Calamity and Other Stories (11 page)

“She never liked me,” Vittoria said flatly. “But, then, she never liked anyone.”

“But she likes you now?” I asked.

“She’s dead,” Vittoria said.

“But—” I stopped myself from speaking. “Oh,” I said, slowly understanding that the woman I had seen in the apartment was not their mother. She was yet another one of this collection Massi appeared to have, women popping up everywhere, in kitchens, on balconies, in restaurants. I supposed I was one, too. “When did she die?” I asked.

“About two years ago,” said Vittoria. “I guess they still don’t talk about it much.”

“They must miss her,” I suggested.

Vittoria raised her brows slightly. “She was an impatient woman, and yet she put up with too much. She didn’t know how to handle her husband. She let herself be ignored, and so he pushed her aside until there was nothing left of her.” Vittoria poured herself some more wine. “I know how to handle men,” she said. “I would never let myself become like that. Still, you have to be patient.”

I eyed Massi, who was listening to a curly-haired woman I couldn’t remember meeting—yet another one of the menagerie, I guessed. “Or perhaps you could play in the marching band,” the woman was saying. “My cousin played the clarinet, and he never had to do any combat drills at all. Do you play an instrument?”

Massi paused thoughtfully before saying, “I used to play the cymbals.”

The woman’s eyes lit up, and she said, “Well, there you go. They’re sure to need a cymbal player.”

The conversation continued along these lines until late. By 2 a.m. the restaurant had emptied, and it was just the four of us. Marcello popped the top from a bottle of Bailey’s and poured himself a low glass. In what appeared to be a usual pattern, he then said that he wasn’t feeling quite well and should like to return home, and Massi decided to stay over at Vittoria’s. I looked at Massi’s tired face and Vittoria’s bright eyes and realized that my one real reason for being in La Spezia no longer existed.

“I have to leave tomorrow,” I told Marcello as we walked into the damp night air. All we could hear were the splashes of waves on rock and the click of my heels on stone. “I’m feeling guilty about my work,” I explained. “I’ll need to take the early train. Please tell Massi I said goodbye.”

I boarded the train through the morning’s frigid mist, my bag heavy with books and translated texts. To guilt myself into working, I imagined the cloistered nuns, their life’s work abandoned, never to be more than a pile of illegibly bilingual note-cards. Settling into a seat, I opened my notebook and read:

I have sinned and have offended my Lord.
Thus, for His love, that He may pardon me,
Joyously I scourge my shoulders and belly
To escape the serpent who wants to devour me.

About five miles out of the station, the conductor decided to
fare sciopero.
He stopped the train in a misty field, made a brief speech about workers’ rights, and ran away. Through the window I watched him flee across plots of some tall, dead, unharvested grain. We waited for a replacement conductor until it became clear that none was coming. I knew I ought to find a hotel, or camp out at the station. All around me businessmen made calls on cellular phones. They had places to be, people to miss them, family to wonder where they were. Borrowing a phone, I dialed the brothers’ number.

Marcello managed to look pleased at being stuck with a guest he had just gotten rid of. “It means you’re one of the family,” he said. “You should stay awhile.”

“I can’t,” I said, aware of a note of panic in my voice. “You don’t understand. I’m on a grant. I have to do my work.”

“What work?” said Marcello innocently. “The nuns? Come here; let’s have a look.” I peevishly handed him my notebook. “Here we go,” he said as he opened it. “ ‘O sorrowful sisters, now give a black mantle / to her who cared neither for beautiful silk nor good veil / For I am so abandoned and widowed by my son.’ ” Marcello slammed the book shut. “Sounds good to me.”

“Widowed by my son,” I said out loud. “It moves me, actually.” I felt my eyes well up, thinking of what I had been through that summer. Then I stared hard at Marcello and said, “Vittoria told me your mother died.”

“Yes,” he said, looking down. “Two years ago. My father finally went off with his girlfriend, and my mother never recovered.”

“And who is the woman who lives here now?” I asked, with a bit more force.

“Alba doesn’t live here,” said Marcello.

