“Yes,” she said. “I published two collections of stories. One is called Other Small Spaces and the other is called Fictional Family Life.”
Deliberately, she did not tell him he could read them if he wanted to, that there were a dozen copies of each book in English, and more in all different languages, in a box on the top shelf in the closet in his parents’ bedroom, that there was probably a copy of each on the living-room bookshelves. It wasn’t only that many of her stories were disturbing, Daniel had read tough material since he was young, but she wanted his picture of his life, of their family, to be pure, unsullied by the way his mother once thought, sometimes still did, if she was honest.
He didn’t say anything for a few moments. Didn’t ask what the titles of her books meant or if he could read them. When another long moment passed, she hoped he wouldn’t recall the other question he asked her.
“Are you writing now?” And there it was.
It was scary how fast the brain could process various rationales for not answering a question one did not want to answer. Daniel was competitive and she did not want him competing in this way, over writing, his versus hers. Martin did not know, and so Daniel could not know that she was writing, a novel, a second novel actually, because a child should never have to keep a parent’s secret. Something had happened at school that day to make him ask her these questions, but what that could be, or how it tied in with Henry the Squirrel, for she was certain that it did, she couldn’t figure out.
“No,” she said instantly, and did not take a breath, did not want Daniel to ask another searching question, wanted him only to feel good about himself. “I’m so proud of you, love. Proud of you for reading your terrific story to your new classmates.”
She kissed his forehead and said, “Don’t stay up too late reading. It’s only the second day of school tomorrow.”
She checked in on Eric again, but he was fast asleep, covers thrown off, thumb in his mouth. His oral fixation had calmed in the last years. No more greenery and pebbles, but now sometimes he sucked his thumb when he had not done so as an infant. Were his baby teeth at risk of becoming buckteeth, if he kept it up? He’d only lost one so far. Well, she thought, they’ll all fall out eventually anyway.
She poured herself a glass of wine and went outside. The moon was full, an eerie white. That déjà vu she had felt earlier in the day, the thought that tragedy was required in the story of a woman who had a delightful run of years as the mother of an unwanted baby, was it just a foreshadowing of the uncomfortable questions Daniel asked her that night, or were the questions not that important, and it was his shrugs and monosyllabic answers that were portents of what everyone said were the brutal teen years? How she would miss her wonderful boy, the son she felt closest to, the son whom she tried never to favor over his younger brother, but did, if only in her own heart, because of a crimson kinship thicker than blood, beyond DNA. Their hearts had meshed from the beginning, and then there was their shared adoration of reading, their love of writing. How she would hate it if that time were already here.
*
Daniel was still quiet at breakfast on Wednesday morning, but he ate the scrambled eggs she made and three pieces of toast, and teased Eric until Eric laughed, and Joan thought whatever had been going on with him had passed. She waved as they walked together through the red school door, wondered if they had a ritual for parting, if Daniel messed Eric’s hair, or Eric reached out a hand to touch his older brother one last time until the end of the day.
At the kitchen table, she continued reading Words. She had warned herself against editing, but the instinct was too ingrained, and she covered the typed pages in thunderous black ink, and the pad next to her filled up with notes. Finally, she read a page straight through.
He thinks how far he has come from his childhood in Goa when he knew only bare feet and the beach and the Arabian Sea, and nearly nothing about how huge the world could be. He has made this good life possible for his family, teaching himself both English and Italian, finding this job in the Tuscan countryside, as the marchesa’s majordomo at her fine hotel, that once was an enormous farmhouse, and was still surrounded by its fertile lands. His long days are spent translating the marchesa’s directives, to his mother and two sisters who prepare traditional Italian fare for the biking groups who come for riding and good wine, and to his father and brother who tend to the olive orchards and the livestock. They are now all asleep over the barn, in the large apartment that has been their home these past six years.
The guests are at the long-planked table in the garden, their dishes scraped clean, though the briny smell of the fish dinner lingers. The wine bottles are nearly depleted, and a married man, whose wife is sleeping upstairs, is feeding an olive to a young woman here on her own. Bash hears him say to her, “Your voice makes me think of ecstatic sex in gorgeous rooms. I long to experience that with you. I want to do wonderful things to you, and for you, for a lifetime. Whatever you want to say to me, I will listen.”
It is late, past midnight, and Bash watches those two, and the other guests, their smiles and laughter caught in candlelight. He uncorks another bottle for their pleasure, lights a few more of the citronella candles to keep the bugs away.
Tomorrow, he will hide among them, gathered on the graveled walk of the hotel, suitcases beside them, headed to the airport, leaving Italy behind. He has saved enough to disappear like this, to fly across the sky, to take the large highways and the small roads to the place he read about, that rural valley where others are gathering, where he might finally make good on his long-cherished dream to cease taking orders, to turn those words in another direction, to grab hold of them for himself, to write the book he’s long had in his mind.
A honking horn returned her suddenly to the kitchen, to the ticking clock on the wall showing her she was out of time. Then she was shoving her work back into the box hidden in the closet, covering it with the old coats, grabbing her car keys and racing down the hill to pick the boys up. Daniel wasn’t smiling when he walked out of school, but in the car, he sort of leaned over the seat and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. She was delighted, and relieved, and she called over her shoulder, “Who wants to go out for pizza tonight?”
*