Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (23 page)

T
he sweeping marble staircase in the Milano Centrale train station seemed a little over the top for grandiosity, even for the
Italians. But Becky couldn’t help but admire the national dedication to art as she perused the mosaics of winged trains, the
bas-relief of a horse-fish, and a standing sculpture of a cherubic boy. She craned her neck to gape at the high ceiling, the
magnitude as impressive as any church she’d visited throughout Europe.

But as she reached the center of the main hall, Becky stopped short. Monique muttered something unintelligible and continued
to walk ahead of her, but Becky stayed fixed, staring down the corridor that opened on one side of the building. There a soaring
iron-and-glass canopy covered a train platform, allowing sunshine to pour in through black crosshatch supports.

Judy clattered up beside her, as one wheel of her luggage had gone wonky. “Looks a little like Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris.
Or at least how Monet painted it.”

“It’s the ironwork.”

Becky’s fingers itched for a pencil. This dawn-of-the-twentieth-century type of architecture was not something that usually
inspired her, but now she found herself wondering how many pages were left in her sketchbook. Her eye followed the pattern
of the wrought iron, her gaze enveloped the scale of the room—vast and full of murmur and whisper and whistle and the screech
of metal. The opening of the platform at the far end was a glare of Italian sunshine where the train tracks disappeared into
a blast of white light.

“Judy,” Becky murmured, “where’d Monique go?”

“She’s trying to figure out where the Metro is. Apparently these upper floors don’t service all the local stations.”

With a
thunk
, Becky dropped her backpack to the marble floor. “While we’re waiting, I’m going to get a quick sketch.”

“Go for it. Our time is our own now that Monique has crossed the last thing off her list.” Judy wearily perched herself on
the edge of her standing luggage, sinking her elbows onto her knees and her chin onto her hands. “I’d like to spend the next
hour or so soaking in a really hot bubble bath—but that’s a pipe dream. Even if they have tubs, European hotels still haven’t
grasped the definition of
hot
.”

Becky closed her fingers around the spiral top and yanked the sketchbook out of her pack. Poking around she found a pencil
with a bit of a point, and then settling down cross-legged she flipped the sketchbook to an empty page. With quick strokes
she sketched the perspective, then set to work on the crosshatching, trying to take in the full scale, squinting a bit to
try to focus more carefully on the metal detail, realizing as she did that somehow—during the weeks since she’d received the
RP diagnosis and became more aware of her weak peripheral vision—she’d unconsciously adapted to that weakness by bobbing and
weaving her head in order to take in the most detail with the center ring of good vision she still had.

As she settled in on the ironwork detail of the canopy, the memory of a certain evening with Marco drifted through her mind.
It was the early days then, long before marriage, long before money troubles and Gina troubles dampened the fires. They’d
spent the weekend in a sexual haze, giddily besotted, lolling in the loft of her sixth-floor walk-up, an apartment she shared
with another art student. In one moment of postcoital bliss he joked that her low-ceilinged, two-room apartment was very
La Bohème
,
with its slanted rooftop glass. It had once been a skylight, he’d surmised, before some enterprising owner had lowered the
high ceiling of the fifth floor in order to produce the sixth-floor apartment for either maidservants or starving artists
like herself.

She’d placed her bed under that skylight. The dawn served as her alarm clock, convenient for the job she’d taken after she’d
left the restaurant, baking chocolate croissants and boysenberry scones at a little bakery nearby. With his hands tracing
lines in the air Marco had gestured through her window to an office building under construction a few streets away. Lazing
in her bed with her head on his broad shoulders, she’d run her fingers across the muscles of his chest as his magical hands
made graceful swirls in the air, describing the balance of forces on the lattice-like steelwork.

Now she glanced at the graphite crosshatching she’d sketched and knew why she’d felt the uncontrollable urge to reproduce
it on paper.

Marco would love this place.

Her pencil point trembled above the paper. Fear was a seeping cold that came up through the marble floor and bled through
her skin to the marrow of her bones. She’d tried very hard not to think about the fact that in twenty-four hours she’d be
on her way home. Back to the not-so-imaginary moat that surrounded her crooked little castle, so broad and deep and dangerously
unsurpassable that it may as well be full of alligators.

