Imola (11 page)

A green light for him. “Why did you have to take care of him?”

“My father left us. Mother had to work nights so I could go to school. I didn’t sleep much his last year.”

A large truck whizzed past and sent a shock wave through April’s open window. A puff of dust followed. She reached to turn the ignition.

Jason stopped her hand. “Sorry, but I don’t understand. Why would you not want kids? Are you afraid there might be a hereditary problem? Genetic counselors can sort that out.”

She flopped back in her seat. “That’s part of it.” She reached for the key again.

Jason flinched but didn’t stop her hand.

The BMW fired and lurched onto the road.

Two deep breaths seemed to cleanse April’s mood. “I don’t want to ruin the day any more than I have already. I’m excited about this last winery.”

“I’ll still sit it out,” Jason said. “Any more wine and I’ll go from sleepy to obnoxious.”

The headrest cupped his head, but his mind spun too fast to let go. He closed his eyes and hoped the warmth of the late afternoon would do its job.

A strong jolt shook the car. Jason’s legs shot out, and his toes struck the floorboard. The haze gradually cleared to give him his bearings. He turned in the seat and caught sight of a young man closing the trunk. April slipped the man a bill and skipped toward the driver’s side door.

She threw open the door and slid into the seat. “You’re awake.”

“I thought we were having an earthquake.”

A turn of the key and the BMW matched April’s enthusiasm. “That was the best Pinot I’ve ever had. That thump was a full box, a dozen bottles.” A slight slur stained her speech.

He squinted at the brightness that emanated from both outside and inside the car. “A new record.”

“It’s incredible. I’m going to have to hoard some of it. This one’s for special occasions only.”

Jason tapped the fingertips of his left hand with his right index finger. A frown doubled his squint.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a large winecollection.”

“I don’t.”

“By my calculations, you bought forty-two bottles of Pinot Noir today. To me, a small collection is around ten bottles.”

“A small collection is under two hundred. I’m closer to one hundred.”

“After today?”

“Yes. My collection isn’t diverse. I concentrate on a few favorites.”

“Where do you keep them? A second floor condo usually doesn’t come with a cellar.”

April laughed. “You really don’t know anything about wine, do you?” Her right hand patted his thigh. “There are several storage lockers around town. Temperature controlled. I rent a small room in one not far from home.”

Jason bobbed his head. “I keep my beer supply in the refrigerated section of Belletini’s Liquor Store. I’d call mine a large collection.” He waited for another laugh, which didn’t come. “What do you do with all that wine? I know you have some with dinner, but it seems a bit much for personal use.”

“I entertain sometimes.”

“I can’t remember a single time since I’ve been around.”

She gave him a long stare, then returned her eyes tothe road. “You don’t come around very often, so how would you know?”

“You threw parties and didn’t invite me?” He tried to make the hurt sound sincere.

She shrugged. “Don’t take it personally. I don’t think you’d have much fun around some of my colleagues.”

“Ashamed of me?”

“Not at all. I work with a lot of pompous asses. You’re too honest to be in a room with them for any length of time, particularly if alcohol is served. These people don’t do well in mixed company. They either talk business all night or they try too hard to be the life of the party. Either way, you’d escape at the first opportunity.”

“You’re ashamed of them?”

“Not that, either. I enjoy their company because of our common interests.”

“So, you’re kind of like your wine collection.”

Her chuckle was truncated by a frown.

He settled into the seat and opened his window enough to put a hitch in his inhalations. The day was winding down around him.

“What kind of reporter are you?”

Her vacillating mood seemed to take a new form—a matter-of-fact, detached air. Jason pulled his head from the headrest.

“There’s more to the story,” she said. “Don’t you want to hear it?”

“Do you want to tell it?”

“I do this for a living. This time I need to be the patient. If it helps others, it should help me, too.”

“My fee is a six-pack an hour. And it’ll require multiple sessions.”

“Deal.” She backed off the accelerator but remained serious. “My father was a religious man. Very devout. My mother wasn’t. She believed in God, but she didn’t have much time for organized religion.”

“That’s not so unusual. You’re describing my family now, but with the genders reversed.”

“But my father was LDS. You know. Mormon. He wanted a large family—at least five children.”

“Are you religious?”

“Let me get this out. Ask me later.” The car lurched. “My mother was raised Catholic. And she liked to drink wine in the evenings. Not a lot—two or three glasses. Sometimes four. It drove my father nuts. He wanted her to adopt the LDS attitude about alcohol. He wanted her to convert. She wouldn’t.”

“An age-old conundrum.”

“When my brother was born—”

“Harry.”

She glanced over. “Yes, Harry. When Harry was born, my father blamed my mother. He wouldn’t get off her case. He said the wine did it—created Harry’s problems. She started drinking more and more. That’s when thefights started to get really bad. My father wouldn’t have anything to do with Harry. He said it was her problem. She caused it. It wasn’t his seed but her drinking that did it.”

“Jerk. Is that when he left?”

“No. He stayed for almost a year after that. He tried to get her to stop the wine. He wanted more children. But not as long as she was drinking. We had a lot of visits from people from the church. But as soon as they left, she headed for the wine again. My father would get furious. Eventually, he said he’d had enough. I think he divorced her, but she never talked about it.”

“Is your mother still alive?”

“No. She lived long enough to see me get into medical school. She worked so hard to make sure I could get there, and she didn’t make it long enough for me to pay her back. I think she died a lonely woman. It broke my heart.”

“I have a feeling she was happy in the end … seeing you get into medical school.”

The tires let out a muffled squeal as the BMW turned into the driveway of her condo complex and lined up with her garage. She stopped short of the door, which remained closed. “You coming in? I have a party in mind right now, and you’re invited.”

