The Chameleon (43 page)

Claire did not relinquish her heart to Harrison. Instead, she shared it with him, a much richer gift, presented by a worldly woman, than the total surrender of an impressionable young girl. She whispered words to him on the tip of her tongue and then pushed its moistness into his mouth. She tangled her fingers in his silver hair, marveling at the silkiness of it, inhaling the smells of him she had so crazily craved for so long.

She arched her neck, exposing her throat's lovely hollow to him, leaning back to gather all his kisses. She lavished her willingness on him and invited his advances. He was astonished at how much more powerful love was when it was shared by a man and a mature woman instead of a dominant male and his devoted young admirer. Then, he had been the only man she knew. Now, out of all the men in her glittering world, she wanted him. It made him feel more potent to be chosen.

As she shuddered little kisses down the strong ridge of his chest and then the lean gully of his stomach, she lifted her head to survey the corporeal muscle and sinew that was Harrison, to make sure he was not just some erotic imagining of hers. When she sweetly pulled him into her mouth, she was sated by the familiar tastes of oysters seasoned with the briny juices of Courvoisier and salt. It didn't matter to Claire as they lay comforting each other, catching their breath in the four-poster bed, that they could never go home again.

They made love for the third time as the dawn rolled in over the Seine and across the low rooftops. It discovered them in their secret lovers’ chamber, their faces hidden, buried as they were in one another's flesh. With the morning sun rising in a brilliant blue sky, Harrison bent over the bed to kiss her, then forced himself out the door to catch his plane.

Feeling warm and powerful, she sank back into the feather-filled mattress for a few more hours of dreams. They had climaxed together with such frenzy in the early hours of the morning that she'd thought her heart would surely burst and her breaths stop coming. Now he had gone home to extricate himself from Ophelia, flying out on the 9
A.M.
from Paris to New York. He was like a man on a one-directive mission: to make a clean break and disentangle the nasty loose ends. Claire would return to Rome by train where she would gather her children and her things and stay in Harrison's Ritz Hotel apartment until domestic arrangements could be made.

She drifted into the little parlor and picked up the newspaper that lay on the wood floor, not bothering to read it. All her news was happy. Why spoil it with the world's worries?

In the bathroom she splashed cold water all over herself in the hopes of toning down the warm glow radiating from her face. A night of passion with the man she loved had brightened her complexion, even her eyes lighting up at a higher voltage than the low they'd been dimmed to over these lonely years. But all that was about to change. Her hope and exhilaration were written all over her face.

She wondered how she would be able to disguise the happiness from Duccio's streetwise suspicions. She sighed, remembering how he always bragged he could gauge which way a punch was being thrown at him by just reading his opponent's eyes, whether in a brawl from his rough past or in the sparring he engaged in for exercise. A chill snaked down her spine as she imagined her next conversation with Duccio.

She pushed on her prescription sunglasses before picking up the phone to dial Rome. She called the private line that only she or Lorenza answered. Lorenza picked up with a cheery
“Pronto.”
All was well. Six and Sara were out horseback riding with Tutti as chaperone, but they would be packed and ready for their trip to America with Grandfather in the morning. Signóre Duccio hadn't left the house all day but was still at home in his first-floor office. There had been noisy meetings all morning long, Lorenza reported, with lots of men and lots of screaming. Hardly unusual.

Claire pulled on her silk shirt, wrapped an orange and tan Hermès scarf over her head, tying it twice around her neck, and stepped into her low-heeled Italian shoes and traveling trousers. She wondered if Lorenza was the loyal friend she seemed to be or if she only treated Claire so well because she was the wife of the vastly powerful Fulco Duccio. She'd need to enlist Lorenza's deft hands in packing up her belongings and helping her with the rest of the preparations without letting the rest of the household staff know. Secrecy was crucial. Instinctively Claire knew that the best way to handle her hot-tempered husband was to announce her intentions to divorce him only after she and her children were safely settled in Harrison's Paris suite.

