The Liar's Wife (38 page)

“This is my son, Ivo, and his friend Sage,” Gregory said. “They are joining us for champagne.”

“Hey,” said the woman.

“Salve,”
said the man.

They both lit cigarettes. “I'm very grateful to the old man for letting us smoke.”

“My parents won't let anybody smoke within a hundred yards of their house. But then, it's Marin County. My mother's always throwing me out of whatever room I'm in and basically sending me to another zip code if I want to smoke.”

“But this is your home, of course,” said Gregory Allard. “And it's Italy, not California.”

“Yeah, home sweet home, Dad. What have I spent, like maybe sixty-five days total here in my life?”

“That's your choice, Ivo, of course. But let's not spoil Theresa's time with unpleasantness.”

“No, Theresa, Gregory here never allows unpleasantness,” he said, taking a heavy glass ashtray from the table and cradling it between his knees.

Everything about these two made Theresa feel clumsy, foolish, unfashionable, almost middle-aged, although she knew that Ivo was at least fifteen years older than she. “You're a photographer,” she said, hoping to get him off the subject of his father and their past.

“Ivo has a show coming up. We hope you'll be there for the opening next week.”

“I'm sure it's not your thing, any more than it is Gregory's here.”

“I'd very much like to go. I really admire good photography.”

“Who do you really admire?”

Her mind went blank, as though she had never seen a photograph in her life. The only names who came to her were all of dead people, and she knew that, unlike the test that Gregory had set for her, this question, also a test, was one that she would fail.

She felt herself blushing and she hated this man for making her do it.

“She's probably a real Ansel Adams girl,” said Sage. “Don't you think? Good old American values.”

“Actually,” she said, “I've never been very interested in America.”

“Well, Gregory, you've snagged one right out of Henry James,” Ivo
said. “Watch out, Theresa, they never come to a good end, these Henry James girls. And it's always about money. Gregory knows all about money. Or no, he doesn't know anything. He doesn't have to.”

Theresa saw that Gregory would not say a word in her defense, or in his own. He opened the champagne. “To Theresa and her brilliant career,” he said and poured them each a glass. Sage took one sip and held it in her mouth for at least half a minute before swallowing. Ivo downed his and said, “We're out of here. Nice meeting you.” He pulled Sage to her feet.

“I'm sorry, Theresa,” Gregory Allard said. “I think I've told you that Ivo can't forgive me. And he seems to enjoy not forgiving me. I don't think he'd know what his place was in the world if he weren't the person who couldn't forgive his father.”

Theresa knew that she did not forgive her mother. Still, she would never have dreamed of speaking to her like that. But, she wondered, did that mean that she had more in common with Ivo Allard than she did with his father? Or ordinary nice people like Chiara, who loved their parents and enjoyed their company?

The grim-faced servant brought them their dinner:
tortellini in brodo
as a first course, then a roasted chicken and a plate of spinach surrounded by sliced lemons, leaving on the sideboard a salad in a crystal bowl rimmed with silver.

“It pleases me to be able to tell you—I suppose it is a sort of bragging, but, well, what of it?—that the chicken was reared here and the olive oil is from my trees and the wine is ours. It pleases me very much indeed.”

“It's wonderful here,” she said. “Everything is so beautiful.”

“It requires a tremendous amount of attention, the upkeep is staggeringly expensive and difficult; well, everything is difficult in Italy, except when it isn't, which is when you know somebody who turns out to be the cousin of a cousin who can open any door.”

“Speaking of which,” she said, “I may need your help. One of the pieces I most want to see seems to be in a church that is never opened. Santa Maria dei Servi. And there's another in a church in the countryside, Mugano, that can't be got to by public transportation.”

“Nothing easier,” he said. “I'm sure I can find someone who's the
cousin of a cousin. And we'll make a jaunt to Mugano; have lunch outdoors in a little trattoria I know there. Nothing simpler.”

