Part 14 (1/2)

She's the one who says it first. This is an instinct in her as old as any she possesses: knowing when and when not to finish her twin brother's thought.

”Yes, right. So I was driving up to this tollbooth yesterday and the car in front of me is this enormous what are they called... minivan like everyone drives in the States. But I'd never seen one quite this big, or maybe it's just because in... in... Italy, in Italy what I'm used to seeing are those toy cars, speeding around. That and the... the...”

”Motorinos. Vespas.”

”Motorcycles. But yes, motorinos. Motorini motorinos. Motorini? Anyway, this thing was really strange.”

”I've seen so many American cars this trip,” Kate says. ”Many more than ever before.” But as she speaks, she isn't sure that's true. She doesn't actually remember noticing cars one way or the other since arriving the day before. She's had other things on her mind.

”I suppose that's right,” Arthur says, though in fact he has noticed no more than she. ”Blame it on the global economy and all. Cable television. American imperialism. All the usual suspects, right?” He lifts yesterday's Herald Tribune Herald Tribune to his face. He's read through it once already on the plane, but it's better than nothing. ”It feels,” he says from behind his s.h.i.+eld, ”seeing that van, that minivan... it feels...” to his face. He's read through it once already on the plane, but it's better than nothing. ”It feels,” he says from behind his s.h.i.+eld, ”seeing that van, that minivan... it feels...”

Another pause begins its unmistakable stretch.

Peering over the paper, he finds her pale blue eyes, his own pale blue eyes, staring back. These seconds, the empty ones, move slowly for him. Knowing she has what he wants. Preferring to produce the word himself. It's funny how this, the language thing, has never bothered him as much with anyone else as with her. He squints as though he might find the words written on her face, and Kate, who has lived with this look, with its silent, insistent pressures for over six decades, begins suggesting possibilities to him.

”Wrong?” she asks. He shakes his head. ”Not foreign enough?” No. Not that either.

”Sad,” he p.r.o.nounces-the cloud lifting this time. ”It just feels sad.”

”Oh, it is sad,” she agrees, though she barely remembers now what the it it in question is. So much is sad these days, Kate is willing simply to a.s.sent to the word and leave it there. in question is. So much is sad these days, Kate is willing simply to a.s.sent to the word and leave it there.

”So, we're off to Orvieto today?” he asks, back behind the Trib Trib.

”I'd like that. I'm still feeling jet-lagged and not too ambitious. Unless you have work you need to do. I'd like to sit together in the square and watch the pa.s.sersby. Maybe talk.” She stands, tightening the belt on her travel robe, silk-not for its luxury, but for its negligible weight. ”I'd like to talk.”

”I think that sounds perfect,” he says, and puts the paper down. ”Work can wait. I didn't come on this trip to work. I came to be with you. Half an hour?”

”Yes. That sounds right.”

”I'm looking forward to seeing the... the...”

But it's gone.

”Cathedral?”

He shakes his head and slowly moves his hands together in the air, as if signaling a tighter focus.

”The facade?”

”Yes. That's it. Thank you. The facade. I'm looking forward to seeing the famous facade.”

As a child Kate suspected that it was her own umbilical cord, and not his, that had wrapped itself around Arthur's neck, depriving him of oxygen for just long enough. No one ever told her this. No one ever told her much of anything about why Arthur spoke the way he did, why his otherwise razor-sharp brain seemed to have these holes in it, lacunae into which words would disappear. Their parents chose silence on the subject of Arthur's odd silences as the kindest and maybe the easiest course, and left it to their daughter to glean what little she might from bits of private conversations slipping out from under closed doors, or from relatives who gossiped, neighbors who thought they knew. The cord had gone around him three full times. An older cousin whispered this when Kate was five, maybe six. And he had been completely blue at birth. As blue and as silent as a blueberry.

Kate pictured it, a single image of the rope, thick and twisted, the kind sailors use, uncoiling from out of her own infant stomach, twirling itself around, around, around his neck.

In the shower upstairs, she soaps her body, wis.h.i.+ng she'd remembered the razor still in her suitcase, by the bed. Not for her legs. The hairs come in finer and spa.r.s.er now; and anyway, she's quite sure no one is paying much attention to her solid, matronly legs or, for that matter, to the area between them, where the hair has grown strangely lush in the months since Stephen left. Untended. Unseen. But under her arms there are bristles, sharp among the pale, pouching skin, and standing there, in a just too cold shower, she cannot bear the thought of herself as a woman of a certain age, deserted by her husband, traveling with her brother, a woman whose underarms have grown visibly unkempt.

There is no way around it. It would have been so much less painful had she lost Stephen to death, rather than to Rita. It wouldn't have been a referendum on her, on her marriage, her s.e.xual worth. It wouldn't have been fun or easy; but it would have been possible-in a way that this is not.

