The Stories Of Mary Gordon Part 3

In the morning he says: "You should have let me take that truck." She says: "Do you want to go back to that house?" "I want the truck." "Danny's a nice boy, isn't he?" He says: "Are you going to leave me alone today?" "I don't know," she says. "I'll see."

When they arrive, the teacher says: "I think Billy's ready for a regular day today. I think the time's come definitely."

She doesn't look at JoAnn when she says this. She takes Billy's jacket off and hangs it on his hook below his name. She does not let go of his hand. "Billy, I heard you played with Danny yesterday. That's so terrific He brought in the truck today, for you to play with while you're here."

The teacher leads him into the cla.s.s, closing the door behind her so JoAnn can't see them. So that he cannot look back.

She stands in the hall. Her hands are freezing. She pulls the fake fleece collar of her plaid coat around her ears. Her heart is solid and will not pump blood. She walks into the parking lot. She gets into her car and starts it. She does not know where she will get her air, how she will breathe. The engine stalls. She pumps the gas pedal and starts the car again.

And then she hears him. He is calling. He is running toward the car. She sees that he has put his coat on by himself. She sees him standing at the car door, opening it, getting in beside her.

She can breathe, the air is warm and helpful for her breathing. They are driving, singing. They are happy.

She says to him: "Let's pack up all our things. Let's find another place, a better place to live in."

Happy, singing.

He will leave me soon enough.

Death in Naples.

It was wonderful of Jonathan to have invited her. How many sons, her friends kept asking, would include their mother on a vacation with their wives? You could see it, her friends had said, if there were children: invite granny- a built-in babysitter. But there was nothing in it for Jonathan and Melanie but pure goodness of heart. How fortunate she was, her friends all told her, to have a daughter-in-law she was fond of.

And she was fond of Melanie, really she was, although she wasn't a person Lorna felt she could relax with. Certainly she was admirable, the way she dealt with everything: her job as a stockbroker, keeping their apartment beautiful, regularly making delicious meals. And she always looked splendid; she kept her hair long, done up in some complicated way that Lorna knew must take time in the morning. Braids or curls or a series of barrettes or clips. And beautifully cut suits and beautifully made high-heeled pumps. Lorna remembered when she had worn heels that high, and remembered how she'd loved them. But she remembered, too, how uncomfortable they had been and what a blessed relief, a consolation even, it had been to kick them off at the door. To give them up for something softer, slippers or loafers or tennis shoes. But Melanie didn't kick her heels off at the door. She kept them on even to cook her careful dinners. It occurred to Lorna that she'd never seen her daughter-in-law in slippers. She a.s.sumed that she must have a pair, but Lorna couldn't imagine what they might look like.

Lorna could be of use to them on their holiday in that she had some Italian and they had none. Don't overestimate my ability, she warned them: I'm not very good and I'm easily fl.u.s.tered. And when I'm fl.u.s.tered I lose the little proficiency I've had. Possibly, had she started younger, or lived in Italy for extended periods, her Italian would have been quite good.

That was what Richard kept telling her. They traveled to Italy every year the six years before his death. His death that was brief, composed, a line that completed itself effortlessly. He'd slipped into his death as a letter slips into an envelope, and is sent off, or as a diver, seen from a distance, enters the dark water, and swims into a cove from which he can't be seen again. Like the letter or the swimmer Richard had, she was sure, reached some proper destination. Only she could not name it or locate it. But she was sure there was such a place.

When they were in Italy, he was terribly proud when she could talk to waiters, and said it was nothing, nothing, when failures of comprehension occurred on either side. When a fruit vendor would say "come," scrunching his face up when she had said perfectly clearly, she had thought, uove or pere, when she would have to say "mi displace, no ho capito" after someone had told her the directions to a museum, or when an Italian, losing patience, would lapse into English, Richard would say, "Relax, you're doing great." She knew she wasn't doing great, and even though Richard was right to tell her that no one in their conversation group could do half so well, she wasn't comforted. She knew that when real situations arose, she often failed.

The Italian conversation cla.s.s was one of the things she and Richard did together after Richard's retirement. They'd hired an Italian student from the university to teach a group of them, four retired couples, or rather four retired men and their wives, because none of the women had ever worked. They'd planned to study all year and then travel, four couples, to Italy in the spring. The study had continued; the travel happened only once. For in reality the other couples hadn't really enjoyed themselves in Italy, had behaved dutifully rather than joyously, and were unable to conceal their real joy at returning home to Cincinnati. To their own bathrooms, their own beds.

