Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (28 page)

“I didn’t ask to go to support you.  I asked him to invite
me because I wanted to see him die.”

Alish’s eyes skipped off the page and seemed to trip
across her daughter’s face until she steadied her horrified gaze. 

“See him die?”

Tess glanced at the letter Alish still clung to.  “I
thought I needed to see him die to be free of him.”

“Free of him?  What are talking about?  He loved you,”
Alish said, her eyes shiny with tears.

“Mom,” Tess moaned as the endearment she hadn’t spoken in
years slipped from her heart and through her lips while she fought back her own
tears.  “He stole everything I loved: you, our family, the creative vision that
was my passion and countless things that I don’t have names for but I know are
missing because of the empty places I find in my heart and in my life.”

“This sounds so absurd.  I don’t even know what this is
all about.”  Alish’s eyes darted around the room like a bird trapped indoors
searching for somewhere safe to land.

“This is the last sick string he thought he could pull in
my life.”  She looked at the letter her mother now folded to her chest.  “He
wanted the last word, but I have the last word.  And I’m going to have the
final say in living the rest of my life free of him.”

Alish’s eyes honed in on Tess’s.  “How can you sit there
and say this to me?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

Alish’s shoulders sank and her already diminutive body
seemed to shrink further.

“But I loved him.”

“And I hated him.”

Her eyes blinked rapidly as if suddenly registering the
impact of her daughter’s words.  “I can’t believe I’m hearing my own flesh and
blood say this to me.”

“You left your own children for a man, no, no, a monster
who looked like a man.  Do you have any idea what that did to us?  It’s taken
me years to realize I don’t have to languish in my own personal hell just
because of him.  He’s powerless over me.  I’m free.” 

Tess dragged her hands from her lap and up on the table. 
Slowly, she inched them across the conference table toward her mother, offering
them to her.  “Someday you’ll realize that you’re free, too.”

“Free?  Is that what you think?”  Alish sat up taller,
pulling away from Tess’s reach.  “Randall was freedom for me.  He freed me from
the burden of living my meaningless life.  He gave me love, complete and
unconditional love.  No more tearing pieces of my heart out to feed it scrap by
scrap to an ungrateful husband who loved his patients more than me.  No more
sharing my life with doctors, hospitals, sick children and their parents.  No
more trying to love my children more because my husband loved me less.  Do you
know how ungrateful children can be?  They’re too busy with their own lives and
needs to recognize their parents have any. 

“I will never be free of Randall, thank God for that. 
He’ll always be with me.” 

Alish looked at Tess’s open palms and recoiled from them. 
“But I’ll be free of you and your selfishness and insensitivity.”

Alish rose from the table and turned her back on Tess
without acknowledging her tear-stained face.  She bustled through the door and
departed from her daughter’s life, again. 

Tess bowed her head and watched her tears splash on to the
table’s glossy surface, only half a dozen or so.  The last time her mother had
walked out of her life, the tears were too numerous to count.

“Tess.”  Francesca’s touch followed her voice as she
gently stroked Tess’s hair.

She sat up.  “I’m all right.”

Francesca turned to Sharon standing in the doorway. 
“Thank you, Sharon.”

“I’ll be out here if you need me.”

Francesca slipped into the chair Alish had occupied and
folded her hands around Tess’s.  “Sharon said your mother left abruptly.”

She stared at Francesca’s hands holding hers, something
her mother had refused to do.

“I think it’s for good this time.”

“I am sorry.”

“I don’t remember her being so self-absorbed.  How could I
not have seen that?”

“The lenses of a child are different than an adult’s.”

“Then she must’ve been this way before.  How else could
she have made the choices she did?”

Francesca held Tess’s hands and didn’t interrupt her
thoughts.  Gradually, she lifted her eyes and looked at Francesca.

“Those were her choices.  Hers,”   Tess said as if
conveying a profound revelation.  “I believed she was capable of mothering us
if it hadn’t been for Randall Wright.  And that wasn’t true.”  She sat up and
dragged her arms off the tabling, shaking her head in disbelief.

“She did this to her family.  It’s a mother’s job to love
and protect her children, and she chose not to, all on her own.”

