The Faces of Angels (24 page)

Out in the street, I shoulder my bag, feeling like Santa Claus. As I turn the corner and dodge past a delivery van, I see Marcello ahead of me, stacking tomatoes outside the grocery store. I haven't spoken to him since the other night when he walked me home, and now, in the daylight, it's hard to believe he's the same boy. His shoulders are sloped over again, as if he's trying to curl into himself and disappear, so much so that he reminds me of Little Paolo, and I wonder if maybe he grows in the dark, blossoms like those flowers—what are they called? Queen of the Night? Or maybe he just really hates this job, which would be understandable given the new apron the signora has him wearing. It's bright red and almost ankle length. When he straightens up I'm glad to see that at least it hasn't got her phone number printed all over it like the Vespa helmet.

‘
Ciao.
' I stop in front of him, nodding at the tomato tower. ‘That looks nice. Very skilled. Maybe you could build pyramids for your next career? Be an architect.'

As I speak, Marcello trips slightly on one of the ridiculously long apron strings and bumps the display. Several tomatoes start to topple, and I drop my bag to help him catch them. The familiar pink stain crawls up his neck and blossoms on his cheeks as our hands collide. I should have known better than to try to joke with him; now I've embarrassed him and made him klutzy.

‘It was a joke,' I say. ‘Really. I wanted to be an architect, so I now want all my friends to be one too. Then I won't be lonely.'

‘It's OK. They're better if you roll them in the street,' he mutters. Another tomato falls from the pile and when he dives for it, catching it just before it hits the gutter, I see for a second the same fast, self-confident kid who wrapped his arm around a mugger's neck and tipped him over like a doll. Marcello lands back on what must be his bad leg and winces.

‘Does it hurt a lot?'

He shakes his head. ‘Only when I pinch it wrong. Like then. One of the pins isn't right,' he adds. ‘It's hard to crouch down.' He shrugs and places the fruit back on the pyramid. ‘Jesus says pain is good for you.'

‘Mmm. And battling devils and walking on water, but I don't think I'll try it. Listen,' I say, ‘I want to thank you again. For the other night. If you hadn't been there, outside that wine bar I—'

Marcello is facing the shop door, retying his apron strings as I speak, and suddenly his hands freeze and a look of something like panic flashes across his face. I glance over my shoulder and see the signora hovering, fiddling with a bucket of flowers. Her skirt looks even shorter than usual today, and in the sun her bright red hair has a distinctly purplish tinge. She's clearly been trying to hear what we're saying. A flash of complicity passes between us, as if we're kids with an adult on the prowl, and I point to a box of tangerines. Covering fast was one of my better skills in grade school.

‘And six of those,' I say, louder than necessary. ‘They look good.'

The signora retreats back inside as Marcello grabs a bag, picks them out and hands it to me. Underneath the tangerines I see he's put some tomatoes in too. I dig my change out and pay him, and when I drop the coins into his palm, I can't help myself, I wink. To my amazement, he winks back.

By the time I jostle down the street and get onto the bridge, it's all I can do not to break into a trot. Pierangelo has been bugging me to get a bicycle, and now I wish I'd taken his advice, then I could cross the Lungarno and zoom down a side alley, flying towards him faster than my feet can carry me. I haven't seen him for three whole days, and suddenly I'm desperate for him. For his voice, the colour of his eyes, the feel of his hands.

He said he didn't have to be at the paper until after lunch, and I count the seconds between the floors in the elevator. When the doors ping open at the top, I dart out, and practically start peeling my clothes off right here in the vestibule. Then I stop. There's an envelope stuck to the apartment door and I know what that means. Excitement fizzles out of me like wine going flat. He's had to go to the office. The note reads, ‘
Cara
, I'm really sorry, couldn't wait. Tried to call, but your phone off. Make yourself at home with laundry!' Underneath he's added, ‘
PS:
They've given Ginevra M. to Pallioti.
'

Pallioti, the detective who handled Ty's murder. This doesn't surprise me at all. It's natural that the same man who got Indrizzio should hunt his copycat.

Ispettore Pallioti came to my room every day while I was in the hospital, and sat by my bed, watching me. As the infection in my lung subsided and I became more aware of what was going on around me, I sensed him as a presence in the room, more solid than a shadow, but just as still. Sometimes I'd feel his eyes on my face even before I woke up.

