Banishing Verona (24 page)

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Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Banishing Verona
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He turned to see the driver, hurrying toward him, holding the green suitcase. “Must be a hot date,” said the man, wagging his head.
“Thank you,” said Zeke. “Thank you so much.” One thing if his luggage had never arrived, quite another to leave it in the boot of a taxi. What an idiot he would have felt, presenting himself to Verona without so much as a change of socks.
He pushed his way through the glass door and stepped into a large space filled with chairs and couches and tables. Carefully he scanned the room, starting with the empty sofa to his left and moving past the fireplace and the groups of chairs and potted plants, hoping that somewhere, among all this furniture, was the one person he wanted to see, but the few occupants, mostly men in suits, were definitely not Verona. Then he spotted a counter; if he followed the shining tile floor that was where it would lead him.
“Good afternoon,” said a young man with neatly spiked hair. “Checking in?”
“My name is Zeke Cafarelli. I'm here to see Verona MacIntyre.”
“She's a guest? What did you say the name was?”
“Verona MacIntyre,” he said happily.
“And your name?”
Less happily he repeated that.
The man turned aside and began to search through a file. Zeke watched his dark hair feathering over his white collar and tried to
resist the feeling that all was not going according to plan, that the joyful reunion he had held in his mind ever since he sat on the floor of the chef's kitchen and listened to her deep, warm voice inviting him—no, begging him—to come to Boston was being delayed yet again. She's gone for a walk, he thought, she's taking a nap.
The man turned back to him, holding out a white paper rectangle. “I'm here to see Ms. MacIntyre,” Zeke said again, ignoring the envelope.
“Ms. MacIntyre checked out this morning, sir, but she made a reservation for you—a nonsmoking room on the eighth floor.”
The man's lips continued to move but Zeke heard only a buzzing sound, like a bluebottle trapped in a lampshade. Was there any possibility that
checked out
meant something else in American? Looking down, he saw a dark sweater, leading to dark trousers and two brightly polished black shoes, each planted in the middle of a sandy-colored marble square. Those were his legs, his feet in the shoes that he had polished over the kitchen sink in London only the night before, flicking the brush back and forth in the way his father had taught him. This, he thought, is more than I can bear.
 
 
“Jeez,” said a voice, “we're having an epidemic.”
Opening his eyes, Zeke saw an olive-skinned face hanging over him. The back of his head, his shoulders, and the rest of his body were resting on something cold and hard. “Sir, sir, are you all right?” the face was saying.
“Where's the letter?”
“Would you like a glass of water? Do you want to see a doctor?”
“The letter,” he said again, and this time heard the word as a plea: Let her. Let her be here. Let her come to me.
“Why don't we get you into a chair, sir?”
With the help of two men in gray uniforms, Zeke was transported to a wing-backed armchair. Something small and orange danced at the edge of his vision: the suspiciously regular flames of
a gas fire. The olive-skinned man brought a glass of water and the precious envelope. Another man appeared, wearing black garments of such fitted sleekness as to resemble a wet suit. “Mr. Cafarelli, I'm the manager. How are you feeling?”
“Heartbroken.”
“Do you need to see a doctor?”
“Not for this.”
The man was looking at him so intently that for a moment Zeke wondered if they'd met before. But he knew only one person within several thousand miles and she was gone, leaving instead of her gorgeous person a piece of paper. “Don't worry,” he said. “I just had a terrible disappointment. I do know that this is a hotel, not a hospital.”
“Very well, sir, but might I recommend that you use room service for the rest of the day. We'll be happy to take care of it.”
Zeke moved his head up and down, with no idea what the man was talking about. Why would he want his room serviced? Then a wheelchair was produced and, although he could easily have walked, he sat in it docilely and allowed himself, his suitcase, and the letter to be transported into a lift, down a corridor, and into a pink room with the biggest bed he had ever seen. How on earth would he ever sleep here? The three men turned on the bedside light, drew the curtains, adjusted the heat, asked if he wanted to watch TV; one sounded like Americans on television, one sounded Spanish, one sounded as if he had swallowed English sentences whole and was now regurgitating them. Finally, they left him alone. Making sure to stay well away from the edge, he lay down on the bed and opened the letter.
At first all he saw was her handwriting, much less neat than her grandfather's but still with each letter distinct and martialed into groups. He gazed at them hopelessly, seeing not phrases and sentences but, over and over, the declaration of her absence. I got on a plane, he thought, I came all this way, and you're not here. He wanted to count the hairs on his forearm, climb into a cupboard, take apart the world's largest clock.
A knock came at the door. “Room service.”
That mysterious phrase again. The door opened and one of those men in gray uniforms came in, the Spanish-sounding older one. “The manager thought you might like some tea, sir. Where shall I put the tray?”
Zeke patted the counterpane. The man marched around two sides of the bed and halfway along the third, deposited the tray and slid it in Zeke's direction. “I hope you feel better,” he said, and left as quietly as he had come.
In the midst of his despair Zeke eyed the white china teapot appreciatively. At least they had teapots in America. But when he reached to pour, the liquid that emerged from the spout was clear. Had he, yet again, misunderstood? Then he spotted a container of different colored tea bags: they expected him to make his own tea. Tears came into his eyes. In every evanescent cell of his body he understood how far he was from home, from knowing how many dustbins there were on the street, which church bell struck the hour first. He opened a little paper envelope—there seemed to be only one of each kind—and slipped the tea bag into the pot. After three minutes he poured himself a cup of not terribly strong, not terribly hot tea. He set it on the bedside table and, turning back to the page, watched the rows of letters coalesce.
Dear, dear Zeke,
I am so sorry not to be here to greet you. I did try to phone you in London, to explain, but you must have already left for Heathrow. I just discovered this morning, less than an hour ago, that I have to go to New York. It all has to do with Henry and his horrendous problems. I don't think I'll be able to get back this evening but I should be back later tomorrow. I'll phone to let you know.
Meanwhile, I hope you can have a nice time exploring Boston. If I hadn't been in a terrible mood I think I'd have enjoyed the Fogg Museum, and I did like the Isabella Stewart Gardner. One day soon I hope I can make all this up to you.
My love, Verona
 
