The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (42 page)

“It seems that the suitcase which held the manuscript pages in Cáceres held some old books as well. One of them had a name and address: Elizabeta Bomberg, Venice.”

“What kind of book was it?”

“An old Christian theology text. Absolutely worthless, Marius says. But the priest has given it to Francesca and Marius as a kind of goodbye-and-good-riddance present.”

“So,” said Janice, “they’re off to Venice. Wonderful shopping there. Too bad they missed carnival,” she mused, turning the pages of her magazine.

“Janice. We must find Suzanne!”

“Really, mother,” Janice said calmly, examining a fashion layout from Armani, “when are you going to come to terms with Suzanne? She’ll appear when she’s run out of money, not before. It’s hopeless to try to track her down.”

Catherine sat bolt upright, resting her whole weight on one frail elbow. “Nothing is hopeless, isn’t that what you and my doctors keep telling me?”

Janice looked up, the magazine suspended in midair. “You’re upsetting yourself!”

“Promise me you’ll talk to Marius and get him to call this young man, this Gabriel! He’s a doctor, he must have an answering service that knows his whereabouts.”

“A Jewish doctor, isn’t that what you said, English or something? It sounds wonderful, Mother. Maybe we shouldn’t interfere. Let nature take its course.”

“I tell you, you must find her!”

“And let’s say we do, then what?”

“I want her to go to Venice. She must go to Venice!” Catherine slammed her fist down on the bed, rattling the plastic coils, the tubes, and metal hooks.

“
Madre
, please! I’m going to have to call the doctor if you don’t lie down!”

“Write it down!” Catherine demanded.

Janice took out a lapis blue fountain pen trimmed in eighteen-karat gold, but discovered she had nothing to write on, except her checkbook. She tore out one of the accounting pages and turned it over. “I’m writing,
Madre
.”

“Call Marius or Alex Serouya and tell them to contact Gabriel and find Suzanne. Get word to Suzanne that she must meet Francesca in Venice right away.”

Janice kept writing.

“Have you got all that?”

“Of course. Can I ask why?”

“You won’t understand, but I’ll tell you anyway. I had a visitor a while back. She told me that the girls mustn’t miss Venice. Both of them.”

“A visitor? Who?”

“A woman. She took me upstairs to see the babies, remember? That time I disappeared?”

“That deranged volunteer!”

“She wasn’t deranged and she wasn’t a volunteer. She was my
memuneh
.”

“Your what!?”

“My guardian angel, if you’d prefer.”

“Did this person ask you for money, by any chance?” Janice asked tensely, her eyes narrowing.

Catherine chuckled. “It isn’t a usable currency where she comes from. Besides, ghosts don’t really shop.”

“You frighten me when you talk this way! Do you want me to call the doctor and ask him about your medication?”

“Never mind my medication! I’m not hallucinating, I tell you! Look, Janice, even if you don’t care to believe a word I say, think about it: What possible harm could come from telling Suzanne to meet Francesca in Venice? Call it an old woman’s whim.”

“Why is it so important to you?”

“The woman said specifically that both of them shouldn’t miss Venice. Don’t you see? Venice wasn’t even on the itinerary for them, and now, suddenly Francesca is going there! I just know something is going to happen there to both of them that will change their lives for the better.”

“Be realistic! They’ve never gotten along! Can you really imagine anything lasting and positive coming out of forcing them to be together? Some people are better off apart,” Janice said tearfully.

The divorce papers had already been drawn up. The inelegant wrestling match over money had begun.

Catherine lay back, exhausted, turning her face to the window. “I’ve always loved summer. When I was a little girl, we had a house on the beach. I used to watch the sun make this shining pathway on the water, like some golden road to heaven. And there were always these quiet old men in soft cotton shirts listening to the waves, their eyes closed, content.”

She turned to look at Janice, her voice faint, but stirring with strange emotion. “Do you remember that summer you discovered you had a lovely voice and you sang all day? That was the summer I thought: This is going to be the most wonderful year, yes, the most beautiful year of my life.”

Janice stared at her, transfixed.

