Eyes of a Child (16 page)

Terri turned to him in surprise. ‘We could cut four days off the trip,' Chris said, ‘and still be back to prepare for court. Richie or no Richie, we owe that much to whatever we have.'

Terri sat next to him, hand resting on his arm. ‘We can't, Chris – not now. I won't be able to stop thinking about Elena. It would be a nightmare . . .'

‘Perhaps it would be.' He stared at the floor and then went on. ‘Maybe we couldn't be ourselves. But we'd be far away from Richie. Maybe, somehow, we can think our way out of all this.' He paused for emphasis. ‘Whatever I've faced in life, I've never let anyone just run me over. I won't start now, for Ricardo Arias. And neither should you.'

Terri found that she could not answer. As if feeling her hesitancy, Chris gently touched her face. ‘Come with me Terri. If after Italy, we're not together, we'll have all the time we need to live with that.'

Chapter
15

‘It's alright,' Rosa said. ‘I'll make sure Elena's safe.'

They were standing in the doorway of Rosa's home, on the night before Terri left for Italy. I was seven o'clock; Elena was in her nightgown already. When Terri let the little girl go, and looked into her mother's silent gaze, she felt unutterably sad. ‘I know you will,' she said to Rosa, and then pulled Elena close again.

Arriving home, she felt suddenly sure – in spite of Chris – that she should not go away with him. She snatched at clothes, unable to get started.

The telephone rang.

It was Chris, she knew, calling to take her to dinner. After that, she would stay with him; right now, Terri felt, only that would get her to Italy.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘Ready yet?'

‘Getting there. What's for dinner?'

‘Actually, I think I'm coming down with something. Is it okay if I just pick you up in the morning?'

‘Sure,' Terri said automatically, and then felt the loneliness overcome her. ‘Are you all right?'

‘A little queasy. I've got the twenty-four-hour whatever, I think. I don't want to give it to you, or take it with us on vacation. We're taking enough as it is –'

‘That's fine,' Terri cut in. But when she hung up, she found that she had far too much time to think, and too much need to talk.

An hour later, she had not started packing.

Terri sat on the edge of the bed, lost in the past. Remembering the night she had packed for her honeymoon, filled with hope and uncertainty. Knowing, already, that Elena would be born. Looking across the bedroom into the face of her new husband, Ricardo Arias.

She picked up the telephone, to call him.

In the stillness of the night, Terri knelt before the confessional.

The priest was silent. Behind the screen, his profile was a shadow. The church was dark and cold.

Terri was afraid. But she could find no peace, and there was no one else to tell.

Trembling, Terri confessed what she had done.

The church was hushed. The priest had turned toward her.

As he rose from the confessional, Terri could feel his anger. The only sounds were his footsteps on the stone.

The priest appeared from behind the screen, a shadow. Terri could not bear to see his face.

She turned to run. Behind her, he called out.

‘
Teresa . . .
'

Terri awoke, the terrible image lingering on her brain.

Her eyes adjusted to the dark. Voices drifted through the window from the walk below. A church bell, deep and sonorous, echoed across the water. The lulling rhythms of an ancient city, where Terri lay next to her lover, unable to forget Ricardo Arias.

Venice, Terri realized. She was with Chris.

He reached out to touch her. ‘Are you all right?'

With Chris, she told herself again, for the last two days. Together with him in Italy, and yet lost in the past.

Silent, Terri tried to retrieve the last pieces of reality. They had made love, slow and sweet and passionate, and then, in fitful sleep, the dream had reached out for her. She could not have slept more than two hours; the evening sky framed in the wrought-iron balcony had a faint sheen, the death of sunlight moments before; the voices below their window were quickening with anticipation, people rushing toward the night.

‘You cried out,' Chris said.

Terri still felt shaken. ‘What did I say?'

‘You were afraid of something. Richie, I thought for a minute. But I couldn't make it out.'

Terri touched her eyes. ‘It wasn't Richie.'

‘What was it, then?'

