The Prodigal Daughter (19 page)

“
Would )ou
like to come to lunch at Radcliffe tomorrow?”

“I can’t,” he
said. “I have a paper to finish in the morning, and I’m not sure I can complete
it before two o’clock. You couldn’t bear joining me for tea?”

“Of course I
will, ~illy.”

“What it pity.
If I had known I would have booked you a room in the guest quarters. ‘.

“What a pity,”
echoed Florentyna, thinking of the unopened suitcase lying in the trunk of her
car.

The next day,
Scott picked her up shortly after three and took her back to his rooms for tea.
She smiled as he closed the door, remembering that it was still not allowed at
Radcliffe. His room was considerably larger than hers and on his desk was a
picture of an aristocratic, slightly severe-looking lady who could only have
been his mother. As Florentyna took in the room she realized that none of the
furniture belonged to Harvard.

Alter he had
given her tea they listened to America’s new singiny, idol, Elvis Presley,
before Scott put on Frank Sinatra singing “Stranger in Paradise” and they
danced, each wondering what was in the other’s mind.

When they sat
down on the sofa, he kissed her at first gently, then with passion. He seemed
reluctant to go any further and Florentyna was both too shy and too ignorant to
help him. Suddenly he placed a hand over her breast as if waiting for
Florentyna’s reaction. At last his hand moved to the top of her dress and
fumbled with the first button, Florentyna made no attempt to stop him as he
continued \& ith the second. Soon he was kissing her, first on the
shoulder-, then on her breast. Florentyna wanted him so badly that she almost
made the next move herself, but quite suddenly, he stood up and took off his
shirt. In response she quickly slipped out of her dress and let her shoes fall
to the floor. Thev made their way to the
bed,
clumsily
trying to remove wl~at was left of each other’s clothing. For a moment they
stared at each other before climbing onto the bed. To her surprise the pleasure
of making love seemed to be over in seconds.

“I’m sorry, I
was awful,” said Florentyna.

“No, no, it was
me.” He paused. “I might as well admit
it, that
was my
first time-”

“Not you as
well’?” she said, and they both burst out laughing.

They lay in each
other’s arms for the rest of the evening and made love twice more, each time
with greater pleasure and confidence. When Florentyna woke in the moming,
cramped and rather tried but exultantly happy, she felt instinctively they
would spend the rest of their lives together. For the remainder 121 of that
term they saw each other every weekend, and sometimes during the Aeek as well.

In the spring
vacation, they met secretly in New York, and Florentyna spent the happiest
three days she could remember. Ott the Waterj~ont, Limelight and, on Broadway,
South Pacific preceded the “21” Club, Sardi’s and even the Oak Room at the
Plaza. During the day they shopped, visited the Frick and walked through the
park. When she returned home at night, her arms were laden with presents, which
ended up by the side of her bed.

The spring term
was idyllic and they were rarely out of each other’s company. As it drew to a
close, Scott invited Florentyna to spend a week in Marblehead to meet his
parents.

“I know they’ll love
you,” he said as he put her on the train to Chicago.

A hope so,” she
replied.

Florentyna spent
hours telling her mother how wonderful Scott was and how much she was bound to
love him. Zaphia was delighted to see her daughter so happy and genuinely looked
forward to meeting Scott’s parents. She prayed Florentyna had found someone
with whom she could spend the rest of her life, and had not made an impulsive
decision that she would later regret.

Florentyna
selected yards of different-colored silks from Marshall Field’s and passed the
evenings designing a dress she felt certain would capture the heart of Scott’s
mother.

The lettei came
on a Monday, and Florentyna immediately recognized Scott’s handwriting. She
tore the envelope open in happy anticipation, but it contained only a short
note saying that because of a change in his family plans he would have to
postpone her trip to Marblehead. Florentyna read the letter again and again,
looking for some hidden message. Remembering only how happily they had parted,
she decided to call his home.

“The Roberts
residence,” said a voice that sounded like the butler’s.

“May I speak to
Mr. Scott Roberts?” Florentyna could hear her voice quiver as she said his
name.

“Who is calling
him, ma’am?”

“Florentyna
Rosnovski.”

“I’ll see if
he’s in, ma’am.”

Florentyna
clutched on to the phone and waited impatiently for Scott’s reassuring voice.

“He’s Hot at
home at the moment, ma’am, but I will leave a message saying that you called.”

Florentyna
didn’t believe him and an hour later called again.

The
voi(
e said, “He is still not back, ma’am,” so she waited
until eight that evening, when the same voice announced that he was at dinner.

“Then please
tell him I’m calling.”

“Yes,
ma’am.”

The
voi(
e returned a few moments later and said perceptibly less
politely, “He cannot he disturbed.”

“I don’~ believe
it. I don’t believe you’ve told him who it is. “

,
,
Madam, I can assure you-” Another voice came on the line, a lady’s, with the
ring of habitual authority.

“Who is this
calling?”

“My name is
Florentyna Rosnovski. I was hoping to speak to Scott as-...”

“Miss
Ros-en-ovski, Scott is having dinner with his fianc6e at the moment and cannot
be disturbed.”

“His fiancde?”
whispered Florentyna, her nails drawing blood from the palm of her hand.

“Yes,
Miss Ros-en-ovski.”
The phone went dead. It took several seconds for
the news to sink in; then Florentyna said out loud, “Oh.
my
God, I think I’ll die,” and fainted.

She woke to find
her mother by the side of her bed.

“Why?” was
Florentyna’s first
word.

“Because
he wasn’t good enough for you.
The right man won’t allow his mother to
select the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with.”

