A Place I've Never Been (20 page)

There is a huge bathroom, the size of a bedroom, with a toilet built into a marble bench, and a tub on claws, big enough to hold a family. Much of the furniture Alex made himself, in his shop in the barn—fanciful sofas and beds with elaborate animal carvings in the moldings, down-stuffed cushions wrapped in brightly colored cotton fabric. But it is the girls' rooms that take Celia's breath away. In each is a handcarved sleigh bed of dark cherry, above which Alex has painted a mural. The background of the mural in Adriana's room is sky blue, the letters of her name, spread out against it, festooned with birds—every imaginable bird, each species distinct and colorful and exact. “Francesca,” by contrast, floats in an undersea green, surrounded by fish. “Like the Grotto of the Animals,” Alex says, as Celia stares admiringly. “Outside Florence, in a place called Castello. A little leftover of the Mannerist period. You go into this grotto, and what you see is a stone-carved catalogue of the birds of the air, the beasts of the land, the fish of the sea. This is my slightly less ambitious version.”

There are differences between the rooms. Whereas Adriana's is neat and filled with toys—as many handmade by Alex, Celia notices, as bought at town shops—Francesca's is a mess, the covers thrown off the bed, underwear tangled on the floor, Bon Jovi and Guns 'n Roses posters thumbtacked into the great sea wall. The posters make Celia flinch with pain—a defacement—but Alex is blasé. “The worst thing in the world,” he says, “is to tell children how to lead their lives. Their rooms belong to them. The murals are my gift, to make of what they wish. I've always thought it a mistake to expect appreciation from your children. You'll never get it that way.”

From the kitchen, Sylvie calls out, “Al-ex! Lunch!” so they head outside to the table under the grape arbor. Seth has told Celia that at formal Italian meals, the eldest guest is always seated at the host's right, so she is surprised when Sylvie—who clearly knows better—seats Signora Dorati at Alex's left. The old woman once again flutters her fan frantically, her face tight with distress. Celia is seated between Ginevra and Fabio. Ginevra, she knows from Seth, is a famous poet, although not a very productive one: two slim white volumes over twenty years, published by the best literary house.

While Alex fills glasses with wine, Adriana and Francesca, freshly dressed, their hair still wet from the pool, emerge from the kitchen, bearing huge, steaming bowls of pasta. Ah, pasta! Celia has always loved it, and now, as she spoons
penne
into a bowl handpainted by Alex with purple garlic bulbs, she sees that Sylvie is an expert. The tubed
maccheroni
are luminous with bits of sausage, basil, tomato, glints of yellow garlic. What a far cry from the spaghetti and meatballs of her childhood, the overcooked, mushy noodles swimming in a bright red bath of watery, sweet tomato sauce, the whole plate periodically dented by boulders of ground beef and bread crumbs! Her mother used to sing a song as she cooked it, to the tune of “On Top of Old Smoky,” her voice loud in the cramped, steamy kitchen:

On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese
,

I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed
.

It rolled off the table, and onto the floor

And then my poor meatball rolled out of the door …

Celia puts down her fork. Oh, her poor foolish, sad mother! She is overwhelmed, suddenly, by the poverty of her childhood, by all she didn't know, all she didn't even
know to ask. Here, of all places, in Chiantishire, sitting at this perfect table with these beautiful people under a grape arbor on a gloriously sunny spring day, she is haunted.

“The weather will be bad tomorrow,” Ginevra says. “I can feel it.”

“How?” asks Seth. “Today is beautiful.”

“Today beautiful, tomorrow hot, humid, uncomfortable. My mood always tells me. I'm getting depressed.”

“Ginevra can recognize the bad weather coming,” Fabio says. “And she's right much more than the newspaper.”

“Well, I'm not going to haul in the garden furniture yet!” Sylvie says, still stroking the small bulge in her breast. “Anyway, Ginevra, why should we listen to you? You've been in a bad mood since you lost your manuscript. I don't trust your senses so much.”

This last remark is greeted by a tense silence. Ginevra puts down her fork and rubs her forehead.

“Really, Sylvie,” Alex says.

“Well, it's not like a death,” says Sylvie, her back tensing defensively. “I'm tired of avoiding the subject.”

