25. Rome, December
ROME, DECEMBER
As we entered December, it wasn’t the end of my residency but the date of the Melrose school Christmas party that loomed pathetically large in my mind.
It was the twelfth of December, and soon after it, the students would be going home.
In bars and at dinners, I overheard them discussing their glamorously full Christmas diaries: the big dinners they had planned, then Boxing Day departures for the West Indies, or to Scotland for Hogmanay.
It stung me to realize that the holidays signified no severance at all to the students’ relations.
Life in London, or beyond, would continue as it did here, only with a slightly wider social set, which accommodated the siblings, cousins, and friends who they often talked about.
During our sittings, I often asked Mary about whether I could model again next year, but she remained vague.
She still needed to check with Lawrence.
So I tried to be flexible and act like it wasn’t a big deal.
I didn’t want her to know the truth: that my staying on in Rome to be near her and Jean—what was starting to feel like my future happiness—depended on the work, and, of course, the payment she could give me.
When the day of the party came, I lay weakly in bed, studying the invite: a thick tablet of embossed cardboard.
There were no concrete details printed on it, only the theme.
This year, it was the age of the Roman emperor Nero.
I thought that it was a pretentious thing, getting your guests to google the dress code.
That was back when I thought the worst thing about Lawrence was that he was pretentious.
I texted Mary for more information. We hadn’t spoken much that week. There had been a break in our sittings, while she flew to New York to look around a design school for the next academic year that I desperately hoped she wouldn’t get into.
Bourgeois question but do you know time, place etc? I’m coming as a centaur by the way.
She responded, though not until the afternoon.
It’s in the old hospital on the island in the middle of the Tiber. Easy to find. Big yellow building. Will be lit up.
A minute later, she added:
Etc
Over the phone, Jean advised me how to get there. I was to cross over the river at the Ponte Cestio. Then, at the tower of St. Bartholomew’s church, turn right.
“You know, there’s a great story about that hospital,” she said.
The phone was propped on the side while I changed outfits to show her what I would be wearing.
“During the war, this heroic doctor managed to protect a group of Jews by pretending they were very sick when the Nazis arrived. He got them to present with all these symptoms, coughing like lepers, and claiming all these ailments. He diagnosed them with a made-up illness called Syndrome K so the Nazis were afraid and wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
He saved hundreds of lives,” she murmured. “What a good man.”
I was half listening, worrying about my outfit, when Jean interrupted my thoughts.
“Don’t wear that,” she suddenly said sharply, pointing through the screen at a tunic I’d got in a tourist shop.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s a costume party ,” she said, and her lips twitched. “Not fancy dress. There’s a difference. Plus, I don’t think Mary will like it.”
How do you know? I thought with a shiver of resentment. You haven’t met her yet.
The large yellow building with the green shutters was lit up in the darkness, exactly as Mary had said.
Flares in the grass marked the wooden doors at the hospital’s entrance.
I crossed the threshold, wielding my invite like a passport, but no one stopped me.
Instead, a tall waitress took my coat, then another one smiled and passed me a glass of cold, clear alcohol.
The reception was held in the old apothecary.
The space was huge, but the guests filled it easily.
It smelled of damp stone, sweetened with the same fig scent that Lawrence used in the bathrooms at the school.
And Jean was right: The dress code had been interpreted immaculately.
The guests were all wearing ornate costumes that looked more like museum pieces or antiques than fancy dress.
I adjusted the laurel crown that I had sprayed with gold paint, and looked around for Mary.
She was hard to find. Most of the guests were blond and almost all were as tall as she was.
But none were as beautiful. It was strange to see so many adults present.
The only parties I’d ever attended were designed to escape them, but here, I noticed, there was no generational divide.
The younger students interacted seamlessly with older guests, calling them nicknames, taking photos, and sharing cigarettes.
Someone touched me on the shoulder. It was Mary. I beamed as I took in her blue toga, the braids in her hair, the jewel in the center of her forehead. I drew her in for a hug. She smelled like an Italian hair salon, of cigarettes and hair spray.
