Are We There Yet? (16 page)

“So now he's into Annunciations, too?”

“No. It was just a place to meet.”

Elijah knows he's being a drag. So he concentrates hard to send the bad vibes away. He can feel them disperse, like dark angels dipping away to the sky.

“I'm glad you're back,” he says.

They both stand and kiss briefly in front of a small tree that floats on a cloud.

Then Julia pulls away and leads Elijah to his brother.

The three of them stand in front of Veronese's
Annunciation
. Danny doesn't say a word to Elijah about being late. Elijah assumes this is because of Julia's presence.

Mary seems beautifully anguished as a cloud of angels and souls falls onto her. Gabriel is fiercer than before, his finger jabbing upward, the flowers spilling from his hands.

“I guess you have to feel sorry for her,” Elijah says. Julia nods, but she's barely listening. She's still studying the painting, her eyes following the flowers' paths.

“Did Mary have any friends?” Danny asks.

Julia turns to him. “What?”

“I'm the first to admit that I don't know that much about the whole Mary thing. But didn't she have friends? She always seems so alone in these paintings. And then once she has the baby, it's like her previous life never happened.”

“I don't know,” Julia says. “But it's a good question.”

“She probably had friends,” Elijah chimes in. “They just didn't want to be in the picture.”

Julia has nothing to say to that.

After skimming the rest of the museum and dipping into the gift shop for a moment (trying to avoid the
Primavera
mouse pad and the
Birth of Venus
outerwear), Julia looks at her watch and makes an announcement.

“I'm afraid I have to leave you for a little bit,” she says. “I have plans to meet an old girlfriend for the afternoon.” She sees the look on Danny's face and laughs. “Not
that
kind of girl-friend, Danny. Man, you boys are going to need to work on those hang-ups of yours. I'm meeting an old friend from high school who's doing some curating work here. She's going to tell me all about the floods.”

Danny is surprised by how sorry he is to see her go. He is not surprised by how sorry Elijah seems. Danny keeps a respectful distance while his brother asks Julia when she'll be back and when they can meet again. Julia touches his cheek and says it won't be long. They make plans for their next encounter.

“So now what?” Elijah asks as Julia heads away. He watches her disappear into the human traffic. He would wave, if only she would see him.

The brothers decide to fall back on tourism, heading to the Duomo and its environs. The austere interior doesn't at all match the delightful exterior, which is itself darkened by car fumes and other modern pollutants. Elijah hangs by the candles, while Danny paces the baptistery and admires the windows.

Elijah cannot believe how tired he feels. It hits him fully, now that Julia is gone. She'd buoyed him into wakefulness. Now
he's wrapped in fatigue, all of the sleepless hours catching up to him.

“Maybe we should go back to the hotel? To take a nap?” he suggests.

“Good idea,” Danny replies. He too is feeling the full breadth of his tiredness. It's a different tiredness from home— less workmanlike, more atmospheric.

They walk for ten minutes in silence. Then Danny asks,“So what time are you meeting her?”

“About four. You don't mind, do you?”

“Of course not. It's not as if I thought I was going to have dinner with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just a joke. A bad joke.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I have my book. And I should probably get some sleep tonight.”

Elijah can see his brother is bluffing, but he can't think of anything to say besides, “Okay.”

“Just be ready to leave for Rome tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay.”

“She seems very nice.”

“She
is
very nice.”

“I know. That's what I just said.”

Back at the hotel, Elijah grabs his toiletry kit and heads straight to the bathroom. Danny realizes he's forgotten about lunch. But really, he's not in the mood. Sleep will taste much better.

The water turns on and off. Elijah leaves the bathroom and puts his kit back in his bag.

“What about your girlfriend?” Danny asks.

“Huh?”

“You know. Cal.”

“She's not my girlfriend.”

“But weren't you going to write to her?”

“I did,” Elijah says flatly. But he feels guilty when he says it. It's the truth when measured against the question, but it's hardly the truth when measured against his original intentions. He'd meant to write to Cal every day. He'd meant to live his days as letters to her—turning the trip into a story as he went along. Now the story has become something he can't quite share.

