by Delia Ephron
Last month she told me it was coming true.
Is he in love with her?
My brain rattled, every moment reconsidered, thoughts ping-ponging around as I stumbled down one spindly street after another. I didn’t encounter another soul. Except for the noise in my head, the silence was unearthly. Houses were mostly shuttered, doorways covered with rusted iron gratings; some were partial shells with exposed second floors as if bombed in the war. I mean, like in World War II, those photos of Dunkirk. Maybe they were. In one, a man popped like a jack-in-the-box into the empty frame of a window. He rushed out, babbling in Italian. I burst into tears and ran.
Finally a house, formerly grand, larger than others, a chalky yellow, with clothes drying off the balconies, had an open arched entrance. Under the arch were several inner doors secured with iron padlocks and two large green trash bins. It was cool, dark, and rank. I sat on the ground, my back against the wall, too tired now to rerun the marriage tape. I think I might have dozed for a while. When I woke I texted Finn.
By the time I heard back I had wandered on and found a café, a funky patio surrounded by pots of bushy green things and miniature spiny palms, slatted wooden picnic tables with plastic sunflower placemats, and, off to the side the sort of portable bar you might find by a pool. I sat at a table and ordered a Coke.
“Will you have dinner?” the waiter asked, a charmer, not more than twenty, the short sleeves of his tight T-shirt rolled up to his shoulders. While he told me the specials and presented a menu, he kept up a running conversation with two hotties at the bar. I asked him where I was, showed him the map, and texted Finn the information. He showed up quite a while after the parmigiana I’d ordered to be able to stay.
Finn scouted the bread basket, selected a mini pizza square topped with pesto, and stuffed it in his mouth. “They make pesto with pistachio and parsley in Siracusa. What happened?”
I couldn’t get words out.
He jammed his chair around next to mine. I put my head on his shoulder. He patted me like a kid who doesn’t quite know what comfort is or how to provide it.
“Michael’s been cheating on me. With that woman. The woman you met at breakfast. He brought her here.” I burrowed into his shoulder and waited until I could hold back the dam. “How could he do that?”
“What?”
“All of it.”
Finn propped me upright. “Let me get settled.” He took out rolling papers, sprinkled on tobacco, spun and sealed it.
“You’re rolling your own cigarettes? When did this start?”
“Want one?”
“No. I don’t know what to do.”
He glanced at the menu and ordered a bottle of white. “How’d you find out?”
“Did you know?”
“How would I know?” said Finn.
“I don’t know. I just now got this feeling that maybe you knew. What am I going to do? How can I get out of here? Get home?”
We stopped talking while the waiter uncorked the wine. “Drink this. Drink a lot of it. Très bien,” he told the waiter. “It’s the way you like it, Lizzie, not too dry.”
“I don’t want to drink. I need to think.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m a dope. A dupe. Do you think he’s in love with her?”
“It’s a game.”
“He makes it all up, you know. His life’s a fiction. I could blow him out of the water.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Finn clinked my glass. “She took Snow somewhere and returned her looking like a hooker.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Take three big gulps.”
I downed the glass. He poured another, and ordered after asking several questions about the fish. “After the boat ride, the two of them, Snow and Kathy, went off for ice cream. Hours later, they weren’t back. Taylor was bananas. Me too. I told the manager, you better fucking call the police or else, and these two cops showed up, and then suddenly Snow walked in.” He started laughing.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing. It was the scariest shit ever, the end of life.”
“I’m sorry.” I rubbed his arm. “Do you want me to kiss your eyes? It makes you feel better.”
“No, that’s okay, I’ll pass on that, but Snow . . .”
“Is she okay?”
He brightened, grinned. “She stonewalled the cops. Reminded me of myself when I was a kid. Wily as hell.”
“But didn’t—” I couldn’t say her name. “Did she say what happened, where they’d been?”
“Kathy didn’t come back. Just Snow. Kathy’s still out partying.”
“After all that, you came to see me. That is so nice of you, Finn. And thank Taylor for not minding. Don’t tell Taylor about Michael. But that was nice of her, really nice, to release you. She must still be around the bend.”
“Yeah, she is, but better for Snow if Taylor calms her down. Not that Snowy needed calming. Better if she’s just with her mom, though. I’m hopeless.”
“I saw Snow and her.”
“Get out.”
“I did. I saw them walking toward that big rock where everyone suns and swims. Snow was—you’re right—different. Teenage. I was so crazy, I mean upset, startled to see”—forced myself to say it—“Michael’s lover. She was so close I could touch her, I almost didn’t notice Snow, I didn’t think. He brought her here on our vacation. He’s a monster. I married a monster.”
“The parmigiana is okay, signora?”
“Oh, it’s delicious. I’m just not hungry.”
“She eats like a bird,” said Finn.
“The Italians always ask that, if you leave anything, have you noticed? They expect you to clean your plate. No, they want you to be happy. A tragedy not to enjoy a meal. I’d kill for that to be my tragedy. What do I do?”
“Spend the night somewhere else. Go back in time to pack and get on the plane.”
“What do I do with my life?”