“I missed you,” I whispered, not daring to ask about New York yet.
When we pulled apart, Mary kissed me on the cheek, then glanced anxiously over my shoulder. “I have to go,” she murmured. “Find me later.”
I turned. There, approaching, at long last, was the famous Anna Finbow.
She was shorter than she looked on TV, and her skin, in person, was a richer pale.
Her dark hair was piled onto the top of her head and decorated with lots of little paper butterflies, which were also fastened to her plump chest and the tips of her eyelashes.
I stood aside as she waltzed up to Mary, brought her cheek against hers in the performative guise of a kiss, and then pointed down at some mark on her toga.
Hastily, Mary attended to it, while I lingered there, hopeful for an introduction. But Lawrence swooped in.
“It’s the love of my life!” he said to Anna. Looking straight into her face, he shook his head in wonder. “Is it possible you’re actually getting better with age?”
Anna laughed and hit him playfully with the back of her hand.
In response, he Hollywood dipped her and pretended to kiss her neck.
Everyone around them laughed. Everyone except Mary, who gave a disgusted look, turned, and downed her glass of champagne.
I tried to catch her eye, to signal that I also saw how excruciating this was, but she wouldn’t look at me.
Her cheeks were flushed red, and her eyes were wide with an emotion—embarrassment, maybe, or anger—that I couldn’t quite identify.
As I moved around the room, I took every drink, impatiently waiting for the tipping point to happen, when I’d get to find Mary again. I wanted the stuffy atmosphere to lift and for the party chaos to descend. I wanted the adults to leave so that we could take charge.
First, though, there was the meal to get through.
The man sitting next to me asked where I had gone to school.
Uninterested in my answer, he turned away from me and spent most of the meal speaking to his female neighbor on the other side.
The chair next to mine was empty, so I had no other choice but to listen into their conversation.
At one point during the pasta course, I heard them discussing a student from here.
Her name, when I picked it up, was familiar to me. Oriel.
“Seriously talented girl,” the woman was saying. “I sat in on her interview. She should have been at one of the London schools, really. She was quite brilliant. Very, you know, intense. And then, one day, she just stopped coming. Went completely AWOL.”
“Do you know,” the man said, “I heard about this from someone else. Wasn’t some guru involved?”
My wine turned sour. Rattled, I waited for a break in their exchange, wanting to ask what Oriel’s surname was, but then there was a sudden tapping on the microphone from the stage: Lawrence’s speech was about to begin.
What was the point in delving further? I had no clue about Oriel’s full name, and it couldn’t be the same girl. Jean had said her client was thriving.
“Can you hear me at the back?”
A painful reverberation announced Lawrence’s speech.
He stood before us in a maroon toga that showed off wide shoulders and thick forearms. Beneath the heat of the spotlights, his eyeliner began to seep toward his high cheekbones.
This would only be a short interlude, he assured us, quoting something in Latin.
We had no excuse, he joked, for not giving him our full attention.
The speech felt long to me, lasting well over twenty minutes, though the audience leaned back in their chairs and remained attentive throughout.
Lawrence discussed the school’s founding by his Scots great-grandmother, before going on to thank the donors who managed to keep the spirit of the place alive.
The Finbow family had recently made a generous donation, apparently, ensuring that the academy could remain in its current premises for many years to come.
There was hearty applause. With a sincere smile, he encouraged other parents to dig deep in their pockets and support the school in the same way.
More applause. The man next to me cheered loudly.
I glanced over at Anna throughout the bursts of clapping.
She smiled, gripping tightly on to her wineglass, then whispering thanks to those around her.
In the opposite corner, Mary was not clapping.
She was looking down at her phone. As I tried to catch her eye, I recalled the spitting cruelty in Lawrence’s voice from before.
Tell me, Mary. Why the fuck are you so afraid of paint?
Look at me. Fucking look at me.
My heart hurt as I studied her.
Please , I thought. Please, just look at me.