“Huh?”
She thought that a dependable, erotic, intelligent man sounded like a good deal.
Mr. Columbo came after lunch to fetch them.
Carl was in possession of the plastic engraving and the adhesive materials, though he still seemed jet-lagged. What if he glued his own fingers to the gravestone and they had to call in a chemist to break the bond?
Mr. Columbo jumped out of the van and they jammed inside, except Eloise, who stood on the sidewalk, surveilling the passersby. “Have a good time,” Margie said, but Eloise didn’t budge. “I have a premonition,” she said.
“Get in the van.”
She got in the van.
“You’re not coming?” Carl said. “I have to lie down,” Margie said. “Jet lag hit me.” And when the van pulled away, she went off to lie down with Paolo. She went to the coffee bar and called his number and he picked up on the first ring and said, “Hello darling Margie” with a hard g and said he’d been hoping she’d call. Well, she had. “Would you like to come over?” Well, yes, she would. She headed for his hotel, armed with clear directions—down a narrow street with many little restaurants and a bar called Luigi’s on the corner, and turn left past a modern art gallery—but Luigi’s never appeared. She turned and retraced her steps, but evidently not—the street didn’t look the same going in this direction—and she stopped, and was about to ask for directions. Dove si trova Il Paradiso?
The weight of the question struck her: which way to paradise? And a little voice within said, “Not this way, that’s for sure.” She was lost in more ways than one.
She was a bad person. Perhaps God had put a price on her head even now, and should she dare to take Communion when she returned home, the Body of Christ would stick in her throat and she would choke to death. Of course one could avoid Communion, make all sorts of excuses, but bad things do happen to guilty people, no matter what they say. It’s true. Call it “bad karma” or call it Nebraska, but a sinner has every reason to be paranoid. Something awful could be just about to happen. Cheryl could marry a man with obsessive-compulsive arsonist tendencies and Carl Jr. take up parachuting and Carla give birth to a dwarf.
She could imagine a sorrowing Sister Arvonne approaching her, hands outstretched. (Don’t take life into your own hands, my child. Don’t throw away all of God’s gifts and two millennia of the wisdom of the Holy Mother Church in favor of your own restless heart. If you don’t believe, that is okay—faith comes and goes—but don’t destroy the temple that God has built in your heart. Your parents, your grandparents, your teachers, all of the faithful, have worked and prayed and sacrificed to make you the good woman you are. Don’t throw it all away for an hour of pleasure.)
She was lost, looking for paradise. Paolo had carefully pointed her toward it and she must’ve taken the wrong passageway because she came into a piazza full of parked cars, a sort of fifteenth-century parking lot, where an eager young man stood with a big steel hoop around his neck on which hundreds of car keys hung. He had made the piazza his parking lot. A red Fiat drove up, a lady hopped out, he parked the car in the mass of other cars, and added her keys to the hoop. Across the square, the high marble front of the church of Sant’Agostino, and she crossed over to look at it. Four slender pilasters with carved capitals (she read in her guidebook), the crests of a bishop and a cardinal on the façade, a fresco of St. Augustine himself (“Known for his work with the care and conversion of prostitutes, the church was built in what was then Rome’s red light district.”). A church designed for women just like herself. She opened a small side door and walked into the dimness. When her eyes adjusted, she found herself standing next to the archangel Raphael, a gown slipping rakishly off one shoulder, holding a black marble half shell with holy water. She dipped her fingers in it and crossed herself.
In the dimness she could make out gilded baroque columns and colored marble, carved birds and plants, busts in niches, frescoes, an explosion of color—odd, to have such a gaudy display and so poorly illuminated—and then her eye met the eyes of a man in a black suit standing thirty feet away in the aisle, his right hand in his pocket, holding (it looked like) a pistol. A second man stood in a pew near him and a third and fourth in the side aisles, all of them in dark suits, dark hair swept back, and then she noticed, in the middle of them, the man kneeling in prayer. Four hoodlum bodyguards protecting a sinner. They made no motion toward her and she stood stock still for a moment and then, seeing the statue of the Blessed Virgin a few feet beyond Raphael, stepped over to it and knelt on the cushion. If they wanted to shoot a woman at prayer, then so be it.
