Aunt Rose was crying. Her nose ran and she kept wiping it on the back of her hand and muttering ‘damn,’ then she unpinned the Santa and gave him to me. And since I didn’t really want to listen to what she was saying, I pulled the ball on his hat, once, then twice, and then over and over again. ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen, God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,’ Santa sang. And long after Aunt Rose stood up, and kissed my forehead and tiptoed out, he kept singing. Over and over he sang his single phrase until the high tinny notes drowned out the noises of grown-ups downstairs, of crying and the clinking of glasses, and the opening and closing of the door, and the stray words—‘drunk’ and ‘shame’ and ‘speed’—that drifted up the stairs along with the blasts of cold air and the noise of cars coming in and out of the driveway.
I told Billy that story mostly to make up for laughing about Indiana, and when I finished, she lit a cigarette and looked at me for a second. Then she said, ‘That’s sad.’ But I shook my head. That wasn’t why I told it. And besides, I explained, really, it isn’t. All it is is proof of what I found out early: that the Good Lord giveth and he taketh away. Mainly because he feels like it. All of which may or may not go some way towards explaining why I have always hated Christmas.
Billy frowned through the smoke. Then she asked, ‘What happened next?’ So I told her how I went to live with Mamaw.
Mamaw was my mother’s aunt, and her only living relative. Her real name was Mary Margaret Tulliver, and she ran a bookkeeping business called Tulliver Accounting out of her den. She kept the books for most of the not very many businesses in town, so we always knew exactly how bad or good it was for Dave’s Hardware, where we bought nails and duct tape, and for Real Brite Dry Cleaners, and for the Pig Stand that sold corkscrew fries and soft ice cream in the summer.
Mamaw wore navy-blue nylon pants suits five days a week, dresses on Sundays, and lipstick every day that left bright red bands on the filters of her Lucky Strikes. She didn’t believe in walking under ladders or stepping on cracks, and she taught me how to say ‘good morning’ to single crows in case they brought bad luck, and how to throw spilled salt over my left shoulder to blind the devil’s eye, and how to be Catholic. ‘There’s no sin in being alone,’ Mamaw told me once, in a voice so hushed she sounded like she was sharing a secret. ‘But if you are, and you belong to the church, then you’ll always belong to something, and no matter what happens, even if nobody else loves you, Jesus will.’
Mamaw’s daddy had been a miner and a rock hound, and when he died all he had to leave her was his collection of polished rocks and the house she was born in. She was still living there when I moved in. Mamaw’s house had a steep gable roof, ugly black shutters and a front porch nobody ever sat on, and it didn’t look an awful lot different from my parents’ house, which had been all of three streets away. There was the same maple tree in the yard and the rooms were even laid out the same, so I didn’t get lost. Kitchen and den at the back, dining room and living room at the front, three bedrooms and a bathroom with liver-coloured shower tiles upstairs, all of it covered in avocado-green shag carpet that smelled like cigarettes.
There was a front walk, a lawn, and a back yard with a Webber grill and picnic table too, just like my parents’. But Mamaw’s house had theirs beat flat on one count. At Mamaw’s, I could lie in bed on winter nights and look straight out of my bedroom window through the bare branches of the maples to the flying horse on the gas station sign down the street.
I loved that horse. As far as I was concerned, he was the most beautiful thing in our town, and over time he became more important to me than anything else, even Jesus. For a start, the horse stayed lit up all night long, so no matter when I woke up, if I had bad dreams, or heard the tinny notes of the Santa Claus song, there he’d be, flying through the winter trees with his bright hooves and his snow-white wings.
I dreamed of those wings, as big and strong as an angel’s. And of the whooshing sound they made, and of his hooves, which were as black as patent leather and threw sparks that turned into stars as we galloped down the streets. I dreamed of my hands wound in his mane as we went, faster and faster, until finally we left the ground, and rose through the shredded night clouds, and flew.
I told Pierangelo about my horse not long after we met, and he put his arms around me and asked, ‘Where, cara? Where did you fly to?’ But I told him that back then I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Anywhere. Just anywhere at all where there weren’t liver-coloured tiles and shag carpets. ‘Closed’ signs nailed to downtown windows. Mountains of frozen slush that lasted till Easter. And Santa Claus pins that sang in the dark.
