The Chapel

by Michael Downing

  I probably would not have repeated any of these inconsequential observations to Mitchell, but while he was alive I almost always imagined him at the other end of such thoughts, as if our marriage was like the green patch of lawn beneath the maple tree in our front yard, the place where leaves fell, swirled around, and finally piled up so high and dry that we knew it was time to grab our old bamboo rakes and make big piles to burn, the thick smoke sweet with the harvest of fleeting colors, the incense of another year.

  I sat at the desk and pasted the photo of Ed’s biscotti palace and cracker chapels into my book. It was not quite six-thirty, and T.’s invitation to a late breakfast was working on me like a prison sentence. I checked my phone, and beneath a coupon for a used-book website and an offer of cheap drugs from a Canadian pharmacy, I found an email from Sam with a photograph attached.

  O Captain! My Captain!

  I hope the sailing is smooth. And while you are in foreign lands, I thought you might enjoy this little slice of Americana—courtesy of you. Susie and I think of it as the Colonial Corner in our Cobble Hill sublet—and we always think of you and Dad when we’re sitting in there.

  The camelback sofa had long lived in Mitchell’s study, but when I had a hospital bed installed for him, something had to go. That was the weekend Sam hung the flat-screen TV in the living room, so I offered the sofa to him. Mitchell didn’t like the idea of it leaving the house. Maybe he still believed he would recover, or maybe he wanted me to pretend I believed he would. I know he didn’t like Sam’s readiness to supplement his teaching salary with hand-me-downs and handouts.

  From the living room windows, Mitchell watched Sam tie the sofa to the roof of the BMW. When Sam came back into the house, triumphant, Mitchell said, “If you found a summer job, you could afford a new sofa.”

  Sam said, “I’ll think of you whenever I am sitting down, Dad.”

  Before he left, I pulled Sam aside and told him to take some of the towels and sheets I’d stashed in the closet of his old bedroom.

  He asked if I could spare any blankets.

  I nodded and asked him to send his father a picture of the sofa once it was in place.

  Sam said, “Wouldn’t that be rubbing it in?”

  I said, “He knows he is never going to see where you and Susie live. And so do you. You’ve got the sofa, and his new car. Does he get a thank-you yet? Send him the picture.”

  “There’s an old wooden chair upstairs in the attic.”

  “Take it,” I said. I knew if he stayed five more minutes, he’d ask if I could spare the refrigerator. And if he stayed ten more minutes, Mitchell would present him with a bill for the food he’d consumed since his arrival. They were always disappointed with each other, and time together made them both ravenous for compensation.

  Until the belated arrival of the picture, I hadn’t known that the chair Sam had found upstairs was the Shaker gathering chair my brother had sent me as a wedding gift, the one authentic piece of furniture in the house. Plus, one of the blankets Sam had chosen was a patchwork quilt made for me by Cambridge middle-school kids who’d successfully completed the Reading Rainbow program. The photograph of Sam and Susie’s sublet was an unnerving glimpse into the future, the museum of Mom and Dad. And now Sam was shopping for a permanent home for his collection.

  Susie and I spent the weekend walking around Williamsburg, poking our heads into open houses. There are a lot of new (tiny) loft spaces for sale in the old brick buildings, and we have to be out of here by December, so time to shop, right? I know you said there was more money (how much?) coming my way (when?), and if that’s true maybe when you get back to Cambridge we can square away how and when I should expect it? No rush. Not trying to build Rome in a day. Love from the New World.

  Mitchell was dead, but for Sam the story would never end. I understood now that he would always want more from his father. And in the sad light cast by this insight, I also saw how often I had indulged Sam because I knew the feeling.

  I’d urged Mitchell to settle the inheritance issue before he died. Almost weekly, Mitchell had proposed a new scheme for managing the transfer of money to Rachel and Sam. Many of his plans were wise, most of them were designed to prevent Sam from doing what Sam would surely do with unrestricted access to a pot of money, and ultimately Mitchell left all of that money in trust. He made me the sole trustee and entrusted me with an elaborate binder of handwritten notes about investment strategies he preferred, as well as the percentage of annual interest he anticipated, and his preferred maximum whole-dollar distributions to each child, which effectively created a part-time job for me as a funnel for his largesse.