PS 1 Please don't worry about money. I know this has been terrifically expensive: the plane, not working, etc. We'll sort it out.
 
PS 2 I hope you understand that I don't approve of Henry's behavior but I still have to help him.
 
PS 3 You probably know by now, from Emmanuel, that I have no connection to the Barrows. I'm sorry I lied to you about being their niece, but not sorry, not at all, about the rest.
Oh, no, thought Zeke, not New York. He pictured tall buildings, endless pushing and shoving, a park where people killed each other, where everyone had either too much money or not enough. Why was Verona going to such a dangerous place? How could Henry possibly deserve this kind of devotion? Parents and children he understood, but brothers and sisters were a mystery. Two adults did something that they wanted to do anyway, and had a baby. Then they did the same thing again and the result was siblings: two people who didn't necessarily have anything in common besides their parents. Although, he had to admit as he sipped his tea, a sibling might have been a help with the shop. The one time he had asked his mother why he was an only child she had said—kindly or cruelly, he couldn't tell—you were enough. He hadn't given the matter another thought until the night she'd made him dinner and explained how his father's fears about his heart had kept them from having a larger family.
He poured a second cup of tea, stronger but even cooler than the first, and reread the letter. It was astonishing how little information she managed to give. Once again, he thought, my task is to wait, and waiting is one of my least favorite activities. He folded the pages neatly back into the envelope, set it on the bedside table, and closed his eyes. If only he could be frozen until all this was over.
The man at the desk didn't seem to know what Zeke was talking about. “Fog?” he kept repeating. “I don't think so. They're saying a thirty percent chance of snow later.” And then he did something Zeke had heard about but seldom witnessed: he rolled his eyes. His pupils moved from one corner of the eye to the other as if someone had twirled them on a stick. Was he being rude, Zeke wondered, or was it like the waitress in the coffee shop who had found his request for water incomprehensible until he pointed to another customer's glass of clear liquid. Now, as the man kept quoting the weather forecast, Zeke doggedly refused to move. He wanted to go to this place where Verona had been, to take comfort in sharing a few molecules of air with her. He reached for the notepad and pen lying on the desk and carefully printed: I WANT TO GO TO THE FOGG MUSEUM. HOW DO I GET THERE? Then he drew himself up to his full height. It seems like a small thing, Gwen used to say, but when you stand up straight people are convinced that you're a person to be reckoned with. Napoleon, she went on, had excellent posture. So did Tina Turner. Neither was an immediately useful role model, but in the middle of the lobby Zeke did his best to signal that, in spite of being an inept hotel guest, he was
not going to be intimidated. He stared resolutely at an armchair while the man carried his message over to the main desk and, after a lengthy consultation, came back with another piece of paper that he unfolded with a flourish.
Zeke was pleased to see a mass of black, brown, and green lines. He liked maps, the way they made order out of chaos and the peculiar fact that you could point to one and say, I am here. When his English teacher had been explaining metaphor—how it links two things we normally regard as separate—Zeke had been bewildered until he pictured a map. On the plane he was delighted to find a sheet of paper pinned on the wall by one of the lavatories, showing their flight path. There was their journey, neatly drawn from London, across Ireland, the Atlantic, and Nova Scotia to Boston.
“The hotel is here.” The man's nails had clear, shapely half moons. “And you want to go here, to the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, across the Charles River.” He indicated a meandering blue line. “Either you can take a taxi or the T.”
“What's the T?”
“The subway. In London you call it the tube.” He continued to explain the system, the nearest stop to the hotel, the nearest stop to the museum, where to change. Zeke wrote down the crucial information. The idea of traveling underground was at once appealing. Surely, down below, Boston could not be so different.
“Thank you,” he said, slipping the map into his pocket. He had almost crossed the shiny expanse of marble that lay between him and the door when the man called after him. “You might want to wait awhile. They don't open until nine.”
Zeke stopped, midstride, and checked his watch. It was only seven-thirty. Of course he had heard of jet lag, that phenomenon whereby one part of your body remained in the old place while the rest arrived in the new; still, it felt weird to be so alert before dawn. He took the lift again and got out at the eighth floor. The corridor stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions, every door the same flat beige, with only the gold numerals fastened
above each little fish eye to distinguish them, though four now had trays sitting outside. Earlier, when he left his room, he had walked the length of the corridor and located three exit signs and an ice machine, improbably full of perfect ice cubes.
Back in his room, he set his own tray from the night before outside the door, made the bed, and tidied the bathroom. After being up for nearly twenty-four hours, he had, in spite of his strange surroundings, fallen asleep soon after drinking his tea and slept remarkably well. Now he lay on the enormous bed, holding a copy of the magazine about Boston he'd picked up in the lobby, and stared up at the ceiling. It looked as if the builder had mixed sand into the plaster, the American equivalent of wood-chip paper, he guessed, a way to conceal flaws. The little red light he had spied in the night turned out to be a smoke detector, and the metal nozzle beside it—he stood on the bed to check—seemed to be a water sprinkler.
He lay back down. All I want, he thought, is to live in a safe place with Verona and Ms. F. In their company he could imagine learning the skills he had failed to grasp the first time round: how to ride a bicycle, how to tell lies and recognize people, maybe even how to enjoy the seaside. But, whatever happened next, a stormy period lay ahead. Back in London, debts must be paid, to Emmanuel and to his relentless parents. And where exactly, now the Barrows were home, would he and Verona be together? At the prospect that he might have to leave his flat where he had lived for six years and where, on even the darkest night, he could find his toothbrush or his pepper grinder by touch alone, he began to count the threads in the counterpane as fast as he could. Just for a moment he glimpsed the terrible possibility that his affections might not be inexhaustible. Overhead the sprinkler glittered.
He jumped up and seized his jacket and hat. He could always pace the street outside the museum until it opened, which was, after all, a predictable event. Almost any other waiting was preferable to the nebulous, painful kind that Verona imposed on him, over and over again.
 