But Richard and Lorna had gone back every spring for six springs. They had not been able to wean themselves from Tuscany, landing in Florence, spending a week there in the same hotel, where, after the fourth year, and because they were never there in high season, they were given a room with a view of Piazza San Marco. She was grateful that Richard didn't mind driving in Italy; she could never have; the speeds on the autostrade terrified her. So they visited Siena, Civietalla, Pisa, Lucca. Gentle weeks during which they could digest the beauty they had seen in Florence, avoiding what she had read in a guidebook was called Stendhal syndrome. The novelist had suffered a nervous breakdown, overwhelmed by the pressure of having to a.s.similate so much greatness, so much human achievement in so short a time.

During the long wet winters in Cincinnati, she would regularly place a postcard of something they'd loved next to Richard's breakfast plate: Donatello's saucy David in his feathered hat, Michelangelo's Evening languidly waiting for something to be played out.

And then Richard had died, and she hadn't been back to Italy since. Six years, could it have been? She was seventy-four now, unarguably an old lady. Some women she knew, but no one she knew well, traveled alone at her age. A friend of a friend had made, at seventy-five, a trip to Thailand on her own. She envied such women, wished she could be like them, but she was not. She kept her life full; she wouldn't sell the house or get help with the garden, she was a docent at the museum; she kept up with her Italian and her women friends- widows and divorcees. The couples had, somehow, stopped including her. But she met with her friends, regularly, to cook elaborate meals. They swam together at the health club. Three times a year, she traveled to Chicago to see Jonathan and Melanie, staying only a few days at a time, going to the Art Inst.i.tute, to the symphony, to see some experimental theater, priding herself on keeping out of their way and not staying too long. She believed them when they said they were sorry to see her go; she believed their friends when they told Jonathan how lucky he was to have a mother who was so "low maintenance." Low maintenance. It amused her how many phrases had become common that hadn't existed when she was young- or even ten years later.

That was the world, that was language: it was a product of change. Change was a good thing; when you stopped believing that, you'd got old, you might as well chuck the whole business.

After a deprivation of six years, the prospect of seeing Italy with Jonathan and Melanie was particularly delightful. They were young and vigorous and full of curiosity. How strange that neither of them had been to Italy. Melanie had never been abroad. But Melanie's life, before she'd met Jonathan, had been difficult. Her parents had been killed in a car crash just after she started college; they'd seemed to leave her nothing. Lorna respected Melanie's reticence about her late parents; she saw her unwillingness to talk about them as an attractive fastidiousness- she was always uneasy at the modern tendency to reveal too much. She'd been surprised when, just before the wedding, Jonathan had said to her and Richard: "Melanie wants me to talk to you about what she's going to call you. She just doesn't feel comfortable calling you Mom and Dad; she says that's what she calls her own parents in her mind. Is it OK if she just calls you Richard and Lorna?" Lorna had never expected that Melanie would do anything else; she wondered what that suggested about Melanie's background, but as she thought there was no way of knowing, and as she was moved by Melanie's protectiveness of her parents' memory, she warmly agreed that Melanie should go on just as she had, calling them by their first names.

So it wasn't surprising that Melanie had never been to Europe; she had no indulgent parents to treat her; she'd had to augment her scholars.h.i.+p with a series of menial jobs. She'd gone to work at a bank a week after graduation. And Lorna and Richard had often remarked to each other that going to Europe, the whole idea of Europe, didn't mean to Jonathan's generation what it had to theirs. She and Richard had gone to Paris on their honeymoon, saving up a year for it, feeling that on the rumpled sheets of their Left Bank hotel, scene of so much illicit, such artistic love-making, they could legitimate their s.e.xual union without its losing its allure. Jonathan and Melanie had gone to St. Bart's for their honeymoon. They both worked so very hard. Eighty-hour weeks sometimes. Who could blame them for wanting to lie on a beach, rest up in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Jonathan hadn't been to Europe since college; she and Richard had taken him to the South of France for a pregraduation gift. It hadn't been a success; Jonathan didn't seem to enjoy it as they did; Lorna thought he missed his friends. But now he'd be with Melanie; they were so perfectly matched; she knew that when Jonathan was with his wife, he felt no need for other company. She only hoped she wouldn't be in the way.

"We want to take you back to the old haunts, your old haunts with Dad, they're new for me and Mel. But we thought it would be fun for us to see something new to all of us. I've booked us into Naples, and from there, we'll tool around the Amalfi coast."

