Siracusa (16 page)

T
HE
D
OLANS WERE SILENT
, eating at a round corner table when I sailed into the breakfast room and buzzed the buffet. Limp slices of fruit swimming in a sugar sauce. A platter of overlapping squares of ham and white cheese. A bowl of shelled hazelnuts with a teaspoon standing up in it. A basket of hard rolls. A pitcher of orange juice. There were several cakes, half eaten, all one-story and dense, and single-serving plastic containers of yogurt on an aluminum tray.

In spite of ancient architecture, thick arching and intersecting stone walls, the sub-terra room seemed suited for a bingo game in a senior center. The walls and floors were a bit shiny, as if they’d been disinfected. The chairs with round backs and bottoms upholstered in a tweedy yellow brown were squishy, something depressing about that, and the frames stained walnut. “Of all the stains, walnut is the dreariest,” said Taylor, despairing of her plight. Her skinny shredded clothes with unexpected tucks, surprising necklines, and uneven hems could not have been
more out of place. No way to feel sexy in that room or around that food, and yet I did.

Sexy and unflappably cheerful. Basking in the joy of having Michael back.

At another table, a sturdy gray-haired couple who looked as if they’d walked their way to Sicily passed a phone back and forth, admiring photos.

What does it matter? The chairs? Who was there, the buffet, the room? My obtuseness matters. My being observant and clever about the wrong things. My delusional state. My smugness.

Although suppose you see the corner of a building at sunset and one side is beige and the other flamingo pink when both are in fact the same drab red brick? And a second later the vision is gone because the earth has moved infinitesimally. Was what you saw reality? Is there always more than one?

“What’s the plan?” I set down my plate.

Snow locked eyes with her mother.

“Snow saved that place for Michael,” said Taylor in a dull voice.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Fine,” she said without inflection.

“Michael’s working this morning. I’m bringing him coffee. He’s had a breakthrough, isn’t that wonderful? On his book. Still, just in case he changes his mind—” I left the chair empty next to Snow.

They hate me. As soon as I thought that, I banished it. Why would they hate me? Didn’t I make things more fun?

Finn bounced a roll on the table.

Taylor poked at a slice of semolina cake, tipping it over. She dug out a few candied cherries and corralled them. No guidebook. No reading aloud. No prepping Snow for the day.

Not me, I think now. They hated each other.

As for Snow, looking back, I marvel at how elusive she remained as she gained more and more power. Snow’s passivity was an art form. What a perfect criminal she would make, I remember thinking: someone who could be present and invisible. Given her beauty, that was truly remarkable. What was she doing? Something methodical. Peeling the foil off her yogurt—turning the container as she did to tuck up the edge—examining the yogurt as if peering into a pond, then eating small spoonfuls. Now and then her eyes darted toward the door, checking for Michael.

When I was back at the buffet, pouring a glass of juice, Finn came up. “Would you go shopping with Tay today?”

“Do you think Italians invented hard rolls for breakfast to have something to do with their stale rolls?”

“Ask her, okay?”

“Aren’t you going to the Greek ruins?”

“No.” He took my juice and drank it as he went back to the table.

“Taylor, do you want to go shopping today? Finn just said you’re not going to the Greek amphitheater.”

“She fired Gina,” said Snow.

“She wasn’t good,” said Tay.

“I’m taking Snow on the boat,” said Finn.

“With Michael. I’ll remind him when I go up. He promised to go too.”

“That’s why Snowy agreed to hang with her dad, right?” He poked her in the shoulder. “Because she gets to hang with Michael?”

Snow scraped the bottom of her yogurt and licked her spoon.

“Ms. Ross?”

She was barelegged in flip-flops, a man’s blue-and-white-striped shirt dangling to her knees. “I’m the hostess at Tino’s? Kath?”

