Spin

I was on my second wash when Teresa asked if I would go with her to Italy. She was still on her first one. She’d put it on the cotton spin, which always took longer, because she’d read somewhere it’s gentler on your clothes. Ever since she’d stopped drinking, she was doing little things differently like that. Her apartment, for instance, was now clean as a hotel. Sometimes I dropped by when she wasn’t expecting me, to see if it was always like that. And it was. Not like it used to be, filled up ashtrays and empty bottles and shoes everywhere, and a smell like something in there had died a long while ago.

‘I want to ask you something,’ she said. ‘Helen. Is your TV broken or what?’

‘What?’

‘Can you take your eyes off that thing for a second?’

I looked up at her even though I didn’t want to. I knew there was something up, that once I got caught up in that wrinkle-ray stare of hers, I’d be in trouble. ‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, and I could tell she was excited. ‘Jane’s invited me over to meet her fiance.’

‘I thought she was in Italy.’

‘She is. Florence, Italy. What?’

‘Nothing. You’re flying all the way over there? I thought you’d only just started speaking to each other.’

‘She’s invited me over and I’m going. And the other thing is, you’re going with me.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Jane is Teresa’s daughter. I thought back to the first time I’d met her, a whole eight years before, though that was hard to believe. It was just my second week in Lexington and I had gone to a bar alone because I was tired of walking by it every day after work and then spending each night in front of the TV. So I sat at the bar and had one drink and decided I’d go home and never go there again. But then I went to the bathroom, and found Teresa passed out cold on the floor. The barman knew her address and I got her home in a cab. There, in her kitchen, was Jane. She would have been only fourteen and she hunched over a tiny table in the kitchen, covered in notepads and books, all short hair and too-big t-shirt, I wasn’t sure she was a girl or a boy until she spoke, her voice coming out all warbly and soft.

‘You can put her there,’ she had said, pointing to the sofa behind her. She didn’t ask who I was or where I’d found her or anything. I lay Teresa down and left, thinking I’d never see either of them again.

In the launderette, Teresa fixed that stare of hers on me again.

‘You’re going to say Frank won’t go for it. Well, fuck Frank. Cheating bastard.’

I kept my eyes firmly on his underwear swirling around. Let her tell me again about the letter from Jane that arrived with the Christmas card. About the phone calls that followed. About how they were friends again, though as far as I knew, this was actually a first.

‘I won’t go without you Helen,’ she said then. I knew this was true. ‘I’ll pay for your ticket. I’ve saved the money.’

‘Sure,’ I said then. ‘Why not?’  

The truth was, I knew I wouldn’t be going. A plan like that would never see its way past Frank, even with Teresa paying. But she still didn’t know quite how bad he was, not even after all those years. She threw her whites into the air and did a little dance in the sock and t-shirt rain. She ran across the room, wrapped her pipe arms around me and squeezed, as though my extra padding meant she could squeeze all she liked.

‘You think they have launderettes in Italy?’ I said, when she finally let me go. It was the only thing I could think of.

‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘They must have dirty laundry there too.’ She took a step back, put her hands on my shoulders. She looked me in the eye as though something in there annoyed her. As though she’d never seen me before, not really, or I looked different and she was only noticing it now. But I didn’t look any different. I looked the same as ever.

‘It’ll do you good to get away from that dick. Who knows, maybe you’ll have a little affair of your own.’

‘Ha,’ I said.

‘Don’t take any grief from him about this. Tell him I’m paying. That’s all he needs to know.’

It was a week later before I brought it up with him. I came home and found him sitting on the sofa, watching a game and thought, if nothing else, I’d have Teresa off my case about it. That day, she’d shown up at the bakery before closing and dragged me with her to a travel agent’s, insisted I bring home some brochures. I think she thought it would get me excited, looking at the pictures.

‘Hi,’ I said, putting the brochures on the table. The one on top had the leaning tower of Pisa, the Duomo and some other great big church on it, as though they stood alongside each other.

‘Hi,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the game.

‘You cold or something?’ I said. I’d just noticed he had his jacket on.

‘What? No. Heading out in a minute. This is nearly done.’

I sat beside him until the game finished. We were always good at sitting companionably like that without talking. I’d been with Frank almost as long as I’d known Teresa. After that time I brought her home, I got into the habit of going into that same bar every day after work, in case I’d find her there again. And one night, she did come in. She didn’t remember me, but she was on her own and she let me buy her a drink. We started meeting up there. One night, Frank and a friend of his came up to us. He was easy for me to talk to. I liked how he seemed a bit intimidated by Teresa. And when I told him I’d moved to Lexington to be nearer my sister and her family in Chicago, I liked how he nodded as thought that made a whole lot of sense, despite the fact that Chicago is still a seven hour drive away.

