Secrecy (32 page)

“Of course. Couldn’t be better.”

Elena’s keen eyes examined her daughter, missing no nuance of expression. Apparently satisfied, she bubbled over, “Look, I’m tearing, you’re making me smear my eyes. Oh, this is wonderful! Do you like your room? I suppose you’re wondering why I had you stay at a hotel. It’s quite a story. I’ll tell you when we sit down. Let’s go outside. You’ve never been in Venice. Don’t waste a minute. You must start at San Marco. It’s a marvelous day, so let’s go. We’ll sit there and have a drink and talk.”

This stream of words flowed until they reached the great square with the church, the cafés, and the pigeons that, Charlotte reflected as she gazed, would be familiar to anyone in the world who had ever received a postcard picture of Venice.

“So,” Elena commented, “now tell me about yourself. You never say anything in your letters.”

“Nor do you,” Charlotte said gently. “Maybe you should begin by telling me what you’re doing in Verona.”

“Not Verona. I’m in a villa near Verona. Well, I might as well put my cards on the table.” Elena sighed. “I left my husband last week. There wasn’t enough time to inform you because everything happened so fast.”

“But I thought you were so happy with Mario.”

“I was and I wasn’t. I suppose at bottom it was a question of boredom, getting fed up, I with him and probably he with me, although he never said so. But he never wanted to do anything except practice medicine. I’ve always told you how he hates to travel, how I could never get him to come with me to America. Goodness, it would have been a miracle to get him to your wedding. Thank heaven, I don’t have to worry about that now. It’s not that we had a bad life, you know. The apartment was perfect, and—well, you’ve seen his picture. He’s as good looking as your father, but in a different way, much more sophisticated. However, it’s all been quite amiable. Possibly—even probably—he was relieved. We should have done it sooner. We had no little children, nothing to keep us, after all, so I just left.”

“You just left.”

It was astonishing to Charlotte. As you trade in your car or reupholster your furniture, you end it.

Her astonishment must have been very visible, for Elena resumed quickly, “It’s a hard subject for you
and me, considering our past, isn’t it? You could write books about those things. People do write them, don’t they? But books never really explain things properly. Sometimes you can hardly explain them to yourself while they’re happening.”

Elena’s delicate wrists, each embellished by two or three gold bangle bracelets, rested on the table. Her face, circled with glossy black curls in her timeless style, was bent as though she were examining the rings on her fingers. Then abruptly, she raised it and looked straight at Charlotte.

“The truth is that I met someone,” she said. “His villa is where I’m staying. That’s why I thought you might prefer a hotel, you see. Things get complicated. You do see, don’t you?” she asked anxiously.

Sad, thought Charlotte. Sad.

“Yes,” she said, it being simpler to agree.

“You’ll meet him sometime. He’s Swiss-Italian. In the winter he goes to his house in Gstaad. He’s an investor, some sort of banker—I don’t know much about those things. You’d like him. He’s cultured and charming, a little younger than I am, but …” Elena threw out her hands palms up.

That most probably was the reason why a twenty-five-year-old daughter was to be kept out of sight. With a soft pity Charlotte saw again, in the afternoon light that had no pity, the tiny lines that were around her mother’s eyes and the parentheses around her mouth.

Elena caught her glance. “You’re looking at my smile lines? I’m having them taken care of next month. I’m going to a first-rate clinic in Switzerland.”
She gave Charlotte a rueful, apologetic smile. “You don’t know yet how terrible it is to see fifty approaching. Five more years, and my cheeks will start that little drooping, those little pockets that squirrels have when they’re holding a nut in their mouths.”

“You know you’re being silly, don’t you? At eighty-five, after a few more face-lifts, you’ll still be young,” Charlotte said, thinking almost tenderly, A careless, foolish child. And nobody, least of all I, can really know what made her that way, any more than you can explain why Claudia should have had the son she had.

“White becomes you,” Elena observed. “There’s nothing like white linen in the summer. Yes, you do look wonderful. Glowing, the way people do when they’re in love. I always say the glow is unmistakable. But you never give me any details. You were a secretive child. You still are. All you write about is your job and that project in Kingsley.”