She stopped by the lobby to pay her bill and was just a little surprised to discover that Harrison had settled the account. How very like him, with his old-fashioned good manners. Even if the lady had rented out the joint and provided the love nest, he had picked up the tab. She smiled as she stepped out into the street to hail a taxi and was almost knocked over by a newsboy carrying a load of papers and crying out the morning's headlines. Her thoughts were on the stars and her head in the clouds.

She saw the three-inch headline and heard the horrible news at the same precise moment:
ANDREA DORIA SINKS, 25 DEAD, 17 MISSING.

She stood speechless with her heart throbbing in her throat, coming out of her lover's daze with the same frenzied speed in which hundreds of sleeping passengers onboard had jerked awake as the liner
Stockholm
had rammed her husband's luxury ship. Her eyes hurriedly scanned the story, her mind switching to French as she read the lurid account.

On her last night out before docking in New York Harbor, the
Andrea Doria
had been walled in by a thick North Atlantic fog. The mists closed in around the late diners eating off plates Claire had helped design beneath chandeliers grand enough for even Duccio's liking. Some of the passengers had been enjoying a movie in one of the ship's four theaters while stylish dancers swayed to the rhythms of the orchestra's last song,
Arrivedérci, Roma.

Lulled by the soothing roll and the sea sounds, they were unprepared for the crunching roar of the
Stockholm's
knife-sharp prow (reinforced for cutting through ice in Sweden's ports) grinding thirty feet deep into the starboard side of
Andrea Doria.
They were also unprepared for its aftermath. Claire's breathing was ragged. Her children had sailed to the States twice on the grand luxury liner, always in the company of Violet or one of the Aunties. She shuddered, not able even to imagine the horrid possibilities. She said a quick prayer for all those souls aboard and then rushed on to the station to get back to her children. She thanked God Sara and Six hadn't sailed. Luckily, they were waiting to return with Grandfather Harrison. And now even that had changed.

And then her thoughts turned to the crazy rage Duccio must be in.
Big meetings all morning, lots of screaming.
He would be violently possessed, angrily pitching ashtrays against walls, screaming in eight different languages at the top of his lungs, hurling explosive epithets at whichever unlucky person happened to be nearest, deranged at the news that his most expensive trophy, all six hundred and ninety-seven feet of her, was lying belly-up at the bottom of the sea.

It was that strange time of day at the four-hundred-year-old palazzo when the fading light of dusk fooled the eye. It often spooked Six and Sara, who frequently giggled and swore to their mother that a stone statue had just moved his arm or waved his sword, for a fleeting second coming alive. As Claire opened the heavy palazzo door, she looked down the long, tunnel-like corridor, darkened by shimmering afternoon shadows. She entered the house quietly, hoping she would have time to climb the stairs to see the children before having to calm Duccio's wrath. She tilted her head in surprise. It occurred to her that Duccio must have added to his ever-expanding art collection in her absence. In the darkness she could just make out an unfamiliar marble statue holding an offering in its arms. She wondered why no one had thought to turn the lights on. Not even a spotlight on the statue, as Duccio usually arranged to light his newest prize treasures. With its broad shoulders and long, shapeless legs, she wondered if this was the valuable Greek kouros that Duccio had been trying to outbid Onassis for. She was momentarily stunned when, from her perspective fifty feet down the vaulted entry, which had always reminded her of a tomb, the Greek statue breathed. But that was the spell this hall held over everyone's imagination, Claire told herself as she turned on one of the entranceway torchères. She moved forward only a few steps before she froze. In the light, she could clearly see that the statue was Tutti, and the lifeless bundle in his arms her son.

Claire shrieked. As she ran down the hall in the slow-motion gait of a person trapped in a nightmare, there was time for her to imagine a thousand explanations: Six had fallen off his horse and sprained his ankle; he had just fallen asleep and Tutti was carrying him up to bed; they were all playing a game of swinging statues and Six was “it.” But the other side of her brain had only to see the unnatural angle at which Six's neck and head hung from his shoulders. His eyes rolled back in his head. His boy-child's curled fingers were more rigid than limp. Her ears were deaf to her own screams. She fell to her knees in what she thought was silence as Tutti handed Claire the body of her dead son.