The pressure is low and it takes some chilly minutes to rid herself of suds, step out, towel off. Before she dresses, she slips the razor from her bag. Standing naked at the sink, Kate lifts first one, then the other hand above her head, and shaves. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, slack and neither practical nor pleasurable anymore, stare out at her from the mirror like uninvited guests.

Arthur prefers to drive and Kate lets him, though the rental car is in her name, as is the two-week lease on the small farmhouse. In the elaborate, sixty-five-year-long allocation of traits between them, she has long been acknowledged as the practical one, which at times strikes her as odd, since he he has gone out into the world and made a good living doing whatever it is he does with stocks, while she has moved seamlessly through the decades, dependent first on her parents and then, without pause, on Stephen, and even now, even discarded, is still dependent on the monthly checks Stephen sends. Yet with Arthur, when they are together, she is the practical one, the roles of the nursery, early ascribed, early learned, proving immutable despite what other truths a greater world may have revealed. has gone out into the world and made a good living doing whatever it is he does with stocks, while she has moved seamlessly through the decades, dependent first on her parents and then, without pause, on Stephen, and even now, even discarded, is still dependent on the monthly checks Stephen sends. Yet with Arthur, when they are together, she is the practical one, the roles of the nursery, early ascribed, early learned, proving immutable despite what other truths a greater world may have revealed.

The July day is hot and still. The dove-gray sky seems to be holding its breath, ready to exhale a storm. Arthur speeds and Kate tells him not to. Like a wife, he thinks, aware of his own unkindness. A nagging wife. The kind of wife who gets herself left. He denies speeding while slowing down, and then of course speeds up again.

”Just try not to kill anyone,” she says as they pa.s.s the emptying buses just outside the town.

”I'll do my best.”

He finds a parking s.p.a.ce, though the lot appears to be full and Kate has told him it isn't worth a try. And now, he notices, Kate withholds all comment. She sits there beside him, frowning.

These are the moments at which it's hard not to feel some sympathy for old Stephen.

”Do we have enough gas to get back?” she asks.

”Yes. I think we do. If I am reading the... the... well, the thing, that thing.” He points to the dashboard, but Kate's attention is now directed to her purse.

”I don't suppose you have change?” she asks.

”As a matter of fact, I do.”

They are silent as she deciphers the mysteries of the parking meter. They are silent as they climb the outdoor steps from the lot to the cathedral, then continue their way alongside the vast white building, silent as they weave through groups of other tourists, silent until they reach the front.

”Jesus,” Arthur says. ”I never saw such a thing. It's... spectacular.”

Kate says nothing, only looks. Bright gold and blue and red, it is is spectacular. A part of her knows that he's right, though to her, on this day, it looks more improbable than beautiful, sparkling against the darkened sky as if lit from within. She thinks it looks spectacular. A part of her knows that he's right, though to her, on this day, it looks more improbable than beautiful, sparkling against the darkened sky as if lit from within. She thinks it looks fake fake. That's the word in her head, though she questions the thought even as it appears. What can it mean? The word makes no sense. Yet the cathedral seems like confection to her, spun sugar. Sprinkle water on it, and it will melt. Like a promise that can't possibly be kept.

”Does it still look the same?” Arthur asks.

”Yes. It does. Strangely so. Just the same.”

Almost forty years ago, Stephen declared this structure his favorite in all of Italy, while Kate said it was a little gaudy for her taste. She felt more kins.h.i.+p with the dark weight of the cathedral in Siena. She could have hidden for hours in the twilight of that building. But this was an optimist's facade, and Stephen was an optimistic man.

”I could use a drink,” she says.

”Go ahead. I'll just be a minute. Pick a cafe, any cafe. Somewhere around the square. I'll be right there.”

”Take your time.” And then, ”Stephen loved this place.”

”When you were here?” he asks, his gaze fixed ahead. ”You and Stephen? When was that? Exactly? Was that your honeymoon?”

”No.” She steps toward the cathedral, so he sees only her back as she speaks. ”The honeymoon was a long weekend in Maine. We were still poor. Italy was the year before Martha was born, our last hurrah before the children began to arrive.”

She doesn't say any more than that. The word that occurs to her next is happy- happy-but she can't bring herself to say what she might. That they had been happy then, and she had thought it would last. That's all. It doesn't need to be said.

When she turns around, her brother sees the sadness on her face, the eyes seeming only to stare backward, the trembling mouth, and he takes pity on his sister, throws his arm around her back. ”Come on, lady,” he says. ”Let's go find ourselves a table and tie one on.”

Arthur knew that Stephen was leaving long before Kate learned. For nearly a month he kept the secret, believing she should hear it from Stephen himself and trusting his brother-in-law of nearly forty years, a man he had always rather liked, to handle the thing as well as it could be handled.

”As much as I hate doing this to her, I just can't agree to being unhappy for the rest of my life,” Stephen told him over lunch. ”I have no desire to hurt her. But I haven't loved her, not in any real way, for many years. I've puzzled the thing through and through, but I just can't see what's to be gained by giving up on, well, on moving on.”