When the game ended, he turned off the TV. Only then did he see the brochures.

‘What’s all this?’ he said.

‘Teresa’s is taking a trip to Florence for a week, to visit Jane. She asked me to come along.’

He stared.

‘You know. Florence, in Italy?’

‘Europe?’

‘Europe.’

He narrowed his eyes. Took another drink from his beer, more slowly this time. Then he squinted at me.

‘You and Teresa,’ he said, ‘are going to fly all the way across the Atlantic ocean for one week and then back again.’

‘Yep,’ I said. And then I started to hum. He hates it when I hum. But sometimes I don’t even realise I’m doing it or I do know but somehow I’m not able to stop.

‘That won’t be cheap,’ he said.

I looked at him, surprised. ‘Teresa’s paying for the flights,’ I said.

‘Florence, Italy. What the hell would the likes of you two do in a place like that?’ He wasn’t being mean when he said that. He was really wondering.

‘Jane lives there now.’

‘What’s she doing there?’

‘A masters. In art history. Whatever that is. She got another scholarship.’

He took another drink of his beer. Took this in. ‘I’m still surprised she wants anything to do with Teresa. Remember that time Teresa went to Chicago for two weeks and left Jane home alone? What age was she then, twelve?’

‘More like fifteen.’

‘Still.’ The beer bottle shot to his lips again.

‘They’ve made up,’ I said. ‘Jane’s engaged, actually.’

‘I suppose Teresa does have her act together these days.’

‘She does.’

‘So, when are you guys flying out?’

‘Teresa wants to go next week. Wait. You think I should go?’

‘Why not? You could use a vacation.’

That’s when it hit me, how strange it was - the way he was wearing his jacket. There was the smell of aftershave too. And he was wearing a shirt. An ironed shirt.

He stood suddenly. Took his car keys from the sideboard and stuffed them into his pocket. For a moment, he just stood there, one hand on the sideboard, the other in his pocket, looking around the room, like he forgot something and couldn’t remember what it was.

And then I knew.

‘You’re going to her, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘You’re still seeing her.’

At first, he looked at me as though he’d never heard such nonsense. But then he closed his eyes. He shook his head. Looked at me again, all defensive now.

‘You don’t look so shocked,’ he said. ‘It’s not like you ever acted that bothered before.’

It felt like the air was being sucked out of me.

‘What about us?’ I managed.

‘Us. You tuned out of us a long time before I did.’

‘You’re - you’re breaking up with me?’

‘Ever since we gave up trying. You tuned out of everything.’

He looked at me when he said that, like a kid looking at the school principal and not giving a damn anymore. But I was no school principal. I went to the kitchen, poured a glass of juice and drank it in one. He followed me to the doorway.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I know how hard it was. The miscarriage. All that.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Well. I know how hard you took it.’

I shook my head. I looked at the empty glass I’d put on the worktop.

‘But at least now, we don’t have to try to stay together for kids, or anything like that.’ He walked up to me. Awkwardly patted my shoulder. Took a step back.  

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘We’ve been together eight years. It can’t end as easily as this.’

‘You’re no more in love with me than I am with you and you know it.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said. But the words sounded weak somehow. Like I didn’t mean them.

‘Someday, you’ll meet someone too,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll see I was right.’

And just like that, he turned away, walked out the door. The next day, when I came back from the bakery, all his things were gone. Clothes, car, everything. The only thing he left was a bottle opener I got him for Christmas.

It took twenty-seven hours and three planes to get to Italy. Lexington to Boston, Boston to Frankfurt in Germany, Frankfurt to Bologna city. I’d said nothing to Teresa about me and Frank beforehand, thinking I’d tell her on the journey. But I couldn’t find a way to tell her. The whole journey, on planes and it airports, she chain-drank colas and fidgeted like a child. She kept starting sentences and not finishing them. When we tried playing cards, she kept forgetting about the game midway through. When I tried to talk about things we might do when we got there, she just looked at me as though I’d sprouted a second head. And anytime she did say something to me, it was always to ask a question about Jane. Did I think Jane would like her haircut? Would Giulio, her fiancé, be with her? Doesn’t she look beautiful in this photo?

Jane in the photo and Jane waiting for us at the airport was beautiful, her dark long hair scooped into a pretty twist at the back of her neck, sunglasses resting on her head, jeans showing off her long legs, an elegant white shirt. Not a trace left of the teenage boy–girl that left Lexington five years ago.

