“Oh, give me a break,” she said. “You don’t have what Bobby and I have because you’ve spent the last two years looking for an out.”
I felt like I’d been slapped.
“So, congratulations,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You’ve got one.”
140.
AFTER LAURA’S SHOWER,I grew so anxious about Paul discovering the truth that I began to wish our departure date hadn’t been extended. This, of course, made me think of Susan Jordan and her bean jar. I’d made so much fun of her, but maybe I had been too quick to judge. There were all sorts of reasons to want off an island.
When I was downtown, I was terrified of running into Laura or Mary Lou or anyone else who’d witnessed the confrontation between Laura and me at Il Paradiso. When I was at home, I was hyperaware of Paul’s every move, constantly looking for signs that Bobby had said something to him.
I told myself that this was unlikely. What was Bobby going to do? Pull Paul aside in the middle of a job to tell him Laura had received confirmation that I was sleeping with Teo? It’d be the most awkward conversation ever, and I couldn’t imagine Bobby, who was as easygoing as they came, going there.
Now, whether Laura would tell Paul was another story. She had a mean streak that I’d seen come out on occasion. Maybe it wasn’t a mean streak so much as an abundance of confidence in her own moral judgment. She was certain that she knew not just what made for a good marriage, but what made for a good life. The house, the kids, the trips, the volunteerism. And that confidence could come off as mean, especially to someone like me, because I often felt like I was just treading water. My only solution to the Laura problem was to curtail all couples outings so she didn’t have the opportunity to talk to Paul, much less tell him anything. But after our showdown, it wasn’t like she wanted to hang out with me either.
As for Paul, he seemed the same as ever. Obsessed with the ins and outs of the tender but not all that interested in me. I take that back, actually. There were a few times that summer when I sensed he was tempted to make a move but was waiting for some indication from me that I wanted to be touched, and how. I had to pretend I wasn’t picking up on those signals,because if I had acknowledged them, we might have ended up going to bed together, and the thought of doing so—of doing that to Teo—was enough to make me want to crawl out of my skin.
Laura had accused me of using Teo as an out, insinuating that I wasn’t so much interested in being with him as I was in escaping my marriage. This suggestion that Teo was, in some sense, a means to an end was one I had never thought of, but once she’d said it, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I wanted to be with Teo all the time, but how was I supposed to know if that was because my marriage was bad, or because what Teo and I had together was actually really good?
I didn’t talk to Teo about this careful calculus I was doing, partially because I didn’t want to hurt him and partially because I knew what he’d say. He wanted me to tell Paul the truth. And by that, I mean that Teo wanted me to leave Paul and start a new life with him in La Maddalena or maybe Sassari. We had never talked specifics, but it was evident from the outset that Teo was in love with me and that, while this half-life we’d established was better than nothing, he wanted the whole thing.
141.
IN EARLY JUNE,Bruno and Luca’s team got word that the Ministry of Health was going to come through with enough money to extend CNEN’s research program in La Maddalena for at least another year. So on a Friday night, Teo and I met up with them at Il Brigantino to celebrate.
The tender was on another ten-day cruise, which meant that Teo and I had been spending an obscene amount of time together. After some debate, we decided we could pull off this very public dinner so long as we maintained the facade that we were just friends.
“What do you think did it?” I asked Bruno after the four of us had started in on our antipasti. “How’d you get the funding?”
He finished chewing a pickled onion. “It’s the DC. They’re desperate to shore up support ahead of the election.”
Italy’s national elections were less than two weeks away. While the Christian Democrats had defeated the communists in the local elections back in February, it was anybody’s guess as to whether they’d be able to pull out another—much bigger—win.
“What does the DC have to do with the Ministry of Health and whether they allocate enough money to CNEN?”
“The DC wants to stay in power, right?” said Bruno.
“Sure.”
“And they’ve apparently decided they can’t win if they pretend this nuclear pollution business is no problem.”
“Yeah, but I thought they didn’t have the money,” I argued.
Teo laughed. “They’ve got friends with money.”
“Who, us?” I said.
He nodded, then reached for a piece of prosciutto.
“You really think it’s American money they’re using?” I asked.
Teo shrugged. “Probably.”
Bruno agreed. “It can’t come out that it is, or it’ll look like they don’ttrust their own radiological surveys. But right now they’ve got to do everything they can to silence—or at least quiet—the PCI, and if that means helping Italy build out a radiological surveillance program, then so be it.”
I thought of all the calls Francesca and Carmela had put in to reporters and editors on the continent. “Do you think all that stuff Francesca’s been doing has helped?”
“It hasn’t hurt,” said Bruno.
