One Great Lie, page 8
Althea (who Luca Bruni introduces as my beautiful wife, Althea Whitaker-Bruni) sits on his left, and Avni sits on his right, and they’re all straight across the table from Charlotte. Luca Bruni seems much less open than he was that afternoon. In spite of the beautiful night and food and wine and the glow that makes everything look magical, he sits straight and uncomfortable, and his speech is careful. The conversation around the table gets louder and louder, and Charlotte’s doing that kind of rude thing where she’s talking to Shaye about this guy Shaye just broke up with who drank too much, while at the same time trying to hear whatever Luca Bruni is saying.
Luca’s wife barely eats, and she cuts her food into teeny pieces she just moves around her plate as she tells Leo about using a decorating firm in Boston, where they live, to get every Venetian detail right, searching for gilded mirrors and… It’s hard to catch the rest. Althea’s blond hair shines under the lights, and Charlotte can see the varying shades of color a hairstylist carefully put in. Althea’s hands are manicured, flawless white-pink nails. Shaye must be doing the same thing as Charlotte, though, because she interrupts herself and says, “Hey, Bruni, you must have sold a lot of books.”
Wow, that’s rude, especially after what Shaye told them at the party, how Althea was the one with the money. Althea’s eyebrows turn downward, but Luca only laughs. A huge, delighted laugh. His laugh is so awesome.
“More than almost any living writer aside from that dude who writes horror, but nah. I only bought the piece-of-shit place no one else wanted. The brilliant Althea Whitaker-Bruni did the rest.”
“It’s amazing,” Katerina ass-kisses.
“Immensely talented, and beautiful,” he says.
A lemon mousse arrives. Shaye leans over and whispers, “Jesus, is he required to compliment her every time he opens his mouth?”
“Really,” Charlotte says. It’s one of those relationships you’re sure you can understand in two seconds. You’re probably wrong, though.
“Poor guy,” Shaye says. No kidding. It’s strange—Charlotte admires him so much, but seeing even that small glimpse into his homelife… She feels sorry for him too. Really sorry.
When Althea gets up to excuse herself for the night and then exits, everyone exhales. The mood lightens. It’s like the recess teacher is gone. More wine is poured. The laughter gets louder. Luca—that is what they’re calling him now—keeps setting his arm against Avni’s, or maybe it’s just Charlotte’s imagination. Ashley says, “Oh my God, mmm, mmmm, I could eat this all day,” and licks the lemon off her spoon like it’s, um, not a spoon.
“Wow,” Luca says, and chuckles. “You’re good at that.”
“Jeez, Ash,” Hailey says.
Bruni leans on the table with both elbows and looks at them deeply. “So, who’s ready to reveal their innermost secrets?”
“I told you guys to bring the stuff you wrote, right?” Bethany Sparrow says from the far end of the table, where she’s spent a lot of the evening tapping on her phone. There’s a boyfriend back home, someone said.
“Right. I’ll go first.” Avni stands. She probably always goes first, Charlotte thinks, then immediately regrets the thought. Avni is confident and smart and gorgeous, but she’s also nice. Earlier, when she found out Charlotte just graduated, she offered all kinds of great advice about her first year of college. And when Avni reads her piece about how she’s haunted by her own ambition and the shadow of her doctor father’s success, Charlotte sees she’s talented, too. Really talented. Like, from that very first sentence, she writes with authority, but you feel the honest pain there too. Her father sounds like an arrogant asshole, but she never says it like that. She just shows it in a scene with Avni’s mom in the car. Avni is someone who could really make it as a writer, Charlotte realizes. She could make it right now.
“That was really amazing, Avni,” Shaye says. “Wow.”
“Beautiful,” Luca Bruni says. “Beautiful. Haunted by I won’t ever be enoughs. Yes.”
“Next?” Bethany Sparrow says.
“I’ll go.” Katerina pulls her notebook out from her bag. “It’s hard to read in this light.”
“Here,” Leo says. He shines his phone flashlight.
“Fuck, man, don’t you know chivalry is an insult to female power?” Luca says, and Leo’s face falls.
