The Other Language (26 page)

Her ex-husband was waiting at a table in the far corner of the wood-paneled bar, among soft cushions and elaborate Japanese flower arrangements. He looked more attractive than she remembered and, like her apartment without him, oddly foreign. The memory of their physical intimacy—even its subtle scent—had vanished as though someone else (the woman with a sense of humor?) had erased it for eternity. He asked why she was limping and when she told him about the Janu Sirsasana incident, he couldn’t keep back a condescending smirk.

“Yoga. You didn’t give that up yet, did you?”

“It’s not like I’m doing heroin,” she said breezily, yet she regretted having mentioned the word
yoga
. He’d always found the subject—with its obsessive concerns about hips, knees and shoulder openings, breathing techniques, mantras and especially the smugness that came with an advanced practice—deeply irritating.

The conversation floated without a purpose for a few minutes, aided by the intervention of a young waiter who took their order. Her ex-husband asked for a pot of green tea but Lara felt she ought to order a martini. She tried to sum up the past year, giving a joyful picture of all that had happened without him. She was happy with her choice of the venue; it had just the right atmosphere: the bar was quiet, almost empty, the muted colors soothing, the decor minimal yet cozy. The drinks came, and there was another awkward silence while he juggled with cup and teapot. He then broke the silence with a studied casual tone.

“It’s great that you’re happy in your place down south. Where exactly is it again?”

“It’s just a tiny village south of Lecce. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

Because she’d bought it with his money she felt protective of it, as if he could lay claim to what was now only hers.

He smiled encouragingly. He only wanted to be nice and friendly.

“It sounds good, your life. I mean, you used to be such a city girl. I never pictured you in a small village growing vegetables.”

Lara wasn’t sure this was the kind of recognition she’d been looking for, and the eagerness he showed in approving her life without him was beginning to unnerve her.

Suddenly, in the richly upholstered, orchid-filled bar, her ideas about growing her own vegetables and making fig preserves sounded naïve, even pathetic. She looked at her ex-husband, in his superbly tailored pin-striped suit, who kept smiling at her as one would with a crazy person. Now that she had him in front of her it wasn’t clear why she’d wanted to see him again. She didn’t love him, didn’t hate him or want him anymore, and certainly she didn’t care to be his friend. Maybe she thought that seeing him again would help her make sense of the nine years spent in his company. She needed evidence that those years had been meaningful for both of them but, the more she looked for that evidence, the less she found it.

“You look good. I like this look. The raincoat,” he said.

The martini was beginning to have its effect. She hadn’t had a stiff drink in ages and had a feeling her eyes were beginning to spin all over the place without a focus and her voice had started to slacken.

“Lara,” he said calmly.

“Yes? What?” Had she been staring at the wall too long? She quickly regained her posture in the velvet armchair.

“Nicole and I are getting married next month.”

There was a long pause. She collected herself again.

“Nicole? Oh. Is that her name?”

He nodded, with a hint of impatience. She knew her name, of course.

“We are going to have a baby in January,” he added as he sipped his tea, so that the cup would conceal the lower half of his face.

There was another silence. He took a deep breath.

“I meant to call you. I wanted you to know but you beat me to it. I didn’t want you to learn it from someone else.”

She kept still, her eyes fixed steadily on him.

“Lara? Are you okay?”

“Yes. Totally. Why? Well, that’s very good news. Really good. Congratulations. I mean it.”

“We’ll be moving to Paris next month. GreenTech has hired me as a consultant.”

“Paris? Wonderful.”

She smiled. He smiled back. Sipped more tea.

“I’m glad I got to see you. I really am. You seem good,” he said and then chuckled. “Except for your knee, of course.”

“You never made me laugh,” she blurted out.

“What?”

“You were never funny. You have no fucking clue as to what humor even is.”

His face morphed into the more familiar expression of hostility and alarm.

“Please, don’t let’s start.”

“Start what? I am so done.” Her rage had unleashed itself like a vicious animal. “I am so bored with you I cannot bear this conversation another minute.”

She stood up and wobbled across the creaky wooden floor without turning around. She asked for the ladies’ room and when she came across her image in the mirror—half drunk, her hands
still shaking from adrenaline—instead of Grace Kelly what she saw was a dull, unattractive woman in a frumpy beige raincoat with a ridiculous scarf around her head.

That fall Ben Jackson was listed in
Vogue
as one of the Ten Best Dressed Men of the Year.