“I just don't think one should refer to tragedies … quite so casually—”

“No, Alex, never mind,” Ginevra says. “It's all right. I don't know if Seth told you, but I'm sometimes a poet. Sometimes, because I don't write very often—I have great blocks. And last year I was working on a poem, a long poem, which I loved like a person. I loved it so much I carried it with me everywhere. And I lost it. So for a year I've been in grief, and everyone is silent about my poem as if it were my lover who is gone.”

Again, a tense silence stretches out. “That must have been terrible,” Celia says at last.

“Terrible, yes,” Ginevra says. “I suppose. Yes.”

“Ginevra is a wonderful cook,” Seth says now, brightly, to change the subject. “You know, Ginevra, Celia's very interested in Italian food. Maybe you could give her lessons.”

Ginevra looks at Celia and smiles. “Are you ready to be an obedient pupil?” she says. “Because the Italian kitchen, it is only about obedience. Obedience to the old ways.”

“Ginevra is a perfectionist,” Fabio says. “Last week in Rome, she made a duck. And she drove miles and miles to a little village in Lazio to buy the duck, because it had to be just so. And then she spent an hour picking through the vegetables at Campo dei Fiori because they had to be just so. And then she spent three hundred fifty thousand lire for caviar and
tartufi
even though she cannot pay her house. And then—”

“
Basta
, Fabio,
basta
—” Ginevra covers her mouth, laughing.

“No,” Sylvie says. “Not
basta
. Go on.”

“And then she made the duck, and we ate, and it was the most delicious duck we ever taste, and we tell her, ‘Ginevra, it is marvelous,' but she takes one taste and says, ‘No, no, it's awful, throw it away, throw it away,' and starts taking our plates from us. She is mad!”

Ginevra is still laughing. “I told you, the fourth taste wasn't right!”

“The fourth taste?” Seth asks.

“There were supposed to be five tastes, and the fourth—”

“
Che cosa?
” asks Signora Dorati, bewildered, and Alex offers her a quick summation in Italian, at the end of which she laughs halfheartedly. She has not touched her pasta. He pours more wine for himself and her.

A barrage of heavy-metal music stuns the atmosphere; apparently Francesca has put on one of her Bon Jovi records.

Sylvie puts down her glass, closes her eyes, and rubs her temples. Francesca, nonchalant and challenging, comes out of the kitchen, picks up some empty bowls, goes back in.

“Alex,” Sylvie says, “can't you do something?”

“Do what? You do something for once.”

“You're useless,” Sylvie says. Then she turns and shouts, “Will you please shut that dreadful noise down?”

“All right, all right!”

The music is turned off, not down, the needle pulled from the record with a violent scratch meant to be heard.

There is a quiet which feels dangerous, like the moment after the screams of someone dying have finally stopped.

“So, Celia,” Sylvie says, with a smile that seems to cost, “tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up?”

“New York.”

“Really! Me too. Though mostly in East Hampton. Did you ever go to East Hampton?”

“Not until I was grown up.”

“And where did you go to school?”

“Bronx Science.”

“I was at Spence. I dated a boy from Bronx Science once. Gerald Ashenauer. Did you
know him?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Well, of course not, you're probably just decades younger than me, aren't you?”

“Not
decades
.”

“And what kind of work do you do?”

“For God's sake, Sylvie, don't interrogate the poor girl,” Alex says, pouring more wine. “After all, she's only come to lunch.”

“I don't mind answering,” Celia says. “Only it's not very glamorous. I was a proofreader and copy editor.”

“Any kind of work sounds glamorous to me,” Alex says, “never having done any myself.”

“Why do you say ‘was'?” Sylvie asks.

“Celia's quit her job,” Seth says. “We're not going back. We're going to stay here in Italy.”

“Oh, jolly good for you!” Alex says, lifting his wineglass. “Wonderful. A new wave of expatriation, that's what we need over here. A shot in the arm, since all the British around here are so bloody boring.”

Francesca and Adriana come out from the kitchen again.

“We've washed the bowls, Mummy,” Adriana says.

“Thank you, sweetie.”

“Mummy,” Francesca says, “can't I please go to the Bon Jovi concert next week?”

Sylvie's hand once again cradles her breast. “We'll talk about it another time, Francesca.”

“But Seth says it's all right, he says nothing will happen and he likes Bon Jovi, don't you, Seth?”

