The Bottom of Your Heart Read Free Page A

left alone, once she was no longer around to look after him.
    Now, on the deck of the steamer, as Enrica clasped her hat to her head with one begloved hand, and pressed a scented handkerchief to her nose with the other, she struggled to remember the enthusiasm and trepidation she had felt when she first set foot in his home. At Easter she had felt she could sweep aside any obstacle, that—with her innate calm and patience—she would be able to claim her desired place, beside the lifetime companion she had chosen in silence, in the privacy of her bedroom, reading and rereading the first awkward letter that he had sent her, in which he asked her permission to greet her when they met.
    She had cooked for him. With Rosa’s help, she’d put together a meal with all the dishes he loved best. She’d picked out a dress, a perfume, a pair of shoes. She’d even planned out the topics of conversation. She was ready; she felt like the woman she most wanted to be.
    She gulped back a sob that was rising in her chest. She felt sorry for herself when she thought back to that night. He’d never shown up at all, and there she had sat, stiff and silent, while Rosa, embarrassed and sad, watched her from the kitchen door, not knowing what to say. Finally Enrica had gotten up and gone home. Later, when her fear for his safety won out over her mortification, she’d stood watching at the window until she’d heard a car pull up in the street below, and she’d seen him step out of the car with a chauffeur holding the door; she’d been able to make out a silhouette in the car’s cab and, in the silent night, she’d heard a woman’s laugh. That woman.
    That was when she’d made up her mind to be happy in spite of him.
    If he preferred the other woman, she could hardly blame him. She’d seen her once, at the Gran Caffè Gambrinus, and she could hardly ignore her beauty, her style, and her elegance. Rosa had said in a contemptuous tone that she was a fallen woman, one of those who smoke in public and flirt with everyone, but Enrica knew how difficult it was, for a simple schoolteacher like her, to complete with someone like that other woman.
    Enrica’s mother—who never missed a chance to point out that when a girl reaches the age of twenty-four she can officially call herself an old maid, that her younger sister (younger!) had not only been married for over two years but already had a son, while Enrica seemed fated to a future of miserable loneliness—watched her with unconcealed and growing concern, and this pained Enrica intolerably, especially now that she couldn’t even lay secret claim to a love she believed was reciprocated. Her father, so similar in temperament to Enrica, quiet and gently determined, understood that if he spoke to her about it he’d only wound her further; and so he watched her surreptitiously, helplessly, sympathetically sharing in the sorrow that he could see on her face.
    Shielding her glasses from the sea’s spray, Enrica told herself that yes, she’d made the right decision. She couldn’t stand the prospect of a long hot summer, of having to duck her head every time she walked past his window; struggling to keep from looking across the street on afternoons when she tutored students forced to take makeup exams in the fall; doing her best to sidestep painful chance encounters with Rosa in the grocer’s shop downstairs. What could she tell the old woman? That she didn’t think she was up to fighting for the man she loved? That the weapons of seduction, which that other woman seemed so expert in, weren’t part of her arsenal? That she was so cowardly and resigned that she was willing to step aside, so long as it put an end to her suffering?
    And so she’d stopped by the teachers’ college where she’d taken her degree and inquired whether they knew of anyone who might be looking for a teacher. Was she running