Not for one moment in my whole overlong life. It has made many things possible. Not everything of course. There was, in the end, not much I could do for my poor lovely Elisabetta. Oh, I could make her more comfortable than she would have been if I hadn’t had money; I could surround her with beautiful things and people who cared for her gently. But I couldn’t spare her pain. And I couldn’t spare the damage it did to our son. Although I tried. We both tried. We didn’t want him to live with what you had to live with. We didn’t want to have his mother’s illness be the thing that most importantly shaped his life. Partly, it was Elisabetta’s vanity. She didn’t want him to see her ugly. She wanted him to remember only a beautiful mother. So we sent him away. A Swiss boarding school: how’s that for a cliché. He didn’t see his mother for five years; she died without saying goodbye to him, except over the phone. He and I would go to marvelous places on holidays. The Galápagos. Cambodia and Vietnam. Kenya, Montana, Machu Picchu. But he will never forgive me. A very important part of his life is not forgiving me, finding ways to punish me. And of course, I don’t blame him. How could I? He is, by the way, a first-rate photographer. He’s having a show in a gallery here in a week.”
“I hope to be able to see it.”
“I’m not sure it will be exactly your cup of tea. His work is very often not mine, though I admire his skill. But let’s talk a bit about you. Why Civitali? I’m assuming it’s not just a clever career move. I would be surprised if you were a person who made clever career moves. If it is, don’t tell me. It’s important to me that someone like you is as moved by him as I am. By like you I mean, someone young.”
She leaned back in her chair, which was upholstered in a soft burgundy velvet, and looked into his eyes, which were the color of the green grapes she’d seen in the market.
“I love him for his mixture of containment and tenderness.”
He jumped to his feet and came over to her, took her chin in his hands, and kissed her on both cheeks.
Then he sat down, and bared his horsey teeth again, and once again she didn’t know whether or not he was pleased.
“Have I embarrassed you unbearably?”
“No,” she said. “I think I’m having fun.”
“I hope you do more than think so. I hope you really are having fun, although I’m not sure that talking about illness and death with an old man would be most people’s idea of fun. But I’m having fun, too. May I come for you tomorrow at four or so, and I will give you dinner at my house and show you my Civitalis?”
“Yes,” she said, once again. “That would be very nice.”
He drove a light blue Mercedes, which she imagined was at least twenty years old. He got out of the car to open the door for her, and waited to start the engine till she’d fastened her seat belt. She liked this very much, but she forbade herself to go on liking it. It was too predictable, pathetic in its predictableness. The fatherless girl, the scholarship girl taken under the wing of a rich man old enough to be her grandfather.
He asked about her day and she was happy to describe it: her morning cornetto and cappuccino, at the café on the corner where they recognized her now and served her without her asking, a morning reading and taking notes, a walk around the walls, a lunch of bread, cheese, and tomatoes, which she bought in the market and ate in her room while she read. A half-hour nap, and then more reading.
They drove out of the city into the countryside. Quite suddenly, a fog developed; the cypresses grew indistinct and she lost sight of the mountain. Gregory Allard beeped his horn at each curve. They drove down a hill, and out of the mist there appeared something that Theresa thought could not possibly be real. A white horse galloped through the fog, his whiteness the only thing distinguishable, a brightness against the duller whiteness of the fog. If you concentrated, you could see the horizontal bars of the fence behind which you could hear the sound of his galloping, but he, too, had grown invisible, the white bars separating him from them and the road. Rolling down the window, she imagined she could hear the horse’s breath.
“I feel like I’m in a dream,” she said. This was something she would have been embarrassed to say in front of everyone she knew. Except Gregory Allard. Tom, certainly, but even Joan Gallagher. Maura would tease her for being overly romantic. Perhaps she could have said it to Sister Imelda, but Sister Imelda thought everything Theresa said was wonderful.
“The Tuscan dream of the white horse. It sounds like a painting by de Chirico or Magritte or one of those surrealists I loathe. But thinking of a Tuscan dream of a white horse when I connect it to your pleasure in it, that is quite wonderful. You’ll remember that, Theresa, you’ll remember the white horse in the mist when you’ve forgotten most of what you’ve experienced in these days.”
“I don’t forget things,” she said.
“We all forget things. We must.”
The house was barely visible in the mist, but as she approached, she saw it was pink, with mottled pink walls and green-shuttered windows. Gregory Allard took a key out of his pocket and then put it back. “I forgot, my son is here. You’ll meet Ivo. And his companion, whose name is Sage. I’m not sure whether it’s about wisdom or cookery, that name. I don’t like to ask.”