“I mean the woman with the silver hair. In the silk robe.”

Marcello looked at me with surprise, nodded slowly, and said, “So you’ve seen her.”

“Yes, who is she? Why haven’t you introduced me?”

“She is my mother,” Marcello said. “I can’t introduce you because she’s dead.”

“I don’t understand,” I told him, surprised at how whiny I sounded. “I don’t understand.” Then I took a deep breath and said firmly, “I don’t believe you.”

“Yes, it’s problematic,” said Marcello. “But I’ve seen her, too. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

I just stared at him.

“I understand if that makes you uncomfortable,” Marcello continued. “Massi asked a friend of ours—he knows about these things—and he said to ignore her. Only if people notice them do they stay. If you stop paying attention to her, she’ll eventually leave.” Marcello wrinkled his forehead slightly. “It’s true, I think. I don’t see much of her any more.”

I looked at Marcello, at the resigned slope of his shoulders, and realized that this was probably the most thought he had ever given to the subject. “I have work to do,” I said huskily, and went to the leather couch to read for the rest of the morning. “I’m sure the evening train will be back on schedule.”

Massi looked happy to find me there on the sofa when he got home that afternoon. I explained about the train, that there would be another one that evening, and found myself looking up at him with the same longing as before. It was just loneliness, really, but I waited for some revelatory gesture, a hand on my back, on my hair. Massi sat down next to me and put his mouth on my neck. In an instant, I felt myself forgiving him for everything, his secrets and mysteries. Massi took me in his arms and moved his mouth toward my ear. “They’ve changed my assignment,” he said, and pulled back to reveal a smile. “I’ll be stationed here.”

We discussed a vague, dreamy future—from which Vittoria was mysteriously absent—in which I worked in Florence weekdays and visited Massi in La Spezia on weekends, when he was off dishwashing/cymbal duty. Its hopelessness was comforting. But when Massi leaned over to kiss my mouth, I sat up and pushed him away. “I’ve seen your mother,” I said. “In the hallway, and then on the balcony, gardening.”

“My mother is dead,” Massi said softly, and then seemed to decide that no explanation was worth the effort. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “If you believe you’ve seen her, then you’ve seen her. It’s certainly what she wants you to think. People believe what they want to believe.”

Though I should have known better, I waited for him to say something else. I still believed he had more to offer. My expectant, curious eyes must have held the same expression that often meets me now, when from a podium in front of a chalkboard I look out into a broad plot of lecture hall. This is at one of the few colleges still reserved for the female sex and therefore unable to shake the appellation of “girls’ school”; I stand in front of my Renaissance studies class to see row upon row of budding Vittorias. Some look bored and self-assured, some chew pencil ends or their own hair, some frantically copy my words into notebooks. And some, jaws half open, eyes too patient to blink, watch me with trusting confidence, waiting for some wisdom that I myself am not sure I possess.

What would they think if I told them the truth, that I still, two years later, and for all my lack of explanation, at times see that silver-haired woman with the silk robe—on the winding paths of campus, and in corridors, in doorways, looking lost or staring out a window? It isn’t often that she turns up, but with a certain regularity. Sometimes she appears in busy places, waiting in line at the movies, or filling a grocery cart with produce.

That winter in La Spezia, I was sure there was an explanation. I thought that by returning to Florence, to the cold library and my tired notebooks, I could make sense of mystery. I was still of the mind that what was studied could be learned.

And so, when evening arrived and I again said goodbye, I watched for what more the brothers might reveal. Massi just warned me not to study too hard, and Marcello gave me a little package of cough drops and syrup (wrapped in his exam schedule, I later noticed). They waited with me as the elevator creaked up to their floor, and I stepped into the compartment for a last time. Through the gilt bars, I watched Massi bring a lit match to the tip of his cigarette. He looked pensive as ever. “It’s a shame you have to go,” he said, exhaling. “You really should stay.” The smoke from his cigarette wrote some flimsy, short-lived message in the air.

