Sweet Karoline (5 page)

"
I didn't know…" I tried to say, but was prevented from finishing by Karoline's firm hand on my elbow.

She
steered me back outside away from the shocked hush of Giulio's relatives and the continued flow of invective from the aggrieved café owner.

Karoline
hurried me down the dusky pathway to a bench overlooking the ocean, a spot I would have reveled in at any other time. After we sat down, she grasped my hand and turned my face to look at her with firm fingers on my chin. "So tell," she said, and I did, though I left out the details of the sexual experience in question, afraid I would be too flowing in my description and therefore not at all contrite.

"
I had no idea he was attached to anyone," I said in my defense. "He never mentioned a girlfriend."

"
It's a fiancée. Apparently that little clearing is a secret rendezvous of theirs. So the parents are really upset. Not only is it obvious that Paolo is a cheat, but he's also been screwing his intended. I guess virginity is still revered around here. The wedding takes place next week, or at least it's supposed to."

She
let go of my hand. "It's one of the major reasons we're here. Giulio is the best man. Or did you forget that part of the itinerary?"

I
stared off across the water, listening to the soothing sound of the waves, wishing I could disappear. "I guess so. I thought we were going on a tour of Italy, not a family visit."

I
know I sounded childish and selfish, which is in fact exactly the way I felt. Karoline, as always, was sympathetic.

"
This really hasn't been what you expected, I know that. Maybe you and I should just go off on our own. Maybe very early tomorrow morning."

I
gave her a sheepish smile. "Yes. Sneak out of town before dawn. I get your meaning. But you really don't have to come with me, you know. You are enjoying this immensely. I truly don't want to spoil it for you. I could join a tour or something. I honestly wouldn't mind. If I were on an organized group tour, I'd be safe so you wouldn't have to worry."

She
looked at me as though actually considering the suggestion, but I realized quickly that she was making a decision. It was a choice. Her original, cherished friend Giulio or her other, in some ways more valued friend, Anne. In the end, the selection that she made ended her life.

As
it turned out, we did leave before anyone was up the next morning. Giulio didn't come to say good-bye, although Karoline admitted later that he'd kissed and hugged her before she left. I was the one he didn't want to see. I had mixed emotions as we climbed aboard the bus to parts unknown. I was suffused with guilt only because I'd hurt Giulio. Certain that he would forgive me at some point, I found that I was not enormously sad. In fact, quite the opposite. I was thrilled to be free.

Karoline
and I spent four weeks traveling through Italy. We made no plans, pre-booked nothing. Karoline had her own ideas about sightseeing. We never trod on the path of common tourists. We went south to the romantic Amalfi coast where we fell in love with Sorrento and Capri. From the cliff tops, we gazed out over the navy blue water, watched birds sail the winds in every direction, soaked in the salt air. We avoided the gift shops and instead traversed little winding alleys and roadways that led out to sheer drops. We marveled over dazzling stone cottages. We ate in quaint cafés that were tucked under trees or behind a house, away from mainstream scrutiny.

We
went north to Florence and stood on bridges to gaze at the domes, steeples and baptisteries. Under Il Duomo's spell of green, peach and white angel carvings and gold tales of hope, I almost entered the hallowed ground, until Karoline reminded me that, throughout history, organized religion was responsible for too much war and death. It would have been unconscionable to appear to admire this monstrosity. We found little shops in the alleyways, far from the tourist marketplaces, with treasures made by hand from stone, marble or glass. We ate authentic Florentine meals, drank heavy dark wine and enjoyed the flow of Italian words and laughter all around us.

In Venice, just north of the Three Bridges, we discovered a square that was a young adult night scene. Surrounded by student residences on all sides, giant old red-bricked buildings with wrought iron Juliet balconies leaned with approval over the scene. We sang and danced with the locals, drank beer, ate panini and took a ride on someone's speed boat up the canal.

