“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
I then found the early portrait of Cesca that had so transfixed me the first time I had been here. It was perfect. The slightly crooked smile. The intelligence and fire in her eyes. It was all there. “You look just the same.”
“Liar.”
“I used to stare at this whenever Lio wasn’t looking.”
“You should see the nude he painted of me in Barcelona.”
“I did.”
“Oh, you did, did you? And? What did you think?”
I remembered when he had shown it to me. The pride in his work. For my part, admiration infused with acute embarrassment and lust. “It was miraculous.”
“It was quite a painting, wasn’t it? Did you get all horny when you saw it? I bet you did.”
“I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of an answer.” I smiled. “Whatever happened to it?”
“He gave it to me.”
“He did? Where is it?”
“It’s a secret. A girl has to be careful about who sees a painting like that,” she said with a smile.
I nodded and looked around the room. “So, what are you going to do with all of his other paintings?”
“That’s something we’ve been talking about for months. Mare and I want to have a show, but Lulu’s not sure what she wants to do.”
“Lulu? Why does Lulu get a vote?”
“Oh, you probably didn’t know. Lio married Lulu. He left her everything. Paintings, money, the apartment in Barcelona.”
“Wow. Well, good. I suppose.”
“Yes, she was incredible to him. I’ve never seen such devotion.”
“When did they get married?”
“Two weeks ago. There was a little ceremony in his bedroom. He could barely talk. But he had asked her. He wanted to do something for her. To repay her for her love. He was like that.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “We all were. He was such a dear man. He was so weak, but he wanted to look special for his wedding day. There was an old top hat that had belonged to Gog and a white silk scarf, and he insisted on wearing those things in bed. Lulu wore a little white dress. We filled the room with flowers. Cosmo played the wedding march. A friend of Mare’s who is a judge officiated.”
“Where did Lio meet her?” I asked.
“In Barcelona. She’s Danish. He saw her panhandling on the street. She had been backpacking around Europe for several months and had run out of money. There had been a guy, but they’d split up at some point. Lio was afraid she might soon start selling herself, so he invited her for lunch. The next thing he knew she had moved in.”
“Was he already sick by that time?”
“Yes, I think so, but he didn’t know it. You can only imagine how Lio felt about going to the doctor.” She smiled. “He thought everything could be cured with tea and sleep.”
“Could they have saved him?”
She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. In a few years, they might find a cure. If he had lived that long. I’ve read a lot of articles about AIDS, talked to Carmen. She knows a lot about it. She’s specializing in internal medicine at St. Vincent’s now. There’s so much about the disease they don’t know and so many more people who don’t want to know.”
“So what is Lulu going to do with Lio’s paintings?”
“I don’t know that either. We brought it up with her after he died. Cosmo said we ought to organize a global tour. Hang them in hospitals in major world capitals. He’d go and play. He could get his manager to arrange the whole thing, but Lulu said no.”
“Why?”
“She said she didn’t want to lose any more of him. Each one of the paintings was precious to her, and she couldn’t bear to part with them.”
“That sounds a little nuts to me.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I think she’s grieving right now. Let’s see how she feels about it in a couple of months. Come on, let’s go back to the Playhouse, or we’ll be late.”
There was an outdoor shower, where she stopped and turned on the water. She undid the back of her bikini top to remove the salt and stood with her back to me. I couldn’t help but stare at the sides of her uncovered breasts, which were as brown as the rest of her. Then she washed the sand from her feet. “Your turn,” she said, taking the towel and wrapping it around her head, leaving her naked from the waist up. The casualness of it all annihilated me. I had never wanted her more.
She walked by me saying, “After you’ve finished, wait for me downstairs, and we’ll walk over together, okay?”
There was no one else in the big house when we walked in half an hour later. Cesca walked up to the bar, put ice into two glasses, and filled each with vodka. “Here you go,” she said.
“I have to drive.”
“One won’t hurt you.”
Slowly, the rest of the family wandered in. Roger and Diana first. Carmen and Jonathan. Even Ugo and his new wife. Roger’s mood had improved, and he began telling funny stories. He told one about my father and him when they were in college. “One night we were in a bar in the South End, and there was this fabulous girl. Redhead. Great tits. Both of us wanted her, and neither of us was going to give the other guy a crack at her. There was dancing. So each of us danced with her. While we were dancing, she whispered in my ear that she liked me better than your father. Naturally, I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Later I drove her home in my car. I was at the wheel. She was in the middle. Mitch on the other side. The interiors of cars back then weren’t as brightly lit as they are today. At one point I felt her hand snake over to my crotch, unzip my zipper, and begin giving me a hand job! Of course, I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t want to make your father feel bad. She finished before we got to her place, somewhere out in Watertown, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, as you can imagine. She gave us each a good night kiss, and as we were driving off your father turned to me and said, ‘See, Roger? I knew she liked me better. She just gave me a hand job.’” Everyone roared.
