The Gilder (23 page)

The following morning, Marina made her way to Lydia’s as soon as she saw the school bus go by. She had talked to Lydia the previous night, but neither she nor June could induce Zoe to come to the phone.

“She says she has nothing more to say to you. I’m sorry, Marina,” Lydia had said. “Why don’t you come over first thing, after the girls have left for school, and we’ll try and figure things out.”

Over their first cup of coffee, Marina told Lydia that Zoe wanted her to go to Florence.

Lydia put a plate of cinnamon toast on the table between them. “Maybe she has a point.”

“What! Go off and leave her here? You’re kidding!”

“I think Zoe’s serious about not going home right now, and I don’t think you’ll achieve anything by forcing her, if that’s even possible. I think she just needs more time. She was going to be staying with us anyway. So why not go to Florence and do the conference. It’s a huge honor. You’re only away five days, and maybe the time away will help you, too.”

Marina nodded. “It is an honor, and I’d hate to miss it.” Her nod became a shake. “But I don’t know if I could even focus enough to deliver my talk. Besides, what kind of mother leaves her child during a crisis?”

“It’s not as if you’re abandoning her. She’ll be with us, we’re her family, and you can trust us to do the right thing.”

“I know I can. Thank you. I don’t know, I’ll think about it. Maybe she’ll talk to me tonight.” Marina pushed herself away from the table and walked over to the French doors, where she stood with her arms crossed, looking out into the garden. Lydia had large perennial beds on either side of the yard that in early summer were the talk of the county but which now lay dormant, bedded down with hay. Without turning around, Marina said, “You know what else she said? She told me to tell Sarah the truth.”

Lydia had just put a piece of toast in her mouth and choked a little. “She said
that?
”

Marina turned around and walked to the end of the table. “Actually, she didn’t say it that nicely.”

Lydia finished her piece of toast. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe you don’t have a choice, maybe you won’t be able to move on with Zoe if you don’t resolve things with Sarah.”

“How will telling Sarah change anything for Zoe? What happened, happened. Besides, Zoe is still going to go on hating me for depriving her of the time with her father.”

“You’ll figure that out as you go along, but telling Sarah is not just for Zoe. Are you even aware of how much your guilt eats you up? For God’s sake, Marina, you won’t even let yourself have a relationship.”

“I have relationships.” Marina glared at Lydia.

“No, you don’t. You’re a serial dater. As soon as someone gets too close, you break it off. You use your work and Zoe as a shield. Anyway, you haven’t even dated in a couple of years.”

Marina smacked the flat of her hand on the table. “Why are you saying this? Don’t I have enough on my plate right now?”

Lydia leaned forward in her chair, her hands on the table. “I’m saying this because I care about you. It makes me sad to see you stuck in this half lie—half life.”

Marina threw her hands in the air. “Who the hell are you to pass judgment on my life? You think
you
have the model family?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just calling it like I see it. Maybe you could have gone on like this and Zoe would have been none the wiser, but the fact is, it’s all fallen apart.” Lydia’s voice rose and she jabbed her finger in Marina’s direction. “And you have to fix it.”

“So I should tell Sarah? I should hurt her just to clear my conscience?”

“This isn’t about Sarah’s feelings. You have to put Zoe first. Sarah will handle it in her own way.”

Marina shook her head from side to side. “She’ll never forgive me.”

“Maybe, maybe not. There’s nothing you can do about that.” When Marina didn’t respond, Lydia went on. “Think about it. It’s bad enough that you have to carry this lie, but if you don’t tell Sarah, then you’re asking Zoe to carry it, too.”

CHAPTER 13

T
he plane was full, the cabin dark except where narrow circles of light illuminated those too restless to sleep. Marina shuffled the papers in her lap, put them back in the manila folder, and tucked them into the seat pocket. She couldn’t concentrate on her presentation with every thought finding its way back to Zoe. After leaving Lydia’s, she’d driven down to the river to a clearing she and Zoe had found years ago while out on a walk. At the center of the clearing, a fallen tree trunk was shielded by low-lying bushes, which allowed the person in the clearing the advantage of seeing without being seen. She sat on the tree trunk, wrestling with her resistance until the sun was high, and she’d come to the conclusion that Lydia was right. It wasn’t fair to ask Zoe to carry her lies. She would have to tell Sarah the truth.

