Art on Fire (36 page)

“It's me.” Francesca forced a smile, though she felt her face freeze into a look of fear, almost as if she were about to cry. She wished she could turn around, get back in the car, and be on I-95. She stepped onto the stoop and put one arm around her mother's slim waist. In her other hand, she held her knapsack.

“Oh my God.” Vivian pushed Francesca away to look at her. “Bella, come here. Come see your sister.”

Isabella stampeded down the stairs as if she'd only this moment learned of Francesca's arrival. When she reached the first floor foyer,
she stopped, inhaled loud and long, then continued to move slowly through the kitchen. She saw her sister through the threshold, leaning over, embracing Vivian, and decided she looked rather like a colt—a slim, young colt (
mania
?) as opposed to a grown, shod horse (
depression
?). She was even manlier in person than she'd appeared in the newspaper photograph. Isabella struggled to think of something normal to say, something to distract herself from the raging, inappropriate impulses that beckoned. She felt the urge to whisper to Francesca: “Quick! Run! And don't look back or you'll turn into a pillar of salt!” Or to push Francesca out the door, down the two squat steps, then bolt the door behind her.

“Look. Look who it is,” Vivian cried.

“Oh my God,” said Isabella. “It's Francesca!” She waved frantically, then stopped and let her arms drift apart until between them was just enough space to accommodate a small hug, one reserved, perhaps, for a toddler or a ball. Francesca squeezed herself in between Isabella's hands and awkwardly the sisters embraced under the teary gaze of their beleaguered mother.

Vivian woke Alfonse from his nap, and he came down the stairs slowly, like an old man, his back bent at the top so that his shoulders curled forward. He'd gone gray, and the lines in his face were etched deep. His hair was messed from sleeping, squished on the left side so that it stood inches above his scalp. Francesca thought he looked almost mentally arrested, a small boy in an old man's body.

“Oh my goodness,” he said, his pace quickening when he got a look at Francesca in the living room. “You're really here.” He began crying, as if someone had pulled a switch.

Francesca gave in to it now. Something about her father made it all inescapable—the familiarity, the promise of family, of love, of all that she'd forced from her thoughts. Weepy Alfonse, his emotions always so ready, made it impossible for her to remain stalwart.

They sat in the living room. Vivian watched Francesca as if she were the newest panda bear in the Washington zoo. She was grateful to Francesca for coming home; it would be such a relief to not have her daughter's absence remarked upon all through the funeral and the shiva afterward. Still, Vivian could not completely eradicate the anger
she felt at Francesca's complete abdication of her responsibility as a daughter. Sure, she herself had failed in many ways, most strikingly in her ability to divide her attentions between a demanding genius and a quiet girl who had seemed so ordinary and self-sufficient.

On the other hand, she knew, as did Alfonse, about the morning Evelyn had walked in on Francesca and the Chinese girl, and this, Vivian told herself—and Alfonse told himself as well—was the real reason Francesca had fled. She'd always seemed a strange child, what with her penchant for things wild and natural, her lack of interest in anything feminine (I want a
purple
room!), her finger painting. And on the day when Evelyn related the story, through a filter of disgust and rage, Vivian and Alfonse could no longer hide from themselves what Francesca was. This, they decided then, was why she'd gone, so she could live among other people like her. Evelyn had been happy to accept this explanation, since it took the onus off of her and made Francesca's disappearance inevitable.

Alfonse piled spaghetti, three meatballs, and a heaping tablespoon of freshly grated Reggiano Parmesan onto a plate.

“That Joycie. What a mensch,” said Vivian, referring to Joycie Newman, who had dropped the food off in Tupperwares that afternoon.

Alfonse held the plate out to Francesca. “Our guest of honor,” he said.

Isabella put one hand in the air. “Ask her if she eats meat,” she demanded.

“Oh—” Abashedly, he retracted the plate.

“I do eat meat. Thank you.” Francesca took it from him.

Alfonse glared at Isabella.

“What,” Isabella said firmly. “A lot of lesbians don't eat meat.”

He ladled a large heap of pasta and sauce onto another plate and held it out to Isabella.

“What? I can't eat that!” She blocked it with outstretched hands. “Didn't she bring any salad?”

“Joycie brought spaghetti. That's how it is. People bring the food and we eat it. It's not a time to be difficult,” said Vivian.

“I'll just have an apple,” said Isabella.

“Viv, tell her to eat the spaghetti.” Alfonse spoke quietly.

“It's okay,” said Vivian. “Just don't eat too much.”

Isabella looked at the plate, panicked, as if upon it sat an unpredictable wild animal she didn't want to rouse. She swallowed hard and shook her head. “Just sauce,” she said, handing the plate back to Alfonse. “Please.”

“What do you mean, just sauce?”

“It's fine, Alfonse,” said Vivian. She turned to Isabella. “I know for a fact that Joycie uses very little oil in the sauce. And lean meat. You know Joycie—she's always on a diet.” She patted Isabella's hand.

“That's ridiculous. She's too skinny as it is,” said Alfonse, disgusted.

“It's the white flour. It metabolizes into sugar and forms a layer of flab right here.” Isabella patted her belly.

Alfonse pushed the spaghetti back into the saucepan, mixing it in with the mound of clean noodles, staining everything a weak orange. He slapped the pot down and presented Isabella with her abridged plate, now smattered with sauce and pimply bumps of meat. “Happy?” he said, his voice tight.