I jumped up and hugged her. I had never hugged her at Tino’s, an Italian place we ate at every couple of months, but when you’re away, everyone you bump into from home is family. “I apologize. I didn’t recognize you. Michael has exactly that shirt. You look gorgeous. Are you on vacation? This is so weird. This always happens.”

“What?” said Finn.

“This. It happens to me all the time. Once on a subway I sat down next to my piano teacher from when I was ten.”

Finn moved between us and extended his hand. She shook it, giggling for no reason, the Finn effect.

I introduced her. She supplied her last name, Bicks, and she sat right down in the seat saved for Michael, treating Snow like a little sister, oblivious to Snow’s cool. She showed Snow paper packets of sugar she’d been collecting since she arrived, scooping a handful out of her bag. She told her about swimming, about the men. “Ooh la la,” she said. “They dive off this big rock and they are always offering to show me around. Lo Scoglio.”
She insisted Snow repeat it, and Snow did.
The Sicilian men will make mincemeat of her
, I thought. “Have you been pickpocketed?” I asked.

“Does that happen here?” Her blue eyes grew rounder.

“I’m sure. You should be careful.”

That morning at breakfast was the only time we spoke. I almost wrote, “as I recall,” but I would have recalled. I tend to speak of that time, particularly about her, as if I’m testifying on the stand.

She arranged the packets in rows on the table, moving one and another from here to there, an artistic display. “That’s famous.” She pointed to the image on a heart-shaped one. “God reaching out to touch Adam.”

“Michelangelo,” said Taylor. “Snow knows about that. Thank you for the offer, but I don’t feel like shopping.”

“Come on, please. It will be fun.”

“Zoom, zoom.” Kath pressed a finger on a packet and zipped it in Snow’s direction. “They’re all different. This one’s crazy—what’s
Italia Zuccheri
? Zucchini sugar? Oh, and isn’t this a pretty yellow? Would you like to have one?”

Snow took the Michelangelo.

“But that’s Kath’s favorite,” said Taylor.

“No, it’s fine. Good choice,” said Kath. “Do you want to come swimming with me, Snow? I’ll take the best care of her, I promise.”

“She’s going on the tour boat with her dad.”

“And with Michael,” I said.

“What tour boat?” she asked.

“They’re right near the bridge to Ortigia,” said Tay.

Snow ripped open the sugar packet, severing God from Adam, and dumped the sugar on her plate.

“Whoa, Snowy,” said Finn.

“It
is
sugar,” said Taylor. “You’re supposed to open it.”

Kath took a second to react. We all waited. She laughed. She seemed a cheery positive type, the sort in high school that one might dupe and then feel guilty because she was so trusting and forgiving. “Where’s Mr. Shapner now?” she asked.

“In the room. Writing.”

“Tell him hi.”

“Where are you from?” said Finn.

“Indiana. Bloomington. Well, New York City now. Well, not really. I live in New Jersey. Jersey City. But I’m moving to New York soon.” She swept the rest of her sugar packets off the table into her bag. “Nice to meet you all. Snow, you’re going to come swim with me sometime, aren’t you? It’s a date.” She waved with a scrunch of her fingers and left.

It was a sweltering day. Taylor turned up in a hat with a wide brim that she kept clamped on her head with one hand. We’d never spent much time together alone, and ended up discussing deodorant. As I do when I am stumped for conversation and wondering how in the world to connect, I confessed something inappropriate, that I used clinical strength and sometimes rolled it halfway down my arms. Taylor didn’t like greasy sunblock, she said, and didn’t believe 30 was as effective as 60 even though some doctors say it’s good enough. Finally we were rescued from pseudo intimacy by the shops on shiny and clean Corso
Matteotti, a wide street near the entrance to Ortigia before it spidered into a maze.

Taylor threw herself into shopping the way a camper might seek to prove she was a good sport. She flipped through racks of clothes, pulled out this and that, held it at arm’s length, and then popped it back in again. “What do you think?” she would say, and often not wait for an answer. We both knew these fun, cheap stores were not her thing. She pretended to consider a white shirt with a transparent back. “Better for that woman. The one with the sugar.”

“Definitely better for her. Well, she’s younger for one thing. Wasn’t she nice to Snow?”

I worried then. She
was
nice. Finn had moved right in on her. She was someone he would discover could juggle oranges and he would talk her into doing it on Lo Scoglio and the next thing you knew, she would have a serious crush, and he would, God knows what Finn might do. Better him than the Sicilian men. Maybe not.

“Did you see her ring?” said Taylor.

“Yes.”

“Horrible.”

We both laughed, our first unstrained moment.

“I wonder who bought it for her? A man. Older. Richer. She is sort of luscious. I never noticed at Tino’s. Married. A married man, I bet.”

“She’s brainy,” said Taylor.

“Not possible.”

“She was reading
The Red and the Black
.”

“Stendhal? Weird. Michael is basing his novel on it.”

“Well, she’s reading it. When I first met her, she was carrying it.”

We were in a lingerie shop now. Taylor lifted leggings off a display, striped plum, peach, and white.

“Those would look cute on Snow.”

She sank into a chair with the leggings in her lap.

“Is the signora all right?” asked the saleslady.

Taylor sniffled quietly, located a tissue in one of her zippered compartments, and mopped her eyes under her giant Prada sunglasses, which, when she raised them, tipped her hat at an angle.

I was holding six pairs of thong underwear, two for five euros, a great deal, and put them back on the rack. “Taylor, come on. Let’s go.”

She bobbled up, letting the leggings slide to the floor, where the saleswoman snatched them, and started to walk toward the dressing rooms. “This way.” I pointed to the front door.

Even desolate, so upset she seemed not to know where she was going, she wasn’t someone to comfort. From the distance she kept, from her rigid posture, always leading with her small proud breasts—it seemed that touch wasn’t something she liked. Every so often I grasped her twiggy arm to keep her from walking into a light pole or tripping on the low metal chain strung like a garland along the sidewalk. That garland was odd. What was it doing there? Was it culturally significant, reflective of some demented Siracusa-think: Those crazy drivers, always taking shortcuts on the sidewalk, this will stop them.

Thank God a café turned up on the next block, although
unfortunately located on a little triangle where two streets intersected. Vespas and cars raced by on both sides. Taylor flinched at every rev of an engine.

The menu had pictures. I pointed to an orange drink in a tumbler that looked girly, refreshing, and lethal, and held up two fingers.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?” said Tay, which made me laugh.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. About why you’re upset?”

What with all the eye-wiping, nose-blowing, and general mournfulness, she’d taken off her glasses and hat. She blinked into the sun without realizing she could do anything about it, like ask the waiter to adjust the umbrella, so I did. I noticed too that perhaps her stretchy top was on wrong. Her left arm might be coming out of the neck hole. She might be wearing it sideways. The thing is, all the openings—neck, sleeves, and bottom—were cut ragged and loose. I wasn’t sure.

“Snow,” she said.

“Oh.”

The tears welled again. She sniffled loudly, then sucked her drink through the straw. “This is good. What is it?”

“No idea. It tastes like orange and it has an orange slice in it. I’m guessing orange liqueur with something else. Wouldn’t this drink be a lovely nail polish color?”

“Amber,” she said. “I had the cutest amber cardigan but I left it somewhere.” She waved her hand as if she were dismissing what she was about to say before she said it. “I upset her.”

“Snow?”

She nodded.

“Did she upset you?”

“What?”

“I had this shrink once who said sometimes you switch things around. For instance, you say you upset her when she upset you.”

“I don’t like therapists.”

“Why?”

“They’re troublemakers.”

“I went to one after my dad died. She helped me a lot. It was around the time I met Michael. Therapy smoothed the way.”

She took the skinny straw out of the glass and drank the rest. “Michael is so charming.”

“I know. He is. I feel, whatever else I did in life, I got that right.”

“You’re in sync. So devoted.”