“Okay,” Monique said, her footsteps sharp and sure as she approached in full I’ll-take-charge mode. “Remember when we said
it was weird that the trains were on the second floor?”

Judy jerked out of what must have been a doze. “Yeah?”

“Well, it
is
weird.” Monique brandished a map of some sort, frowning as she shook it smooth. “Any train we caught up here would take us
to Zurich or Vienna or Budapest.”

“Zurich would be good.” Becky leaned over the paper and concentrated on finishing the pattern. “I’d take Vienna.”

“Look, Monie, we’ve made a vagabond of her.”

“Well, vagabonds walk,” Monique muttered, "and the city Metro is underground, and from what I can tell from this map, we’ve
got a hell of a maze to navigate.”

“Pack it up, Beck.” Judy pressed her hands on her lower back and stretched. “There’s a shower and a featherbed calling.”

“They’ve got featherbeds in Budapest.” Becky ducked further over her sketchbook. “Young, strong porters too.”

“Tempting.” Judy’s face crumpled in concentration. “Very tempting.”

“Stop, both of you. If I don’t show up at Newark Airport the day after tomorrow, Kiera will jump on a plane and drag me back
by a fistful of braids.”

Becky reluctantly flipped the pad shut and shoved it and the pencil back into her backpack. She straightened up and glanced
dreamily at the bullet-nose train just pulling out of the station as Judy readjusted the weight of the shopping bags hanging
off the handle of her rolling baggage. With a sigh Becky fell into line behind Monique.

They wound their way through the sea of other travelers, dipping and lacing through the crowds so thick at the stairs. Monique
walked ahead of her and Judy behind, a tandem configuration that had sometime during the vacation become their default. Down
they went, bumping their suitcases over the stairs, bags crinkling as they jostled. Becky glanced up occasionally to catch
sight of the swinging Smurf keychain hanging off the back of Monique’s pack and then down again so she could make sure there
was no crack in the marble floors that could catch the edge of her sneaker, no placard outside a boutique whose slender brace
would trip her up, no errant bag or piece of luggage or dropped umbrella across the path. As they descended into the Metro,
where the lack of light in the tunnels washed her sight to gray, she lifted her arm to trail her fingers against the cold
wall tiles, feeling the bump of the edges, the rough grout, and the occasional lump whose provenance she preferred not to
consider.

“Hold up.” Monique buried her head in the folds of the map. Becky stopped abruptly so as not to careen into her. “I think
we go left here.”

Monique cut across the tunnel. Becky pressed away from the wall to follow Monique but she was so focused on the bouncing Smurf
that she didn’t notice that Monique’s luggage didn’t lurch with the same speed. Becky’s toe caught on the underside. She plunged
forward—but Judy stepped up, absorbing her weight, cutting off what would have been a complete header.

Judy held firm as Becky suffered a hot surge of embarrassment.

“Are you sure this is the right direction, Monie?” Judy peered over Monique’s shoulder. “Here it says to take the right tunnel
to the M2—”

“But we don’t want the green line.” Monique squinted closer at the map. “We want the yellow line, the M3.”

“I feel like a hamster in one of Audrey’s middle-school science fairs. I thought the green line was the M3.”

“Nope, that’s the M2.” Monique traced something on the paper. “We’re taking the yellow line, south, toward San Donato station.”

“Left it is, then.” Judy settled back on her heels once Becky regained her composure. With a flick of her fingers, Judy tilted
Becky’s luggage upright when it threatened to tumble. “My doggies are barking. There better be seats on the platform.”

Monique surged forward and Becky stepped into her wake, more carefully now. Judy slipped behind her. The heat of embarrassment
ebbed into a different kind of warmth, a wave of gratitude that made the back of her eyes prickle. She blinked it away. Her
sight was bad enough in this dim light. She didn’t need tears blurring what little vision she could muster.

They arrived at the entrance to the platform just in time to hear the ding of doors closing. A train sporting a yellow stripe
pulled out of the station. “That was our train,” Monique said, as they moved into the light. “But it shouldn’t be long before
the next one comes.”

Judy blurted, “Bench.”

Judy made a beeline past a busker who sang something vaguely Eastern European to the distinctly Milanese breed of well-heeled
commuters gathered on the platform. Becky followed. Judy settled on the bench with an exhalation not unlike the breath of
a train coming to a complete stop. Becky collapsed next to her as Monique sprawled on her other side, drawing her luggage
in close.

