“Don’t do this.”
“How can you think of nullifying any child, considering that your sister’s child died?”
“Don’t bring Bianca into this.” He followed her into the kitchen. “Father says—”
“Don’t you hide behind Father-says.” Leonora has grown up within this religion that claims to be the path to God. She’s skeptical of any group that considers itself superior, especially Catholicism, which offers you priests as tools to cut out the impure parts of your soul with confession—the killing of your sins—and demands your sacrifice. But to Leonora, sacrifice is poison: it comes at you in the shape of giving and is clotted by resentment.
“Well, what Father says…” Victor worked two fingers inside his collar, tugged at the fabric. “Father says he can’t marry me in church if—”
“Now you and Father-says are getting married?”
“Don’t do this.”
“Your mother will be so happy. A son in the clergy. Well…almost in the clergy.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Then say the name of that woman you intend to marry. Unless you’re ashamed of that woman.”
“Anyhow, he can’t marry…Elaine and me in church if I’m divorced. Because his loyalty is to his bishop.”
“Not to God, but to the bishop?”
“Don’t do this.”
“And where is your loyalty, Victor?”
“Don’t do this.”
“Why don’t you tell Father-says that at least divorce is honest. Because it acknowledges that there once was a marriage.”
“But if we annul—”
“It’s part of my history, too, Victor, this marriage to you. And I’ll be glad to end it with divorce—believe me—but I won’t pretend it didn’t exist.”
“That is not what annulment means.”
“What does annulment mean then?”
“That…I guess, that it was never right….”
She felt her arms tighten, and when she tried to speak, he stepped back from her as if he could feel her rage.
“Never right in the eyes of the church,” he said quickly.
“How about in your eyes?”
“Don’t ask that.”
“Was it right in your eyes, Victor?”
“Was it right, she asks.”
“Yes, because she—if you must talk about me in the third person—deserves to know if it was right in her husband’s eyes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“It was right.”
She didn’t respond.
“For a long time. All right?”
“Right all right?”
“And now it no longer is right.”
“Then how can you annul it? Look at the word. Annul. Invalidate. Void—”
“This is not one of your damn crossword puzzles.”
“Too bad. Those I usually solve. Nullify. Cancel. Disclaim—”
“It’s only a word.”
“A word, yes. That’s what Judas thought, too, and of course that led to a bag full of money, a sore throat, and betrayal.”
“Here you go with your lopsided Bible stuff. Listen, I’m not crazy about how they uphold their rules by maneuvering around them. But they have to.”
“Why do they have to, Victor?”
“Why?” He looked miserable.
“Yes, why?”
“Because…those rules have been there for centuries.”
“And so they ask us to live a lie by invalidating that we had a marriage? What does that make our son? Illegitimate?”
“Don’t ever say that.”
“They’re screwing with lives. And with truth. Don’t you see that?”
“Then where do I go from here?”
“To Elaine. Father-says gave you his blessing to fuck her.”
“Wine or hot chocolate?” she asks James.
“Hot chocolate.”
“That’s what I guessed. Still the tastes of a boy.”
“Really.” He looks sullen.
“In bed you have the tastes of a man.”
“Tell me more.”
When she returns from the kitchen with his cup of hot chocolate and her glass of wine—a fine bottle of white Bordeaux she’s bought for today, not the wholesale Chianti Victor shleps from work—James has fluffed her pillows against the maple headboard so she can sit next to him in bed. He has moved the ashtray—Anthony’s first-grade project, seashells from Bermuda glued to a saucer—and he has tilted her reading light so that his flat hand makes a shadow across the wall. His thumb is up, his index finger bent, and when he slants his little finger down and up again, the shadow becomes a barking dog.
“Don’t,” Leonora says sharply.
“Just something my grandma showed me.”
“To you and to Anthony.”
“So?”
“It makes you seem like…” She lights a cigarette, holds the smoke as long as she can to keep from saying what she knows she’ll say anyhow. “It reminds me that you’re closer in age to my son than to me.”
“Want me to make a shadow cat instead?”
“You don’t get it.”
“It’s because I get it.” He drinks from her glass. “Tastes of a boy, my ass.”
“Does that mean I’m stuck with your hot chocolate?”
“It means I get both.” He laughs. Settles himself against the pillows, tells her about a restaurant he plans to open in Southampton: “French cuisine. One of my friends from work, a chef from Paris, is coming in on it with me.”
Grandiose plans. As always. It’s impossible to keep track of where James has lived while doing what, and Leonora no longer tries to separate the things James has done from the things James would like to do. Most of Anthony’s little friends have made that distinction between fantasy and reality, but for James they still fuse. Yet it’s exactly this quality that makes James safe. Because she will never lose herself loving him. One of the best things about their affair is that it is temporary.
James starts rubbing his feet against her hardened soles.
“Now what are you doing?”
“You have calluses.”
“You bet.” She crouches next to him. Dips her tongue into the hollow of his collarbone. Tastes the salt of new sweat.
He skips a breath. Mumbles, “Calluses…” without the earlier conviction.
“Plus, I am a thousand years older than you.”