When I was well enough to talk, it was Pallioti who asked me what happened. Pallioti who made me repeat every detail, over and over. Sometimes he'd raise his hand, stop me, and wind me back as if I were a machine and he was learning what I recited, committing every second of it to memory so it would be etched in his brain exactly the same way it was in mine, there for him to examine and re-examine after I was gone. Oddly enough, when I got back to Philadelphia, I missed him.

I think of this while I am putting the laundry in, and wonder if he still looks the same. Once, waking up and seeing him sitting there on his plastic hospital chair, I thought he looked like a lizard, alert but immobile, his grey eyes clear and unblinking. Later that morning when he opened his mouth, I half expected his tongue to dart out and flick towards me, pink and thin, grabbing one more tiny fact as if it were a fly.

That was the drugs, I think, as I stuff shirts into the drum, the beautiful drugs the doctors drip-drip-dripped down that plastic tube into my veins. They made me dream and dream, those drugs. Sometimes I rode my flying horse. Sometimes I heard Mamaw's voice. Once I even dreamed I was dying and that Rinaldo was there, giving me extreme unction, dripping oil on my forehead and rubbing the soft pad of his thumb against the soles of my feet. It makes me smile now, remembering how totally out of it I was. When Ty's mother arrived, I thought at first she was the Virgin Mary. It was the blue coat she was wearing that did it.

I set the dials on the washer and wander down the hall to Pierangelo's study. The door is ajar, the cushion on his chair still dented, and the room seems forlorn without him. In fact the whole apartment seems forlorn. Maybe, I think, I'll take myself out for lunch in a café to make up for the disappointment of not seeing him. Read the newspaper while my clothes spin.

Pulling the door closed, I turn back in to the hall and stop. There's the whoosh and slap of the machine, a car in the street, and something else; the hollow clack of heels on wood. Someone is walking across the living room. Pierangelo must have come home early. He's in the kitchen, I can hear him now, opening cabinets. He probably brought lunch. I start up the hall but, even as I do, I know something's wrong. The noises aren't his noises. They're lighter, more tentative. Doors open and click closed. Someone is looking for something.

I stop in the doorway and stare. The woman is crouched down, rummaging. The straight line of her back. The blonde hair in a ponytail. Long legs. Impossibly slender thighs. Expensive high-heeled boots. I can smell her perfume from where I'm standing, and almost feel the heavy expensive silk of the scarf that's slung so easily across her shoulder. She can't be anyone but Monika.

When she swings round to face me, both of us gasp. She recovers first, and her English is perfect, only slightly accented. ‘You must be Mary,' she says, standing up. ‘I'm so sorry if I startled you.'

The hand she stretches towards me is tanned, the skin toasted a soft golden colour, and her eyes are faintly slanted, greenish-grey. They could be her father's. This is not Pierangelo's wife I have come face to face with. It's one of his daughters. ‘I'm Graziella,' she says. ‘It's really nice to meet you.'

When she takes my hand, her grip is warm and firm. ‘Daddy's told me all about you,' she says. ‘I didn't know you were here, or I would have rung the bell.'

Graziella laughs and shrugs, catching the scarf before it slithers off her shoulder and onto the floor. ‘With Dada you never know whether he's in or out, so I just let myself in. Actually, I wanted to borrow his big paella dish. The yellow one.'

She's talking fast, and I realize suddenly that I've unnerved her as much as she startled me. ‘Tommaso and me,' Graziella nods towards the street, ‘we're on our way to Monte Lupo for a few days. We have a bunch of friends coming, and I don't have any big serving dishes.'

Monte Lupo is the family's country house down near Pienza.

‘It must be beautiful,' I say, sounding idiotic. ‘At this time of year.'

Graziella smiles. Her teeth are white and even and perfect, like everything else about her. ‘It is,' she says. ‘I'm sure you'll see it, sometime.'

