25. Rome, December #3
I had to find her. The fact that she’d invited Vincenzo here, to a party her mother was also attending, seemed significant.
I imagined the three of them heading off for a cozy nightcap together, laughing over events of the evening, laughing at me.
I needed to see what he looked like. I had to try to understand exactly whom Mary was choosing over me.
I checked outside, scanned the other groups sitting at the tables, and figured she might still be upstairs, where the bathroom and cloakroom were.
The stairway was dark and curved, and the far corners of my field of vision were warped and slightly glittering.
I gripped the banister hard, feeling struck for a moment by its beautiful S shape.
I walked upward, calmer now that I was away from the party, as if I had taken refuge in a cool church.
I traced my fingers across the corners of the large picture frames that lined the stairway and which contained oil portraits of eminent doctors.
Then, from the cloakroom, I heard a shuffling sound, a tiny cry. I looked up. I wasn’t alone.
Two figures were clambering out of the tiny cloakroom space.
My breath caught on itself. I knew, instantly, the shape of her.
I retraced my steps on the stairs so I could watch, unseen.
Mary was gripping the railing, but leaning backward from it.
Her hair had come loose, and it rested in thick strands on her shoulders.
Her eyes were either half-dead or rolling backward in pleasure.
Stood behind her was a man, kissing her neck and pawing at her breasts with his broad hands. My heart collapsed. There was the red toga. His moon-pale skin. The muscle of his upper arm was tensed. No, not Vincenzo. It was Lawrence.
I can still see the image of them, even now.
It plays and replays beneath my days endlessly, like a video tape on a loop.
I remember hearing a choking sound, then a loud cry.
I was moving blindly. I recall the reflex to turn protectively away.
I hurried back down the stairs and ran from the party, in the direction of Jean’s apartment, my hand clamped to my mouth, utterly bewildered.
“Did you enjoy the feast, then?” Mary glanced up at me mischievously.
It was our final sitting of the term. Her music was playing softly through the speaker, and we had the classroom to ourselves.
“Those pills were strong.” There had been an after-party at her flat, she said.
Lawrence had been there. Even the dealer had come inside and stayed up with them. “I didn’t sleep for about two days.”
“Me neither” was all I could manage to say.
We were both quiet for a while. Whenever she was at her canvas, Mary lost the boisterousness she exuded outside of the school.
Now, I hated her painstaking process, how tentatively she mixed pigments in an old pesto jar.
I’d once believed, stupidly, that she took such care over the portrait because of me.
It was agony to realize that it had only ever been to impress Lawrence.
“When do you fly back?” Mary asked, referring to Christmas.
“I actually think I’ll head up to Venice.” I made it sound as if I’d be avoiding a big, flamboyant family event at home, but I’d been saving up carefully for the trip. Jean had given me pointers on which scuolas to visit and where to eat, all the tourist traps I had to avoid.
“And then it’s London, right?” Mary asked. “Is that the plan?”
“Maybe here for a month or two longer.” I hesitated. “Have you heard anything more about next term?”
“Gussie, please,” Mary said shortly. “You can’t keep asking me.”
“But have you actually asked Lawrence?”
“I’m waiting for the right time. He says he’s already got someone in mind.”
Of course he does , I thought bitterly. There was a pause as I waited for the heat of our exchange to dissipate. “What are your Christmas movements?”
She pulled a face. “We’ve got filming at home.”
Every year, cameras were invited into Mary’s house to film the drinks parties and the festive meals that her mother pretended to prepare. Mary had spoken about it before, describing it as an awful intrusion.
“I’m dreading it.” She puffed out her cheeks. “Playing happy families while Mum and Dad are hardly talking. Plus, I’m so fat at the moment.”
“Don’t be mad,” I said quietly. The memory of her brown nipple, the small mole that lay alongside it, made my legs tense. “Will Vincenzo be with you?”
Mary gave no impression that this had touched a nerve. “No,” she said softly. “He’s got work.”
It was shattering, how easy Mary found it to lie.
I lowered my eyes and kept quiet, hoping she’d address the coldness between us, but she seemed lost in thought, humming along to the song lyrics, smiling at what was taking shape in front of her.