All the while, I assiduously took pictures of every step of our adventure. Our albums stand all dusty and ignored now. They had once proudly graced a coffee table and have been pawed through more times than I can count. Karoline and I look happy, excited, rested and young. We are together in most of the photos, arms around each other, laughing, pointing, posing. Neither of us had ever had so much fun.

I
had three more lovers after Paolo, two native Italians and one transplanted German. These secrets I never shared with Karoline, though she must have known where I was. She never asked so I never told.

Nor
did I ask her about the waiter she flirted with and who took her on a late-night stroll, nor about the boat's captain who seemed to spend a very long time with her in his cabin.

Dear Diary,

She
thinks I don't know about most of the men she has fucked, but I know every single slimy one of them.

Chapter
5

In the clear light of hindsight, I can see that we had begun to simply avoid certain sides of our lives. We became reluctant to explore the enormous chasm of difference that existed in our two philosophies of life. I didn't believe that I had to be my fellow creatures' caretaker, while Karoline had a drive to help others and make their lives better. All that Karoline's philanthropic urge did was cause her guilt, as far as I could see, since she never really acted upon her desires other than giving a large percentage of her salary to charity. Which she promptly used for tax deductions.

When
I look back now, I wonder if Giulio and I were her 'hard luck cases'. Perhaps she felt she was already dedicating her life to good. Without the burden of these two absurd friends, Karoline might have been a crusader, a nun or a leader in the war on poverty. A politician perhaps.

Sexuality
was only one of the topics we began to avoid discussing intimately or privately. The topic still figured in debates with others, along with charity, politics and religion, but there ceased to be any sharing between the two of us. Those discussions would have come too close to placing our fractured relationship under a formidable microscope.

Since
Karoline's death, I have polished the table to a sheen that resembles very old wood, even though the table is one that she and I bought new. It was the single most expensive piece of furniture either of us had ever purchased. At first it was a source of pride and excitement. This was where we ate either alone, together or with our friends. This was the focal point around which our heated debates took place. This was the displayer of our most prized souvenirs. This was the center of our life.

Karoline
religiously kept it clean and polished. She dictated its care, as she did with the Turkish carpets and the other artifacts we brought home from our minstrel wanderings. Her obsession with keeping the souvenirs clean and polished was a good thing, I'd thought. I for one immediately abandoned them and would have sent them off to a closet, alone and neglected. Under Karoline's rigorous attention, the mementoes still looked new and I was appreciative. I could look at them and remember each step, each breathtaking view, every moment that we stood shoulder to shoulder gazing over a place or a building or a world wonder that I'd only read about in books.

Over
the years I began to believe that those journeys were like the men in my life. I loved visiting them for the first time, feeling the newness of their surface, getting to know a little bit about how they came to be, intrigued by their mystery and mystique. Soon after that initial visit I would get bored, anxious to get on to the next world wonder. Already thinking about future possibilities and places to see even as I stood in their midst. Unlike the towers and ruins and statues, which appeared unmoved by my indifference, the men would often cry, beg or storm away angrily. Perhaps to them I too was an unfeeling relic. All of that changed with Karoline's murder and the advent of Ethan.

The
day after Karoline died, Halina and my parents arrived unannounced on our doorstep. Still in my silk nightgown, my hair was frizzier than ever. My eyes red from lack of sleep. All I remember was the suffocation. The hugs, the housecoat thrown around me. The coffee pressed into my hand. The endless questions, the tears.

My
mother is an enormous woman. Folded under her belly and boobs are layers of jiggling fat that swim underneath the sundresses she favors. Always colorful with prints, flowers or joyful patterns, she wears them in winter or summer. Her long hair—once dark black and now striped with grey—is usually tied in a bun at the back of her head. Her eyes are a startling combination of light and dark brown flecks. Wide and guileless, they give her face a beauty that distracts nearly everyone from her size.

