The Chapel (24 page)

T. had rolled the stone away from the entrance of my tomb and awakened something in me, but it was not a desire for life. He had looked inside and recognized my situation. He countenanced my sadness. He made no effort to deflect or discount my disappointments. He offered me a way back into the world that required nothing of me.

I had not returned the favor. His former life was chasing him down, chasing him to Florence, where he had only his dead daughter before him and his ex-wife hot on his trail. He needed nothing but the company of someone who wanted nothing from him, someone who could tolerate his being out of reach.

I could do that. And there was nowhere else I had to be. So I decided I was not going to Cambridge. I was going to Florence.

Admittedly, I had a few moments of difficulty deciding whether the resurrected me would call T. and tell him to expect me for dinner in Florence, or if I should just turn up and offer to buy him something fizzy. I was also not sure about the rules of the afterlife. For instance, was the new me allowed or not allowed to call Shelby and ask for help navigating the Italian trains? I was breathing way too rapidly, excited to the point of exhaustion at the prospect of moving forward, and so I decided the new me would definitely need some open floor space for yoga every morning. I dug out the EurWay itinerary to call the hotel in Florence and book myself a double room.

When I turned it on, my phone yipped in its maddeningly indiscriminate way, as excited by a hang-up or an ad for anti-aging cream as it would be by a message from the dead. The text that popped up was from my ex-son-in-law, Poor David—the name inadvertently bestowed upon him by Rachel. After the divorce, she prefaced every response to a question about David's work or well-being from Mitchell or me with
a sigh—Poor David. He'd been hired as a line cook by one of Boston's celebrity chefs, who then closed her new waterfront restaurant after six months, and though one of the principal investors offered Poor David the helm in the kitchen of a small bistro meant to be the first of a franchised chain, that venture went bust about a month before opening night, so Rachel fronted Poor David the down payment on a refurbished mail van, which he intended to launch as a stew-themed food truck as soon as he could get the cold storage areas to stay cold. These days, Poor David was microwaving nachos and jalapeño poppers for late-night room-service customers in an extended-stay hotel ten miles south of Boston. This rotten job had only one real benefit—he was available for chauffeuring his two boys to their many afternoon arts and athletic programs and cooking dinner for them in the van, which he and the boys had taken to calling their clubhouse.

mrs b! was at yr house sunday hoped to say hello etc but no you!! hows rome?! yr roses r MAJOR this yr but 2 days of rain since this pic so maybe this was best day of season?? can we talk soon or sometime? call when yr in mood anytime fine no pressure!!

I was sure Poor David hadn't dropped by to admire my garden. I figured he was looking to commiserate with someone about Rachel's career move. I pecked out a response:

Beautiful. So sorry to miss the blossoming—but nothing compared to how we will miss those 2 sweet boys if Rachel takes that new job in NYC.

I also had several unread emails, and at least two were from human beings, so I cracked open the complimentary bottle of mineral water on my bedside table and read Rachel's latest missive.

Dear You—

The idea of being in New York is not the same as being in Midtown on a humid day.

Grueling three-hour interview today. I did manage to make them do most of the talking (Daddy's rule). More surprising: they think they have to woo me. Evidence: Insanely expensive lunch with one partner and three associates from the firm and one woman (paralegal with hair extensions). Her only contribution came in the powder room (her term): “Two kids? What are you going to do with two kids and no husband when you're working every weekend?” (She nannies on weekends, btw.)

I checked the Florence hotel website and saw this:

Do you have a view of the Arno from that balcony? (If not, complain—it was promised.) Mostly, I'm worried that you are stuck in a closet with a tiny bed just because we changed you to a single room.

On the home front: I had a text from David with a question about parking his food truck in your driveway for a couple of weeks while you are gone. I think he might be trying to sell it (my only hope of a return on that investment). But do not feel obliged. He has a parking space (rental) and I can tell him to keep the truck where it is—not a problem, especially compared to telling him I am moving with the boys to NYC. Maybe we can talk this weekend?

Love from me to you.

And then my phone dinged with a new text from Poor David:

??? What new job? NYC trip not pharma biz?

That settled it. I was definitely going to Florence. A food truck parked in my driveway would not be a perfect welcome home, but that was nothing compared to the prospect of Rachel parked on my sofa, ledger in her lap, forcing me to account for myself.

