Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

It was still raining heavily when he started back for the hotel. It was only noon. There would be time for a drink and lunch, time to change into some dry clothes before his four-o’clock appointment.

He saw her coming down the Spanish Steps.

He had reached the Piazza di Spagna at the foot of the hotel, passed the patient taxicabs clustered like shining black beetles to the left of the fountain, approached the steps that rose in quiet majesty to the Via Sistina above, and began counting the steps idly as he climbed them, very tired somehow, wet and tired, his head ducked against the driving rain, he knew there were a hundred and thirty-seven steps, he remembered counting them when he had been in Rome with his mother so long ago.

The rain swept across the flat steps that seemed to mount forever to the sky. He kept his hatless head ducked against the relentless spikes of rain, the count of forty-eight, and then perhaps a shadow, it could not have been a shadow because there was no sun that day, a knowledge, a sureness that another person was approaching, and suddenly he knew it was she, he lifted his head, he dared to raise his eyes.

The steps were behind her in a rain-rushing backdrop, her russet hair was the only splash of color in a monochromatic print. She came down the steps in her peculiarly graceful, peculiarly awkward lope, wearing a gray trench coat belted tightly at the waist, a gray skirt showing below the hem of the coat, dark-gray pumps, the coat collar lifted high at the back of her neck, her hair consuming the total grayness like a runaway fire lapping newsprint.

She stopped suddenly.

She looked up. The shock covered her face, starting with the sudden rising wings of her brows, startled in flight, piercing the widening green eyes, flaring nostrils in the angular face, spreading to the incredible mouth, distending the lips slightly, ever so slightly, her lope arrested, she stood stock-still.

“David,” she said. She whispered the word. There was no belief in the word. There was only incredulity and shock.

“Hello, Gillian,” he said.

They stood in the rain. They could have been in Times Square and not on foreign soil thousands of miles from home. It could have been yesterday that he’d seen her last, and not eleven years ago. She was standing two steps above him, a slender girl in a sopping-wet trench coat, and he held out his hand instinctively, and instinctively she took it, and they both laughed, and then stopped laughing, and she said, “We’re in Rome!” again with the same incredulity and shock. They stood in the rain on the Spanish Steps, and he held her hand and listened to her laughter, and he could think of nothing to say to her. Her laughter died. There was nothing to say.

“Shouldn’t we get out of the rain?” Gillian asked.

“Yes,” he said. He could not take his eyes from her face.

But neither made a move. They stood ridiculously on the steps, her hand in his, and neither moved, and suddenly she laughed again, and, clinging to his hand tightly, pulled him down the slippery steps. For a moment, there was no time, no place, only memory full-blown and poignantly painful, the dimly reconstructed image of two innocents running down Eighth Avenue toward a sleazy Chinese restaurant, hand in hand, the sidewalks glistening wet, the thunder booming majestically in the surrounding skyscrapers. The image gurgled away flatly into the sewers of Rome. Eleven years, he thought. A cab door opened and a fat driver in a black cap shouted “Taxi?” and they both shook their heads at the same time and ran down the rain-gutted street.

The yellow-topped tables outside the bar glistened with rain, spanged to the steady tattoo of rain, added a drumming counterpoint to the shouted whisper of rain against the cobbled curb. A white, rain-brimming Cinzano ash tray sat in the exact center of each table on the deserted sidewalk. David threw open the door to the bar. A bell tinkled. She went in first, and he closed the door, shutting out the sound of rain beating on the table tops. The room was silent. It carried the close tight smell of wet garments in a small and secret closet. She shook out her hair and grinned, and they went to a table together and took off their coats and sat, and then looked at each other for the first time really, looked at each other silently across the table.

She had changed. Looking at her, he saw the change and saw her eyes studying his face and knew she saw the same change in him, and remembered again that it had been eleven years.

The knowledge came to them both at the same time perhaps. Eleven years. The knowledge came to them, and they suddenly wondered who, exactly, had met on the Spanish Steps and extended hands to be touched, who had run through the rain together, who? And with the knowledge, with the mutual understanding that it had been eleven long years, there came the strangeness.

“You look well, David,” she said.

“Thank you. So do you.”

“Have I changed very much?”

“No,” he lied.

“Neither have you,” she lied.

They knew they were lying to each other. They studied each other’s faces and tried to find what they had known, but eleven years was a long time.

“What are you doing in Rome?” she asked.

“My mother died, and I—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“You never met her, did you?”

“No.”

Memory touched, a time long ago, a time shared, you never met her, did you?

“She died last month,” David said. “I had to come to Rome about the will.”

“Will you be here long?”

“No. Just a few days.”

A waiter came over to their table. “ Buon giorno, signore, signorina ,” he said.

Gillian smiled at him, and said, “ Buon giorno . Would you like some coffee, David?”

“Yes, please.”

“ Per piacere ,” she said to the waiter, “ portaci due caffè caldi con latte separato. ” The waiter nodded and moved away from the table. There was the strong smell of coffee in the room. The place was empty save for an old man who noisily slurped sherbet through a hanging white mustache. “You have to specify that you want the milk separately,” Gillian explained, “or they bring you a cross between iced coffee and lukewarm bath water.”

“You speak Italian very well,” David said.

“Oh, that was fake, David. Really. I learned to say that from our director. He’s very sweet-oh, but it’s almost the only thing he taught me.”

“Your director? Are you doing a show here?”

“A movie.”

“That’s wonderful, Gilly.”

“Yes, it’s marrr- velous,” she said. She saw the sudden look that came over his face, and she stared at him curiously, and then smiled and said, “It’s a good picture, and I’ve got a wonderful part, and everyone is treating me like a star, it’s all quite wonderful, David.” She smiled again. “Do you like Rome? Is this your first time?”

“I was here a long time ago,” he said, and fell silent.

“What are you thinking, David?” she asked.

“I was thinking how long it’s been since I last saw you.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I feel very strange.”

“I do, too.”

“We mustn’t.” She reached across the table to touch his hand, and then drew it back almost at once. “I’ve thought of you a lot, David. I’ve thought of this day.”

“I have, too.”

The waiter came back to the table. He put down two cups of black coffee, and a small silver pitcher of bubbling milk.

“Oh, see?” Gillian said. “They’ve gone and warmed the milk. Should we send it back? Do you mind hot milk?”

“Not at all.”

“All right, then.” She turned to the waiter and smiled. “ Grazie. ”