Chapter Eighteen
It was late. Patrick found his way by moonlight to the Villa Emilia—a second building on the hotel’s property, which housed some of the more exclusive guest suites—and he paced with his sister, Clara, in the hallway in front of Palmina’s door. What a mess. Greg and Livia had retreated back to their room with Grant in tow and were most likely in for the night; no doubt they had some hard thinking to do. Maisie rode back to the hotel in a separate water taxi with him, Clara, and Palmina. Clara and Palmina tended to her feminine needs, and then, in the privacy of Patrick’s room, he held her while she cried until there were no tears left and, drained, she fell asleep in his bed.
“Are we doing this?” Clara asked impatiently. “I have someone waiting for me in the hotel bar.”
“Yes, we all know. Groot.”
“His name is Gustavo. Why do you keep calling him Groot?”
Patrick ran both hands through his hair, uncharacteristically mussing it. “Hasn’t Grant forced you to watch Guardians of the Galaxy? Groot is a big dumb tree who can only say his name. He hangs out with a raccoon.”
Clara considered this new information. “Not that dumb if he can say his name.”
“What?”
“I know that you mean it as some clever insult, but how many talking trees do you know?” Clara fanned herself with her hand, her frustration making her temperature rise. “Does the raccoon also talk?”
“Does the raccoon also— Can we focus, please?”
Patrick pressed his ear against Palmina’s door, wondering if they would find her alone. Despite their squabble at dinner they had made fragile peace on the boat, and Patrick felt an emergency summit of the siblings was in order—something that would be much more difficult to convene with her backup singers hovering.
“What are you doing?” Clara whispered hoarsely, checking the delicate watch on her wrist. She looked back wistfully in the direction of the main lobby.
“Listening.”
“For what?”
Patrick wasn’t sure. “Movement, scissoring, women’s lacrosse. I don’t know—I’ll know it when I hear it.”
“That’s it, I’m out.” Clara turned and headed back for the elevator.
“Clara, wa—”
Palmina whipped open her door, causing Patrick to tumble forward, his head landing squarely on her breasts.
“What is all this bickering in the hall?” Palmina seemed more bothered by the unwelcome noise than she was about Patrick’s presence against her chest, as if everyone eventually ended up in her bosom. Patrick scrambled upright, trying to look equally nonchalant. Palmina had removed her makeup and changed from her jumpsuit into sweats and her hair had flopped to one side; she looked more reasonable with her guard down. The sleeves and waist on her sweatshirt had been cropped, and it was emblazoned with a pitched trident, which may or may not have been the logo for Maserati. Or maybe she’d paid an outrageous amount and it came that way. It didn’t matter. This was a Palmina that Patrick could do business with.
“Are you alone?” Patrick asked, peering beyond her into her room. “We were hoping to find you alone.”
“I’m flattered, but I’m not into threesomes.”
Clara gasped, then giggled, but Palmina just glared, then retreated into her room. Was that an invitation for them to follow? Patrick ushered Clara inside before Palmina could change her mind and quietly closed the door behind them.
The room was wedge-shaped, the widest end where they stood now, and as they passed a marble bathroom, Clara pointed to a tub that was so long and thin a very small person could almost swim laps. The bed was in the room’s center and was still immaculately made. Feeling frustrated with their hosts, he whispered to Clara, “I knew they booked the best rooms for themselves.”
Palmina moved undaunted to a sitting area at the room’s far end, which had two modest couches, a small table with chairs, and an antique desk that held her laptop and a stack of books with Italian titles including an Elena Ferrante. Outside her open floor-to-ceiling windows, the long track of the moon rippled across the lake’s choppy waters as a surprising wind made dance partners of the drapes.
“There’s champagne,” Palmina informed them, indicating a bucket on the coffee table next to an enormous conch shell, which Patrick hoped was not dredged from the lake.
“Not prosecco?” Patrick asked carefully, in as dry a tone as (hopefully) the champagne. He knew better than to rock the boat (it was already a small miracle she had let them in), but he couldn’t help himself.
Palmina waved her hand dismissively. “Sometimes the French do things better.” It was a rare concession on her part. She leaned out the open window and piled the hair back on top of her head before the wind caught it and swept it back down. “I’ll kill you if you tell anyone I say that. And they will never find your body.”
Patrick imagined the Robert Palmer girls weighing his corpse down with enormous shells like the one on the table, and pushing him off a boat into the lake under the cover of darkness. They’d then undulate back toward the boat’s wheel and grab it in unison, speeding off into the night, hair gelled so slickly to their scalps, nary a strand would be out of place when they were questioned about his disappearance later.
“We’ve probably consumed enough for one night,” Clara said. They both had observed Palmina’s face as they left the rehearsal dinner. There was not even a hint of pleasure at the evening’s unraveling; quite the opposite, in fact—her forehead remained furrowed in concern. “Besides,” she continued, “Gustavo’s waiting.”
Patrick, ignoring her, released the bottle’s cork with a satisfying pop and a spiritous fog escaped from the bottle’s neck.
Clara relented. “Well, maybe just one glass.”
Patrick poured three, waiting patiently for the bubbles to fizzle and fade, then slowly filled each flute with more. He handed one to his sister and one to Palmina as she closed the drapes over both open windows so they blew dramatically into the room, then sat on the floor like she was Demi Moore at the end of St. Elmo’s Fire. “I want to start by apologizing for my behavior tonight,” he began. “I was less than my best self.”
It didn’t feel like Palmina needed an apology. In fact, she seemed not to desire one at all. “I would hate to see more.” She grabbed a bottle of pills from the desk and tossed them to Patrick, who—with surprising athletic grace—caught them. The bottle rattled like a tambourine.
“I don’t need pills,” he announced. Alcohol, for him, was enough.
“They’re for Maisie. She could be in for rough days.”
“See, this is where guncles are better than launts, as even I know not to give a child Valium.”
Clara, understanding Palmina perfectly, rolled her eyes.
“They’re for her period, you bastardo,” Palmina croaked.
Patrick’s face grew hot as he scrutinized the bottle’s label. “Oh,” he said, and tucked the pills in his pocket. A change of subject was in order. Moving on. “Just so you know, I’ve always liked Livia.” He thought it important Palmina knew where he stood.
“As have I,” Clara added, wanting to do her part to make peace.
“And I have always liked Greg.” Patrick wasn’t looking for reciprocation, but he appreciated Palmina’s words nonetheless. She gestured for her guests to take a seat on the couch.
“We can fix this. Can’t we?”
“We?” Palmina challenged, but she said it with a wry leer.
Clara tried not to overdo it, wanting to stay alert for Gustavo, but the champagne was better than any she’d ever tasted. “Why have we not been drinking this all weekend?”
Palmina stretched on the floor like a cat. “My parents don’t like the French.”
Patrick stared into his glass, transfixed by the bubbles rising to the surface. Come quickly, I am drinking the stars. Those were words supposedly spoken by Dom Pierre Pérignon the first time he discovered bubbles in one of his bottles, at least according to a book on sparkling wines Patrick had read. The line, pure poetry—as romantic as champagne itself. The truth of course was less intoxicating, the bubbles were CO2 gas; there was enough in the average bottle to create twenty million of them. The magic is in the bubbles, he thought, even knowing it was not magic at all. Anyone who had tasted flat champagne would know what he meant. The same was true of relationships—you introduce too much air and the bond between any two people could fizzle. In this case, kids were a lot of ether.
“So what do we do?” Clara asked.
Clara usually thrived in a crisis. Patrick stared at her, wondering who’d kidnapped that version of his sister. Sadly, he knew—he was sitting patiently at the hotel bar introducing himself to everyone and everything down to the potted plants.
Palmina held her champagne flute by its base, as coolly as she held cigarettes. “Why do we need to do anything? Time, I think, fixes most things.”
“Yes, but we don’t have a lot of it,” Patrick pointed out.
“We have the night, that is plenty. Then I will talk to my sister.”
“And I’ll talk to Greg,” Clara offered.
“Okay,” Patrick agreed. “That leaves me to talk to the kids.” He and Palmina once again held an intense eye contact that made Patrick uncomfortable, and he thought it best in the moment to agree. “A good night’s sleep might help cooler, may I say prettier, heads prevail.”
“Grazie,” Palmina said, in unison with Clara’s “Thank you.”
“I was talking about me,” Patrick protested. He stood and began to pace. “Grant will be fine. He’s made his desires clear. It’s Maisie I’m worried about. I know you both look at me and see someone who has it all together...”
“My father is right. You are the comedian.”
“...but the truth of the matter is I’m a little out of my league.”
Palmina clutched nonexistent pearls. “Patrick. Are you asking for my help?”
Patrick gripped his temples at the absurdity of it all. They were now the unlikely partners thrown together by a job-weary chief in every cop movie ever made. “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
Clara set her champagne down on the coffee table. “Speaking of bedfellows, I should probably...” She pointed with both thumbs at the door.
“It’s an expression,” Patrick said, plopping back down on the couch. “Shakespeare. The Tempest, if I recall.”
Palmina agreed. “Prospero was the Duke of Milan.”
Patrick tucked his chin to his chest and looked down at her on the floor. “Yes, I’m sure next you will tell me you were related.”
Clara was exasperated with her brother’s antics. “Patrick, she’s only saying that because we were just in Milan.”
“Right.” They had been in the city not two nights prior. Europe was extraordinary that way, so different from the States, Patrick thought, which felt far from the center of everything. Patrick settled on the couch and kicked off his shoes. Clara glared at him, annoyed he was making himself comfortable instead of starting their good nights. “You know, there was a time I thought Maisie was like you.”
“Beguiling?” Palmina purred.
“Gay,” Patrick corrected.
Clara glanced at her watch again.
“And now?” Palmina asked, with genuine curiosity.
Patrick adjusted the conch shell with his bare foot so that the opening was not facing him, suddenly afraid of something crawling out of it. “I don’t think about it. Now she’s just Maisie. She’s a young woman, something I don’t have any experience being.”
“This is where Maisie could benefit from someone like Livia,” Clara observed. “If she would just stop pushing back against everything all the time.”
Palmina dissented. “Pushing back is the job of a young woman. It is, what is the word—imperative.” She laid flat on her back and studied the ceiling, before rolling her head in the direction of the windows. “Some people believe there is a monster in the lake.”
“A monster?” Clara recoiled.
“Lariosauro. Over the years there have been many sightings.”
Clara laughed nervously. “Have you told this to Grant? He would love you forever.”
Patrick glared. Traitor. If he was losing Maisie’s favored status to Palmina, he didn’t want to lose Grant, too.
“Do you believe there is such a monster?” Clara asked, blocking her brother’s annoyed gaze with her hand like one might blot out the sun.
“Italian folklore,” Palmina dismissed, returning her attention to the ceiling. “There are many stories of witches and demons and ghosts. That’s just Italy. The Christianization of our myths.”
Patrick understood. Religion seeped its way into everything. But monsters living under the water seemed to take things to a new and chilling depth.
“But folklore has its place,” she continued. “Because that is what it is like to be a young woman. To have a monster inside you. Raging.” Patrick turned to Clara; while she looked a little uncomfortable with Palmina’s phrasing, she was clearly in agreement. “And there are sightings. Occasionally. People see it from time to time, despite your best efforts to keep it hidden.”
“Like at rehearsal dinners?”
Palmina winked, glad to be understood.
“But isn’t that true for all adolescents?” Patrick pressed. “Young men, too?”
“Young men can become their monster and not be judged for it. They are allowed to show anger, be violent and growl. Young women are different. They know they have to contain the monster to get what they want. And it’s frustrating to be young and to first see how the world works and to learn how much of yourself you have to hide. The unfairness of there being two sexes. And how lonely it can be to see your future mapped out and to know that part of your light will be dimmed.”
Patrick hated the idea of Maisie being lonely or dulled. Is that why she spent so much time with her nose in a book, where the world might still seem vibrant? “Greg doesn’t want that. I don’t want that. We go out of our way to make sure that she is encouraged and celebrated for exactly who she is.” He turned to Clara for back-up.
Palmina glanced down at her sweatshirt as if contemplating cutting it shorter. “At home.”
“Yes.”
With her foot, Palmina knocked her cigarettes from the desk chair where they sat next to a book of matches. “But she won’t be celebrated that way in the world. Not by everyone. That’s not how the world works.” She propped herself on an elbow to reach for the matchbook, too. When she lit her cigarette, she held the match upside down so that the flame crawled toward her fingers; it was the way Patrick and Clara’s grandfather had long ago lit a pipe and he found it both masculine and strangely sexy. She inhaled deeply and it was a long time before she exhaled. “Your sister is right. The irony is she could use a strong woman like Livia to help it all make sense.”
Ironywas a bit strong of a word for Patrick’s liking, and he didn’t like the suggestion that he wasn’t enough to light Maisie’s way. “All this monster talk is wonderful feminist theory, but we have a very real-world problem facing us. So unless you can tell me how to tame this monster...”
“Oh, you never tame it.”
“Train it, then.”
Palmina shook her head. Wrong again. “You encourage it.”
Feeling like he was the only one dealing with the matter at hand, Patrick punched a sequined pillow in frustration, then blew on his knuckles when they burned.
“See?” Palmina said to Clara, who looked ashamed on her brother’s behalf.
“I’m not a monster!” Patrick insisted.
Palmina exhaled several smoke rings. If you say so.
Clara polished off her champagne. “You know, you two are not as different as you think.”
Patrick and Palmina aligned their gaze.
“You’re not! Here.” Clara checked her watch a third time, hoping she could make this quick. “I play this game with Maisie and Grant when they’re fighting.”
“We don’t have time for games,” Patrick protested. “We have a wedding to get back on track.”
Clara pushed ahead. “What’s your favorite color?”
“CLARA,” Patrick objected, burying his face in his hands.
“Humor me,” she insisted. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue,” Patrick answered, without looking up.
“Black,” Palmina countered at the same time.
Clara snapped her fingers to get them to focus. “Great, together you’re a bruise.” This was already not going how it did with the kids.
Patrick turned to Palmina. “Black is not a color.”
“Yes it is.”
“Black is the absence of light. It’s the very nonexistence of color!”
“FORGET COLORS,” Clara exclaimed, losing her patience. “Favorite shapes.”
“Parallelogram.”
“Circle.”
“Parallelogram, Patrick?! Honestly. How about a shape that people have heard of.”
Patrick threw up his arms. “Fine. Square.” They were wasting time. “Which I might point out is a parallelogram.”
Palmina scoffed. “Talk about square.”
Clara was losing her patience. “Musical instrument, then.” She was grasping for straws.
“Clavichord,” Palmina said.
Which overlapped with Patrick saying, “Triangle.”
Clara stood up and brushed the wrinkles from her dress. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, I have better things to do.”
“WAIT,” Patrick said before his sister could go. “I may have been stuck on shapes.”
“I have kept Groot waiting long enough. Gustavo.” Clara clapped her hands over her mouth, horrified. Patrick laughed, which angered Clara further. “You know, you may not think he’s the smartest tool in the shed, but he could probably build me a shed. And frankly that’s all I need for tonight.”
“A shed?” Palmina asked, as if needing the word translated.
“That’s what she shed,” Patrick said by way of explanation and they both laughed, causing him to wonder if they ran reruns of The Office in Italy.
“Honestly, you two deserve each other.” This time Clara skipped checking her watch and headed straight for the door. “If you figure out this mess you can call me. But don’t be surprised if my phone’s on do not disturb.” Patrick and Palmina waited until they heard the door close and latch before they burst out in riotous laughter. Then it grew awkward again, so Patrick reached for the champagne and topped off their glasses.
It was the first time the two of them had been alone.
“It feels good to laugh,” Palmina admitted. For once on this trip Patrick took pride in being the comedian; it was no longer a diss.
Patrick reclined on the sofa and covered his face with his hands. “I hope Maisie’s asleep,” he said.
“She is,” Palmina assured him, as if she knew firsthand that emotional outbursts were exhausting.
“I just want to fix it for her, you know?”
“Americans try to fix everything. Maybe it fixes itself. Or maybe it doesn’t. And we make peace with some things that are broken.”
As much as it wasn’t the answer Patrick hoped for, she did have a point. Perhaps their predicament wasn’t that dire; maybe everyone was not as far apart as they seemed. “It’s beautiful here. Lake Como. I’m sorry it became such a mess.”
Palmina hesitated before saying, “Don’t be.”
Patrick turned to her, surprised.
“This entire... production? Prada. Milan. The Grand Hotel Tremezzo. It’s not me. I had to bring my friends just to endure it. I’m not so sure it’s Livia, either, but she is better at pretending.” She became transfixed by her cigarette as it burned perilously close to the filter.
“It’s definitely me,” Patrick blurted. He couldn’t help himself. He might have tried to mask his enthusiasm before, but this wedding was his dream affair. He even wondered if he could replicate it one day; all he had to do was find a willing groom.
“Of course it is,” Palmina said, disappointed, and they laughed.
“Oh, hell. Give me a drag of that thing before it goes out.” Patrick reached for her cigarette and Palmina relinquished it to him. He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke hit his lungs, holding it there momentarily before doubling over in a coughing fit when it was time to exhale. She laughed again, this time at his very predictable predicament. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed as he dropped the butt; Palmina swooped in and extinguished it between two moistened fingers before it could burn a hole in the rug. Once again, unflappably cool.
“Should I light another?”
Patrick waved her away as he caught his breath, reclining further on the couch. They were like two teenagers staying up all night at a slumber party. Patrick even wondered if he could crash right here, leaving Maisie undisturbed in his bed. But he also knew his niece would be frightened if she woke up in a strange room alone. His eyes followed the room’s ornate molding to a corner, where it joined seamlessly with the door frame. Two different things, blending against the odds, just like him and Palmina.
“I start every day by crying for nine minutes,” she divulged.
Patrick propped himself up on his elbows. Nine minutes was very specific. “Are you that miserable?”
“No. I’m that happy. They are tears of joy. I was just thinking you should try it sometime.”
“Yoga might be more productive. Or even taking up smoking for real.” And then he thought about it. “You cry. For nine minutes.”
“Yes, but with joy.”
Patrick didn’t feel like he had that much to be joyful for lately, but maybe this would help find things for which to be happy. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think soon,” she said, as if he were the victim of one of the Italian folk tales she mentioned, cursed by a witch while sands in an hourglass were running out. She couldn’t have let it just be a nice moment between them.
Patrick took a few deep breaths. “Just so you know. These are limited circumstances in which we are aligned.”
“Very limited.” Palmina agreed. Then added, “You worry too much, trying to control everything.”
“Controlling things is what gay people in my country do best.”
“There will be a wedding,” Palmina assured him with an airy conviction.
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Palmina tossed the extinguished cigarette butt in the dregs of her champagne and made herself comfortable again on the floor. “You can just feel it in the air.”