The other email was an apologetic note from one of my only neighbors in Cambridge with whom I exchanged more than nods and waves. Anandi Roy and her podiatrist husband, Samir, had moved to Falcon Place a few months before Mitchell and I had purchased an almost identical Greek Revival across the street. The other homes on the small dead end were mostly tiny mansard-roofed cottages that attracted single women and a roundelay of childless couples who stayed as long as it took their noisy, round-the-clock contractors to knock down a couple of interior walls, replace the butcher-block counters with granite, and run an incessantly beeping back hoe through the old garden and lay down strips of golf-course-green sod. And then a sign would go
up, advertising the availability of another overpriced, updated, open-concept bungalow for sale on a quiet street in Cambridge.

Dearest Elizabeth,

This note brings you my affection and the oddest of questions. Do you know someone who operates a mobile canteen? Hours after you departed, a most unlikely truck with the word “Stewed” painted on each side appeared in your driveway. It is outfitted with a stainless kitchenette. (Samir had a look inside after dark last night.) This morning, Melanie Monterosso stopped me in the street with concerns that someone is operating a business illegally from your home. She showed me something from Facebook that did look like an ad for that Stewed truck with a menu and a promise of “Cambridge Locations—Check Back Daily.” And now Samir claims he might have noticed a cot in the truck, and he worries we have a squatter in the neighborhood. I was hoping you might forward this to the truck's owner as fair warning before Melanie takes action. Also, dear friend, I am afraid Samir will soon insist on my calling someone in City Hall.

On a so much sweeter note, Samir and I heard the Bartok on Sunday at the Gardner Museum. Thank you for the kind gift of those tickets—magical and melancholy to occupy your seat and Mitchell's.

We miss you both.
              

Yours, Anandi
                    

Melanie Monterosso was seeking revenge. She still blamed me for the raid on her unlicensed in-home hot-yoga studio a few years ago, just because I had dropped out after two classes. I should've turned her in for attempted murder—she was a tyrant on the mat—but I hadn't reported her to the authorities, even after Mitchell's umpteenth admiring comment about Melanie's entrepreneurial spirit as she went power-walking by in a leotard.

I knew it was Anandi who'd called the zoning board about Melanie's unlicensed yoga studio, and before that, Public Works about neighbors dumping yard waste into storm drains on Falcon Place, and before that, Animal Control about a roving pack of coyotes, which, when captured, turned out to be a skittish mother fox and her two whimpering kits. Each time she lodged an official complaint, Anandi identified herself as Elizabeth Berman. Her rationale for this charade was both personal and historical.

Anandi's husband, Samir, was a tireless snoop, and an affable but unrepentant chauvinist, so whenever he spotted something amiss in the neighborhood, he commissioned his wife to contact the appropriate government agency. Anandi was compliant until September 11, 2001, after which she was convinced that she and all other Hindus in America were effectively Muslims, who were de facto terrorists, so soliciting public scrutiny terrified her, and she begged me to allow her to use my name. I suggested she should also probably use my home phone, in case such calls were traced. As her true friend, I considered it my duty to confirm her paranoia. It was only when Anandi suggested I might just as well lodge the complaints myself that I balked.

I said, “Samir is not
my
husband.”

Anandi said, “But I am pretending that Mitchell is my husband.”

I said, “Who isn't?”

Anandi laughed.

I'd made a joke, but it was inadvertent. This was just a few days after Dan-Dave-Don Ellenbogen had called to offer me filmed evidence of the affair between his wife, Rosalie, and Mitchell, and when Anandi knocked on my front door that day, I had resolved to tell her about the affair.

I never did expose Mitchell. And, thus, I never exposed myself. Mitchell and I had a long history of being disappointed in ourselves and in each other, and early in the marriage that stabbing sense of
what each other might have been, what we could have become, seemed to us both a genuine and poignant intimacy, and eventually became a substitute for it. Anandi made her call that day. Samir got Melanie's yoga studio shut down, as he had got the storm drains flushed out. I didn't regret any of these results any more than I regretted the idea of affable Samir and elegant Anandi replacing Mitchell and me at the Bartók and the upcoming Schubert and Mozart concerts.

Instead of responding to the Stewed controversy, I Googled the Gardner Museum website. I clicked on a photo of the courtyard, and after several failed attempts to compose a message that I would not regret, I just texted the picture to T. under the subject heading, “Thinking of you, here and there.”

T. didn't respond immediately. I hoped he was in the chapel—he'd told me he was off to see the Virgin when we'd parted. I imagined he was disconnected from everything but Giotto, whose name I then appended to my original Google search of the museum's website. I waited while my phone downloaded the gem of gems from the Gardner's collection.