Siracusa

by Delia Ephron

  As soon as she left, tried K. Again her phone kicked to voice mail. Fuck her.

  Last night while Lizzie slept, I went into the hall. Called Tino’s. The woman said, “It’s not her night. Is this Mr. Shapner?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought I recognized your voice. It’s Tessa, Tino’s wife. May I help you with a reservation?”

  I made one. A random date a month ahead. For three. Why three? What three? I hung up. Then I thought, K’s going to go to work tomorrow. She’ll see my reservation and think I’m never leaving Lizzie. I am full of shit. I called back and canceled. You have done your cruelest, Katarina. You have made me second-guess. Grovel. You have turned me into a girl.

  I can bend the will of a woman, always could ever since the first play. Since I was anointed. Success was an aphrodisiac. Only the novel won’t be seduced. Only the writing betrays me. A woman never yet. I will win, K. You will see.

  With Lizzie it was a sexual attraction. That’s always first for me. During a forced march through a publication party, a book about the Gulf War, I spied her casing the buffet, stretching her body like a cat as she did, plucking this and that from here and there, stacking the plate high. “Did I miss anything?” I heard her say, and liked her low, throaty laugh, amusement at her own greediness. Sometime later she passed by behind me while I was in conversation, and I caught her hand. I knew she was available, have an unerring instinct about that. She’d written something interesting, about five investment bankers, what they wore, what they ate and where, favorite books, heroes, the last six things they’d done for entertainment. Just the facts. It was smart, a bit of fluff to some, but she knew the facts would tell you more than a conventional interview. New York magazine does pieces like that all the time now. So does Vanity Fair. Lizzie did it first. Without knowing her I had saved it to steal from for my next book or play. That I had clipped one of her articles Lizzie found more seductive than champagne and roses. She’d never been told her writing was substantive.

  Divine the insecurity and compliment it. That’s always been my way.

  In Rome, after dinner that first night, Lizzie was, for her, subdued. She loved to chew over an evening, reconsider, despair, crow, dissect, but mercifully she was groggy with wine and jet lag. It occurred to me that if I wanted to leave her . . . correction, when I left her, I had to be firm. A waffle would be an invitation to a conversation. I’d be trapped for eternity.

  She should never have had two glasses of wine, she said, and isn’t limoncello awful? “You were darling to Snow,” she said. “What do you make of her?”

  I didn’t respond to see if it mattered.

  “She’s odd. Well, Taylor smothers her. I mean, don’t you think? Am I being too critical? That’s what happens when you feel shitty about yourself. You turn into a bitch. Where was I? Taylor smothers her. God, mothers.”

  I was right. For a conversation I wasn’t necessary.

  She disappeared into the bathroom and left the door open. She has no modesty. Never has.

  Lizzie

  “THE BRITISH FLAG, that’s what you want.” Michael was at the Bancomat with me peering over his shoulder. To get prompts in English, I reached in to press the button.

  He knocked my hand away.

  “You hit me?”

  “Did I ask for help?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I didn’t hit you, I flicked you.” He pushed cancel by mistake and had to start over. “Damn you.”

  He got his cash and strode off.

  “Michael, I’m sorry.” I hurried after. “I want this vacation to be . . . It means so much to me that we made love last night. And this morning too.”

  He stopped and studied me.

  “We’re together in Italy,” I said. “Let go of the book, please try.”

  Two Germans walked between us. Germans for sure, they always wore the most intimidating sunglasses.

  I expected Michael to appreciate the ridiculousness of tourists parading through our tiff, but he pressed his fist into his forehead as if I’d given him a massive headache.

  “You’re blaming me,” I said. “The book’s like a lover, and it’s all my fault for taking you away from that lover.”

