Disposition of Remains Page 11

  “Thank you,” she replied graciously, instantly stashing the bottle under her apron.

  “This is an alcohol-free zone, you know…because of Michael,” Graziella whispered as she glanced over at Michael who was busily admiring his daughters’ new gifts.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…,” I whispered back as I fantasized about cracking it open and guzzling the whole bottle on the spot.

  I felt incredibly stupid. Michael had mentioned that he felt he drank too much, but I hadn’t put it together. I’d just been so anxious to make a good impression that I didn’t want to show up empty-handed.

  “Would you like some tea?” Graziella asked as she gave me a mischievous smile and a silent signal for me to follow her to the kitchen.

  Tea again? Another strike against her.

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I haven’t had a glass in ages,” Graziella said with a smirk.

  Instead of giving me tea, Graziella opened the wine, poured it into two teacups, and then crammed the rest of the bottle behind some pasta in the cupboard.

  I suppose I should have protested but something about her demeanor put me completely at ease. I was already starting to regret the fantasies I’d had about her stroking out into her salad at dinner. I could relate to any woman who rebelled against her husband in any small way, even if that husband was Michael.

  Within moments of seating myself upon the couch, I had a little girl plunked down on either side of me. Graziella seemed pleased rather than threatened.

  “You are very pretty,” Bianca said to me in perfect English.

  “Thank you! So are you,” I replied.

  “Are you a model?” Filipa then asked.

  I made a mental note to spend as much time as possible with Michael’s little flatterers. Filipa and Bianca asked me a thousand questions over the next half hour, and I loved answering every one. I hadn’t had much experience with the innocence of children. They were so curious and pure; they weren’t going to inquire about my marriage woes, my illness, or my fury with the world at large. They weren’t going to flatter me with artifice to try to obtain something in return. It was refreshing. Yet still, they made me thankful that I never had a child of my own—one who would watch me suffer and die, as I had my own mother. As far as that was concerned, everything had worked out for the best.

  We gathered for dinner at the dining room table where Michael detailed his job as an English Professor at the local university. It seemed as though he were gloating about the fact that he had followed through with our plans without me. After a delicious crème brûlée dessert, the little girls retired to their room, but not before Graziella refilled my “tea.”

  “So, what is your occupation, Stacia?” Graziella asked, pointedly.

  I was caught off guard by the question. My own acquaintances had long ago stopped assuming I had any sort of career ambition. In my world, I was viewed merely as Evan’s loyal wife. For a brief moment, my mind raced, trying to invent a way that I could spin my meager accomplishments: I’m a busy executive. I’m a successful cog in a corporate wheel. I’m the entire support system for a burgeoning medical group. But as I looked into Graziella’s soft gray eyes, I realized that I was well past the need to impress those who would inevitably survive me.

  “At the moment, I’m unemployed,” I confessed. “Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was working at my husband’s law firm. But I left for lunch one day, and I never went back. My guess is that I’ve probably been fired.”

  I’d had slightly more wine than I’d intended. Michael and Graziella exchanged confused looks.

  “So…it sounds like you may be staying in Florence for a while…,” Graziella finally offered. “Michael and the girls will be going to school tomorrow, but I would love to show you around our beautiful city.”

  Although second to a nun, the wife of my ex was the most unlikely Italian tour guide I could have imagined. I could see why Michael had married her. As much as the unreasonable, angry part of me wanted to dislike her, it was virtually impossible. She was charming and seemed to genuinely like me—which was especially strange since most of the time I didn’t like myself very much.

  “Sure, that would be amazing!” I agreed as I arose from my seat. “It’s late, and I’m still a little jet-lagged. But I’ll see you tomorrow”

  “Why don’t we say 10:30?” Graziella suggested.

  “Perfect. Thank you for everything. Both of you.”

  “Michael, you should walk her back,” suggested Graziella.

  Michael nodded, silently peeled his slouched frame from the chair, and met me at the door, which he followed with an “after you” gesture.