Mary always liked to listen to Joni Mitchell while she painted.
I won’t, can’t, listen to her now.
After I fled the costume party, Jean had found me shivering and sobbing on her doorstep.
Seeing Jean in her dressing gown convinced me that she couldn’t have been there.
She seemed to have been asleep: no makeup on, no glasses, either.
Without them, her eyes looked narrow and dark, like pellets.
She bundled me inside. Next came her tea, the warm bath.
So sweet she was, so deft and caring as she spun that tight cocoon.
She sat patiently with me, while I soaked in the water and told her the story.
“I just wish I could get that image of them out of my head,” I said, screwing my eyes shut. “She must be so fucked up to be with him. To want to do that. It’s fucking gross. ”
Jean’s face was grave. “No, Gus. Mary’s the one who we need to help. She’s been exploited.”
My stomach clenched. There was a flannel in my hands. I twisted it between my fingers like a rosary.
“He’s a close friend of the Finbows, isn’t he?”
“Practically her godfather.”
Jean flinched. “I wonder when it all started? When someone abuses their position of power,” she continued calmly, “the victim rarely has any choice over whether they really consent to a relationship. We get mixed up, confusing our desire for acceptance with something more meaningful.”
I shrugged miserably, uninterested in Jean’s excuses for Mary, who I had decided was a slut. A vain slut with a weak personality.
“Will you go to the school tomorrow?”
“The school?” I said, aghast.
“Another adult must know,” she urged.
I hesitated, unwilling to admit that I couldn’t upset things at the Melrose when I hadn’t been paid for my last month of sittings. Without that, I couldn’t afford to go to Venice, or pay my debts to Jean, which were starting to add up.
“Well,” she said, grim-faced. “You’ve put me in a very difficult position.”
“I’m sorry,” I said weakly, exhausted from the party and all the crying. “I’m so sorry for involving you.”
“Unless,” she said, then left a meaningful pause.
“Don’t tell the school,” I begged. “Please, let me talk to her first.”
“Mary needs to speak to a grown-up, Gus. Someone impartial.”
At the sink opposite, a tap was dripping. Jean got up and tightened it forcefully, then sat back down. My body tensed over. I knew exactly what she was asking, and I was frightened by the starkness of her ultimatum: Bring her to me, or I’ll tell.
“You’ve enjoyed our sessions together, haven’t you, Gus?” Jean smiled tetchily toward me, through the steamy bathroom air. “Haven’t I made you feel so much better?”
My tongue darted across the tiny mouth ulcers which were developing along my lower lip from the pills. “ So much better.”
“Why wouldn’t we want that for our other friends, too?”
There was something off, I knew, in the stern little nod Jean gave me, the triumphant way she reached into the water and jerked out the bath plug.
But I didn’t pursue the thought further.
There were far more painful things to dwell on.
My mind kept going over the grisly details of what I had witnessed: Lawrence’s blunt fingernails pawing over Mary’s body.
His pronounced chin nuzzling the soft pit of her neck.
The sight of her back, arched with pleasure against him.
I was coming down and facing the bleak embarrassment of Mary’s rejection.
Why would I want to introduce her to Jean now?
She didn’t deserve it. I had already lost Mary to Lawrence. I couldn’t face sharing Jean, too.
Halfway into the portrait session, there was a knock on the door. It was Lawrence, dressed in a camel-colored coat, his hair slicked back. My body stiffened with anger. Mary looked at him and immediately colored.
“Can I do you now, Mary? Before I head off to that dreary lunch.”
Mary glanced anxiously at her canvas, then rested her paintbrush down in the slot at the bottom of the easel.
I shifted out of my usual position on the plinth and stretched my arms. As I watched Lawrence approach, I was bracing myself, still used to him representing trouble for her.
But as he gazed at the portrait, he didn’t criticize it as he usually did. He made sounds of approval.
“Almost there.” He beamed, his eyes flitting between the canvas and me. Then he clicked his fingers, as if to wake me from hypnosis. “Gus, come take a look.”