For dessert there was a sweet wine and
cantucci
, and Gregory Allard offered coffee, which he said he would not drink himself. She refused it, too; she knew she would already have trouble sleeping tonight because of what she'd seen.

He showed her his Roman medals and a bronze that he'd brought back from Cambodia, and some watercolors of Naples from the late eighteenth century. After a while he sat down and stretched his legs and raised his arms over his head. “And now,” he said, “I'm afraid I must take you home. I fade rather early. People say that the old don't require much sleep, but actually I require quite a lot. And I do adore sleeping. Everything about it: my bed, my covers, my lovely pillows. Yes, sleeping is one of my greatest pleasures now. Perhaps that says something about a nearness to death.”

“Oh no,” she said. “You seem so young and so alive.”

“We're all alive until we're not,” he said.

The fog had thickened and Gregory Allard beeped his horn every few seconds as they made their way down the winding narrow road.

“You mustn't worry, I'm an excellent driver,” he said. “It's one of my two real physical skills. Driving, and carving meats. You know my father went to a special course just to learn how to carve. And I must say he was a dab hand at it, and I'm offended by the hacking that passes for carving at most tables, I must say.”

She tried to relax her grip on the handrest, but she did find the drive on the nearly invisible road rather alarming. She was glad when she saw the lights of the city, and even the narrowness of the streets, where it seemed you might always be scraping your car against some ancient wall, seemed a relief after the near-blind drive.

“I wonder if I might ask for the pleasure of your company tomorrow,” he said. “I want your opinion on that piece the antiques dealer is saying is a Civitali.”

“Oh, Mr. Allard, I don't think I'm qualified to make that kind of judgment.”

“My dear, I'm not bringing you as an expert, just a friend with a very good eye. And by that time I may have found the cousin of the cousin who might be able to get us into Santa Maria dei Servi.”

They agreed to speak in the morning. Theresa thought she would be awake all night, from the excitement of having seen the two Civitalis, but she fell immediately into a deep dreamless sleep, from which Gregory Allard's phone call awakened her, asking if they could meet at the antiques shop in an hour. He was already standing there when she arrived, pacing up and down, looking more than ever like a grasshopper in his green Lacoste shirt and khaki pants.

She could see it in the window a hundred feet before she got to the storefront; a statue, four feet high, that was once polychrome but the color had faded to a pocked beige. The arms were missing and one of the shoulders was degraded. But the posture was unmistakably Civitali's. But she told herself, it would be very possible to make a mistake. Perhaps it was Civitali's, perhaps it was only by someone in his school, perhaps it was only someone who had seen his work and been influenced by it.

Something in her was aroused by the statue, by the kind of puzzled supplication that she had seen in both the suffering Christ and the young virgin of the Annunciation. But she would not say anything yet.

The owner of the antiques store was younger than she expected, and more nervous than she believed it was in his interest to be. He kept rubbing his hands together and putting his first three fingers to his lips, then moving them away and rubbing his hands together again.

It was clear that he and Gregory Allard had had many conversations about the piece, and even Theresa's Italian was enough to let her know that they used their words only as placeholders, not using them as vessels of information.

Gregory Allard introduced her to Signore Calvi as a graduate student of art history at Yale, a specialist in Civitali. He mentioned Tom Ferguson's name. This seemed to make Signore Calvi even more nervous, and Theresa wanted to say to him: “You needn't be afraid of me. I'm nobody. I have no authority at all. Nothing I say will be of any consequence.”

But seeing the intensity of Gregory Allard's gaze as it fell on her, she knew that was only partly true.

It seemed entirely remarkable that she was in the company of someone who might be able to make this beautiful object his, take it into his home, purchase it as you might purchase a refrigerator or a telephone. Or a perfectly ordinary, perfectly serviceable chair or desk.

“I think it's earlier than your pieces,” she said to Gregory, speaking English. “You can see the gestural energy, but he hasn't quite achieved his full refinement, and he's still heavily under the influence of Rossellino and Mino da Fiesole.”