  I took a shower, and every thought I had about the money, and the kids, and the trust was swept right down the drain along with the fleeting pleasure of the puffy pillows and the other dust stirred up by my solitary existence. I didn’t towel off the steam on the big bathroom mirror. If Mitchell had been a better Jew, or if I had been a better wife, I would have covered all of the mirrors in my home after he died, and I would have understood sooner what I understood when I repeatedly looked for my reflection, which wasn’t there. From now on, wherever I was, I would always be alone with these thoughts. I was a sentimental warehouse stuffed with old sofas, a matching pair of ancient bamboo rakes, and ironies and indignities and intimacies no one else could understand. It was a relief to know I would be at home by Wednesday evening, where I could lie still, let this stuff drift around and pile up until I was buried.

  I put on the hotel bathrobe and wrapped my hair in a towel. I sat at the desk and dialed into my online investment accounts. Maybe it was the amount of money Mitchell had amassed for the two kids, not to mention how much he’d left for me, or maybe it was the soft white hotel robe, or maybe I’d tied the towel too tight around my head, but I felt momentarily like an heiress. I called down to the front desk.

  “Pronto.”

  I thought I recognized the voice. “Ricardo?”

  “Signora Berman. Come la posso aiutare?”

  I was already lost. “Breakfast? Room service? Is that possible?”

  This occasioned a long, muffled pause. Eventually, a much younger man said, “Pronto. How may I help you?”

  “Coffee? Is it possible to get some sent up to my room?”

  “No. We have no room serving, signora. We have—. Oh, okay. Only if you did have room serving, coffee is what you prefer to enjoy?”

  I said, “Yes,” hypothetically speaking. I got the clear sense Ricardo was orchestrating the young man’s responses.

  “Which is the preferred favorite?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Si, signora.”

  “Latte?”

  “Perfetto. Prego—oh. Okay. If room serving con succo, which one should arrive?”

  Did he mean, with sugar? Unclear. This indulgence was turning into a trial. “Lovely,” I said.

  “Lovely?”

  “Con succo,” I said, hoping I wasn’t ordering a whole pineapple. “Perfetto.”

  He said, “Prego, prego,” and hung up.

  I reread Sam’s email. Five or six times, I tapped out a few lines of response and deleted them. I couldn’t quite imagine what Mitchell would have wanted me to say about the money. I could imagine what Mitchell would have said, but he wouldn’t have wanted me to say that, which is why he’d left it to me to say what had to be said. In a fit of inspiration, I added Rachel’s name to the address line and wrote:

  Dearest you two—

  I miss you, and I miss your father, and among the many hopes and wishes he harbored on your behalf, I know he most wanted you both to thrive and love your lives. And I know it pleased him to think that he could leave you both with evidence of the simple truth that he carried you with him in his mind and heart every day. Your father left you each a bequest of $425,000. My intention is to give you the full amount immediately. When I return to Cambridge, I will put you both in touch with Lawrence Macomber, a longtime friend of your father, who now is a di
rector at the Harvard Management Company. He kindly offered to advise you both on strategies for making the most of this gift.

  I know that your father left each of you with much more than a sum of money, but that material is wholly yours to tally and invest as you see fit. The money is another matter. It initially passed into my hands, and I write today to let you know it is on its way to you.

  I hit “Save” because I heard a knock at the door. Or I might have hit “Save” because I realized I was about to give away almost a million dollars—and then I heard the knock.

  As I opened the door, Ricardo hoisted a silver tray overhead and squeezed past me. He made a beeline for the little desk, which was crammed with my stuff, so he twirled toward the unmade bed. He said nothing. He lowered the tray and got it firmly into both of his hands. It was a full coffee service for two, with two flutes of blood-orange juice and two crème-filled pasty cornets.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  He nodded dismissively, as if that should have gone without saying.

  “You’ll want to put it down,” I said. I pointed to the bed.

  He didn’t love that idea. He was staring at the bathroom door.