"Marvelous," said Lorna. "And maybe we can take a side trip to Pompeii."

"Archaeology's not Mel's thing," said Jonathan.

Lorna told herself it didn't matter that she'd miss Pompeii; they'd have more than enough to see.

For three months, she read and reread guidebooks, trying to select a few things that would spark for Jonathan and Melanie the love that she and Richard had felt. Not too much, not too much, she kept saying to herself, cutting back her plans as she would prune a vine or a bush that could choke out fragile life with its overeffulgence. One beautiful thing a day, we'll see what we see, they're young, they'll come back. She would leave them to themselves in the afternoon; she remembered the sweet sleepy afternoons of lovemaking with Richard in Italian hotels, in beds that weren't really double beds at all but twin beds pushed together, a sheet stretched tight over the top. And of course, they worked so hard, they'd need their afternoon siesta. One beautiful thing a day, she said, pleased at her own modesty- they'll have love, and rest, and delicious food as well.

She'd never traveled business cla.s.s before; the luxury quietly delighted her. She knew Jonathan was uncomfortable about being thanked for upgrading her fare; he seemed impatient that she should think it was anything to mention. "Mom, for heaven's sake, everyone flies business cla.s.s. It's no big deal. Mel and I have so many miles we don't know what to do with them. She's the queen of the upgrade, my wife, aren't you, babe."

"Jesus, yes," said Melanie. She reached into the tapestry bag at her feet and shyly handed Lorna a box wrapped in violet paper with a teal ribbon. "This is your survival kit for the airplane," she said. Lorna opened the box; there was an inflatable neck pillow, a set of earplugs, a lavender sachet that went over your eyes like a mask-sized pillow- it was supposed to induce a gentle sleep. There were Victorian tins of pastilles: one black currant, one lemon, with pictures of little girls holding parasols. Tears came to Lorna's eyes at Melanie's thoughtfulness- all the more touching because she seemed so uncomfortable at being thanked. She put her lavender sachet- hers was a paisley print of dark blue and magenta- over her beautiful gray eyes. She'd taken a sleeping pill.

"She's also the queen of the sleepers. Just watch, five minutes, she'll be dead to the world."

Dead to the world, Lorna thought, what a terrible expression. If you were dead to the world, what, then, were you alive to? She opened her map of Florence. She'd left map reading to Richard and she was afraid she'd forgotten everything, and Jonathan and Melanie were depending on her to lead them around.

She watched the young people sleeping. Beautiful, she thought, their health, their wholeness. They shared a kind of sleep that she and Richard had never shared, because she had never worked as hard as Richard. Melanie and Jonathan were together in feeling they had earned their rest, that it was equally hard-won, equally precious, because rare, to both of them. She thought of Jonathan's sleeping body when he'd been a little boy, how nothing had given her the pure peace and joy of holding her child's sleeping body. He was hers then. And now he was- what? The world's? Melanie's?

Melanie woke cranky; everything made her impatient. Their room in the hotel wasn't ready. Gingerly, Lorna suggested a coffee at a cafe in Piazza San Marco.

"What options do I have?" she asked.

"Chill out, babe," said Jonathan.

"Jonathan, I'm wondering what could possibly make you think that was a helpful comment," she said, snapping shut the lid on her blusher.

Jonathan and Melanie drank their coffee silently. Melanie kept looking at her watch. The girl at the hotel desk had said the room would be ready in half an hour. Melanie crossed and uncrossed her legs. Lorna noticed that her brown boots were very beautiful. She supposed Melanie would want to shop for shoes.

She took a sip of cappuccino. Her eyes closed with pleasure. "Isn't it wonderful, isn't it wonderful," she wanted to say, "isn't the coffee delicious, aren't the waitresses' uniforms charming, isn't the chandelier elegant." But Melanie was elaborately, ostentatiously making fanning gestures in front of her face.

"Haven't they ever heard of a nonsmoking section," she said.

"I'll bet there's no Italian word for secondhand smoke," said Jonathan.

"Unbelievable," said Melanie, and they moved closer together, united, a couple once again.

The bellman showed them to their rooms. Melanie didn't even open the shutters. "Don't wake me for lunch," she said.

"I think it might be better if you just took a short nap, and tried to get on Italian time," Lorna said.

"Look," said Melanie, in a way that Lorna knew was more polite than her impulse. "I'm just not up to it."

"I'm with you, Mom. I'll just snooze for an hour, then we'll meet for lunch and do some sightseeing."