“You were a darling child. In my mother’s and grandmother’s day, you would have been considered the perfect daughter—pretty, docile, sweet-natured. But your father and I, we considered ourselves modern, progressive. We wanted you to succeed, to be accomplished, to contribute. That was it! To make some
contribution
to mankind.

“You weren’t a scholar, even though you did manage to pass all your courses. Nothing much interested you, though, but young men and real estate. Oh, that’s unkind! You wanted a husband and a home. You were all right. It was the world that changed.

“But that summer, listening to you singing all over the house, I felt such a breaking out of happiness. And then suddenly, I got depressed. I got strange aches and pains, sometimes sharp ones right over my heart. I felt anxious. I couldn’t sleep. I overate. And then I felt sluggish and sleepy. All day, all I wanted to do was sleep.

“This went on until I finally understood what was wrong with me: Everything in my life was suddenly perfect. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to hold on to it. So I made myself miserable. I couldn’t trust the future. I didn’t believe it would be kind, even though it had brought me that lovely summer, so unexpectedly. Do you understand what I’m saying, Janice?”

Catherine did not hear her answer, the sudden blackening into unconsciousness taking her unawares. She felt a sudden sliding beneath her, as noiseless as a swan, and smelled the weathered wood of the gondola. She lay back, the sunlight warm on her face as someone competently manned the oars, singing with great happiness as they drifted toward some pleasant, unknown goal. It would be so easy to get there, she thought, wondering why she had been resisting, why she had been so afraid. True, she had not planned it this way, but what did that matter? The important thing was…

And suddenly, she couldn’t remember. Nothing seemed important anymore, just peace, perfect peace. That was the goal in the end. Those old men, their eyes closed, had found it with less trouble than she.

Madre!

Unpleasantly louder, the voices, a shout, not a song. A scream of alarm, and the shaking boat dashed recklessly against the pier.

The harsh light. Janice’s tearful, frightened face. Concern, pain, noise, needles, flashing red lights.

Not yet, she thought, full of regret and a small hope. Not yet, but soon.

Janice closed the door and bought a cup of bad coffee from a hospital machine, more to hold than to drink. Her hands shook.

A fainting spell, not a heart attack, they said. She wiped her sweating brow, leaning back and trying to gain her composure.

She remembered that summer. She’d been thirteen years old. And all summer long, the disc jockeys had been wearing out records of Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and the incomparable Joan Baez, whose lovely voice filled you with a longing so painful that your whole body ached with joy. She’d spent that entire August with a Joan Baez song book and a guitar, sitting on her bed singing about lost maidens and drowned sailors and unfaithful true loves, feeling as lonely and lost as she’d ever felt in her life.

Lovely singing voice!

She’d never even been able to carry a tune! And it had made
Madre
so happy! What could that mean? Living in the same house at the same time with someone, and yet not even having your memories vaguely intersect? Had they been part of each other’s lives at all? And were they now, and would they ever be?

She downed the coffee in one long, lukewarm sip of displeasure, wondering if Kenny’s lawyer had responded to her lawyer’s latest proposal. Wondering if she could take an hour or two off to go down to Bendel’s to walk through the perfume counters, to shake off the smell of hospital antiseptic. Wondering how much longer this was going to take….

She reached into her handbag for a tissue, and pulled out the note she’d written. Call, do, tell.
Memunehs
and guardian angels! Foolish, all of it. But
Madre
wouldn’t forget. She’d ask about it later, fainting spell or no. I’d better get to it immediately.

Trust the future, she thought, wondering what in heaven’s name that could possibly mean.

33

The fog rose from the water like steam, hiding the houses in a fairy-tale mist that made you feel you were walking open-eyed through a dream.

“It can’t be real!” Francesca murmured.

“Come!” Marius took her arm, guiding her to the
vaporetto
.

“A boat?”

“There aren’t any streets. Think of it as the local bus.”

She felt disoriented looking around at the flooded spaces, reminiscent only of places declared “disaster areas” on American television news. “The suitcases?”

“I’ve arranged for a porter to bring them around to the hotel. Relax.”

