Trompe l'Oeil

by Nancy Reisman

  The brushing sound of turned pages continued from Theo’s room, except on weekends when Theo stayed out with friends. Absent were James’s predawn shower and kitchen rattling, the regular 6:00 AM opening and closing of the outer door, the revving motor. While other weekday sounds were unaltered, Katy’s footsteps turned heavy. Not stomping: not so forceful. A thudding, as if a kind of speech addressed to each room, or to the road beyond the exterior walls, perhaps to Boston. Or as if the sound might echo back through the house to an earlier moment, before James left; or back to Rome, and to the house before Rome. More often now, Nora would sigh, sometimes in response to the thudding, the two sounds alternating jaggedly.

  In the weeks after James left, the membrane of each day seemed to Nora so thin it might tear any time. She felt a kind of vertigo. As if, on a sleepy morning, while you stood in the kitchen brewing coffee, the laws of physics might lose force, gravity failing. In what direction would you fall? And when she thought of the day James left, she thought of the way he addressed the column of air beside her—later she found herself stepping into that space—as if speaking not to Nora but to himself, or his former self, or to some other Nora, say the part that had leaked away. Perhaps he confused her with a column of air, not recognizing where Nora ended and empty air began.

  Yet without the leaching drag of James’s discontent, the days became simpler. The trick was to stay in the traces of household routine. One night after she put the little girls to bed, Nora allowed herself a martini, and a second one, and the cocktail party scrim returned. She’d begun to buy packs of cigarettes and ration them, two or three a day, though that night she took her cigarettes and her drink out on the deck, at the east end, sheltered from the wind. She sat on the wood planks, knees bent, back against the house wall, and drank and watched the lights down the beach, and the stars between clouds, and fell into the sound of the waves. She smoked a cigarette and then another, let herself drift, and was for a short time almost peaceful. Eventually the cold and the stiffness in her legs drove her back inside. She’d paid no attention to the time; it surprised but did not trouble her that an hour had passed. Only an hour, and on the deck of her own house. But on the living room sofa, Theo sat rocking Delia, Delia hiccupping, her face tear-streaked.

  “What’s up, Mom?” Theo said.

  Nora crossed the room to take Delia, and when Theo stood, Delia clung to him. “It’s okay,” Theo said. “Dee’s okay, aren’t you, Dee? I’ll put her back to bed.”

  Only an hour. Only her own deck; but the feeling on the deck, the relief, the sensation of her body relaxing into some other place, her mind loosened from trouble, then floating—how lovely that feeling had been. Not exactly necessary, not quite. The next day neither she nor Theo referred to that evening; but how easily it could recur, how easily those scrim moments might accrue. She wasn’t, she thought, sorry enough.

  For now, there would be no more drinks. Cigarettes—rationed—but only when the little girls were asleep, or occupied by Katy or Theo, only when Nora was in hearing distance. Then Nora would open the window above the kitchen sink and blow the smoke out; so, too, those seasons in the house were marked by the creak of the window opening, and the increased rush of wind, and the hard click of the window latch. More days smelled faintly of tobacco mixed with salt air; more evenings only of milk.

  II

  ROMAN CAFÉ

  The tourist districts echo with repeating arches—freestanding arches, arched doorways and passageways, ancient viaducts. Echoing domes, stone walls, stone streets. Dreaming shop windows—blue gloves, chocolates, soft leather shoes, silk scarves, mirrors edged in gold, small etchings, handmade paper, books of art, books of philosophy—like glassed-in still lifes, or galleries in the mind. And the markets: imported teas and coffee, cases of cheese, fat oval breads and palm-sized pastries; tabletop patchworks of tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, eggplants, melons, spinach, jars of olives, tubs of egg-sized mozzarella. Stone pines line the parks; citrus branches rise above the walls of gated houses; trompe l’oeil windows overlook narrow and broader streets leading to piazzas with fountains, outdoor cafés, local bars; and in the road, the Vespas, speeding Fiats, Smart cars, buses, daredevil taxis, and trucks pass within inches of each other and the curb.

  Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere, Chiesa di Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Chiesa di Santa Maria del Popolo. In the story of the girl and the truck, the church is called only “the church,” the street “the street beyond the church.” One can walk here all day, chiesa to chiesa, recording details, meditating in empty pews as if in this church, the Murphys will appear. Outside, the morning’s misty rain clears off, leaving a sky the blue of robins’ eggs, later brimming gold and flaming pink, softening before fading out. But after hours, after the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Popolo, out on the piazza, fatigue: here, now, the impulse to lie down on the stone street, give over and gaze up at the narrow rim of city, the framed variegated sky.

  It’s still that brimming gold moment, outdoor café tables filling. Perhaps they’re at a café then, the Murphys—white tablecloths, the shade of umbrellas. James, Nora, Theo, Katy, Molly: the Murphys as they were one day in Rome, and at adjoining tables the various incarnations of them since, taking chairs for a while before returning to the respective moments they’ve stepped out of, hollowed from their lives in and beyond Blue Rock. Several Noras sketching or quietly smoking along the edge of the piazza; a rotating handful of Theos, each reading a novel, sipping a latte; a repeating James in a navy-blue or soft gray suit paging through the Herald-Tribune. Katy spooning lemon ice, Katy soaking biscotti in milk. Approach and they look away; walk among them and they’ll continue what they are doing, gazing only at their cups and spoons, cigarettes and pages. A single Molly, intent on her chocolate gelato.

  NORA AFTER JAMES

  It was the body she missed most, the body she had to let go of: perhaps separation was always this way. The same body housed a different James, a not-James, a man who ought to be named something else. That scent—shaved wood, salt, cloves, a musky sweat—no longer meant the James of her bed, the body she’d turned to, although she recognized the minor curves and calluses, the tilt of the head, the eyelids in sleep, the circular scar near the base of the thumb, like a capped lens; the oblong calf muscles, bronze mixed into the fine hair of his arms; darker line along his torso, the dark bronze pubic hair, the heft and delicate curves of his genitals, thickening belly, thickening hip.

  She had let go of bodies before, or tried: she knew what steps to take, how far one might travel to relearn the meaning of a day. But her own body betrayed her, once again dumbly forgetting: a sparking impulse to touch him, say, when she glimpsed him at the train station, and then the delayed knowledge. A vestigial loyalty, nearly canine—the tumultuous jerk at the end of the leash, distraught owner yanking her back. Over time she’d learned to guard against other unaffordable betrayals (she did not think Rome; she did not think of the unlived Cambridge life, although still, remotely, of untrammeled space, the far coast of the sea, a green field one could run through if one were not-Nora). James was not another window onto the sea, she told herself, he too was trompe l’oeil.

  Had she herself painted him? Maybe.

  She’d scoured the bedroom and boxed his things. New mattress, new sheets, fresh paint on the walls. But here was his voice on the phone, the business-world voice she wanted to puncture, speaking now about a joint account (fast shrinking, her finances alarming), his upcoming weekend with the kids. It was better to send written notes, or to go through the lawyer—the divorce proceedings went through lawyers—but there was no avoiding discussion of drop-offs and pickups, the calls to retrieve Katy’s jacket, Theo’s track shoes, library books for Delia and Sara, now past due. In those first months, a chronic insomnia had taken root: she slept in small bursts, then woke, and in waking found the same salt air and same wind and also the usual thrumming, and she walked barefoot
down to the laundry room and began a load of towels; or made lunches for the next day; or if the wind had abated, pulled on boots and a coat and briefly—only briefly—stargazed from the deck.

  She’d begun another kind of winnowing, gradually becoming a yet-sparer Nora—thinner, quicker. A snapping energy. There was an end to languor. To calm herself she smoked her rationed cigarettes and read novels on evenings when the girls and Theo visited their father: these were the sole moments she quieted and traveled elsewhere. How easily she was undone by the stirrings of arousal. She’d touch herself but in the release there was also a wave of loneliness. What she could push away, she pushed away, learning to forget, to build more locking rooms in the mind, closing off the we of self and beloved.

  There were small saving graces. A job, part-time, at Ben Sundlun’s pediatric office, near the harbor; occasional drinks with the MacFarlands. Calm weeknights of family dinners and homework and stories before bed; Theo’s soccer games, Katy’s field hockey and track. A fortified city of days composed wholly of kids and house and dilute office pleasantries, buffered by civilities from cashiers, clerks, the kindred beleaguered parents of Blue Rock.