I looked at Teresa, who had stopped walking at the sight of her, Jane not having noticed us yet. She had actually managed to turn pale beneath her tanned skin. She took my hand, squeezed it.

I squeezed hers back. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.’

Then Jane saw us. For a second, she looked as shocked as Teresa. But then she smiled. She started walking towards us. Teresa let go of my hand and walked towards her daughter.

I followed. Watched them hug like you might imagine a pair of robots hugging. I said ‘Hi Jane, how are you?’ and she said, ‘Hi Helen, it’s good to see you again.’ Then we followed her out of the airport and onto a bus, which left us at a train station, and then onto a train. Jane had already bought the tickets. All this time, none of us said anything much, but on that shaky train journey to Florence, they started throwing stiff little bunches of words at each other.

‘How was your flight?’

‘Lovely. Just lovely.’

‘How’s work going?’

‘Oh, fine. Busy. The usual, you know. Nothing very exciting. How are your studies going?’

‘Great. Busy too.’

‘Would you look at those red poppies along the tracks.’

‘Giulio’s looking forward to meeting you.’

This kind of thing. I didn’t speak once, except the odd time Jane asked me a question out of politeness, and then I gave her the shortest answer I could think of. I didn’t even say anything when a man who came around to look at our tickets sighed loudly when I couldn’t find mine straight away. Or when we got to the city and walked down and around those mean little streets that looked a million years old, and had to push our way through all the people. I didn’t speak a single word until we were in the tiny lobby of our hotel, and Jane started drawing a line to a nearby restaurant on a map of the city the receptionist had given her.

‘You know where there’s a McDonalds?’ I said. ‘The lady in the travel agency said they got them over here too.’

‘You came all this way to eat a Big Mac?’ said Teresa, smiling and glancing at Jane.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘I love a good Big Mac,’ said Jane. She started speaking again to the receptionist in Italian, and then she drew another line on the map.

Then she said she’d see us in the morning. She had essays to correct that were due back that evening.

Teresa and I showered and changed and then we walked to McDonalds.

‘I wish everyone would stop talking,’ I said, when we had gotten our food and found a table. ‘It gives me the creeps when I don’t know what they’re saying.’

‘Oh,’ said Teresa. ‘I suppose we’ll get used to it.’

She went back to looking out the window. Her shoulders all hunched up the way they always get when she’s stressed. A smidgen of ketchup on her upper lip.

‘You okay?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘It must feel weird to see her all grown up. After all these years. She’s so sophisticated, isn’t she?’

She shook her head in a vacant way. Her eyes all worry. ‘I’m in awe of her,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ I said. Then I said, ‘I guess it makes sense, though.’

‘What does?’

I took a sip of my milkshake. ‘I guess she liked the idea of turning into somebody new, after everything.’

‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘That’s true.’ Then she went back to looking out the window.

I looked at my watch, which was still set for home. There it was eleven in the morning. In the bakery, the second queue of the day would be forming, people waiting for their mid-morning sugar hit of doughnuts and muffins.

‘So, what are we going to do?’ I said.

‘Today? Catch up on sleep, I suppose.’

‘I wouldn’t worry she had to leave so quickly.’

‘Well, of course not. She’s managed to get off all her morning classes so she can do stuff with me. Us, I mean.’

‘Are we meeting the boyfriend?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? What about his parents? They live here too, don’t they?’

‘I don’t think we’re meeting them. At least, Jane didn’t say anything.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’ After a couple of minutes I said, ‘So today, you really want to just go home and sleep?’

‘Sleep sounds good,’ she said.

‘I feel kind of restless.’ I looked out the window. ‘Did you see that place we passed on our way here?’

Teresa shook her head, a new wariness to her.

‘A bar, on the corner of a square? You must remember it. There was a terrace. A big group of girls drinking cocktails.’

Her face when I said that.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I know we can’t go there. Unless – you want to try a virgin? Just one? I can’t remember the last time I had a strawberry daiquiri. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I was on vacation.’

She came with me. I took a table beside the big group of girls, who were still there. the waiter came and I ordered my strawberry daiquiri and she ordered her virgin. When the waiter came back with our drinks, I lifted mine until she lifted hers and we clinked.

‘To having fun,’ I said.

‘To having fun,’ she said.

We each took a sip from our straws.

‘Wow, that’s good,’ I said. ‘How’s yours?’

‘Great,’ she said. ‘Delicious.’

The waiter came out again with a tray loaded with pink drinks in flat glasses. He placed them on the table of the group of girls.

