The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [94]
Saturday, October 27
SANTA SABINA
“Why Is It There Are Some Things We Aren’t Meant to See?”
“How about a picnic?” Adam says. “It’s a wonderful day, and I’d like to take you to a place I love, orange trees and Rome in front of you, all laid out. We can buy food in a market where the locals shop … you don’t hear a word of English or German or French, just people shouting insults and giving in or not giving in.”
They met at the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. He runs up to her, takes her hands and spins her around three times.
“I called Valerie last night, to see if she wanted to join us for the picnic. She seemed really overwhelmed, incredibly apologetic that she hadn’t been in touch. She was just on her way out the door. Apparently her mother-in-law is going to some spa in Switzerland, and they need to be there with her for three weeks. She said she’ll be in touch with you about the details of your leaving. She’s sending her cleaning woman to pick up the key, you’re not to worry about anything, but she’ll phone from Switzerland.”
“I have to change my entire understanding of the universe. I now believe there is a loving God who cares about my personal well-being!”
“Maybe that’s not it at all,” he says. “Maybe she didn’t want to see us either.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to see us?” Miranda asks, genuinely puzzled.
It occurs to Adam that Miranda finds it difficult to understand that anyone wouldn’t want to be in her company. He remembers a conversation; they were still in high school. She was talking to one of her friends about another girl, whom she intensely disliked. “She’s so conceited, she’s really dumb, she’s a total brownnose,” Miranda had said.
“She doesn’t like you either,” Miranda had been told.
And she had seemed genuinely surprised. He thinks she might have even asked, “Why?”
He understands that he will actually have to explain, a task that makes Miranda seem endearingly young to him.
“Maybe she was so mortified by what happened when we were at her apartment, or maybe she’s horrified that we know what her life’s really like.”
Miranda shrugs, unconvinced, still puzzled. They both agree that they won’t take their place in the line of tourists putting their hands in the open mouth of the appalled or outraged god. The Bocca della Verità. The mouth of truth.
“You remember that moment in Roman Holiday? Where Gregory Peck pretends to have his hand cut off in the god’s mouth? Because the lion is supposed to snap off the hands of liars. It’s a moment of complete charm, when Audrey Hepburn screams: she knows she’s a liar, too, pretending she’s not a princess.”
A wire thrums in the space separating the two sections of Miranda’s rib cage. Does not saying something that should have been said still constitute a lie?
She wants to bring the conversation away from anything like this.
“I wonder,” she says, “how many people have their first, maybe their deepest, impressions of Rome from the movies. How many people thought of Rome first as the place where Anita Ekberg jumped into that fountain. They might only learn later that it’s called the Trevi.”
They make their way to the large covered Testaccio Market. “There used to be many more of these,” he says. She is happy, he sees, going from stall to stall, looking, tasting. Being elbowed by ordinary housewives who insult one vendor’s tomatoes, praise the plums of another. She points to the different cheeses in the showcases: he names them to the salesman, and she is given taste after taste. She takes a bite, then passes it to him. She hopes he hasn’t grown nervous about germs; but she sees that he’s content to share the morsels with her. She wipes his lips with one of the rough napkins that the salesman offers. As she does it, she thinks perhaps it’s something