  I knew the sink counter was even less promising than the desk.

  “So, so, so. You are one?”

  He barked out the English words as if he had just memorized them. I said, “I am one. Why?”

  “One,” he said, dubiously, glancing at the two of everything on his tray. “Uno,” he added, just so there could be no confusion.

  “Yes. One.” He seemed to be accusing me of something. “Uno. Why?” I had intended to thank him for the glue, but he was staring at the bathroom door again, as if he suspected I’d secreted in a bunch of freeloaders for breakfast. I bent down to pull the comforter halfway up the bed, and the towel fell off my head, which only heightened my sense of fraudulence. With as much authority as I could muster in a bathrobe and bare feet, I pointed to the bed again. “Here, please.”

  While he set down the tray, I went to the desk to dig up my wallet for a tip. I pulled out a five-euro note, but when I turned, Ricardo was backing out of the bathroom, and as he headed out of my room, he slid open the closet door—one last check for unregistered guests—and then he left without another word.

  THE HOTEL RESTAURANT WAS STILL CROWDED AT EIGHT-THIRTY, but I spotted an open window table. I didn’t sit down immediately for the same reason no one else had claimed that table—the view was blocked by a big man outside, leaning against the granite windowsill. It was T., and though I couldn’t hear what he was saying out there, I recognized the timbre of his voice as he chatted with someone beside him whom I couldn’t see. He was wearing his blue linen blazer, and I guessed that he had been out all night and his companion—a paramour? Ed?—had kindly led him back to the hotel. I didn’t want to go out and intrude into his private nightlife, but when I sat down directly behind him, I felt like J. Edgar Hoover or the mother of a teenager who’d stayed out partying past dawn. Before I could move, T. reached out and took an espresso cup from his invisible acquaintance and noticed me. He turned, his smiling face cleanly shaved, a crisp crimson-and-white pinstripe shirt tucked into a pair of khaki trousers, an espresso cup in either hand. I was impressed that he’d persuaded someone to provide him and his companion with street-side beverage service, but I still thought my breakfast story trumped his.

  By the time he appeared in the restaurant, T. had traded the espresso cups for two wood-handled black umbrellas, which he was wielding like canes. He said, “You might be expecting me to sit down.”

  “I was just admiring your sticks,” I said.

  T. said, “I was thinking a walk might be the thing.” He looked ill at ease, and he was clearly hoping not to have to explain himself.

  I grabbed my bag. “I ate two breakfasts earlier,” I said, standing up, “so we’re both done here.”

  T. handed me an umbrella and headed out of the hotel. He was standing too straight and taking long, purposeful strides, as if he was trying to walk off something—maybe a hangover, maybe a cranky back. Even before we reached the end of Largo Europa, his pace was taking its toll on me. With each hurried step, I could feel my feet skidding forward in my shoes, widening the little holes in my open-toed pumps. Instead of heading left past the post office, he hustled us to the right, and after we’d zigzagged through four crosswalks, the Church of the Eremitani appeared on our left, and I realized we were going to pass the café where I’d picked up a free biscotti after Ed’s lecture.

  I called out to T., but he was so far ahead he didn’t hear me, so I yelled, “Uncle!”

  He stopped but didn’t turn around.

  When I caught up to him, I pointed to the café. “I just want to step in here and put on a sports bra and running shoes.”

  T. said, “Forgive me.”

  I said, “Buy me something foamy,” and headed inside to the bar. The young waiter had been replaced by his father or an uncle—same smile, same apron, brown mop of hair reduced to a scraggly tonsure of gray curls.

  T. ordered two latte macchiatos and something else that made the bartender smile, which turned out to be a blood orange. While the milk steamed, the bartender peeled the orange and then set it on a plate with a paring knife and slid it onto the bar with our beverages.

  I said, “Grazie.”

  He said, “Prego.”

  T. was awkwardly twisting his torso, attempting to shrug off his coat.

  I said, “Are you okay?” T. stiffened. My question had registered as a violation of the terms of conduct for our peculiar friendship. I instantly regretted my breach of our policy of presumptive intimacy—no questions asked. Hoping to make it clear I didn’t need an explanation, I casually reached for the collar and slid the blazer halfway down his arms.