Chapter Fourteen

Into the Tunnel

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form: Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

—
Shakespeare
King John

S
ix's baseball cap still hung from the rump of the onyx centaur guarding the entry hall of Palazzo Duccio, as if he might grab it in his hurry to run out and play. No one had the courage or heart to remove it, least of all Lorenza, who passed it, crossing her heart and dabbing her eyes with her black cotton gloves, each time she answered the doorbell. The festive chimes rang out almost incessantly, and in this somber house on the morning after death, whoever was the nearest—butler, chambermaid, or cook—bustled to the door to stop the sound. Lorenza knew that Tutti had been ordered to kill the bell's gay melody and replace it with a more respectful toll. Duccio had also instructed the help to wear crepe-soled shoes to keep a silence in the house and to hang black bunting from all the balconies. Even the dogs and cats had been ordered into mourning; they, along with the canaries in Duccio's library, wore crepe bows around their necks. Lorenza wondered if this elaborate display of grief could hide what had really happened in the house.

An accident, they were saying. A terrible freak accident, so unfortunate and doubly tragic coming on the heels of the
Andrea Doria
disaster. The Neapolitan banker was unembarrassed to weep real tears, saying that God had blessed Duccio with so much and was now extracting payment. The bishop shook his head and knew out loud that Six was certainly at peace in heaven. Though the boy was not a Catholic, last rites had been administered by the Vatican's secretary of the treasury, Archbishop D'Agostini, who happened to be in the house at the time. Surely he was with the angels now, this child as beautiful as a seraphim. What a misfortune that the child was as reckless as he was golden, falling to death from the top of the marble balcony, balancing like a circus ropewalker on the narrow ledge until something distracted him. He had slipped and then toppled off, breaking his neck either when he hit the staircase railing or when he finally landed on the marble floor.

Lorenza turned her back on Duccio and his men, afraid to meet their eyes. She rushed upstairs to hold Signóra Duccio's bloodless hand. She'd been very surprised to see that her refined lady mourned her child with the same naked grief as the simple people from her village. She had wailed with the same banshee voice, thrashing feverishly around on the floor, flagellating her body with her arms like the bent black-shawled peasant women wailing their dead off to heaven. But now her lady sat staring out a window in Six's room upstairs. The signóra was in a pill-induced stupor, the remedy prescribed by Duccio's doctor to quiet the animal howl emanating from deep inside her. Lorenza's tears flowed freely as she knelt by Claire's side. Signóra's normally translucent skin had turned paler than porcelain. The bones in her face protruded as sharp as knives, cutting through the sunken hollows of her cheeks. Her mouth continued to quiver as it opened and shut like an unlatched window in a storm. Each time Lorenza expected a glass-shattering scream to come out of the wide-open mouth, but each time only an anguished whisper escaped Claire's trembling lips. Rocking in the yellow and gold armchair in which she had read Six his stories, tears streaming down her cheeks, Claire's fingers gripped his soccer jersey, twisting it around and around her wrist, making it impossible for anyone to take it away from her. His smells still filled the jersey, and the sweet perspiration of the young athletic boy permeated his uniform; she could conjure him up just by holding his shirt to her face. Lorenza laid her hands lightly over Claire's and rocked with her. She decided that the next time the doctor came in with his needles and jelly-bean bags of pills she'd keep him away. She'd stand guard until Violet and Harrison arrived to protect her. She'd already covered Sara with a blanket, as the child had billeted herself on Six's bed and just lay there as if she had died, too. It worried her even more than Claire's very human unraveling, the kind she had seen too often as a child during the war, that Sara had gone rigid and frozen.

When the child had heard Lorenza's screams the day before, she'd come flying out of her room. When she saw her brother's body lying at the bottom of the stairs, a thick hedge of kneeling men around him, she urged him to get up and tried to shake him awake.

“Don't tease me, Six,” she'd cried. “This isn't a game. Get up, get up!” And for the first time in his Me, Six didn't wink back and jump up gaily from one of his practical jokes. When Duccio ordered her out, she'd fought him with her small angry fists until two men dragged her away, her shoes leaving lines of black scuff marks on the floor as she flailed the air with her arms.