The Last Enemy (19 page)

At five I awoke to find him slipping on his clothes. He said he must go, but I reached up and began to unzip his trousers. We made love again, deliberately, with great tenderness, until the first morning light came through the bedroom window. Then he insisted once more that he had to leave and placed his hands over my mouth so I couldn’t protest. I put on my pink flannel robe and we went down the stairs together. At the front door, just before he kissed me goodbye, he opened my belt and slipped the robe off my shoulders. It fell to the floor.
Sei bellissima
, he said and called me Little Rita, the same as Father Crespi had done. He also said that we could never see each other again.

I studied him from behind the window curtains as he walked toward the subway station. A train whistle pierced the still air and he broke into a run.
We’ll meet again
, I said aloud to the empty house as I watched him climb the stairs toward the elevated platform, two steps at a time, and disappear from view.

JUNE 1, 2001—
Tried all day yesterday and most of today to find his name and address. Called the rectory of St. Francis twice and was told both times, by the same woman, that they entertained many visiting priests from all over the world, three of them last week from Italy alone. Without a name she couldn’t help (
wouldn’t
was more like it!). I called St. Anthony’s and spoke again to the parish secretary. She denies sending a priest to the house to give my mother the last rites. Well, he didn’t just materialize out of thin air, I yelled in frustration. I wish I had asked his name the day that Mamma died, but I was too upset. When we were together at dinner he said to call him Gianni, but I don’t think that’s his name. I called him Gianni twice. The first time he didn’t answer and the second time he laughed before replying. I don’t blame him for lying. If his bishop finds out, he could be defrocked.

JUNE 2, 2001—
It’s frightening to realize fully what I’ve done, even more so to realize that I have no regrets. I’m completely free, sitting in First Class, drinking Spumante, on my way to Rome. The second couple to view the house made an offer. The realtor thinks she can close the sale by the end of June. Another two hundred fifty thousand dollars, two and a half million dollars all told, not including my pension when I’m eligible. Whoever said money doesn’t matter is a fool! John McIntyre accepted my resignation with more respect than he’s ever shown me in the past, although at first he refused to believe that I had enough money to quit teaching before I was eligible for retirement. He’s always patronized me, treated me like an old maid. He won’t find anyone else in the department willing (or able) to run the Debating Society, the Scholars’ Club, and organize two class outings a year, all without extra pay.

I bribed the secretary at St. Francis—two hundred dollars cash—to give me the names of the three priests who had been visiting from Italy last week (money for the poor box, I told her). She only agreed when I said that the priest had comforted my mother in her dying. I want to donate money to his parish in Italy, I said. Of course, none of the priests on the list are named Gianni.

The steward just came around to collect the dinner trays and the man sitting next to me, an Italian film director, ordered grappa for both of us. He reached over and took the pen out of my hand. Stop writing and talk to me! he said. And later, Let’s meet in Rome for dinner. He compared me to an Italian movie star, a young Anna Mangani, only more beautiful!

JULY 6, 2001—
Today I received my
soggiorno
and immediately applied for residency in Assisi. The woman who took my application congratulated me, said my
soggiorno
application came back from Perugia in record time. Ten years is more than they ever give on a first application. But then your family is Umbrian, she added.
You’re really Italian!
Really Italian! I like that!
É vero, e scrivo adesso in italiano
per dimostrare la mia gratitudine.

It’s ironic that on the day I became an Italian resident, I started teaching a class in English, at Umberto’s school—Count Casati, as he likes to be addressed by his staff! The woman who was supposed to teach the class skipped out yesterday, back home to Liverpool. She came to the house late last night, ten hours before the class was due to begin, and handed in her resignation. I was in the sitting room when she arrived and overheard her talking to Amelia in the hall. The school didn’t pay enough, she said. Amelia was very polite—she always is—but in that topdrawer way she has of condescending to those whom she believes are her inferiors. I know the tone, she uses it often enough on me.