"Whatever suits you, dear," Lorna said.

"One o'clock then, it's a date," Jonathan said, c.o.c.king his hand like a gun.

It was February, off-season. They had said it to each other time and time again, congratulating themselves for their cleverness- warning themselves in advance about disappointing weather and doors seasonally closed. But Lorna's heart was entirely light when she said the words to herself- off-season- approaching Cappella San Marco, home of the Fra Angelico frescoes. She dreamed that she and Jonathan would have the place to themselves. The silvery disc of sun that fell onto the flat leaves of the plane trees did not have to pa.s.s through throngs of tourists or buses; the square wasn't empty, but the traffic seemed normal, native, workaday. There were no lines at the ticket window and no one was ahead of her on the dark staircase that culminated in the famous fresco of the Annunciation.

She hadn't said anything to Jonathan about it; she wanted him to be taken entirely by surprise as she had been- could it have been half a century ago?- when she'd seen it for the first time. Nothing had prepared her for it; no one she'd known had spoken to her of it, perhaps because no one she knew well had ever seen it. The sweetness of the virgin's face, the serious blue of her skirt, the vibrant expectant lunge of an angel, as if he'd only just landed, as if he hadn't given over yet, completely, the idea of flight. And those miraculous wings: solid, sculptural, wings the colors of fruits or jewels, peach, emerald, rust red, the shade of blood but with no hint of blood's liquidity. Tears came to her eyes, as they always did when she saw the fresco. She was not a religious woman, nor a tearful one, but always when she saw it, she wanted to thank someone, she did not know whom. When she and Richard were together they would squeeze each other's hands.

But Jonathan was yawning when she looked back at him with what she hoped was not too expectant a smile.

"Great colors, Mom," he said. "You don't see something like this every day."

Now she must try not to make her smile disappointed. What had she wanted him to say? She wondered if it would have been better if he'd said nothing. And the guards chattered so that it was noisy: the place might as well have been full of tourists. She remembered the Italian word for chatter, which had pleased her for its onomatopoeia. Chiacchiera. But now the word didn't seem pleasing; it suggested restless, pointless busyness- not the atmosphere she wanted for Fra Angelico. Jonathan was walking down the corridors, stopping only seconds at each cell, each of which had its own fresco. At the opposite end of the corridor from her, she could see him stretching, doing exercises to loosen the tension in his neck.

Melanie complained that the room was noisy, that the beds were hard and the towels were thin. And Lorna told herself that all Melanie's complaints were justified and wondered why she hadn't noticed. It wasn't that she hadn't noticed, of course she'd noticed, but it hadn't mattered. Be honest with yourself, she said, it's not that you don't understand why it didn't matter to you, you can't understand why it would matter to anyone when there was so much out there, so much of beauty, of greatness. Why would it matter that the beds were hard, the towels thin. She simply couldn't understand.

Melanie would eat only grilled fish and salad. She said the vegetables were drenched in oil. "I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole." Lorna tried not to be irritated as she ate her farm, the thick Tuscan soup she and Richard always enjoyed. She wanted to hold the bottle of olive oil to the light and ask Jonathan and Melanie to share her pleasure in its greenness. She wanted to have wine with lunch, but she felt she couldn't because she didn't want to appear a drunkard or a glutton to her daughter-in-law, so slender, so chic, with her long legs and complicated braid.

"Florence is supposed to be a great place for leather. Where's the best place to look for bags?" Melanie said.

Lorna felt that, in confessing that she didn't know where to shop for bags, she was letting Jonathan down, revealing herself as provincial, dowdy, and out of touch. But she didn't remember having shopped when she and Richard were in Florence.

And she didn't remember that, at this time of year, the Piazza del Duomo was so crowded with tourists. In summer, yes, at Christmas or at Easter, but they had purposely avoided those times; it was February now. Why was the square so full of buses? And wasn't this a new kind of tourist, a new kind of American, people in their sixties, abashed couples dressed in matching leisure suits in various shades of blue, new white sneakers dragging themselves across the cobblestones. Were there always so many of the nearly elderly? she wondered. She had read that people were retiring earlier now. Were they traveling because they had too much time and too much money and didn't know what to do with either? Had they always been here and she just hadn't noticed them? Or was it that they were younger than she was now, but seemed older? Herded through the Duomo, the Uffizi, they looked stunned, like oxen that had been struck with a mallet. They weren't seeing anything, they looked miserable; they made stupid jokes to each other. Melanie was right; they did spoil Botticelli's Venus, Michelangelo's David.

