Girl in the Moonlight (17 page)

I nodded my head. There wasn’t much I could add.

“And you, Wylie?” she asked. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Excuse me, Wylie,” said Gianni. “Sweetheart,” he said, turning to Cesca, “would you like something to drink?”

“That would be lovely. White wine.”

“Wylie?”

“No thanks.”

Gianni disentangled himself and walked through the crowd to the bar.

“It’s good to see you,” said Cesca, placing her hand on my arm. “You look skinny, though.” It was true. I hadn’t been eating well.

“Well, you look beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“How long have you been with Gianni?”

“A few months.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Oh, we’ve known each other all our lives. I used to have a mad crush on him when I was a little girl. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Even more beautiful than you.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yes.”

“I wrote you a few times.”

“I know. Your letters were sweet. I hope you weren’t too disappointed when I didn’t write back.”

“No.” I smiled. “I knew better. And I’m happy for you. Gianni’s a terrific guy.”

She smiled back. “You’re a dear, Wylie. You always have been. Thank you for understanding.”

Gianni returned with Cesca’s white wine. I took this as my cue to leave. “My condolences again,” I said as I leaned in to kiss Cesca’s once-familiar cheek. Jasmine and roses.

I then shook Gianni’s hand and said I hoped I’d see him soon and that I’d call Esther tomorrow to see about coming over. I had meant what I said about him to Cesca. I had always liked Gianni enormously. It was easy to see why any woman would fall for him. I was happy for them both. When you love someone and you can’t have them, there is at least a kind of comfort in knowing that they are with a person you admire. I felt as though a chapter in my life had closed, that it was finally time to forget about Cesca.

Other things came to a close instead over the next few months. I decided to give up painting. It was something that had been coming for a long time, but I had been too stubborn to accept it. My plan now was to apply to architectural school. That way I could still make use of my artistic talents but in a context that would provide me with a more secure career. Harvard was my first choice, but I also was looking at Columbia,
Cornell, and the University of Virginia, although I would have considered myself lucky to get into any of them.

My parents were relieved. My father immediately reached out to friends of his. He knew several members of the faculty at the Graduate School of Design. He even invited me to move out of my apartment in New York and stay at the pool house in East Hampton rent-free, which I accepted gratefully. They would not be there long, however, as they now left after Thanksgiving to spend the winter in Palm Beach, where my father had recently bought a house off South Ocean. I soon got a job working with my old boss building houses. It was good money and practical experience for what I now thought of as my new career. In the evenings I studied, boning up on my calculus and physics. I took out several volumes on architectural history from the library. Wrote flash cards with words on them like
clerestory
and
gambrel
. I was feeling good at last, convinced that my life was on the right track.

I was also able to spend time with Paolo and Esther. Winters on the East End of Long Island are bitter, and their house was old. When the wind blew, you could hear it whistling through the cracks. They bundled themselves up in heavy sweaters and stoked their wood-burning stove. When it snowed, I drove over to shovel their driveway and the path from the house to the old shed where they kept their tiny car. Many days I brought them groceries when the roads were too icy for them to drive. Once a week I split wood for them.

In the past they had gone away during the winter to a more hospitable climate where Paolo could teach. But not this winter. Paolo was feeling too weak. He had a bad cough, the result of too many years breathing in cement dust and tobacco smoke. They were not disappointed in me for having turned away from painting. They had many friends who were architects. Sert, Corbusier, Bunshaft. Paolo had even collaborated with some
of them. For Sert he did a huge mural. For Bunshaft another. Paolo told me proudly that those commissions had helped pay for Gianni and his sister to go to college.

“And how is Gianni?” I asked over tea in their kitchen.

“He has been involved with that Bonet girl,” said Esther, who was knitting a sweater. Her voice reeking with disapproval.

“Is anything wrong?”

“She is magnificent,” said Paolo. “Like a wild animal.” He then started coughing.

“Yes, she is quite lovely, but I am not sure she is right for Gianni,” sniffed Esther.

