In the Pitti Palace, trying to find a good angle to photograph the fresco of Lorenzo de Medici welcoming the exiled muses to Florence, he suddenly turned to Pat with tears in his eyes. “It makes you realize they were just people, people who were excited about art and making things and sharing it with other people who cared about it.”
“Yes,” Pat said, gesturing at the next fresco, Lorenzo pointing out the young Michelangelo. “I always call that one ‘Let’s Have a Renaissance’.”
“I wish people felt like that now,” Michael said. “I mean it’s fashionable to be cynical and jaded about everything, but when I look at the passion those Renaissance people had, that clarity of … of caring about things, I envy them.”
“That’s what I’ve always felt here,” Pat said. “That’s what first drew me to Florence in particular. It’s why I wanted to write about it, to explain that to other people. I’m not an art historian, or any kind of historian really. My degree is in English. But I came here and I responded to the beauty and I wanted to know more about it.”
Near the end of his two-week stay, Pat and Bee sat down together to discuss him. It was early in the morning, and they sat at the wrought iron table on the patio eating terrible Florentine unsalted bread with wonderful fresh mozzarella and some of Bee’s honey.
“He seems ideal in many ways,” Bee said. “My only hesitation is that he’s rather homely looking.”
“Neither of us is anything special to look at,” Pat protested.
“Exactly,” Bee countered. “I was hoping to give the babies a bit of a leg up there. But he’s intelligent and creative and he has no genetic issues—his parents are alive, and his grandparents were killed in the Blitz, which is hardly hereditary!”
Pat laughed. “I hope not!”
“He’s Jewish of course, but I don’t see that making any difference.”
“Considering the Holocaust, I think if anything it’s a good thing,” Pat said.
“So it’s just the difficulty of asking him,” Bee said.
They did find it very difficult to open the subject. They tried and failed to find good openings all day, and eventually Bee came straight out with it over dinner in Bordino’s. “We want to have babies, and we were wondering if you might help?”
Michael choked on his truffle pasta. Pat slapped him on the back. When he was recovered he looked from her to Bee. “I’m terribly flattered of course, but what are you suggesting?”
“Because of the way biology is arranged, we can’t give each other babies, but we want to have children,” Pat said. “We need a man who will cooperate with that and not make a fuss afterwards. And we’d like it to be one man, so they can be real siblings.”
He took a long draft of red wine. “What would my role be? Just a sperm donor?”
“Well, we hope you’ll continue to be our friend, which means you could be a kind of uncle to the babies. But we’d be the parents,” Bee said firmly.
The waiter came by to take their pasta plates and they were all silent for a moment. “I don’t know how to put this,” Michael said. “But have you ever—” he trailed off.
“I have, Pat hasn’t,” Bee said. “Look, it’s perfectly all right if you don’t want to. We can find somebody. I know we’re a lot older than you are, and it’s a strange kind of relationship to enter into. But we both like you. If you want to think about it, or if you just want to turn us down, no hard feelings.”
“I do want to think about it, it’s a lot to take in,” Michael said. “Would you be able to manage—I mean, financially?”
“Yes,” Pat said. “We’ve thought that all through, don’t worry. We wouldn’t be asking anything from you except a bit of time.”
“And genetic material,” Bee added.
Michael laughed nervously. “This is the strangest proposition anyone has ever put to me.”
They finished their dinner, and the bottle of wine Michael and Bee had split between them, and went home, still discussing it.
Back in the house, the three of them went into the bedroom where Pat and Bee always slept, the shutters latched for privacy but the window open to catch the breeze. “It might not work the first time,” Bee warned. “Sometimes people try for years.”
“I could come down to Cambridge if necessary,” Michael offered, taking off his socks.
“We hope you’ll come down to visit in any case,” Pat said. “We’ll want to see all the pictures, not just the ones they end up using in the book.”
In bed it was strange and awkward having a third person present. Pat felt shy and uncertain.
“I don’t know if I can manage it with both of you tonight,” Michael said, embarrassed.
“You should try first,” Bee said to Pat, putting her hand on her arm. “I should really wait until November or December so I could have the baby in the Long Vacation.”
“You’re talking as if it’s entirely under control and works every time,” Pat said.
“It’s strange, but I feel like that even though I know better.” Bee laughed. “Well, we’re both in the middle of our cycle. There’s a good chance.”
“Will I bleed?” Pat asked.