Stay Gone Days, page 29
Such nice untroubled times. Darkened only occasionally, as when she thought about how her father died, or how her sister disappeared, or what happened in her instructor’s apartment near the BSO. Lighter times than these. Times when travel seemed transcendent. Like you could leave the soiled parts of yourself behind.
She checked her phone. No reply from Liz. So she stopped at a café and had a glass of wine. Then she wandered the streets a bit longer, heading in the general direction of the Grand Palatino, thinking once or twice that she recognized a trattoria where the four of them had eaten way back when. Soon the smells of food made her realize that she hadn’t had a meal since the flight attendants served her dinner. At least sixteen hours ago.
She found a restaurant a short distance from the hotel and went in. The bartender, a tall woman with a rugged face, snapped her fingers at a chubby waiter who wore black pants, a white shirt and black bowtie and somehow managed to look both harried and jovial. He led her down a narrow hall into the main dining room, where there was a single unoccupied table. After pulling a chair out for her, he asked her name.
“Ella,” she said.
“Mrs. Ella, what I’m gonna do for you is I’m gonna get a wine list and a menu. You never been here before?”
“I’ve been to Rome. But not to this restaurant. At least I don’t think I have.”
“If you had, you’d remember it. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin.’”
She felt a smile forming. “Where’d you pick up that expression?”
“You like it, huh? Make the lady feel at home in Rome! So I tell you how I learned. One time, not so long ago, an American man and woman come in here, and every time I pass their table, that’s what the man’s saying to his wife. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin.’ And his wife she don’t say nothing back. But because I got what we call sesto senso … You know what that means?”
“Sixth sense?”
“You speak fine Italian. That’s right. I got six senses, and the extra one tells me she don’t believe a word what he’s saying. So next time I’m going by their table, he says it one more time—If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’— and his wife she looks up at me and in a loud voice she says, ‘Waiter, call the doctor! My husband he’s very ill!’”
She laughed for the first time in months.
“You like that, huh? I like it too. Now, Mrs. Ella, I’m gonna bring you that wine list and that menu and you gonna tell me what you want to eat and drink.”
She ordered the Bucatini Amatriciana and a glass of Pinot Nero. While waiting for her wine, she looked around the room. Mounted on each wall, at eye-level, was a wide ledge loaded with wine bottles three or four deep. The walls themselves were covered with graffiti. People had signed their names, written adages in different languages—she saw a couple of inscriptions in Cyrillic—and drawn all sorts of images, several of which looked like the work of real artists. Directly across from her, above a table where another woman sat by herself eating, was a framed, signed photo of the actor Robert DeNiro. She squinted, trying to see what he’d written besides his name, but from that distance she couldn’t make it out.
The waiter returned with her wine and told her to enjoy it. He’d filled the glass to the rim. She’d promised herself she would sip it, but the promise didn’t hold. As soon as he left her table, the sense of being in Rome again but without Martin and the girls all but overwhelmed her. She took her phone out, thinking she’d log on to the Boston Globe website and read the news, but she discovered she’d missed a text from Liz.
ran into this cool guy from racine wisconsin he invited me to dinner hell he invited me to wisconsin and baby im hanging for a while may not be back til late don’t be mad you know ole lizzies got a honky tonk heart!!!!
She had only herself to blame. Yes, she knew ole Lizzie, and ole Lizzie was reverting to form. How easy it must be for all the Lizs. She’d gotten dumped by more men than Ella could count, yet if she suffered when it happened, nobody saw the evidence. She’d be up and at ’em again the next evening. Go, girl, go.