If he sent a letter now, it would get to Providence after his return. The end of the story would precede the beginning. Just the fact that he'll be home in less than a week fills Elijah with dread. He would put off his return for a month, if it meant more time with Julia. He wishes he could conjure a future where Julia came back with him to Providence, and the three of them—Julia, him, Cal—frolicked and conversed for the remainder of the summer. But he knows this can't happen. For a variety of unarticulated reasons.

Danny is already snoring. Elijah looks to his brother and feels a genuine guilt. He hadn't intended to abandon Danny so blatantly. He feels bad about it. But the alternative is to not see Julia at all. And that's impossible.

He hopes Danny will be okay and wonders if there's anything in Danny's life that would help him to understand.

Elijah spots two snack cakes at the foot of Danny's bed.
He just can't escape America, can he?
Carefully, Elijah moves them to the dresser so they won't get stepped on.

He tries to sleep. He closes his eyes and sees ceilings.
Melting faces, black woodwork. Saints, inscriptions, murders. Gold, angels, nightmare Popes.

There are good angels and bad angels. There are trees that become clouds.

Julia is gravitating toward him, sliding along in the half of a shell. He is wrestling demons to get to her. Wedding bells ring and children throw crosses in the air.

Only an hour has passed when he wakes up. Danny is still solidly asleep. Quietly, Elijah puts on his shoes and leaves the room. Then he comes back, writes a note thanking Danny for being so cool about everything, and leaves again. He is hours early, but he cannot wait. He will find the bench nearest to Julia's
pensione
.

Then he will wait for her to appear.

Danny is relieved to find it's still daylight. Naps can be devils of disorientation. He is glad to have gotten free before the day has ended. He is not surprised to find that Elijah has gone. But he is surprised by Elijah's note. It's not something Danny would've thought of at seventeen. Danny knows that at that age he would've left without a word.

Part of him can't even believe that Elijah is about to go to college, about to enter that world. Danny still thinks of him as twelve, their parents' favorite, so sure of what is right. But now he's off with a college girl. Or, more accurately, a dropped-out-of-college girl. Something Danny would have only dreamed of when he was seventeen. And maybe still does, from the other end.

Picking up his college copy of
A Room with a View
(never read, alas), he resists the call of CNN and heads to the park square across from the hotel. Most of the benches are already taken. (
Don't these people have jobs?
Danny thinks.) Finally, he finds a spot in the shade. He cracks the paperback spine and settles in. After an hour, he's utterly absorbed and utterly despondent.

Danny puts the book in his lap and searches the park for echoes of Forster. He tries to harken back to a time when being abroad meant something. He searches for a traveler sketching a scene or writing in a journal, as Forster's characters did each afternoon. But instead he sees cell phones and shopping bags, camcorders and an occasional hardcover.

Travel is no longer a pursuit
, he thinks. There is something
inherently noble about that word—
pursuit.
Life should be a pursuit. But Danny doesn't feel like it is. Or, at the very least, that it's a pursuit of the right things.

The daylight dims, and the people scatter like birds. Danny sits still, watching.

He doesn't know what to do. He heads off to find the statue of David, and figures he'll go from there.

Statues was one of their games. There was Statues, and Runaround, and Penny Flick, and TV Tag. And others now forgotten, invented only for a single afternoon before they disappeared with sundown.

Danny remembers the first time their mother walked in on them playing Statues. They couldn't have surprised her more if they'd been dripping with blood. But instead they were absolutely still, absolutely silent, fully clothed and striking classical poses. A Frisbee for a discus. A Lincoln Log for a javelin. Not looking at each other, because then it would become a staring contest, and they would both crack up. So instead they stared into space until a single arm fell or a single leg wobbled.

It couldn't have lasted for longer than a minute. They couldn't have done it that many times. But still, Danny remembers. And when he sees the statues in Florence, he remembers the way he would try to turn himself into carved stone. The way, when Elijah was young, he would secretly be hoping that his younger brother would win. The times he dropped the Frisbee, just to give Elijah that satisfaction. Their mother walking in, not believing her eyes.

In the museum, he tries to mirror one of the statues. He tries to compete again. But it's not the same. He can stare off now for hours. He can avoid moving a muscle. But it doesn't mean anything without someone beside him. It's not a game if he's the only one playing.