Rehearsal Dinner

“Everything in this car is automatic,” Pierre-Luc announced, ushering Geoff into the front passenger’s seat. His accent turned it into
otomateek.
“Even the window wipers. They turn on
otomateeklee
when it rains. That’s what the man at Hertz said.”

His wife, Caroline, slid into the back seat. “It even talks!” she added. “If you leave your keys in the ignition, it tells you to take them out. Things like that. According to the Hertz guy.” She had a Toronto inflection that made her sound innocent and somewhat dim.

“Is it male or female?” Geoff had to ask.

“Good question.” Pierre-Luc was in the driver’s seat now. “We’ll have to forget our keys and find out.”

Caroline said, “I hope it’s a girl.”

At the sound of the ignition, Geoff felt the seat belt tighten over his chest. Exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, and still hungover, it was all he could do to make the very smallest of small talk. “Thanks for offering me a ride,” he told them. “I appreciate your waiting for me.”

“It only makes sense,” Caroline said. “Eileen mentioned that your flight was coming in just a bit after ours, and it only made sense.”

“And you don’t look much in shape for driving,” Pierre-Luc added, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Geoff mustered a laugh to match Pierre-Luc’s. “Yeah, well, who knows what kind of a lunatic you’ve just picked up.” He had meant to make a joke but immediately regretted trying. At fault was the so-long-we’ll-miss-you party thrown by his colleagues (the few remaining ones) yesterday evening; the company he worked for out in Oregon had been bought by a larger corporation, and even though Geoff had weathered two previous rounds of downsizing, in the end all but the top tier of employees had been let go.

It was the fitting conclusion to a generally bad year. Twelve months earlier he and his girlfriend had separated, leaving him alone in a house hexed by her absence.

All year he had struggled to not feel guilty about it. He had stayed away from women, afraid to hurt one, afraid of the serious talks and big decisions that being with one might entail. To feel that strongly about anyone ever again seemed impossible. Even everything he had felt before hadn’t been strong enough.

As they swung onto the highway, Pierre-Luc declared, “We have no map.”

“Didn’t the Hertz guy give you one?” Caroline asked.

“No, but I’m sure we can find it. We’ll just point ourselves straight toward the ocean.”

They were heading up Boston’s North Shore, out to that tiny scenic tip that was Rockport, Massachusetts. There Geoff was to be the Best Man in his childhood best friend’s wedding. Tonight he was to attend the rehearsal dinner.

Already it was six, but the September sun was still bright enough to remind Geoff of his headache. He shaded his eyes with his hand. They had driven only a few miles farther when Caroline said, “I have to tinkle.”

“This,” Pierre-Luc explained without exasperation, “is our pattern. With your permission, I will pull over and allow my dear wife some relief.”

Geoff thought they would stop at a rest area, but Pierre-Luc pulled over at the first tree-lined spot, and Caroline didn’t seem to think this odd at all. She headed back into the woods with a cheery, “Be right back!”

“Twenty-five years of traveling together,” Pierre-Luc said, “you come to expect certain things.”

Geoff nodded, and his head gave a little throb-throb. After being out all night with his co-workers, he had gone straight to the airport for a morning departure. Luckily he had packed his suit and gift and shoes and tie the day before. What he had forgotten to do was eat, and the cross-country flight was one of those bargain ones without meals. Geoff had downed two bags of mini-pretzels that did little to soak up the alcohol, while nausea prevented him from drinking anything else. Queasy, hungry, his mouth dry, he hadn’t slept at all those six hours. He wondered how he would make it until the rehearsal dinner.

“Eileen told us you grew up on the same street with her and Mack. Your folks still live here?”

“Yeah, my mother’s in the area.” His father and stepmother had recently moved down to North Carolina. “I’m actually moving back here myself.”

“What a lucky mother!”

“It’s for a job, actually.” Geoff had begun sending out his résumé as soon as it became clear he might not be able to hang on to the Portland position much longer.

“Any special girl in your life?”

The question took Geoff off guard. He was used to women making such queries—older women, usually, his relatives or his parents’ friends—but not men.

“Not at the moment.” Not for a year, he might have added, but he felt too ill.

