The Italian Teacher(38)
Pinch sees that she disbelieves this, correctly so. He didn’t want Barrows to meet his mother, fearing that Natalie’s strangeness devalued him. Now he is ashamed for that—yet still wouldn’t want Barrows present.
Natalie’s gaze sweeps across the restaurant, alighting finally on her son. “You need to go,” she says, her hand—a slight tremble from the meds—on his fingers. “So, so much luck to you, Pinch.”
He touches the top of her head—but is too upset and must stand in haste, unable to look at her. He mumbles thanks and is on the street, striding fast.
33
Barrows drives their rented Beetle onto a hovercraft across the Channel, then onward into France, motoring through the outskirts of Paris, he squinting at a map, directing them (very badly) toward their hotel near Montparnasse cemetery. The room is the cheapest available, a creaky-floorboards garret with a petrifyingly narrow balcony overlooking zinc rooftops. She passes an hour out there, gazing down, as he lies propped on the bed, puffing his pipe, observing her.
“What in hell are we doing inside?” she asks, spinning around. “We need to be there!”
With only two nights in Paris, they race through her itinerary. At the Louvre, she canters toward this painting or that, he accompanying, unable to study the art, only her. They return deliciously drunk to the hotel, she pawing at his belt, he watching as if viewing this from outside himself. On their last morning, they come downstairs asterisk-eyed and too late for the hotel breakfast, begging a maid for even a stale croissant (denied), then find a nearby bar and tear apart a pain au chocolat, dipping it in a shared café au lait, kissing hard outside, coffee breath, pastry tongues. “We already checked out of our room,” she notes.
“In the car?”
But there’s no time. They must reach Bear’s cottage by nightfall to avoid the expense of additional hotels. It’s nine hours by car from Paris, most of which she drives while he looks in puzzlement at the Michelin map in his lap, thinking of Cecil Ditchley, and of his mother, whom the cottage was bought for, and of his father too, who awaits them—the fact makes Pinch smile, erasing all worries. He regales her with tales of Bear, his artistic gambits, his rakish misdeeds.
“I must admit,” Barrows says, legs on the dashboard (Pinch’s turn to drive). “I’ve got mixed feelings about his work.”
“Mixed how?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever loved it.” She adds, “Keep that to yourself, please.”
“No, I was planning to walk in there, thank him for flying us to Europe—then immediately point out that you consider his life’s work pointless.”
“I never said that.”
“You’re wrong, by the way,” he says, grip slippery on the wheel. He wipes his hands on his corduroy trousers. “Have you ever met an artist, a really serious one, before?”
“Temple Butterfield?”
“Hilarious.”
She pokes her finger in his ear, leans over, nips his cheek.
He dares a thought: Barrows needs me to become what she will. So here’s what we do. I come with her to New York and manage the unfashionable parts of her life—the cooking, the ironing, the cleaning. I want to be useful. He looks at her.
“Eyes on the road,” she says.
And I can do independent research in my own time. There is a way out of this.
“I’m sorry your mother didn’t have time to meet up,” Barrows says. “I’d have enjoyed that.”
“What if I reapply next year?” he asks.
“To NYU? Of course. If you want.”
“But what do you want?”
“I want you to tell me more about your mother. You keep changing the subject.”
He claps his hand on her thigh as if to push down the surge of emotion inside him. There’s a sharp turn ahead; he must return both hands to the wheel.
“Nearly there,” she says. “Nearly Bear.”
The roads keep narrowing: from highway to two-lane regional, to a belt of tarmac around the mountainside now. They lean into each turn, he hitting the horn in case another car races toward them, especially with the light fading. Finally, there: the roadside barrel, its staves splashed with red paint. He slows, turns in, the Beetle shuddering up a steep pebbly driveway.
The trip rushed by. He needs more time. More Barrows. Years more before they pull in. He yanks the parking brake, turns to her.
“About time!” Bear hollers, approaching through the dusky evening.
34
The painter, well into his sixties now, seats his two young guests at a long farmhouse table in the kitchen beneath hanging lamps circled by flies. Pinch talks in a nervous rush: how they’ll need to find a real-estate agent in Prades tomorrow, must also tidy up the cottage for viewings, and look into the legal side of the sale.
“Nothing of the sort!” Bear interrupts. “I’ve decided to keep this pile of rocks, meaning you luckless rhubarbs came all this way for nothing. But there’s good news. I’m compensating you with fine dining—fine as possible in this neck of the woods—and even finer boozing all week.”
“Wait, what? You’re not selling?”
“I’d be crazy to. Have you any idea how cheap booze is around these parts, Pinch, my boy?” Winking, Bear reaches for his pipe.