Terri lay back on the pillow. In the darkness, the crystal chandelier above their bed looked like shards of black obsidian, falling toward them. ‘It's an old nightmare,' she said. ‘One I haven't had for years.' Terri found that she could not look at him; she spoke to the ceiling, voice drained of emotion. ‘I'm in the chapel at Mission Dolores. It's as it was when I was a child, except that the confessional is a dark alcove, one where I've never been before.

‘I'm alone, confessing my sins. I can't see the priest's face of course; he's a shadow on the other side of the screen. But I recognize the profile; it's Father Anaya, the parish priest.

‘There's a last sin, one I've never confessed to anyone. I lean my face to the screen, as close to Father Anaya as I can get, and whisper it.'

Terri did not wish to remember. Her words were slow, reluctant. ‘The shadow moves. I hear footsteps; something about my sin is bringing Father Anaya toward me.'

Terri closed her eyes. ‘I want to run. But I just stand there, waiting, as the shadow appears beside the confessional. A priest in monk's robes and a cowl.

‘At first I can't see his face. But I know that he's filled with hate. His arm rises to point at me, and then he steps into the light.'

Eyes opening, Terri turned to Chris. ‘It isn't Father Anaya, Chris. It's my father.'

Chris looked at her intently. After a time, he asked, ‘And that's how it ends?'

‘Yes. It's always the same.' Suddenly Terri felt angry. ‘Except that I thought I was rid of it, years ago. It's so arrested – like wetting the bed or something.'

Chris fell quiet. Terri lay back, feeling the breeze through the window watching the shadows in the room. Her forehead was damp. A tendril of hair stuck to her cheek.

Chris brushed it away. ‘A lot of people have recurring dreams,' Chris said at last. ‘I just wonder why you'd have this one now. With all that's going on.'

‘Do you remember your dreams?'

‘Not really.' Chris seemed to reflect. ‘The only one I can recall is where I'm in elementary school, on a bus, except that the driver is Daniel Patrick Moynihan. If you can figure
that
one out, get back to me.'

Terri stared at him. ‘You're making that up. You have to be.'

‘I'm not. Haven't you heard? WASPs don't have
dreams
, Terri. They have cartoons.'

Even now, making her smile was a gift Chris had. ‘That's because WASPSs don't believe in sin,' she retorted. ‘Unless they're fundamentalists.'

Smiling slightly, Chris touched her face. ‘This particular sin of yours,' he asked. ‘What have you done that's so terrible?'

‘I've never known. I'm always afraid that my father's going to say it aloud. But the dream just ends.'

‘Do you have any idea what it means?'

Terri felt a sudden impatience. ‘It's obvious enough. Somehow I feel guilty about my father, perhaps for how I felt when he died. I don't waste a lot of time on it.'

Once more, Chris seemed to watch her closely. ‘The nightmare started after he died?'

Terri turned from him. ‘It's nothing, all right? Except that I seem to have passed my talent for recurring dreams on to Elena, like some family curse.'

Chris reached for an ice bucket beside the bed, poured a glass of Pinot Grigio, and handed it to Terri. ‘I thought she wouldn't tell you what she sees.'

‘She won't.' Terri sipped the wine, tart on her tongue. ‘But she always calls it “the dream.” I'm left with this little girl in my arms, damp and trembling, not knowing how to make it stop.' She faced the window. ‘Sometimes, Chris, I wonder what I've done to her.'

He reached out, cradling her face. ‘Why don't you try to call her again.'

Terri kissed his palm and went to the other room.

Dialing Richie's number, she watched Chris flick on a bedside lamp, refill the ice bucket. The lamp caught the slim line of his body.

Richie's telephone rang.

Terri began counting. At twelve rings, she hung up.

Gently replacing the phone, Terri was still. Enough, she told herself. Be with Chris while you can.

‘Nothing?' he asked her.

‘Nothing.'

Chris pulled his hand from the ice bucket. Perhaps the purple discoloration had faded a little, Terri thought, but Chris still winced when he used it. ‘You should have had that x-rayed,' she said. ‘For all you know, it's broken.'