Vera
Williams fills up a room in more ways than one. Gregarious, loving and loud, she is the stereotype of a black mama. She loves to cook, entertain and wallow in other people's dramas. She is fond of retelling the story of her roots, the American slaves who came into Canada and married Indians. Vera, she would have us believe, was a Mohawk-African Princess. She treats me as though I were a trophy, sculpted to honor the roots of both royalties. I, in my hidden and secret self, am utterly ashamed of her flamboyant, in-your-face personality. She smothers me with adoration. Yet I am aware of a distance that keeps me from believing in her love as genuine.

Halina
is the polar opposite to my mother. Tall, slim, polished, Halina is completely self-absorbed and couldn't stand her daughter for turning out to be short, homely and stocky like her father. Gordon Mikulski died very young, when their only girl was just a baby. Probably to get away from Halina.

Neither
Karoline nor I really talked about it, as per usual, but we both acknowledged somewhere deep inside us that we didn't have normal mother-daughter relationships. When our two mothers were in the same room, no one else could speak. Their words flowed over one another like ocean waves, now and then smashing up against each other in a roaring crescendo. In their life and in their conversation, everything was about them, from their point of view. They allowed no intrusion from others.

My
mother isn't actually
self
-absorbed. She is merely consumed with my father. She didn't really have anything left for me or my sister except her native traditions, which she dishes out to everyone in general. Thus I, like Karoline, never felt special or unconditionally loved. We were both pretty much ignored.

My
father is tall, slim and extremely good-looking. I never could understand his obsession with Vera, but he lives that old adage, there is no accounting for taste. When he is near her, he cannot keep his hands off her. They always hug, kiss or touch in some way. Originally my bedroom was next to theirs, until I grew older and figured out what the nightly bumps, moans and thrashes meant. I convinced my father to make me a room in the attic and slept far more soundly after that.

My
sister Elizabeth is very similar to our mother, though she would probably not approve of that statement. She's more like our dad physically but she has the same exuberant personality as our mother. She's the consummate hostess. A store greeter. A woman whose phony sweetness feels like cardboard dripping with syrup.

The
dichotomy of our half-and-half appearance doesn't bother her. Ten years older than I, Elizabeth is much lighter skinned. When our parents moved to the U.S., Elizabeth was old enough to choose, so she stayed behind. Later she married a black man and had three children who nearly cover the whole spectrum of skin colors. She appears to be comfortable in both worlds. Perhaps that's the Canadian way. Certainly my mother proclaims that her birth country is as perfect as her first daughter.

With
my swarthiness I am often, ironically, mistaken for Italian. By the time I moved with Karoline and Giulio to Los Angeles, I'd gotten over my shame and confusion about my own heritage. I learned to simply ignore it.

All
these years later, I can see what lured my father to move from our small Canadian enclave to the United States, even notwithstanding the financial considerations. The place we landed in was fairy-tale perfect, at least from the outside.

Bell
Canyon is ringed by hills dotted with lush native plants and rounded boulders. Huge sycamore and oak trees cover the area. Their enormous limbs straddle the roadways and hillsides like giant muscular legs.

Bell
Creek, a lovely, peaceful blue stream, winds its way through the community. It's known as a 'horse community'. Most of the homes are enormous. A lot of them include stables and paddocks for the horses.

Originally
our house belonged to my grandparents. They bequeathed it to their only son with the stipulation that he live in it. Ten years after their death he would be allowed to sell, but that time frame has come and gone and my mother and father are still in the Canyon. From their house my parents have a breath-taking view into the valley. The place isn't one of the larger residences, nor a part of the gated upper class, but it is huge in comparison to our home in Canada. So spectacular are the sunrises and sunsets that they are causes for celebration each and every day.

When
Karoline, Giulio and I trekked through the Canyon Trail, we encountered deer, hawks, squirrels, foxes, woodpeckers and quail. We'd often spied coyotes from afar, but we'd been taught not to investigate. The area is a stunning combination of modern sophistication and country wild.

