The Gilder (33 page)

At a little before six, Marina stood in the greengrocer’s around the corner from Sarah’s apartment debating over daffodils, tulips, or hyacinths. She’d already given up on the idea of chocolates after scrutinizing boxes in several windows along the way—candy was a gift for lovers or people in the hospital. The flowers were lovely, but she imagined proffering the bouquet only to have it slapped from her hands. Perhaps it was presumptuous to think that a peace offering of any sort would be welcomed. It might very well be perceived as frivolous. It might be best to go in with head bowed, prepared to receive the blows she deserved. She left the flowers and walked to the back of the shop where a shelf above the root vegetables held a selection of wine. A drink was just what she needed to calm her queasy stomach and steady her shaking hands, and she wished she’d stopped in the hotel bar for a stiff one on the way out. No, she’d go empty-handed.

It was completely dark by the time she pushed the bottommost doorbell on the front of Sarah’s building. After all these years, there was still no name on the brass plate next to the bell. It took all her willpower not to run back to the hotel and the safety of her room as she waited for Sarah to buzz her in, and it seemed an eternity before she heard the click of the latch and the front door released. The stairwell light was on, but no one looked down or called out to her. The handrail was icy as she pulled herself up, each step becoming steeper as she climbed, the urge to take flight tugging at her back. When she reached the second-floor landing, she saw that Sarah’s door was ajar, and she forced herself forward, knocking lightly on it as she entered. “Sarah?” Her voice snagged on something in her throat, and she wasn’t sure she’d actually made a sound. She closed the door behind her, cleared her throat, and called out again as she took the few steps into the living room. This time her voice seemed too loud, an assault on the stillness. A woman who was not Sarah stood up from where she was sitting on the couch.

“You remember Marcella.” Sarah’s voice came from the shadows, where she was little more than a silhouette against the French doors. The only light in the room came from two sleek glass lamps at either end of the sofa.

Marina stared, confused for a moment, until she saw that it was Marcello! She’d seen him in drag before, but this was different. She could see that being (almost) a woman agreed with him. He had the same flawless beauty he’d had years earlier, but time and hormones had softened his features and given him curves in all the right places. Marina smiled and took a step forward, but when he gave her a curt nod and sat back down, she stopped, unsure what was expected of her. Certainly not hugs and kisses.

Sarah stepped into the light, her arms wrapped across her chest as if she was cold. She was dressed entirely in black, her face a pale oval above the turtleneck, her hair pulled back in a severe knot at the back of her head. “I asked Marcella to be here for me.”

Marcello looked up at Marina through his lashes as he crossed his legs and smoothed the tight skirt over his thighs.

Marina looked at Sarah. “I got your note. Thank you.”

“Sit if you like.” Sarah’s voice was quiet and without intonation.

Marina sat in the chair closest to the door without taking off her coat. When no one spoke, she began, “Sarah, I ...”

Sarah held her hand up, closed her eyes for a beat, and shook her head slightly before turning away and walking toward the bedroom. She became a shadow again as she reached the far end of the room, where she stopped, but instead of going into the bedroom as Marina had anticipated, she turned and walked slowly back toward the circle of light.

Without looking at Marina, she said, “Just give me a moment.” Then she turned again and retraced her steps to the far end of the room. She took two more slow laps before stopping. Her disembodied voice came from the shadows. “I have some questions.”

Marina didn’t dare move from her chair, but she shifted so that she was facing the dark end of the room. “Yes, of course.” She glanced at Marcello, but he looked down at his hands. He really did seem to be a “she,” but Marina found it too confusing to think of him as Marcella.

When Sarah emerged from the shadows, she had something in her hands. “And these?” She held up the stack of photographs that Thomas and the contessa had engineered in their spare time. “Were you in on this? Was it a cozy threesome?” Two red spots appeared on Sarah’s cheekbones as she spit the words at Marina.

“God, no! No, Sarah. How could you even think such a thing?”

“Quite easily at this point.” Sarah’s face was hard, her glare unwavering.

Marina looked down at her hands, shaking her head. “No. I had no part in it.”