“Good.”
She follows his scent down his belly but bypasses his groin, teases him, though he heaves himself toward her. When she inspects his feet, they’re soft and narrow with long toes. Hairless. Victor has stubby toes with thick hair, chafed soles he massages with Vaseline and covers with baggy socks he wears to bed so he won’t stain the sheets.
“You have the feet of an infant,” she informs James. “You are an infant.”
“My grandmother always bought me expensive shoes…never too tight.”
After Victor moved out, she found one of his socks under the bed, still shaped by his foot, and she felt his loss abruptly as if it were happening that instant. Even though she’d been done with him ever since that afternoon last February when Anthony was doing his homework at his desk, and she left his room to answer the phone in the kitchen.
A woman’s voice, deep, like a man’s almost. “I wouldn’t be calling you if I weren’t so worried about my sister.”
“Your sister? Who—”
“Elaine. You don’t know her. But your husband does. And I can’t bear to see her like this. Waiting for you to let him go.”
Leonora’s face felt cold. The phone felt cold. And around it, her hands felt cold. It was the familiar cold that was hers in emergencies, slowing everything and freezing it so that panic had no way in. Leonora loved that cold. Loved its insulation. Its clarity. Loved being able to count on its dignity to be there for her. And within that cold she knew the woman was telling the truth. Not because Leonora didn’t trust Victor—it was more complicated
than that, had to do with punishment. So much had felt like punishment since Bianca’s death. Punishment of the parent who had not lost a child. At least not an already-born child. After you have been spared that, you are willing to give up almost anything, even your belief in your son. And live instead with a measure of suspicion.
Not that anyone blamed Anthony.
“Poor boy…” they’d whisper.
“That girl wanted to be Superman.”
“Talk to me, Anthony.”
“There’s nothing you could have done to stop Bianca.”
“To witness her fall…”
“She was always trying to fly.”
“You must eat something.”
“…so terrifying for him.”
Even Floria, disoriented by grief, said, “Let him be. Don’t make him relive it.”
After you have been spared that loss of your already-born child, you are even willing to give up your husband. Insurance against losing still more.
“Mrs. Amedeo?” Deep voice. Hesitant voice. “I’m sorry to be the one to—”
“Tell me about your sister,” Leonora’s cold, slow voice said.
“They love each other. They’ve been wanting to be together. Except Vic says you won’t give him a divorce.”
“How long have…Vic and your sister been lovers?”
“A little over a year.”
“What month?” Leonora had to know if it started before or after Bianca’s death.
“Why do you—”
“What month did it start?”
“January.”
A year and one month ago…just after we bury Bianca. Victor goes to the funeral alone, stands in for the three of us, because we don’t want Anthony to see the coffin. I keep him with me that day, take him to the Museum of Natural History. The weeks after that, trying to do other things with him that are normal. A movie at the Paradise: Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. Reading together in the library on Bainbridge Avenue. Inviting Kevin and Mustache Sheila along to Jahn’s and sitting beneath a stained-glass lamp eating banana splits. And then—late one evening—laughing, suddenly laughing, because Victor comes home with his beard shaved off. Feeling ashamed for laughing because of Bianca, and yet making it last because laughing makes me feel alive. Telling Victor I wouldn’t have recognized him if I’d seen him on the street. Where before his jaw was squared off by the edge of beard, he now has a round chin, pale. But at least no sloping jawline for him, though I baited him once, “Is that why you have a beard?” A valley between his upper lip and nose, quite defined. I rub my cheek against his, tease him. “Like having a different man. How safe…having an affair within our marriage.” His sleek face against mine reminds me of my first kiss—Stevie Klein in high school—and I feel vaguely unfaithful. But it’s a degree of unfaithfulness I can handle. Enjoy, even. But Victor dodges my embrace, gets skittish when I try to seduce him. I take my distance, figure I’ll wait till he grows a new beard, because that’s the man I know. Not this stranger whose sleek face makes him elusive, evasive. Makes him Vic.
Whose reluctance had nothing to do with Leonora’s eagerness, but rather with this Elaine, who either had a sister or was pretending to be her own sister on the phone. If so, Elaine’s willingness to fight for Victor impressed Leonora, who was not willing to fight for him at all. “You don’t like beards, do you?” Leonora asked her.
“…No. But what does that have to do—”
“When do they see each other, your…sister and Vic?”
“Thursdays. Thursday evenings.”
Thursdays. Those evenings that separate Victor’s weeks. Evenings when he prepares lists for his busiest days—Saturdays and Sundays.
“And usually Mondays. For lunch.”
“Of course.” Monday. His one day off. A day to do errands. “And what is it you want from me?”
“Just to tell you.”
“Yes.”
“So you can be aware.”
“Yes.”
“And to find out if you’re willing to let Vic go. Or if he’s lying.”
“Vic never lies. Believe me.”
“He wants to be with her.”
“With your…sister, yes. So you’re telling me. And you? What do you want for yourself?”
“I’m her sister.” The voice, higher now. “And I want what’s best for her, but I’m worried—”
“My soul bleeds for you.”