"Jesus, Americans are unbelievable," Melanie said. "The obesity is epidemic. Look at them, men and women, they all look like they're in their third trimester of pregnancy."

Lorna wondered if Jonathan and Melanie would have a child. She rather thought they wouldn't.

On the morning of the third day, Jonathan knocked on Lorna's door.

"Mom, we've had some bad news. One of Melanie's clients is losing his s.h.i.+rt. You know how all the dot corns are tanking. Mel's got to leave immediately and see what can be salvaged."

"Of course," Lorna said.

"Sweetheart, can you manage here alone? She wigs out when she's stressed. I need to be with her." "Of course," Lorna said.

Dot corns are tanking, wigs out when she's stressed. The words made pictures her mind had to ingest; there were ent.i.ties, ideas she'd never had to know about that she now had to try to understand. Talking to her son made her feel old. And crotchety. I am becoming a crotchety old lady, she told herself. So she was extra careful to make it clear to Jonathan and Melanie that she'd be just fine on her own, that they mustn't think about her.

"Mom, you're a great sport," Jonathan said.

Go with G.o.d, she wanted to say, which she thought odd. It was a thing she never before would have thought of saying.

She told herself it was a blessing in disguise that Jonathan and Melanie had to leave. It was the kind of push that did a person good, particularly a person of her age. What kept a person young was doing new things; what aged a person was giving in to the fear of the unaccustomed. Now she would be traveling alone, like the women she'd admired but had feared to be. Now she would be going, entirely on her own, to places she hadn't been with her husband. And how generous Jonathan and Melanie had been. Jonathan had put an envelope on her bed, full of lire. Fifteen hundred dollars it would come to. And the hotel bill had been taken care of.

It was not the kind of hotel she and Richard would have chosen: the art deco grandeur would have made them feel, as a couple, fearful and at sea. Her room was larger than any she'd ever stayed in with Richard; it was larger than their bedroom in Cincinnati. She looked over all the roofs of Naples. Vesuvius crouched in the distance, and if she stood by the window, the blue slice reminded her that she was near the sea. No, not the sea, she told herself, the bay. The Bay of Naples.

It would have been Richard who had read the history of the place they were visiting, but she had done that part too. He would have learned about the dynasties, the wars, the politics. Now it was her responsibility; she hoped she hadn't skimped. But if she had, what difference would it make now? Who would know? And if something was missed, there was no one to judge her. The loss was only hers.

From her bed she could push a b.u.t.ton that opened and closed the blinds. Another turned the lights on and off, a third started the television. She kept mixing them up, and she tried to laugh when, attempting to close the blind, she brought into her room the Simpsons in Italian. She supposed she could learn something from watching it, but she didn't want to. She wanted the darkness. The bed was overlarge; she had not been sleeping well.

On the Neapolitan streets, she had to work very hard not to lose her way. Every few seconds she would look down at her map, then look up at the street signs, saying to herself if Via Chiara is to my left, if left is west, then I am all right, I am not lost. But it was very tiring, this kind of concentration, and she felt as if the part of her brain that had the words for things was being taken up with trying to find her way. She felt she could either get lost or remember the words for things, and she was more afraid of being lost than of being speechless. But it alarmed her that the simplest sentence seemed beyond her now; what she would once have found easy now seemed to her impossible.

She kept telling herself that she wasn't disappointed in Naples, not really, that the weather was really bad luck, that was it, that was what was keeping her heart from its Italian soaring. She very much admired what she saw in the great Baroque churches; she was charmed by the majolica cloister of Santa Chiara, there was a fresco in San Domenico Maggiore that came near to the Giottos in Santa Croce for the freshness of its blues. And beside it was a Magdalene, her gold hair covering her rosy flesh- it was miraculous, really miraculous. She was more tired than she remembered being anywhere else in Italy, and there seemed to be fewer cafes to rest in. She liked that it was a real city, a working city, not some hopped-up showcase for tourists. She remembered a poster in Florence protesting the banning of cars in the city center: "This is our home, not your museum," the poster said. And she had understood. But Naples wasn't Florence; it was a place where people went about their business, and their business was not tourism.