The text led to several swift swallows, and when the waiter re-appeared she signaled for another. He wasted no time bringing it, and once again he’d poured a bucket of wine into that glass. Sesto senso. No doubt he could recognize a reasonably well-off lonely American woman when he saw one. He might even intuit that despite the wedding ring she still wore, she was now permanently by herself. Jettisoned or widowed. For his purposes, it would not make any difference. She’d laughed at his lines. She might or might not know that in Italy the tip was built into the cost of her meal, that almost no one who understood the customs of the country would leave more than ten percent. Or, better yet, she might know it but not care. Laughter and wine, such perfect anesthetics. Give the woman what she wants. Give her all she craves. She finished it and asked for yet another, and this time his face betrayed a trace of concern. Not for her, surely. The next glass contained a little bit less than the first two.
Such an old, old story, the disappearance of her wine, the gradual blurring of lines. The restaurant was beginning to empty out. When the waiter brought her food, he pretended to be in a rush, leaving before she could ask for another glass. She tried to feel affronted. She still had a swallow left, why should he assume she’d request more? Who did he think he was? Who did he think she was? A deprived woman trying to drown her sorrows when what she probably ought to do was wobble over to the Tiber and drown herself instead? Join the ancient dead?
Swallowing a mouthful of pasta, she saw that the woman at the table beneath the picture of DeNiro was still there, Bob smiling down upon her. Until now she’d just been part of the background, less noticeable than the striking graffiti. Her plate was gone, but a half-full glass still stood before her. It looked like urine but was probably chardonnay. How old she was would have been hard to say. Fifty? Fifty-five? She wore a black blouse, over that a black jacket. Leather, most likely, though polyurethane could not be ruled out. Shoulder-length hair so black it looked blue. Big eyes. Long black lashes. Dark complexion. Lots of lipstick. Her hands rested on the table. They looked older than her face. She didn’t paint her nails.
She was staring at Ella. Her head cocked slightly. Something in her eyes. Sympathy? Familiarity? Sisterhood? She lifted her glass and took a swallow. Then set it back down. Ella did the same. Now hers was all gone.
She was the first to look away, turning toward the narrow passage that the waiter had led her through however long ago that was. He stood there, arms crossed, his affability having abandoned him.
Abandoned her.
Abandoned them.
She gestured for the check. He attempted a smile but failed, nodded and disappeared down the hallway. He’d get his nap before the dinner shift.
She allowed herself a glance at the other woman. Again their gazes met, again she looked away.
A moment later the waiter returned and handed over the check. She studied it until the numbers coalesced. She withdrew a fifty € bill and, when he reached into his pocket to make change, shook her head. He nodded and said, “Gracia.”
Best I can do, Mrs. Ella. So sad for you.
She needed to pee, but she rose and walked out.
Quarter till five, already dark. While she was inside, soft rain had begun to fall. She had no umbrella, but she didn’t care. The cobblestoned street was narrow, the stones slick and glistening beneath the streetlamps. To get back to the hotel she’d have to walk downhill. She didn’t care about that either. If she fell she fell.
She couldn’t decide what to do, whether to return to the room or look for a bar. How long since she’d been to a bar by herself? She couldn’t even remember. Pre-Martin, most likely. What she did instead of reaching a decision was stand there between a couple of parked cars, her back to the restaurant. Directly across the street was a small art gallery. Through the windows on either side of the door she could see paintings that rested on easels. Blobs of color. Beneath her ribcage on the right side, a dull pain made itself known. She thought perhaps she’d felt it once or twice before, maybe on the afternoon Liz found her passed-out in the kitchen. She didn’t care about that either.
“I plain do not fucking care,” she heard herself say, and in that moment it occurred to her that over the last few years she’d started to sound like her sister, or at least like her sister sounded thirty or thirty-five years ago, back when she was certifiably alive and getting in trouble.
Behind her a voice said, “What you don’t fucking care about?”
She thought of the lockbox. What would have changed if she’d never opened it? Her father would still be dead. Folks would still think what they wanted to. Folks always have, and they always will, even the ancients did. If she hadn’t opened it, she might have maintained her delusions a little more easily, but probably not. The rest of her life would still have happened, pretty much just as it did, and she’d know nearly everything she knew right now. And she still wouldn’t know everything that she didn’t.