 
Soon after he changed to the Red Line the train came aboveground. A mechanical voice announced Charles Street station and a hospital with, amazingly, the name Jill had mentioned. Before he could identify the buildings, the train was pulling out of the station and they were crossing a river, the blue line on his map now a frozen gray. Then they were once more down below, among the pipes and moles. Zeke would gladly have spent the day going back and forth between the mysterious Alewife and the equally mysterious, although somehow symmetrical, Braintree. But a sense of loyalty to Verona made him get out at Harvard Square. He followed two boys, each with an armful of books, to the exit marked Church Street.
Aboveground he discovered again the bitterly cold day and half a dozen boxes containing newspapers, some for sale, some free. A small flock of telephones clustered together amid the snow. As he studied them, he heard a roaring noise and, looking up, saw two planes flying overhead, the only familiar part of the landscape. Everything else was different: the brick sidewalks, the low muddled buildings, the cars on the wrong side of the road, even the shapes of the leafless trees. No, not everything. Right behind him was a shop selling soap and shampoo that had branches all over London.
He crossed Church Street, passed an ocher-colored church, and came to a snowy expanse surrounded by black railings. A park, he was thinking, when he noticed several dark slate stones punctuating the snow and recognized a graveyard. The railings led him to another church, this one made of wood, painted light gray, with beautiful clear windows. Standing on the front step, he took out the map and located Harvard Square. All he had to do to find the museum was retrace his steps, walk up a street called Massachusetts Avenue, and turn left on Quincy Street.
He was outside a bookshop when he spotted a metal effigy like the one he had seen from the taxi the day before. He bent down to
examine the silver body and faded orange helmet with its snout and two stocky arms; even on closer inspection it seemed to have no obvious use. He stopped a passing boy and asked what it was.
“It's a fire hydrant. If there were a fire the firemen could connect their hoses to this”—the boy pointed at the snout—“and get water at high pressure.”
“Is fire a particular problem in Boston?”
“Got me.” The boy whistled. “We do have some wooden buildings, but you see fire hydrants all over the country. I bet there was a blaze somewhere, New York or Chicago, and somebody invented some paranoid law. That's how a lot of stuff happens here.”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
Welcome to what, Zeke wondered, but it seemed to be the expression Americans used to conclude conversations instead of
no problem,
or
right,
or
take care,
or
cheers.
He turned the corner. There was the museum, a handsome stone building, just where the map said it should be and it was open. Inside a sign requested six dollars. He was muddling over his wallet when a voice said, “Excuse me.” A woman, dressed in black, reached over the counter, deftly extracted two pieces of green paper, and in exchange handed Zeke a metal button. “Wear this in view,” she instructed.
In the two-story courtyard, he closed his eyes, trying to summon Verona. Maybe he should ask the woman behind the counter if she remembered a tall pregnant Englishwoman visiting the museum recently? But when he glanced back she was talking on the phone, one hand shielding the receiver as if whatever she was saying was too good to share. The courtyard itself was pleasingly symmetrical, with a row of arches, like upside-down U's, on the ground floor, and a row of double arches, like M's, above. On one side was a shop, closed, but selling, he guessed, postcards and souvenirs. He headed for the stairs, passing a wooden statue, a saint, clearly very old. On the poorly lit landing he paused in front of a picture of another saint, the gloomy-looking St.