The
Mikulskis did live in one of the more ostentatious houses. A white southern-style mansion with a wide porch that stretched all the way around the front and side, the place sported big, airy rooms with tons of windows. The hardwood was always shiny. A wooden staircase, the same deep brown color as the tree in front, wound its way from the entry to the landing and then up to the floor with all the bedrooms.

It
was a romantic and mysterious house to little girls. Outside Karoline's window the slanted roofline of the porch led to one of the fat white columns gracing the outside. When Karoline first talked me into sliding down it in the middle of the night, I felt I'd desecrated something holy.

Behind
the house an old barn that contained empty horse stalls served as a storage and tool shed. It had one magnificent secret. A closed-in loft became our clubhouse. Even Karoline's two older brothers never discovered the hidden door to our hideout.

Despite
its stuffy heat and cobwebs, Giulio and Karoline and I spent hours in that attic. We read, played games, made up jokes and tried cigarettes. The sweat poured down our faces in summer. We shivered inside our jackets in winter. We told stories of the places we would go and the things we would do.

Once,
we went through a spurt of shoplifting, snatching whatever was at hand when the storekeeper's back was turned. We hoarded our stolen wares in the leftover hay inside our loft. We blatantly styled ourselves as The Young Thieves Association, or the YTA, but we were neither brave enough to enjoy our plunder nor smart enough to steal something useful in the first place.

For
a very long time I thought that the Mikulskis were rich and that Halina was cool compared to my mother. I thought of Vera's tight curls, her plain brown face, her stubby fingers and wide girth and I decided Halina was a movie star. She paid a great deal of attention to me, too, which naturally added to my childish worship. She always gave me tips on how to wear my hair, the kind of lipstick and make-up I could use once I was old enough and whether or not a blouse looked good on me. With enormous effort I learned enough Polish to please her.

Halina
played our music. She even smoked, painted her nails and wore bright red lipstick. She drank something that made her breath smell sharp. Her accent was exotic. In her kitchen we danced and sang to Elvis, the Beatles and every other popular fifties and sixties band. Karoline and her mother were happy together while we wiggled our butts and hollered the lyrics. As the attention Halina lavished on me splashed over onto Karoline during our frenzied dancing, my friend floated. Later our own apartment sang with the same joy, often fueled by the same alcohol stimulus, even the same tunes.

I
never could understand why Karoline completely ignored her mother at any other time. It only occurred to me later on that it was actually the other way around.

Karoline
's brothers were big hulking shadows who grunted and ate their meals sloppily and speedily. They didn't go to school once they turned sixteen but joined their father in whatever mysterious work he did. When they were in the kitchen, however, they invariably picked Halina up in their huge arms and swung her around. She would giggle and flush the same way I did whenever a boy I liked said hi.

I
didn't remember Karoline's brothers ever paying attention to me or to their sister. Halina was the center of their world. When they grew up they married women who looked exactly like her. In fact, the wives were younger duplicates of Halina in personality as well. To focus and keep the attention on themselves they moved their husbands hundreds of miles away from their mother-in-law.

Much
later I discovered that the house was rented and that the money source was Halina's mother. Unfortunately, Karoline's Boosha was a traditionalist. In her will she gave all of her estate to her sons, creating a rift between Halina and her brothers that, as far as I know, never went away.

Imagine
how angry Halina would be if she knew that Karoline had received a significant sum from Boosha just before the old woman died. An amount that paid off the mortgage on the apartment.

Bell
Canyon, the town where we grew up, prided itself in being far enough from L.A. to be considered innocent yet close enough to be sophisticated. The population was largely upper class. Many made their livings in the city, especially in the film industry, but absconded to the boonies to have their children or hide from their fans. As a result, there were a great many families who, during the week, were husband-and-fatherless, and some wife-and-motherless, because they worked in Smog City while the rest of the family stayed at home.

My
father, Ian Williams, was born in the States, but he'd been brought to Canada so young he didn't remember Bell Canyon. Like Elizabeth, he'd been old enough to choose not to leave when Granny and Gramps moved back to the U.S.