He shrugged. ‘I doubt it. And I'd have had to spend the night before we left in an emergency room, endlessly waiting for some rookie doctor to tell me I shouldn't go at all. Getting
you
to go was hard enough.'

Terri looked at his hand again. ‘I've never been the victim of a falling trunk. I can't imagine how you did it.'

‘Your reflexes are faster. I only wish you'd helped me pack.'

Terry gave him a wry look. ‘It's
your
trunk. And it was
you
who canceled the dinner at the last minute and left me alone all night.'

Chris turned to the window. ‘I'll make it up to you,' he said at length. ‘It's a fine night to take the vaporetto, and I know just the place for black squid pasta.'

‘
That
,' Terri answered, ‘was the real subject of my nightmare. The other stuff I just made up.'

They caught the vaporetto near the Danieli and took the long slow ride to the Rialto Bridge.

The floating bus hammered along the dark canal with the deep throb of the motor straining to capacity. Chris and Terri walked through the glassed-in compartment filled with tourists and Venetians, and stood in the open air of the fantail, breeze in their faces. The night was purple; the lights of the vaporetto swept the black water of the canal. They seemed far away from everything.

For a half hour, they cruised past the three-story facades of the grand houses that rose from each side of the water. Some glowed with light, which illuminated a room – tall ceilings and crystal chandeliers, books and oil paintings – others were deserted and almost spectral. Feeling Chris sway with the water as he held her, Terri recalled the moment of sheer happiness, surprising and intense, as she stepped from Chris's house that first morning, before she had begun the long, dark slide wishing Richie dead.

Briefly, Terri shivered.

Chris slid his leather jacket around her. Together they gazed across the water at the Rialto Bridge.

It was a light, almost floating structure from which five covered arches rose on each side, silvery in the night, to meet above the black water of the canal. The piers were lined with gondolas and vaporettos and private boats; the walk near the bridge was bathed in the light of outdoor restaurants where groups and couples sat eating or drinking cappuccino; on the left bank a stream of tourists and Venetians strolled through the stalls of street merchants. Voices and laughter carried across the water.

All at once, Terri had the almost weightless sensation of having stepped in an instant from one life to another – the Teresa Peralta who shared this time and place with Christopher Paget could not be the one who had spent six, dreary years as Richie's wife. With a fierce suddenness, Terri felt the desire to immerse herself in Italy and Chris. When the vaporetto docked, she hurried them off.

They left the pier, crossed the bridge, and wandered between the dark medieval buildings of narrow stone streets until they found the restaurant Chris was looking for. But Madonna was not the intimate
ristorante
Terri was learning to expect of Venice. The wooden door opened into two large and brightly lit rooms, with white walls and vivid modern prints. Both rooms were jammed with diners; waiters in starched white jackets bustled between their tables and the kitchen, calling quickly to each other above the warm cacophony of voices mingling. It was like her favorite restaurant in the Mission District, where Terri had grown up –families and laughter and argument, kids spilling drinks and no one much caring.

Terri smiled at the thought, and then Chris, glancing over her shoulder, held two fingers in the air. Suddenly a short, mustached waiter was whisking them to a corner table. Terri looked around them. Even past nine o'clock there were dark-haired Italian children at some tables, other kids still among the groups waiting. Terri could not help thinking of Elena: it was hard to imagine Chris and Terri ever bringing her on such a trip.

‘Cocktails, signorina?'

The hell with it, Terri thought. ‘Tanqueray martini, please. Straight up, not much vermouth.'

Chris grinned; he had introduced her to martinis only a few months before, when Terri had been in an escapist mood. ‘The same,' he told the waiter.

As he left, a little girl in the corner caught Terri's eye. She was perhaps four and knelt in her mother's lap, touching her gold earrings with the air of great discovery. Even as a baby, Elena had done these things with Terri; from a few weeks old, when Elena was still breast feeding, the little girl would spend long minutes gazing into Terri's face as if discovering the person into whose care she had been given. When Richie's fecklessness had forced her to return to law school, Elena was not yet two months old.