It was wonderful that she hadn't seen a single American in the streets, hadn't heard a word of English spoken. It made her feel proud of herself that she was negotiating this really foreign territory. She ordered her meals competently. On the street of the presepii, where figures for elaborate nativity scenes were sold, she had no trouble getting the sellers to show her the pieces that she wanted. Her trouble came in choosing; she was attracted to the elegantly costumed bisque angels hanging on wires from the ceiling- but what difference did it make whether she chose the peach one or the teal, the one in the coral robe with the serene expression, the one with the striped wings and impish grin? And did she really need a fancy Christmas ornament? Who would see it? They weren't expensive; they were lovely, every one of them had its own appeal. Leaning her head back to look up at them had made her dizzy. All the angels seemed to swim into each other, and blur into a wave of indistinguishable colors, features. She left the street of the presepii having bought nothing.

One waiter in a restaurant had been kind to her, telling her with a gruff paternalism that she had to have dessert, it was customary, and she needed her strength. She had probably overtipped him, but when she went back the following night she was glad she had. He took her arm and escorted her to her table and told her she must leave the ordering to him. She enjoyed his kindness as she enjoyed the pasta with mussels and clams, but by the time she was back in bed the pleasure of both had worn off, and she felt her body rigid, a supplicant for sleep, which did not come. Was she becoming one of those people she and Richard had secretly condemned: people like Jane and Harry, or Albert and Jean, who could only sleep in their own beds? She must get over this. She was in one of the places history had marked as great; she would get the good of it, she would expend herself, test her limits. For once, she was doing what no one she knew had ever done. No one she knew well had been to Naples. She realized that for her whole life, she had walked in the footsteps of others. Now she would be breaking her own trail.

At 3 a.m. there was a terrifying clap of thunder. You are perfectly safe, she told herself. Nothing can happen to you here. Yet the sight of Vesuvius, which she had only to prop herself on her elbows to see, suggested that the idea of safety was the most fragile of illusions. Flashes of silver lit the heavy mountain with what she thought was a capricious show of force. Then the mountain would hide itself behind gray and become invisible. It was easy to see its malevolence, its carelessness. She thought of the Pompeii mummies, turned to stone embracing, or foolishly trying to run. But was that so bad? What would be lost if she met her end in this way rather than some other? Why not be crushed by a huge, indifferent fist, squas.h.i.+ng her insignificance? The idea of her insignificance didn't bother her; she found it comforting- the notion that she would not be very much missed. Richard had gone before her, and Jonathan- well, Jonathan had Melanie. He would grieve her pa.s.sage, but his grief would not leave much of a mark.

The next day it was cold and rainy; she decided on a visit to the Archaeological Museum; she didn't need good weather for that. She rented a taped guide to the museum, a thing she ordinarily would not have done, but her guidebook had warned her that the museum might be overwhelming, and she felt that, as she was alone, she didn't want to be overwhelmed. But the machine confused her; she seemed unable to find what the voice told her was in the rooms; the spoken descriptions seemed to match nothing before her eyes. Reliefs, vases, tiles: what people had lived with and amongst before their lives were extinguished in a blink- none of it seemed connected to any human experience she could understand. After a while she realized that for half an hour she'd been walking up and down the same corridor, in and out of the same rooms. She sat down on a stone bench in front of a showcase displaying drinking vessels and she wept. There is nothing I understand, nothing I understand, nothing I understand, nothing I will ever comprehend, she heard her own voice saying. She put on her sungla.s.ses, hailed a taxi in the freezing rain, went back to the hotel, and went to bed. She kept pressing b.u.t.tons trying to close the blinds; she didn't want to see Vesuvius through the rain. But every b.u.t.ton that she pressed was wrong; the lights went on and off; the television blared. She got out of bed and tried to pull the blinds shut, but only a b.u.t.ton could effect a change, and she couldn't make the b.u.t.tons work. She got back into bed, covered her head with blankets, and listened to the outlandish beating of her heart.

She had two days left in Naples. There were many enjoyable things to do. But if she was honest with herself, they didn't seem enjoyable enough to justify the effort. Everything seemed too difficult. Life itself was too difficult, not just life but what life had become. b.u.t.tons and audio guides and dot corns tanking. And travel so comparatively cheap and easy, and people with too much money and too much time. Things that used to be simple seemed too taxing now. Taxing. Tax. What was the tax that was paid, what was the rate, and what the currency? And to whom was the payment made? Was it flesh or blood or spirit that was demanded? She thought of Caravaggio's St. Matthew in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. The last time she and Richard were there, even seven years ago, they had had to worm their way into a knot of tourists, all of whom looked bored and oppressed to be there. St. Matthew was a tax collector. He gave it all up to follow Jesus. What was it he was giving up, and what was it he was following? She remembered the mysterious light coming through the window, and Matthew's expression of shocked surprise at being called. She remembered her own joy at the painting, a joy that made her heart beat hard, perhaps dangerously so for someone of her age. There were many Caravaggios in Naples. Tomorrow she would begin in earnest to seek them out.

