A day or so after Jay started his job at DiPio’s clinic, Barbara announced that the older boys could go down to the centro with their father, if they cared to pitch in. A “situation” that hadn’t been “compromised,” according to Attaché Roebuck, the clinic was a psychiatric facility for disorders resulting from the earthquake. It was the same jerry-rigged baronial home, its closets made over as offices, to which the doctor had taken the family on the first day after the assault. The place was tailor-made for sneaking off. Boys like Chris and JJ would have no trouble showing up to “pitch in,” and then gallivanting all over the original city. They could set up any assignations they liked. Then there was Jay’s job, another word that belonged in quotes, though Roebuck and the former VP had worked out a position title that wouldn’t damage the resume. Nevertheless, not quite a week after Jay had worked out the deal, the mother announced that Chris and JJ were free to join their father downtown. She used the news to kick off the dinner conversation, while setting out a hefty platter of octopus sautéed with garlic. More than that, declared the newly-fledged Owl, she’d come up with something fun for Paul and the girls to do.
With that, Barbara wound up in her first direct exchange with Aurora.
“Why, bravo,” the old playgirl told her. “Ever since I’d heard about our Junior here and that girl, I’ve thought there was no point pretending, simply hiding our heads in the sand and pretending. Of course they were going to try to see each other.”
Barb put her clean hand, the one untouched by olive oil, in Dora’s hair.
“Nothing so inflames love’s sensibility,” Aurora said, “as being forcibly kept apart. Why, it goes back to the myths, Hero and Leander. It goes back to the Kama Sutra. ‘Once the wheel of love has turned,’ you know.”
From where Barbara stood, she had a good view of Aurora’s favorite studio portrait. The merry widow never traveled without it. The photographer had posed her facing a fan, a silk scarf trailing from her silky hair. Aurora Isadora.
JJ and Chris were speaking up already, falling all over each other to make it clear that they had no idea where Romy had gone. “I mean,” said John Junior, “the Kama Sutra? Aurora, get real.” But both boys also insisted that the gypsy couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder.
“Mom,” Chris reminded Barbara, “you don’t think so, either, right? You know that Romy’s like, the least of our troubles.”
John Junior added: “You know the real trouble we’ve had over here, it’s been between you and Pop. I mean, whatever.”
But that had been the old Barbara, the one who’d struggled with “whatever,” setting off all kinds of speculation among the kids. Tonight she worked up a smile and pointed out that, anyway, the next morning Chris and JJ needed to be ready when their father was, if they wanted to go downtown. She reiterated that she’d figure out something for the others as well. She sat and enjoyed her octopus, she arranged a fair distribution of the KP duties off the top of her head, and then she stepped out for a limoncello on the balcony. Only out there was the wife forced to admit again, silently, that she lacked the deep tranquility she wished for when it came to her new commitments. She hadn’t yet wrapped the inner whipsaw in canvas and put it in the shed. To her the sunset appeared to have left a bloodstain out on the Bay, and the smell of diesel recalled the museum loading dock. Here it was five days after Silky’s murder, and Barbara’s clearest impression of his death was that the white-suited rule-breaker had fallen to his knees before Aurora. He’d made his final bloody salaam to the home-wrecking prototype, the Siren who’d been, at just that moment, winging towards him over the dark Atlantic. Yet hadn’t Barb herself been preparing for an even nastier Coming? And how could she be certain that she knew better now? Whatever Romy might threaten, whatever other trouble might be lurking around the city, Barbara had to deal with it from a new wholeness. She had to be like something you might see on the family website, a bad bird-woman who’d morphed into the Phoenix.
By the time she came in off the balcony the kids had settled down to a game of Clue with Aurora. They were into it, laughing; they didn’t notice Mama. She found Jay at the other end of the apartment, in their bedroom, going over his checkbook with an old-fashioned calculator. Right there the wife settled into nuzzling and sweet nothings, with the same bewildering relief such puppy love had afforded her over the last few days. She wouldn’t have thought she’d missed it so much, or that it could feel so good to cuddle. She sank more deeply into the man, and shifted to a more serious kiss. Her husband’s fingers trailed over her breasts, her ribs, the waistband of her underwear.
“Let’s try again,” she murmured. “Let’s please.”
“Right here right now,” he said. “Like two kids.”
Should they have talked about who’d murdered the Lieutenant Major, or what papers he might’ve left behind, instead of stretching out on the bed he’d provided for them? Barbara had the sense that the answers would help a little, just as the stroking Jay gave her as he pulled away her clothes seemed to ease her closer to a genuine peace. Should they have talked about all they were risking, in this search for a fresh, shared self that was hardly half-defined? Yes, no, maybe; the answers might do some good, just as for a while it seemed to be working as Barbara shifted her pelvis into a better angle against Jay’s, as she yielded to the man’s plying. They appeared to be making progress as she gave him back three, four, five kisses. But in time the answers proved not to be here with them, or not enough for Barb at least, and she held back. In the few seconds between one kiss and another their touch cooled. Not that Barbara resisted her man — she would’ve worked out some variety of pleasure if he’d needed it badly enough — but Jay too relented when he understood that his wife was short of real arousal. She wasn’t herself, dry between the legs. There remained something else she needed, and she’d been this way every time since, in front of the entire overseas community, Barbara was forced to recognize how badly she’d misunderstood what she’d thought she’d needed up to that point. Since the meeting at the Consulate, in their moments alone, she and Jay had gone no further than tears and whispers and unfinished business. Tonight, after a cry from down the hall about Mrs. Peacock, Barbara again told her husband that she wanted him inside her, she knew it would help. She left her legs open long after he lost his erection, and she wondered aloud how she might find a decent Naples gynecologist. Also she mentioned the jelly and oil in the nightstand drawer. But the man’s touch turned conventional, he’d rarely been selfish or needy anyway, and settling back against the pillows he whispered, “Soon. Soon.”