The Chapel by Downing Michael

Author:Downing, Michael [Downing, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781619026346
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

T. OFFERED TO WALK ME BACK TO THE HOTEL ON HIS WAY to an appointment of an unspecified nature with a nameless person, but Ed said he was going my way, and I said I was actually going his way because I wanted to take a few more turns around the chapel. I also wanted to get far enough away from T. so I could let out my breath and think of some way to be of some comfort to him. T. raised his hand to his head, thumb and pinky finger extended as if he were talking on a telephone, and I nodded enthusiastically, even though I didn’t know if that meant he was going to call me or I should call him.

Ed waited until we were well away from T. to tell me that the chapel was closed to the public for the afternoon to clear the way for a delegation from the World Heritage Center.

“I’ll never see the rest of it,” I said. Ed’s news had registered like a punishment. “I looked at all the wrong things. I didn’t even see the big version of the Gardner Giotto.”

Ed said, “You’re still planning to leave tomorrow?” He sounded genuinely astonished.

It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that Ed might think he had passed T. from his care into mine by telling me about Lily, that Ed might have been eager to find a substitute caretaker for T. “I’ve given away my place on the tour,” I said.

“Fine,” Ed said. “You can always come back some other time.”

But I knew I never would, as surely as I would never take up knitting, or plant a vegetable garden, or get a cat, or remarry. I knew I would end up buying a book of photographs of the frescoes and paging through it on the plane so I could pass any test administered by Rachel. I figured Ed was waiting for me to say something about his revelation at the doorway, but I was already gone, already feeling frantic about whether I should buy the little paperback guidebook to the chapel that would be easy to carry on the plane or one of the handsome, oversized hardback tomes I’d noticed in the gift shop, which I’d have to shove into the suitcase with Mitchell’s Dante debacle, and then what? When I got home I could set that suitcase full of Padua paraphernalia on the mantel as a memorial to our mutual failures or, even better, stick it in the front yard under the maple tree like a gravestone, a monument to everything unfinished. In a fit of inspiration, I said, “I have something I would like to give you.”

Ed said, “Are you thinking we will never meet again?” He pressed his hand to my back and led me around a corner, and the Hotel Arena sign appeared a few hundred yards ahead of us.

I said, “No.” I was actually thinking I might never see T. again. “The manuscript—my husband’s notes and speculations—I don’t know what else to do with them.

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