19. Rome, November
ROME, NOVEMBER
If you asked me, why did I let her in? How did I let Jean control my life so intimately? My answers would be embarrassingly naive.
Because she worried about me.
Because her apartment was nice.
By November, Jean was offering her home as a sanctuary whenever things got a bit much , providing me each time with freshly pressed pajamas, a carafe of lemon water, and stacks of good reading material.
I had been the kind of child who was expected to make her own breakfast, so it was a novelty when she greeted me in bed with a cup of coffee, soothing the perpetual hangovers and comedowns I was sustaining from trying to keep up with Mary.
But, as I let her lavish all sorts of maternal comforts on me, was there also an uneasy twinge inside?
A strained note which might have warned, This woman is kind, but is she too interested in me? What is it that she wants?
If there was, I chose to ignore it. I had found, for the first time in my life, someone to lean on.
Jean’s memory for the mundane logistics of my existence was astounding.
She remembered when my deadlines were, and niggling bits of admin to do with my course.
She tested me on the verbs I was learning during the Italian lessons I’d started taking from Bea, often sprinkling them into conversation so they’d cement in my mind.
Economizing was easier when she helped me source art materials and plan meals.
Nights out were much cheaper, because she gave me the password to her taxi account.
There were promises, too, of introductions to collectors back in London, other courses she’d heard about that she might help me get into.
Then, in perhaps the most irresistible of her offers, a place to stay in London when my course was done.
“You’d love my house in Primrose Hill,” Jean boasted.
“It’s very seventies, very airy. To be honest, I rattle around it.
There’s a bed for you next year for as long as you need. ”
At that point, I began to obsess over the creative freedom that living with Jean would bring.
Without the obligation to pay rent, I could make ceramics full-time, become unblocked in the way Jean wanted me to.
Become an artist. And that dream twinned with another: a future in London with Mary, who was due to return there next June.
I knew she wouldn’t want to be with someone who took depressing day jobs just to make rent.
No, if Mary was going to want me, I needed to commit to my creative work full-time.
If I was successful, things might level out between us.
It might disguise how painfully I needed her.
But since the night I had stayed over, Mary sometimes acted coldly toward me.
We were still meeting twice a week for the painting sessions and going out with Cleo, Bea, and Decca, but instead of inviting me back at the end of the night, Mary would disappear.
I’d search helplessly for her in the smoking areas, on the dance floors, or in the toilet cubicles of whichever nightclub we’d fallen into.
How bitterly I swallowed Decca’s shrugging appraisal each time: Mary had probably gone off to be with Vincenzo.
The thought of it made me act in ways I wasn’t comfortable with.
I was aware that I was becoming hopelessly addicted to those confusing, push-pull forces that underpinned our interactions, but I was powerless to stop the pattern.
On the days I texted Mary and didn’t get a reply, I gripped my phone, hawk-eyed, to check when she was online.
Every time she opened the app and didn’t respond, I sank into a lower mood.
If her silences lasted longer than forty-eight hours, I’d find myself going round to her apartment, just to see if her lights were on, though I never admitted that to Mary, and not even to Jean.
And then, just as my heart was hardening and I was growing used to the coolness, Mary’s behavior toward me would change.
She’d insist that I come over to her apartment on the nights she was detoxing.
Or drinking less, because we agreed that wine at home didn’t really count.
Often when I arrived, she’d seem in a shaky mood, biting her fingernails and distracted by her phone, so I would bustle around and help her to relax.
We’d curl up together under blankets, and I’d select a Paolo Sorrentino film to watch on her projector and pull-down screen.
My tastes in cinema impressed her, but also that I knew how to talk about the films in a critical way.
“I just watch it,” she said, one rainy Monday evening, standing up from the sofa and tying a lime-green scrunchie in her hair.
Her legs were like long brown poles, extending from the baggy white T-shirt she liked to wear when she was at home.
The black lace of her underwear flashed at me as she raised her arms.
“You actually understand the mechanics of what’s going on.”