But, my dear, you never did complete your degree, and you
have no formal teaching credentials
. And then, very sweetly,
Perhaps I can persuade the count to pay you a bit more.
All to no purpose, of course, as it was obvious the woman was determined to quit, although I do think Amelia had some right on her side. Three times in five minutes the woman started a sentence with
between you and I
, a frequent gambit of the grammatically impaired. Amelia was on the verge of tears when she returned to the sitting room. I think she’s afraid of my uncle’s tyrannical tempers, and they have seven students signed up for the class. I can’t do it myself, she said, her voice breaking. I have a class that conflicts with this one.

I can teach the course, I told her. Without pay, I added. She seemed skeptical but I reminded her that I was certified in New York State to teach English as a second language (of course, to my uncle an English accent—even a Liverpudlian one—carries more weight than a knowledge of grammar). She agreed but insisted on paying me—thirteen euros an hour. She’d just offered the woman from Liverpool fourteen euros, but I kept that to myself. I’m sure they’re short on money. I overhead her telling Umberto they’d have to sell the Sisley.

Later Umberto came into the sitting room for his nightly cup of cocoa. Amelia told him about the class, in that breathless voice she uses when she’s afraid of his reaction. She looked away from him, toward me, when she added that I’d very graciously offered to teach the course, probably to avoid the look of disgust that passed over his face. He didn’t thank me, and instead told Amelia to instruct me in their teaching methods before I entered the classroom—in less than ten hours! I could have reminded him that I have a master’s degree in English and twenty-three years teaching experience, but he intimidates me as he much as he does Amelia, and Paolo. Nobody intimidates Artemisia! Just before he went up to bed, he turned to me,
Rita dear, try not to pepper every other sentence with “you
know.” It will confuse the students.

JANUARY 1, 2002—
Last night was wretched! John and I went out to dinner, to a small hotel-restaurant at the top of Assisi. I booked a room in the hotel and paid cash, even told them to put a bottle of chilled champagne in the room at midnight. I thought John liked me! He spends all of his time with me when he’s not in the library working, so what else should I think. Lots of men like older women!

I ordered a five-course dinner and French cham-pagne— not prosecco as the headwaiter suggested—and reserved a private table in the dining room alcove. The perfect New Year’s! Not like those with my mother: Every year exactly at midnight two glasses each of spumante, in bed by twelve-thirty, mass in the morning, the last of the spumante with our New Year’s dinner. Lies, and more lies, to the other teachers.
Party?
Of course.
With whom?
A friend. And the day after!
Good time?
Great! Got home at dawn.
Hangover?
Oh God, yes, slept until dinnertime I hated the lying, but I hated even more for them to know that I spent New Year’s Eve with my mother.

When I could I avoided the teacher’s lounge altogether from Christmas until mid-January. But it didn’t matter. They knew I lied. I was in the last cubicle of the ladies’ room and overheard Carol Stafford talking to one of the younger teachers about me.
She stays home
every year with her mother. We could do something about it if
she’d let us. Mike has lots of friends he could fix her up with (he
thinks she’s a knockout), but how do you get around the lies?
You don’t, Carol, I said to myself after I heard the bathroom door slam shut. I went home early that day, told the school secretary I was coming down with a horrid cold to explain my red eyes.

Our evening was perfect until midnight. Before eleven we were high on a bottle of Moet and before midnight we were drunk, on the bottle of Rosso Montefalco that we’d ordered with the Florentine
tagliata.
We laughed at each other’s jokes, silly ones, and made fun of the waiters and the other diners. At midnight, after we’d toasted in the New Year, I leaned across the table and kissed him on the lips. He kissed me back. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, not the way Gianni had kissed me, but warm and friendly. I wanted desperately to make love, for someone to make it up to me for all those barren celebrations with my mother.

I can’t do it Rita, I like men!
John cried, after we’d undressed. Afterward we put our clothes back on and opened the chilled champagne that the hotel had sent up, and we cried together. It turns out that John has lots more to cry about than I do. His father physically abused him as a child and when John was twelve shipped him off to a Catholic orphanage in northern Canada, labeling him an incorrigible, which gave the friars at the orphanage the right to abuse him again, at first physically and then sexually. Later, as a young teacher at a small religious college in New England, John was accused of sexually abusing one of his own students. The student hanged himself from his dormitory window. John says he can’t return to the United States or he’ll go to prison. I urged him to go back. Prove your innocence. It’s better that way! Oh dear God, what’s wrong with me? First a priest and now a gay man!