  A flicker of recognition—what a relief because Michael intimidates me when he’s steely. Then he laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  He only shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He reminds me of a boxer, big head, strong jaw, nose with a jog as if it’s been broken. He shaves his head, well, the barber does, a point of vanity as partial baldness projects weakness, makes a man a potential target, the butt of jokes. He’d confided that very late one night, I guess we’d been together about a year. He was optimistic that his memoir would be a success, more than that, a hit, so he was cocky, more able to reveal insecurities, feeling, I think, that they no longer applied. We had taken to walking around naked—our naked phase, we were so hot then—it led not only to great sex but to confessions. I worried that he might leave after he told me. A morning-after regret. He would feel too exposed, vulnerable. The subject never came up again, but it was a marker—we did cross into something deeper and more dependent that night.

  By the way, at the time I didn’t even think it true. The fear that he might be a goat came from something inside, I believed, and had nothing to do with his hair or lack of it and everything to do with the father who had walked out.

  I liked to imagine Michael in the ring, sparring, contemplating his next punch, an exciting fantasy about a man of words. His physicality made him more compelling than the other male journalists and writers we hung out with whose only weapons were wit and sarcasm.

  “In your screwed-up heart, you really do blame me for this trip,” I told him. “And I apologize.”

  “My heart is screwed up,” he said.

  “We agree on something.”

  Since we weren’t traveling by ourselves, I had to eat crow. It wouldn’t be fair to our friends if Michael and I spent the day angry. I’m not a great defuser. Normally I take the bait as easily as the next, but I always tried to give Michael the benefit of the doubt. He is different, I thought. Highly strung because he’s creative, wary and distrusting because of that disappearing dad. As writers, both Michael and I—although I’m not on his level—liked being alone with our thoughts six hours a day. Living in our heads, we called it. My problem: I wasn’t living in my head anymore. Nothing much was going on there. That was why I loved traveling. I didn’t expect to get anywhere except the next restaurant. I didn’t feel a failure at the end of the day for not writing, the way I did these days at home. If I was present, that was enough.

  I wanted to enjoy being married.

  “You should draw the Pantheon,” Taylor was telling Snow when we found them drinking frullati di frutta at a café opposite. She had snuggled their chairs so they could share the guidebook. “It says here that the Pantheon, built in 125 B.C., is like a children’s drawing of a house. Elementary. A triangle on top of a square. You should draw that, Snow.”

  She often suggested activities to her daughter as if her budding teenager were a toddler.

  “I love your shoes,” said Taylor.

  “Oh, thank you. I love them too. They’re Nikes. But not heavy-duty like most Nikes. Isn’t the checkered fabric inside cute?” I folded back the high top. “What do you think, Snow?”

  “I love your shoes,” she said. Taylor’s words. She captured her mother’s inflection perfectly. It might have been an impression. Was it an impression? Was that a comic move? Was it ridicule? I studied Snow’s poker face. She shifted her attention to the Pantheon. “Did someone shoot it?” she asked.

  “It looks that way,” said Michael. “Like it’s been machine-gunned. I think it’s simply pockmarked with age. Where’s Finn?”

 
“Lingering at the Campo de’ Fiori,” said Taylor.

  I got a pang. I was missing something wonderful, prowling through a Roman market with Finn while he flirted with the marinated peppers.

  I have to confess, sightseeing makes me feel inadequate. I expect to have an emotional experience—swoon, feel my heart swell, be awed in the face of, in this case, such a monumental architectural achievement. But it never happens.

  “No one will criticize you for abandoning the Pantheon.” Michael tipped down his sunglasses to let me see his eyes and that he meant what he said. He didn’t mind being alone with Taylor and Snow. “Snow, come on,” he said. “Let’s check this masterpiece out.”

  Snow looked to her mother, who must have assented, although communication between them was too subtle for me. He pulled back her chair with a flourish and took her hand. They squeezed between tables and out of the café into the crowd.

  Taylor arched sideways to keep Snow in her sights. She has beautiful slender arms and impossibly small wrists. Tall and tiny, she is both. I did feel lumpy around her. That day, as always, she was terminally chic in something geometric: a pleated top, front black, back white, the neckline and armholes slits in a perfect square.

