The Widower's Tale (45 page)

He thought about his answer. "Care for trees and houses."

"Trees, that's good," she said. "Lots of trees in Matlock. A whole lot more trees than houses. It's nice out there."

"And you are here as a student?"

"Psychology. I'm studying PTSD," she said. "Traumatized children from abusive families in cultural isolation. In a nutshell." She pushed the shakers aside, unfolded her napkin. "I'm going to France in three months. I'm going to work in an Algerian community in Marseilles."

"France." The word, in Celestino's mouth, felt as if it were made of glass.

"Cut the umbilical cord, only to return to the womb. Absurd and ironic. But my French turns out to be my biggest asset.
Merci bien, Papa et Maman
."

The waitress brought Isabelle's wine and a basket of bread. Immediately, Isabelle tore a piece off the loaf. She pushed the basket toward Celestino.

"I can't believe I'm looking at you across this table." She chewed as she spoke. "Celestino, I was so crazy about you. My friend Ceci--remember her?--she thought I'd die of a broken heart. Losing Papa, then you. Etienne clueless and snotty about it all, Maman in this personal cone of anger. That's what I called it, the cone of anger. I was so totally grounded after you vanished. For months. She must have thought I'd run away and find you, or maybe you'd climb a trellis and spirit me away. Ceci came home with me after school almost every day. Sometimes I wonder if Maman bribed her to keep an eye on me."

She said all these things cheerfully. "I guess it sounds like I
have
forgiven you, doesn't it? You know, there's this saying I remember from Grand-mere.
L'absence au coeur, c'est comme le vent au feu
. 'Absence to the heart is like wind to the fire.' A little fans the flames; too much puts them out....

"I'm sorry," she said, interrupting herself. "I've eaten all the bread. I was at the library practically all night. I skipped dinner." Standing slightly, she waved at the waitress and pointed to the basket. Then she said, "I can't figure out if I should tell my mother I've seen you or not. I think she'd have a heart attack."

Celestino knew he should ask about Senora Lartigue. But he said, "I've never fallen in love with anyone else."

Isabelle stopped what she was doing (gathering the crumbs before her into a small, neat pile) but did not look at him. Was she hiding her face?

He would have to ask, because he had to know. "Are you with someone now?"

When she looked at him, he could tell she was anxious again, the way she'd been back on her doorstep. Her voice had tightened. "I've been with a few guys. After you left, I was at college, Celestino, not a convent. But right now--no. No one now. I work too hard. I figure the love part has to come later."

All this talk began to make him feel miserable, trapped, yet what could he do? Invite her to his drafty attic in Lothian? Take her to a movie?

"Can I ask you something, Celestino?"

"Anything, Isabelle."

"Did you finish school--in New York?"

"No."

She nodded. "I wondered about that. That's a shame."

She drank the last of her wine. The soup and the sandwich arrived.

"You know," Isabelle said softly, "Maman isn't heartless. Once--it was after they dedicated the gallery in the museum to my father, and there was this huge exhibit that included photos from the dig, and there was one of your father and his crew--anyway, we were at home together, and I was back from college, so she probably thought it was safe to mention you. She said she was haunted by the thought that you fell off the path my father put you on. She said she warned Papa not to get so involved with other people's fortunes, she said he was playing God. He argued that if you can change one person's life for the good--not counting your children's lives--then you've fulfilled one thing you need to do in your life. Maman told him he changed lots of people's lives by being a teacher. He said it wasn't the same thing, that his students would have learned whatever they learned, more or less, from somebody else if not from him."

Celestino thought of Dr. Lartigue going over his earliest compositions in English, the famous professor sitting in his study with a fifteen-year-old boy, a wild boy from the jungle. "A Portrait of My Village." "The History of My Family." That first year, all the topics Celestino's teacher assigned were strangely personal, something he hadn't expected. Dr. Lartigue had helped him think of details about his life that he had never noticed. The man's generosity and patience had never seemed unusual to Celestino, because they came to him as a legacy of sorts, shown to his own father first.