“Can I take a rain check? Wine always gives me a doozy of a headache, and this one’s just getting started. I think two aspirin and my pillow are the company I need right now. Unless you’re in need of unconscious company. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I should get the wine over to the locker right away. I’ll have to get into some of the good stuff tonight. It’ll be your loss.” She forced her lower lip out into a toddler pout.

He pulled the door handle, but froze. “So, are you? Religious?”

A slight smile escaped from her bowed head. “I believe in a supreme being.”

“But you’re not religious?”

“Religions were invented by man to give hope for a sometimes hopeless existence. They were formed to give a moral framework to human societies. Most modern religions have pushed those tenets to the back of their priority lists. Look at most of the wars throughout history. See if religions were involved. I choose faith over religion.”

“Did Harry’s problems alter your beliefs?”

She looked over, scowling. “Do you think microcephaly was punishment from God for my mother’s drinking?”

The rapidity of her response, and its forcefulness, surprised him. He watched her eyes, but they didn’t say a word. “No. If there is a supreme being, he or she probably doesn’t intervene in our daily lives. It’d be too big of a job. I think we’re judged on a lifelong balance of actions. I don’t think a deathbed repentance can erase a lifetime of sinning or a single behavioral trait can damn us.”

Her look intensified. “But, from a medical standpoint, alcohol can cause problems during embryonic development.”

“I wouldn’t dwell on that. There are too many things that can go wrong: genetics, developmental mistakes.”

“And it could be hereditary.”

“There’s always a chance. Is that why you don’t want to have kids?”

“Please, go. I have to get this wine to the locker.”

Jason slid out of the seat and leaned back into the car. His head throbbed with his change in posture. “There’s always a chance. For everyone. But the odds are incredibly small.” Her watering eyes shook him.

Her words flew at him. “The one thing in this life a man can’t handle is the thought that he produced a defective offspring. I don’t want to watch another man slam the front door for good. I don’t want to die lonely like my mother. Now, let me go.”

Jason turned and walked to his car like he was balancing a stack of books on his head. Despite the headache, he decided to take the longer, scenic route home—his thinking route.

April’s words kept him driving. Psychiatrists were like everyone else. They had their own personal baggage to carry through life. And April’s interest in wine seemed intertwined with that baggage. Did she enjoy a few glasses of wine each evening because it validated the sidestep of her biological urges?

The afternoon was eye-opening for him; it gave hima window that looked deep inside her. And it drew him to her. But it still wasn’t like the feeling he had with his ex-fiancée, Eugenia. That whole mess had changed him and his views on women. But, recently, something else had changed in him as well. And that’s where he felt a common ground with April. Despite their different interests, they both seemed to take the same approach to life. Their age? Was that it?

He passed his turnoff and headed for Belletini’s. It had to be age. Once the twenties passed from windshield to rearview mirror, romantic adventures seemed to take on a different tone. One with more immediacy. And he wrestled with it. He still believed in a certain kind of love despite the innate tendency to compromise. He knew both he and April no longer toed up to the fountain of youth and flipped in pennies. They chucked quarters from a distance. But the goal was still the same. At least it was for him.

And where did Agnes fit into all this? Why did she pop into his mind every time he thought about his relationship with April, every time he was with her? There was no way anything could happen between him and Agnes. It was impossible. Then why did the thought of her keep forcing its way in? Why was she able to make him forget about Eugenia, when April couldn’t? Maybe this was his subconscious way of holding back from anything serious with April. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Agnes. Maybe this was just another one of Eugenia’s long tentacles.

He parked the car and stood leaning on the open door. The fluorescent lights of Belletini’s were already on, competing with the sun as it dipped into a layer of molasses that coated the horizon.

His feelings for April were comfortable. But were they enough to take away his scars? Or to take away April’s scars?

The quiet of the Imola Day Room no longer soothed Agnes’s desire for solitude. The silence was a threat. Instead of staring at the shadows of the outside world, cast on the wall opposite the windows, she sat with the wall to her back, where she could see the entire room. Relaxing and being on guard were on opposite extremes of her behavioral continuum, and it distressed her because she wanted to do both.

It felt like her life in Imola was degenerating, falling apart. And it was all Stuart’s fault. He’d cracked her globe of security. Without it intact, serenity no longer existed.

Stuart hadn’t been transferred as everyone had said he would. He still lived down the men’s hall. Still came into the Day Room. But he didn’t bother any of the girls anymore. No more fondling, anyway. No morehunched shuffles to his room. He still spent time in his room, but he half stomped, half limped down the hall in his walking cast. Each trip, his door slam reverberated throughout the wing. It shook the television on the overhead wall bracket.

In the Day Room, he stared. He sat and stared all day, his eyes nearly closed to slits. They flicked like the eyes of a nervous ferret, from one girl to the next.

Agnes shuddered. Mostly, Stuart’s eyes found her. If she moved, flinched, breathed deeper than a sigh, his stare pierced her. And his middle finger would go up. It was seldom still, jabbing the air at anyone or anything that moved. He wouldn’t say a word. He’d just thrust the finger in the air and sneer.

Agnes stayed in the Day Room as long as she could. But the comfort she craved didn’t show. The room had never felt drafty before. Now there was a constant chill. The kind a sweater couldn’t tame.

She stood and stretched. The nervousness of the night had triggered a series of eye-closing yawns, each making her lightheaded for an agonizing instant. She backed up against the wall and looked around the Day Room. The sun touched the horizon, stretching the branch shadows across the ceiling. Giving them a pink tint.