She fiddles with her scarf, rolling the edge of it around her finger, and then she says suddenly: ‘Mama and Dada are fighting over it. Dada doesn't like Tommaso, and he doesn't exactly know we're—' She looks at me hopefully. Tommaso's the boyfriend Pierangelo thinks is a jerk, and she's asked her mother, not her father, if they can use the house. Graziella is so perfect-looking, so sophisticated and put together, that it would be easy to forget how young she is, not much more than a teenager.

I smile. ‘Your secret's safe with me.'

She looks visibly relieved. I've just made my first foray into currying favour with Pierangelo's children.

We beam at each other pointlessly for a couple more seconds until finally Graziella asks me if I actually know where the dish is. ‘It's just,' she adds, ‘Tommaso's waiting in the car.'

I have been so busy staring at her and wanting her to like me, generally behaving as if I have just found a unicorn in the middle of the kitchen instead of a young woman, that now I burst into frenetic motion. I do know where the dish is, or at least I think I do. But I turn out to be wrong, and when I eventually locate it I insist on washing and drying it before I hand it to her, as though it's mine and she'll think I'm grubby if I don't.

‘Thanks.' Graziella puts the dish on the counter and shakes her head. ‘Dada should get it.' She's adjusting the knot of her scarf as she speaks, and it takes me a second to realize she's talking about the farmhouse, Monte Lupo, and not the paella dish. ‘Mama is just being a bitch.' She doesn't add the ‘as usual.' but I hear it loud and clear. ‘It's only right since it belonged to Dada's mother anyways, his real mother, I mean,' she adds. ‘So Mama has no right to it. It really is his.' She stops when she sees me staring at her. ‘Oh didn't you know?' She looks slightly stricken.

‘His real mother?'

I repeat her words, and Graziella colours slightly. The blush suits her.

‘Yeah.' She shrugs. ‘Her sister, well, my aunt, brought Dada up, from when he was little. His mother—well…' She laughs, the way people do when something ought to be funny and isn't. ‘She gave him to her sister. She was a little wild, a hippy, you know, except they didn't have them then. I don't think she could cope with a baby. She's dead now. He never really knew her. He'll tell you, I'm sure,' she adds quickly. ‘He's just a little strange about it. Embarrassed.'

More like hurt, I think. ‘What about his father?' It's probably not fair to put her on the spot by asking her like this, but I can't help myself. I'm fascinated by this nugget of information.

Graziella shakes her head. ‘I don't know. I don't think he does, either. My uncle was father to him. I think Dada was pretty happy and everything, but Monte Lupo, it was his real mother's. She died there and left it to him, and now Mama wants it, which I don't think is fair. Mama just wants everything.' Graziella looks at me for a second. ‘She says he owes her,' she says. ‘She just blames him for everything. Like he's God, and he made everything happen. It's not fair on him.'

Graziella shakes her head like a frisky horse. She knows she's said too much, and now she tries to skate over it, flick it away like a fly. ‘I just want Dada to be happy,' she adds. ‘So, I'm glad you're here. He is too, you know.' She grins, and I see the ghost of a naughty child flit across her features. Then she asks, ‘Have you met Lina yet?'

Lina is the family name for Angelina, her sister.

‘No.' I shake my head and Graziella nods, as if this is no surprise.

‘She's really angry with Dada. It's funny, isn't it? How family's split? I'm his girl and Angelina's Mama's.'

I can imagine this, good twin, bad twin. It's not too hard to see the messy charming flirt in Graziella, the little girl who could wind her dada around her little finger, and probably play her parents off against each other in the process. She's obviously delightful, but I don't know how much fun she'd be as a sister. A picture of Angelina forms in my mind, beautiful, dutiful, serious, and perennially pissed off. There are a hundred questions I'd like to ask, but I'm half afraid to breathe in case this window into Pierangelo's marriage gets slammed in my face.

‘Lina'll come around,' Graziella announces with such certainty that I doubt she actually believes it. ‘Just don't let her bother you,' she adds. ‘Mama's—'

Mama's what? I think. What? But a horn honks outside in the street and cuts her off. Tommaso. The mood shatters.

Graziella grabs the dish and glances at her watch, which is big and gold. ‘Listen,' she says, ‘I really do have to go. But next time, maybe we can have coffee, OK?
Ciao
, Maria!' She leans forward and kisses my cheek, the touch of her lips nothing more than the brush of a moth's wing.