“Pah,” said Paolo. “Have you ever known a mother who thought a girl was right for her son?”

“Victoria was right for him,” she replied, mentioning the name of Gianni’s first wife. A pretty heiress he had married when he was still in grad school. “She is also the mother of his sons. He should never have left her.”

Paolo leaned over to me. “It was the Bonet girl who broke them up. She saw him at a party. Bang!” he said, smacking his palm on the table. “She is a siren. Like
Ulisse e sirena, no? Che cosi fai?
What do you do? He had no one to tie him to the mast,
si?
So he crashed upon the rocks. Pow!” He slapped his hands together. More coughing.

Esther shook her head and sighed. “It has been very difficult on the children.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

“He has asked her to marry him,” she said. “Once the divorce comes through.”

“What did she say?”

“She said maybe—not definitely no, not definitely yes,” laughed Paolo. “But I told him to forget about her. A siren doesn’t marry. She can’t stop being a siren. It is what she does. It is her
natura, no?
You may as well stop asking a horse to be a horse or a fish to be a fish.”

In early March, Paolo and Esther invited me for dinner. Gianni would be coming out, and he was bringing Cesca with him. When he was there, I was demoted. He was the true son, after all.

“Thank you for all the help you gave my parents this winter,” said Gianni. “They said you were wonderful to them.”

“They are wonderful to me. It is the least I could do.”

I would steal quick glances over at Cesca. She looked subdued, distant. When she caught me looking at her, she would give me a brief smile and then look away. Gianni was very solicitous of her. Could he get her more wine? Was she warm enough? He could bring her a sweater. She barely responded to him.

“So what are you doing up here by yourself, Wylie?” she asked midway through dinner.

I told her. Applying to architectural school. Working construction. Rising at dawn, putting on my quilted canvas jumpsuit to keep out the cold, and driving to the work site while it was still dark. The ground was rock hard. It was worse when it snowed. My hands were red and chafed; dirt circled my broken fingernails no matter how hard I scrubbed.

“Sounds awful,” she said.

“No, I like it. For the first time in my life, I feel I’m doing something really useful. I have a plan.”

“What about at nights? Don’t you get bored?”

“I study most nights. And I’m pretty tired, so I’m in bed early. This is the latest I’ve been up in weeks.”

“What do you do for fun?”

“I don’t know if you could call it fun, but it does get lonely some nights. There’s a bar in town near the railroad tracks. Big Al’s. Sometimes I go there after work. There’re also a few places in Sag Harbor. The Sand Bar. Murf’s.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re all local places. Nothing fancy.”

The conversation turned to other things. The corrupting influence of television was one of Esther’s favorite topics. Also politics. Esther was liberal, Gianni more conservative. To his mother’s horror, he had voted for Reagan. Sometimes they would argue. This was one of those nights.

“I’m sorry,” Cesca said at one point, addressing no one in particular. “I’ve got a headache. I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

Gianni stayed up with us, finishing the wine. Later, after he and Paolo had gone upstairs as well, I helped Esther wash up. “Wylie,” she began, “do you have any girls in your life?”

“Not exactly. There is one girl, but she doesn’t feel the same way about me.” I dried a dish and placed it in the rack.

“How do you know? It can be hard to tell sometimes what girls are thinking. Many times they say one thing and mean something else.”

“Well, she’s with someone else.”

“Ah, are they married?”

“No.”

“Engaged?”

“No.”

“Then there is still hope.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe.”

“Does she know how you feel about her?”

“Yes.”

She laughed lightly. “There is nothing that makes a woman happier than knowing a handsome young man is in love with her. But, remember, she doesn’t have to do anything else but be beloved. It is up to the handsome young man if he decides he wants more.”