“Well, all right, I’ll tell you. I am very much in love. Here’s his picture.” Charlotte was amused to hear herself saying what people always say: “It’s only wallet size and doesn’t do him justice.”

Elena examined it critically before giving her opinion. “He looks as if he’s probably tall. A nice, strong face. Yes, a very nice face. Serious, I think, like you. You were such a serious child. Is he like that too?”

“Yes and no,” Charlotte replied, seeing them walking through Boston without umbrellas in an April downpour, soaked and loving the rain, laughing like a pair of teenagers.

Elena’s musings interrupted these bright images. “Love. Sometimes, Charlotte, I find myself wondering whether I ever really knew it. Maybe I didn’t and only thought I did. Is that possible, do you think? Oh, well! What does your father say about Roger?”

“Dad likes him.”

Perhaps, though, he didn’t like him as much as he had at the start, not after reaching this impasse. It was a case, the last time the two had talked, of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

“Then Roger must be very much okay,” Elena said, laughing. “I see Bill as the typical father who never thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.” She jumped up and, drawing a bracelet from her arm, said impulsively, “Here, you must have this to remember the day you sat on the Piazza San Marco and told me about Roger. Here, put it on.”

“No, no, I don’t want to take your bracelet,” Charlotte protested.

“The occasion calls for a present. Besides, it’s not emeralds, for heaven’s sake. Take it. Now let’s walk back and dress for dinner. We’ll have a gala celebration, and afterward you’ll telephone to Roger and tell him about it.”

Very much touched, Charlotte put on the bracelet. Life with Elena, she thought. Generous gifts, generous galas, generous, foolish heart.

They sat long and late over dinner, from fish soup to chocolate bombe, to the final cheese and fruit. On the table, candles bent in the wind. Far below the dining room the lights of gondolas and vaporetti
splashed wakes onto the flat, black water. Elena chattered like a nervous young girl, rushing from one topic to another, from place to place: the film festival here in Venice, the music festival in Salzburg, and the Highland Games in Scotland. Nevertheless, she was still interesting; between visits, Charlotte thought, you could forget how she sparkled. Indeed, she was as sparkling as she had ever been. It was almost comical to think of her in Kingsley, hiking out to the lake or discussing the budget at the Board of Education meeting.

“I took a room next to yours,” Elena said, “so we can talk. Let’s go up now, if you’re finished. You must tell me more about Bill. How is he, really?”

“Dad’s pretty well,” Charlotte began when they were sitting in her room on the rose velvet chairs. “Of course it was a great relief to get rid of those awful tenants without having to fight a court battle that we’d most likely lose.”

“I can imagine. Oh, your marvelous project! Kingsley won’t recognize itself. I’m so proud of you, I could burst. I’m going to hang this beautiful picture you brought me in my bedroom, right across from the bed, so I can see it when I wake up. When do you expect to be finished? It should take at least a year or two, shouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” She heard her own words ring in a minor key. “We haven’t even started it yet.”

“Haven’t started? Why not?”

She was about to give an evasive reply. And yet, why not admit the troubling truth? So she told it,
while Elena listened with sharp attention to the detailed, plaintive account.

“So that’s where we’re stuck, you see,” Charlotte concluded in that same minor key. “I can’t understand Dad’s thinking, especially since he’s in such bad shape financially—even worse than Cliff is, who at least earns a little from his book.”

“I would gladly help Bill out, although I suppose he wouldn’t accept anything from me,” Elena said.

Charlotte had to smile at that piece of truth. “No, I’m afraid he wouldn’t.”

Elena got up and poured two glasses of wine. “Let’s not spoil our first evening with troubles. Let’s drink to better luck,” she said briskly.

“If a drink could bring it, I’d drink a whole bottle,” Charlotte replied.

“Yes, you’ve had a hard year with all this going on. And Claudia’s death too. That was sad. She was too young to die.”

“It’s especially sad that she didn’t live to see her son come home again, even though it’s the FBI that will be bringing him.”

“My God! The FBI?”

“Yes, the native police are well on his track. The FBI were at the house searching through everything, every paper in Cliff’s and Claudia’s desks. It was awful.”

“Yes. Awful. You didn’t tell me.… But how will it be for you when he comes back?”