They walked into a high room with white walls and blood-colored floor tiles. The walls were covered with photographs, many of which Theresa assumed were of Gregory’s late wife. She would have liked to look more closely, but was embarrassed to. He showed her into the sitting room. The fog was beginning to lift, and she could see outside the window two large palm trees growing on either side of the double staircase and terra-cotta pots with lemon trees, leading to a loggia that overlooked a lotus pool. She thought the surrounding garden was stuffed with flowers, so profuse were they … perhaps, she thought, a bit too profuse. The land outside the gate sloped down to terraces planted with vines and olive trees. She could see, pricked out of the greyness, poppies and some lavender flowers whose names she didn’t know. The dark red roses stained the fog; there was a glimmer of fireflies in the bushes.
A woman wearing a white apron over a black wool dress appeared and nodded unsmilingly. “Ecco la studentessa Americana,” Gregory Allard said. “Theresa, ecco Rosalba.”
Theresa didn’t know whether to extend her hand to be shaken, so she stood with her hands at her sides and the woman didn’t approach her. She disappeared and then reappeared in a second carrying a silver tray covered by a white cloth, two glasses, and a green bottle. She had not yet smiled nor even met Theresa’s eyes.
“Prosecco,” Gregory Allard said. Rosalba returned with a blue and white plate of olives and another of almonds on a smaller silver tray. Theresa felt wild with impatience. Why were they eating and drinking when what she was here for was to see his Civitalis?
From another part of the house she could hear what sounded like a buzz and a rumble; she knew it was a kind of music called techno, something that didn’t seem like music to her, but people she knew, and even liked, admired it
. She assumed his son was listening to it. Gregory Allard seemed to be taking a ridiculous amount of time finishing his drink. He would take one olive at a time, in his long spatulate fingers, and fastidiously place the pits in the small white dish which was there for the purpose. He took three almonds, chewed each one separately, then wiped his fingers on a linen napkin.
He began slowly, a rumbling laugh that reminded her a bit of the music coming from the other part of the house. “Oh, Theresa Riordan, you’re not good at hiding your feelings. Or your thoughts. You are nearly bursting out of your skin with desire to see my Matteos. I will not torment you any longer. Come,” he said, stretching out his long grasshopper arm.
He led her to the adjoining room and switched on the complicated lighting. He took her hand and led her over to a glassed-in cabinet.
These works of art belonged to him; he owned them, and so they would be available to her, would be hers, in a way that no works of art had ever been. He would allow her to touch them; he might even allow her to be alone with them. She felt a kind of dread and at the same time a kind of supersaturated elation.
He opened the glass doors with a small key. He took the marble statue out first, rubbing it with a chamois cloth. He placed it down on a small marble-topped table. She had no idea what she would do in relation to it, what she was allowed to do.
“Don’t be frightened of her, hold her if you like, she’s been around for a while and I know you’ll treat her well.”
She felt her throat close with anxiety. The marble was cool and smooth. It felt as she thought it would: like marble. People were always saying things were like marble, and this was, this was marble that was just like marble. She ran her fingers around the graceful contour of nose and chin, around the coiffed rolled hair, and the raised design of the ribbons that kept the hair in place. She put it down. She walked away from it, and then walked closer. She closed her eyes. She was afraid that when she opened her eyes it would no longer be as beautiful as what she had first seen. But then she opened her eyes, and nothing had changed. She knew what she meant to say—I could look at this forever—because time was about change and forever was about no change and she couldn’t imagine there would be a time when she would want to be doing anything else than looking at the gentildonna, would want any change, any sense of moving on. And she knew that, like most of the things that came to her mind when she saw something beautiful, she couldn’t say what she meant to anyone. There was only one word she wanted to say, and if she couldn’t say that she would say nothing. So she would say it now.
“Beautiful,” she said.
“She is beautiful,” Gregory Allard said. “And she is mine. And now, I feel, in some way, yours.”
And almost without her willing it, a reflex, like sweat, or the leap from an electric shock, a smile came over her face, she felt her whole face was only a smile, and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t reduce or modulate it, she could only nod and smile. She was aware of possibly looking foolish. But she didn’t care. I have never been happier in my life, she said to herself, and then she remembered saying that about being with Tom. But that had been a mistake. The happiness she felt now had no tincture of wrongness in it, no voice that had to be silenced telling her she shouldn’t be where she was.
He took down the small wooden Madonna and child. How eagerly the mother leant towards her baby, as if she could barely restrain herself from picking him up and holding him to her. The intense stillness of the marble head was not a part of this—was it the difference between marble and wood? The head gave a sense of endless serenity; the mother and child were full of a kind of vitality, as if at any moment they might spring into motion.
“How would you date them, if you had to?” Gregory Allard asked. She tried to read his expression. He was testing her, but what was the motivation behind the test? Was he going to reward her for a right answer or punish her for a wrong one, refuse her another look or grant her the access she needed?
She knew she was good at this sort of thing, noticing the small details in the course of a career that marked early from late work. She had studied images of Civitali for many hours, but she had only seen four or five actual works. He had a perfect right to ask her. She knew she was here because of her training, her position, which she knew to be false, as an expert.