Marina switched off the reading light, raised the window shade, and looked out into the bruised purple night sky. There were no stars in sight, not a single one to guide her or wish upon. Zoe had refused to see her before she left, but Marina asked Lydia to extract a promise from Zoe that she would sit down and talk to her mother upon her return. At the Albany airport, she’d hugged Lydia tight, then handed her a note, asking her to make sure that Zoe read it. She’d labored over it for almost two hours, distilling two pages of rambling down to a few lines of essential information.

My darling Zoe,

There is no way you can know how utterly devastated and sorry I am to have hurt you so deeply. Just know that you are the best thing that ever happened to me, that I love you more than anything in the world, and that I will find a way for us to get through this. Please call me if you want to talk while I’m away. Lydia has the number. XXXXXX, MOM

Marina adjusted the pillow behind her neck. Clearly, the only way out of this mess was to move forward, and the only way forward seemed to be back. She closed her eyes and asked herself the question she’d never been able to answer: Why hadn’t she stopped Thomas that afternoon? She
should
have, absolutely. There was no doubt. But
could
she have stopped him? She’d gone over and over this point and always came to the same conclusion, that she’d been too drunk to resist. But there remained a tiny voice somewhere in the recesses of her mind that whispered doubt. She couldn’t shake the uncertainty any more than she could remember what happened after finishing in the tub, other than being on the daybed, at first cold, then warm, then confused. She imagined sitting across from Sarah at a café, a wasteland of coffee-stained cups and crumbled biscotti between them, trying to explain that she had been drunk and confused, that it was
she,
Sarah, not Thomas, she had been in love with. But did that make any difference? It didn’t change what she’d done.

She shifted in her seat and rested her forehead on the icy window. One giant eye stared back at her. She took a deep breath and exhaled and, closing her eyes, focused on the numbing sensation as it spread across her skull.

Marina scanned the hotel lobby, an austere expanse of marble punctuated by clusters of oddly designed, oversized armchairs. She would have preferred a small
pensione,
something reminiscent of her first weeks in Florence sixteen years earlier, but Josh had booked the rooms for the entire American contingent, and evidently they rated five-star treatment. In the far corner, sitting under a lush palm, a young woman in jeans and a bulky red sweater stared at her. What did she see? A middle-aged woman in a gray pantsuit and camel-hair coat, a tourist perhaps? Marina smiled at the girl, hoping to convey that once she had been just like her—young, carefree, on the brink of an adventure—but the girl looked away.

“Signora?”

Marina turned to the receptionist, who indicated where to sign the registration card. “Signora”? When had she ceased being a “signorina”? She accepted the large brass key with a silk tassel and followed the bellman to her room. Josh had gone all out. The room was sumptuous, with a plush burgundy carpet and gold brocade draperies. The heavy door muffled the sounds of the hotel around her. She crossed to the window and peered down into the street, where shops were just opening up for the evening hours. She looked at the bed longingly but decided it might be better to stay up and get in sync with the local time. If she took a nap now, she might be up all night. She checked the phone to see if there were any messages, hoping against hope for a call from Zoe, but there were none. She had told Lydia to have Zoe call her any time of the day or night, whenever she wanted to talk. But what if she didn’t ever want to talk to her? What if Zoe refused to see her when she returned? What if Zoe decided she’d rather live with June and Lydia? Marina picked up the phone, asked for an outside line, and dialed Lydia’s number, only to reach the answering machine. She left a short message, saying that she’d arrived safely, sent her love, and would call the next day. She walked back to the window and looked out just as the young woman from the lobby exited the hotel. Marina grabbed her coat and bag and hurried from the room.