She asked to be forgiven for the sin of adultery, enjoyable though it had been. She asked that her love for Carl be restored to her heart, difficult though he is. She asked that she not be shot and killed, especially not in a state of sin. She prayed for her mother and father, that they have a peaceable old age. She prayed for the happiness of her children, though she had no clue what that might involve. She prayed for the well-being of her fellow pilgrims, that light shine into their hearts. She prayed for the new president and his family.
And then she prayed for the existence of God. She said, “I would feel so foolish talking to You like this if in fact You are simply a myth or a superstition. And think of how the people who built this church would feel. I mean, look at the work involved. The expense. The artistry. Does this not create some sort of an obligation to be real, Lord?
“I’m not demanding that You walk out of a cloud and talk to me, though I wouldn’t object to it either. I just wish I believed in You more. I was brought up Catholic, You know. Which is pretty strict. Maybe not to You but to us it seemed pretty tough. All black and white. Do what you’re told and don’t slough off. You can’t be a half believer. That was my preparation for life. And now here I am, riddled with doubt about You and the Life to Come and also what to do about this one.”
And then a door clicked shut. She looked around. The men in dark suits were gone.
So she got to her feet and continued living her life. The Holy Mother sat under a halo of gold stars, the infant God in her arms holding a bird in His hand, a silver leaf over His genitalia. Just beyond, in a little chapel, a large painting of an elderly man and woman kneeling in the dirt before the Madonna (“Note the famous dramatic lighting of Caravaggio, which emphasizes the Madonna’s everyday clothing and dirty feet [scandalous to many in the seventeenth century] as the pilgrims kneel before her.”), just as she had just done, and light shone on her. Her phone beeped. There was a voice-mail message. It was Paolo. “Darling, did something come up? Did you decide not to come? It’s okay. I’d love to see you whenever you can. I love you.”
“He drove us around the battle sites but they’re all gone,” Carl told her that evening. “Just a lot of ugly high-rises and shopping arcades and pizza shops, gelato stands, gas stations. No monuments to be seen. Anyway, the Americans and British landed there at Anzio on the twenty-second of January, 1944, and fought inland through light German resistance up the beach and into the Padiglione Woods where the fighting got heavier. They had moved a couple miles inland by January twenty-fourth, but then the German commander, Kesselring, brought in two Panzer divisions and stopped them cold right there. There was an Anzio Beach Landings Museum but it was closed. So we stood around where the boats had come ashore and tried to imagine what it was like, thousands of men wading through the surf holding their rifles up over their heads, the landing ships coming up on the beach.”
“Did you find the grave?” she said.
“He’s not there. We looked all through the American Cemetery outside Nettuno, about eight thousand Americans buried there and the names of three thousand missing written on the memorial walls. No Gussie.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Well, it’s not your fault.”
But it was, of course.
