The Faces of Angels

 

The Faces
of Angels

 

 

Lucretia Grindle

 

 

 

 

F
ELONY
& M
AYHEM
P
RESS
• N
EW
Y
ORK

I
T WAS HOT
and there was a stone in my shoe. These are two of the things I remember, two of the things I think of when I think of the day my husband died. I understand that you might consider that strange. That you might reasonably expect something more momentous, a flash of insight, something large, or incomprehensibly moving. But in my experience it didn't work that way. That isn't what my memory hangs on to. What it grabs instead, what it salvages, are the small things, facts, details I can hold in the palm of my hand like so many grains of sand.

The stone, for instance. It had wedged itself between the flat sole of my new sandal and the bottom of the strap that crossed over my foot. They were typically Italian, those sandals, fancy and impractical, and not really like me at all. In fact, you could fairly say they were an aberration. And I would, except they matched the bag my lover had bought me, and the dress the salesgirl sold us afterwards.

They're ferociously good at that sort of thing, the salesgirls here in Florence, and they show no mercy. They spot you right away, as soon as you walk through the door of one of those fancy little boutiques, and they recognize all the signs. The nonchalant fingering of price tags, the too-close attention to displays, the jumpy, irresponsible twitch at the edge of your smile and, if he's there, the man standing by, the one smiling indulgently and fingering the credit card—or, if he's married, the cash—in his pocket. The salesgirls see it all. Which is not surprising. After all it's virtually a genetic trait in this city, the making and selling of beautiful things, as is the talent that goes hand in hand with it: the special ability to sniff out your secret weaknesses, the holes in your heart that push you to buy, buy, buy. Handbags made entirely of seashells. Perfume distilled from iris kernels that cost more than gold. Engraved notes, and coloured sealing wax. Glass pens, beaded shoes. The salesgirls have them all to hand, all the beautiful, useless things you think you need when you're in love.

Which I was, at the time. And not with the man I was married to. I don't mean that as a confession, by the way. It's no
mea culpa
, that's not the spirit it's offered in. It's just a fact, that's all. Just one more grain of sand.

That wasn't how it seemed, though, on the day he bought me the dress, and the sandals, and the bright blue bag. On that day in early May when I looped my arm through his and he said, ‘Wear it, and I'm touching you,' on that particular day, and on the days that followed, being in love seemed like everything. Everything you've ever been promised or dreamed or wanted. Nirvana. A bright shining light. Call it what you will. To me, that spring in Florence, it seemed like nothing less than that brass ring everyone talks about, the one that, just once in your life, you're supposed to reach out and grab. And I was ready to do that. In fact, in the days just before my husband died, I could almost see my hand moving through the air, almost feel my fingers making contact with the smooth, golden metal.

And then everything changes, and suddenly your life's a Scrabble game that's been knocked backhanded off a table so the letters no longer make up words you recognize. And though you don't fully understand it yet, you know, even before you try, that putting them back will not be possible; that some words will be missing. Holes will be left. There will be crevices and gaps that can never be filled, and things that won't make sense in quite the same way they used to.

So, while this happens, while the world slips, you cling to your strange little collection of facts, the ones you're absolutely sure of. The stone in your shoe. The sweat that slicked down your back and beaded across your chest. And the chalky white dust that was churned by the feet of running children and rose from the paths of the Boboli Gardens to hang on the still and languorous heat of a Sunday afternoon.

It was 25 May, that Sunday, and my husband and I were with other people. This was not unusual because, during the three months we were in Florence on what was effectively our honeymoon—if you can have a honeymoon with someone you've lived with for the better part of a decade—we were almost always with other people. Teachers, to be specific, and the occasional priest.

That was what my husband, Ty Warren, was, incidentally—a teacher, not a priest. Priests were part of the picture, though. They were part of the overall package, so to speak, because Ty was in an exchange programme teaching in religious schools, comparing the relative merits of the education systems. I'm Catholic, but I was just along for the ride, so I didn't really count. As far as the programme was concerned, Ty was the one who counted. He was the Quaker. There was a Baptist, a Methodist and a Lutheran too. Lance, Tricia and Melody, in that order, if my memory serves me right, which it does. And then, of course, there was Father Rinaldo.

Rinaldo joined us for lunch that afternoon, which was supposed to be a treat, a convivial splurge at a trattoria of the fancier kind, and afterwards he came with us to the Boboli Gardens. He waited, smiling, in the bright throng outside the gates while Ty ran off to buy tickets, and chatted amiably as we walked above the amphitheatre, then down by the orangery and made a visit to the grotto. But in the end he left early, most likely because of me.

Up until a week or so before, Rinaldo and I had been friends—if ‘friends' is the right word for someone who hears your confession. During my first weeks in Florence, when I was alone for most of the time because Ty was teaching, and before I met Pierangelo, Rinaldo had taken me under his wing. He had spotted me one morning at San Miniato, standing awestruck in the vestry, and struck up a conversation. Rinaldo knew a lot about art. He was witty and spoke excellent English, and made a point of showing me some of his favourite places in the city. But by that Sunday afternoon at the end of May, our friendship was over. It ended because I made a mistake. A bad one. I told him the truth. All of it, naked and unvarnished.