  “Michael’s so sweet with Snow. Finn could learn from him.” From one of six compartments of her efficient purse, she extracted a mini bottle of Purell and offered me a squirt.

  I didn’t know about the Purell. I don’t think I would have wanted to vacation with someone who brought Purell along. I even fantasized later that if I’d known about the Purell, maybe the vacation wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t remember Purell in London, perhaps it was a new fetish. Purell is a fetish. Once one carries it—I have noticed from those who do—it seems necessary throughout the day to cleanse. It reflects a constant awareness that the world is awash with bacteria and you, going about your innocent carefree way, are all the while collecting microbes that can murder you or at least give you the twenty-four-hour flu. It’s awkward to turn down Purell, so I didn’t. That struck almost as powerfully as the Pantheon, I’m ashamed to admit. It’s as if one is saying, I prefer germs, I prefer to eat with dirty hands, I have poor hygiene. I am a pig.

  While I was playing with the possibility of spinning Purell into something, into some puny article to sell, Taylor shot up out of her chair and stared. Snow and Michael had stopped to talk to some husky Italians dressed as gladiators.

  “Would you mind paying?” she said, and sped toward Snow.

  It took me a minute to figure out the euros, which were mixed up in my wallet with American money, and to guess the tip. I finished off Taylor’s smoothie and left in search of Finn.

  The market—open-air stalls shaded by umbrellas—is what makes my heart pitter-pat: stacks of prickly-looking vegetables (or fruits) I don’t recognize, baskets of peppers, fresh berries (the prettiest marble-sized cerise-colored ones that turned out to be slightly sour), mixtures of spices named after the pasta sauce they season (arrabbiata, puttanesca), a dizzying assortment of cheese, some in giant farm-sized hunks. I wanted to get stoned on their smoggy dense aroma.

  Finn was eating a slice of pizza bianca, chatting with a signora at a checkered cloth–covered table where several large pieces were available by the slice.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I did, and took a bite. “God, it’s even good cold. Why is it better to eat with your eyes closed?”

  “It concentrates you,” he said. “You can’t feel pain in two places at once.” He wiped my mouth with a paper napkin. “Same thing.”

  “That makes no sense. I’m sure I could feel pain simultaneously in twenty places.”

  “That’s because you don’t respect me. Whatever I say, you disagree. It’s a problem, Lizzie, your loss. You felt that, didn’t you?”

  “Felt what?”

  “Us. A frisson.” He gave the word the full impact of his French accent. “Just now.”

  “No, I didn’t feel a frisson,” I said, although I did. “Have you been sneaking calls to Jessa?”

  “Her kids are trying to murder each other. Also she’s a volunteer firefighter. She’s got a lot happening. It makes it hard for her to focus. Don’t mention Jessa. It disrespects Taylor.”

  “You are bad.”

  “Look,” he said, “if your eyes are open, whatever you see distracts you from the taste, dilutes intensity. You’re employing two senses at once, and not only that, instead of smelling what you eat, which will enhance the flavor, you might be smelling what you see or something else entirely. Never eat while you’re having sex either. Are you following, Lizzie?”

  Almost every encounter we had alone featured a moment from our past—a flash of a flirt or a fight or a joke. In this case he’d fed me fried clams in the middle of—well, some things are better left mysterious. And here he was telling me not to be distracted when he was the king of distraction. During our short life as a couple, his attraction to anyone or anything other than me was constant and indiscriminate. He’d stop to chat up a passing dog, jump in a truck driven by someone he’d gone to high school with. Something as insignificant as a bobbing balloon might intrigue him. With Finn, the time between when we fell for each other and drove each other crazy was no time at all.

  “Try it again,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and took another bite. “It might be the greatest pizza I’ve ever tasted. It’s like—”

  He put his hand over my mouth. “Never describe taste. You can only desecrate it. Merci bien, Violetta,” he said to the pizza lady. “Ici, Lizzie. Elle l’aime aussi.”