‘That’s her! That’s the woman from the apartment!’ Billy tweaks my sleeve, but I’m not paying attention. Instead, I’m leaning as far as I can over the parapet of the Ponte Vecchio watching the fish.
Centuries ago, before the gold merchants who are here today moved in, butchers lined this bridge. Carcasses hung here, and there were those who believed the future could be read in the entrails of the slaughtered animals. For a penny or two you could have intestines thrown down onto the blood-slicked cobbles, and love, death, fortune—your whole life—would be divined by those who knew how to read the patterns. Then, every night at sunset, the offal would be swept up and dumped into the Arno to feed the ancestors of these same fish which, four centuries later, still come and hang just below the clouded green surface of the water, driven by ancient hunger.
I love the fish. I admire them for gobbling up the future, but Billy, who is definitely more interested in gold than prophecy, thinks my fixation with them is stupid. More than once I’ve told her I’m sorry for them, and that I think they should somehow be rewarded for their persistence. Secretly, I’ve contemplated bringing them a steak. I’ve imagined pulling the pink slab from a bag, allowing it to slither out of its wrapping, and hearing the splash as it hits the water below.
Billy tweaks me again. ‘It is her!’ she hisses, and I pull myself back from the parapet and turn to see where she’s pointing.
It’s marginally warmer this evening, and the passeggiata is in full swing. At least half of Florence must be out here, promenading up and down, moving along the box-like fronts of the jewellery stores, inspecting the rows of gold bangles and rings and charms displayed in the brightly lit windows. This is serious business, the viewing and comparing of merchandise, and on a nice night the bridge and the avenue all the way up to the Duomo will be packed solid, full of couples holding hands, tourists and students, and pairs of squat middle-aged ladies in suits and expensive shoes, all of them eating ice cream and examining displays of jewellery and handbags and gloves.
A woman pushing a bicycle with a little white dog in the basket weaves through the crowd in front of us, momentarily blocking our view, then Billy pulls at the elbow of my sweater.
‘There,’ she hisses, ‘over there. I swear that’s her.’
And she’s right, it is the woman from the apartment opposite. I know, because I’ve seen her too. In fact, I saw her just yesterday. She was attempting to manoeuvre her way through the security gate under the archway of our building, her child’s empty stroller in one hand and a shopping bag in the other, and she nearly fell down the steps. Standing nearby, I leaned out to help, grabbing the bottom rung of the stroller and lifting it to the sidewalk, and afterwards, as I stepped up and took the edge of the gate before it could swing closed, she thanked me, murmuring the way strangers do. Our eyes met, and I saw the telltale red rims and pink blotches on her cheeks, and knew she’d been crying. Now, she’s pushing the stroller again, but this time her child is in it. A man in an overcoat walks beside her, his hands dug in his pockets.
The man is handsome, in a saturnine sort of way. He has dark hair and a beaky nose. It’s a face you would call ‘horsey’ if they were poor, but is ‘patrician’ because they’re obviously not.
‘Phew,’ Billy whispers, ‘get the cut of that cashmere. Overcoats like that mean serious real estate.�
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I nod, but the truth is, neither the man nor his overcoat interest me. It’s her I keep looking at. Everything about the woman from the apartment opposite is curved, from the ample rise of her chest, to her hips, to the curls of pale colourless hair that fall over the black collar of her coat. Her cheeks are round and still slightly flushed, as if she has been crying since yesterday, and the child she pushes looks way too old to be in a stroller. Six or seven at least and dark like his father, the little boy sits staring straight ahead. Wrapped in a scarf and coat and hat, as if this is the Arctic winter instead of spring in Florence, he looks like a large doll, a boy made of wax. To be honest, he looks not quite human.
‘The kid looks kind of retarded,’ Billy whispers.
We watch as they draw parallel to us, fascinated and slightly guilty because we know something about them the rest of the world doesn’t. Out here, they’re a nice young family; handsome, prosperous father and plump, pink-cheeked mother taking their little doll boy for a stroll. But behind the walls of our palazzo, we’ve heard them shriek and call each other names.
