The Rome Affair. Laura Caldwell
in my mind. It seemed true from my side as well, despite everything. “I love you, too,” I said grudgingly.
As I hung up, there was a rap at the door. “Uno momento,” I called, pulling on a robe.
The front desk clerk, Bettina, stood outside the door. “For you, Rachel.” She held aloft a foot-tall square wrapped in brown paper. “Delivery.”
“Grazie.” I wondered if this was somehow the surprise from Nick. “And have you seen my friend? Kit?”
Bettina grinned. “She is with Frenchman, I think.”
“Okay, grazie.” If Kit was here, she could help me decide. To believe or not to believe.
I took the package to the table near one of the windows. Outside, it was another sunny Roman day, the Spanish Steps loaded with backpacking tourists holding cameras. Today was windy, though, and people held on to hats, as well, the women’s hair flapping in the wind.
There were no markings on the package except for my name and Il Palazzetto written in black marker in a hand I didn’t recognize. I turned it over. Masking tape held the paper together and it easily came undone. Inside was the small painting from Roberto’s apartment. The one of the woman he’d said was me.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Why had he sent this? I turned over the canvas and saw a note taped to the back. It was a small rectangle of heavy ivory paper, folded in half.
Mia Rachele,
You have only a small time in Roma. I would like to spend that time with you. But if you cannot, then I want you to have this. Please take it to Chicago and remember me. I will remember you.
Roberto
If I chose to disbelieve my husband’s words, I should pick up the phone now. I should call Roberto, and not only thank him for the painting but tell him to meet me.
I set the painting on the table. I opened the windows and leaned out, hoping to catch a little sun on my face, and with it, a decision about Nick. Another one. Hadn’t I leaped over enough moral and mental hurdles to get to this point? Deciding to forgive him. Deciding to trust him again. Now he was asking the same. And I was no longer the innocent.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the gallery where I’d met Nick during a spring art festival in Bucktown, the same gallery where we had our wedding reception three years later, when Nick’s brother and our parents and our friends gathered together in that high-ceilinged room filled with jazz and champagne and sun and art.
I thought of the way Nick always looked at me, especially when I entered a room or a conversation. Nick had a way of furrowing his brows when he listened to someone speak. He was, I’d always said, one of the best listeners I’d ever met. He truly wanted to hear what someone was saying. He wanted to learn, to understand. When I spoke though, the corners of his mouth turned up in a small grin. His brown eyes softened and filled with pride.
And then I thought of Nick’s eyes and the way he’d looked at me that night in our kitchen. The night he’d told me. After his confession, he’d held me lightly by the shoulders, as if I was a balloon that might float away. He’d bent down until our eyes were even. I made a mistake, he’d said. The most awful, most cruel mistake. But I will never do that to you again. I promise. I could see the anguish in his eyes, the paleness of his skin making his few freckles stand out in sharp contrast. I promise, Rachel. I promise.
To believe or not to believe.
I crossed the room and found Roberto’s note. I fingered it. I remembered his fingers on my body. I thought of Nick’s words—I was planning a surprise for you…My wife.
I thought of our bungalow on Bloomingdale Avenue. I thought of the family we planned on having.
I took the note to the window. Outside the wind was still buffeting the people on the steps. I held my fist outside. I unclenched my hand. I watched the scrap of white float into the Roman air.
5
Nick was waiting for us at O’Hare when we landed, which meant he’d left the office early. I wondered if this was because he loved me, as he had said so many times over the past few months—as he’d said on the phone when I was in Rome—or because he felt guilt that he’d done it again.
“Golden Girl,” Nick said, when Kit and I reached his car.
I smiled. No matter what was going on with us, I always loved when he called me that. He was wearing a suit with a silvery tie and the cuff links I’d given him on our first anniversary. He looked the part of the elegant surgeon. I felt a rush of pride.
He hugged and kissed me, then turned to greet Kit. “How was the trip?”
“Great,” she said.
Kit was wearing the earrings her Frenchman, Alain, had bought for her. They were made of little pieces of green glass, like tiny, emerald chandeliers, and they made her hair gleam a more beautiful auburn.
Looking at those earrings, I remembered how I’d felt after Nick gave me my square sapphire engagement ring. I’d shown it to Kit, who’d expressed happiness, but I knew she’d been envious, wondering why she wasn’t the one getting married.
Now the tables had turned. Alain had told her he was being transferred back to Paris, and he would fly her there when he was apartment hunting. Kit was already envisioning herself in France and I envied her for the clean, simple beginning of it all.
“Did you have fun?” Nick asked Kit.
Her eyes shot to the ground, and she nodded. She looked guilty.
I wondered if Nick noticed, because if I was reading her right, Kit was feeling guilty because of me. She knew about Roberto. I hated myself for putting her in a position where she had to keep quiet about this. But then, wasn’t that what female friendships were based on—the ability to hear the other’s dirty little secrets, to sympathize with her, to tell the other the honest words she needed to hear, to build her back up, to make sure she no longer felt shame at what she’d done, and then to forget, forever, those secrets?
“Your chariot,” Nick said, gesturing to the navy-blue BMW he’d bought last year. “Let me get your bags. And what’s this?” He nodded at Roberto’s canvas, covered again in brown paper, which I’d carried on the plane.
“A painting.” My voice rang high. “A souvenir.”
Nick held out his hand. “I’ll put it in the trunk.”
“No, no. I’ve got it.”
Kit’s eyes shot away from us.
The ride home was filled with my chatter. Nick smiled when I told him about our delicious first-night dinner in Rome; he groaned and said, “Oh, babe,” when I recounted the meeting with the Rolan & Cavalli architects. It felt good to be with him, but I couldn’t ignore the flashes of Roberto, nor could I forget the questions—Nick, what were you doing while I was gone?
The whole time, Kit was silent in the back seat. I turned every so often and tried to draw her into the conversation, but she only smiled back, a sad, resigned kind of smile, and I assumed she was embarrassed for me. Or maybe she was thinking about her mother, about the fact that the vacation was over and it was time, again, to face the hard realities of her illness. When we dropped her off at her mom’s place—an old apartment building in River Forest that looked more like a roadside motel—I couldn’t help but remember the house they used to live in, before Kit’s dad died. It was only a few miles away, just down the street from where I grew up, but it was a well-tended Georgian, with a huge oak in the center of the front lawn.
“Thanks, Rachel,” Kit said to me. “It was a great trip.” She hugged me, avoided Nick’s eyes and headed quickly for the door.
I glanced at Nick, but if he saw something strange in Kit’s behavior, he didn’t comment. “Ready?” he said, putting the car in gear. “I’ve got something to show you.”
We