‘Round three,’ said one of them in an accent I didn’t know. ‘How many cocktails do you make here then?’

‘We have fifty-two cocktails,’ he said. This time, they laughed louder than ever. I looked over at Teresa. She was staring out into the street. I still had half of mine left. I took a sip. I smiled at one of the girls. I took my time finishing that drink.

Walking back to the hotel, we did not say one word to each other. Going inside, Teresa held the door open and for a moment our eyes met. She looked at me like I was poison.

Jane had a plan for each of the five mornings that followed. On the Monday, we went to the Duomo, stupidly big it seemed to me, in its small square. It took one hundred and fifty years to build, Jane said. It was six hundred years old. She took us inside, all dull marble and gloom, told us about a man who was killed in there hundreds of years ago, how they’d stabbed him nineteen times because some family wanted to take power from another family, and how the other family had retaliated by killing other people and hanging their bodies hang from a window. Then she had us climb the bell tower beside, dark and an ancient smell of cold, the steps getting narrower and narrower towards the top, the view when we got up there all rooftops all the way to the horizon, people and more people living under that blank blue. On the Tuesday, we went to an ancient bridge with jewellery shops huddled on it, where a man explained how it used to be all butcher shops up there, how they would slaughter the animals right there on the bridge and throw their foul-smelling meat waste into the river below. How one day, eight hundred years ago a man was murdered there on his wedding day. On the Wednesday, we went to a palace that Jane explained is now the town hall, all yellow stone and small windows, where inside huge rooms the walls were covered with pictures of battle scenes, people being slaughtered from hundreds of years ago. Afterwards, she brought us to a big market, where they sold shoes and sunglasses and chickens and rabbits, skinned but still in one piece, lined up in neat little rows. Teresa bought two pairs of slip-ons with thick wooden heels. I bought a pair of sunglasses, though I already had a pair. Then on the Thursday, we queued for two hours to see the statue of David. The sculptor had made it from a huge piece of marble and it was about three times as big as a real man. Underneath it said something like if you’ve seen this you don’t need to bother looking at any other sculpture ever again. I wanted to say to Teresa, never mind another sculpture, if you’ve seen this you don’t need to bother looking at another man again. But I didn’t say anything. While she and Jane had kept their robot conversation going, all week the silence between us had been hardening the way that concrete does.

We didn’t even spend time together in the evenings. A couple of times, Teresa met up with Jane again and the other evenings she said she was just tired and wanted to stay in our room. So I walked around those streets some more, on my own, where all the other people walked and had walked for more years than I could imagine. Each evening, I went to the same little restaurant near the hotel with a menu in English on its window. I would order a pizza and a whole jug of wine and take the same seat by the window alone and try to imagine what it would be like at home without Frank or Teresa. Nothing matters, I told myself. Not a single thing. One blink of an eye is all it takes and then I’ll be gone too, like that man who was killed on his wedding day or the man in the cathedral. What difference does it make if I’m happy or not. If I have friends or no friends. If my sister doesn’t need me and never has. Soon me and everyone I know alive will be gone too and everything will just keep going.

‘I’ve saved the best for last,’ said Jane on the Friday morning. ‘We’re going to the Uffizi. It’s one of the best art galleries in the world. I’ve booked the tickets already so we won’t even have to queue.’ She looked at me when she said this last bit.

‘Sounds wonderful,’ said Teresa.

‘You’ve been really helpful,’ I said.

We traipsed around after her, from dark high-ceilinged room, to dark high-ceilinged room, each one filled with holy pictures. The kind of rooms that make you feel tired just being in them.

And then I saw it. The painting of the angel that looked like a baby. There was a sad looking woman who I think was Mary and the angel baby was holding up another baby who I suppose was Jesus. Mary though is looking right at the angel baby. And the angel baby is looking right out of the picture. He was looking right at me. And he was grinning.

I walked right up to it. I don’t know how long I was standing there before I put my hand out. I wanted to touch his cheek.

I couldn’t understand a word the security guard said. Only that he was angry.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Teresa, who had suddenly appeared beside the guard, Jane beside her.

I ran and ran, through all those awful rooms until I was outside again. Then I kept running, past a fake statue of David and another statue of a man holding another man’s head, veins and sinews dangling out of it. I ran through a street and into another one and then into a big piazza. It was busy with people but I sat with my back against the wall of a building and sank to the ground. I wrapped my arms tight around my legs. I started to cry. I hadn’t cried in a long time. I hadn’t cried in years.

Someone tapped my knee. I looked up. It was a police man.