Finn emptied the rest of the wine in my glass. “We need somewhere to spend the night.” He went over, chatted up the bartender and the two young women, and returned with a card. “This way. Down this street.”
I stood up, drunk and dizzy, sat down, and started over very slowly. Finn wrapped his arm around me. He smelled sexy, of tobacco, sweat, and garlic.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get you a room.”
Taylor
I BLAMED FINN.
He’d let his daughter, too shy to ask directions, waltz off in this stone city with no stop signs or stoplights, where streets while not identical to each other were as indistinguishable as one natural pearl from another. I have a pearl necklace that belonged to my great-aunt, Bunny Seddley, three strands, and while each is different, the differences are minuscule. These houses and streets aren’t pearls, of course, nevertheless. He didn’t take her cell number either. Can you imagine? Later he pointed out that most likely she couldn’t afford data roaming. “Bet she didn’t have data roaming,” he said. “Costs a bundle.” I pretended not to hear. He’d trusted his gut. I think he said that while we were waiting for the police. Maybe I only think he said that because it’s the kind of thing Finn would say.
My gut tells me this person is reliable. I’ll entrust my daughter to her. My only daughter, not that I mean it would be any different if we had two but we don’t.
I knew, sitting in that lobby with his uselessness next to me, that Snow and I would be better off without him.
As for the police, I barely recall anything, following them down the hall, my legs wobbly, the manager’s office, rocking in the chair. “You were making animal noises,” Finn told me. I said to April, “Why would he say that? Why would he tell me I humiliated myself?” On the floor under the manager’s desk were a bunch of wires held together with a rubber band. Wasn’t that
a silly thing to notice? I thought, She needs a snap-collar cable like the one I have.
I remember biting down on my fist not to scream, and Michael interceding, being so grateful for his intelligence and assuredness. They had to think, if he was with us, that we were important Americans.
When I saw Snow, it was as if my life was given back to me.
Grief overwhelmed, but then, what in the world—Snow was made up as if she’d gone wild at a makeup counter. Her clothes were trampy, that’s the only word I can think of—no, slutty. Snow was suddenly sixteen. Yes, sixteen and jailbait.
I wanted to throw a blanket over her.
I had to keep my wits, a challenge with the police trying to dig in and get some information. Snow was too vulnerable to be submitted to a third degree. Being a mother has made me a warrior, that’s what I told April.
I suppose we were all overwrought and I should forgive Michael. So rattled was he that he actually shook Snow for something she said to him. Shook her?! I ultimately concluded that his reaction was a perverse expression of relief, but Finn let him have it.
I kicked Finn out, took Snow to the room, and ran a bath.
“Are you hungry? Do you need something to eat?”
I didn’t hear her answer and went back into the room where Snow was lazily circling, letting her hand dance along the bed and across the bureau.
“We ate,” she said. It thrilled me, the ordinariness of simply hearing my daughter’s voice.
“Oh, that’s nice. You had a gelato, shopped, and then ate what?”
“Pizza.”
“Where?”
Snow stopped at the mirror and picked up the brush. She leaned in to see her face close-up.
“Snow?”
Her eyes caught mine in the mirror.
“Where did you eat?”
“A café. With boys.” She brushed slowly, arcing the brush to let her glorious hair fan out and settle.
“Where did you go after that?”
“Nowhere.”
“Did anything happen? I know I asked you downstairs. You might not have wanted to say then. This is just between us.”
“This is just between us,” said Snow.
She sounded exactly like me, which mixed me up. I lost my train of thought.
I wanted those clothes she was wearing. I wanted to stuff them in the wastebasket, but I thought, no, I’ll do what I do with Finn’s awful clothes, misplace them later.
Snow fluttered toward me and then around me. I spun to follow. It crossed my mind that she was hyper, although she is not hyper, she has always been the opposite of hyper and I hate labels. Still, she did seem overly excited. “I’m glad we’re going to Ravello tomorrow. Snow, if you don’t take a bath, you should wash off the makeup.”
She tugged the string on her pants and let them drop to the floor.
“My goodness, she bought you a thong.”
I don’t know why I even say this, it is obvious, but Snow and I have no modesty. Yet I was embarrassed to talk to her standing in the middle of the suite, naked except for that little triangle patch over, well, barely over her fuzz of sprouting pubic hair.
“Put on your pajamas.” Conveniently they were out on the chair because I had left out everything we would need for the trip tomorrow. I thrust them at her. “Where is that woman now?”
“She went with them. I got lost. It’s hard to find your way here.”
“What an irresponsible dolt she is. Leaving you to find your way back. How awful for you. Were you frightened?”
She only blinked. Rapid blinking for five seconds or so, a long time to blink. I recognized it as one of her turtle moves. She walked into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Nothing strange about how she did that. She’s a vigorous brusher and afterward she always bares her teeth, examining them in the mirror, and, with her tongue, swipes them across the top. I found it comforting to see, business as usual. From that alone I knew nothing bad had happened.
I decided not to make a fuss about her washing off the makeup.
“What did you say to Michael?” I asked as she slipped into bed and drew the covers up to her chin. “What did you whisper to him, Snow?”