“I’m worried about—”
“Worried about Elaine. Frantic about Elaine. Distraught. Anxious. Shaken—”
“He hates it when you get that way with the words.”
“He said that to you? Or to your sister?”
“I have to go.”
“You have asked your questions. Now grant me the courtesy to answer mine. How did you and Victor meet?”
A pause. Longer than a minute. But she was still there. “A dinner he catered at…at the place where Elaine works.”
“How did it begin between you?”
“I can’t.”
“How did it begin?”
“Ask him.” And she was gone, Elaine or Elaine’s sister.
Leonora hung up the cold receiver. Tucked her hands beneath her armpits to warm them. Picked up the phone again and called Mustache Sheila. “Can Anthony stay with Kevin overnight?”
“Sure. What’s the matter?”
“Just something Victor and I have to take care of.”
“You don’t sound good. Are you—”
“I can’t talk about it, Sheila.”
“Send Anthony over. Anytime. You hear that?”
Thin neck curved over his marbled notebook, Anthony was sitting on his bed next to his favorite toy, Robert the Robot, silvery gray, with wheels and arms that could move.
“You should be at your desk,” Leonora reminded him. “Otherwise you’ll ruin your spine and your eyes.”
Without looking at her, he slid off his bed.
“It’s not that important,” she said, hating his obedience. “You can stay on your bed.”
He stopped moving. His eyes darted from the bed to Leonora, then back to the bed, and when she touched his cheek—his triangle of gaunt cheek—he flinched but didn’t say anything. He’d been trying to get by with shrugs and nods. In school he did well enough with his written work. That’s why the nuns didn’t try too hard to make him talk. “We have other children who are shy like your Anthony,” they would assure Leonora.
“But he wasn’t like that before,” she’d say. What she couldn’t explain to the nuns was how he’d been wrapping himself around the memory of Bianca falling, wrapping that memory into a space so tight and small that the rest of him was left pulpy, easily smashed.
Leonora knew what that was like, because she, too, had that tight, cold space inside her. Ever since she was a child. Except within her it had grown tighter by and by, while for Anthony it had happened all at once the moment of Bianca’s fall; and he hadn’t learned yet to use that space to protect himself the way she used to whenever her father had raised his fists. Fifty-four days of my life. Spaced far apart. Over four years. Then not so far apart. You count them. Mark them in the back of your photo album. One flat line for each. Fifty-four days of fists without warning. And the fear that waits for you every dawn—“If you tell, you’ll really get it”—until your father dies.
Not now. She kissed the top of her son’s hair. Don’t think of it now.“Guess what?” she said. “Kevin’s mom says you can stay over.”
Anthony crossed his skinny arms.
“Hey…you like Kevin. You’re his best friend.”
He nodded.
If she’d known a way to blast his cold, tight space open without injuring the rest of him, Leonora would have. Instead, she gently coaxed him. “Take your school things along.”
He slipped his pencil into his Davy Crockett pencil box, slid the wooden top closed.
“Pajamas. Clothes for the morning. Do you want to eat something before you go?”
&nb
sp; He blinked as if incapable of deciding.
Lately she’d been waiting him out till he had to make a choice for himself; but today she rushed him. “I’ll make you a salami sandwich while you pack your things.”
He grimaced as if food were repulsive, an obligation that kept him prisoner at family dinners. To think how he used to enjoy eating, but now even sweets no longer interested him. Sweets and words.
“You don’t eat enough. See, now I’m sounding like your Aunt Floria.”
Still, he didn’t eat, and when he was gone—reluctant he was in leaving, so reluctant—Leonora filled the bathtub. Washed her hair and dried it, letting it fall over her shoulders. While all along her heart—slow and cold—beat inside her chest. She drew a narrow line of black along her eyelids as if she were getting ready to go downtown for a show. She darkened her lashes, painted her lips deep red, buttoned the silk dress Floria had sewn for her; and when she sat down in the living room, facing the entrance hall, she saw herself as if on stage—this woman waiting for her unfaithful husband—and she was able to appreciate the drama, as well as the potential of even greater drama. That’s what she looked for the instant the curtain rose: drama in setting and costume; drama within the first words. She wanted drama to sweep her onto the stage until she was so much part of it that she forgot she was sitting in a darkened row.
She wanted it to be that real.
As real as Victor’s surprised expression when he came in and saw her dressed up and quiet.
“Hello,” he said heartily, acting as if there were nothing unusual about her waiting for him like this.
She looked at his naked face—looked steadily, solemnly—and felt articulate without words.
“How was your day, mia cara?” Victor asked.
“Where’s Anthony?” Victor asked.
“Probably at Kevin’s. Right?” Victor asked, still playing his part.
She wondered if not speaking was like that for Anthony. To have all of them dance around him with words? Not all bad. A certain power, pleasure even, in letting others do the words for you.
“I get it. You didn’t feel like cooking tonight?” Victor asked.
“Are we going out to eat?” Victor asked.
“Tell me about Elaine,” she said quietly.
His face arched up. Ashen. Startled. “What do you mean?”