A few nights later, I walked into Big Al’s bar. As usual, I had been agitated by seeing Cesca and was in no mood for reading about barrel and groin vaults and their place in Romanesque architecture.
I was craving companionship, even if I spoke to no one. The thought of spending another evening alone was unbearable. Seated at the bar were several regulars, most of them former baymen, who were silently nursing their beers or shot glasses. I nodded to them. Big Al, a stout octogenarian who was blind in one eye and spoke in a gruff squawk, greeted me with a “Hey kid,” and opened a beer for me. It took me coming there for several months before he deigned to recognize me, to know what I liked to drink. He had never bothered to learn my name, but I was grateful simply to be treated as a regular. I sat there, watching a game show on the television above the bar, lost in my thoughts. I had another beer and was about to go when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around, and there was Cesca.

“I was hoping to find you here,” she said.

Big Al immediately brightened, hustled over as quickly as his girth would let him, and said, “Hey, beautiful, what can I get you?” I had never seen him move so fast or be so animated.

She smiled at him and said, “Stoli rocks.”

“Ain’t got no Stoli. Sorry.”

“Absolut?”

“Coming right up.”

Then to me she said, “All right if I sit down?”

I was too astonished to see her to say anything more than “What are you doing here?” Then, realizing that might have sounded rude, I added, “I mean, hello. I’m surprised to see you.”

She laughed. “I’m sure you are. I remember you said this was one of your hangouts.”

“Here you go, beautiful,” said Al. “On the house.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” she replied. “Thank you.”

“You want something else, kid?”

“Another Bud.” Al limped off to the cooler, lifted the lid,
fished around for a while, removed a bottle, opened it, and set it down in front of me.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked. The rest of the bar had gone quiet. All the men were staring at Cesca.

“Cesca.” She put out her right hand.

“I’m Al,” he said, taking her hand in his.

“Pleased to meet you, Al.”

“You a friend of his?”

“An old friend.”

“Hope you don’t feel you gotta come in only when he’s here.” He winked.

“Why, thank you, Al. I can’t believe I’ve never been in here. I must have passed it hundreds of times.”

“Well, nothing wrong in making up for lost time,” he chortled.

“I’ll do that. How long have you been here for exactly, Al?”

“Almost sixty years. I’ve seen a lot of pretty girls walk in through that door, but you got ’em all beat, you know that?”

“That’s so sweet of you to say.”

“Sweet, hell. You’re just lucky I ain’t twenty years younger.”

“You married, Al?”

“Yeah, but what she don’t know won’t hurt her,” he said with a wink to the rest of the bar, drawing an appreciative laugh from the other patrons.

“Well, we’ll just keep this our little secret then, won’t we?” she said and, leaning over the bar, kissed him on the forehead.

Big Al beamed and turned red. The others whistled and clapped. “Big Al’s in love,” shouted someone.

“Aw, get out of here,” he responded, obviously pleased.

“Al, I hate to love you and leave you, but Wylie here and I have to get going. I’ll see you next time.”

“I’ll be waiting, darlin’.”

I held the door for Cesca and followed her outside. The night was cold and brisk. Through the bare branches of the trees on the sidewalk, stars twinkled against a deep blue sky.

“I can see why you like that place,” she said. “You want to get something to eat? I’m famished.”

“Cesca, why are you here?”

“Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Of course I am. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I might not have been there.”

“Guess I just got lucky.”

“What if I wasn’t there?”

“Well, I’d have tried those other places. What were they called? The Sand Bar and Murf’s, right?”

“Right.”

“And if you weren’t there, I’d’ve just driven to your house. I’ve never been there before, but I figured I could find it okay. So, if you’re done questioning, what do you say to dinner?”

We drove separately to a little Mexican place in town. Cesca spoke in Spanish to the busboys, who grinned and blushed.

“Where’s Gianni?” I asked.

“He flew home. He has a seminar to prepare for.”

“How’s it going?”

“The seminar? I have no idea.”

“Not that. You know what I mean. Between Gianni and you.”

She shrugged. “It could be better. The sex is good but . . .”

“You can spare me the details.”

“Embarrassed or jealous?” She grinned.

I leaned back in my chair and grinned. “Maybe a little of both.”

“But let’s just say I don’t see myself spending the rest of my life being a faculty wife in some small New England town where they roll up the streets at ten o’clock.”