The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [132]
“Faith kept trying to get me out of there,” Wolf explained. “It shamed her, I think, being with these people, the level she’d sunk to. But I was pretty sure if I left, she’d forget what level that was, just lose herself in it.”
After Rome, Wolf took over the driving, which eased his worst fears of pitching off the road, not to mention reducing the number of hitchhikers they stopped for. He tried to keep Faith in the front seat, next to him. Otherwise he could barely drive, he’d be so fixated on the rearview mirror, what she was doing back there. Often she would sleep, her head in his lap, fitful terrified sleeps, but at least she was there, at least he could put one hand on her head or rub her shoulders, whisper into her ear that her luck had turned, everything was getting better now—couldn’t she feel it?—hoping Faith would hear it on some unconscious level and believe him.
But when they hit the Italian coast, a remarkable change occurred. Faith glimpsed the sea and sat upright, staring at the water with a mesmerized attention she’d not shown for anything in weeks, save the ghastliness of her own crime. “It was amazing,” he told Phoebe. “There was just this total alertness, like she’d remembered something that threw a whole new light on her situation. I waited for it to fade but it didn’t, she sat there riveted, and as we drove along the coast, all that anguish, the lassitude, everything—it just drained right off her.
“We got stuck going inland a long time because of the mountains. I practically freaked out, thinking, Forget it, she’s going to slide back into her funk, but Faith stayed cool. After all these damn tunnels we ended up at this town, Manarola, just one south of Corniglia. I said, ‘That’s it, folks, we’re stopping here,’ and we spent the night on the beach, this gorgeous beach covered with white rocks, big pieces of shell—it looked like the moon. Faith and I sat on a huge rock, and the tide came in around us. She was calm, calm like I’d never seen her—even at her best she’d never been calm. It was like she’d reached a new level, or that’s what I wanted to think. I’d been waiting so long for signs of hope.”
And sitting there, sea drifting in around them, Wolf had understood for the first time what kind of life he wanted to live with Faith. Maybe they wouldn’t rise up into the sky the way he’d thought, maybe the real thing was doing what his parents had done, pay the rent, read the paper, hell, maybe that was the dare. To live—day in, day out. Just live. It felt like a revelation.
They cleared away the shells and rocks from a patch of beach and unrolled Wolf’s blue down sleeping bag on sand that sparkled like sand inside an hourglass. Whenever Wolf woke up, he’d find Faith calmly watching the stars. What a relief it must be, he thought, for her not to feel that panic anymore.
Next morning he and Faith climbed to Corniglia, packs on their backs. The others straggled far behind, but Wolf and Faith felt wonderfully light, like bubbles rising through water.
They wandered through the town. Faith bought a lavish spread for lunch, figs and mortadella and big cans of tuna. She’d turned in the last of her traveler’s checks in Rome, but she didn’t care. “Why not?” she said, grinning like the old days, the feather pillow days. They set the bags of food in the shade of the little church, then sat on this wall to wait.
Wolf took