Finally he is able to calm himself, and he wheels himself out of the bathroom. He could leave, he knows. The elevator is there; he could send Mr. Ahmed back for his coat.
But he doesn’t. Instead he goes the other direction, and returns to the office, where Dr. Loehmann is still sitting in his chair, waiting for him.
“Jude,” says Dr. Loehmann. “You’ve come back.”
He takes a breath. “Yes,” he says. “I’ve decided to stay.”
[ VII ]
Lispenard Street
ON THE SECOND anniversary of your death, we went to Rome. This was something of a coincidence, and also not: he knew and we knew he’d have to be out of the city, far away from New York State. And maybe the Irvines felt the same way, because that was when they had scheduled the ceremony—at the very end of August, when all of Europe had migrated elsewhere, and yet we were flying toward it, that continent bereft of all its chattering flocks, all its native fauna.
It was at the American Academy, where Sophie and Malcolm had both once had residencies, and where the Irvines had endowed a scholarship for a young architect. They had helped select the first recipient, a very tall and sweetly nervous young woman from London who built mostly temporary structures, complex-looking buildings of earth and sod and paper that were meant to disintegrate slowly over time, and there was the announcement of the fellowship, which came with additional prize money, and a reception, at which Flora spoke. Along with us, and Sophie and Malcolm’s Bellcast partners, there were Richard and JB, both of whom had also had residencies in Rome, and after the ceremony we went to a little restaurant nearby they had both liked when they had lived there, and where Richard showed us which part of the building’s walls were Etruscan and which were Roman. But although it was a nice meal, comfortable and convivial, it was also a quiet one, and at one point I remember looking up and realizing that none of us were eating and all of us were staring—at the ceiling, at our plates, at one another—and thinking something separate and yet, I knew, something the same as well.
The next afternoon Julia napped and we took a walk. We were staying across the river, near the Spanish Steps, but we had the car take us back over the bridge to Trastevere and walked through streets that were so close and dark that they might have been hallways, until finally we came to a square, tiny and precise and adorned with nothing but sunlight, where we sat on a stone bench. An elderly man, with a white beard and wearing a linen suit, sat down on the other end, and he nodded at us and we nodded at him.
For a long time we were silent together, sitting in the heat, and then he suddenly said that he remembered this square, that he had been here with you once, and that there was a famous gelato place just two streets away.
“Should I go?” he asked me, and smiled.
“I think you know the answer,” I said, and he got up. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Stracciatella,” I told him, and he nodded. “I know,” he said.
We watched him leave, the man and I, and then the man smiled at me and I smiled back. He wasn’t so elderly after all, I saw: probably just a few years older than I. And yet I was never able (and am still not) to think of myself as old. I talked as if I knew I was; I bemoaned my age. But it was only for comedy, or to make other people feel young.
“Lui è tuo figlio?” the man asked, and I nodded. I was always surprised and pleased when we were recognized for who we were to each other, for we looked nothing alike, he and I: and yet I thought—I hoped—there must have been something about the way we were together that was more compelling evidence of our relation than mere physical resemblance.
“Ah,” the man said, looking at him again before he turned the corner and disappeared from sight. “Molto bello.”
“Sì,” I said, and was suddenly sad.
He looked sly, then, and asked, or rather stated, “Tua moglie deve essere molto bella, no?” and then grinned to show me he meant it in fun, that it was a compliment, that if I was a plain man, I was also a lucky one, to have such a beautiful wife who had given me such a handsome son, and so I couldn’t be offended. I grinned back at him. “She is,” I said, and he smiled, unsurprised.