Fin & Lady: A Novel Page 20

  Fin was used to people noticing Lady. He was used to Lady noticing everyone around her. But in New York, all that noticing had to do with strangers. In Capri, Lady was suddenly, completely, among friends.

  A happy, radiant Lady? He was as proud as a parent.

  But if Lady belonged on the rocky seductive island, Fin wasn’t so sure about himself. He missed the dog. It was ridiculous, but he did. He missed his friends. He missed American radio stations. He missed Biffi, though that was weak of him. He missed Mabel, perhaps most of all.

  Dear Mabel, he wrote.

  This is a very strange place. There are high cliffs and you can jump off them into the water, which is bluer than any water I’ve ever seen. There are caves you can row a boat into. Which are also blue. The streets are so narrow you can almost touch the buildings on both sides at once. You will be happy to know there are very few kids my age, hardly any kids at all, so I’m sure all the houses are calm and unchaotic. I miss New York. It is very quiet here. No baseball. No politics, either. Well, maybe Italian politics, but how would I know? Lady is unrepentant. Are you surprised? It doesn’t really matter, though. She has a new boyfriend, but he is different than the others. He is very protective of her. Like a big tree. He’s Italian. I hope your sister is feeling better. And your children and grandchildren are all happy and having a fun summer. I hope it is not too hot in New York. There are no movies here. All the visitors are very rich. I don’t know about the people who live here all the time. Unless the rich visitors pay a lot for everything. Sometimes, there is no water to take a shower. Like every day. You have to wait. I wonder why the rich people don’t mind. Probably because it’s so beautiful. Maybe they think they’re roughing it. Well, I’m going to the post office to buy stamps to mail this. But I just realized I don’t have your address. So I can’t send this. I don’t have your address because of racism. I know you don’t like to talk about it because you have too much dignity to discuss it with me, an ignorant white person whose sister employs you to do EVERYTHING. But it’s true.

  Love, Fin

  He never sent the letter, but he kept it, a thin blue sheet of air-mail stationery folded into the size of an envelope. “Mabel Sparks” was written on the front. “Address Unknown Because of the Legacy of Slavery in the United States of America.” Fin showed it to me once with a rather rueful smile.

  “I meant well,” he said. “Foolish but not a fool, as Mabel would say.”

  Lady always hoped to see Graham Greene at the Caffè Tiberio, but if she did, she didn’t recognize him. He, the Capri resident best known, was unknown to her. Jackie Kennedy and Caroline and John-John did walk by one day, though, followed by several photographers, Michelangelo among them. Lady, to Fin’s acute embarrassment, waved gaily and threw earnest kisses at the children. Fin turned his face to the ground and suffered. Now Michelangelo was off on a shoot for a couple of days, and Fin and Lady sat, just the two of them, at their usual table. Fin leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. “I wish I liked coffee,” he said. “It smells so good.” He drank Coke every morning, a sweet, syrupy Coke that tasted much better than the Coke at home.

  “Let’s take a walk together today,” Lady said.

  “I have letters to write,” he said.

  “Ha! You sound like a Henry James character. How are your friends Henry James, anyway? What are they doing this summer?”

  “Camp. Junior counselors.”

  “Eh?” she said, jutting her chin out, the sides of her mouth down. “A lake in the Poconos? Camp Capri is preferable, no?”

  Lady slipped into Italian cadences more and more, even when speaking English. Especially when speaking English, Fin sometimes thought.

  “Yup,” he said. “The best.” Lady had rented a small boat, and Fin often took it out in the morning, alone, motoring around the island, the cliffs sheer and towering beside him, through rocky arches, the water as green as jade as it disappeared into the curve of one grotto, as blue as the sky as it disappeared into another. He dropped anchor at different spots, slipped into the cool sea, and thought. Sometimes he thought of Odysseus and the briny, broad-backed sea, sometimes of Mabel and her family and how unfair it was that he was floating on his back in paradise while she was hot and discriminated against in Harlem.

  “I wish the International Herald Tribune came in the morning,” he said.

