“How about the asparagus?”
“You need to go see Cleo,” I say.
Frank swallows the mouthful of bread in his mouth with difficulty. “I need to what?”
“You need to go see Cleo,” I say again. “Your wife.”
“I know who she is.”
“First of all. You’re still married, which makes what we’re doing right now technically an extramarital affair.”
“I had no idea you were so puritanical.”
“And second of all. You need to make sure she’s being taken care of over there.”
“Cleo can take care of herself,” he says.
“If she could do that,” I say quietly, “what happened would not have happened.”
He looks at me, and I see how that experience has brought a sadness to his eyes that was never there before. “Go on.”
“She’s still very young, and she doesn’t have much family, which means you and I are her family. We have a responsibility to make sure she’s set up.”
“You mean financially? I can send her money.”
“Some things take a little more than money.”
“I never knew you were so concerned with her well-being. Is this some First Wives Club stuff?”
I try not to look at him like he’s the stupidest man on the planet.
“No, Frank,” I say very slowly. “It’s sisterhood.”
Frank takes my hand gently in his across the table.
“Eleanor,” he says. “You are a good woman.”
“We’re getting the tomato salad,” I say.
*
My mother and I spend an evening watching an old season of Sing Your Heart Out. We have become, I think, perhaps overly invested in the success of young Harold, who put his singing aspirations on hold to look after his ailing, diabetic mother. Every time he performs, they replay the same footage of the two of them together in their small, shambolic home in New Orleans.
“He is my only pride,” the mother says in her big floral dress. “My heart beats for him.”
My mother turns to me and puts her hand on mine.
“Frank called me,” she says. “Go.”
*
Frank has come over to help my mother prepare a farewell meal. Incredibly, it does not seem to involve a wok. I’ve spent the whole day packing and need some air, so I throw on a coat and head out into the garden. It is very quiet, dark and still. My breath makes little gray clouds in front of me. Above my head, the stars are just barely visible. I can smell the earth. I can hear Frank and my mother laughing in the kitchen. Somewhere, a dog barks. I can feel the night pressing against my skin. It is cold, but I am warm. My breath meets the air.
*
Wow.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
January
Rome was in the middle of its mildest winter in fifty years when Frank arrived. A breeze with a tropical lilt licked at him through the taxi window as he headed toward the Fine Art Institute, where Cleo lived. The building he found was painted a faded fuchsia, with tall palm trees planted around its gates. A pink palace. It felt ancient and muted, precious and slightly forgotten. He couldn’t imagine a better place for her to be.
From out of sight behind the window sash, Cleo watched him wind his way up the stone pathway to the entrance with his familiar bouncing gait. She had been standing there waiting for him to arrive for some time, her heart beating like a trapped bird inside her chest. She watched from above as Frank reached the door and searched the list of names, ringing the button next to hers. He stepped back to look up at the empty window from which she had just ran.
Footsteps, the sound of fingers scrabbling on wood, whispered swearing, a lock scraping back, and there was Cleo. His heart swelled like a wave returning to her shore.
She had cut her long hair into a bob, a golden hood framing her face. Her beautiful heart-shaped face, he wanted to take it in his hands and hold it up to the light like a snow globe. She was wearing sun-faded jeans and a nubby butterscotch cardigan he recognized. Her slim ankles peeked out above canvas shoes splattered with paint. What a lovely girl she was. Like a white butterfly in a bar of sunshine.
“Your hair,” he said.
“Short,” she said and ran her fingers through it.
“Good.” He nodded.
“Not too short?” she asked.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Like a nun’s wimple.”
“You mean veil. The wimple’s what they wear around their necks.”
“See! This is why I need you in my life. Who knows how long I’ve been making that mistake. What if I had been talking to an actual nun?”