The Liar's Wife (40 page)

Just at the top of the staircase leading down to the exhibition itself, a screen flashed the words “Lucca Then and Now, the Sacred and the Profane.” She and Gregory stopped to watch the screen. Alternating with the lettering was the image of a man whose body was almost entirely covered by tattoos. Theresa felt a wave of nausea rise up inside her. The tattooed man was standing in the posture of Civitali's Dolorous Christ she'd seen in the Villa Guinigi, his arms opened in baffled supplication, his face despairing.

She wanted to take Gregory's hand and say, let's go quickly, before we see something terrible. But she knew that wasn't possible. They made their way downstairs, entering a room that a sign on the wall informed them was a cellar that housed the remains of a Roman well. But she couldn't pay attention to that. Now she had to read the words on the wall, Ivo's words, explaining his work.

Theresa had to acknowledge that he'd described his work quite well. The show consisted of paired photographs. There were photographs of two Annunciations and, beside them, dressed in identical costumes, his hair done exactly like the Madonna's, was Giorgio Alcante, Campari, the drag queen. In the posture of the Dolorous Christ was the tattooed man. In the place of the mark of the spear, there was a tattoo of a dragon and, instead of the loincloth, a miniature tuxedo, with a bow tied exactly at the center of the clearly erect penis.

She was afraid to meet Gregory's eye. But looking around the room, she couldn't see him. She went upstairs, thinking perhaps he'd gone to get himself another drink. But he was nowhere to be found.

She had never been so angry in her life. She knew that was something people said all the time, and it wasn't literally true for them, but it was for her. The circumstances of her life had made her feel that anger was one of those luxuries that, in her mother's words, she simply couldn't afford. She was the only child of old-fashioned parents who didn't countenance anger in a daughter, and then she was the child of tragedy, the child of a destroyed father and an overworked, exhausted mother whom everyone called a hero. When she felt anger, it was a fire that was kept banked, well protected by walls of impermeable stone. But now she felt anger as an explosion; she saw herself a cartoon character; she imagined smoke coming out of her ears, so on fire did her brain seem.

What Ivo had done was disgusting. It was perverse. It was wicked. What, she wondered, was the difference between wickedness and evil? Evil, she supposed, suggested a greater scope, and Ivo's adolescent display would affect no one but his father and herself. He had mounted a small show in a provincial gallery; the notice that might be taken would be small and provincial. But he had defiled something that she believed to be of the very highest value. Purity of intention; it was a phrase that Sisters Jackie and Maureen used in describing some of the saints they
admired, to encourage Theresa and Maura to work hard even at subjects, like math, that they didn't like. She'd applied the words to the artists she loved as Sister Imelda did to her saints. Defilement. But no physical thing had been harmed. Could you defile an idea? Could you defile love and fineness and effort and skill and patience and an original vision? Certainly, he had tried.

Never had the desire to punish someone seized her so entirely. People had hurt her before; her mother's going off with George had seemed a kind of betrayal, not that she had chosen another man but that she had chosen such a coarse and vulgar braggart. But Theresa could forgive her mother, because her mother had had such a hard time. And she could forgive Tom because she had got a great deal out of what they'd had. Also because she felt he was too insignificant to want to punish; thinking of him as the husband of his wife, she despised him too much to want to direct the energy of punishment his way.

But Ivo and what he'd done left her no room for compassion, gratitude, or the indifference made possible by a sense of one's own greater power. Ivo was powerful; he acted from a position of strength, his gestures were strong, his aim exact. His desire to punish fed her own. She felt it in her mouth; it had a bitter taste, and its texture was sharp and cutting as if she were biting down with a ragged tooth on a capsule that released pure bitterness. The sharpness and bitterness were not without pleasure; she felt enormously alive; small seed pearls of sweat broke out along her hairline, and her blood seemed quick and thin, like an athlete's primed for speed.

She knew exactly what she would do. But it would have to wait till morning.

She showered and tried to sleep, but sleep was impossible. She packed her bag. She counted the money left in the envelope Tom had given her: she still had two hundred euros in cash. She checked the credit balance on her MasterCard. She looked up the Trenitalia timetable, and the Alitalia website, and then Delta's, and United Airlines, and USAir.

She made herself stay in the room until 9:00, and she phoned and booked a taxi to take her to the station at 11:30. She wrote a note to Chiara: so sorry, had to leave at the last minute; will be in touch. She
made her way to the café, where the owners seemed pleased to serve her cappuccino and
cornetto
without being asked. She told them she would be leaving that day, a work emergency, no no, nothing wrong with her family. Her family was fine. She looked up “hardware store” in her phrase book, and asked the owner of the café to recommend one in the neighborhood.

In the hardware store, she asked the salesman for cans of spray paint, and picked up three. Yellow. Color of cowardice. Color, she hoped, of shame.

The gallery opened at 11:00, but she knew that no one would be there that early. She smiled politely at the bored young woman at the desk, who was busy reading the Italian edition of
Vanity Fair
, then made her way downstairs, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't followed.

She looked at the photographs as little as she could. She didn't have to look closely to do what she'd come for. She took the top off the first can, shook it, and covered the photograph of the drag queen Madonna with yellow paint. She did the same with all the others, and then put the cans back into her navy blue cloth carrier bag. Then, smiling pleasantly, she walked out of the gallery, bidding the
Vanity Fair
–reading girl goodbye.