Two weeks earlier, I had gotten down on my knees in the little black box of the confessional and whispered to Rinaldo that I didn't love my husband. And that I did love someone else. And that for the first time in my life I was happy—truly, wildly happy—and that what I wanted was God's permission to leave. Or, more precisely, to stay, since I understood even then that Pierangelo and Florence are inseparable.

I don't know, looking back, how I could have been so naive, and I wonder now what I had expected. Had I confused the Catholic Church with the Constitution? Did I really think my belief in it gave me a right to the pursuit of happiness? I don't know. The truth is, I would have settled for forgiveness, or even understanding. Compassion. Probably that's what I was really after. I mean, I thought that was the business Jesus was in. But apparently not. Rinaldo set me straight on that score. In the real church, he said, on the real path to God, rather than the byway I'd been wandering on, there was no room for weakness. We were all soldiers, and battles—nothing less than endless wars—had to be fought. In His Name's Sake. And I was blessed because my time had come. I had been presented with this chance to give up what I loved for Christ.

Of course, I demurred. I even went so far as to argue. But Rinaldo rose to the occasion. He insisted that the enemy was at hand. That it was, in fact, my own flesh, and if I did not engage, if I deserted the field and refused to fight—in short, if I didn't stop seeing Pierangelo immediately and dedicate myself, body and soul, to life with the man I had promised to love before God—well, then I might as well consider myself damned. Or at the very least cut off. Excommunicated. Out of the lottery in the stakes of grace.

Hearing those words was like leaning forward to receive a kiss and being slapped instead. And Rinaldo must have sensed it, because when he felt my shock, and heard my silence, he pushed the point home. There was, he said, no middle way. I must give up Pierangelo's love in order to accept Jesus'. My soul, he insisted, was in danger.

One has to admit the Catholic Church has always had an excellent sense of drama.

But despite the fact I knew full well about the histrionics favoured by certain kinds of priests, those words shook me to the core. Until that day I had lived my entire life as a Catholic, an obedient one, if not utterly committed, and so, shell-shocked by the strength of Rinaldo's conviction, I did what I was told. I remember walking back to our apartment from the church of San Miniato and feeling as though the lights had gone out, as though I was becoming slowly blind, and would be blind for ever. But still, I did try. That night I looked into my husband's handsome face, held his familiar hands, studied the flat, warm inflection of his words, and felt…nothing. Nothing but a horrible dulling hardness inside, as if my organs were slowly solidifying, ceasing to function and turning to stone.

When I told Pierangelo, which I did the next day before I lost my resolve completely, he tried to help. He assured me that he loved me, that he would always love me and that he would never forget, but he also assured me that he understood. Even if he didn't believe any more in the church himself, he too was married and, possibly more important, he was Italian. How could he ask me to choose between him and God? I suppose I could have hated him for that, but his response had the opposite effect. It didn't help, and it only made me love him more. Especially when he insisted that I had to do what I believed was right.

And so I did. But my heart was never in it. More than once I dialled his cell phone, just to hear his voice on the message, and occasionally I thought I saw him in a crowd, or on the street. I began to believe I was being followed, as though some other betrayed self, robbed of its chosen future, was dogging me down alleys and across squares. I was nearly run over by a motorcycle outside the apartment when I stepped, without looking, off the sidewalk, and I wondered if it was deliberate, if what I was really trying to do was kill myself fast, instead of ossifying slowly inside.

I did pray. In those awful leaden days, I begged God—I think it was God, or possibly the Virgin because I thought she'd be more sympathetic—that if I couldn't love Ty, could I at least feel something? Anything. But nothing touched the stones inside me, nothing relieved the conviction that I was dying by stages—heart, liver, spleen—and by the time we had lunch that Sunday and I sat there surrounded by the chattering teachers, wearing Pierangelo's dress and clutching the bag he had given me as if it were some sort of living memory, I think that by that time, I can safely say I hated Father Rinaldo.

He was aware of it, I'm sure, but I doubt he felt the same way about me. In fact, I'm sure he didn't, if only because hate implies a certain equality, and Rinaldo was an officer in the army of God whereas I was nothing more than cannon fodder caught on the brink of desertion. I'm quite certain, too, that he sensed the wavering of my resolve, knew where my dress had come from and why I wore it, and read the record of phone calls written on my soul. Every time he looked at me that Sunday a superior sort of pity lit his eyes, as if there was a private understanding between us of just how far I had fallen, and how the sad fact of it would only be offset by the thrill of my redemption, something I was certain he was planning even as he ate his ravioli and drank his wine. I could sense that like a mountaineer before a difficult climb, Rinaldo was getting ready, planning the route by which he would drag me back up the cliff of Faith before guiding me home through my own particular forest of thorns.