Tess stared out the cab window at the rain-soaked evening
where streetlights shimmered on wet pavement that appeared painted over with
polyurethane.  The evening hours hid the gray skies that had descended upon the
city two days ago, bringing rain with them.  The stars, always difficult to see
against the glare of the city’s lights, were invisible in the gloom overhead. 

When she’d moved here, it had taken months to adjust to
the artificial stars of streetlights and neon, but she’d never gotten used to
the gray skies that stubbornly dug in, hiding the blue atmosphere for days and
sometimes endless weeks.  Gray skies were an anomaly in Florida, and when they
did appear, they stayed only briefly.  What weather idiosyncrasies would
Florence challenge her with?

Yesterday evening, it was easier saying goodbye to
Francesca than she’d imagined, only because Francesca made it sound as if
Florence was a frequent destination of hers.  She’d stymied Tess’s tears by
telling her about a planned trip to Florence in January, diverting her feelings
of loss into anticipation.

It was true; Francesca traversed the Atlantic at least a
dozen times a year for work, but Tess had grown used to her daily presence and
now would have to appease their friendship with visits she knew would be like
satisfying a summer thirst with coffee.  She tried not to dwell on the time
she’d wasted acting so remote and treating Francesca like an acquaintance.  If
she did, she knew there were too many other things in her half-lived life to
regret and overwhelm her.

She wondered if saying goodbye to Ben would be easy, then
quickly assumed it would be, at least on the surface.  She’d never given him
any hope to build a shared future on; no promises of love, nothing he could use
to challenge her decision and argue his case as to why she should choose him
over Florence.  She had her own private battles about her decision. 
Thankfully, she didn’t give him any ammunition because she knew she couldn’t
win a war fought on two fronts. 

Tess had never loved before, and passing up this
opportunity to experiment with it was the prudent thing to do.  She was going;
that was it.  She had to.  Her things were packed and her employer expected her
in the Rome office on Monday morning.  Besides, it was too late now to change
her mind, wasn’t it?

The cab pulled up to the curb across the street from
Suzanne Hopkins’s gallery.  Tess paid the fare and stepped out into the damp
evening.  The rain had stopped, but the breeze carried a cold mist.  She
hurried across the street before the signal light changed.  Bright light bathed
the gallery’s glass windows.  The shops on either side of it couldn’t compete
with its luminous glow and disappeared into the cityscape.  Through the glass
doors, Tess admired the paintings, glasswork, metalwork and other media the
medley of artists expressed through their creative visions. 

Her outfit didn’t whisper she’d paid too much money for it
as some of the other women inside appeared; but black could always pass for
dressy, and that was her goal when sorting through the remnants of clothing she
still hadn’t packed.

She strolled up to the elegant French doors gracing the
main entrance.  Just as intended, the prominently displayed painting on the
other side of the entry drew her eyes to it.  She halted.  A subtle gasp
escaped her as she faltered backward, clasping her hand over the mouth at the
stunning sight just on the other side of the doors. 

The image of a woman’s body imprinted the canvas.  Its
place of honor offered Kenyon LeMere’s creation the opportunity to awe
everyone.

The painting that greeted every patron entering the
Hopkins gallery held Tess’s eyes ransom.  The last and only time she’d seen
this canvas, it was a white colorless rectangle marred with soot from her body. 
Kenyon had added color and form, using the contrasting shapes of her round
breasts and triangle of hair as his theme.

If she wasn’t so dazed seeing her form hanging from the
ceiling by wires, preserved at just the moment he’d entered her, she might’ve
appreciated its artistry, even marveled at its brilliance, just as the people
encircling it were. 

Repulsed by but drawn to the image in front of her, Tess’s
feet vacillated beneath her while walking backwards.  The curb caught her
heels.  She stumbled into the street and caught her fall with her open hands. 
She winced and staggered to her feet.  Rivulets of blood oozed out of the
striated scrapes on her palms and they began to burn.  She waved them in the
damp night air, attempting to cool them.