She closed her eyes, caught a hint of fragrance, dropped her hand to her side, and felt another hand envelop it. Warm and alive.
•
The other woman drives fast, either by habit or because she does not want the wine to wear off. Her fear that it might, if she’s entertained such fears, is not unreasonable. Ella’s head is beginning to clear. It is not lost on her that she was drunk at the Sun ‘n‘ Sand and drunk at the home of her instructor. For all she knows, a similar experience could be waiting for her at the woman’s apartment, or something even worse. She doesn’t think so, but there’s no way to know. There’s nothing between the two of them but the transmission hump and the gear shift and everything that has yet to be said. They don’t even know each other’s names. Across the Tiber they go, into Trastevere. The American University slides by on their right.
Her ex-husband, the woman finally volunteers, breaking a silence that has lasted a few moments too long, was a conductor. Not exactly Riccardo Muti but not bad. To him, Ennio Morricone was Ennio, Sergio Leone was Sergio. Does Ella know those names?
“Yes.”
Both of them, the other woman tells her, grew up nearby: Ennio “over here,” Sergio “over there.” Does she know the American Frederic Rzewski?
“Not personally.”
“He once lived in this street. My husband he didn’t like him. Musica Elettronica Viva? Just noise, he said. Always he argued with his friend Severino Gazzelloni. How he could play with a pianist like Rzewski who make such sounds on purpose?”
“Does your ex-husband still conduct?”
She swerves to avoid a pothole. “He died.” A glance at Ella. “Your husband too?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
“How long you were married?”
“Twenty-five years. And you?”
“Thirteen. I was nineteen when I met him. He was almost forty. All his life he lived in Rome. I come from Piacenza. You know where that is?”
She and Martin and the girls stopped there for lunch in ’92. With her meal, she ordered red wine, not knowing it would be the fizzy kind served cold. “In the north?”
The driver nods. “Between Bologna and Milan. A nice town, but he never thought so. For him it was too small.”
“Do you have children?”
“No. You do, I think.”
“What makes you say so?”
“Sesto senso.”
“Is that something every Italian is born with?”
The other woman laughs. “I heard the waiter. Two weeks ago, maybe three, he told another American woman the same story. He has four or five that he tells again and again. But I do think you have children. Why, I don’t know.” To Ella’s horror, she briefly lets go of the wheel to wave both hands at the inexplicable nature of her perception. “Just a feeling.”
“I have two.”
“Boys or girls?”
“Girls. Both grown now.”
“Like us. We are grown now too. We can do whatever we want. Ride a broom to the moon. Fall asleep on the street.” A sideways glance. “Your girls don’t watch you tonight. And nobody watches me ever.”
They turn onto a smaller street. The cars suggest a certain affluence. She sees a couple of newish BMWs, a Mercedes, a Lexus.
“Home,” the other woman says, pulling into a parking spot. She shuts off the engine, and they climb out, and Ella follows her into a building that looks old on the outside but new on the inside: lots of metallic surfaces, the floor, the ceiling, the elevator door. It makes an industrial impression. She can imagine bicycle parts being fabricated here. Lawnmower blades. Gardening tools.
In the lift, a Schindler according to the logo beneath the keypad, the woman punches the highest number. 6. From the street the building didn’t seem that tall. The door closes, the elevator rises, but she barely feels its motion. In no time the door reopens.
They walk a short distance down a hallway too brightly lit for this moment in Rome. The other woman—that’s how Ella continues to think of her, because as odd as it might seem, they still have not exchanged names—unlocks her flat.
The instant she turns the light on, the mystery of her identity is solved. On the wall, there’s a framed page from La Repubblica. Sabato 26 Gennaio 1985. Ella can’t decipher the entire headline, but she knows it’s a review of Rossini’s La Donna Del Lago, accompanied by a photo: the other woman decades younger, dressed in bridal white. Elena in the production, perhaps the greatest role ever written for a soprano and one of the most demanding. According to the caption beneath the photo, she’s Brigida in real life. Brigida Terracina.
