The Detour (29 page)

“I’m not forgetting anything.”

There was an awkward moment as she scooted to a more upright position, back against the headboard. She patted the side of the bed, and I left the stool to sit closer to her, still not touching.

“Do you want to talk more, about art?”

“Not at all.”

“
Va bene
.” She smiled, self-consciously. “Perhaps you should tell me more about yourself. I’ve told you a lot about me.”

“Not so much.”

“I’ve told you I was married. I’ve told you I’m defective. That should frighten you away, unless you think it is a convenient defect.”

“You’re not defective, Rosina. Anyway, how long were you married?”

“Two years.”

“That’s all?”

“It was two years too long. And trust me, a man like Gianni can’t wait to see his face reflected in new faces all around him.” Now she laughed. “You have no idea. You’re so young! At least ten years younger than I am. No, don’t tell me.”

“You
are
trying to frighten me off, aren’t you?”

“Look at you—not a wrinkle, not a blemish.” Her fingers touched the front of my shirt. “And you probably have no idea that you are good-looking or athletic because no one your age can appreciate—”

“Now you’re being condescending. You’re trying to make me feel young and foolish, so I’ll leave you alone.” I unbuttoned my shirt, methodically, and left it hanging open. She watched, a serious look in her eyes.

“I will tell you something,” I said.

“What, you can’t get pregnant either?”

I didn’t laugh, didn’t smile. Then I started to tell her, slowly at first. It wasn’t easy to talk about. I’d never told a soul, not the librarian who had befriended me and first showed me the great books of classical art; not the antiques dealer who had given me my first job; not any of the coaches who’d been annoyed by my tendency to dress and bathe away from the other boys; not Gerhard or any other work colleague or friend. Only Doctor Schroeder had known, and my mother and I had left his office before I was subjected to his questions or procedures.

I told her about how I hadn’t noticed at first, as a boy; about how my mother had helped me cover it up; about how it had embarrassed and later enraged my father. I explained about the summer campouts and group hikes I had missed, as well as the youth organizations I had failed to join, and the impact that had made on my life in a day when military preparedness and group affiliation and the appearance of cooperation were everything. Even now that the problem was no longer visible or tangible, it had left a stain on my life.

Maybe it was my fault for building it up, for leaning closer and closer, for lowering my voice at the awkward moments. Our foreheads were nearly touching. “I don’t have it anymore. But I did, as small a thing as it was, and that’s the story.”

Her brow furrowed as she listened, trying to understand.

“But what is it—what
was
it—exactly?”

“A mark.”

“But what kind of mark?”

I opened my shirt and let her see the long, puckered scar across my ribs.

“But is that it? Or was it there before?” She ran a delicate finger along the jagged, salmon-colored line.

“The scar came after. It was much smaller.”

“But what was it?”

When I told her, she pulled away. She threw her hands to her face. She buried her eyes. It was a reaction that made my heart race because I had visualized it so often before—the revulsion and judgment of a stranger. She couldn’t help it; she was trying to hide it and squelch it. It took me a moment to realize she was convulsing, not with disgust, but with laughter.

“That’s all?” she said, just beginning to catch her breath. “It probably looked like a mole. That’s really all?”

My face blazed.

“I’m so sorry.” She reached for my shirt, my chest—and missed, because I had scooted back and was leaning as far away from her as I could lean without falling off the bed. “No, I shouldn’t have laughed. But don’t you realize how common that is?”

When I didn’t answer, she reached for me again, hand on my knee. “My goodness—hundreds of people have an extra nipple, I’m guessing. Thousands of people. I knew a girl with the same oddity. I knew a boy with six toes. I had a
cat
with six toes. I’m sure extra nipples are just as common.
Liebling
, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to embarrass you. Wait—don’t go.”

But I was only going as far as the stool. I didn’t want to be touched, or laughed at, or condescended to, or sympathized with; I didn’t even want to hear the word she had said twice already, the name for the extra thing I once had. I had in fact already learned, in just the last few years, that my own birth defect—the visible part, anyway, because there always would be the question about what lurked inside, what other cellular strangeness or hereditary weakness existed—was minor and common.

“As common,” I said, continuing my thought in midstream, “as being an imbecile. Or an incestuary. Or a gypsy. Or a Jew. Or infertile.” I was clutching the bottom of the stool just to keep my hands occupied. I was afraid of my own hands. “Yes, I am well aware that it is common.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a mistake to tell you.”

“I’m very sorry. But Ernesto—”

“Ernst. I’m not Italian. Call me Ernst.”

“But what happened after? Why is there a scar?”

“Another time.”

“Never mind,” she said, swinging her legs over so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She touched her lips to mine, waiting for me to respond, which I couldn’t help doing—which I did and kept doing, until she needed a breath. She let her robe fall open and she whispered into my neck: “Never mind.”

We were experts at starting again, newly coined experts at seizing the moment, but perhaps that was the natural outcome of burying someone. There should be something good that comes from it.

My hands were inside her robe, on either side of her waist at first, holding fast to this first rung on a ladder that stretched farther than my mind dared picture all at once. I moved my hand, and she pressed closer. I followed her curves, surveying everything quickly, anticipating many subsequent explorations, adoring and memorizing her.

When my poorly shaved cheek rubbed against her skin, just above the line of her camisole, she murmured, “You missed a rough spot there,” and when I pulled away, she pulled me back. “I didn’t ask you to stop.”

A moment later, she broke away to whisper, “Tell me what you wrote on the postcard.”

“
Ich bin verliebt
.”

“So soon?”