Leo sent her a link from his office in Los Angeles.

Check this out. How cool is that?

Vogue
had posted several photos featuring Ben either attending different exclusive events in eveningwear, caught on the street fidgeting with his car keys, or walking with a take-out latte in his surfing shorts. Lara scanned the pictures one by one: nine times out of ten he was wearing one of Mina’s creations. The clothes had a distinctive, classic Italian cut with a slight retro look, which felt new and original because of the gutsy nonchalance he had in wearing them, thanks to the way he turned up the stiff collars without wearing a tie, or left the shirt cuffs dangling unbuttoned.

The other nine celebrities on the list had gone to great lengths to praise their favorite labels and designers, whose clothes they were wearing, whereas Ben told the press he detested labels and that his entire wardrobe had been cut and hand stitched by a single seamstress in a small village in the south of Italy. A true talent, he was quoted as saying, like those gifted dressmakers Balenciaga or Dior at one time had had in their
maisons
—a rare, endangered species that should be protected. The whole thing sounded fabulously exclusive and rare, and the writer tried in vain to obtain at least the name of the obscure Italian seamstress, which Ben refused to disclose. “I’m a no-logo, and I want to remain a no-logo,” he stated vehemently, like an anarchist standing on a barricade.

Lara e-mailed Leo back.

I hope he’s sent Mina a present. A ticket to Tahiti? A big fat check?

There was no answer. She re-sent the message as a text and got an instant reply.

what are you now, mina’s agent?

Lara put the magazine in the post to Mina and rang her brother at his office. She got his voice mail instead and resigned herself to leaving a lengthy message in which she listed all the things she most resented in their relationship. It was a long list that got cut off by the end of the tape.

The days were getting crisper and shorter, the light through the trees projected starker shadows on the sidewalk. October came, the month of enterprises and plans. Everyone around Lara had one, even her mother—she had enrolled in the Elders University, resolved to get a degree in anthropology. Anita was looking into a rare breed of Balinese dogs—even smaller than the hairless Chinese cresteds—which were all the rage in California (you can stuff them inside your coat pocket and fly with them everywhere, she’d exclaimed) and she predicted they would soon hit Europe. Leo was finally getting an office of his own—he had enough clients now to have a company with his name. Her ex-husband and Nicole were probably unpacking boxes in their new Parisian flat. Her belly must be pretty big by now.

Lara sat in her apartment in Rome, thinking about all this. After three weeks of gentle physical therapy, her knee was fine again, she had printed flyers and made a few phone calls advertising her yoga class, but only two people had called so far. She sat around the house unable to think of an alternative. What had happened to her? Nine years of safe marriage with a steady flow
of cash assured by her husband’s salary had turned her into an incapable, paralyzed human being. It had been a steady flow of unlearning all that she’d known before. But it was late now. Too late even for being mad at herself.

The tourists had gone and with them their ugly plastic paraphernalia of inflatable mattresses, flippers and flip-flops that all summer long had crammed the exterior of the
tabacchi
shop and the grocery store. The village had regained its sober style and had gone back to looking like what it used to look like: an undisclosed secret, just a village nobody had ever heard of, with a small but perfectly proportioned square, a pretty clock tower, a baroque church and a grand palazzo once owned by a family of barons.

Lara had taken an early flight and arrived at the house just as her neighbors were sweeping the street outside their doors, as they did every day. When they saw her get out of the taxi they called out her name. They seemed happy to see her back, off season, just like a regular neighbor, like someone who lived there.

“I came for this evening’s procession.
Per la Vergine della Tempesta
,” Lara announced proudly, wanting to confirm that she had, in some way, become one of them; that this particular day—when the Virgin had appeared to a group of fishermen in the midst of a storm and had saved them from drowning—mattered to her as well.

“
Brava! Brava!
” The women in slippers with brooms in hand nodded and laughed.

Mina’s house had gone through a radical transformation. Everything was in its place, no more wisps of thread flying around, no bolts of fabric or clothes hanging off nails. Surfaces were clean and clear, there was no trace of work, no electricity or stuffy smells of sweat and fatigue in the air. Even the orange cat looked different,
stretched on the windowsill next to the Gertrude Jekyll rose. Lara peered in the next room. The big TV screen was gone. But the change was owing to something deeper than just a cleanup. Something was gone from Mina as well: her mad exhilaration, her electric excitement. Now she looked older, more austere.