Gingerly, Isabella moved two laggard strands of spaghetti to the side, then took the plate from her father. Sauce is depression; spaghetti, mania. She should have chosen spaghetti, some meatballs, a big glass of Coke. Tears filled her eyes, silent and unstoppable, clouding her vision. She felt around her plate for her spoon, trying to focus on the sad puddle of sauce before her, struggling not to resent her sister's monopoly on approval. She shook her head, grimacing. She was trying so hard. Oh, how she was trying. She reassured herself that although Francesca was visiting, and so was being fussed over and lavished with gobs of attention, her parents were and always would be hers. Utterly. Exclusively. This fact, while unspoken and, of course, unspeakable, was still a fact. Already they were so ill at ease with each other, her mother and her fly-by-night sister, that it was only a matter of time until they ran fresh out of patience, or whatever resource they were rapidly depleting. There was nothing to draw them
together except perhaps the tiniest physical resemblance—the posture, the leanness, the sharp features. And the big hands. Vivian had smaller hands but they were big for her size, for her carriage—long fingered and thick palmed. Francesca's were just plain big. Anyhow, this was a superficial likeness, so subtle as to go unnoticed, and Isabella knew that very soon they would revert to a state of mutual loathing. How sad. Sad, sad, sad. It was all she could do not to “tsk tsk” aloud. She wished everyone well, somewhere deep down and hard to get a hold of. Like a tiny gold ring at the bottom of the ocean. “All done!” She placed her tablespoon diagonally across her plate, took the salt-shaker from the middle of the table, and dumped a long spray over the stain of sauce that remained. She sprung to her feet.

“Good for you.” Vivian said.

“Good? Why are you telling her that's good?” asked Alfonse, his voice cracking.

“That's why she's so slim.”

“Yes,
she
is. Thank you,” said Isabella. “If you'll excuse
her
. . .” She walked into the living room and flung herself on the couch.

“Tell her to get back in here,” Alfonse demanded.

“You should have seen your sister,” Vivian told Francesca. She puffed out her cheeks and hung her hands at her side.

“I saw that, Mom,” called Isabella.

“No, you didn't,” Vivian replied smartly, as if this were a game.

“Viv, tell her to come back in here.”

Why, Francesca wondered, had Lisa ended her life when lives like these continued on and on with no apparent purpose?

Isabella's needs were tapping, tapping, demanding attention. She'd tried to allow the focus to stagnate on her sister. But Francesca didn't need their attention; that was obvious. And oh, how Isabella did. She needed it more with each passing moment. She appeared in the doorway. “Here I am.” She sat down at the table and, to please Alfonse, took her napkin and smoothed it over her lap. “I'll have some spaghetti, Papa.”

“No point now. We're nearly finished.”

“But I'm hungry.”

He took her plate, rather roughly, and spooned a small amount of
pasta, maybe a quarter cup, over the heap of salt, then used the ladle to cover it with sauce. But as soon as Isabella had taken the plate from him, she knew she couldn't eat. Quickly, she searched for a distraction.

“My new book is going very well,” she said. “It's a memoir.”

“We know,” Alfonse said.

“How do you know?”

“You told us.” He picked up his fork.

“When?”

“I don't know. Recently.”

Isabella thought hard. “Oh. I guess I've been so busy working on it, I forgot.” She paused, heard only the sounds of silverware tapping dishes. “Uh oh. Did I give away the ending?”

“I'm sure you didn't,” said Vivian.

“Good, because it's the best part. The ending. But they say you're never supposed to tell. Because once you tell, once you say the story out loud, which, of course, is so much easier than writing the whole thing down, page after page after page—then you needn't write it.”

“Oh, go ahead,” Francesca pushed her plate away, relieved to have her sister back in the room. Isabella, at least, had vim. Inside that pale, frayed exterior, one could feel the life trying to get out. “Tell us, Bella.”

“Alright. If Francesca wants to hear it. Since she's the guest of honor.” She leaned closer to her sister until their faces were inches apart, and spoke intimately, in a low, spooky voice. “It's all about the mental ward. And the narrator—is . . .” she whispered, “a pedophile.”

“Jesus Christ.” Alfonse dropped his fork, put his hand to his heart. “Vivian!”

Vivian turned to Isabella. “Either you sit down and act like a regular person, or you can stay in the other room.”

“I'm telling Francesca.” She cupped Francesca's ear but spoke loudly enough that the others would hear. “He managed to work a deal with the prosecutor where he's in the loony bin to beat a jail rap,” she whispered. “This actually happened.”

“Isabella, stop fibbing,” said Vivian.

“Why does she always want to write about perverts?” asked Alfonse.

“First of all, I never write about perverts.” She wasn't sure whether this was true. “Second, it's a classic theme, Papa. The antiprotagonist.
The main character who does horrible things and yet we are made to identify with him. Dostoyevsky did it. Nabokov did it.” Finally, thought Isabella, the spotlight was rightfully hers. “Even Shakespeare was obsessed with it.”

“Nabokov always wrote about pedophiles,” offered Francesca.

“Well, he was a very strange fellow. He had that thing about butterflies,” Alfonse added, trying to participate.

“Papa, I doubt you've ever read Nabokov,” said Isabella.

“I've read plenty. I've certainly read Italo Calvino. He's a very fine writer. And he writes about beauty and his country and love, of course.”

“But Nabokov turned the whole genre upside down. No one since Chaucer had written such defiantly literary dirty books! Unless you consider Henry Miller literary.” Isabella shuddered with distaste.