The Dismal Science (14 page)

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's infamous stage system for bereavement, the “phases” to mourning were: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and—finally—acceptance, the littlest of consolations. The system did at least offer an attractive order, a reassuringly straightforward shape to the disordered experience, so it was hard not to think about it once in a while. Still, he wondered why there was no space for bafflement. Maybe it fell under the rubric of “denial.” But, if so, why did it persist through subsequent phases? And anger, smuggled in the middle, didn't it burn its way through other emotions? Couldn't even lofty acceptance, couldn't it be embraced balefully? Maybe his was just an unusual case. In thinking about Cristina's death Vincenzo had noticed that there were actually an array of discrete losses. Maybe it was only because the loss was so sudden. Because a bomb lands on a village and yes, the blast itself is tragic, the people it kills, but the subordinate tragedies also ricochet away from the initial blast: a brilliant child goes deaf and loses his way in life, resulting in a troubling burden for his sister; or the wife of a man rendered chronically impotent by his injury enters into an affair, which results in a daughter, whom the impotent
husband rears with as much love as he can muster, but it's always a qualified . . . et cetera, et cetera. And in this way the aftershocks ripple through history itself.

In the case of Cristina's death, there were at least a dozen serious subsidiary losses for Vincenzo. Enormous plans that needed to be unwound, countless relationships that unraveled. The worst of all had to be the damage to his relationship with Leonora, who had been closer to her mother to begin with. Still, the family had been triangular, the sturdiest shape known, and when one of the points was wiped out, the remaining two formed a line, which stretched in search of some new formal identity.

So, because there were actually many different waves of mourning, the stages might be muddled. If so, might they achieve synchronicity at some point? And, if not, would he always be at the mercy of those separate waves raking across his soul, each tide perpetually chasing the last?

He had quit his job in the midst of what, from a clinical angle, must have been some grand wash of resignation. But it was much too late in the process for resignation. Years had passed. Surely he had to have arrived at acceptance by now. Up close, he might have looked to be tinged with a bit of lingering guilt, but he saw it all as a yellowy bath of acceptance. Because this was the end of the line. It just had to be.

At dawn, Vincenzo put on running clothes and went down to the hotel gym, which was almost completely empty. He lifted
some weights, spent some time on the stationary bicycle, reading subtitles on
CNN
and glancing often at the young bodies dancing two screens over on
MTV
. Vincenzo had been captain of the World Bank's soccer team for a few years about a decade ago, but had given up for no worthwhile reason, and was pretty badly out of shape now. The fifteen pounds he'd put on felt normal. Every year his physician said, “You should lose about ten pounds, but otherwise you're still surprisingly well preserved.” The joke that never got old.

Now that he was a retiree, Vincenzo decided he'd lose that weight—why not? He had the time. In fact, he'd do better, he'd lose twenty pounds. By the time the cherry blossoms were out, he'd be back to 165. The gym was fun. It felt good to get the blood pumping again, it felt good to sweat and push his body until his mind was finally forced to shut the hell up. Afterward, he showered and ate a healthy breakfast (black coffee, fruit, muesli), and went for a little walk around Midtown. He felt euphoric, giddy, and overly energetic when he returned, as if he could feel the stretching out of unidentified possibilities. While walking, he'd put his mind to his professional options. The following morning he was meeting Colin at Lehman Brothers' Midtown office. There must have been something appealing about that world other than the money, because he knew at least a dozen brilliant economists who'd left top jobs at the Bank and Fund for permanent careers at investment banks. Then again, if he worked at a think tank, he could focus on ideas and policies, and he could speak to an audience, could shape the discussion in his own way for the first time in his life.

The idea of consulting at one of the aid institutions—the Caribbean Development Bank, or the Inter-American Development Bank, or the
UNDP
—came and went while he waited for a light to change. Nothing about returning to that community appealed to him.

Back at the hotel, he winked thanks at the cute female concierge when she told him the names of some good restaurants, and she—to his surprise—smiled bashfully, as if flattered.

Upstairs, he checked his e-mail and saw a message from Lenka. He opened it with a little dread: he didn't really want to go there, after all, he thought. It was too much.

If he was available, she wrote, Evo's political party would host a party on December 30 at the National Museum. That would put it less than two weeks before Evo's inauguration. It was the very end of Vincenzo's grace period. If he aspired to be anything more than furniture, he would, by then, have had to declare allegiance to someone or other.

Leonora arrived at noon and they walked to Central Park. There was a cold front bearing down and the air was so icy the bones in his hands hurt, so he kept them in his pockets. Already the city was festooned with Christmas regalia: crimson bows on lampposts, vast plastic wreaths in windows, strings of impatient lights flickering in apartment windows, each casting its own golden-spoke halo. Salvation Army bells tinkled faintly, and the odor of roasting chestnuts snaked through the windswept streets. Holidays were awful, post-Cristina, some grim interminable party he'd agreed to attend before realizing he'd rather do anything else. Leonora treated the season similarly, with dutiful resolve.