  “Desecrate is not what you mean.”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  I did. He put the balled-up dirty napkin into it and closed my hand around it. “When are you dumping Michael?”

  “Don’t project your escape fantasies onto me, Finn.” Just like him to do that. My marriage made sense and his didn’t. His marriage was a stagnant pond. He and Taylor hadn’t had sex since, I had no idea really but they never touched. Never. His attraction to Jessa—she had to be Taylor’s opposite. I imagined her in huge rubber boots wading into the Maine surf, dragging a dinghy, climbing in deftly as if it were easy, barely a splash, definitely no squeal, no near capsizing, then with muscled arms she would power the oars, plunging the boat through high waves before switching on the motor. “How do they start motors on dinghies?” I asked him. “That string they pull—what is that?”

  “The starter,” said Finn. “You’re an idiot.”

  His hands on my shoulders, he steered me through the market, pausing to admire vats of olives and pomodori secchi, moon over vinegars, curse airport security because he couldn’t bring home exotic olive oils. “Tay had us up at seven,” said Finn. “By nine we were at the top of the Capitoline Hill.” He ranted on about his chic cultured wife the way husbands do when they secretly admire them, at least that was my take. By eleven they’d toured the Forum, imagined Caesar holding forth with the help of their guide, Signor Sixty-Euros-an-Hour Giorgio.

  A tour group swarmed in and swallowed us up. We found ourselves being lectured in a Scandinavian language.

  “Is Siracusa a rat fuck of tourists?” said Finn.

  “I know. It’s insane here, isn’t it? And yet who wouldn’t want to come to Rome?”

  Finn pulled me to another stall. Off a tray of samples he picked up a thimble of wine. “To Siracusa,” he said. He gave me a sip before finishing it off, getting into a discussion of Sicilian reds, and dropping the name of Angelo Gaja.

  Michael

  NO WAY TO TAMP DOWN CHARISMA, the man shrugged, reconsidering events, deflecting responsibility. He patted his face with a napkin. It was suffocating in Siracusa. No breeze, no flow. He decided against dissecting his own behavior and motives in favor of burying his head in the Herald Tribune while sipping an excellent espresso. The café at least was hidden. It even had armchairs
.

  Did he have a role? Was he collateral damage or an instigator? Stop here. He was getting ahead of the story. He wasn’t yet in Siracusa.

  Rome, day two.

  Gravitated to Snow by default. Preferred the child. She was a way to avoid Lizzie. Inadvertently, it turned out, to charm Taylor and show up Finn. Taylor was a nervous woman. I liked to study her contrived style. Made a mental note to someday write a woman who masks her insecurity and at the same time parades it in a fashion she doesn’t understand.

  Plan in motion: Sending Lizzie off to Finn was easy. I felt a wizard. How natural it would be for them to fall into bed. They’d been there before. That, by the way, didn’t bother me. “No one is going to criticize you for abandoning the Pantheon. If you’d rather hit the market,” I told her.

  All she needed was permission to be lowbrow.

  The Pantheon is humbling. Built in 125 B.C. I’d already been, came to Rome years before with another woman, an art historian. (I received a liberal arts education from the women I dated.) She had known to come in wet weather, and for a long time we had stood inside that solemn cavernous space hypnotized by a perfect cylinder of rain falling through the oculus, its splash and tap on the marble floor.

  Being a tourist destination, the Pantheon was surrounded by opportunities to experience comic-book versions of ancient Roman life. Two gladiators waylaid us, drawn for sure by Snow’s beauty and because children are a mark. A correction: Snow wasn’t a child. I have not yet lit on the word for what she was at that particular moment in time. Not childlike if she ever was. Too silent, too composed—cunning, did I think that in Rome? On the brink of a spectacular blossoming, which made her, don’t misunderstand, erotic. Forbidden fruit, but erotic.