  ROME

  Annunciazione

  Fra Filippo Lippi (15th century)

  GALLERIA DORIA PAMPHILIJ

  First, the colors seduce—variable reds and blues, dense golds. Here is Mary, seated in the chapel, her robe a rich blue, her gown crimson; she raises her left hand in greeting or surprise as a red-robed Gabriel kneels before her, his right arm crossing his chest. Both of their heads are circled in gold. The background arch leading into the chapel curves beyond Mary’s line of vision. It’s aligned with Gabriel—at first glance, you may not notice the breaks in the arch’s curve. Perhaps you’re distracted by the dove flying toward Mary, but look: three sky-blue point-tipped ellipses follow the dove, identical in shape to three gaps in the gray arch. As in a dream, piece by piece the sky displaces stone. The top of the arch is open, and from two suspended white hands, a half ring of fine gold rays ripples down through the dove and onward toward Mary’s belly. Her features are delicate, but her eyes are glazed: a somber doll. Her belly is already swelling. It’s a private moment, this new awareness—but a private moment made public, heavily staged.

  Still, it’s hard to resist the rich reds and blues, all the repetitions in gold: Gabriel’s staff of lilies, lilies rising from a floor vase beside him, fleur-de-lis patterns, the gold floral patterns etched onto the furniture, gold stitching in the carpet and along Mary’s hem, the gold wall hanging behind her. A striking painting, despite the immobile faces of Gabriel and Mary, well-costumed actors still learning their parts.

  Yet finally what draws the eye: Gabriel’s grand red wings. They are nearly as large as the sweet-faced, androgynous Gabriel. Each large red wing is tinged with gold. Although he kneels—his gold-haloed head even with Mary’s—the wings are still too big, out of proportion, suited for vast open spaces. Gorgeous, but they may not fit through the archway. The longer you attend to the splendid wings, the harder it is to focus on the doll-like Mary and—despite divine hands and dove and gold rays—the slight billowing of her dress. The red gold seems to melt into Gabriel’s robe and his halo, the wings tangible in a way that immaculate conception is not.

  This painting’s miracle: Gabriel’s wings. A flying boy. And who can resist the possibility of flight?

  The angel has, it seems, something else to say to the blue-robed woman, the one we’re calling Mary: what is it?

  Let’s get out of here.

  And maybe, to everyone else: Stop staring at her.

  THE MURPHYS II

  In different ways they were reckless, the older Murphy children, their recklessness sometimes hidden, usually spilling away from their sisters. Garden-variety drinking, occasional cut classes, occasional broken curfews. At times they turned on each other, though more often the resentments were silent, now and then supplanted by alliance. Theo was both more sanguine than Katy and more separate. In the months before James left, Theo’s grades dropped, but after, when it seemed James had cut him loose, Theo excelled again, enrolled in AP summer school. He lettered in two sports, charmed most parents. For the first half of his senior year, he had a girlfriend; the second half, another. Pretty, well-mannered, college-bound girls. Acquaintances did not perceive him as a recluse who might retreat in favor of a book, or a run. When he ran long distances, he’d often run alone, ignoring bad weather, ignoring fading light; he’d take no money; he’d leave no note at the house with his route or his return time. Once when a hailstorm came up he was five miles out. He waited at a bus stop until the worst passed, the road now icy, and hitchhiked home in the dark. Once in hard rain, he sprained an ankle and walked three miles back. Katy watched the girls while Nora took him for an X-ray. He’d wear the orange vest Nora bought him, but not always. On his bike, he sped over badly paved and potholed roads; too often, he would zigzag through traffic.

  Sex without birth control, at first, in the urgency of the moment: he was not ignorant. And he was lucky. A girl he slept with got pregnant later by another boy—it was a matter of months. Then he took care. Some. He learned early to love sex, to love his body’s immersion, an ecstatic kind of travel that from the start seemed not to attach itself to one specific girl. Or to boys. Within him there was an apparent divide: he claimed to want a steady girlfriend. He flirted, always. The softness was slow to leave his face, but the clean line of his jaw, the high cheekbones, and the arresting cerulean eyes allowed him to lie about his age, and hold sway with women. In college, without conscious intent, he would become a player. Casually friendly, engaging, persuasive. Easy to misread.