“I can see,” Katerina says, and begins to read. God, it’s sad. What haunts her is an orphanage, one she was actually in, in Russia, where she was born. Smells, the feel of a coat, her mother’s coat, being left all alone—man. It’s devastating. The table is quiet. There’s only the chirrup sound of night insects and the far-off lap of waves against the seawall.
“Wow,” Hailey says. She holds the ends of her two braids together. “I can’t even imagine it.”
“Hey. Mutual abandonment issues, you and me.” Luca Bruni looks at Katerina across the table, until Eliot pipes in.
“Who even wants to follow that,” he says, but then he does. It’s a funny, funny piece about not fitting in. The kind of story that’s sad but hilarious, where he’s made fun of, and you laugh, but you see how the laughter is heartbreaking. Luca Bruni begins to talk about truth, how mining that shit is power. It’s the second time he’s used the word power, but when someone like him says it, it’s like he’s sharing his with you.
The laughing and the heartbreak, the amazing way Katerina described that coat, and the tender way Eliot described the kid who stole his journal, and the night and the stars coming out and the crickets and the lemon smell growing stronger as it gets later and later—it all makes Charlotte want to write so hard. It makes her want to create something wonderful and meaningful. It makes her believe she can.
“One more?” Bethany Sparrow lifts her index finger.
Charlotte spins her rings. But the wine also makes her feel braver than usual, and so does the far-from-home feeling. “I’ll go.”
Everyone quiets in order to listen. God, they’re so quiet, just waiting. But here’s her voice, on this island, in this incredible foreign country, surrounded by people who are becoming more familiar. Here are her secrets—the big hole, her father with the suitcase always packed, the slam of dishes and doors, the generations of needs, going back to the long-forgotten Isabella di Angelo, who was maybe the true creator of one of the most famous poems in history.
“Whoa, for real?” Hailey says. “You’ve got to find out if it’s true.”
“Antonio Tasso! Analyzing that stupid poem was the only paper I ever got a C on,” Katerina says.
“Man.” Eliot shakes his head. “I don’t know. That’s like saying your relative actually wrote Dante’s Inferno.”
“Patriarchal masculinity, the underbelly of civilization—you think it’s impossible?” Luca Bruni says to Eliot. “Female artists were a threat. All of them. Of course their historical legacies were stolen or lost or ‘forgotten.’ ”
Charlotte never thought of it that way, exactly, but she loves how Luca Bruni is a feminist. He shows it in a million ways. No, she loves everything about him.
“There’s got to be someone here who could tell you more,” Avni says. “If you could stick it to that guy, it’d be awesome. He’s a total asshole.” Charlotte’s face scrunches in doubt. “You didn’t know that?”
“I’ve read twelve million books about him, and they all say how amazing he was,” Charlotte says.
“A book about him came out after La Campagna, when there was that Tasso craze. He supposedly had sex with everyone in sight. He was a tyrant, too. To his kids, his wife, students he taught. Tromped around like an egomaniac.”
“Is that bad?” Eliot says, and they all laugh.
“If that poem wasn’t his… that’d be so fucking great,” Avni says.
“But you said she was in a convent? I don’t get how she could be doing it with the guy. Tasso’s just going to go waltz in there and have sex with a nun? It sounds a little far-fetched,” Ashley says.
“I always wondered that too,” Charlotte admits.
“Far-fetched? No way!” Luca Bruni says. “Those places were full of party girls. Are you kidding?”
“Wait,” Leo says. “So, she lived in Venice, and her book was published in 1573? The plague struck in 1575. Maybe she was actually here. Like, right here, on this island.”
“Maybe she still is,” Luca Bruni says.
* * *
It’s getting late. Everyone gets up to head back inside. There are calls of Buonanotte! Buonanotte a tutti! Good night! Good night, everyone! Charlotte says it too, even though she knows her accent is laughable. She’s halfway to the villa when she realizes she forgot her phone. She returns to the table, snags it where it’s half hidden under her napkin. Luca and Avni are still lingering, just the two of them under the little white lights. He keeps touching her arm as they talk, and then, as Charlotte nears, she hears him say, “Hey, you know, I’d love to read more of your stuff.”
