I didn’t have any experience with pregnancy loss, but I knew a little something about grief, so I vowed not to let one stupid platitude slip past my lips, and to get her out of her apartment as often as I could and by any means necessary.
On Wednesdays, I liked to hit the flea market in the Piazza Comando, so I started picking Laura up and taking her with me. One week we bought these plastic contraptions that we were supposed to use to soak beans overnight; on another visit, we each bought a dustpan on a stick. You know the kind that keeps you from having to bend over? It turned out Italians loved those. Neither of us had much money to spare, so the stuff we bought was almost always practical and cheap, and since we were both terrible at haggling, the joke was that we preferred to pay full price for everything.
On Friday afternoons, I took Laura to Caprera and made her choose one of the two dozen trails that crisscrossed the island. I’ve always found walking to be good therapy—even before I knew what therapy was. There’s something about keeping the focus on your feet and maybe the scenery. It makes it easy to talk about whatever’s on your mind. On those hikes, Laura sometimes talked about the babies she’d lost and her fear that she’d never be a mother; when she got going, I tried not to say much, because the last thing she needed was me telling her to be patient or that the miscarriages hadn’t been her fault. She knew all that.
We went on a few day trips that spring. Once, we took the ferry to Palau and drove up into the hill towns, where I helped Laura pick out a trunk like the one Susan Jordan had received at her farewell. Another time, we took the ferry to Corsica, where we wandered aroundBonifacio’s old town and got to practice our high school French and eat moules-frites.
Laura was still sad, of course, but she was willing to be distracted, and in that way, she reminded me of my mother, who—after Lenny’s death—managed to get on with the business of living. Those who knew her best knew she was going through the motions, but the funny thing about faking it is that eventually you’re not.
96.
IN EARLY MARCH,Luca invited me to come see him give a talk at an ecology conference hosted by the Region of Sardinia in La Maddalena’s municipal building. The conference, which had been hastily assembled, was on La Maddalena’s “pollution” problem, and while no one would go so far as to use the phrasenuclear pollution, that’s clearly what they meant.
Technically, it was Bruno who’d been invited to present CNEN’s early findings, but he’d told the organizers that since Luca had taken the lead on the environmental survey and the latest round of testing, he should get the experience defending his data to a roomful of strangers. Luca was excited and also very nervous, particularly when it became clear that the conference was going to be well attended, not just by local bureaucrats and politicians but by radioecologists from across Italy and beyond.
I registered to attend the conference, then spent a week working up the nerve to tell Paul, whom I assumed was also planning to go. He knew about Luca and Bruno, but I had never told him about going out on theAlessandraor that Bruno sometimes slipped me cash for cleaning the current meters and doing other odd jobs. In November, the team had acquired several big jugs of Rhodamine B, and we’d traveled all over the archipelago, dumping it in various embayments. The places where the viscous red liquid quickly dissipated had high flushing rates, which meant that radionuclides were unlikely to hang around for long; the places where the Rhodamine B dissipated more slowly had low flushing rates, and these were the ideal spots to test for radionuclides going forward.
I had expected Paul to be combative about my plan to attend the conference, but when, over dinner, I finally got around to telling him that I’d registered, he didn’t say a thing.
The silence was uncomfortable, so I kept talking. “I thought it’d be nice to support Luca.”
Paul nodded, slowly, and when I pushed—trying to ascertain whether he was really all right with my going—he told me it was a free country.
Noted.
I was going to the conference to support Luca, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also hopeful I’d run into Teo. I suspected he’d be covering it, and I hadn’t seen him since before Christmas, when he’d come to town and taken Luca, Bruno, and me for drinks. In the intervening months, I’d missed him—more than I cared to admit, and I think if I’m being honest, part of the reason I was taking classes and cleaning current meters had to do with putting him out of my mind, or at least trying to.
As fate would have it, I ran into him on my way to the conference. I had stopped at Café Gargiulo for a coffee, and he was sitting at an indoor table, drinking an espresso and reading over some notes.
“Can I join you?” I asked.
He looked up at me and smiled. “Of course.”
He stood, and we greeted each other properly, then I took my seat. “You’re here for the conference?”
“Yes,” he said, and moved some of his papers out of the way. “Are you going?”
I nodded, then told the waiter I’d have a cappuccino. “Luca’s very nervous.”
“He should be,” said Teo. “He’s going to cause quite a stir.”
I tilted my head a little. “Why do you say that?”
“Between us?” said Teo as he offered me a cigarette, which I declined. “There are elevated levels of cobalt-60 and manganese-54 in the water.”
“You’re serious?”
He nodded, then lit his own cigarette. “It sounds like it was easier to find once they knew where to look.”
“You’re talking about the preliminary survey?”
“Right.”
I was a tiny bit hurt that Luca and Bruno hadn’t shared these results with me, but I reasoned that, with the exception of a week they’d spent on the island in January taking samples, I hadn’t seen much of them since they’d wrapped up the preliminary survey in December.
“When did they find out?” I asked.
“Recently,” said Teo, who must have sensed I didn’t like being the last to know. “You can understand why they couldn’t tell you?”