She did. It was really nice having him take care of the luggage, she thought, standing beside him on the prow. It was true that everything he did for her she could have accomplished pretty easily by herself, but how lovely not to have to! Not to have to struggle and be self-sufficient all the time. To simply
lean
.

She leaned. She could feel his muscles brace, accepting her weight. She felt protected and cushioned as her ear rested against his arm and her soft curls brushed his shoulder. Since the incident on the road to Cáceres, he had been careful not to touch her, even casually. She looked up at him. He was smiling down at her with a look of perfect contentment. She smiled back. Suddenly, strongly, she felt a wave of happiness.

The boat moved slowly through the water. Francesca gazed, enchanted, at the magnificent old palaces and charming bridges that appeared and vanished, ghostlike, in and out of the fog. Venice and Cáceres, she thought. Places that wear their history neither as shroud nor costume, but simply as a fine old gown lovingly preserved. Yet, as much as she wanted to be absolutely charmed, she found she couldn’t ignore the patches and tears: the polluted smell of the gray-green water, the peeling shutters and crumbling stonework, the way the entire dreamscape seemed to be sinking like a rotting tug into oblivion.

Why do you always have to do this? she complained to herself bitterly. Why do you have to examine everything under a microscope until the little, swarming microbes appear, ruining everything? Why do you have to constantly talk yourself out of feeling joy?

The image came to her of a child in a sporting-goods store being outfitted for Rollerblading by his anxious mother: the crash helmet, the chest protector, knee guards, elbow guards.

When had she acquired all this protective gear?

After Peter? Or was it even before? Daddy walking out?

Or was it Darren Stockwell?

She shivered.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head. Still, he took off his light summer jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

Put it out of your mind!

But it wouldn’t go. It sat there, as if once again the door were locked and the big football jock, whose father had worked with Kenneth Barren, were standing in front of it.

It had been her first big date for her first Homecoming weekend. They’d both had too many beers and she’d invited him up to her dorm for a minute. He’d been so nice. A senior, pre-med, beautifully built. Rich. Courteous. Up until the moment he’d locked the door of her dorm room and put his hands around her throat.

Getting “carried away” is what he called it before leaving her. And she hadn’t corrected him, hadn’t called it by its rightful name, the name the police would have used, had she not been too hurt, too confused, and too ashamed to call them.

The only person she’d ever told was Suzanne, years later, and more as a warning than a plea for comfort and protection. She’d found ways of protecting herself.

The first step was not to connect: to turn down the pages of the newspaper, to turn off the radio and TV news; to live in a building with security guards, where you didn’t know anyone, and no one knew you. To concentrate all your efforts not on saving the world, but on saving yourself.

So far, she’d succeeded, she thought, straightening up.

The boat made regular stops, docking to take on and leave off passengers, just like a normal, wheeled vehicle of public transportation. They got off at Piazza San Marco. It was only a short walk to their hotel.

Even from the outside, Francesca knew this couldn’t be the one on her itinerary.

“The Gritti Palace? There’s got to be a mistake.”

He patted her arm and slipped it through his. “Nothing less will do for the descendant of Doña Gracia Mendes.”

“I don’t have a budget for this, Marius!”

“Tut, tut. My treat. I insist.”

It seemed more like the private home of fabulously wealthy aristocrats than a place that accepted Visa and MasterCard.

“A perfectly restored fifteenth-century Gothic palace,” Marius murmured, taking her into the lobby.

It was lavish. Yet, the sumptuous overstuffed period furniture seemed intimate and cosseting. Porcelain vases held huge, fresh flower arrangements reflected in ornately gilt-framed mirrors. Through tall, heavy, wooden doors, she glimpsed a charming crowd of well-dressed strangers basking in the magical light of dazzling crystal chandeliers. That and the staff, so diffident and spoiling, really did make her feel like traveling royalty.

“Shall we have lunch after we freshen up? The Club Del Doge is one of the finest restaurants in the world.”

She looked at him curiously. He never spoke about money. He didn’t dress or act like a wealthy man. But if he was offering to pick up the tab for all of this…? She didn’t know what to think.