But the next day was Monday. The Caravaggio Flagellation was in the Museo di Capidomonte, and it was closed on Mondays. Well, she would look elsewhere. The guidebook said that the Seven Mercies of Caravaggio was in a still active charitable inst.i.tution, the Pio Monte della Misericor-dia. The sun seemed weakly, tentatively, to be coming out. She would take a taxi to Piazza Jesu and walk down the Via Tribunali. She hadn't been getting enough exercise; at home she swam three times a week. Perhaps that was the reason for her low spirits.

She walked down the Via Tribunali, her money pouch tucked inside her coat, her collapsible umbrella in her pocket. It was a shopping street; it could have been in any minor city in the world. But not a great city; there was no place that lifted her heart with displays of unattainable beauty. She pa.s.sed a section that specialized in bridal gowns. But all the lace on the dresses had an unfresh look, as if it had been worn before, but in the recent, ungenerous past, by an unsavory groom and unfortunate bride. Everything seemed made of cheap-looking synthetic material, surely not the right thing for a girl's great day. The mannequins seemed squat and fat and middle-aged. She could only imagine that shopping in such stores would be a lowering experience for the girl herself, and surely for her mother. And there was something about store after store of bridal gowns that made the possibility of uniqueness seem out of the question. People got married, as they were born and died; the species must be propagated and the ceremony ensuring the propagation must be marked by something that was meant to be special but, by virtue of its very frequency, could not be. She remembered her own wedding; she'd worn a navy blue suit; it had been a morning in November, a small wedding, but the day had been very happy. Jonathan and Melanie's wedding had been lavish; they'd taken over the Spanish consulate in Chicago; they had paid for everything themselves; it had cost, they told her later, fifty thousand dollars. No synthetic lace for Melanie. It had been, she remembered, quite a happy day. Except that Melanie had lost her temper at the photographer, and had burst, quite publicly, into tears. Richard had settled things somehow, and Melanie had collapsed into Lorna's arms. She'd been touched by the glimpse of the child in Melanie; the orphan child, gamely coping on her own for much too long. For the first time, she wished the young people were with her. She would spend time looking for a postcard that would please them both.

She came to the Pio Monte della Misericordia. The heavy oak door with its embossed studs was fastened shut. Chiuso, a sign said, unnecessarily. The guidebook had said it was a functioning charitable inst.i.tution. But the place seemed so tightly, so permanently shut, it was impossible to imagine anything functioning inside there in the locatable past.

She walked back up the street, as quickly as she could, not wanting to look at the bridal dresses. She wasn't hungry, but she made herself have an early lunch.

The day was warmish now, with a weak sun. A few people were eating at outdoor tables. This seemed such a good idea, here in the land of sun, the mezzogiorno. She ordered an insalata caprese. The cheese was good, but the tomatoes were unremarkable. She wondered why she thought it would be good to order fresh tomatoes in March. Over coffee she caught the eye of a woman near her age at another table. The woman's formal dress pleased her. She was wearing a royal blue woolen suit, a white blouse that tied in a bow at the neck, plain black pumps, gold earrings. Her hair was pulled back in a French twist. Lorna didn't think that the new informality- dressing down it was called- had been successful. She wondered why everyone liked it so much. Didn't this woman look lovely? Wasn't it better that people should take this kind of trouble than that everyone wear sneakers? She thought with pleasure of her own outfit; her charcoal pants suit, pink silk s.h.i.+rt, black Ferragamo oxfords. She hoped that her appearance pleased the woman as the woman's had pleased her.

"Enjoying Naples?" the woman said, in an English accent.

"Oh, yes, very much," said Lorna. When she told the woman what she had actually seen, it seemed so scant that she felt ashamed. Yet she wouldn't make excuses for herself, for in doing that she'd have to express her disappointment in Naples, her annoyance that so many things had been closed. And she didn't want to do that.