Pierre-Luc shook his head. “Every man needs a special woman in his life. I firmly believe that. You know why?”

Geoff managed a “Why?”

“Quality of life!” Pierre-Luc cried triumphantly.

Geoff tried to nod, as if understanding.

“They smell good and are kind and can do all sorts of things we can’t! Why go through things alone when you can do them with a woman?”

“Right on,” Geoff said weakly, sensing that it was his turn to talk.

“Have you ever noticed how much more comfy a woman’s bed is than a man’s? Have you ever noticed how much better food tastes when a woman makes it? And the best thing is, it only takes one! One wonderful woman!”

Geoff tried to absorb what Pierre-Luc was telling him. You think it’s about love, his mother had scolded, angry at him after his breakup last year. You think it’s about love, when really it’s about dirty socks.

That alone might have been enough to keep him out of the arena these twelve months. Who needed it? Dirty socks.

“I’ve been with Caroline since I was twenty-eight,” Pierre-Luc told him. “Three times she has tried to kill me. Not maliciously—just in a passionate rage. She’s that type. Emotional. You wouldn’t know it, but she’s full of surprises. That’s the secret.”

Geoff had heard this sort of thing before, “the secret” to a happy marriage, to a healthy relationship, to a satisfying sex life. But there couldn’t be just one secret; Geoff had been given all kinds of advice and none of it matched up. There was his mother and the dirty socks, and his grandfather saying, Just pretend you can’t hear, and that mystic who read tarot cards at a restaurant he sometimes went to who had, without Geoff’s having asked, told him one Thursday, a few weeks ago now, “Give your love away. Find the love within you and send it out.” He had spied on couples he thought of as perfect together—the ones who seemed like equals, who laughed and kissed a lot. Ones like Callie and Mack, getting married tomorrow, who when they were together, easy and relaxed, made it look perfectly simple. But how simple could it be, when they had broken up at least three times? And yet something had kept them coming back to each other. That was the part that Geoff envied: the force that told them to go back to each other, a force he had never known. He wondered what it must feel like—that sureness, real or imagined, that what they were doing was right.

“Thanks, guys.” Caroline was back, fresh-faced. “We’d better get a move on if we’re going to get there on time.”

“Notice how she says this as if I’ve pulled over for no good reason. As if our sitting and chatting has nothing to do with a certain someone’s petite and charming bladder.”

Caroline reached over and clunked Pierre-Luc lightly on the head. “Let’s go, buster.”

Pierre-Luc pulled onto the highway, and Geoff leaned back into the headrest. He knew he should be composing his toast for tomorrow night, but he kept drifting off into something that wasn’t quite sleep. It was more like hallucination: a large soda floating in front of him, taunting him. This, he realized, was what he wanted more than anything right now. One of those big vats they give you at the movies, more like a tub, something you might wash your feet in. Sweet and bubbly and full of caffeine.

“I’m hungry,” Caroline said.

Geoff sat up straighter, though he supposed this was merely a mirage, or wishful thinking.

“And we arrive,” said Pierre-Luc, “at stage two of our travel sequence.”

“Just a little something to tide me over,” Caroline said. “I can eat in the car. That okay with you, Geoff?”

“My wife has a very fast metabolism,” Pierre-Luc told him. “This means that we’ve been accorded familiarity with every fast food joint along every highway here and in Canada.”

Geoff, elated, said, “I could use a soda and maybe even a burger myself.”

Within a minute they were at a drive-through, only two cars in line in front of them. Geoff breathed the sweet, sticky smell of processed food, a wave of thick air rushing over him. He thought he might faint from longing.

“That’s funny,” Pierre-Luc said. “I can’t seem to roll down the window.”

“Did you try pushing the button?”

“I can’t find the button.” He was pushing little buttons all along his door, and then began fiddling with the dashboard. The dashboard lights came on and then went off again. “
Cibolaque.
I thought they said everything was
otomateek.
”

Geoff’s head was swimming now, from the thick scent of oil and sugar and meat seeping in through the completely sealed car. “Maybe we’re supposed to talk to it?” he suggested, desperate now. “Didn’t the car rental guy say it was voice-activated?”