  The wonderful thing about Florence, was that there were very few cars and most destinations were within walking distance. As I walked alongside Michael through the moonlit, cobblestone streets, I scoured my brain for something to say. I had spent the past seventeen years trying to formulate the right words to express my feelings to him if I ever got the chance. And there he was, walking within inches of me, and my mind was an empty slate.

  “It was great of Graziella to offer to show me around...”

  “Oh, she loves to do that. She’s very proud of our city. Graziella knows every minute detail about every building here. Not just the easy-to-find historical stuff. She knows the scuttlebutt.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m still partial to the paintings and sculptures.” Michael said with a shrug.

  “The more things change,…”

  “The more things stay the same.”

  Michael completed my sentence, and we both chuckled.

  “You used to say that all the time. Honestly, I’ve never really understood what it meant until now,” I said.

  Michael switched on his intellectual voice.

  “It’s a French proverb implying that turbulent changes do not affect reality on a deeper level other than to reinforce the status quo.”

  He paused, then added, “I really didn’t get it either. I used to say all of that proverbial shit just hoping you would sleep with me.”

  “I guess it worked,” I admitted with a smile.

  “Got me through the rest of college,” he said with a cocky smirk.

  He then gave me another cheek-to-cheek air kiss. It reminded me of something snobby teenage American girls do—the ones that don’t really like each other very much. However, this time there was a slight hesitation between cheeks—just nanosecond where our eyes met and I thought he might go in for the real thing.

  Something was missing in Michael; I could see it in his deep-set eyes. I wondered if I was somehow responsible, but I was through thinking I had that kind of power over anyone. He wasn’t the Michael I’d remembered, but perhaps my memory was deceiving me. I had put him on a pedestal almost as high as I’d placed Botticelli, perhaps because Evan had failed so completely by comparison. I watched Michael stroll away, tossing his head to the side in order to flop his hair out of his eyes.

  Back in the safety of my room, I snuggled into the hard, cold bed in a feeble attempt to empty my still jet-lagged mind. Unfortunately, insomnia kicked jet lag’s ass and it was raining men in my head. I’d always had embarrassing private little fantasies of Michael and I crossing paths again one day and running off into the proverbial sunset. Reality can be a bitch. He was happily married to a woman who, frankly, was superior to me in every possible way. Even if I were to prevail in stealing him back, I’d be nothing more than an evil home-wrecker, and Graziella would still be better than me. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted him back, or if I merely wanted the time with him back. I was just resentful that I had lost both.

  What I’d won instead of Michael was an egomaniacal control freak. According to Evan, there was a specific way that everything in life needed to be done and I always got it wrong. He had a way of making me feel so inadequate just trying to live my life. After a while, bit by bit, I’d bought into it. I had become increasingly angry with myself for alwa
ys making the wrong life choices.

  As I pushed the thoughts of Michael versus Evan to the back of my brain, Wilbur reappeared in the foreground. My original assumption was that because he was so incredible on the outside, he must be ugly on the inside, just like Evan. He seemed anything but, and yet I was so quick to dismiss him. If a genie were to magically appear, I would wish to journey back in time and meet Wilbur instead of Evan—maybe even instead of Michael. Of course, I would prioritize that wish, right after the genie was done granting it, so that I wouldn’t be destined to kick the bucket at thirty-eight.

  CHAPTER 15

  Graziella and I agreed to meet on the Ponte Vecchio, Florence’s famed bridge, occupied by colorful buildings and jewelry shops run by equally colorful characters. I’d always been enamored with the Vasari Corridor, the once-secret passageway that runs from the Palazzo Vecchio across the top of the Ponte Vecchio to the other side of the Arno River. It was created for the rich and powerful Medici family so that they could avoid rubbing elbows with local riffraff while traveling between their palaces.