"Your father was so good to everyone," he said.

"To many people, yes," said Isabelle. "But he could be brutal when it came to ambition. Not all his colleagues loved him, I can tell you that."

She ate several spoonfuls of soup. Celestino forced himself to finish half of his sandwich.

"Can I steal some of your fries?" she said. Her fingernails were trimmed, modestly short, and lacquered a milky shade of pink. As Arturo had said, she wore no rings. Celestino and Isabelle had shared french fries a dozen times when they had roamed into the Square like friendly siblings--and later as secret lovers. Then, he would have grabbed the hand that took the fries from the plate, held it under the table. Now he just looked at her hand with mournful longing.

"What comes next, Celestino?" She held his gaze. "This is too surreal."

What he wanted to come next was going back to her apartment with her--or anywhere, really: to the library if that's where she had to go, to the place she went when she wanted her hair cut, her nails painted. He wanted not to leave her again.

"I wish to see you more," he said.

"Are we friends, then? I don't get that feeling from you."

"No," he said.

"Not friends?" she said tentatively.

He answered quickly, "Friends, yes, of course. We are. I did not mean--"

She blushed again. "We could sit here, stammering like this, forever, couldn't we? But I'm afraid I do need to work. Celestino, I really am leaving for France, and I had planned on having almost no life before going. I was supposed to do an interview, for my thesis, this morning. I put it off till this afternoon." She signaled the waitress. "You know, this feels like a dream."

"Yes," he agreed. "But it is not."

She played with the shakers again. "If you had stayed, if we had known each other all this time ..." The shakers clicked: together, apart, together. "All I know is, it would be different."

"Different how?" Though he could guess many ways how.

"Celestino, I'm no oracle. I can't really say. I just look at you and you don't ... I don't know how you fit in my life. If that's what you're asking."

"Yes," said Celestino, seized by an urgency he hadn't felt in years, "yes, that is exactly what I am asking."

She had one hand on her coat, but she did not put it on. "Oh boy. I can't get my brain around this." She rummaged under her coat for her bag. She took out a notebook and pencil. She opened the notebook and pushed it across the table. "Give me your number."

"I can call you whenever you say," said Celestino, dismayed that he would have to reveal how unrooted he was. "Write your number."

"But what if I want to call you first?"

The waitress set down the folder with the check; Isabelle gave her a credit card without looking over the charges.

"No," said Celestino, reaching.

"Let me," said Isabelle. "Please. I mean, look at us. Who has the advantages here, who's the spoiled one?"

This, too, dismayed Celestino. When they had lived under the same roof, her advantages had been those of culture, language, education; they presented him with a heady struggle to make himself even with her, not the feeling that he would always lag behind. Now she must judge him to be poor, uneducated, inarticulate ... desperate.

She put a hand on his, as if guessing the pathetic turn his thoughts had taken. "Let's be real with each other. We're old enough now."

He willed away her obvious meaning. He said, "When can I see you again? My work takes all my days except Sundays, but I am free any evening."

"I need to be able to call you--or e-mail? Do you have e-mail?"

"I am living carefully, saving for my business."

"No communications? That's rather Spartan! You run your business by word of mouth?" The look on her face was kind yet mocking. This older Isabelle alarmed him. At seventeen, her bravado had been charming, even sweet. Now her honesty felt harsh.

"It is not yet off the ground." A worn memory rose with his sense of shame. The night Senora Lartigue had ambushed them, she ordered Celestino to leave the room, preparing to deal with her daughter first. Isabelle had shouted, "Don't go! Don't obey her; we are in this together!" But he had obeyed. In this painful memory, Isabelle was the one who had guts. Perhaps she was also the one without shame.

"Well," she said now to the silence between them. "Let's head out."

He followed her onto the street. In the sun once again, he tried to see more deeply into her face. While they had been apart, had she ever burned with passion, pined away? The telltale lines of sorrow were absent from her beautiful skin. He was the idiot romantic, she the practical one, pushing forward in her life, waiting for no one. But would he have wanted the kind of woman his cousin called
la condesa en el castillo
, whose passions quickly turn leaden, into needs, demands, disappointments?