“
Ich liebe dich
.”

“Again.”

“
Ti amo
.”

“You’ve been consulting your dictionary.”

“That one was easy.”

“But I don’t believe it,” she said. It was a game, but one she didn’t mind playing. It was a game she had played with someone else who sounded like me, maybe even looked like me. What was the harm in that? At least that was her view.

I rolled onto my back, taking her with me, and then changed my mind. Now I was on top, she underneath, and perhaps I was pressing too fiercely. She flinched, and I thought I’d reached a limit, done something wrong or moved too fast. But it was only the sound she had heard. She froze, listening—there it was, the soft, swift scratching. She cursed under her breath, pulling away from me.

Tugging her robe closed, she hurried to the door and slipped through it, hand low to the floor, pushing away the would-be intruder, Tartufa. In a minute she was back.

“Couldn’t we have ignored her?”

“She would have kept it up all night. It’s because I let her sleep in here sometimes. She would have started barking, until Cosimo came and found her, and found us.”

“You scared her off?”

“I put her in the back of the truck and pulled down the door.” Rosina laughed at this, at the desperation of it.

“Won’t she still bark?”

We listened together, and there was the sound—a single muffled bark, a long pause, then another testing bark. But it was very faint.

“That’s all right,” she said, pulling me closer, resuming what we’d started, but more gently now. She reached to unfasten my belt. “Let me help you.”

“I’ll get to that.”

More gently, more slowly, nothing wasted or forgotten. But it was like a phonograph slowing down—not just slower, but changing pitch. The new sound was one of uncertainty, with—here, the truly unfortunate thing—canine accompaniment.

There was nothing fluid in this. Nothing elegant or well practiced. I tried harder, but harder was not better. Like a man drowning, I was only making things worse with my struggles, losing track of the woman beneath my weight—not just a woman, but
Rosina
—losing track of what had excited me, of all that she possessed when I had first seen her, not only physical beauty, but lack of shame. And all the while, I was still thinking of that dog, pushing its paws up against the door, scrabbling to get in.

“I heard something.”

“She’s fine.”

“Maybe someone … maybe Cosimo …”

“We’re alone.” Then, joking: “There are no ghosts.”

When I stiffened, she apologized. “I shouldn’t have said that. Kiss me.”
Küss mich
.

But if I was afraid of any ghost, it wasn’t Enzo’s.

Something was off. The interruption, the distant barking, the time pressure, my own recall of her love for someone else,
the question of what would come next, the argument we’d been having before which had returned to prick me, a thorn ignored but not forgotten. Something had hollowed out the moment. My hand paused too long, and she noticed, too. She pulled away slightly, though without closing her robe, so that she was sitting on the bed, half reclining, her body in full view.

Her beauty was undeniable. I was not any less drawn to her.

“I’m worried about the dog,” I said, because that was the easiest part to explain.

“Still?”

When I didn’t answer, she began to pull her robe closed again.

“Please don’t. I want to look at you.”

And though she complied, my own body betrayed me. My own vitality had ebbed, my own self-consciousness had returned, and yet the adrenaline was still there, poisonously unspent. Of course she wouldn’t love me. Of course she wouldn’t have desired me if we had moved more slowly, if she had looked carefully and examined me more deeply and considered what she was doing.

And the act itself—it might have been disappointing. While this—looking at Rosina, seeing and memorizing her every contour—was a pleasure that would sustain me for months and years to come. Just as Rosina herself had predicted: a memory for later, but a memory of
before
.

The moment before had always been the best moment. The moment at the starting line, just before the struggle and before the striving, before the questionable euphoria. None of it used up. None of it tainted, in the way that everything
is ultimately tainted—everything and everyone. The moment just before the discus flies, when nothing has happened, when no one has succeeded or failed, won or lost. When everything remains possible.

That’s how it had been, once.

That’s how it should have been, still.

Looking at Rosina was a pleasure, even with the poison in my veins, and the anger. But with whom was I angry? Not her. Not Enzo. Not even Keller.

“I’m just going to close my eyes,” she said, releasing my hand before she rolled away. Could she really fall that quickly from frantic passion into unguarded sleep? But perhaps more time had passed than I realized. Yet more time passed as I listened to the soft, uncertain sounds outside and stared at the bunched sheets, the sensual slope of her robe-draped hip. My shirt and belt were flung across the stool, but I was still wearing my unbuttoned trousers.

“Stupid dog,” I whispered, though the bark was so irregular, so faint, it was bothering no one.

“Will you turn down the lantern?”

“Must I?”

“You can stay,” she said sleepily. “But don’t forget the light.”

“Rosina—” I began. But what more could I tell her? What more could I ask? And anyway, she was already nodding off. “I’ll move to the floor later. Cosimo will be looking for me just before dawn.”

She didn’t care what Cosimo thought, so why did I say that? Perhaps to cloak my own lack of performance in chivalry. I had spared her and her reputation. She had not asked to be
spared. And still, she gave off warmth, and forgiving softness, which I found in the dark and curled up next to, wishing that sleep itself were unnecessary.

It’s hard to remember how deeply a child sleeps, how deeply and without care, but that’s how I had slept once. Deep enough not to hear arguments, or the radio, or a barking dog, or neighbors coming and going, slamming the doors, even on a hot summer night with the windows open. I used to fall asleep with the smell of dinner cabbage in my nose and not wake again until there were different smells—a combination of bleach and potatoes that meant my mother had been scrubbing floors and making breakfast well before the rest of us awoke. In between were hours of safety and ignorance, which I had nearly always slept through, without complaint.