She flipped over on her tummy and closed her eyes. She was done. Too exhausted to answer, I’m sure. Too traumatized. Better forgotten. A night we would delete from our mental hard drives.
Watching my daughter drift into slumberland, letting my hand rest lightly on the small of her back, feeling the rise and fall of her breath was pure joy.
Lizzie
WE KISSED ON THE STREET. Finn slid his hands up my jersey. My breasts were nearly exposed, yearning to be. I lifted my top and pressed against him as we stumbled on, half walking, half making out. We peeked through the glass into Hotel Zero. A man was asleep at the desk, his head back, snoring loudly.
Finn knocked. The old man shuddered awake and unlocked the door. I stood behind in disarray while Finn paid in cash.
He nuzzled me up the stairs to number five at the top. When we opened the door, the dim yellow bulb in the hall cast a sickly pall over the dark spread on the bed with its two flat pillows. The only room light was overhead. Finn switched it on, throwing glare on our undone flushed selves, and as quickly switched it back off. Better not to see.
I was so drunk, so emotionally at sea, I could have done unmentionable things with a stranger, and yet it rumbled through my consciousness that I had been fifteen pounds lighter when I slept with Finn last.
In this small, airless cube with a slanted ceiling I felt a wave of nausea, which I swallowed back before we fell on the bed, which sagged under our weight, and wiggled out of our clothes.
The sex was familiar, the way the taste of something stays locked in your unconscious. (Proustian, a madeleine, Michael would have invoked that cliché.) We lay pressed together on our sides, Finn slid his hand up my leg, and then he got down to business. He always flips on top, practical, no deviations off his route, no detours exploring the landscape or sudden bursts of inspiration. He likes to fuck and he knows what he needs to do, so I’m happy too.
I kept my eyes closed.
I had to put a man between me and Michael.
Finn left an hour later, rustling me awake.
“Why did we break up?” he said.
“Oh, God, not now.”
He mussed my hair.
“Because you drove me crazy. All our dreams were different. I wanted to go to New York. It was the end of summer.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
Later I thought it was not love but loyalty we were expressing, the way two devoted friends might end a conversation or a telephone call. Loyalty: a more honorable pledge than love. Did that make Finn’s betrayal greater than Michael’s?
When I woke up and craned my head at the window, the swallows were swirling and whining in the slip of colorless dawn between this roof and the one opposite, an uninhabited wreck.
The bathroom, with a plastic accordion door and nearly too small to turn around in, had a dirty mirror over a miniature bowl of a sink with one spout, cold, a toilet with no seat. A metal shower spray poked out of the wall, greenish around the edges. There was a drain under my feet. I soaked myself with icy water, then realized there was no towel. I rolled around on the bed to dry off. It was disgusting.
The anesthetic of sex and alcohol had worn off and I was beginning to feel jumpy. My hangover was like nothing I’d ever experienced, a vise across my forehead and over my head to the base of my neck. My arms and legs felt barely attached or under my control. My eyes had deep dark circles, my skin sallow. I looked discarded. I had been.
But I had Finn. I had always known I had Finn, even though I didn’t know what I wanted to do with Finn. But I had him, and Taylor didn’t, and that was a comfort.
Trembling at
the thought of seeing Michael, scared of him, I realized, scared of his seductive games, worrying about how he might confuse me, and frightened at how much I wanted to kill him, I gave myself orders. Spoke them aloud: Go to the hotel, pack, ignore, take a taxi solo to the Catania airport, and find your own way back. To Berkeley.
I would visit my mother. When we pulled into the driveway, I would cry as I always did at the sight of my dad’s bicycle still chained to the front porch, rusted into art, and I would blame him for Michael.
Digging through my purse, I located a stray lozenge that I rinsed off and sucked. It was 6:42 a.m. according to my phone.
A little girl in pajamas pawed a scooter in and out of the front door of whatever this was, a vacation flophouse. As I was trying to figure out which direction to walk, a cheerful woman bustled out of the back, waving a dishtowel. She shooed the little girl outside, walked me to the end of the block, and pointed me right. I could see the sea and sky but not the horizon, the ash blue of one disappeared into the other. “At the water, a sinistra.” She signaled left.
I walked unsteadily to the water, and when I got there realized I was standing nearly at the tip of Siracusa by a stupendous fort. There wasn’t even a wisp of wind and over the seawall, looking down, water lapped the rocks in a friendly inviting way. I thought about diving in, about crashing headfirst into the clear shallow sea, my head splintering. I also thought about the time between diving and landing when I imagine all people changed their minds. For me it was only a flirtation, not serious, merely an acknowledgment of how much I was dreading the next hours. It cheered me that I could have that fantasy.
Sticking to the route along the seawall, I figured I was a half hour from the hotel. As people passed—a few joggers, some bare-chested men in trunks with towels slung over their shoulders—I clung to the balustrade railing for balance and calm. Eventually the path zigged sharply and I could see Lo Scoglio. I quickened, wondering about the crowd gathering at the entrance, the patrol cars, the cops waving traffic to pass farther from the sea side and closer to the buildings. A boy climbed the nearby parapet angling for a better view.