Tess squinted at the painting.  To the eyes admiring it
tonight, the body could’ve been any woman’s, but as Tess stared at it, she saw
every scene leading up to that moment her betrayal was preserved.  What had Ben
thought when he’d walked through the door?  He’d want to talk about it with
her; two art lovers discussing the compelling pieces they viewed tonight.

What would she tell Ben she saw in it?  The continued
compulsion of a woman afraid to submit to anything but sex?  Certainly not
love.  Maybe physical energy?  Or maybe something more along the lines of an
insect captured and displayed between glass or pinned to a display board as
part of a collection, the artist LeMere’s collection.  Maybe Kenyon would even
saunter up and add a bit of commentary.

She stared across the roadway to where the cab had dropped
her off.  The street separating her from the opposite curb appeared so slick it
seemed she could skate across it.  She looked down, almost expecting to see her
face reflecting off the shiny surface, but the illusion disappeared just
beneath her, and all she saw gazing back at her was the ebony pavement made
even darker from the rain.

Tess forced herself to return her gaze to the studio, then
scanned the room beyond Kenyon’s painting until she found him.  Ben looked
sharp in his tuxedo.  Even without it, he was a sharp dresser.  She’d noticed
that after a few dates.  Even the casual clothing he wore seemed perfectly
tailored to his body.  She’d never seen him without clothes; never felt the
full measure of his skin pressed against her. 

She’d shared none of what she’d experienced with others
with him, yet he stirred something in her that others had failed to.

She closed her eyes.  She’d fallen in love with him, that
was the difference.  How could a four-letter word represent something so
complex?  But she’d made it more difficult than it was, hadn’t she?  Love?  She
waited for her fear to follow.  It was inevitable, it always did; but as she
lingered at the curb, all she felt was the damp air clinging to her skin. 
Damnit, where was the fear?  And if not fear, then the fight to free herself
from the feeling of love.

Gradually, her eyes opened.  A strange emotion stirred
within her.  It was a reassuring peacefulness wrapped in anticipation.  Nothing
resembling fear or anything she felt compelled her to flee.  She recognized
feeling this way before.  Thanksgiving evening.  It all had seemed so foreign
to her then as well; yet, now she was sure she knew its source. 

Her heart quickened.  Ben?  Where was he?  Twelve-hundred
miles didn’t separate her from this moment this time.  She took a step up on
the curb, lifted her eyes toward the door and halted her next step.  Her
tantalizing image on Kenyon’s canvas reminded her that the last time she’d
stood on this precipice she hadn’t leapt; she’d pushed, sacrificing love and
holding fast to her unconquered fears.

Tess studied the small crowd circling the painting vexing
them.  Her eyes followed theirs to the canvas and traced the outline of her
body.  She wondered if Kenyon had named this particular piece.  It was her
story captured on canvas, the perpetual retelling of that one night that
resembled so many others and of how she’d surrendered to her familiar past.

She glanced at the street and waved at a cab cruising by. 
As she climbed into its warm, dry interior and gave the cabbie her address, she
promised herself that next time she’d choose love.

After spending four days in Mazzaro Brothers’ Rome office,
Tess was scheduled to begin working in the Florence office Monday morning,
which gave her the next three days to reacquaint herself with the city she’d
fallen in love with in college.  She rented a car for the five-hour drive north
from Rome but first headed west on a planned detour into Italy’s Abruzzo
region.

Sulmona sat at the foot of the Apennines.  The mountains
there looked like a dragon’s back perched on the horizon: ancient, scaly and
mythical.

She parked the car in a large lot on the edge of town used
for the tour buses that frequented Sulmona and studied a local map she’d
printed from the Internet.  Asking for directions meant drawing unwanted
attention to herself on her surreptitious visit.  Sulmona was small enough
where people might know who she was looking for, and Tess didn’t want Dahnya
Alicandri knowing a stranger was in town asking about  her. 

It was still early.  Most of Sulmona’s residents were
tucked away inside their dwellings.  It wasn’t a big town; less than thirty
thousand residents plus whatever population increases tourists brought to it
daily.  Sulmona’s large piazzas sat hidden behind ancient buildings.  Tess
found them only when the narrow maze of roads she navigated revealed them to
her.  These grand courtyards stood in sharp contrast to the constricted streets
leading to them.