“You would, huh?” Avni tilts her head, pleased.
“I would, huh.” His voice is teasing. “I’ll give you my private email.”
Charlotte edges past awkwardly. Inside the villa, she tries not to look at the huge painting of the glass ship, and as she climbs the stairs to her room, the feeling that she might create something wonderful slips. The warmth and bravery of alcohol is leaving her. She feels sober, in every definition of the word. She feels uncomfortable about the two of them back there, or maybe just competitive. Luca didn’t say anything about her piece, not really. Neither did anyone else. He certainly didn’t offer his email to her.
Nothing feels as important as pleasing him. He’s so large and great and funny, and this is her big chance. She’s going to have to do better.
Chapter Thirteen
Isabella Cervoni, poet.
Wrote her first important poem at age fifteen, and political poems from the age of fifteen to twenty-five, when any more information about her disappears.
(1575–1600)
“Stern, huh? Wow, you don’t picture him with someone like that. I wonder why they never had kids.”
“No idea.”
It’s morning on La Calamita, but getting late at home. Ella’s over at her friend Aanya’s house for a sleepover, so they don’t get to talk. Earlier, though, Charlotte caught Yas right before she boarded her flight to Maryland, for her NASA internship at Goddard Space Flight Center, and she finally answered all those texts from Carly, too, about the party Nate gave, where only four people plus Adam showed up. It’s weird, but that gossip feels too distant to be relevant. Like a NASA rocket, the boosters that propelled Charlotte skyward have detached and are falling away.
Now Adele wants to know everything: what Luca Bruni’s like, and how he dresses, and what sort of person his wife is. Charlotte walks the outer edges of the villa, away from everyone else, as she answers her mother’s questions. She almost doesn’t want to share. She wants all of it—the behind-the-scenes stuff, the private moments, the whole experience—to be hers. The ground is rocky, and she has to step carefully over it as brushy stuff rubs against her ankles. She avoids the patches of overgrown foliage, trying to stay on the path.
“Well, call again soon so Ella can talk, and keep posting those photos. Wow, they’re amazing. I want to see everything. Aunt Tony keeps texting every time she sees one, like she just can’t believe you’re there.”
Charlotte spots an unusual rock and bends down to pick it up. It’s yellowed and old, and has a strange, spongy appearance, and a deep hole, and—oh, God, oh, shit! She flings it away, and the only reason she doesn’t scream is that her mother is on the other end of the line. Oh, jeez. She knows what that was. She’s seen bones before. Only when they’ve given them to Marv, but still.
“Oh, Char, I’m glad this experience is everything you dreamed it would be,” her mom says.
A bone. An actual bone.
It’s hard not to think about what Luca Bruni said last night. How maybe Isabella is still here, actually and truly, on this island, amid that earth and ash. It’s hard not to think about who else might be too.
* * *
Now they’re riding away from La Calamita in two boats, one driven by Aldo, and one driven by Aldo’s son, Marc. Apparently, she’s not the only one who finds the island eerie—the water taxi drivers refuse to go out there, Bethany tells them, not just because it’s too far, but because they think it’s haunted, and they’re superstitious. Charlotte is stuck with Aldo again, and his booze breath and opera on loud, the bow of the boat high as they speed through the water.
“Vivaldi,” Eliot shouts. “We’re going to be walking on the same streets he walked on! The same streets as Michelangelo, and Marco Polo, and Antonio Tasso. Sorry,” he says to Charlotte.
“It’s fine.” She shrugs.
“Classical music sucks,” Shaye says as Hailey applies sun lotion to her fair skin, and as Ashley holds her hat on her head with one hand so it doesn’t blow away. Charlotte’s own dark hair is pulled back into a long ponytail. She sits on the hem of her sundress so it doesn’t blow around.
