Indiscretion (11 page)
Her face rises to his, her lips on his, her tongue in his mouth. “Make love to me,” she pleads, placing his hand on her breast. Immediately she can feel him hardening. “I love you. I need you. Now. Here.”
But he does not. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m married. I love my wife. Don’t do this.”
“But what about me?” she asks. “Do you love me?”
“You’re a beautiful girl,” he says. “You shouldn’t be doing this. I’m married.”
“I can’t help myself,” she says. “I need you. Please.”
“Claire, for God’s sake. Don’t make this more difficult than it already is. We should go. Come with me. Please.” He holds out his hand, but she refuses it, walking past him to the car.
They drive in silence. There is nothing to say. He gets out of the car to open her door but she is already out and heading toward my house, the key under the mat. She says nothing.
“Will you be all right?” he calls to her. At the door she pauses and looks at him before disappearing inside.
The wax seal of a secret letter has been broken. Nothing can make it whole again.
When he returns to the beach, everyone asks after Claire. He laughs and says he’s glad he won’t have her hangover in the morning.
T
he next day they are leaving. It’s a time for last swims and the final packing of bags. In the morning, I find a note from Claire in my kitchen. She has caught an early train back, thanking us for our kindnesses. Harry’s sweater has been left folded neatly on the counter.
Our lives will never be the same.
T
he poet Lamartine wrote that a woman is at the beginning of all great things. It’s indisputable. After all, women give birth to us, so they are always at the beginning. But, whether they mean to be or not, they are also present at the beginning of terrible things too.
The Winslows move to Rome. The latest in a long line of expatriate writers. Keats, of course, who died there. In no particular order, Byron, Goethe, the Brownings, James, Pound.
Harry and Maddy live off the ecclesiastical version of Jermyn Street. In Rome, even the priests are fashion-conscious. During the daytime the street is full of archbishops and cardinals of every size, shape, and color, from Soweto and Ottawa, Kuala Lumpur and Caracas, shopping for cassocks, chasubles, zucchettos, and surplices. Garments of red, gold, white, and purple fill the shop windows. Painted wooden statues of saints and the Virgin. Gammarelli’s, it’s said, is the best.
They live in a fine apartment. The
piano nobile
. The owners are on sabbatical. The ceilings are high, the furniture elegant, portraits of noblemen with perukes, cuirasses, and long noses hang on the walls. Every channel on the television seems to show women with bare breasts, and they decide to hide the set in a closet because of Johnny. There is an old woman, Angela, who comes with the apartment and speaks no English. Maddy tries to talk to her in rudimentary Italian, adding in schoolgirl French when she doesn’t know the word. It doesn’t matter. They like each other.
Johnny can do no wrong in the old woman’s eyes.
“Ma che bello,”
she exclaims, pinching his cheek. She cooks and cleans. To his delight, Harry finds she even irons his boxer shorts.
Rome in early autumn. The Tiber sparkles. People still eat outside. There is a café near the Piazza della Rotonda where Harry, Maddy, and Johnny go in the morning for caffe latte and sweet rolls. Johnny drinks fresh carrot juice. They read the
International Herald Tribune
and struggle through the
Corriere della Sera,
a dictionary at their elbows.
Maddy sends me e-mails describing it all. As ever, I envy them their life. They spend the first weeks walking and eating, wandering through museums and churches, marveling at St. Peter’s Basilica. Every street is a history lesson. They follow in the footsteps of saints and vandals, poets and tourists. There are names of contacts, friends of friends. Bettina and Michaeli, Romans who live in a floor of a palazzo on the Piazza dei Santi Apostoli. One of her ancestors was a pope, which is a source of both great family pride and amusement. They have a large portrait in the dining room of the pontiff in question. Michaeli works at Cinecittà. Other friends. Mitzi Colloredo. The Ruspolis. The Robilants. English bankers. A Hapsburg and his wife.
It doesn’t take them long before they are going to parties and making even more friends. “You only need to know one person in Rome,” Bettina says. “Then you know everybody.” Harry’s book has been translated into Italian and has already had three printings. One evening he does a signing at a bookstore near the Piazza di Spagna, and the store is packed.
There are weekends along the coast at Ansedonia, with the Barkers. A Yale classmate who married an Italian woman, a contessa. Maddy tells me it is the Hamptons of Rome. Harry buys a Vespa.