She asked what he planned to do next.

He might, he said, get a consulting job at a financial institution in New York.

“Really?” She winced.

He resisted the urge to ask if she was more displeased about the prospect of him working for an investment bank or of him living in New York.

For lunch, they went to the eighth-floor café at Saks Fifth Avenue and ate at the counter. Both had fourteen-dollar Caesar salads. They shared a half bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and an appetizer of taramosalata. Then he bought himself an absurdly long, many-hued Paul Smith scarf and, for his daughter, a snowy hand-crocheted angora sweater. While the items were being gift wrapped, he told Leonora that he'd put them under a little plastic tree in his hotel room and they could open them on Christmas Day.

Her face registered stifled shock. “You're not going to stay until Christmas, are you?”

“Of course.” He laughed. “I'm not sure that I ever want to go back to DC.”

“But I—I don't know if I'm going to be here.” She looked at the ground, her face going red. Then she dropped her voice and said, “Can we go back to the café and talk?”

He leaned down and signed the receipt, picked up the bag, and followed her back to the café. They sat, once again, at the bar. He was aware of a dread in his stomach when she reached out and gripped his hand, earnestly, looked him in the eye, and
told him that she was going to spend Christmas with Sam's family. She said that they would spend the next Christmas with him in DC. “We want to trade off. One year with them, one year with you. You know? It's only fair. I did Thanksgiving with you this year. So we'll do it with them next year. It's like—doesn't that make sense?”

Vincenzo blinked. The news was so unexpected that he had no idea how to respond. They'd never been apart for Christmas. He struggled to think about something else, anything at all, anything neutral, he thought about salt and pepper (what's the profit margin on those?), then laminate, paper, and angora, the concept of fashion itself, but none of it was any good, he was nodding at her, chewing on his lower lip, and warm tears were already falling out of his eyes.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” she was saying. “I didn't realize you were going to quit your job.” She was saying things like that.

The bartender approached but then stopped, no doubt seeing Vincenzo's face, and turned away.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Vincenzo said. “It just caught me off guard.” He said that he needed to find a bathroom. He stood up. He said that he'd be back in a second, and could she guard the bags?

She just stared at him, tears in her eyes now, too. He turned and walked toward the restrooms.

The summer Leonora lost her leg on Lake Garda, before they left for Italy, her friend Greta jumped off the Adams Morgan bridge. She left a note addressed to Leonora:
Tell my parents that I get it that they meant well, and I hope this doesn't hurt them too badly
.

Her parents shared the note with Vincenzo and Cristina, who decided to let Leonora read it, too. After she'd read the note, Vincenzo grabbed Leonora, who was already weeping, by the shoulders and fixed her with his gaze, told her that if she killed herself, she would also be murdering him. “I will die. Do you understand?”

She'd stared at him in mute horror, her lip trembling, and he wanted to slap her in the face, make her understand him, but Cristina had grabbed him by the shoulder.

“What do you think you are doing?” Cristina hissed, in Italian.

He shook his head, looked back at his daughter, who was too freshly traumatized even to speak. He looked back at Cristina. “I know you don't agree, but I happen to know that there is no God, no heaven. She must know this.”

With that, Leonora ran out of the room.

Then, a month later, an Italian doctor drove a mechanical saw through Leonora's leg.

Life was so geometrical at times, the pieces fit so neatly that it was hard not to imagine that there were gods orchestrating the show. That is what Vincenzo thought when he sat in a marbled stall in the bathroom at Saks Fifth Avenue and wept as quietly as possible, biting the heel of his thumb. Eventually, the torrent loosened. He blew his nose twice. Flushed. He washed his face with cold water. He dried off and, looking at himself in the mirror, his giant eyes and his long narrow nose both reddened, was amazed by the intensity of his reaction. It wasn't like him to emote so nakedly: that had always been Cristina's turf. He was the stoic one, the one who tried to dampen arguments and apply cold reason to her outbursts. Maybe he'd
acquired some of her heat when she left. Maybe that was how it worked.

In any event, this Christmas issue would be fine. He could do any number of things. He could, for example, spend the holiday in Piedmont working on the house. The space would do him good.
Jesus
, he could even stay in New York alone. Maybe Colin would have a little project for him to do for Lehman—if not, he could just stay at a hotel and start exercising and catching up on his reading. Or, of course, he could consent to his own Bolivia proposal and head off there with Walter. Yes, maybe it would do him good to get some space to think about things.