Dinner was surprisingly lively. It was a simple meal, leftovers from earlier that day. A dozen wine bottles. A green salad. Served buffet style on the sideboard. Candles were lit on the long dining table. Kitty welcomed me warmly. It was the first time I had spoken to her all day. “I am so glad you could come,” she told me. Roger and Cosmo took turns entertaining the crowd, telling uproarious stories, each more outrageous than the last. The wine flowed. Cesca and Carmen joined in. Many of the stories had to do with Aurelio. About the time he accidentally lit himself on fire, or when he had dared Cesca and Carmen to spend a night alone in a graveyard, and how he had pretended to be a ghost but had tripped and fallen accidentally into a hornet’s nest. Even Lulu was weeping with laughter.
I sat next to Cesca, who kept refilling my wineglass. A part of me wanted her to stop, another part of me did not. I knew what she was doing. And she knew I knew, and that only emboldened her. I am getting you drunk, her eyes told me. Too drunk to drive. At one point she even slipped her hand under the table and held mine, leaving it there for several minutes, intimate and innocent at the same time, our fingers interlaced, as though we had been doing it all our lives.
At this point, I had only betrayed Kate in my mind. When I had sat down to dinner, I had every expectation of shortly getting in her car and driving home tonight. But with each hour, I pushed the time of my departure back even further. The conversation was too entertaining. The company too pleasant. Cesca’s presence too intoxicating. Like everyone else at the table, I needed to lift the great sadness that had climbed on top of me since Lio’s death. We all needed to laugh, to remind ourselves of the joys of life. To forget the pain and remember what it was about Aurelio that made us all love him so much.
Initially, I had intended to leave by eight. I would have a quick bite, say my good-byes, and virtuously be back in the city by ten if I didn’t hit traffic, maybe even early enough to see Kate
. Then, when it became obvious that eight was too early, I told myself nine. I’d be fine to drive. I’d only had a few drinks. But then nine came and went, and I was astonished to see that it was nearly half past when I next looked at my watch. If I left by ten, I could still make it back by midnight or so, as long as I drove steadily and didn’t get stopped by the police.
The easiest excuse for a moral lapse is to claim inattention. To deceive ourselves. We want to feel that our sins are not our fault. That we were pushed, or stumbled, not that we made a conscious choice to hurt other people. At trial, few suspects plead guilty. There is always a mitigating factor. Someone else made me do it. I didn’t do it. That wasn’t me. It is simpler to live with ourselves if we can convince ourselves of our innocence. Of course, such justification is simply another word for cowardice.
If I had thought for a moment of Kate, things would have been different. But I didn’t. All that I could think of was how privileged I felt to be there, sharing this moment with them. To be accepted by this extraordinary family that I had admired so greatly and for so long. Grateful that their love for each other also, in a small way, included me. Even Cosmo made me feel welcome. That in some way I had a right to be there. That there was nowhere else in the world I would rather be. No other people I would rather be with. Such a feeling was as intoxicating as the wine. The distinctions between truth and want become blurred, until we forget the one and focus only on the other.
It was easy, too easy. Like felling a tree that is already rotten; a simple push and it crashes down. That’s all it takes.
“You can stay here tonight if you want,” whispered Cesca, leaning over to me. The rest went unspoken. Nothing else needed to be said. The time for resistance was long past.
I nodded, I was complicit. Like a child trying to brazen out the broken vase on the living room floor, I said, “I have to make a phone call.”
I went to the kitchen and found the phone. There were dishes in the sink. Normally, I would have helped clean but not now. I had a purpose. It was an old-fashioned phone, fixed to the wall. The dial pad on the receiver. “Kate,” I said when I heard her voice. “Baby, hi. Sorry for calling so late. I think I’ll be staying here tonight. I’ve had too much to drink. I’ll just have to wake up early tomorrow and drive right to work.”
“Okay. Are you all right? I’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m okay. A little drunk. It’s been an emotional day.”
“I understand. Call me when you get to work.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
I hung up, guilty but also unencompassed, fooling myself into thinking that I was free, that my actions were without consequence, that it was impossible to hurt someone who didn’t know she was being hurt.
If my older self had been able to sit down with my younger self at that moment, what would I have said? Look at the decision before you. What do you really want? What is best for you? For the people you care for? Who is it that you really love?
On the one hand there was Kate. Beautiful, kind, affectionate, and good. There was nothing wrong with her and much to love. I enjoyed her company, and I think she enjoyed mine. I could imagine our lives together spooling out ahead of us. Children, holidays, dogs, a place in the country at some point. There would be money. Enough to live reasonably well, do as we pleased. Maybe I would start my own firm. Become an adjunct professor, lecturing to eager young design students on crisp fall afternoons in Cambridge while the orange and red leaves in the yard rustled in the wind. We would grow old together, our hair turning gray and then white. Grandchildren. At some later date, hazy in the future, there would be death, but only after a happy, well-spent life.
And then there was Cesca. I had no idea what a life with her would be like, if there would be one at all. It would be an invitation to chaos, to agony. What I did know was that since I had met her so many years ago, not a day had gone by without my somehow finding a way to think of her. She touched everything I did, believed in, or felt. In her presence, the world was richer, more exciting. Colors more vivid, senses sharpened. There was no one closer to me, who understood me so instinctually. Removing her would be like removing a vital organ.
