He still would not answer.
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, and she turned back to the mirror and picked up an emery board.
“All right, tell me,” Arthur said.
“We’re going to be late. I hate walking into a—”
“The hell with the goddamn dinner party, Julia! Tell me.”
“Tell you what, Arthur? Just what do you want me to tell you?”
“What happened in Aquila?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what happened in Rome?”
“Nothing.”
“Then where did it happen, Julia?”
“Where did what happen?” She turned on the stool angrily, her eyes flashing, furious because he had guessed, and wanting him to know, yet enraged because he already knew, and refusing to tell him, and feeling hopelessly embroiled in a stupid situation that he alone had provoked. “Just what do you imagine happened?” She looked up into his face defiantly.
“I... I don’t know,” Arthur said hesitantly.
“Then stop accusing me!” She stood up suddenly and walked to the closet. Angrily, she pulled a dress from one of the hangers.
“I... I wasn’t accusing you, Julia. I simply felt—”
“You simply felt that because I didn’t want—”
“Julia, Julia...”
“I suppose that whenever you get the damn—”
“No, but, Julia...”
“Then let it go, damn it!” She turned on him, the dress in one hand, her eyes blazing, and she saw the sudden embarrassment on his face. He’s going to back down, she thought. He only wanted assurance. He only wanted to know I still love him. Tell him, she thought. Tell him you love him. Tell him you want him. Tell him.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Yes,” she said. “It happened in Rome.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. He looked at her, puzzled, and he shook his head slightly, not understanding, or not willing to understand.
“In Rome,” she repeated.
“What are you...?”
“With an Italian soldier.”
“Don’t, Julia.” He turned away.
“Whom I loved,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“Whom I still love.”
“Don’t.”
“Who’s waiting for me to—”
He turned swiftly and sharply, like a prisoner who has withstood the flailing of his torturer for too long, who regardless of consequence would proclaim his manhood, proclaim his humanity, state that there is still dignity here in this destroyed heap of flesh, he turned swiftly and sharply and said, “Don’t!” again, like a defiant whimper, and lashed out at her with his right hand, slapping her face.
She did not raise her hand to block the blow. She did not touch her stinging face after the blow was delivered. She stared at him in the silence of the room, and she said, “Yes.”
Arthur sighed. His hand dropped slowly.
“Yes, I deserved that,” she said.
The room was silent.
“But it doesn’t change anything,” she said. “It’s too late to change anything,” and she told it all then, told everything while he sat foolishly on her dressing-table stool with his head bent, and his hands clasped and hanging between his knees, almost touching the floor, told him all of it, while he sat listening and not listening, told him what had happened and what was yet to happen, while he listened soundlessly with his eyes squeezed shut.
“I’m going back to Rome as soon as the war is over,” she said.
She paused.
“I’m taking David with me,” she said.
“Yes, leave nothing,” he answered. “Take everything, and leave nothing. Total up seventeen years of marriage with a zero.”
“I’m sorry. A woman needs her children.”
“Yes, certainly. And that does it. I’m sorry. That explains everything. I’m sorry. Forgive me for killing you. This is what separates men from animals. The two words ‘I’m sorry.’ This is what gives men the nobility our novelists are always trying to express, the wonderful nobility of man, I’m sorry. Yes, be very sorry, Julia. You should be.”
She said nothing.
“I wish I could curse you. I wish I could say...” He shook his head. “You don’t seem like a slut,” he said almost to himself. He wiped his hand over his eyes, and then passed the hand downward over his face, disguising the action. He was silent for a very long time. Then he lifted his head, and looked directly into her eyes, and very quietly said, “Stay.”
She did not answer.
“Stay, Julia. If not for me, then for—”
“No.”
“—your son.”
“My child,” she said.
“David,” he answered. “Your son.”
“I’m going back to Rome. I have to. You know I have to.”
“And me? What about me, Julia?”
“I... I can’t... I can’t think about that, Arthur.”
“No, don’t think about it. Do you know what will happen to me, Julia?” He paused. “I’ll die.”
“No.”
“Yes, Julia. I swear to you, Julia. I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself, I can’t—”
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t make this any harder than—”
“Please? Please? Who? Who is pleading? How can you look at a corpse and say, ‘Please, please, don’t let me realize I killed you’? What do you want, Julia? A clean conscience besides?”
He did not bother to wipe at his eyes again. The tears ran down his face. He sniffed and said, “No, don’t ask me for that, Julia. Not absolution. You’re taking my life, and that’s enough.”
“I won’t ask you for anything,” she said. “And you won’t do anything foolish, either.”
“It won’t be foolish, Julia. You killed me when you said, ‘Yes, it happened in Rome.’ That was death. The rest is only ritual.” He sniffed and said, “I haven’t cried in all the time we’ve been married, have I?”
“No,” she said.
He nodded. “Because I wanted your respect.” He sniffed. “I’m sorry.” He searched for a handkerchief in the pocket of his robe, found none. “Well,” he said. He gave a curious shrug. “Well, you’ll have the boy.”
“Thank you, Arthur.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “You’ll have the boy.”
There was something more in his words, unspoken, yet how could she have really known, there was so much confusion that day. “You’ll have the boy” sounded like a promise, not a threat, and yet he had said, “I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself.” Still, how could she have known? And at the lake, the look in his eyes, did she know then, did she know what he was about to do in that rowboat, did she even suspect? She tried to remember, but that day too was confused in her memory. Perhaps she had known that day at Lake Abundance when the shutter clicked and the boat edged away from the dock, known she was sending her husband to his death, and let him go because this was the only thing left to him. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she had taken everything else, robbed him of everything else, and now she couldn’t steal from him the one thing left, the one thing he could still do with a measure of dignity and pride. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she wasn’t that big a bitch yet.
She listened to David snoring in the room next door, listened to the impersonal lake outside lapping at the dock pilings. The night was so still.
She lay alone in the night.
Alone.
The letter had come a few days before Memorial Day in 1943. Her son was in a naval prison, and she was waiting for the war to end, and the letter came in its hesitant Italian hand. She had turned it over to look at the flap, and had seen the name Francesca Cristo, his sister. Hastily, she had ripped open the envelope. The letter spoke of Renato, the letter told what had happened during an Allied bombing attack on the seaplane base at Lido di Roma, fifteen miles southwest of Rome.