“Uh—yes,” Seth says. “Absolutely.”

No one laughs.

“Please, Mummy.”

“Just say yes,” Alex says.

“I said we'd talk about it later,” Sylvie says.

“Oh, I'm so sick of you!” Then Francesca picks up an empty bowl from the table and smashes it against the bricks, where it shatters loudly; her father's beautiful, hand-painted bowl.

Signora Dorati gives the only audible gasp.

Sylvie is standing in an instant. “Get in the house,” she says, but though Adriana runs indoors, Francesca doesn't move. “You're fakes, you and Daddy,” she says, “you haven't worked a day in your lives, you just sit out here on your asses. I'd rather be dead than grow up like you.” Then her eyes bulge, and she brings her hand tentatively to her teeth, as if to stuff the words back in.

“Mummy, I—”

“Get in the house,” Sylvie says again, with dental precision, her voice dangerous. Francesca turns, and is gone.

“Excuse us just a moment,” Sylvie says. “Just your run-of-the-mill family catastrophe.”

She follows her daughter into the house. Signora Dorati, fluttering her fan, whispers something furiously to Ginevra, who whispers something back. Signora Dorati wipes her
brow with a handkerchief.

“I think,” Alex says, “that a toast is in order, don't you, Seth?”

“Ah, sure,” says Seth. “What shall we toast? Mothers and daughters?”

“I was thinking, not working a day in one's life. Sitting on one's bum.” He is pouring himself yet another glass of wine.

“Here's to bum-sitting, then,” Seth says.

“Cin-cin,” Ginevra says. The glasses clang.

The chick on Sylvie's tit, in spite of her best efforts, has died. With a sort of sentimentalist's imitation of peasant hardness—her face stoic, her lower lip not quivering one bit—she buries the small, feathered corpse in the garden. Francesca and Adriana, their eyes red but dry, watch her, don't say a word. Then the three of them disappear into the kitchen together, the girls clinging to their mother's arms, tied to her by some blood bond not even broken pottery can threaten, and from which Celia is naturally, painfully excluded.

On the patio, Seth practices his Italian on a bored-looking Signora Dorati. “
Che meraviglia
,” she responds tiredly to everything he says. “
Che bravo. Che stupendo
.” Ginevra and Fabio play a foolish game of Ping-Pong at a green table. Once the ball goes rolling under Signora Dorati's chair, but she has apparently been so defeated by the events of the afternoon that she hardly notices when her daughter reaches under her legs to get it.

Then Alex—drunk, but pleasantly so—invites Celia for a tour of his studio, and together the two of them head off down the hill toward the old barn. “Now you'll get to
see my ‘work,' ” he says, making little quotation marks around the word with his fingers.

“I can't wait,” Celia says, as he pulls open the wide, scarred doors. Inside the barn the air is dark and moist, and all around them are animals—willowy, spindly, brass tigers and antelopes, gazelles, stone cats, their eyes painted black.

“So you see,” he says, “I have my own grotto of the animals.”

Looking at all these animals, the first thing Celia thinks of is her mother's shelves and shelves of elephants.

“They're fantastic,” she says.

“My daughter's right,” Alex says. “There's no reason for Francesca to take me and Sylvie seriously, to listen to us. We're anachronisms. Useless, really. Look at what I do all day! A toy man!” He laughs. “When they were young, that was fabulous, there was nothing better a father could be than a toy man. But now—well, you only have to look at what happened. I don't understand these young people. They're so—practical. They have no romance in them. Francesca, especially. She says her ambition is either to be a rock star or go to work on the stock exchange and make her first million pounds by the time she's thirty. Sixteen years old, and talking like that. Whereas when I was sixteen—well, a lot has changed.”

Celia cautiously strokes the neck of a ceramic giraffe painted with blue spots.

“Do you sell them?” she asks.

“Now and then, through friends. I don't have much of a mind for business. Once Sylvie and I went to New York to talk to some gallery people, people who'd known my father—very intimidating, those people were, not encouraging and not very kind. We fled back here as fast as we could. We really aren't made for the world, you see. Francesca is.
She'll go to England, get a job, be a Sloane Ranger in London, just like she says. And maybe on the way she'll join a punk band, she'll live in a tenement in Brixton. The world. Adriana's more like us. I'm not so sure about Adriana.”