And yet, like a cancer, a parasite, she had infiltrated me, siphoning off the nutrients that kept me alive. Time and again she had dashed my expectations, broken her promises. But I couldn’t help myself from going back again and again like a bloodied boxer, hoping that this was the round when I could turn defeat into victory.
Why did I feel the way I did about her? There was no question that I loved her. But that then begs a definition of what love is and, more to the point, how I perceived it. Had I missed the lesson that taught us what love is? Or maybe something about me was broken. How could I love someone who caused me so much pain? Read the poets, however, and you find time after time examples of the pain of love. Like Prometheus, I had my innards regularly torn out, but unlike him I longed for the rock.
It would be too simple to say I loved Cesca because she was beautiful, that she was brave. True, I admired the way she confronted the world, challenging it on her own terms, refusing to compromise or doubt herself. If I had been a psychiatrist, it is possible I might have ascribed other factors to my fascination with her. Maybe I lacked the confidence she possessed in abundance and so hoped she could help make me stronger. Or maybe it was just as simple as wanting to make her love me so I could then reject her. But it was more than all of that. In my deepest heart I believed we were meant to be together, that fate or destiny had conspired to throw us together and we were meant to be, even if I was to be made miserable time and again because of her. Otherwise why would I have put myself through the emotional torture that over the years she had forced me to endure, seeking me out and abandoning me again, if not because I knew one day it would all be made right?
I could not believe that she was willful or capricious, although she could be both those things. That she was incapable of love. What I did believe, or what I wanted to believe, was that she was capable of love. It was just that she needed the right person to show her how, to reassure her, to rid her of her restlessness and let her be at peace. I believed I was that person.
Yet I also knew I was a fool, quick to forgive and even quicker to forget. What I didn’t know was what she thought of me. Was I simply a plaything, a diversion, or did she regard me in a different way? And how would I know, when she lied as easily as breathing? I had learned years ago that she told people what they wanted to hear, but was no more bound to her words than a musical note is to a violin.
All this rushed through my head as I stood in the kitchen, staring at the phone, hearing the voices in the dining room. It was not too late. I could still leave now. There was a gas station on the highway where I could get coffee, sober up. If I was careful, I would be all right. That way I could wake up in my own bed, clean of conscience. All I had to do was walk back into the dining room and tell everyone in a loud voice good night and thank you, exchange affectionate kisses and handshakes, and that would be the end of it.
I hesitated, my hand on the door, poised to push but unable to move. Would I choose Kate or Cesca? One promised stability, normalcy, a chance at a happy life. The other, passion and uncertainty. I knew I could live without Kate, that I would get over her just as she would get over me. There would be tears, recriminations. But Cesca was my passion, my craving, my magnetic north. Without her I would be lost. And she was waiting on the other side, ready to take me to her room and her bed, desperate to find release from the pain of her brother’s, my friend’s, death. She was looking for me now, needing me to help her to cope with her loss. If she sought my love and comfort now, after so long, would it be monstrous of me to spurn her and deny us both what would almost surely be an unknown period, days, weeks, maybe even months of cherished intimacy? And was I such a fool to keep putting my hand into the fire?
After a lifetime, I made up my mind and pushed the door open.
23
THE PAIN WE CAUSE OTHERS IS ALWAYS MORE DEVASTATING than the pain we cause ourselves. If we break our leg in a skiing accident, it’s our fault. It hurts, but there is no one else to blame, which is a comfort of sorts. But if we were to break someone else’s leg, we would be tormented by remorse and guilt. Of course, there are exceptions. Sadists, soldiers in wartime, the morally corrupt, the truly evil. But for the most part, we are predisposed to avoid causing pain of any kind. Where it gets complicated is when we must choose between inflicting pain on another and inflicting it on ourselves. The cowardly decision is to avoid the pain. Spare me, Lord, but take them, is a not infrequent supplication. It is the brave who take the pain on themselves.
I am not brave. Or at least, no more brave than the next man. I avoid unpleasantness. I don’t want to hurt anyone or be hurt. Like so many people, I am content to be left alone with my life, to find pleasures where they come. I am not a political person or a man of strong opinions. Issues of huge import don’t move me with any particular urgency. When students at my college rallied to compel the administration to divest from companies that were in South Africa, I walked past, agreeing on the one hand with the justice of their aims but also appreciating that the school needed to maintain a strong investment portfolio. It is also possible that if I’d lived in Berlin or Nuremberg in the early 1930s, I might not have been willing to speak out against Hitler, even as the warning signs grew unmistakable, hoping it would all just go away in the end and leave me in peace.
I know I am not alone. The great majority of humankind probably fits in my category. We don’t want to cause pain but don’t want to receive it either. For the most part, we would rather not think about it all. Unfortunately, there are times when we have to choose, to act. It would be so easy just to settle, to allow the waves to wash over us and take us. To postpone immediate discomfort or awkwardness for something equally bad, or possibly even worse, down the road. Like making a large purchase on a credit card that we might not be able to pay for when the bill comes due. We gasp and struggle for a few more moments to avoid the inevitable, clinging to hope and a childlike desire to wish unpleasant things gone, vainly trying to delay the reckoning as long as possible.
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