  He was, in many ways, kind. He was, in many ways, responsible. On papers or exams, he’d never cheat, but elsewhere his ethics would slide. More than once he stole a book he couldn’t afford, or skipped out on a café tab. Present in one world, he could easily block out another, believing, it seemed, if one ignored a condition, the condition might vanish.

  Only many years later would he speak to friends about Molly.

  And Katy? She, too, took physical risks, though not in the company of her sisters.

  In field hockey, a bold, aggressive player. Trained hard, extra workouts twice a week. She, too, would run distances, sometimes in harsh weather, though Nora knew her routes, and often she’d run with a friend. She stole but did not like her mother’s cigarettes. In high school, she’d drink beer or smoke weed but only when she didn’t train or watch the girls, which was rare. Too often, she’d ignore homework. When eventually she’d begin to have sex, it would be with one boy, to whom she’d be devoted. They’d share what would seem a dreamy wildness together—reckless certainly about locations and birth control. She was both defended and careless with herself. She’d diet strictly, then binge on sweets. At times, she wished her sisters would disappear, a wish that horrified her, a monstrous wish, and she would punch her pillows and mattress, and pinch her upper arms or thighs where the bruises would stay hidden, or might be taken for sports injuries. Until later, until the boyfriend, who would not be able to stop her but would stay. Would see her monstrousness and kiss her head and stay.

  HOUSE IV

  Late August, the dark peach end of summer: Theo stepped lightly through the house and took the little girls to the beach and grilled burgers for dinner. More often now he escaped the house, to summer parties nearby, beery evenings, bonfires. Sometimes a girl. Soon to college in DC, which seemed far enough to begin again, simply as Theo, a Theo set loose from Murphy history, from Rome and grief and divorce, at least for a while. There he was, sunburned and jocular, swinging Sara and Delia in circles over the soft sand above the high-tide line, Sara now five, thin and limber, Delia at four more compact. There was Theo rolling the big rainbow beach ball; Theo on the deck sliding burgers onto waiting plates; there splashing water at Nora and Katy in the kitchen. As if he’d just arrived. As if leave-taking, and this particular leave-taking, were a simple intermissi
on.

  Say you crane your neck and call it intermission, but it was more of an ending, a common one, palpable only after time. There would be thick smatterings of visits, but he would travel farther and farther from this house, choosing, he thought, what to carry forward, seeking a separate life in universities, seeking cityscapes that might in fact blot out Rome. Say he had always been alert to stories of leave-takings: his father driving toward the city; a fleet of boats sailing from Spain. Here was his chance. At his father’s place, he’d already dropped a duffel and suitcase, a cache of books. He would leave Blue Rock with a small overnight bag and take the T to meet James for the drive. In this way, James was fatherly. But better that James avoid Blue Rock.

  If what Katy felt was sadness, she did not say; or perhaps she did not recognize it as sadness. In the morning, after breakfast, Nora drove Theo to the T, and Katy and the girls—all of them cranky, the girls hard to distract—assembled jigsaw puzzles of cartoon characters, the pieces as large as Katy’s hands. Later, running, she imagined her father and Theo gliding southward out of Massachusetts in a blue cartoon car, along a bright yellow tubular turnpike, speeding farther away from Blue Rock, which appeared on the map near the Cape as the eye of a mutant fiddler crab. It seemed that Theo and James were always together (although they were not); and it seemed that they were always on the far side of the road (in Rome, yes, and also elsewhere). And yet there had been Theo at the grill; and Theo who since their father moved out had been more ally than foe. Still the Theo who could glide through anything.

  A house of girls, now. From Theo’s bedroom window, Katy watched swans gather on the pond, and evening porch lights and distant harbor lights appeared. Relieved—wasn’t she?—by Theo’s absence, a felt-sense she did not articulate. Perhaps could not. She could not say if she loved him. There remained the dismissive Theo, the Theo who ignored her, the one paired off with their father. And yes: the Theo perpetually across the road, waving; and she the one perpetually losing hold of Molly. The bitter nameless ongoing thing. Were she to find a name, she might call it a curse, one weaker in Theo’s absence.