‘She’s pretty,’ Billy murmurs, ‘but she’s fat. I never noticed before that she was fat. I bet he’s having an affair,’ she adds. ‘I bet that’s it.’
Billy lowers her voice, even though there’s no earthly way they could hear us. ‘I think it’s the kid,’ she says. ‘I mean, look at him. I bet he’s one of those guys who just can’t stand kids that have something wrong with them—you know, perfection freaks. Or,’ she whispers, ‘maybe he doesn’t like fat. If she got her act together, fixed her hair and lost fifteen pounds, he probably wouldn’t screw around.’ She shrugs, losing interest. ‘I mean, with a body like that,’ she says, ‘what do you expect? Guys like perfection, or at least something close to it, you know?’
‘Yeah? Well, not everyone can be as perfect as you! Some people don’t have that choice!’
The words come out before I even realize I’ve said them, fast and harsh, and I feel myself blush, feel the colour rising up under my turtleneck and flooding into my face. The couple and the child have passed us by now, but I watch resolutely until they’re swallowed in the crowd, and finally I have no alternative but to look back at Billy.
I don’t know what I expect to see. Shame? Some token effort to be contrite? It isn’t there. Instead, her eyes are glittering. A tiny smile twitches at the corner of her mouth. The way she’s looking at me reminds me uncomfortably of a child who has just lifted up a rock and seen something pale and naked wriggling underneath. Billy opens her mouth and closes it again, silently, like one of the fish. Then she says suddenly, ‘I have always wanted one of these.’ She turns towards the jeweller’s window immediately beside us. ‘Look.’ Billy taps her nail on the glass, pointing to a tray of rings. ‘Don’t you think they’re absolutely gorgeous?’ she asks.
The rings are thin gold bands, intertwined to hold a pair of gemstone hearts, each a different colour. The stones sparkle under the lights, aquamarine and topaz, fire opal and amethyst, garnet and citrine.
‘They’re beautiful.’ I mumble. And I try to look as if I’m seriously studying the heart rings, instead of watching Billy’s reflection in the glass, and the tiny knowing smile that flutters across her lips.
Chapter Five
BY THE TIME we arrive at the bar the big mushroom heaters have been turned on. Fairy lights lace through the trees and floodlights hit the blank façade of the church. I comment on how beautiful it is with its Cyclops eye, but Billy just looks at me sideways. A gust of wind comes up as we sit down.
‘The weather,’ Kirk announces when he and Henry join us a few minutes later, ‘is supposed to get better.’
‘Oh right! When? In the next millennium? After the current ice age ends?’
The wind has gotten stronger and now, despite the heaters, it is cold. Billy hunches down into her coat, reaches for her wine glass, and shakes her head in disgust. In the half-hour since we left the bridge, she has become progressively snarkier.
I don’t know Billy that well, in fact, I barely know her at all, but I’m beginning to suspect she likes a little excitement. Prefers things spiced up. Mixed and stirred. And I think she hoped that after I’d snapped at her on the Ponte Vecchio, I’d wind myself into a real temper tantrum. Perhaps attack her in a wild and illogical fashion for being six foot tall. Maybe she thought I’d burst into tears and declare my unbridled jealousy for her perfect body. Announce that I lusted for her. Or for the woman next door. Who knows? I don’t actually think Billy would be picky. But I do think, as I watch her toying with the edge of the ashtray that, for just a second, under that rock, she thought she saw something interesting. Something she might poke with a stick. She was hoping, I think, for some fireworks to light up the night, and now she’s sulking because I’ve really let her down.
The breeze gusts, making the fairy lights dance, and I put my gloves on. One’s bright blue and one’s bright green, and when he sees them, Henry winks. He has a gigantic scarf wrapped twice around his neck and the end of his nose is red, as though he’s either drunk or getting a cold. We could move inside, of course, but there’s an unspoken agreement that that would be seriously wimpish, so instead we brave it out. Only Kirk doesn’t seem to care about the weather. Wrapped in his black overcoat, his body temperature is apparently static.
‘The clocks go forward next week,’ he says, reaching for the bottle of Chianti we’ve ordered and filling his own glass, then mine and Henry’s. ‘So I think we should have a celebration. To mark the official start of summer. Regardless. On Sunday.’