She thought of Maura, and imagined Gregory Allard in his underwear and black socks. She thought of Sister Imelda, who would have had a saint in her hip pocket for just this sort of thing. Or she would have told her to pray to the Holy Spirit. Even Sister Maureen or Sister Patricia might have done that. But she had lost her faith, and it was many years, years of looking at her father’s ravaged face, since she had believed there was a face with an ear that would respond to her prayers. She ran through everything she knew of Civitali’s work; the gentildonna was marble, she was small, she was probably commissioned by a private client, and her hair was coiffed in the same way as the Rose Annunciation’s. And the posture of the Madonna suggested the influence of Mino da Fiesole. She closed her eyes, as if she were diving from a high board. What would happen now? A perfect swan dive or a broken neck?
“Midcentury,” she said, “I would say perhaps the sixties, fourteen seventy at the latest.”
Gregory Allard laughed that rumbling laugh, that sounded like a reluctant winter engine.
“Well, well, well, Miss Riordan, Professor Riordan, that is to be, you’ve got it spot-on. Just what your elders and betters have said. Almost to the year. I will leave you alone here for half an hour and then we will have some very good and very cold champagne.”
He backed out of the room, as if he were departing the presence of royalty. She was aware that she had broken out in a sweat, and she was afraid that she stank. She wanted to lift her arms and sniff herself, but she felt she couldn’t. Certainly this was something the gentildonna would never have done, would never have thought of doing, and the Madonna was too busy with her child to care how she smelt. And if she did stink, Theresa told herself, there was nothing she could do about it. But then she realized it wasn’t true; she could go into one of the bathrooms and surreptitiously wash. She lifted her arms and sniffed.
She seemed to herself all right. Now she could approach them, these beautiful ones, without the distraction of anxiety about her stinking flesh, flesh that unlike theirs, would rot and putrefy as these would not. “I’ll do my best for you,” she whispered to them; “I’ll try not to say anything that won’t be worthy of you.” Thinking about her responsibility to say something about them, her elation disappeared. It was another burden, this sense of having to say something, of having to use them in some way to make something else: an argument, an article, a book. She wished she could just be with them, in silence, making nothing of them, making nothing.
There was a gentle knock at the door. Had half an hour really passed? She could hardly believe it possible. Gregory Allard showed her into the sitting room. The furniture was old and almost, she thought, deliberately rickety and uncomfortable. On one of the sagging chintz sofas sat two people whose good looks made Theresa want, simultaneously, to gasp and to hide. She guessed that they would both be called blond—but they didn’t really have hair: instead, standing up from their skulls were silvery yellow spikes, and they had almost no flesh on their bodies. The woman wore a very short skirt and a top that seemed to be made of dragonfly wings, and her legs were so well muscled that Theresa wondered if she was a professional athlete. Neither of them changed their posture when Theresa walked into the room. Their legs were both very long, but the man’s were the longer of the two, and Theresa could see in their thinness, their disproportionate length, the grasshopper features of Gregory Allard. She wondered why she kept thinking of insects.
“This is my son, Ivo, and his friend Sage,” Gregory said. “They are joining us for champagne.”
“Hey,” said the woman.
“Salve,” said the man.
They both lit cigarettes. “I’m very grateful to the old man
for letting us smoke.”
“My parents won’t let anybody smoke within a hundred yards of their house. But then, it’s Marin County. My mother’s always throwing me out of whatever room I’m in and basically sending me to another zip code if I want to smoke.”
“But this is your home, of course,” said Gregory Allard. “And it’s Italy, not California.”
“Yeah, home sweet home, Dad. What have I spent, like maybe sixty-five days total here in my life?”
“That’s your choice, Ivo, of course. But let’s not spoil Theresa’s time with unpleasantness.”
“No, Theresa, Gregory here never allows unpleasantness,” he said, taking a heavy glass ashtray from the table and cradling it between his knees.
Everything about these two made Theresa feel clumsy, foolish, unfashionable, almost middle-aged, although she knew that Ivo was at least fifteen years older than she. “You’re a photographer,” she said, hoping to get him off the subject of his father and their past.
“Ivo has a show coming up. We hope you’ll be there for the opening next week.”
“I’m sure it’s not your thing, any more than it is Gregory’s here.”
“I’d very much like to go. I really admire good photography.”
“Who do you really admire?”
Her mind went blank, as though she had never seen a photograph in her life. The only names who came to her were all of dead people, and she knew that, unlike the test that Gregory had set for her, this question, also a test, was one that she would fail.
She felt herself blushing and she hated this man for making her do it.
“She’s probably a real Ansel Adams girl,” said Sage. “Don’t you think? Good old American values.”
“Actually,” she said, “I’ve never been very interested in America.”
“Well, Gregory, you’ve snagged one right out of Henry James,” Ivo said. “Watch out, Theresa, they never come to a good end, these Henry James girls. And it’s always about money. Gregory knows all about money. Or no, he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t have to.”