  “Well, it doesn’t, so let’s take a walk.”

  “I wish the International Herald Tribune had a decent obituary page.”

  “Poor Fin. You want to walk in the cemetery instead? The one for non-Catholics? The guest cemetery. For guests who never leave.”

  Yes, he did want to walk with Lady in the cemetery. And he would like to have Lady all to himself, for once. She was pretty preoccupied these days. Sometimes with Michelangelo. More and more with taking pictures.

  “I like being alone behind the lens,” she had announced. “I’ve never liked being alone before. I feel so”—she hesitated, gave a discomfited smile, and said—“well, liberated.”

  Fin sometimes wondered why she had even bothered sending for him, but he knew. She needed him. “You’re my family,” she’d said. “You’re my brother. We are in this thing together.” This thing. That was Lady’s way of saying the Past, the Present, the Future: Life. “We’re stuck with each other,” he answered, and he meant the same thing. “Blood is thicker than water,” Michelangelo had added, and Lady had laughed and asked how he knew that expression and did it have a counterpart in Italian, but of course it must be biblical, and she and Michelangelo began babbling in Italian. Fin wondered then if Michelangelo saw himself as water and not quite as thick as Lady seemed to hope. He liked Michelangelo, who treated Fin with casual good humor, who wasn’t annoyed by Fin, threatened by Fin, or drawn to Fin, who maintained an easy, friendly distance. All of which made Fin suspicious. Maybe it was just the language barrier: Michelangelo’s English was careful and often off. But Fin didn’t really think it was Michelangelo’s erratic English or his own nonexistent Italian. It was something else, something about Michelangelo, a man whose interests were what he saw, who wanted very little from the people around him. But Lady was besotted with Michelangelo, so besotted that she couldn’t see he was not besotted with her. Fin did try to tell her, but she smiled at him in an uncharacteristically condescending way and then reassured him that no matter what happened between her and Michelangelo, she would always love Fin and always take care of him. Which he knew was a pile of crap. Not that she would always love him—he believed that. But take care of him? That was a joke. To say that to him after leaving him in New York with all her discarded lovers? After sending for him as if he were one of them? He had gotten from New York to Capri by himself; he could take care of himself, which was lucky, because he had to.

  So did he want to take a walk with Lady that day when Michelangelo was away? Yes, of course he did. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how much. “I have to wait for the paper to check the box scores,” he said.

  “How are the Mets doing this year?”

  “Battling for ninth place.”

  “So you’re not missing anything,” she said. She finished her coffee. “So,” she said. “Walk or no walk?” She reached over and smoothed his tousled hair, the way she used to when he was little. He pushed her hand away, but she simply took hold of his and put it to her lips. “Come on, come on, come on,” she said, standing up, grabbing two rolls from the basket and shoving them into her pocketbook.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Perchè no, right?”

  He usually walked in the afternoon, after lunch, sometimes for hours. He would scramble up steep paths or stroll beneath the shade of palm trees, then find himself, suddenly, on an outcropping of gray rock facing the ancient city of Naples across the bay, or Ischia across a different bay, and feeling as if his heart were expanding, were limitless. Even when he looked back on that summer in Capri from the distance of many years, he would remember that expansive f
eeling, remember it palpably. It was the feeling of freedom, he said, the smell of it, the sound of it, the clarity of a vision of freedom. Freedom from the absence of his parents. Freedom from the puzzle of Lady. Freedom from everything and everyone he knew, which meant, most transcendent of all, freedom from himself.

  Sharing a walk with Lady … not quite the same thing. But Lady gave him a big smile, and Fin thought, Okay, it will be another thing, a Lady morning full of Lady pronouncements and quotes from Homer and energetic chatting with whoever we meet, and he smiled, a big smile, couldn’t help himself. As usual.

  “What?” Lady asked.

  “You’re nuts,” he said.

  She held her arms out, the way she had when he was a five-year-old in a sailor suit. The arms weren’t held out for Fin to jump into this time. They weren’t held out for Michelangelo, either, or for anyone. They were spread out in simple joy.

