“Which I didn’t join.”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “When you married me, you signed up for all of this.”
I couldn’t help it. I started to cry, which softened Paul a little.
“I’m sorry this is how it is,” he said. “But the way you conduct yourself matters. It’s not about you or even us. It’s about my career.”
“Your career is riding on me not accepting cigarettes from guys at bars?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but what you do or don’t do can literally makeit into my fitness report, which affects my next assignment and even my chances at promotion.”
“You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
I was still pissed, but I took a deep breath and tried to be mature about it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“It’s fine,” he said, and he took a tentative step toward me, then pulled me into his chest and gave me a chaste kiss on the lips. “Glad to know you don’t think that dork’s attractive.”
My instinct was to argue that Teo wasn’t a dork, but I decided it wouldn’t help my cause. Instead, I said, “I think you’re very attractive.”
“That is good to hear,” he said. “Now will you help me find the sheets?”
69.
PAUL WENT BACK TO WORK,and I spent the next couple of days unpacking the last of the boxes. This wasn’t a full-time job or even a part-time one, so I went slowly, trying on clothes I hadn’t worn in months and rereading my favorite passages in books likePride and PrejudiceandJane Eyre. Why had I not noticed how many of these books ended with a wedding or at the very least a proposal? Now that I was married, it felt glaringly obvious that a wedding was only the beginning.
The Navy Wifelurked at the bottom of a box of books. I was still a little sore with Paul, and what I didn’t need was a book that told me the success of my husband’s naval career rested squarely on my shoulders. It sounds like I’m being hyperbolic, but when I openedThe Navy Wifeto a page at random, this was literally the first line I read:A wife’s disregard of social proprieties not only reflects upon the character and intelligence of her husband, as evidenced by his selection of a wife, but also produces a state of anxiety and disappointment which cannot but divert his mind from his work. Those who are old in the service can name many once promising, efficient young officers whose naval careers were early blighted by the actions of unworthy wives.
I slammed the book shut and tossed it under the bed. Was that what I was? An unworthy wife? A blight on Paul’s career? Maybe he was right, and the way I’d conducted myself at Bar Fiume had reflected badly on him or even somehow tanked his chances at promotion. It seemed impossible, but what did I know?
Instead of wallowing in my misery, I decided to do something productive and look for Miele. I checked the garden and under the car and any place I thought a cat might hide. I even walked down the hill in the direction of the Villa Webber, calling his name, though I was not sure cats knew their names, much less came to them.
When I eventually met Giovanni’s niece, Allegra, I tried to ask if she’d seen the cat. This was a challenge, since I did not yet know how to phrasea single sentence in the past tense. The best I could do was “Il gatto è qui?” And while she answered in the affirmative, I didn’t know if she meantYes, the cat is herein a sort of existential sense or in a more definite sense, like he’d been sleeping in her laundry basket. Either way, I figured the situation was not dire.
Three days of this and I was bored out of my mind, so on a balmy afternoon, I locked myself in the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and drew a bath. The shower nozzle in the rental wasn’t so different from the one at the Excelsior, but—blame it on the manufacturer or the water pressure—it wasn’t doing the job. I was despondent, but then it occurred to me that it might be possible to orgasm without it. This, of course, proved to be true. All I needed were two fingers and a little bit of patience. Within minutes, I felt the same slow build I’d experienced at the hotel, but this time—if anything—the climb was steeper, the release more powerful.
I’m embarrassed to admit that, after that, I went on a bit of a spree. Sometimes I’d get off once in the morning, after I dropped Paul at the pier, and again in that long stretch of the afternoon when it was too hot to go outside and too early to make dinner. I felt guilty about what I was doing, in part because I worried that my newfound sexual satisfaction might somehow dampen my enthusiasm for sex with Paul. But Laura had told me this was not the case and that, if anything, our sex life would improve. I decided I would have to take her word for it, particularly because, in the days after our first big fight, Paul didn’t make so much as a move in my direction.
70.
MY LESSONS WITH FRANCESCAwere a bright spot in my week, and I continued to go overboard preparing for them. She was trying to teach me how to use the verbfare, which is irregular and also just hard for English speakers to grasp because it manages to meanto doandto makeand sometimes evento haveandto take.
We were sitting on the balcony, my notebooks spread out between us, and she was going over my homework. In a paragraph about getting ready in the morning, I had writtenPrendo una docciaforI take a shower, but Francesca scratched it out. “It’sFaccio una docciabecause it is a personal activity having to do with your body.”
“What does my body have to do with it again?” I asked for what must have been the tenth time.
Francesca was of the belief that Paul and I should be speaking Italian at home. “You are so lucky to have someone you can practice with!” she said. “You need to agree on a specific time when you’ll speak to each other only in Italian. Maybe when you are getting ready in the morning. Or at dinner.”
I laughed a little, trying to picture Paul asking me to pass him the salt and pepper in Italian. “I don’t think Paul will go for it,” I said, and because I didn’t want to make him sound bad, I added, “He’s been a little out of sorts lately.”
“Work?”
I couldn’t very well sayme, so I said, “Yeah, probably.”
“Did you hear anything about a big group of American sailors being arrested out at Santo Stefano?” she asked out of nowhere.
“Like by the Carabinieri?”