Dominic, holding a large book. The accompanying label claimed that the painting had originally been done around 1246, but within a few years it had been altered twice in pursuit of greater verisimilitude. An earlier version of the left ear was apparently still visible in the middle of the face but not, in the dim light, to Zeke. If at first you don't succeed, he thought, and made a little bow to Dominic.
Upstairs, there seemed to be no one else around. Unable to focus on any single painting he began to circle the balcony, and with each revolution his thoughts grew more agitated. Where was Verona? What was he doing in this strange country? Why did only one of the five churches he'd passed between the hotel and the museum have a clock? When he put his fingers to his forehead, he could feel the questions beating against his skull. He had suggested trepanning to one of his doctors, a little hole to let out the bad ideas. No, no, she had insisted, all you need is to take the right medicine and go to your group.
“Are you all right, sir?” Navy blue trousers, a navy jacket barred his path.
“Not really. I was trying to get away from my thoughts.”
“Perhaps,” the guard said, “you might look at the paintings. Whatever your tastes, just look at a couple. You'll feel better. I guarantee it.”
Zeke said he would try. In a room off the balcony he stopped in front of a roiling sea and moved quickly on to a mountain range. For him these scenes had all the disadvantages of nature in real life, an uncountable mass of vegetation. The only painting in the room that offered some relief was a picture of a train with red fenders, standing in a station surrounded by feathery clouds of steam. The next room contained portraits. This was better, he thought, regarding a ruddy-cheeked man wearing a neat white wig. How much easier life would be if people remained fixed in a single posture. He gazed appreciatively at a woman and a small child. Finally he reached a room full of the kind of paintings he most enjoyed, ones that didn't pretend to be a person or a thing
but were simply themselves. He stood in front of a small oil composed of crisscrossing lines for several minutes.
By lunchtime, however, the consolations of art were long gone. He felt so desolate that he would happily have returned to the graveyard, made himself a pillow of snow, and lain down among the stones. Instead, he ate a tuna sandwich at a large factorylike bakery and then stepped into the first men's clothing shop he came to and bought a down jacket. Wearing his new purchase, he returned to the subway and caught a train headed toward Braintree. At Charles Street station, he got out and followed the signs to the hospital.
 
 
“Zeke, what are you doing here? You're not ill, are you?”
A person stood before him, a woman, slender, pale-skinned, eyes caught behind black-framed glasses. Her brown hair was secured with two metal clips and she was wearing the light-blue trousers and top he had already seen on several dozen women as he waited to consult, and then gave up on, the man at the information desk. He stared at her uncertainly. The small nose was the same but the lips seemed too pale and the shoulders sloped differently. Then, as her hand moved toward him, he caught sight of a black leather watch strap encircling a blue-veined wrist and remembered noticing both the day before, across the aisle. “Jill, I was looking for you. The man at the desk said they can only find patients, not nurses. I didn't know what to do next.”
“Your timing couldn't be better. I'm just coming off duty. Do you want to get some tea?”
“Here?”
Even in Jill's company, the thought of spending more time in this place where every other person was in a wheelchair was daunting. But already she was pulling on her coat and leading the way toward the door; there were some nice cafés, she'd heard, across from the subway station. As they walked, she talked about how different everything was, even the names of the medicines,
and sentence by sentence she grew more familiar. “The doctors are very big on patient responsibility. God knows what that means, given that half of them are barely conscious. I couldn't say a word without someone going into paroxysms over my accent.”

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