  “I love it here,” she said. “I just do.”

  He loved it here, too, the place where he and Lady first met, a craggy paradise overflowing with flowers and tourists during the day, with music and parties and wine at night. Here they were, the same two people under the same sun, under the same moon, the same stars.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “You know.” And he looked at her, and she did know.

  It had happened more than once: Fin would be sullen and solitary, angry at Lady, angry at himself for caring, for expecting anything from her. Then, as if she read his thoughts, she would lavish attention on him, and everything would seem normal, if anything could be normal on an island that even Roman emperors, rulers of most of the known world, had chosen as an escape from that world, as a garden of peace and beauty.

  But nothing could be normal there. Was it normal to look up casually and see Mount Vesuvius, the subject of so many paintings, so many postcards, the protagonist of so many ancient tales and tragedies? Was it normal to swim through caves of emerald green water? To float on your back and gaze up at tall arches of stone? The stars that summer were shooting stars. Stars shooting across a jasmine-scented sky. The night was the color of the darkest plums. The plums were the color of night.

  And Michelangelo was there beneath the tender night sky walking along the Via Tragara with Lady, a man as self-contained as the island, as serene. They stopped to look beyond a stand of pines at the sliver of moon that hung above the water. Lady put her hand out for Fin’s. Michelangelo stood beside her, as he always stood beside her, reassuring, almost paternal. Fin realized it was the first time Fin had ever seen Lady with a man who needed nothing from her. She had always seemed so strong to Fin, a creature of unfettered will. Now he saw the effort it had taken to be so unfettered, kicking off all those chains. It was not always easy to find a chain to kick. She had to be so alert, so attentive. But on Capri, no one needed chains. After all, it was an island. There was no place to run, and so no fetters to undo. Freedom, of sorts. Freedom for Lady, anyway. Freedom from all that freedom shit.

  When Michelangelo went off on a shoot the first time, Fin assumed that Lady would be lonely and would want to spend every minute with him. He assumed it and he welcomed it, and they did take out the little boat once or twice, sit on the beach one morning, walk for miles along winding streets on another afternoon, along dirt paths clinging to the slope, along ancient steps, the slanted sun keeping them company.

  But Lady wasn’t lonely. Lady wanted to take photographs. Alone. Each time Michelangelo was away for a few days, they slipped into the same routine. After breakfast, they would go their separate ways, then meet up again for lunch. It is difficult to tell exactly where Lady went. I’ve seen her photographs from that time, and they are abstract and close up. There is no context, no clue, just shape and texture and light. It’s also difficult to know exactly where Fin went. He certainly didn’t know. He followed streets that wound their way between buildings closing in on either side, streets that had steps, that sometimes climbed steeply uphill, sometimes down, alleys that were dark, shaded, clammy, and then suddenly burst out into the sunlight on the side of a sheer cliff, the sky enormous overhead, the water sparkling below. He walked along dirt paths, past tumbled-down houses and flustered chickens and curious goats. Sometimes a path ran along the sea, high above it. Sometimes a path led to Roman ruins, the palace of a great Roman emperor, now an immense rocky blueprint scattered with wildflowers. He walked up the snaking road from the Marina Piccola to the Gardens of Augustus. He walked up and down the seven hundred ancient steps to Anacapri. He walked with tourists, past tourists, beyond tourists. Purple bougainvillea spilled over pitted stucco walls; cats sprawled in the sun, lifting their heads slightly to watch him pass, flicking their lazy tails.

  Ragazzo triste, sang a deep-voiced woman. Ragazzo triste come me. Why did it sound like a Sonny and Cher song? Because it was a Sonny and Cher song with new lyrics. And so Fin learned to say a sad boy in Italian. A sad boy like me. He learned to say Sometimes I cry and don’t know why in Italian. He learned to say Hey hey hey in Italian: Hey hey hey.

  “I think your Italian is brilliant,” Lady said. “You can ask for food and talk about love. That’s all anyone needs in Capri.”