  While I waited for Graziella, I marveled at the disguised corridor from the outside. I fought past the throngs of tourists pulsing their way across the bridge. Upon reaching the halfway point, I sifted through some chains one of the jewelers was peddling. I purchased an inexpensive necklace from a little Italian woman who insisted that I deserved something more expensive. Really, the chain was intended merely as a device to keep the Miraculous Medal charm from Sister Constance close to me. It would serve as a reminder of what she had said to me at the Ognissanti: that someone would miss me when I was gone, and that Mary, or some mystical force, might intercede on my behalf at my hour of death, just like Sister Constance believed.

  Graziella greeted me with that same angelic smile she bore the previous night. She wore a flowered dress over her gazelle-like frame, her soft, curly hair in a romantic updo.

  “Ciao, Stacia. Did you rest well?”

  “I did, thank you,” I lied.

  “Good, good,” she said with a smile as she interlocked arms with me, “because we have much to see.”

  It was something that Jerry, my first love, used to do: lock arms with me as if we were about to prance down the yellow brick road. I realized how much I missed Jerry then. I felt almost the same immediate comfort with Graziella as I had with Jerry in my youth.

  As we strode along, I came to notice that there were dozens of tacky padlocks attached to the side of the bridge.

  “What’s with all the padlocks?” I wondered aloud.

  “Couples attach them to the railing as a symbol of everlasting love. It is believed that if you lock a padlock to the rail and throw the key into the river, you and your partner will become eternally bonded.”

  She shook her head and shrugged.

  “Honestly, I think it’s a story that the padlock salesman at the end of the bridge made up. It defaces the bridge and it’s horrible for the environment.” She said fervently.

  It certainly was an unattractive sight, and while I could understand how throwing metal keys into the water could damage the river’s ecosystem, I still appreciated the romantic notion. I couldn’t help but picture myself gazing lovingly into Wilbur’s eyes as we turned the key in our own lock and tossed it into the murky, green river. But, as quickly as that image came to mind, it morphed into a grotesque scene where Evan was turning the key on a pair of handcuffs, permanently linking us to the bridge and each other.

  “What people don’t realize is that the city just cuts off the locks or fines the perpetrators if they’re caught. What does that do to their eternal bond?” Graziella scoffed.

  “American couples have been known to carve their initials into tree trunks,” I contributed.

  Of course, I didn’t mention that with deforestation and the construction of new neighborhoods, those “Jimmy & Megan forever” hearts wind up as two-by-fours in cookie-cutter subdivisions. I considered that perhaps that is why the Western world’s divorce rate is so high: couples attempting to cement their love with impermanent symbols and perishable pieces of legal paper. It irritated me to consider the fact that we can’t just enjoy love as an intangible. Instead, we are compelled to try to make it into something tangible, like a $3 padlock, and somehow own it—and flaunt it for the world to see.

  Graziella broke my pessimistic train of thought by explaining that the entire concept of bankruptcy is said to have started on the Ponte Vecchio. When a merchant was unable to pay his debts, a soldier would break his table, making it impossible for the merchant to sell his wares. The practice was called banco rotto, literally meaning “broken bank—or table.”

  It turned out that Graziella and I shared a passionate dislike for souvenir shopping, so we bypassed the rest of the peddlers on the Ponte Vecchio and made our way to the Palazzo Pitti, the Medici’s destination on the other side of the Vasari Corridor.

  The gray-stoned, prison-like exterior of the palace stood in stark contrast to what lay behind it. The massive Renaissance-style garden that awaited us on the other side of the palace was a labyrinth of trees and shrubs, adorned by dozens of statues and fountains. The Boboli Gardens even boasted some Roman antiquities. I had never seen anything like it. We strolled slowly through the gorgeous landscape.

  “Michael has spoken quite often of you over the years. I’m glad to have finally met you,” Graziella said.

  Here it comes, I thought. All her former pleasantries had just been staged as a manipulation to uncover my true intentions.

  “I’m sorry if my being here is causing any difficulties,” I responded softly.