When F
,orentyna
returned to Cambridge, matters did not improve.
She was unable to concentrate on any serious work and often spent hours on her
bed in tears. Nothing Bella could do or say seemed to help and she could devise
no better tactic than belittlement. “Not the sort of man I would want on my
team.” Other men asked Florentyna for dates, but she didn’t accept any of them.
Her father and mother became so worried about her that they even discussed the
problem with each other.

Finally,
Florentyna came close to failing a course, and her advisor, Miss Rose, warned
her that she had a lot of work to do if she still hoped to win her Phi Beta
Kappa key. Florentyna remained indifferent. At the beginning of the summer
vacation she stayed at home in Chicago accepting no invitations to parties or
dinners. She helped her mother choose some new clothes 123 but bought itone for
herself. She read the details of the “society wedding of the year,” as the
Boston Globe referred to the marriage of Scott Roberts to Cynthia Knowles, but
it only made her cry again. The arrival of a wedding invitation from Edward
Winchester did not help. Later, she tried to remove Scott from her thoughts by
going to New York and working unheard-ofhours for her father at the New York
Baron. As the vacation drew to a close she dreaded returning to Radcliffe for
her final year. No amount of advice from her father or sympathy from her mother
seemed to improve matters. They both began to despair when she showed no
interest in the preparations for her twenty-first birthday.

It was a few
days before Florentyna was due to return to Radcliffe that she saw Edward across
Lake Shore Drive. He looked as unhappy as she felt.

Florentyna waved
and smiled. He waved back but didn’t smile. They stood and stared at each other
until Fdward crossed the road.

“How’s
Danielle?” she asked.

He stared at
her. “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”
said Florentyna.

He continued to
stare at her as if he couldn’t get out the words. “She’s dead.”

Florentyna gazed
back at him in disbelief.

“She was driving
too fast, showing off in my new AustinHealey, and she turned the car over. I
lived, she died.”

“Oh, my God,”
Florentyna said, putting her arms around him. “How selfish I’ve been.”

“No, I knew you
had your own troubles,” said Edward.

“Nothing
compared with yours. Are you going back to Harvard?”

“I have to.
Danielle’s father insisted that I complete my studies. Said he would never
forgive me if I didn’t. So now I have something to work for.

Don’t cry,
Florentyna, because once I start I can’t stop.”

Florentyna
shuddered. “Oh, my God, how selfish I’ve been,” she repeated.

“Come over to
Harvard sometime. We’ll play tennis and you can help me with my French verbs.
It will be like old times.”

“Will it”
“ she
said.
wistfully
. “I wonder.”

W
HEN FLORENTYNA
RETURNED TO RADCLIFFE, she was greeted by a two-hundred-page course catalogue
that took her three evenings to digest.

From the
catalogue she could choose one elective course outside her major area of study.
Miss Rose suggested she take up something new, something she might never have
another chance to study in depth.

Florentyna had
heard, as every other member of the university had, that Professor Luigi
Ferpozzi would be spending a year as guest lecturer at Harvard and conducting a
seminar once a week. Since winning his Nobel Peace Prize he had roamed the
world receiving accolades, and when he was awarded an honorary degree from
Oxford the citation described him as the only man whom the Pope and the
President were in total agreement with, other than God. The world’s leading
authority on Italian architecture had chosen Baroque Rome for his overall subject.
“City of the Eye and the Mind” was to be the title of his first lecture. The
synopsis in the course catalogue was tempting: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the artist
aristocrat, and Francesco Borromini, the stonecutter’s son, transformed the
Eternal City of the Caesars and the Popes into the most recognizable capital in
the worid.

Prerequisites:
knowledge of Latin and Italian, with German and French highly recommended,
Limited to thirty students.

Miss Rose was
not optimistic about Florentyna’s chances of being among the chosen few. “They
tell me there is already a line from the Widener Library to Boston Common just
to see him, not to mention the fact that he is a well-known misogynist.”

“So was Julius
Caesar.”

“When I was in the
common room last night he didn’t treat me like Cleopatra,” said Miss Rose. “But
I do adn-dre the fact that he flew wtth Bomber Command during the Second World
War. He was personally responsible for saving half the churches in Italy by
seeing that the planes made detours around important buildings. “

“Well, I want to
be one of his chosen disciples,” said Florentyna.

“Do you?” said
Miss Rose dryly. “Well, if you fail,” she added, laughing as she scribbled a
note for Professor Ferpozzi, 11 you can always sign up for one of those survey
courses. They seem to have no limit on numbers.”

“Rocks for
Jocks,” said Florentyna dispdragingly. “Not me. I’m off to ensnare Professor
Ferpozzi.”

The next morning
at eight-thirty, a full hour before the professor was officially available to
see anyone that day, Florentyna climbtA the marble steps of the Widener
Library. Once in the buildin
,9
, she took the
elevator-large enough to hold herself and one book-to the top floor, where the
senior professors had offices under the eaves. An earlier generation had
obviously decided that being far removed from zealous students more than made
up for the long climb or the inconvenience of an always occupied elevator.

Once Florentyna
had reached the top of the building she found herself standing in front of a
frosted door. The name “Professor Ferpozzi” was newly stenciled in black paint
on the glass. She recalled that in 1945 it was this man who had sat with
President Conant in Munich and between them they had decided the fate of German
architecture: what should be preserved and what should be razed. She was only
too aware that she shouldn’t bother him for at least another hour. She half
turned, intent on retreat, but the elevator had already disappeared to a lower
floor.

Turning again,
she knocked boldly on the door. Then she heard the crash.