Trompe l'Oeil Read Online Free Page B

crossed herself, some vestigial response from childhood. They’d walked the inner circumference, gazing at paintings and sculptures, a stone sarcophagus she’d hurried the girls past, and then they left, because Molly was so restless she’d pinched Nora’s arm. Praying was something they did not often do. On the bed, she and Katy and Theo closed their eyes and held hands, but later, when they knew the praying hadn’t worked, she imagined the first of several pacts had begun: her children would not believe in her answers, only in her need to explain. They’d indulge her. About the failed prayers they’d say nothing.
    She tried calling the hospital, dialed the number on the card the medic had given her, speaking her bad Italian, and over the line the questions came rapid-fire in an Italian she couldn’t make out. Inglese? Inglese? Please . She hung up and called the concierge. Yes , he said, this is not a problem, I can help you .
    The concierge appeared carrying a tray of tea and bread and jam, and at first she thought he’d misunderstood, but then he motioned to the telephone, made the call, speaking quickly. His shoes had been shined: his shoes caught the light, and his hands moved fluidly as he spoke. “Signora y Signore Murphy,” he said, and then, to Nora, “They do not give me the information, they find someone to speak English for you,” and when he handed her back the phone it was a woman, who said Signore Murphy was with his daughter, she was very very sorry, they would want to contact the consulate. Katy and Theo watched Nora’s face. “So we will have more information from Mr. Murphy?” she said. And the woman said, “Of course, yes.”
    â€œStay a minute?” Nora asked the concierge. She traveled as far as the next room, the children’s room, not looking at Molly’s suitcase or at Molly’s scattered nightclothes, picking up Theo’s and Katy’s bags and carrying them back to her own room, where the concierge was coaxing Katy to eat bread and jam.

    It was almost evening when James returned to the hotel and found them all on the bed not sleeping, very quiet, and he could not tell from Theo’s or Katy’s expressions if Nora had told them Molly was gone. They gazed up at him and then seemed to focus behind him briefly, before refocusing on him. The apparent calm was temporary. Theo closed his eyes, and Katy, pale, began sobbing. There was a faint fetid smell—someone had been sick, and someone had tried to clean up—and pieces of orange rind littered the table, beside a tray awash in bread crumbs. He was not wearing his own clothes; he was wearing hospital clothes, and in the hallway outside the room he left a bag containing his things and Molly’s. He told them Molly loved them. Katy scooted closer to the center of the bed, and the four of them stayed there. After a while Katy and Theo fell asleep. James didn’t know whether or not he wanted to fall asleep, whether or not he was ready for the shock of waking again. For now there was a quiet numbing. He had stepped into the ambulance with his already-dead daughter, pretending she was not, because you needed to have that little stretch of hope, you needed time to adjust. Whether he’d pretended for Nora or himself he didn’t know. Someone had to stay lucid,and because someone had to stay lucid he had not screamed or thrown himself on the ground, though the outcome would have been no different, his other children no less traumatized. Maybe they all should have thrown themselves on the ground, he and the family and the piazza full of witnesses, weeping and shaking until the day vanished, or until they themselves lost consciousness and slept on the stone road awaiting some other resolution, say, the erasure of time.
    In the ambulance he’d held her hand and stroked her bloody forehead, as though she were still occupying her body. The paramedics