Gregory Allard nodded and said, “Not in front of the children.”

So he would be bargaining, she thought, as she had seen women in the market bargaining about tomatoes.

She tried to understand what it was about this statue that made it stand out, almost jump out from the other things in the shop, some of which were very lovely, some as old, or older. What made it more desirable, as you might desire one person standing among a clutch of perfectly attractive, perfectly presentable others? Some charge emanated from it, some envelope surrounded it, so she could feel the hair stand up on the back of her neck and the skin on her forearms prickle. She told herself she must be cool and analytical. She looked at it from all angles. She ran her fingers over the wood. And again all she really wanted to say was “It's beautiful, it's wonderful.” But actually, that wasn't all. Now she wanted to say, as well, “You should buy it.”

They excused themselves and made their way to Paola's for lunch. She could tell that Gregory Allard didn't want to talk until they were seated, until, perhaps, they'd had something to drink.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

She said aloud the words, words she knew to be daring, that had been in her mind. “I think it's beautiful. I think it's wonderful. I think you should buy it.”

“But do you think it's a Civitali? I'm a bit suspicious. Even with the missing arms, the price seems a little low. Calvi says he's giving me a break because he'd like it to stay in Lucca, but I'm unwilling to trust that kind of sentimentality in a dealer.”

This was a side of Gregory Allard she hadn't seen: a rich man who bought beautiful things but wanted his money's worth. But what did worth mean? She wasn't sure she liked this in him. No, she was sure, she didn't like it, and the dislike made her bold.

“Does it really matter if it's a Civitali?”

“One doesn't like to be cheated.”

It occurred to her that she had probably never worried about being cheated because she had never owned anything that anyone would want to cheat her of, had never had enough money so that anyone would want to do her out of it. And in the same way that Chiara's happy family made Theresa feel alone and a freak, Gregory Allard's wealth made her feel the strangeness of the way she had, until now, lived. The question arose: What was he paying for? The look of the thing, or the name attached to it? Was he buying something that would give him pleasure every time his eye fell on it, or was he looking ahead to the moment of resale, and the hope of making a profit? Or was it something else; would he be paying for a connection, a physical proximity to someone long dead, the primitive need to touch what the beloved dead had touched, a lover's desire for anything that proved that the beloved had inhabited the world, a consolation for the loss or the impossibility of presence? An ancient magic, but one that money could buy. So was it love, or commerce, at work in the decision Gregory Allard would now make? Or was it possible to separate them?

“You should buy it if you think it's beautiful and wonderful. Do you love it?”

“I like it very much. It often takes me a while living with something to experience what I would call love. I suppose that's very New England.”

“If you don't love it, you shouldn't buy it. If you love it, or if you think it's beautiful and wonderful, you should buy it whether it's Civitali or not.”

Gregory Allard blinked his grape green eyes, as if he were surprised at being spoken to in this way. “But you see it isn't just money I'd be cheated of. I'd be cheated of the real. So little in this world is real, is authentic; anything can be a copy of anything. I suppose one reason
one desires objects like these, by an artist one feels attached to because the attachment seems like a living thing. And so if that turned out to be a lie … Well, one would feel a terrible fool for being cheated of it.”

She instantly regretted what she'd said, remembering how disrespectfully his son had spoken. So he wasn't unused to being spoken to in this way, and the thought of being in some way like Ivo appalled her.

“Please forgive me, Mr. Allard. I had no right to speak as I did. It's all very new to me.”

“On the contrary, dear Theresa, and you must call me Gregory. You raise questions that I certainly ought to have thought about, but somehow never have. The question of what I'm paying for. What an extraordinary person you are, and now, stung a bit by your candor, I'm trying to discern whether you are extremely naïve or disproportionately wise for your years.”

“Perhaps I'm simply rude.”

“Believe me, my dear, I know rudeness when I encounter it. You were taken up by an idea, aroused by it, and what a rare thing that is. As a collector, I think a lot about rarity. And you are a rare person.”