“I won’t. Thanks, Joe.”
“Who’s Joe?” my mother said as I hung up, her back to me, fixing a drink. At this distance she seemed small, her shoulders as narrow as a girl’s. Who was Joe? An investigator. A rat chaser. Someone who knew about Gianni.
“An army buddy,” I said.
“In Venice? That’s nice.”
“In Verona.”
“Still. Want one?” she said, turning. “I know it’s early, but the fitting was hell. Nobody ever says how exhausting it is, just standing. But wait till you see it-so pretty. It’s got beads along here,” she said, drawing her hand along an imaginary neckline. “Oh, but you don’t care a bit, do you? Half the time you don’t even notice what people have on. What’s in the bag?” She nodded to the small satchel I’d packed with clothes. “Moving out?” Her voice light, her eyes fixed on mine.
“No. Just a change.”
“Ah,” she said. We never talked about the nights away, the unused bed. I was simply “out late.” “Did you call Gianni?” Offhand, as if it were an afterthought.
“No.”
“Darling, I wish you would. It would mean so much to him.” She put down the drink and walked toward me. “Think what it’s like for him.”
“What what’s like?”
She sighed. “Well, you, I suppose. I wish I knew why you’ve taken-”
“Then listen to me. Please. It’s important.”
“We’ve had this conversation, I think, haven’t we?”
“Then let’s have it again.”
“Adam, I don’t care what happened a long time ago-”
“A year, year and a half.”
“I know him now.”
“You think you do. People don’t change.”
She looked up at me, her eyes softer. “You don’t, anyway. So stubborn. What a stubborn little boy you were. Always going to set things right. Always so sure. Even in the sandbox.”
“What sandbox? You never took me to a sandbox.”
She smiled. “Well, how would you know? Anyway, I remember seeing you in a sandbox. I suppose some child had taken a toy or something, I don’t know. And there you were on your high horse, all three feet of you. Pointing. ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair!’ Just outraged.”
“Well, it probably wasn’t fair,” I said, smiling a little now too.
“Probably,” she said. She reached up and brushed the hair back from my forehead. “But you’re not a little boy anymore. And nothing is fair. Nothing in this world. There’s only-getting along.”
I took her hand, moving it down from my hair.
“We’re not talking about something that happened in a sandbox,” I said. “People died.”
“Because of him. You think that.”
“Yes.”
She put her hands on my upper arms. “Then talk to him. Let him explain.”
“Mother-”
“Come to dinner.”
I looked at her, disconcerted. A social occasion, to iron out the wrinkles.
“No,” I said, pulling away, then stopped, caught by the hurt expression in her eyes. “Anyway, I can’t,” I said.
“Yes, I forgot,” she said, nodding to the bag. “Tomorrow, perhaps.” A hostess taking in a polite excuse.
“No, not tomorrow either.”
“Really, Adam,” she said with a nervous giggle. “He’ll think-”
I looked at her, not saying anything.
“We can’t go on this way,” she said. “It’s important. To sit down at a table together.”
“Like a family.”
“Yes, like a family. You know, you’re all I have,” she said quietly. Then she turned away, her voice changing, back to Neverland again. “Well, another day. Goodness, look at the time. I’d better run a bath. You won’t be too late tonight, will you, darling?” Ignoring the satchel.
“Not too late,” I said, ignoring it too.
It was dark by the time I got to Claudia’s, and she was in fact staring out at San Isepo, just as I’d imagined.
“You’ll go blind,” I said, flicking on the light. “Everything okay?” I put the satchel near the bed.
She said nothing, smoking and staring out the window.
“I went by the Accademia. They said you’d left. Quit.”
“No, dismissed,” she said after another minute’s silence. “In the fire. Isn’t that right?”
“Fired,” I said automatically. “What happened?”
“My services are no longer required. Signora Ricci told me. The director didn’t bother coming down. He had Signora Ricci do it.”
“But why?”
“Why do you think? A word in the ear. It’s so different in America?”
“Whose ear?”
“The director’s, I suppose. Anyway, someone’s. So now it’s begun. But so quick.”
“Now what’s begun?”
“To get rid of me. Now that I’ve exposed him, what else can he do? Kill me, like my father? He’d like that, but now it’s not legal.”
“You think Gianni had you fired?”
“I know it.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, angry.
“No, it doesn’t work that way. He won’t know anything about it. No one will. But I’ll be gone.”
“Then how do you know it was him?”
“I saw his face.”
“When?”
She turned away from the window and put out the cigarette. “I’m embarrassed to tell you. It was-I don’t know, just something I did. Not thinking. I just went.”
“Where?”
“To the hospital. Signora Ricci told me to leave and I knew. Not the end of the week, leave today. I knew what it meant. Who else would do this? Make me go away, that’s what he wants now. No more-incidents. I thought, he can do this, make trouble for me just by picking up the phone. But I can make trouble for him too-I know what he did. So I went there, all the way to Campo Zanipolo, and then I thought, what am I doing? I’m going to run into the hospital? They’ll think he’s right, a crazy. But what do you do? Take your purse from the desk and thank Signora Ricci and just disappear? That’s what he wants.”
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing. I just stood there, by Colleoni on his horse. I didn’t know. Go? Stay? What? And then he came out. Not alone. With two others, out of the hospital. And they cross the campo-talking, you know-and suddenly he comes near and he stops. It was all there, in his face-no surprise, he knew why I was there, expecting it even, and you know what else? A fear. He was afraid. That I was waiting there for him. I wasn’t. Another two minutes and I would have been gone. But he didn’t know that. Remember I said how I should do that, just be there, at his parties, everywhere? He thought I was.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I just looked at him. And him? Nothing, just a look. But it was there, in his face. And the others, the men with him, they don’t understand it at all. Why he’s staring at this woman by Colleoni. Who doesn’t say anything to him either, just a look. And when they start again, I hear one of them say, ‘Who was that?’ And he says,