She hadn’t shown them Gussie’s letters. Better to keep the mood lighthearted, she thought, than face up to Gussie’s bit
terness about the entire Italian campaign, the senselessness of it, the arrogance of the American command, Lieutenant General Mark Clark in particular. Probably Gussie was right and Clark was an ass, envious of Eisenhower’s stature, aware that the D-Day invasion of Normandy was slated for early June, and anxious to get to Rome before D-Day put the Italian campaign on the back pages. The strategic importance of Italy was nil. The crucial thing was to demolish the German army, not to capture Rome. Clark let the Germans off easy and set his sights on a triumphal parade through the Eternal City. That’s how Gussie saw it. He’d come ashore at Anzio and hooked up with the brigadier and seen and heard a lot. His next-to-last letter to Norbert began:
Dear Lille Bror,
The Germans have skedaddled and the Second Corps is all jubilant about that, all except the Brigadier who’s sad because now he must give up his deluxe accommodations and hit the road with the hoi polloi and take his chances elsewhere. He was playing Duke Ellington on his record player last night and feeling very thoughtful and after his fourth Armagnac and soda, he said, “I am not cut out for war. The killer urge is not in me. I am a thinker, maybe too much so. I see too many contradictions. The morality of the thing and so forth.” And he passed out on a pillow and slept the sleep of the confused and I removed his boots and leggings and finished off the Armagnac. The Germans are smarter than we are and they know that Italy means nothing in this war and so the more they can make us pay for it, the better. The war will be won or lost in France and Germany. Were it not for the Russians, we’d be sunk. They bled Hitler white on the Eastern Front, which is the real story of this war and the one you won’t read in the history books. Churchill will write the history of this war, just wait and see, and it will be all about Churchill and the Spirit of the British People and the little boats rescuing the Army from Dunkirk, which is all well and good, but if Hitler hadn’t made the boneheaded decision to attack Russia, the Wehrmacht would be parked in Piccadilly and we Americans would be negotiating a treaty with the Huns and the Japs and feeling lucky to have a big ocean on either side of us. Everybody knows this but nobody says it. If we are winning the war, it is because the Fuehrer is even stupider than our generals, if that is possible. So here we are moving toward Rome a month late, all fat and happy, having failed to wipe out Kesselring’s army, and General Clark shall have his parade tomorrow. Tonight he is rehearsing his lines so he can speak them with his head tilted up and a nice strong jawline which will look good on the front pages of all the newspapers, much better than pictures of American GIs torn and crumpled in the mud, which is the price of Churchill’s bullheaded insistence on an Italian campaign and General Clark’s being outgeneraled at every turn. Ten thousand Americans dead, blown up, bayoneted, and all to win a rocky peninsula of no strategic importance. Like launching an invasion of New York by attacking Miami. This is what wartime censorship accomplishes: it enables stupidity to continue unhampered. But I am out of the war now. I signed my own treaty and I am waiting for dark when I will make my own invasion and find my darling Miss Gennaro who sent word that she found us a lovely little hotel near the Gate of St. Paul. She bought us a bottle of wine and some ham and cheese and she is wearing a white nightgown passed down from her grandmother. Do you get the drift? She wants me. I’ve been playing it cool and avoiding her and this is the payoff. Oh what’s the use of pretending? I’m in love with her. I adore her. I am never coming back to Minnesota. I’m going to marry her and settle down and become Augustus the Roman and make a family. And in two hours I am going to be in her arms. Kesselring’s army can’t stop me.
More tomorrow but don’t expect me to tell you everything.
Gussie
BOYFRIEND
Carl was very courtly to her that evening. Did he know about Paolo? Had she been spotted? Rome wasn’t so big you could assume secrecy. “What did you do today?” he said, in a kind way, not accusingly. “Just living my life, walking around, seeing the sights,” she said. True enough. “Glad you’re having a good time,” he said. He had unbent from his pissy attitude toward the Italians and he’d even adopted some of their style. He opened doors for her, bowing slightly, and offered her his hand up stairs, a courtier in a green nylon jacket and chinos. Once, offering her a chair in a restaurant, he even kissed her hand. Tuesday night, there he was in a sidewalk café near the river, sitting by her side, chatting her up, charming her with witty asides. Affecting a certain Continental style, a knowingness. Everyone had been content to stick with Chianti and then Carl out of the blue ordered a bottle of Tignanello. And pronounced it without hesitation. The waiter was impressed. He uncorked it and poured a splash into a glass and Carl swirled the wine around in a professional manner and tasted it.
“How is it?” said Wally. “Looks like wine to me.”
“I like it. It’s more complex,” he said.
Carl had never commented on the complexity of wine before in his life. Nor had he ever indicated a preference for complexity, not in wine or anything else. And then he drank the wine and said, “One thing you get the sense of, being here in Rome, I must say—you get the feeling that there is a great great deal about life in this world that we will never understand and maybe we should stop trying to and just enjoy what we have.”