They discover trattorias. Nino, Della Pace, Dal Bolognese in the Piazza del Popolo for the people watching but not the food, the Byron in Parioli, but their favorite is in the Piazza S. Ignazio, located on a hidden square not too far from their apartment. I went there with them when I visited early on. It is one of those fine old Roman restaurants where, at the end of the meal, they place on the table bottles of
digestivos,
Sambuca, Cynar, amaro, homemade grappa steeped with figs or fruit. On the wall, photographs of unfamiliar Italian celebrities.
What is most remarkable about the restaurant is the staff, who, appropriately enough, are out of a Fellini movie. Every one of the waiters has something wrong with him. One has a pronounced limp. Another a speech impediment. The third a tumor like a truncated horn projecting from the top of his forehead. They are all very nice and adore the Winslows, who dine there at least once a week.
“We don’t even bother looking at the menu anymore,” Harry says. “They just bring us whatever they have special, and it’s always good.”
At some point in everyone’s life, whether in a restaurant, watching one’s child play soccer, or walking through the streets alone, the question is asked, what else do you need? It is a question that once asked is almost impossible to answer. You may require nothing more at that exact moment to eat or drink, or you may be content with the bed in which you sleep, a favorite chair, the immediate wants and possessions of life. Then there are the intangible things, love, friendship, passion, faith, fulfillment. But you think about the question over and over again, because few of us have what we need—or few of us think we do, which is almost the same thing. It can become a drumbeat. What else is there? Have I done enough? Do I need more? Am I satisfied?
There is an innate greediness that is part of the human condition. It drove Eve to eat the apple; it impelled Bonaparte to invade Russia and caused Scott to die in the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. We have different names for it. What is curiosity other than greed for experience, for recognition, for glory? For activity to distract ourselves from ourselves? We hate the idea that we have come as far as we are going to go. And we are not content with what we have or how far we have come. We want more, whether it is food, knowledge, respect, power, or love. And that lack of contentment pushes us to try new things, to brave the unknown, to alter our lives and risk losing everything we already had.
H
arry often made up stories for Johnny at bedtime. One of my favorites was about the Penguin King. Johnny was mad about penguins. He knew all about the different types. The emperor, the Adélie, the rockhopper. Where they lived, what they ate. Many nights at Johnny’s bedtime, I would stand by the foot of the bed with Maddy while Harry told the story. Each time it was slightly different, but it always started out the same way.
“There was once a Penguin King who lived at the South Pole with his family, Queen Penguina and all their princes and princesses. The princes and princesses were very cute. The Penguin King was the biggest and strongest penguin, and even the sea lions were afraid of him. But the Penguin King was sad.”
“Why was he sad, Daddy?”
“He was sad because he was tired of snow and ice and sea lions. He was tired of swimming. He was even tired of Queen Penguina and the princes and princesses.”
“Oh, no. That’s terrible. So what did he do?”
“One day he told Queen Penguina and the princes and princesses and all the other penguins at the South Pole that he wanted to see the rest of the world. He wanted to see New York City and France and Beijing and deserts and skyscrapers and trees. All the penguins started to cry and said, ‘Don’t leave, don’t leave. You’re our king.’ The princes asked, ‘Who will protect us from sea lions? Who will feed us krill?’ The princesses asked, ‘Who will keep our feet warm?’
“ ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he told them. ‘I need to see the world.’
“They all cried as they watched him waddle off. He waddled farther than he had ever waddled before. He waddled for two whole days. He came to the ocean and saw a big ship. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘That’s just what I need to take me to see the rest of the world.’ ”
“No, don’t go on the ship,” Johnny would interject.
“Well, too bad you weren’t there to warn him because that’s exactly what he did. The Penguin King waddled down to the ship and commanded the men there to take him aboard. They were very tall but did what he told them. They took him on the ship and gave him lots of fish to eat.
“Some time later, he couldn’t tell how long for sure, the ship stopped. To his surprise, he was put in a box and taken off the ship. When the box was opened again, he was surrounded by other penguins. There was a funny smell. Like rotting fish. ‘Where am I?’ he asked. ‘You’re in the zoo,’ the other penguins told him.
“ ‘What’s a zoo?’ he asked.