"You must see the monastery of San Marco. Splendid cloisters, spectacular views, a great collection of eighteenth-century presepii. A glimpse of that particular Neapolitan mix of elegance and tenderness. And you must take the funicular to get there. You'll see the Neapolitans at their most natural. And you'll think of it whenever you hear the song 'Funiculi, Funicula,' which is written about it." Lorna wondered if the woman would begin singing, which she did not. She was a little sad that the woman, who had seemed to be taking her under her wing, did not invite her home for a cup of tea. She could imagine her apartment. It would be large and dark; there would be a cavernous sitting room with shabbily elegant, uncomfortable sofas and chairs; the light would be dim; on the walls would be etchings of nineteenth-century Neapolitan street scenes, darkish oils depicting the campagna. A small, silent servant would bring them coffee in small, gold-rimmed cups. If she was honest, she was more than a little sad that the woman had left without her. She wondered what would happen if she ran after her, caught up with her, started a conversation as they walked. You mustn't do that, she said to herself. The woman would think you were very peculiar if you did that. She ordered another coffee so that she would be sure not to get up, follow the woman, pretend to b.u.mp into her by accident. But the loss of the apartment she had conjured in her mind made her feel outlandishly bereft.

The sun disappeared again; she felt drowsy as she walked to the funicular. Had she ever, she wondered as she walked, visited another city where it was so difficult to cross a street? She felt it was entirely possible that the cars would not, in the end, stop for her. The scooters put their brakes on inches from her feet. She waited for the light to turn, hyperalert, as if she were waiting for the shotgun blast to signal the beginning of the race. She thought the light was very long. As she stood waiting for it, a boy on a scooter pa.s.sed in front of her, carrying a sheet of gla.s.s over his head. His hands held the gla.s.s; he balanced on the scooter without holding on. Cars veered around him; annoyed at having to slow down, even a little, they honked their horns. His hair was dark and curly and he showed his beautiful white teeth in his smile of defiance and pleasure at this risky task. Delivering a pane of gla.s.s through the city of Naples on a motor scooter.

Suddenly she saw how it would happen: a car would not stop for him or would stop too fast, the gla.s.s would break and then, as if a line had been drawn across his neck, he would be beheaded. His beautiful head, the curls bloodstained, would lie in the street and cars would drive around it. She would have to pick it up, cradle it in her arms. And then put it where? What would she do with this treasure of a beautiful severed head?

She was trembling as she waited for the funicular. The boy was far away now, she would never know if he'd made his destination safely. Don't think of it, she said, or think of him delivering the gla.s.s, think of him sitting with his girl, having a caffe. But she could not stop thinking of herself holding the beautiful head.

The funicular started up with a frightening grind. Her eye fell on a mother and a child. The child was lively, unusually fair, she thought, for this part of the world. The mother was much darker. Her frizzy hair looked unclean; her skin was marred by blackheads; she wore rings on each finger, several with large stones; her nails were bitten and her cuticles were raw.

It seemed to Lorna that she talked to the child strangely, as if she didn't know her very well. No, Lorna thought, as if she were pretending to know her well, as if she wanted everyone on the funicular to believe she knew the child well. She could not be the child's mother. She had kidnapped the child, but the child didn't know it yet. She thought she was being brought back to her real mother. But Lorna knew that she would not be brought back. She imagined the dark room where the child would be taken; a bucket would be given to her so that she wouldn't have to go to the toilet; she would be given crackers, warm soda in cans, stale candy bars to eat. How could Lorna tell someone what she knew to be the case? The woman and the child got off. Lorna knew she had left the child to her fate, as she had left the boy on the scooter to his. She had left them to their fate because she had no other choice.

She thought of the beautiful child, the beautiful boy. Left to their fate, left to their fate, kept going through her head. And she could do nothing but get off the funicular, walk to the museum.

It had been a wealthy monastery, closed in the eighteenth century, a museum for thirty years. She bought her ticket, asking for the directions to the presepii, excited at the memory of the Englishwoman's words.

"Chiuso," said the guide, a somber blonde, clicking her silver fingernails, as if Lorna's request had been ridiculous. "Chiuso perche?" Lorna asked. "Non so," said the girl. "Forse in ristauro."

It would be ridiculous to go back to the hotel, although that was what she wanted to do, go back to her room, close all the blinds, lie in her overlarge bed with the lights turned out. Sleep for a while, then read her book on the Bourbons and order dinner from room service. But this was her last day in Naples, her last day in Italy for who could tell how long. Perhaps the rest of her life. The Englishwoman had said the cloisters were extraordinary, the views spectacular. She had obviously been a person of taste.

She walked around the cloisters saying to herself, "I am an old woman now. I will never come back to this place."