“But you knew something, didn’t you? I could tell the other night. You were pretending to be shocked.”

Marina continued looking at her lap and shaking her head. There was no way she was going down that road. If she admitted she’d seen something, it would just be one more thing she’d kept from Sarah, one more seedy connection to Thomas. She heard Sarah move away, and when she looked up, Marcello was looking at her intently.

Sarah’s voice preceded her into the light. “You say this ... thing ... with Thomas wasn’t an affair.”

Marina wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, Sarah’s tone was so flat, but she couldn’t help but respond. “No. No, it wasn’t. Nothing ever happened between us ... until that day.”

Sarah stopped for a moment. “And after that day?” Then turned her back on Marina’s answer.

“No, nothing. I never saw Thomas again except the one night we all had dinner together. And then at his show, but we didn’t even speak that night.”

Sarah continued her pacing. “And before that? When you worked together. Were you ... intimate ... in any way?”

Marina leaned forward in her chair. “Sarah, it wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t Thomas I was interested in, you know that.” She lobbed her shot into the dark, but if it hit the mark, Sarah didn’t react.

“But he flirted with you?”

“No more than you.” It was out of her mouth before she knew it was there, sounding every bit like the accusation it was.

“Touché,” came Sarah’s soft response from the dark. Now she walked back to the couch and perched on the arm, her back rigid. If there was a crack in her armor, it didn’t show. Her arms were still crossed in front of her chest, but now in a posture of judgment rather than defense. Marcello studied Sarah as if taking a reading, but didn’t do or say anything.

Sarah cleared her throat. “So, you had sex with Thomas and kept it a secret.”

Marina wanted to say that, actually, he’d had sex with her, but she held her tongue. These were her lashings to take. There was no point in foisting them off on a dead man.

“What did you think would happen? That things would just go on as before?”

Marina shook her head. “I don’t know what I thought would happen. I did want to tell you. I was desperate to tell you, but I was terrified that you’d take his side and banish me from your life.”

Sarah nodded but didn’t respond.

Marina continued, “When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t see how I could tell you, since I hadn’t told you what happened in the first place.”

“If you’d told me, maybe I could have helped you.” Sarah’s bitterness was unmistakable.

“Do you honestly think you would have helped me abort Thomas’s baby?”

Sarah stood up abruptly and began to pace again.

Marina’s voice reached into the shadows after her. “Think about it, Sarah. What was I to do? I went back to the States with every intention of having an abortion so I could come back without anyone knowing anything.”

Sarah was back in the light, her hair beginning to come loose, curling around her face. “Things never would have been the same, whether I knew or not. Not after what you did with Thomas. And you
didn’t
have the abortion and you
didn’t
come back.” Sarah’s words cracked with tears, and Marcello reached for her hand, but she didn’t take it. “You’ve lied to me all these years. I feel like such a fool.”

Marina stood up and took a step forward, but Marcello gave her a look so sharp it sent her back to her seat. She clenched her hands in her lap. “I know. I didn’t mean it to be that way. I’m so, so sorry.”

Tears ran down Sarah’s face, but still, she held herself tall. “How could you do that to me? Every note you wrote, year after year, full of lies.”

“It wasn’t all lies. It’s just that ... as more time went by, the harder it was to take it all back.”

“Did you even try?”

“I almost told you ... after Thomas died.”

Sarah gasped, as if she’d been slapped.

Marina knew she’d taken a wrong turn but couldn’t see any way out but through it. “Sarah, listen to me. I thought it might comfort you to know that some part of Thomas, the best of him, everything that was good about him, had lived on. But I wasn’t sure you’d take it the way I meant it, and I didn’t want to risk hurting you on top of everything else you were going through at the time.”

Sarah was sitting on the couch next to Marcello, her face in her hands as he rubbed her back and murmured into her ear.

Marina sat paralyzed, afraid to say another word.

After another moment, Sarah pulled away from Marcello and ran into the bedroom. He rose immediately and his face twisted with anger as he hissed a few words at Marina that she didn’t understand, but their sentiment was clear.