“Mama, you know that I’ve put that past me. I’m over it,” Charlotte said steadily.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that.” Elena
shook her head, her face gone grim with recollection. “You went through pure hell back then. We all did. It almost killed your father. You didn’t know that. How could you have known, at your age? He’s such a loving man. I have always admired him, Charlotte.”

A loving man
. As if I, of all people, didn’t know.

“That’s why I’m so upset about what’s happened,” Charlotte lamented. “I was very angry at him the last time we talked. It hurts to think about it.”

Remembering that telephone conversation, she felt chilled. And she sat there silent for a minute or two, crumpled in the chair, hugging her knees.

“Cliff has been trying to reason with him, although to no avail,” she said at last. “Maybe I’ll phone Cliff tonight and ask him to get hold of Dad again. If Cliff were to be furious, really furious, about this craziness of Dad’s, I believe he could force him to change his mind.”

Elena, who was still standing with glass in hand, now replaced it on the table. She opened her mouth to speak, was hesitant, and said, “I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t try to force Bill. No. Leave him alone. Don’t call Cliff.”

Surprised, Charlotte asked, “Why? But why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Elena made a vague gesture. “He’s had a bad time, that’s all. So many troubles.” She straightened a tilted gladiolus in the vase. “I remember how Bill used to fuss over these, taking them out of the ground in the fall, storing them, and replanting them in the spring. So much work, I always
thought. But they are lovely, really lovely.” And she went on, murmuring, “Such striking colors, so intricately made, folded and folded.”

She made a picture, standing over the flowers in her robe, lemon colored and sumptuous as an evening gown. Yet her features had contracted into a troubled frown that had no connection with her words or with the folded petals. The flowers were irrelevant. In an instant Charlotte sensed that they were a diversion, an artificial gesture. And were those tears that had glistened in her eyes before she turned away from the lamplight? If so, they were extraordinary; Elena had never easily shed tears.

“I don’t understand,” Charlotte said. “Don’t I know Dad’s had troubles?” She was thinking that she knew it far more intimately than Elena possibly could. “But why must I not call Cliff?”

Elena hesitated. “I meant—I meant only that Cliff—that he’s had a bad time too. Why bother him? I’d let the whole matter drop if I were you.”

Charlotte pressed for an explanation of these queer, mysterious remarks. “Let what matter drop? You can’t mean the whole building project?”

“Why, yes, if you must. Or at least the part of it that’s causing the problem.”

What on earth could Elena know about it? She had never been interested in business to begin with. And feeling both puzzled and somewhat impatient with such interference, Charlotte replied, “Excuse me, Mama, but you don’t know the first thing about it.”

“I suppose I don’t.” Elena sat down, twisting her
rings and staring at her fingers for a long minute while Charlotte waited.

In a swift yet subtle way the atmosphere had changed. Elena the self-possessed had entirely lost her self-possession. Several times she seemed to be on the verge of speaking, but unable to speak. She trembled. Her agitated movement trembled in the Venetian mirror on the opposite wall.

Presently she said, “You’re a responsible woman. You can be trusted. Can you be trusted, Charlotte? If I were to ask you never, never to repeat a thing, would you never repeat it?”

“Well, I should think you know you can count on that,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, you’re Bill’s child and he’s the straightest, most responsible person I ever met. Look at me.”

And Charlotte, now reflecting the other’s almost hysterical condition, obeyed. The two pairs of eyes, solemn and scared, looked into each other.

“Charlotte … I have something to tell you. I’m trusting you. You promised. God forgive me if I’m making a mistake.”

“Please!” Charlotte cried out. “What are you saying? Please!”

“Listen to me,” Elena whispered. “Listen. That Ted, that monster, is never coming home. They can stop waiting for him.”

How on earth did Ted fit into this subject? An aberrant thought struck Charlotte: She is ill. She’s having a breakdown. Unconsciously, she put her hand on her mother’s, as if to calm her. And humoring Elena, as she had read somewhere that you are
supposed to do when a person is distressed, she said quietly, “I’m listening, Mama. What makes you say that?”

“Because he’s dead,” Elena said, still whispering. “He died a long time ago.”

“But they have found him. People have seen him.”