‘What? Put roses in our hair and dance around a maypole?’ Billy’s drinking white wine, as usual, but she places her hand over the rim of her glass anyways, as if she’s afraid Kirk will turn it into rosé.
‘I think Mary would look very fetching with roses in her hair,’ Henry says.
‘I’m allergic to roses. They make me sneeze.’
‘Mary, Mary. Quite contrary.’ Billy takes out a cigarette, making a big deal of fiddling with the package. Then she says suddenly, ‘Oh I forgot. Something happened today.’
‘What?’ Henry asks. ‘The sun rose in the west?’
Billy smiles. She slides her eyes around the table. ‘A priest came to the door,’ she says. ‘Of our apartment.’
Kirk raises his eyebrows. ‘And?’
‘Well,’ Billy shrugs, lights the cigarette and cups it with her hand. ‘Since he was already inside, I thought he had to be looking for the old lady downstairs.’
Kirk stares at her, waiting. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he says finally, ‘he wasn’t? This sure is a cliffhanger, Bill.’
Billy ignores him. ‘He said he was looking for a Mrs Warren,’ she announces.
I have never told Billy my married name, and, suddenly, my mouth feels uncomfortably dry. I reach for my glass and start to ask when this happened, exactly, but I don’t get the chance, because Henry is being witty again.
‘That Mrs Warren,’ he asks, ‘doesn’t she have a profession?’
‘Oh I wouldn’t be so Shaw,’ Kirk says.
Billy waggles her cigarette at him. ‘I told him I only knew a Mrs Dall-o-way, so he went a-way.’
‘Oh very good. Touche-ay.’ Henry raises his glass in a toast.
I don’t know what they talk about after that, but I don’t talk about anything. I’m too busy wondering how on earth Rinaldo could have figured out where I was. Because it was him. I can feel it. It’s as if thinking about him last night conjured him out of thin air and how I practically expect to look up and see him sitting across the square from us, watching me. Smiling. His smooth round face creased like a baby’s, sure in the knowledge that at any moment I will get up and come towards him, propelled like a sleepwalker, one of those ladies in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, pale and driven and begging for forgiveness.
By the time we leave the bar, an hour later, I’ve worked myself up into a state of barely suppressed fury. I’m convinced that Rinaldo is following us thro
ugh the streets, and that at any minute he’ll pop up like some dreadful priest-in-the-box, and I’ll have to explain him to Billy.
She doesn’t actually say anything as we walk back, but more than once I catch her watching me out of the corner of her eye. When we finally get in, she makes a big deal of asking me what I want to eat, and ignoring me when I say I’m not hungry. She takes her coat off, flings it down and rootles through the fridge, sighing loudly as she takes things out and puts them back again. I was going to ask her more about Rinaldo, but this performance is driving me crazy, so instead I slip into my room and use my new phone to call Pierangelo.
‘Pronto,’ he says before it even rings. ‘I was about to call you. I’m on my way home in just a minute.’
‘I knew that,’ I say. ‘I’m psychic.’
I have never seen his office at the paper, but I imagine him now, leaning back in his chair, one arm behind his head as he talks, and suddenly Rinaldo and Billy and everything else seem ridiculous.
‘What?’ He asks.
I settle for, ‘I’m hungry.’ Which is actually true, I just didn’t want to give Billy the satisfaction of feeding me.
Pierangelo laughs. ‘So you pick up the Chinese. I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. I have to go back to Rome in the morning, early. But,’ he adds, ‘that doesn’t mean we can’t watch the football.’
Football is something of a joke between us. I’m no big fan, admittedly, but Monika banned the watching of matches altogether. No matter how great the club, Real Madrid, Barcelona, even, God forbid, Milan, she decreed it vulgar. As a result, Pierangelo was forced out of the apartment and into the homes of friends, to sports bars, or sometimes even to a hotel, to watch his beloved clubs. Now, he celebrates the absence of La Tiranna, the Tyrant, as he calls her, with orgies of Chinese takeout, beer straight from the can and a lot of obscene cheering. We take it in turns to buy the chow mein and egg rolls.
The Faces of Angels Page 6