CHAPTER 17

L
ater, Marina could not remember how she’d made it back to the hotel. She’d remained in the chair in Sarah’s living room, listening to her sobs until she couldn’t stand it another second, but she didn’t recall leaving the building or which route she’d taken. On entering her hotel room, the first thing that registered was the clothes she’d laid out on the bed for the following morning. The black pants lay smooth and flat, their lifeless legs dangling off the end of the bed, and the black cashmere sweater was tucked neatly into her camel blazer. She stared at them, uncomprehending. It looked as if she’d lain on the bed with her arms spread in supplication, and then simply disappeared—pulverized, turned to ash and blown away, only her clothes remaining. Then she remembered. Her presentation! It was first on the agenda tomorrow, the final day of the conference. She sat down on the bed next to the insensible form and put her head in her hands. She couldn’t do it. There was no way she was getting up on that stage in front of God only knew how many people to talk about what an inspired life she’d led. The only thing in her life that even hinted of inspiration was the multitude of lies she’d told. She would call Josh and tell him she was deathly ill. Marina lay back and stared at the plaster rosette on the ceiling. Get a grip! If only she could cry, scream, tear her hair out, anything would be better than the tension that pulled on every muscle until she thought her bones might pop from their sockets. She took a deep breath and visualized the pond she hadn’t seen since Zoe’s birth.

After about ten minutes of deep breathing, the pain left her body and Marina began to feel as if she might survive. As her mind cleared, she realized that for the first time in almost sixteen years, she was free. There was no longer any need to lie, pretend, deny. She felt at once liberated and exposed. If she had nothing to hide, then she no longer needed anything to hide behind—not Zoe, not her work, not her professed penchant for solitude. A familiar tingle of fear stirred at the base of her spine, but before it could become a full-blown shiver, the phone rang. She sat up. It couldn’t be Sarah, could it? She vacillated for five rings, then grabbed it, praying it was Zoe or Lydia, but it was Josh calling to explain why he’d missed that morning’s session. Evidently he’d been invited to tour the Villa I Tatti, once Bernard Berenson’s estate, now Harvard’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and it was an opportunity he simply couldn’t pass up, not even for his own conference. Marina gave him half an ear as he waxed lyrical about the grounds designed by some famous English landscape architect, the library filled with rare books, and the collection of Renaissance and Asian art, grateful that she didn’t have to make excuses for not being at the conference herself, but unsure if it was a lie to let him assume that she’d been in attendance. He asked if she had plans for the evening and invited her to join his group for dinner, but Marina made a convincing case for needing her beauty rest and agreed to meet him in the morning for a coffee at Rivoire.

The idea of food held no interest for Marina, but she thought a glass of Chianti and a bath might be just what her battered soul needed. After that, she’d call Zoe. Lydia had assured her that the girls would be home for dinner. Then she’d go over her notes one last time and try and get some sleep.

When Zoe came to the phone eager to talk, Marina vowed that if there was a goddess of small miracles, she would become a devotee. Zoe was excited about the photography club and wanted to know what kinds of cameras “Dad” had used. Marina did her best to sound as natural as possible, but having Zoe talk about Thomas as if he’d been an accepted, ongoing presence in her life since birth was unnerving.

“Did you find out where my dad is buried? Did you visit him for me?”

Marina sat down on the edge of the bed and pictured the cemetery. “I did, sweetie. But he wasn’t buried. He was cremated. And his ashes were sprinkled in the most beautiful cemetery I’ve ever seen.”

“What does it say on his stone? Does it say he was a photographer ?”

“Sweetie, there is no headstone because his ashes weren’t put in the ground. No one’s allowed to be buried there anymore. Sarah sprinkled him all over, so he’s a part of the whole thing. The cemetery is full of famous artists and writers, just the sort of people he’d want to be with.” Marina pictured the Grim Reaper.

“Have you told Sarah about me?” The challenge was evident in Zoe’s tone.

Marina nodded. “Yes ... yes, I did.”

“Did she want to know what I’m like? Or was she too mad?”

What had happened to make Zoe so willing to go where Marina had never dared? “I told her all about you a couple of days ago.”