“That’s you?” Ella says, though the answer is obvious.
“For one night. Who you used to be?”
“I never really found out.”
The remark, which escaped before she could stop herself, is allowed to linger too long for her taste. So, as if this were her home rather than Brigida Terracina’s, she turns and steps under an arch and into the next room, where she runs her palm over the wall until she feels a light switch. She flips it on and takes in her surroundings. Gleaming wood floor, no rugs. Hundreds of record albums in shelves along one wall, books along the opposite one, in a corner a large potted fig tree. Perpendicular to each other, two sofas, black leather. A glass-topped coffee table with copies of L’Espresso and Il Manifesto.
Brigida walks over to a sideboard, lifts a decanter and pours two large doses of amber liquid into the glasses that were conveniently waiting on either side of it. “Cognac,” she says, handing her one. “What music do you like?”
“Most kinds. Play whatever you want to play. Or, actually, maybe …”
“Yes?”
“A recording of yourself?”
“I was never recorded.”
“I guess …”
“Yes?”
“That seems unlikely.” She points at the framed review, still visible through the arch. “I mean, if you were good enough …”
Brigida laughs. “How nice that you don’t read Italian.”
“Why?”
“I was doppie. I don’t know what is the English word. It means I was not supposed to be Elena that night.”
“You were the understudy?”
“Yes. The understudy. The real Elena got too sick to sing. Bad fish poisoning. What La Repubblica says is that good enough is what I was not. It says I am terrible. A joke. They say the opera house should give everybody back their money. That my husband make the conductor hire me as understudy, it would never happen if he and Pollini were not such friends.”
“Pollini? Not Maurizio Pollini?”
When she summons memories of tonight, which she will do many times, she will recall a deepening of the nearly invisible lines at the corners of Brigida’s mouth. For the first time all evening, she has induced a measure of surprise, the intimation that perhaps things are not going to go the way they usually do when Brigida brings someone home from a restaurant or bar. They are working off a different script. Ella just became the co-author.
“You know Maurizio Pollini?” her host asks.
“Not personally.”
This time they both laugh.
“Yes,” Brigida says. “He was conductor.”
“I only know him as a pianist. I didn’t realize he was also a conductor.”
“He was not a very good one. My ex-husband said so, he told him many times to his face, and I think this is why Maurizio stopped doing it so much and stick to piano. Best to know where you belong.”
“Who was supposed to play Elena?”
“Katia Ricciarelli.”
“Jesus. You were her understudy?”
“Up until that night. But never again. Never again was I anybody’s understudy, and never did I step onto a stage.”
“It ruined your career?”
Rather than answer, Brigida says, “You are opera buff.”
“No. But a long time ago, I studied voice.”
“Where you studied?”
“The Berklee College of Music. In Boston.”
“My God.” She takes a swallow of cognac.
Something has been puzzling Ella for the past couple of moments, and she decides to go ahead and pose a question, though intuition tells her it may not be welcomed. “If the review is that bad, why do you put it there? I mean, I think if it happened to me, I would never, ever have looked at it again. I probably would’ve burned it. I know I wouldn’t mount it on the wall so everybody who walked into my house would see it.”
Brigida stands her glass on the sideboard, crosses her arms, then stares at Ella like she did in the restaurant. It’s a naked gaze, both defenseless and defiant. “On my wall I put it because I am not ashamed of worst moments. Most who see it do read Italian. Let them read all about it, how I make a terrible fool of myself. Let them think what they think. If they worry I might stain them, make them stink, let them turn and go. Everybody designs their own fate. Katia Ricciarelli. Maurizio. You. Me. Everybody.”
“Has anyone ever turned and left after reading it?”
“Never.”