‘Okay?’ he said. ‘No English. Okay?’ He looked like he really hoped I was okay. He held out a tissue.

I took the tissue. I blew my nose. ‘Okay,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ he said. He kept looking at me with those eyes of his. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a little squeeze. ‘Okay,’ he said again. He helped me to my feet. Then  he nodded, walked away.

The building was a department store. I went inside because I wanted to be out of the heat and because I didn’t know what else to do. I picked up five dresses without even looking at them properly and brought them to the changing room. The third one I tried on was made from silk and was the colour of ivy. It wrapped around me, the way real ivy wraps around a tree.

‘Bellissima,’ said another woman in there. ‘Beautiful.’

I bought it, even though it cost about five times what I’d normally spend on a dress. I found my way back to the hotel and then I lay down on the bed and fell asleep. When I woke,  Teresa was sitting on the edge of her bed, wrapped in a towel, her short hair dripping. She was looking at me.

‘How are you?’ she said.

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘Did you have a good sleep?’

I nodded.

‘You’ve had an awful time here, haven’t you?’ Her face was creased with worry.

I sat up. I took in the sight of my good friend. I thought of how hard her life had been, of that father of hers who she only ever spoke of when she was really drunk, and even then hardly ever. I thought of how unusual it was to see her happy. I thought of how hard this week had surely been for her.

‘I think I may have earned that,’ I said.

‘I’m not so sure about that.’

She swapped over to my bed. ‘We’re going to dinner tonight,’ she said, her voice all fear. ‘With the boyfriend and his parents.’

‘I’m not coming.’

‘You most certainly are coming.’

My eyes grew hot and stingy.

‘Frank left me, Teresa,’ I said.

‘Oh, honey,’ she said. ‘But that’s a good thing.’

The lighting in the restaurant was soft and dim. After the introductions, they all got on talking about the wedding. I got away with nodding and smiling now and then. Then the food came. Giulio had ordered and I was sure I wouldn’t like it. But I have never tasted food like that, since or before. First course was a fig with cured ham and honey. Second course little parcels of pasta in a bright yellow salt that smelled of dessert and the sea. Third course was little flowers in a light batter, and then a meat in a sauce, dissolving in my mouth like pudding. It tasted like kindness. It tasted like what it felt like to curl up in the patch of sunlight that moved across the bedroom floor at home in the summertime.

‘Bene?’ said Giulio, when I finished the last dish and looked up to find them all smiling at me. ‘It tastes good?’ He was wearing a great big grin, as though he had made every course himself.

For dessert, we went to a small ice-cream parlour on a street where people hung washing and even though it had grown almost dark kids were kicking around a ball and cycling up and down. I had one scoop of hazelnut and one of chocolate icecream. Teresa had one of lemon and one of watermelon. They tasted like their names, only better. When a big melted drop from my last spoonful landed on the top of my cardigan, I barely noticed.

‘You need to wash quickly,’ said Giulio. ‘There is laundrette on the next street. We will wait.’

Once Teresa and I began laughing, we could not stop. We’d never seen a man take such an interest in laundry before.

‘What is funny?’ he asked. Even Jane smiled then.

The man in the laundrette was frowning at his washing machine. He had short red hair and was tall and skinny, but good looking, with arms that you couldn’t help admiring. He must have been about thirty years old. Once my cardigan was churning, I couldn’t help myself. I bought another sachet of detergent and soon had his load swirling too.

‘Thanks,’ he said doubtfully. He had an English accent. Then he sat down opposite his machine and stared into it, like he was supervising.

There was a mirror that ran along the wall, above the machines. Florence had brought all my freckles out and turned some of my hair gold. That dress swooped into my waist and around my breasts. I stared at myself for a moment. Then I turned to the man. I smiled at him.

‘Bad day?’ I said.

He threw me a glance. ‘That obvious?’ He managed a weak sort of smile.

I nodded. ‘Takes one to know one,’ I said.

‘You look pretty happy now,’ he said.

‘I do?’

On the plane home, flying back over that ocean, I tried to remember how what happened next happened next. Was it at that moment his expression changed? Or was it when I sat beside him? And then, how did we go from sitting beside each other on that bench, to my legs straddling his thin waist? Standing up sex with a stranger. Good sex, too. Maybe the best I’ve ever had in my life. We both cried out together.

‘You’re fucking beautiful,’ he said afterwards, his breath hot on my neck. ‘Fucking beautiful.’ Then he kissed my neck and smiled blushing at me before ducking out of the place, his washing still churning around in the machine.

I said the words again under my breath as the plane began the race along the runway, the lift off the earth and into air.