Outside, traffic buzzed, kicking up exhaust and pigeons. Marina stopped short, familiar sights, sounds, and sensations jostling her as pedestrians flowed toward the end of their day. Her eyes smarted, whether from fatigue, fumes, or emotion, she wasn’t sure. Just ahead, the girl from the hotel crossed the road and disappeared down a side street. The next wave of foot traffic uprooted Marina, carrying her forward on its current in the direction the girl had taken. She followed, dodging motorbikes and dog excrement, her eyes seeking out glimpses of denim and red. The narrow streets, lined with cafés and shops, redolent with memories, distracted her until she found herself at the river just in time to see the girl disappear over the crest of the bridge. Marina quickened her pace, but halfway across the bridge, she slowed down and stopped. What was she doing? Who was she chasing? What was she after? She looked upriver toward the Ponte Vecchio, where the tiny cantilevered shops still clung to the old bridge, the same flat-faced ocher buildings stood sentinel along either side of the river, and stone towers rose above rooftops as they had sixteen years ago and for centuries before that. How was it possible that so much in her world had changed while everything here had remained the same? She looked over the side of the bridge, where a large, gnarled root-ball was caught on one of the footings, the water flowing smoothly, heedlessly, around it, and all at once she felt bone weary and in need of food and sleep.

She retraced her steps to the hotel and kept her eyes forward, allowing only fragments of familiar images—shiny brass name plates and door knockers, multicolored fruit tarts, hand-hewn stone—to penetrate her peripheral vision. It was all she could handle for the moment. There would be time enough tomorrow to take it all in.

How odd it felt to stay in a luxury hotel, somehow disloyal to the simple student she’d once been. Hadn’t she walked past pricey restaurants and hotels like this and looked disdainfully at the tourists, the invaders of her city? But the fourth-floor hallway, with its thick carpet and flocked wallpaper, was a welcome relief from the world outside, where the past and present converged in a maelstrom of sensations that left her wrung out.

She took the room key from her bag and let herself in. The bed beckoned. Sleep. She needed sleep. A glass of Chianti and a plate of pasta from room service might be just the right sleep aid. She shed her coat, pulled off her boots, and was reaching for the phone when she noticed the flashing message button, mute but insistent, and her heart lifted at the thought of hearing Zoe’s voice.

It was Sarah’s voice, though, that filled the room. “Hi, it’s me. I can’t believe you’re here. Where are you? Maybe you’re with the Uffizi people. Anyway, meet me for lunch tomorrow if you can. I’ll be in Piazza Santa Croce at twelve thirty. Can’t wait to see you. Ciao.” Marina played the message twice more, trying to figure out why Sarah’s voice sounded so strange, not at all the way she remembered, then she realized she’d never heard her voice over the phone. Thomas hadn’t liked the intrusiveness of the telephone.

Marina curled up on the satin comforter and pulled a pillow over her head, giving up on thoughts of food or drink as she realized that a part of her, a big part, had hoped her letter would go missing and Sarah would never know she was here.

Marina woke feeling rested just after dawn, and following a long, hot shower, decided to eschew room service for a walk and coffee at a café. Outside, pint-sized sanitation vehicles scurried along the curbs and spewed water as Marina crossed into the Piazza della Repubblica and stopped in front of the Gilli café. The lights were on inside and a waiter in a yellow jacket and black tie swept the sidewalk out front. When he saw her, he bowed slightly and said,
“Buongiorno.”
Marina smiled but turned away, not ready for an exchange in Italian or the price of their coffee. Instead she walked in the opposite direction, toward the river again, stopping for a cappuccino and pastry at a small bar on a side street. In the old days, she’d have stood at the bar as she had every morning at the café on the corner of Via Luna, but she felt self-conscious in her tailored trousers and long wool coat, and sat instead at a small table and watched the bartender banter with his patrons over their morning shots of espresso. When she was finished, there was still an hour before the opening presentation of the conference, and she decided to get some exercise.