Judy nudged Becky with her shoulder. “Gosh, that girl looks a lot like Brianna, doesn’t she, Beck?”

Becky followed Judy’s gaze and saw a young woman standing amid a cluster of people near the platform. The dark-haired girl
looked to be about college age, and she was surrounded by younger kids twirling and dancing about. With a flip of her hair
the young woman chatted with a woman who must, by the resemblance, be her mother. Nearby stood a short, barrel-chested man
who Becky surmised was her father.

“I thought I was the blind one in this group,” Becky said. “That girl has about ten years on Brianna.”

“Are you talking about that young woman with the yellow scarf?” Monique glanced at the family. “I was thinking the same thing
when we walked in. It’s the hair, I think. It’s thick and wild and the same shade as Brianna’s.”

“Well you guys certainly have an idealized image of my daughter at eighteen.” Becky let her gaze travel over the girl’s chic
hip-length tailored coat and the casual curl of a buttery yellow scarf under her chin. “I suspect Brianna’s look will veer
more toward ripped jeans, work boots, and heavy-metal T-shirts.”

Judy barked a laugh. “Don’t make Gina your measure for all teenagers.”

Becky grunted. “Twenty bucks says that, when Brianna’s fourteen, she’ll chop off all that heroine hair and gel it into a Mohawk.”

“None of my kids have tattoos,” Judy said, “and despite a few instances of drunken rebellion and one perpetual student, they’re
all studying or gainfully employed.”

“Your kids aren’t real,” Becky said. “You had them manufactured in a factory in your basement.”

“Gee, Judy, you should have told me,” Monique said. “I’d have ordered a few of those custom-made types myself.”

“Don’t you go complaining, oh mother of a genius.” Judy reached over to give Monique a playful slap on the thigh. “And as
for Brianna, I’ve got a prediction. Yeah, Brianna might be the ripped-jeans type, but she’ll wear lace stockings underneath.
She may overdo it with the eyeliner, but she’ll prefer buying her clothes at the thrift store. In her messenger bag she’ll
be toting an oversize spiral notebook full of acid-free paper, full of drawings of dragons and gnomes, of elfish castles and
hard-faced warrior-kings. Off to play Dungeons and Dragons—”

“Skyrim,” Becky corrected. “Join the twenty-first century, Judy.”

“—then, sooner than you’ll hope, she’ll find some floppy-haired artistic boyfriend with his jeans slung low on his hips.”

“Oh, lord,” Becky exclaimed, “are you trying to make me crazy?”

Monique said, “You lost me at the floppy-haired boyfriend too.”

Becky glanced over at the young woman, now rocking her mother in a hug. “Maybe it’s good that I’ll be blind. Maybe it’s good
that I’ll never see the nose rings or the neck tattoo or the raccoon eyes. In my head Brian and Brianna will always have the
faces of my sweet, if occasionally irascible, young children.”

“Wow,” Judy said. “You had to really dig for that silver lining.”

Becky shrugged. “Hey, I won’t have to contend with the wise-ass expressions or the rolling of the eyes.”

Monique made a scoffing noise. “Maybe you should go deaf too, Beck, so you can dodge the snark and the sass.”

Judy tilted her head. “Hey, does going blind mean that you’ll always see me as a sprightly fifty-something and not the fat
old lady I’m bound to become?”

“For twenty years,” Becky said, “you’ve eaten Oreos every afternoon at three. You’ll never be fat. But yeah, I suppose I’ll
always see you just the way you are right now.”

“Oh, honey, I’m spending the rest of my life with you.”

They laughed as light streaked on the curve of the wall and a rumbling began down the tunnel. Monique leaned forward as the
front of the train came into view and showed itself to be the M2, not the M3 that they were waiting for.

A collection of shouts drew their attention back to the young brunette. The mother dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as her
father gave the girl a hug. The kids jumped and wriggled and wrapped themselves around the young woman’s legs. A torrent of
Italian fell from the mother’s mouth, and though Becky couldn’t make out a word of it, she recognized the universal, desperate,
last-minute instructions of a mother to a child. The young woman nodded and nodded and backed up into the train, bumping her
luggage over the space between door and platform, and then lifted her hand as the tone rang and the doors slipped closed.