Louisa Meets Bear (16 page)

This time Bussmann didn't take notes. Over the couch, there was a painting that looked like the Grand Canyon framed in a mysterious light.

“What are you thinking?” Bussmann asked.

“About light. Guy used to say that Canaletto showed his debt to his Venetian predecessors by his use of light as a character in his paintings.”

“What do you think Guy would decide if he had all of his faculties and were able to make the decision himself?”

Although Richard had asked himself this question before, consumed with the struggle with Lena about her refusal to tell him her thoughts, he'd been unable to concentrate sufficiently to really imagine what Guy would think about the possibility of living like a child.

“Guy is deeply logical. Or was. Now he's dazed and seems to only half recognize any of us.”

Richard looked off; in his mind's eye, he saw Guy the way he'd been that day in his study with Richard's awful first draft of the article spread out between them. “Guy would say it's unnatural to return to childhood, that he wouldn't want his daughter, daughters, to know him that way.” A man who spent his life honing his sensibilities like a perfectly ground magnifying glass, he thought, wouldn't want to live with them dulled or dissipated.

At the end of the hour, Richard reached in his pocket for his calendar. Bussmann didn't move, and for a moment Richard had the eerie sensation that Lena's stillness, now manifest in Brianna too, was an imitation of Bussmann.

Bussmann raised his eyebrows.

“The next appointment?” Richard asked.

“I don't think that's necessary.” At the door, Bussmann touched Richard's shoulder lightly, with two fingers. Outside, Richard walked into the park and sat on a bench watching a boy feed pieces of bread to some pigeons. It was November, and a faint heat emanated from the sun. When he closed his eyes, a reddish light darted across the back of his lids. What matters, Guy would say, is the vision, not the year count.

With the wan light on his face, Richard had felt a moment of calm. In his book, Guy had discussed the influence of Giorgione on Canaletto. Giorgione had died at thirty-three, but he had, Guy wrote, left his mark, his way of seeing passed from generation to generation of Venetian painters.

*   *   *

Cubby calls at a quarter to seven. Richard is lying next to Lena, who is still studying the Uffizi catalogue plate by plate. Brianna, asleep, pushes her book to the floor and turns on her side. Cubby suggests a restaurant near the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. Richard opens his map and searches for the piazza. It's in the Castello, on the other side of the canal, a fifteen-minute walk from their hotel. Lena looks over, following as he traces the route with his forefinger. She lays the catalogue on her stomach and massages her left temple in tiny circles.
Here it comes
, Richard thinks.

“I'm going to beg off. I have a miserable headache.”

Richard glances sideways at Lena. Like a batter readying for the swing, he calculates the dimensions of Lena's pitch: her dislike of Cubby, her annoyance at Cubby's unreliability, that they are in Venice, the disruption of their travel plans, her headache. He feels tempted to lob an indignant tirade—how many times has he been a good sport with one or another of Lena's friends?

Richard can hear Brianna stirring, the little purrs that mark her transition out of sleep. He runs his hand down Lena's cool arm. Please, he says silently, please come.
No
, he imagines Lena's reply;
I'm too angry
.

“Are you sure? Maybe the walk, the fresh air, would help.”

Lena widens the circles she is making over her left temple.
Let go
, Richard says to himself;
it's a done deal
.

“I don't think I'd be much fun. You go with Brianna.”

Brianna dresses in the regular black mini (doesn't even take the mini-mini out of her suitcase) and a long-sleeved red cotton blouse. From the way she vigorously brushes her hair, pulling it back from her face with a wide headband in a style that Lena always compliments, skipping all makeup except for some shiny stuff on her lips, Richard can tell that she is trying not to raise Lena's ire.

“Won't you be hungry, Mom?”

“There's the fruit and biscotti we bought at the market.”

“I'll bring you back a gelato.
Cioccolato!
”

“
Fragola
,” Lena says, brightening as Brianna draws her into their old flavor game.

“
Vaniglia!
” Brianna says, clearly pleased that she remembers all the names.

“
Misto
,” Richard adds.

“What's that?” Brianna squeals. Lena smiles.

