LAURA PONTI WAS SITTING by the pool, waiting for her daughter, Nina, to arrive, and watching one of the female gardeners pick mulberries off the flagstones. The gardeners came with the house, which she had rented for the summer. Her villa, outside Florence, was being renovated, and she had decided to spend the summer in the States, to be near her daughter, who was making a movie in New York. Nina was an actress. She got a lot of roles in what she referred to as “action pictures”; roles in which she invariably bared her breasts.
Nina had tried to persuade her mother to rent a house in the Hamptons, but Laura refused. She didn’t particularly like the ocean, and she definitely didn’t like the way Americans behaved
when they congregated near it. They tried to be sensual and decadent, two things to which, in her opinion, Americans were not well suited. So she had told the Realtor: just a nice house upstate; and that is what he had found her: a brand-new house, modern, with glass walls and decks and a pool, all surrounded by woods. The people who had built it didn’t have the money anymore to live in it. That was another thing Americans seemed to have trouble with: living within their means.
The pool was for Nina, an alternative ocean, but she had yet to use it. Every week she called and said they had to reshoot over the weekend so she wouldn’t be able to come up. Nina was in a movie about a serial killer who raised pigeons on the roof of his apartment building. Nina played a prostitute. Nina was thirty, and ever since she was twelve, and had been sent to boarding school in the States, Laura had lost the sense of being her mother. Not that she had ever been particularly maternal. Nina had always been precocious and independent; she had never seemed especially interested in having a mother, and Laura had to admit that being a mother had always bemused her. When Nina was away at school, friends would ask how she was doing, and Laura would think: Oh, yes, Nina. I have a daughter. She never felt she neglected Nina, for you cannot neglect someone who does not desire or elicit your care. Now, as adults, they had a strange, tentative relationship: like old friends grown apart, feigning affection for old times’ sake.
“Why don’t you sweep them up?” Laura called to the gardener. The names of the gardeners were Margaret and Evie, but she wasn’t sure which was which. Who was who. They were lesbians, she had been told. They lived half the year up here and half the year in Palm Beach, where they also tended gardens and pools. Normally, Laura ignored people who worked for her, but technically
the gardeners were employed by the people who owned the house, and besides, she was bored. It was odd that she was bored this morning: she had been alone pretty much all of the summer, and yet she had never been bored. It was the waiting for Nina, the anticipation, that bored her.
The gardener, who was squatting on her haunches, looked over at her. “They’ll burst,” she said, “and stain the slate.”
“Oh,” was all Laura could think of to say. There really was a reason for everything. But no, she thought, that’s not true. I just happened to ask a question for which there was an answer; it’s wrong to conclude there’s an answer for everything. There isn’t an answer for everything. In fact, I’m sure there isn’t an answer for far more than there is an answer for. She looked at the gardener and was wondering if there was something else she could ask her, if there was a way to turn this exchange into a conversation, when she heard a car in the driveway. She stood up, but then she felt foolish standing up, waiting, so she sat back down. “Will you go around front and tell my daughter I’m back here?” she asked the gardener.
The gardener scowled at her. She tossed her handful of mulberries into a silver bucket and wiped her stained purple hands on her shorts. She stood up and walked around to the front of the house.
Oh, please, thought Laura, don’t give me that. I should think it would be a nice break from picking up berries. She wondered if this mulberry thing was a scam; perhaps the gardeners were just collecting them and selling them to the farm stand. Maybe I should ask for the bucket when she’s finished. But what would I do with them? Did one eat mulberries? Or make wine from them? No, that was elderberries.
Nina appeared around the side of the house. She was followed by two men and the gardener. Nina was dressed in tight jeans, a
man’s sleeveless T-shirt, and high heels. She looked like a beautiful prostitute. Laura thought perhaps she was trying to stay in character, but deep down she knew her daughter was cheap.
“This place is impossible to find!” Nina said, as she approached. “And it’s so far away! It took forever to get here. What time is it? Hello, Mother.” She put her hand on Laura’s shoulder and kissed her on both cheeks. “This is Anders—” She pointed to one of the men, a tall, good-looking man in a rumpled, dissolute sort of way. “And this is Jerry. Jerry drove us up—I decided not to rent a car, I thought it would be cheaper to hire a limo, but I’m afraid it wasn’t. It was much farther than I thought. So we owe Jerry some money.”
“How much?” asked Laura.
“One hundred,” said Nina. “And I told him he could have a swim. God, the pool looks great!”
“I didn’t know you were bringing someone,” Laura said. She was up in her bedroom, counting out one hundred dollars from her purse. Nina was sitting on the bed. “You’re lucky I went to the bank yesterday. Here,” she said, handing the money to Nina.
“What about a tip?” said Nina. “Shouldn’t we tip him? He’s got to drive all the way back to the city.”
“I should think one hundred dollars included the tip,” said Laura.
“Mother, give me a twenty. I’ll get reimbursed from the production company. They cover expenses like this.”
Laura withdrew another twenty-dollar bill. She knew she would never see this money again. She didn’t mind throwing money away; she just minded throwing it away on Nina. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a friend,” she repeated.
“I know,” said Nina. She went over to the window and looked out at the pool. Jerry was doing the dead man’s float in the deep end. “I didn’t know until this morning. I just felt sorry for Anders. He’s Dutch, and it’s his first film in New York, and he didn’t have anywhere to go this weekend. Everyone was going away. And you said the house was big.” She turned away from the window. “It’s nice, the house. Do you like it?”