  “No, no, not at all. I think it is good for him to see you again. I think it is good for you as well. You seem to be at something of a crossroads.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I muttered as I wondered if Graziella could possibly be that gracious.

  “The way I look at it, you made him part of who he is, and I fell in love with him the way I found him. Had you stayed with him, I never would have met him.”

  It made sense. It was just a much more mature attitude than I would have been able to adopt. We seated ourselves on a park bench near a tranquil fountain with a statue of Triton as its centerpiece.

  “Why did you break up with Michael, if you don’t mind my asking?” Graziella asked gently.

  “Because of my mother. She was dying, and she wanted a very specific kind of life for me—something she felt that Michael couldn’t provide. It wasn’t a lifestyle I wanted, but I worshipped my mother and I felt that she knew things about life that I hadn’t yet experienced. She wanted me to have money and possessions that Michael and I could never have afforded. Evan was my mother’s wet dream.”

  “May I ask what the problem is with your marriage?”

  “Where do I start? The problem, unfortunately, is more than just my marriage; it’s what my marriage did to the rest of my life, or lack thereof, I should say.”

  I paused to contemplate my explanation.

  “Evan squashed my humanity for seventeen years. And I let him. But now that I’ve escaped his…reign, I seem to be creating a lot of havoc for myself.”

  I sighed, and then turned to look Graziella directly in her soft, gray eyes.

  “What do you think makes marriage work for you and Michael?”

  She averted my gaze as she answered.

  “We tell one another everything—good, bad, or otherwise. And we accept what each other has to say. I was in an abusive relationship before I met Michael, and Michael was a bit of a work in progress himself. I think you know what I mean. We sort of grew up together, I suppose.”

  It was a relief to learn that Graziella hadn’t always been the perfect, angelic creature that sat before me. I admired her. She had been in an unhealthy relationship and had escaped it unscathed.

  “So I guess reconciliation is out of the question?” she asked with a timid smile.

  “Only if he has a brain transplant,” I quipped.

 
She laughed as though my statement was hilarious. The woman even got my weird sense of humor.

  I went on to explain the further difficulties of my relationship with Evan. Graziella affirmed that, at minimum, a frontal lobotomy would be in order if I were to go back—if not for Evan, then for myself.

  After the leaving the Boboli Gardens, the two of us sauntered along the bank of the Arno River until we came upon a tree-lined, ominously steep, but very inviting staircase. I was eager to discover what it led to, but my tumor was zapping my energy. I stopped for a moment to take a deep breath before embarking on the upward journey.

  “You will find that most of the best things to see in Italy require a bit of work,” noted Graziella as we made our way up the stairs.

  She practically sprinted while I sluggishly struggled, huffing and puffing the entire way up the seemingly endless stone steps until we finally reached the summit. I had spent my years doing Pilates and yoga and all the other active things lawyers’ wives do to make their bodies look good, but I’d never really been in any great cardiovascular shape.

  When we reached the terrace, the climb proved well worth the effort. The Piazzale Michelangelo, with its bronze replicas of Michelangelo’s most prominent sculptures was alive with budding artists and musicians. As if the square itself weren’t impressive enough, the panoramic view of all the red rooftops of Florence with the Duomo as its centerpiece was a thrillingly beautiful sight. That’s when it sank in: I had finally made it to Italy. I was really there, fully and completely—mind, body, and soul.

  I wanted to engrave the image onto the hard drive of my brain. I wanted to remember the feeling of finally gazing upon Florence from that incredible vantage point.

  A street performer sent shivers up my spine by accompanying the music playing on his boom box with his own rendition of Andrea Bocelli’s “Time To Say Goodbye,” with a flawless operatic voice. I was determined to never forget the intense happiness that welled up in my core at that moment. It melted away whatever anger I had been holding onto. Any time that my life—or my impending death—got me down from that moment on, I would bring myself back to that place, to that perfect hour.