JANUARY 3, 2002—
With my uncle (and now my aunt) I’m always at fault! In August I found a woman sobbing on the steps of the family mausoleum. She said in broken Italian that her employer was blackmailing her, that the woman wouldn’t return her passport. Of course, I informed the police. What decent person wouldn’t? Umberto and Amelia took the blackmailer’s side. To be expected! She’s one of their darlings; she was Nonna’s caregiver in her last days and my uncle dotes on her. Whenever she comes in to help with the cleaning he manages to be underfoot.

Yesterday she followed me home, although she claimed afterward that she was walking in the same direction and that I started the conversation. What conversation! She spat at me, called me a busybody, butting in where I was not wanted—something like that, anyway. If that had been all, as I explained to Amelia when she rebuked me (now who’s the busybody!), I wouldn’t have complained to the police. She threatened me! The woman is mad, I think—and dangerous! I told Amelia that and she scoffed. Don’t be ridiculous, she said.

The policewoman—the one I spoke to in August about the blackmail—wasn’t concerned either. She shrugged it off; said that the Croatian had just received a bill from her lawyer for his services in August—a very large bill, she said accusingly—more than she has. As though this were my fault. Forget about it, she said. Don’t file a complaint or she’ll be deported!

I was reluctant to agree with the sergeant at first. Of course, I don’t want any more grief from Umberto (or Amelia). And God knows, I don’t want the woman deported. But she did threaten me.

Commissario Russo is the only one who showed any proper concern. He’d noticed me talking to the sergeant at the front desk and suggested that we go into his office for some privacy. We don’t need every Albanian in Assisi listening in, he said to the sergeant. He recognized me at once for a Casati. You look like your cousin Artemisia, he said, only petite and prettier. Flattery, but I don’t mind. Artemisia is always putting me down. Calls me
la Americana grottesca
behind my back, and sometimes even when she knows I’m listening.

At first the commissario disagreed with the sergeant. He urged me to press charges. Threats of this nature must be taken seriously, he said. But when I told him that my uncle wanted me to drop the charges, he changed his mind. You should listen to the count, of course, less trouble for the family. When I didn’t immediately agree, he said he’d keep a watch on the Croatian for a while. I’ll call you tomorrow, perhaps even the day after, just to be sure you’re not bothered. He’s very good looking!

MARCH 1, 2002—
I hate Sundays! Ever since John met Matteo, he spends all day Sunday with him. And my family has no use for me, nor I for them, although they’re so enamored of their darling selves, I doubt they’d even know that their opinion of me is reciprocated, in spades. Bugger them! So you see, dearest uncle, I too can speak the Queen’s English.

And, of course,
he
can’t leave his wife on Sunday, not even for a measly hour of lovemaking although it’s his brother-in-law he’s afraid of. Screws around on his wife Monday through Saturday, but never on Sunday. Mustn’t miss the sacred family dinner! He’s rather boring, not at all what I’d expected, but the sex is good!

I must be mad. I am mad! Every piece of my waking day is consumed by thoughts of sex. Today at early mass I wondered about the man sitting next to me and, later, at the communion rail, I imagined the priest in bed, and the man is a midget, shorter even than me! Oh, Gianni, where are you?

MARCH 2, 2002

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass

I memorized those lines of Rupert Brooke when I was in college. Perhaps I knew, even then, that one day they would belong to me. In June, in that little Spanish restaurant on Eighth Avenue, I was captivated by the color of the Rioja wine. Mahogany velvet, I said as I held my glass to the light. Not at all, Gianni rebutted. The crimson velvet of a Raphael painting! When I insisted on mahogany, Gianni said the gentleman’s way to settle our dispute was for us to visit Raphael’s portrait of Leo X in the Uffizi with a bottle of 904 Reserve and two glasses. We can toast a great Florentine patron of the arts, he said, and get drunk at the same time. Those words still resonate whenever I think of Gianni. Always in my imagination we meet in front of Leo’s portrait. To the women who come and go, we’re just two posturing strangers. We speak in code: