Chapter 38 Gayle
G AYLE
Back in San Marco, Gayle and Mike follow his phone map to a pizza cafe that’s advertising a buy one, get one free lunch special.
Opposite the cafe in the piazza is a grand old white church with huge wooden doors. Gayle hasn’t been inside an Italian church yet; the basilica’s still closed after the November floods.
‘Can we take a quick peek inside that church before lunch, hon?’ she asks Mike.
He looks longingly at the cafe, at the enormous slices of salami pizza on display in the window. ‘Sure.’
They walk in and she stares in pure wonderment. Every wall is decorated, and so is the ceiling. She doesn’t know where to look first – statues, frescos, stained-glass windows, enormous pillars made of marble.
‘You shall not set up a figured stone in your land and bow down to it.’ Mike quotes the Bible under his breath, pointing to a statue of Jesus.
‘Right you are, hon.’
Gayle doesn’t admit to him that she can see why Catholics love art in their churches. It’s impossible not to feel God’s presence when the agonised face of the crucified Christ is right there.
Together, she and Mike circle around the church, following the torture of Jesus in the stations of the cross, painted in all its gory detail.
A priest in robes walks among the visitors, stopping to greet people. He’s a dashingly handsome young man, tall and broad and blond like a movie star. Gayle blushes when he catches her eye and smiles at her.
‘Forcing red-blooded young men to be celibate is unnatural,’ Mike mutters, eyeing the priest. ‘I’d bet my last dollar that priest has a woman tucked away somewhere. Stupid Catholic rules deciding his love life for him just ain’t right.’
Mike’s words remind Gayle of what Noah said the day he left and never came back.
You don’t get to decide who I love.
Tomorrow she’s going to challenge Mike. Tomorrow, just not today.
‘I wonder what this leads to,’ Mike says when they come to a door tucked off to the side of the altar. He turns the knob.
‘I’m not sure we’re allowed to go in there, hon.’
‘If they don’t want people in there, they’d lock it,’ he replies, pushing the door open. It gives a slight creak. ‘Sweet holy Moses!’ Mike exclaims once the door is fully open.
It takes Gayle a few seconds to make sense of the scene before her. The room is small and its walls are covered in religious art. But it’s not the art Gayle’s attention is drawn to. No, what Gayle can’t tear her eyes away from are the two women locked in a clandestine embrace up against one of the walls.
The women, suddenly aware of their entry, jump apart from each other and stare back at her with the same amount of shock that Gayle’s sure is plastered on her own face. One of the women is wearing a nun’s habit, minus the veil that’s crumpled on the floor by her feet. And the other woman, with a flushed face, wiping her lips with her hand, is none other than Signora Bianchi.
‘What in the heck?’ Mike’s eyes are bulging and his mouth is agape.
Signora Bianchi lurches towards Mike, the panic clear in her eyes. ‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘Please.’ She clasps her hands in prayer. The colour has completely drained from her face. She looks as if she might faint.
Mike takes a big breath in, but Gayle squeezes his arm. ‘We’re ever so sorry,’ she says to the women. ‘We were just on our way out, you see. We were admiring the church and all the lovely paintings. Such beautiful art here in Italy. Puts us Americans to shame. Our churches are mighty plain, aren’t they, Mike? None of these lovely mosaics and statues and what not.’ Gayle can feel her face sweating. ‘Anyway, we were off to get some lunch at that two-for-one pizza place across the piazza over there and we opened the wrong door by mistake. Whoopsie!’
Signora Bianchi and the nun are frozen. It’s as if they aren’t even breathing.
‘It was my fault.’ Gayle’s panting now. ‘I said to Mike, I’m sure this is the way out, hon. But it’s clearly not. Oh dear. I’m terribly sorry. We’re going right now, right this second. Pretend we were never here, okay? Bye, bye. Take care now. Goodbye.’
She tugs on Mike’s arm, pulling him away. The women keep staring as she backs away.
Silently, Gayle leads Mike out of the church by the hand, as fast as her legs can carry her.
As soon as they’re outside, Mike turns to her but doesn’t say anything. It’s the first time she’s ever known him to be lost for words. When his words do come, she wishes they hadn’t.
‘We’ve gotta tell Signore Bianchi,’ he says. ‘He has to know about this.’