Not long after that movie night, Mary messaged to invite me for a drink that evening with her godfather. Jean was delighted for me, suggesting it showed that she was perhaps more serious about me than I thought.
Meeting the family! Such a good sign! Keep in touch, won’t you? she wrote. I’ll be waiting to hear…
Mary had referred to her godfather by his nickname, Beaker, but when I found the two of them in the terrace bar of a hotel near Piazza di Spagna, I was so shocked at his celebrity I couldn’t speak.
He was an American actor, famous for his role in a big-budget gangster trilogy and rich from his own brand of whiskey, which he’d launched shortly afterward.
I slid mutely into my seat, trying to catch Mary’s attention to communicate What the fuck , but she just smiled with squiffy eyes and carried on talking.
The air was full of paraffin from the patio heaters and the cloying blanket of Beaker’s cigar smoke.
Nearby a waiter hovered, our champagne bottle crooked in his arm, trying to maintain the fiction that Beaker hadn’t been recognized.
This was pointless, since he and Mary were speaking in drunk, boisterous voices.
They were also dressed up in conspicuously elegant clothes, like characters from the fifties: He wore a tux, and Mary had pinned her hair up and was wearing a lot of Bulgari jewelry, which they had picked up together earlier that day.
It was all just for a joke, apparently. Everything that evening seemed to be a joke. They laughed loudly at everything.
“Perfect,” Beaker said, beaming, after I’d explained that I’d not been sent to a British boarding school. He fixed me in a twinkly stare. “I always said Mary’s needed a normal friend. Someone—unlike her—who is sane.”
Mary laughed and said, “There’s nothing normal about Gus,” to which I replied, “I’m right here, you know,” and they both laughed.
Mary continued addressing him about me. “I swear she’s making me a better artist,” she said, her voice slurring to a slight lisp. She squeezed my arm. “Light works in this amazing way on her.”
“In what way?” I interjected, leaning away from the table because the stench of Beaker’s cigar was burning my nostrils. I preferred this conversation topic. The portrait connected us. It was my only real source of social legitimacy.
“You hold your pose really well,” Mary said, “but somehow you change all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, a cloud went over the sun, and as I looked along the canvas back to your face, it had completely changed. You reflected all these different shadows.”
Beneath the table, her foot clipped mine: a spiked heel against my trainer. I kicked back. We smiled at each other. Then she glanced down toward her lap and adjusted her napkin. More quietly, she said, “Suddenly, you were this whole other person.”
When the food arrived, Beaker and Mary spoke for a long time about people I didn’t know.
I drank glass after glass of champagne, smiling along and laughing at their jokes, but it was hard to join in.
Mary’s mother was frequently mentioned. She was hoping to branch out into some acting, and Beaker had been helping her with it.
She was on the form of her life, apparently, though as he spoke, Mary’s attention drifted.
She began to look at her phone. The table shook against her fidgeting knee.
“You guys not talking again?” Beaker asked, sensing the shift.
Mary shrugged and folded a thin slice of grilled courgette into her mouth. “Anna’s been busy. So have I.”
“Ah,” he said, pinching the stem of his wineglass and bringing it toward his mouth. “You girls. Too similar. She said you’d been quiet. She’s worried you might be in love.”
“Worried?” Mary’s skin flushed. “What kind of mother worries when her daughter’s in love?”
“So, it’s true!” Beaker cuffed his arm around her shoulders and brought her close to his chest. I thought briefly of my own mother. When I had fallen in love with Polly, she worried herself to the point of open disgust.
“Do we get to hear about the lucky guy?” Beaker asked.
There was a pause then. How long did it take Mary to respond?
I stared over the balcony toward the Spanish Steps and the row of designer boutiques facing the bottom of it.
The streetlights were white and round, packed tightly against each other like a string of pearls.
My foot searched for Mary’s again under the table.
She looked at me and smiled. A frisky glance.
My heart raced as I tried to interpret what it meant.
Between my legs, I felt a bead of pleasure.
“Not yet,” Mary said, turning back to Beaker, withdrawing a cigarette and lighting it. “We’re keeping it a secret for now. A secret because it’s precious.”