On their first trip to Italy together (before Brianna, before Lena's five miscarriages, before, Richard realizes, they were even married, since Lena had bought a print for Guy and Isobel), Lena had teased Richard by ordering him a
misto
and then watching for his grin of delight when the chilled glass arrived with two perfectly formed mounds—one chocolate, one vanilla—and a long-handled silver spoon.

Richard winks in return.

*   *   *

Crossing the Rialto Bridge, Brianna pauses to look down at the reflection of the lights on the water. Standing next to her, Richard can smell the floral scent of her shampoo, the musky residue of sleep that lingers on her skin.

While he and Lena and certainly he and Brianna never discuss it, Richard has been profoundly aware this past year that Brianna was adopted. Even more than her appearance (“Those shoulders,” Richard's mother whispered to him the last time she saw Brianna. “She looks like a young Judy Garland!”), he is struck by the mystery of Brianna's talents: her natural athleticism, her musical memory, her deep intelligence so that even at eight she'd been able to beat him at chess, a game he'd prided himself on until he'd seen the way his daughter could effortlessly visualize six steps ahead. Watching Brianna grow, Richard has often thought, has been like moving in winter to a house where no one knows how the prior owner planted the garden and then waiting while green sprouts poke through the soil and stalks grow and leaves form to discover the blooms.

Shortly after Brianna's fifteenth birthday last month, they showed her the one letter they'd ever received from, Lena's phrase,
the woman whose tummy you came out of
. In the letter, written when Brianna was just a few months old, the woman—girl, really, just nineteen—had asked that, when Brianna was old enough to understand, they tell her that she would always love Brianna and always welcome seeing her, but that it would be Brianna's decision. Brianna had read the letter slowly. At one point, it had looked to Richard as though she were mouthing the word
welcome
. She'd turned the letter over to look at the handwriting from all directions, smelled the paper. Then she handed it back to Lena, who'd begun to cry. Richard moved onto the couch, next to Lena and across from Brianna, who sat perfectly still on the edge of a swivel chair. With an arm around his now-weeping wife and a hand reached out to touch his daughter's knee, he said, “Every year, at Christmas, we've written her, telling her how you are. Now, pet, it's up to you if and when you want to be in touch with her.” Brianna nodded and then asked if she could be excused. Her friends were waiting for her to play Frisbee in the park.

Brianna leans her head on his shoulder. “Mom doesn't like Cubby, does she?”

Richard moves into alert as he contemplates how to navigate between this Scylla and Charybdis—how not to betray Lena or Cubby by saying too much, how not to betray Brianna by not telling the truth. As a little girl, Brianna had adored Cubby, who had showered her with presents. For her third birthday, he'd bought her a five-foot-high stuffed panda from FAO Schwarz whom Brianna promptly named Cubby. Annoyed by the extravagance, by the way Cubby's gift dwarfed all others, Lena announced they could have paid for a month of Brianna's preschool for the cost of the gift. “Probably the best way to sum it up,” Richard says, “would be that your mother finds Cubby immature.”

“Is he very upset about getting divorced?”

Richard tries to make out Brianna's expression, but her face is shaded by his own body. He doesn't really know how to answer. Cubby and Penny were married for ten years but never had children. Penny managed everything in Cubby's life, from the meetings with accountants and lawyers to buying his clothing through the Nieman Marcus catalogue. Lena had quipped that Penny probably marked on Cubby's calendar which nights he could drink himself blotto and end up in bed with a model or cocktail waitress he then never saw again—“out of respect for Penny,” Cubby once explained to Richard. Still, Richard had been surprised when Cubby called to say that he and Penny were getting a divorce. A week later, Cubby flew in from Dallas, where he and Penny had been living in a Gothic monstrosity situated on a two-hundred-acre farm that they had converted into an unprofitable cattle ranch. After two Jack Daniel's, Cubby said things that left Richard thinking that the problem had something to do with sex. After two more, Cubby spilled the news: Penny had gone to Mexico with a cowhand who used to work on the ranch.

“I think he's pretty upset. He was pretty dependent on Penny.”

“Do you think he'll cry?”

Richard wonders what Brianna is really asking. Is she worried that he and Lena will divorce? “I don't think so. But he'll probably look sad.”