"I'm going to run," she said. "You know where to find me. I'm listed. We'll see each other again, I promise."

She hesitated, and then she hugged him; how impersonal it felt through the puffy insulation of his coat. He smelled not her neck but the wool of her brilliantly patterned scarf. She hurried toward the Square.

Loud had walked him through Mrs. Connaughton's fancy security system. She would be gone for a month. She had a cat to care for, in addition to her plants. "She'd love it," said Loud, "if you sat and, as she put it, 'snuggled a teensy bit with Horace.' " He laughed and shook his head. "Not sure I like paying you to snuggle,
hombre
, but ten minutes won't hurt, especially if it keeps the creature from crapping on these priceless rugs." They'd walked through the entire house. In the attic (its sloped walls white as clouds, like the lime-washed walls of a country church), Loud showed Celestino the places he should check for leaks, especially the trapdoor at the top of a ladder leading to the roof.

On his own now, Celestino entered the house carefully, punching the code into the box as quickly as he could. He was startled immediately by the cat, which leaped off the sofa in the living room.
"Hola,"
he said gently. The cat flashed him an offended look, then ran to the kitchen.

He followed it, treading lightly. In the kitchen he would find everything he needed: watering cans, cat food, lightbulbs, fuses, a flashlight. After every storm, he was to check not only the attic but the dark cavelike cellar. Steep stairs led down from the kitchen, and then he had to crouch on dirt.

In four rooms, there were seventeen plants to water; he had counted, so that he would not forget a single one. The cat had wet food, dry food, water, a litterbox. Tending to those needs took no time at all. But how was the creature to be "snuggled"? It fled from each room Celestino entered, yet seemed to wait for him in the next. It was a hairy cat, with a flat nose and black, fathomless eyes.

He spoke gently to it, announcing his intentions as friendly, asking silly questions about its favorite foods, the secret life of its mistress. Did she have many lovers? Did she like to walk naked around the house when she was alone? Did she eat cake in the middle of the night? He whispered, as if the walls might be listening.

In the bathroom off the kitchen, he changed the litterbox, the cat watching from a distance. He poured food into the animal's dish. He filled the watering cans.

The living room, which faced the open lawn, drank in the most sunlight. The plants that loved sun had been gathered on tables next to these windows: two gardenias, a hibiscus, a sprawling red geranium. As he misted the gardenias, Celestino could sense the cat sneaking closer from behind him. When he finished with the plants, he turned slowly. The cat retreated to the dining room.

When he went upstairs, the cat followed. Every time he turned from his task, he found the cat closer than before, yet always it bolted to another room.

After twenty minutes in the house, Celestino put on his coat. He was about to leave when he decided to try something. He went into the living room and sat on the sofa where the cat had been resting when he entered. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He thought about Isabelle, their meeting the previous day: her skin, her loose hair, her breasts beneath her blouse. Though this was what he'd been trying for, he was startled when the cat jumped up beside him.

He sat up slowly. He looked at the cat, staring at him, crouching low on the cushion beside him.
"Gato,"
he whispered. He could not remember the cat's name. He sat perfectly still for some time, and then the cat touched his hand with its cold snub nose. Still he did not move. It climbed into his lap, but when he moved to stroke its fur, it leaped to the floor and ran into the kitchen.

Celestino laughed. He got up, reset the security code, and left the house. Halfway to the road, he turned and looked back; the cat had climbed up among the plants inside the window to witness his leaving. It struck him then, forcefully, that the strange cat was too much like him: living its life aloof, in fear, watching from a distance, approaching and retreating over and over.

That night, he went to the sheltered pay phone in the park, with his phone card. He waited until nine, a time when he hoped she would have left the library but still be wide awake.

She recognized his voice, though she sounded surprised.

"Celestino, I've thought about you so much since yesterday. Where are you calling me from?" (Did she hope he was calling from nearby, so she might invite him to come to her?)