  That was all Lady needed. She looked so comfortable, scrambling across gray rocks in her white pants, her dark blue T-shirt, her sandals made for her by the man in the shoe store the size of a closet.

  When they did walk together, Lady did not chatter as Fin had feared. She could easily have been Gus, the perfect walking companion, if Gus could hum “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

  “I met a girl who wants help with her English,” he said on one of these walks.

  Lady’s hair was pulled back, her face, what you could see of it surrounding her huge sunglasses, a little pink with exertion. Fin stopped to give her a chance to catch her breath. The heat was blazing and acute, burning off the softer, uncertain morning air.

  “I’m sorry, Fin,” she said. “I just don’t have time for that right now.”

  “From me.” She was a beautiful girl from Florence. He’d met her on the beach.

  Lady raised an eyebrow.

  “She’s sixteen,” he said, as if that could lower the eyebrow.

  “An older woman, eh?”

  “Her name is Donatella,” he said stolidly. “She’s sixteen,” he said again. “From Florence.”

  Fin and Donatella had spoken in English. When Fin tried to think of something in Italian, all he could come up with was Dobbiamo stare insieme, we must be together, which he did not say aloud.

  At first Fin delivered his lessons on the beach, naming common things around them, a chair, a basket, an apple, a bottle of water. He asked Donatella what music she liked and they spoke haltingly of the Beatles. Her English was very much like his Italian. “It’s so fine,” she said, when he asked her what she thought of the weather. “It’s sunshine.” It’s the word “love,” they both thought.

  “Girl”

  Two weeks passed, and Fin saw less and less of Lady. They still had breakfast together, with Michelangelo when he was not on a shoot, but they rarely met for lunch. Fin ate sandwiches with Donatella on the beach or joined her mother and father and two sisters at a restaurant. Lady ate an orange, somewhere on her rambles, then went back to taking pictures. She spent her afternoons in the darkroom; Fin spent his swimming, waiting for Donatella and her family to return from their postprandial naps. He took Donatella out on the boat, too, always with at least one of her sisters, one a little older and happy to look the other way, the other younger and an avid, observant pest. Then he and Donatella would part for dinner, and Fin would join Lady and Michelangelo for white anchovies, octopus, wine, lemon cake, but his mind was not there, and neither was Lady’s or Michelangelo’s, and the dinners were quiet, pleasantly distant. Sometimes Donatella joined them, or they joined Donatella’s family. Fin explained that President Johnson was an evil man. He tried to translate Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today? He tal
ked about segregation and voting rights. But how do you explain the burning of draft cards in a language you don’t know? Donatella’s parents were Communists who understood a little English, so they nodded their heads complacently no matter how radical Fin tried to be, but when he turned to them to ask for help in making himself clear to their daughter, they lifted their shoulders, held their hands out palms up, jutted their chins out, and made a small noise that sounded like the beginning of a word that started with the letter b. Lady was not much help, either.

  “Why talk about the war here? Now? Look—fireworks! Someone must be getting married.”

  And, yes, in the deep night sky there were thunderclaps of golden flowers, soaring rockets of green and red that exploded and arced and drifted through dun-colored smoke toward the water, lighting up fishing boats and yachts. Yes, there were fireworks decorating the sky, but still he could not understand how Lady could let politics fall away from her so easily, like a scarf left behind somewhere. There was still bigotry and segregation and poverty. There was still a war.

  “There is a war going on,” he said. “There’s still a war going on.”

  “There’s always a war going on, Fin. Why did the Greeks have a god of war? Because we need one.”

  “You’ve converted? To paganism?”

  And Lady laughed and said, “I didn’t have to convert. I just had to look around me. The gods are everywhere on this island.”

  “Oh brother,” Fin said.

  “You have brother?” Donatella asked proudly. “I have two sister.”

  Sometimes during these bumpy attempts at conversation, anger would rise up inside Fin, his ears would ring, his face would turn red.

  “When you get mad, you look just like Hugo Hadley,” Lady said lightly.

  “Like father like son,” he answered, and Lady looked hurt, as if it were Fin who was being cold and disloyal.