“It’s fine,” said Laura, “for a summer. But it has that awful renty feeling.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can tell they came through and took every decent thing out of it. I had to go buy some cotton sheets and crystal. They had plastic wineglasses.”
“It’s pretty, though,” said Nina. She turned away from the window. “Where do I sleep? Anders can sleep with me. We’re—well, we’re sleeping together. He’s really very nice. He’s Dutch. Let me go give Jerry his money, and get rid of him. Then we can have lunch. Have you eaten yet?”
“No,” said Laura.
“It’s really lovely here. It’s a bitch to get to, but it’s beautiful.”
They ate outside, at an umbrella-shrouded table, beside the pool. Jerry and the mulberries and the gardener were gone, and Laura had relaxed a little. She didn’t like it when being with Nina made her act ill-humored and disapproving; it made her feel old and rigid, which was not how she saw herself, and she resented her daughter for eliciting those qualities in her. So she willed herself to relax.
“Are you an actor?” she asked Anders.
“No,” said Anders. “I’m an animal trainer. I train the pigeons.”
“Anders can get a pigeon to do just about anything,” said Nina. She had pushed her chair back from the table, into the sun.
“Do you work only for movies?” asked Laura.
“Now, yes,” said Anders.
“He did the dogs in
Paws
,” said Nina.
“I didn’t see
Paws
,” said Laura.
“Yes, you did. At least you told me you did. It was the one about attack dogs run amok.”
“Do you specialize in violence?” asked Laura.
“Action,” said Anders.
They’re all such hypocrites, thought Laura: they make violent movies and call them action films. “But by action don’t you mean violence?”
“Oh, Mother,” Nina said, “they’re just stupid movies. It’s entertainment. For teenagers. Do you have any sunblock?”
“No,” said Laura.
“God, I should have brought some. I’m not supposed to get any sun. I’m supposed to be a very pale prostitute.” She lit a cigarette and went over to the pool, where she sat on the first of the tiered steps that descended into the shallow end. “So what’s it like up here? What have you been doing?”
“Not very much of anything,” Laura said. She was watching Anders peel green grapes with a penknife before eating them. While she generally admired people who peeled their fruit, removing the skin from grapes seemed a little excessive. He worked at each grape carefully and intently, and then popped it into his mouth quickly, as if the moist flesh might be damaged by prolonged exposure to the air.
“Have you been working on your book?” asked Nina.
“A little,” said Laura. “Arranging my notes.”
“You are writing a book?” asked Anders.
“About my late husband,” said Laura, “Ettore Ponti. He was an architect.” Actually, the book wasn’t really turning out. She had spent the last year collecting his letters to friends and colleagues, only to discover—or perhaps confirm—what a profoundly boring and uninteresting man he had been. It had all seemed very different when she was giddy with widowhood.
“One of your late husbands,” said Nina.
“My latest husband,” Laura clarified.
Anders offered her a peeled grape. He held it out, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. In the sunlight, it looked a bit like a large, uncut gemstone.
“No thanks,” said Laura.
“And you’re having your house in Italy remodeled?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Laura. “I’m trying to bring it into the twentieth century, while there’s still time. The plumbing was rather ancient.”
Nina had waded into the pool. “I hope you’re keeping the fixtures. And I hope there’s not too much chlorine in the water,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll get a rash. How far is it to Woodstock? Somebody told me there’s a good restaurant there.”
“About forty minutes,” said Laura. “Which one?”
“I don’t know. Chez something. Do you want to go? Or should we cook something here? Is there a barbecue?”
“I’m going out tonight,” said Laura.
“Where?”
“To a dinner. If I were sure you were coming, I would have asked for you to be invited, but I think it’s a little too late for that now.”
“With who?” asked Nina.
“A couple I met at a party. I knew the man’s mother. Do you
remember Iris Kerr? That beautiful American woman with all the money who lived in Rome and was such a drunk? It’s her son. He’s living up here with his wife.”
“Tony Kerr? He’s married?”
“No. Not Tony. This is the American son. His name is John.”
“I wonder what ever became of Tony. He broke my heart.”
“How?” said Anders. “When?”
“Oh, it was ages ago. When we were children. We went to Morocco together.”
“You never went to Morocco with Antony Kerr,” said Laura.
“Yes, I did,” said Nina.
“When? How old were you?”
“Oh, I forget,” said Nina. “Young. About eighteen, I think. I was madly in love with Tony. He was the most gorgeous man I’ve met. He liked boys, though.”
“That’s the way with so many beautiful men, I’m afraid,” said Laura. “It’s disheartening.”
“What’s this brother like?” asked Nina.
“He’s a half brother. He doesn’t make much of an impression—he was rather silent. Good-looking, though. I spoke with his wife, who isn’t silent: she gushes.”
“If they’re so awful, why are you having dinner with them?”
“They’re not awful,” said Laura. “Besides, one takes one’s society how one can get it. Especially in the hinterlands.”
“But we’re here,” said Nina. “You have Anders and me tonight.”
“I have you this afternoon and all day tomorrow. Tonight I want to go out. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t tailor my plans to your schedule, Nina. You’ve hardly been reliable this summer.”
“Well, then Anders and I will go to Woodstock.”
“You won’t have a car,” said Laura.
“Oh,” said Nina. She stood in the pool, moving her palms gently over the water’s surface. “We’ll stay here, then,” she said. She looked at her mother for a moment—an odd, calm look betraying neither anger nor disappointment, but a look, Laura knew, intended to convey judgment—and then dove into the water.