“Let me write that down, Shakespeare,” said Wally.
“I’m serious. Americans think we can understand everything and then solve it. Italians are different. Maybe it’s enough just to live your life.”
“Thank you for the poem,” he said to her on the way back to the hotel. She had sent him the poem that ended, I hope you know, my darling one / I love you, after all is said and done.
“That’s nice that you’re writing poems again.”
“It’s not finished,” she said.
They made love that night. He lay in bed reading and she took a shower and stood by the bed toweling herself dry, one leg up on the bed. It felt like an Audrey Hepburn movie, except more explicit. He peered over the top of his book at her. It was Beachhead in Italy, about the 1944 campaign, bought used at a curbside book table for one euro, a small triumph for Carl. She dried her legs and spread cream on them and pulled on her green warm-up pants and her IF YOU’RE COLD, PUT ON A SWEATER Tshirt. They lay side by side reading and then he turned out his light, and they lay on their backs for a while. “You having a good time?” he said. She said she was. “Everybody seems to be doing okay.” And then he turned toward her and put his arm across her belly, and hitched his leg up over her leg, and she turned toward him and slipped her hand under his T-shirt, and the rest came flowing along naturally. A miracle. Pure divine intervention. She had said prayers to St. Helen, the patron saint of older women and the lovelorn in general, and the good saint, who had received her martyrdom at the hands of Eskimos in Greenland who set her adrift on an iceberg, came to Margie’s aid, and suddenly Carl was her boyfriend again. It was nice. Very nice. And when it was over, he pulled his pajamas on and she put her head on his shoulder. And almost said, “That was wonderful.” Could have said it. But did not. She said, “Remember the time we went to Chicago for our anniversary and stayed at that famous hotel that turned out to be a welfare hotel with thousands of cockroaches that stampeded when we switched the light on, so we drove around and went to the Drake and you said, ‘Hang the expense,’ and we sat in that bar with about a thousand photographs of famous people nobody ever heard of, and it was just us and the bartender and the pianist with black horn-rims and a guy back in the shadows who when our pupils adjusted to the light we saw was Robert De Niro. Remember?” He shook his head.
“He wore a tan raincoat. I smiled at him and he smiled back.”
“You must’ve been with someone else.”
“Darling, I’ve never been with someone else. The next night we saw Chorus Line and you hated it.”
“Maybe you dreamed it.“
“No. Sorry. Not Chorus Line—Forest Time—that musical about the magical grove where people never grow old. It was really really bad. But there was
a song called ‘Mr. Happy’ and you said, ‘I’m so happy that I was able to talk you into marrying me.’ Remember?”
He shook his head.
She sang: “We’ve got love in our hearts, and sweet melodies, and we’re dancing our way through the trees.”
“Never heard it,” he said.
“Do I know you?” she said. “Did you father those children or was that someone else?”
He had already turned over and was lightly snoring. She stood at the window, naked, arms folded, looking out into the little courtyard. The dry fountain, wooden benches piled against it, workmen’s toolboxes. How incomplete life is and unceasing. Three months she had waited to make love—longed for it, imagined it—and now there it was, done, and … life is still incomplete.
Nothing changes. We’re still standing at the window, wishing for something else. You get your kids raised and out the door and realize you don’t know any more than when you started. The Pope says High Mass and then he sits down and eats a cheese sandwich. You go to Rome for the experience of a lifetime and then it’s time to go home and put in the tomatoes.
The next morning, she poked her head out of the bathroom, toothbrush in her mouth, and said, “That was nice, last night.” He murmured, lying in bed, his nose in Beachhead in Italy. She said, “It’s been such a long time. Why?”
“I thought you weren’t interested.”
“And that’s why you went and slept in the guest room for three months?”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not upset, I’m just asking. Is that why you left our bedroom?”
He looked up. He wasn’t good at this sort of conversation. She knew that. But hey, it’s life. You’re fifty-five. Get used to it. “I just wished that sometimes you’d say that you wanted to make love with me.”
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