She brought her bags down to the hotel lobby, settling her bill with the sullen young man whom she'd spoken to only perfunctorily in her time there. Part of her planning included the knowledge that it was Chiara's day off. She asked the young man to give Chiara her note, and he shrugged his shoulders, as if it were one more incomprehensible request from one more incomprehensible guest. The taxi arrived on time. The train was not late.

She boarded the train, looking around her in case she was being followed by police. For the first time in her life, she had to think of herself as a criminal. Movies and detective novels had been no preparation for this sick feeling of anxious vigilance. The word “capture” suddenly became real, with its attendant images of confinement, darkness.

She was surprised how easy it was at the last minute to trade her first-class ticket for an economy seat. She smiled her way through customs,
hoping she wasn't giving herself away by smiling too much, but the fat clerk merely wished her a good voyage.

She'd booked her ticket through to Milwaukee. She couldn't bear going back to New Haven; certainly she couldn't face Tom. She had no idea where she'd go when she got to Milwaukee. Her mother had sold the house. Sitting at the gate half an hour before takeoff, she realized she was homeless.

The thought of her own homelessness made her feel especially vulnerable to the law. She searched around in her mind to imagine a place of safety and could think of only one. She would call Maura. What time was it in Tortola? She would have to wake her, and Maura would be crabby, she was always crabby waking up. But she had no choice.

It was almost a relief that Maura's response was so predictable. “T, what the fuck. It's five o'clock in the morning here.”

“Maura, I've ruined my life.”

“That's pretty hard to do nowadays, even for someone with your work ethic.”

What Theresa didn't expect, but probably should have, knowing Maura, was that when she told her what she'd done, Maura laughed. “That might just be the coolest thing you've ever done,” she said.

“But, Maura, you don't understand. I probably can't go back to Yale now. I can probably never go back to Italy. I may be wanted by the police.”

“I think they're too busy with pedophiles and arms dealers to worry about you. And maybe the Yale people will never find out. Their heads are so far up their tiny asses they might not even notice.”

“Of course they will, my advisor will find out, the guy's father is a friend of his.” She remembered that she hadn't told Maura anything about Tom.

“Where the hell are you, T, on what continent?”

“I haven't left Italy. I'm landing in Milwaukee, but I don't know where to go when I get there.”

“Sure you do. Go to the convent.”

The convent. Of course. There were plenty of empty rooms there; the house had been built for many more nuns, and the ones who lived there
now had no desire to sell it. She tried to imagine who would be there in the summer, who she hoped would be there. She hoped it wasn't Sister Jackie; she would ask too many questions, offer too many solutions, not understand at all what had upset Theresa so much that she would commit what Sister Jackie (who was devoted to nonviolence, to the point that, as Sister Maureen said, it made you want to do violence to her) would call a violent act. She hoped it wasn't Sister Imelda on her own, because she would just be puzzled. She wanted Sister Maureen there because she would get the situation, might come up with some ideas, would probably be annoyed at Theresa's unwisdom, but wouldn't go on and on about it after what might be a quick initial blast. As long as Sister Maureen was there, she realized that she wanted Sister Imelda, too, because of her unquestioning acceptance, her unquestioning belief that Theresa was “a wonderful girl.”

“Just email them. Maureen is on her computer around twenty hours a day.”

“I'm afraid to open my email. Will you do it?”

“You still have the same password? Matteo C?”

“Yes. See if there's anything from somebody named Allard. Or Ferguson. Or from Joan Gallagher.”

“She always scared the crap out of me. I always thought she expected me to be interested in paintings on velvet. But her husband's really great. He does all this work with diabetes patients, particularly on Indian reservations. He's saved a lot of people from being amputated.”

Theresa remembered how Tom and Amaryllis had made fun of Joan's husband. How he had called Joan's marrying him “perverse.” “There's one from Ivo Allard. The subject line is ‘Mille grazie.' I take it that means a thousand thanks.”

“Oh my God, it's a trick, it's some kind of a trick. You have to open it, Maura. No, don't. No, do it now but don't tell me. No, you have to tell me. But don't tell me if it's terrible. No, you have to tell me in case I have to watch out for the police.”

“Be quiet, I'm going to read it to you. It says, ‘Dearest Theresa. I can't thank you enough for what you've done. You'll put me on the map. The gallery has been on the phone to the newspapers in Rome and Milan … they might actually send someone to cover the show.
You've turned a minor show in a minor provincial gallery into something that will get national attention. The sales will go through the roof. I will have to buy you champagne next time you are in Lucca. By the way, everyone knew who you were. The girl at the desk said no one was around but a red-haired American with big tits. Pa doesn't know yet. He'll probably be shocked, but secretly glad. Mille grazie.”

“What an asshole,” Maura went on. “But he doesn't sound like he's sending Interpol out after you. So I don't think your life is ruined quite yet. On the other hand, he really feels like he beat you. And maybe he did. Whatever game it was you thought you were playing.”

“It wasn't a game, Maura, and what he did was horrible. What am I going to do, Maura? Where am I going to go? I can't stand to go back to Yale, I just can't stand it.”

“Well, it's only July, so you can just put that on the back burner. Listen to me. Just listen. You'll go to the convent and you'll talk to Professor Gallagher and you'll let the nuns pet you and feed you lots of junk food, and then you'll come down here. It's almost hurricane season, the flights are really cheap. Call me when I wake up.”