Brianna is quiet for the rest of their walk. Twice, Richard stops next to a lit store window to look at his map. Slowly they move away from the Grand Canal, through narrow walkways that lead to tiny waterways, over delicate footbridges, into the interior of the city that Richard has always found so mysterious. When they reach Campo Santa Maria Formosa, Richard pauses to take in the imposing campanile and the Greek temple design of the church. They turn right at the north side of the square into a cobblestone passage. Ahead, Richard can see a string of pink lights adorning a striped awning. The sounds of forks clanking on plates and people talking and laughing float out the door.

Richard takes Brianna's elbow and leads her into the trattoria. A woman with thin gray hair that barely covers her scalp and a checked apron tied around her thick waist squints in their direction; for a moment Richard has the thought that she disapproves of something about them. She motions for them to follow her into the softly lit dining room. Unnerved by the inspection, Richard inhales deeply and concentrates on the pleasing smell of warm cream and garlic as he looks around the room for Cubby.

When Richard spots Cubby, seated at a table by the window, his stomach lurches. Sharp pains dart toward his sides. Leaning in to Cubby, with her head almost touching his chest, is a young woman. A very young woman with extremely large breasts visible in the V-neck of a peach sweater.

Cubby waves. Richard rests his fingers on Brianna's upper arm and guides her to the table. The woman sits up. She waves too. She has the meticulously put-together makeup and hair that Richard associates with the girls in his high school, girls who went on to become secretaries in accountants' and dentists' offices, with the department store clerks who have assisted him over the years in buying the purposefully unmade-up unmatched Lena countless scarves, pocketbooks, nightgowns, and earrings. It's a look that has always struck Richard as having an oddly asexual effect, as though each of the parts—the hair, the clothes, the lips—are sexy in and of themselves but the glue that holds them together—the hair spray, the coordinated accessories, the cosmetics—has destroyed the intrigue, the result too obvious and stripped of allure.

Cubby gets halfway up and then sinks back into his chair. “Hey, man.” He wraps an arm around the young woman. “This is Baby.”

“Cubby! It's Babs. Just Cubby calls me Baby.”

Cubby laughs at the sound of Babs's voice. “She's from
Ar-can-saw.
”

When Cubby doesn't reach over to kiss Brianna, Richard realizes that he doesn't recognize her.
Jesus
, Richard thinks,
who the hell does he think I'm with?
Turning to Babs, he says, “This is my daughter, Brianna.”

Cubby raises the back of his hand to his forehead, feigning a swoon. “This beautiful lady is little Brianna?”

Richard feels Brianna stiffen. He pulls out a chair for her.

“Real nice to meet you,” Babs says.

“Lena sends her apologies. She's feeling under the weather.”

“The Lena, the Lena, the Lena.”

Babs laughs and Brianna lowers her gaze. Richard feels light-headed, overtaken by the heat in the restaurant, the boozy smell of Cubby's breath, and the omnipresence of Babs's cleavage dipping in and out from the center of the table as she takes bread and then sways into Cubby. “I'm famished,” Richard says. “Let's order.”

He picks up a menu. Brianna looks over his shoulder. “What should I have, Dad?” she whispers.

“What do you feel like, pet?”

Richard translates from the menu, using his phrase book for assistance.

“How about you, gorgeous?” Cubby asks Babs.

“You got me. All I know about Eye-talian food is spaghetti and meatballs.”

Brianna kicks Richard under the table. He gives two kicks in return. When Brianna was little, Guy had told her that there is no spaghetti and meatballs in Italy. For weeks, Brianna had solemnly announced this information to everyone she met.

Cubby shifts in his seat. For a moment he seems sobered—sad and double-chinned.

“Why don't I order for all of us?” Richard says.

“That's my man. And order us a bottle of champagne. Baby here and me need to celebrate our two-day anniversary.”

The waiter arrives and Richard orders tagliatelle with prosciutto and baby peas for their first course, the house veal with polenta for their second, and a bottle of champagne. Afterward, Cubby wraps an arm around Babs and pulls her toward him. “Baby here and I met on the shuttle from Dallas to Houston.”