“ ‘It’s a prison,’ they told him. ‘No one ever gets out of here.’
“ ‘But I am the Penguin King,’ he said.
“ ‘Not here you’re not. Here you’re just another penguin.’
“ ‘What have I done?’ asked the Penguin King. ‘I should never have left my family and my kingdom. How could I be so stupid?’
“He sat down and cried and cried. He missed Queen Penguina, and all the penguin princes and princesses. He would never see any of them ever again. He would never again protect them from sea lions or go swimming in the deep ocean or warm the feet of his children. ‘If only I could go back home, I’d never leave again,’ he said.”
“So what happens next, Daddy?”
“What do you think should happen?”
“I think Queen Penguina and all the penguin princes and princesses become ninjas and find a boat and rescue him!”
Harry laughs. “Great idea. Okay, so one night when he was dreaming of snow, there was a tapping on his cage. He looked up. It was Queen Penguina and the princes and princesses. All his children were there, even the youngest, who had grown now and had lost their childish gray feathers. They were all wearing black. Outside the guards had all been tied up.
“ ‘What are you doing here?’ asked the Penguin King. ‘Run away or else they’ll put you in the zoo too.’ He couldn’t bear the thought of them suffering as he had.
“ ‘No, they won’t,’ said Queen Penguina. She had never looked so beautiful. ‘We have traveled for months to find you, and no one knows we are here. Come with us quickly, and we can all get away.’
“So the Penguin King followed his beautiful wife and their children to the river, and they all jumped in. He was so happy to be swimming again, and he gave his wife and children the biggest hugs in the whole world. ‘I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family. I can’t believe I didn’t appreciate you all more. I promise I’ll never leave again.’ And then they all swam home, and they all lived happily ever after. The end.”
Johnny almost always wanted a happy ending, and Harry was always willing to oblige. But one night after Johnny had gone to bed, Harry confessed that he really thought it should have a different ending.
“How do you see it ending, sweetheart?” asked Maddy.
“The Penguin King is left to rot in the zoo. Serves him right too, if you ask me.”
I
n early November a call comes from Harry’s editor in New York. He wants to discuss the new book. Can Harry fly over for a day or so? The publisher will be there. Other executives. They’ll book the ticket. Business class, of course. This is a lavish gesture, one that reflects their high expectations. The Winslows’ New York apartment, the bottom two floors of a brownstone east of Lexington, has been sublet. It won’t be a problem to put him at a hotel. When can he come?
He doesn’t want to make this trip but says he will. Maddy has to stay in Rome, though, because Johnny is in school. In New York, they had sitters who could look after him, but not there. It’s not the same thing. “What if something happens? I need to be here,” she says. He will only be gone for two nights. Three at the most. It will be the first time they have slept apart since he left the Marines.
A week later he lands at Kennedy. A driver is standing outside customs, waiting with his name on a sign. After the old stones of Rome, New York seems ridiculously modern. It is jarring yet reassuring to be surrounded by the sound of English being spoken, the advertisements for familiar products, Yankees caps, the large cars.
The day is spent in meetings. The weather is colder here than in Rome. He is wearing a new blue cashmere coat Maddy bought him at Brioni. He shakes hands with the senior people, many of whom shepherded his last book through. He is hailed like a returning hero. A young woman brings him espressos. “Would you like anything else, Harry?” asks Norm, the publisher. A lunch is brought in. Sandwiches, pasta salad. There is a PowerPoint. Charts, graphs, sales projections. Hollywood is interested. Later in the hotel he takes a nap. Reuben, his agent, is taking him out for dinner. Afterward there are several parties they could stop by.
They eat in a restaurant popular with publishing executives. The maître d’ shakes Harry’s hand warmly, and says how good it is to have him back and how everyone can’t wait to read the new book. When is it coming out? Many people stop by their table. Some sit down for a drink or to swap industry gossip. Harry is tired. He is drinking to keep himself awake. He tries to beg off, but Reuben insists they go to at least one of the parties. It’s in Chelsea, near the river. Another of Reuben’s clients. He promises it will be fun. The younger generation. Not like us. You’ll learn something. Come on up for just one drink, says Reuben. Harry agrees but finds himself yawning and glancing at his watch in the car downtown. It is too late to call Maddy.