Luca Bruni is on the other boat with Avni, Katerina, Leo, and Bethany Sparrow. Charlotte really doesn’t mind which boat she’s on, though—it just feels so good to be off La Calamita and heading into Venice for the first time. It’s crazy, because… well, there’s an incredible villa, and that pool, and the lemon trees, and the food, and every corner of the place is worthy to share on social media. But it’s spooky, she thinks, the way La Calamita closes in on you. Maybe any small island would make you feel like that, but out here, on this boat, she can breathe. She’s getting farther away from that piece of bone in her hand, and all those ghosts, and the image of Luca’s hand touching Avni’s arm stroking, that’s what he was doing, admit it that night at dinner.
The boat cuts and bumps through the choppy waves, until Venice all at once reveals itself in a broad panorama of interconnected islands, and bridges, and tilting palaces, and lacy buildings. Aldo slows, and then arcs inward, entering the Grand Canal, the wide waterway that curves through the center of the main island. There’s so much to take in—the motorboats zipping, the gondolas (real gondolas!) bobbing at their red-and-white-striped mooring poles and gliding through the waters, the large Rialto Bridge ahead.
The boats dock, and they all climb out onto the landing. Everyone’s talking at once, though Avni looks cool and unimpressed, reminding them with her offhand posture and aloof gaze that she’s been here before.
“No cars,” Charlotte says. Of course, this is obvious, but it’s suddenly weirdly noticeable. A city with no cars, just boats, and as they begin to walk, she can already see hidden alleyways of water everywhere, the tucked-away canals of mirrorlike green. Also: sounds. Shouts in Italian, one gondolier to another; a waiter outside a restaurant, urging tourists inside; overheard bits of dialogue in other languages too, French, and maybe German, because the street is busy with tourists.
“This way,” Bethany Sparrow says. The schedule lists Walking tour of Venice and Saint Mark’s Basilica, though the daily writing prompts are always a surprise. The group follows Bethany down one stairwell and up another, past shops with gold jewelry or glass or handbags in the windows, past groupings of tables with white tablecloths in outdoor restaurants, and rows upon rows of gondolas alongside flat, old fishing boats. Bethany turns into an alley, where there’s the sound of glasses clinking in a restaurant, and above her, Charlotte sees shutters and more shutters. The alley opens onto a street with other shops—clothing, violins!—where everyone seems to be hurrying somewhere. Rushing past her: old ladies with shopping bags, and people on their phones, and two nuns, even.
“Bruni!” a guy calls from a balcony, and waves. Further on, a trio of teens shout his name, and everyone has to stop so they can get his autograph. Wow, they love him here, she sees. Maybe even more than in the US. He’s a celebrity who actually lives here part of the time, so it’s probably like spotting Hunter Eden or someone from Armor Class Zero in Seattle. And he’s so great with them! He’s speaking in Italian and obviously cracking jokes, because they’re laughing, and he takes the time for a photo with each of them, leaning his long frame down, smiling so wide. He’s got that big, awesome laugh that’s like a prize you earned when he does it. He’s full—of energy and joy, like they just poured it into him.
But those kids… They have to walk away, content with a photo they can post. They don’t get to spend the summer with Luca. They’re not his very own students, living under his roof. He’s theirs, you know. He’s special, so they are too. It feels good. It feels like a balloon in your chest.
Now they cross a piazza with a fountain in the center, and go up and over more canals, past tiny markets with fruits and vegetables outside, and mysterious doors painted in all colors. It’s a maze. Who knows where they are now, after twists and turns down the slender stone streets, where some buildings most definitely look like they’re sinking, and others look like a Disney movie set, with patches of exposed brick and flower baskets under the windows. If she were writing it… Forget it. She just wants to remember it, all of it. The portly waiter sweeping, the bored shopkeeper having a smoke, an old man whistling as he strolls down an alley, tourists poring over maps and trying to figure out where they are.
And it’s all so old. So old. Yeah, Vivaldi and Michelangelo and Tasso walked on these same streets, but so did Isabella di Angelo. Right here. Her heart beat in this same place. That ash, that bone, Charlotte’s vow to know her, to know what happened to her—it feels more urgent. It’s a nagging question.