“I think it was the other way around,” Caroline said, but then tried, experimentally, to issue a command. In a soft, diffident voice, she said, “Please open the windows.”

They waited, expectantly.

Caroline said, “Pretty please?”

“Open the windows!” Pierre-Luc tried, grandly, before grumbling
“cibolaque”
and going back to flicking levers and turning knobs.

Geoff felt his stomach gulp the greasy air. He screamed: “Open the goddamn windows!”

At that, the horn shouted out—and continued to yelp, over and over, a quick yet steady cry of alarm. “Now, how did I set that off?” Pierre-Luc asked, as the passengers in the car ahead of them turned to see what the trouble was.

“Refill window washer fluid.”

“Who the hell was that?” he asked.

“Refill window washer fluid.”

Caroline said, “Aw, it’s a girl after all.”

Geoff tried to laugh, but his own exertion, and the thick aroma of hamburgers and soda, and the hammering horn and the lights flashing on the dashboard, had weakened him completely. His seat belt tightened suddenly around him.

“Replace oil filter.”

Caroline said, “My goodness, she’s getting demanding.”

“A door is ajar. Replace oil filter. Refill window washer fluid. Check oil. A door is ajar.”

The horn, too, continued to complain, and now the windshield wipers joined in, waving in panic. Geoff’s head felt as though it might crack, as though it were already cracking, from the base above his neck up to the very top of his skull.

“Refill your self.”

Geoff tried to unsquint his eyes, as if that would help him hear better.

“Fulfill your heart.”

He looked to Pierre-Luc, who was examining the steering wheel, saying, “Now, I wonder what this thing does.” Caroline was again speaking politely to the window, asking it to please open.

“Find her. Love her.”

In a sweat, Geoff swung his head around, to see where the voice was coming from. The windshield wipers flapped frantically back and forth. “Don’t wait any longer. Remake your life. Don’t wait any lon—”

With an abrupt sigh, the car shut itself off completely. The horn stopped mid-honk, the lights flashed one last time, and the wipers froze in action, splayed across the glass. Geoff exhaled deeply.

“Well, now, that did something,” Pierre-Luc said with satisfaction, as the car in front of them drove off. “Do I dare turn this thing on again?”

Geoff was trying to catch his breath.

“We’re up,” Caroline said.

Pierre-Luc flipped the ignition, and the engine made an encouraging sound.

Without any coaxing, all of the windows slid down.

“How fortunate,” Caroline said, as if used to such occurrences. Pierre-Luc drove forward a few feet to the intercom.

Geoff’s heart was still pounding, and he wondered how these two people could remain so unflustered. It was as if they were used to confusion, to turmoil, as if they accepted it fully and without worry. They hadn’t yelled at each other. They hadn’t panicked. Caroline hadn’t scolded Pierre-Luc the way Geoff’s mother would have done to his father back when they were still together. And yet, from what Pierre-Luc had said—well, if Caroline really had tried to kill her husband, then surely a temperamental car was nothing to them.

But he couldn’t deny what he himself had heard. Could they tell? Did he look as insane as he felt? He was afraid to open his mouth, afraid of what he might say. But he managed to blurt out his order, and the next thing he knew, a hamburger and soda were being handed to him. He ate in gulps and took long swills from his drink, barely chewing his food. Soon he felt sated as he never had before.

He closed his eyes. He must have slept, because when he next opened them the sun was setting, and the road had narrowed to two lanes without becoming particularly scenic. Though Geoff didn’t remember dreaming, he felt he had been somewhere; a sensation of strong, if unclear, conviction ran through him. He tried to recall a story line or image but came up with nothing. Stretching his arms, he turned to see the bright ball of sun as it dropped onto the horizon.

“I have to tinkle.”

Pierre-Luc was pulling over to the shoulder now. Geoff looked out at the trees, the usual side-of-the-road type, nothing especially lush or promising about them. But they stood nobly, and Geoff was gripped by a sudden and precise certainty—that someone was out there for him, and that, when the time came, he would know exactly what to do.