Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“What about Millie?”

“She... she’s worse, Arthur,” Julia said. “I’ve... I’ve spoken to her doctor. I haven’t told her, of course, there’s no need to upset her. He... he thinks we shouldn’t go back yet. He wants her to... to stay until... until April at least.”

The lie was, out, the lie, was told, she felt herself relaxing in his arms. She was covered with a cold sweat.

“And must you stay with her?” Arthur asked.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Your son.” He made a meaningless gesture with his hands. “He misses you.”

“And I miss him ,” she said. “ And you. But what can I do, Arthur?”

“Julia, it’s so empty at home without you. I don’t feel alive without you, Julia. I don’t feel as if I’m really living.”

“But what can I do, Arthur? Can I take her home against the doctor’s orders? Can I leave her here alone and sick? What can I do? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

It was easier now. She marveled at how much easier it was. The lie had almost assumed a veneer of truth. She was beginning to believe it herself.

“We’ll discuss it later,” he said. He put his arm around her waist and they began climbing the steps, “There doesn’t seem to be much you can do. I only wish...”

“Arthur,” she said, “there’s nothing I want more than to be home with David and you.”

She choked down the lie.

The biggest lie was waiting for her upstairs, in the bedroom.

He did not seem to know, nor did he seem to suspect, that there was anything different about her. He saw no change, and yet the change was apparent to her, she looked different, she felt like a different person, she knew she even walked in a different way, she was sure he could tell this was not the Julia Regan who had left Talmadge in August. But he did not know, and perhaps the difference did not show to anyone but herself.

Only once did he say something that could have been interpreted as an expression of suspicion, but even then she wasn’t sure — he might have been joking. They had entered the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin and walked through the portico where they found the Bocca della Verità — the Mouth of Truth. The carving was a marble disk representing a human face, an old man’s face with accusing eyes, and a beard, and a mustache hanging over an open mouth. The mask dated back to the twelfth century, and the legend concerning it was that in medieval times a suspected person was required, in taking an oath, to place his hand in the mask’s mouth. If the suspect was swearing falsely, legend held, the mouth would close upon his hand.

Arthur studied the mask and then took Julia’s hand and gently placed it inside the marble mouth.

“And have you been faithful to me?” he asked.

She pulled back her hand suddenly, not because she expected the mouth to clamp shut, but only because his question had startled her. Arthur raised his eyebrows.

“Well, now,” he said.

Calmly, smiling at him, she put her hand into the marble mouth again. In an exaggerated attitude of piety, she intoned, “I have been faithful to you, dear husband,” and they both laughed, but her secret ached inside her.

She showed them around Rome like a paid guide. The tour was painful to her because, perversely, she took them to all the secret places she had shared with Renato. In a side street off the Piazza Navona and the Bernini fountain facing the church, she led them to a pair of huge doors, which were opened to her when the caretaker recognized her. At the far end of the enclosed courtyard was an arch over a long passageway floored with tile and lined with columns. At the distant end of the long passageway was a large statue.

“Let’s walk to the statue,” she said.

They started for the arch, and she knew both David and Arthur were expecting a lengthy walk between the columns. She watched their faces for the first signs of recognition, pleased when it came almost at once. The corridor leading to the statue, the columns lining the corridor, the tiles flooring it, the statue itself, were all a magnificent trick, a masterpiece of trompe l’oeil. The corridor was perhaps eight feet long, but it seemed more like fifty. The arch was slanted to give an illusion of perspective, the columns grew progressively shorter, the tiles progressively smaller, as one walked through the arch and down the corridor. The statue, which seemed immense when viewed from the opposite end of the arch, was no more than three feet high. She could remember her own reaction to the optical illusion when Renato first showed it to her, and she was pleased now by the reactions of her husband and her son — and yet annoyed somehow.

She took them to the monastery of the Knights of Malta on the Aventine, where the keyhole was set in the massive entrance doors. She asked David to lean down and peek through the keyhole, and when he did he saw a path lined with poplars, and in the distance the dome of St. Peter’s, perfectly framed, centered exactly, like a precious miniature. Arthur bent and looked, smiling, holding her hand as he looked through the keyhole. Chiaviamoci , she suddenly thought, and her heart lurched; she had not seen him for a week.

Christmas was upon them before they realized it. They had brought her gifts from the States, and she had shopped Rome for days before their arrival. They exchanged their gifts in the villa while the servants beamed and murmured, “ Buon Natale. ” The present she had bought for David was far too young for a boy his age. The days after Christmas seemed to move very slowly for her. She saw happiness on the faces of her husband and her son, but she could not share it. She could only think of their departure. She went through the mechanical motions of showing them the city, but the city was her secret, and she could not really unlock it for them. Time was suspended. She had not seen Renato for eleven days, and she longed for him. But she lived out her lie, and her sister watched the play-acting, expressing neither approval nor censure, moving silently about the villa with her shawl around her shoulders. On New Year’s Eve, she and Arthur went to a night club in Rome. They stayed until two in the morning, and he toasted her eyes and toasted her mouth and said there were too damn many black shirts in this damn place and he wanted to go home to make love to her. They were both tipsy on the drive back to Aquila. In bed he told her drunkenly, “If anything should happen to us, Julia, I would kill myself.” She brought some measure of passion to her love-making that night, but only because she too was drunk.

On January 4, David and Arthur kissed her goodbye and went back to Talmadge, Connecticut.

The townspeople, of course, did not know that Julia Regan was a woman living almost entirely in the past. They knew she had once been thirty-five years old and had gone abroad with her sister Millicent. They knew she had been to France and Switzerland and Italy. They did not know that day by day Julia lived and relived a time that had begun for her in August of 1938.

They did not know.

Matthew was not in the mood for a Talmadge cocktail party, and he told Amanda so the moment he got into the car at the station.

“Neither am I,” she said. “I’ve been shopping all day. But I promised.”

“Amanda, I’m exhausted,” he said. “And I’m cold. Isn’t it cold for November? It wasn’t this cold last November.”

“I promised we would go, Matthew,” she said.

“Who’s staying with Bobby and Kate?”

“I got Mrs. Arondo.”

“That decrepit sack?”

“She’s a very capable sitter.”

“I hate Talmadge parties,” Matthew said.

“Matthew, please, let’s not argue about it.”