  T. said, “I had an odd night.”

  I was staring at a thin streak of something dark on his shirt below one of his shoulders, a run of several inches where the crimson pinstripes seemed to have leeched into the white space. It was obviously blood. I said, “I think you may have sprung a leak.”

  “That’s nothing,” he said.

  The bartender disappeared into the little kitchen behind the bar.

  I still had one hand on his blazer, and I saw another, darker splotch of blood, about the size of a coat button, right on his spine, and his shirt seemed to be stuck to it. With my free hand, I pinched a bit of the loose pinstripe fabric gathered at his waist, tugged lightly, and felt a release, like tape giving way.

  T. said, “Much better.”

  I said, “How do you say Band-Aid in Italian?”

  “Grappa,” T. said and slipped on his jacket. “Thank you. I was rushing earlier so we could walk around the old arena before it rains.” He sipped from his glass and picked up the knife. “During dinner last night, I was treated to a debate about Scrovegni’s sincerity.”

  I wasn’t really interested in what had been served up at a dinner to which I wasn’t invited. I drank some coffee and did my best not to think about his back. I just kept telling myself, He’s a doctor, he’s a doctor.

  After a few silent seconds, T. said, “Enrico Scrovegni specifically dedicated the chapel to the Virgin of Charity.”

  “There was only one Blessed Virgin,” I said.

  “There are many versions of the Virgin,” T. said.

  “One virgin, many virtues. And the greatest of these is charity,” I added, mixing up the Virgin and the Seven Virtues. This felt like an argument in search of a topic.

  T. said, “Speaking of the Virgin of Charity, she was the basis of Scrovegni’s bid for salvation. Will the Virgin accept Scrovegni’s gift of the chapel in exchange for forgiveness?”

  Along with a newfound devotion to the Virgin of Charity, T. seemed to have picked up a note of piety during his dinner at the basilica. “It’s an age-old question,” I said, hoping to leaven the tone. “Can a man buy his way back into a woman’s good graces?”

  T. said, “Sc
ripture says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to pass into heaven.”

  I said, “And any woman can tell you that it’s easier to buy a new pair of socks than to try to thread a needle and darn them.”

  “Ye of little faith,” T. said. He sliced the orange into six ruby-red discs and fanned them out among the bits and streams of bloody juice on the white plate. He held his hand over the plate, palm down, and piously said, “The Blessed Sacrament.” The melodrama of the moment made me queasy. The whole ritual seemed to be connected to the blood on his back that we weren’t talking about. And as if the weirdness quotient weren’t high enough, the bartender came back bearing a crystal cruet, pulled out the faceted stopper and said, “Miele di acacia,” and ceremoniously poured a clear viscous liquid onto the oranges.

  “Now,” T. said.

  I said, “Now what?”

  He pointed to the bartender and said, “Join us. Si, si, si. Unisciti a noi.”

  They both took hold of a slice and looked at me, their hands still balanced at the edge of the plate, where the pool of bloody juice was glimmering. The bartender nodded, urging me to join them, as if this were some kind of initiation. I smiled and didn’t move. The moment was teetering in my imagination between a dare and a Black Mass.

  Two young blonde women with backpacks poked their heads in the doorway. They hovered there like hummingbirds or a couple of angels who’d flown in from a Giotto fresco. They smiled and said nothing.

  To me, the bartender said, “Si, signora. Unisciti a noi.”

  T. said, “Trust me.”

  I pinched the smallest slice between my fingers. I said, “What is it?”

  T. and the bartender popped their slices into their mouths. I followed their lead, feeling the acid bite on my tongue.

  T. staggered back a few steps and mumbled, “Jesus Christ.”

  The bartender nodded, gleefully chewing away, wiping the bloody juice from his chin with the back of his hand.

  I smooshed the slice against the roof of my mouth. Satan didn’t show up, but as I tasted the sweetness of honey, I felt an evanescent, smoky aroma filter up into my head. I said, “I can feel it more than taste it.”