“So,” she said. “Tell me about Eleanor. Not your mother.”
Frank coughed up the smoke he’d just inhaled. He’d assumed he would be the one to bring Eleanor up. He did not know that Cleo had heard about the relationship from Zoe weeks earlier. For Cleo, hearing that Frank was in love with someone else was like being stung by a jellyfish; after the first surprising pain had worn off, there was only a dull ache. It would never hurt as much again. And Cleo was determined to be happy for him—but first, they had to talk about it.
“I read your emails last year.” She shrugged, a movement equal parts contrition and dismissal. “It’s funny because I was so upset, but I was laughing too. I like her.” Cleo forced a grin. “Maybe even more than I like you.”
“I do too,” he managed. “Certainly more than I like me.”
What could he say about Eleanor? She was handsome, not beautiful, and didn’t attract the attention Cleo did merely by walking into a room. But she was made of deeper, sturdier stuff. The best sense of humor he’d ever found in a woman, in anyone really, except maybe his mother. But she was kinder than his mother, tenderer too, with a writer’s true capacity for empathy.
“We’re … very fond of each other,” he said.
“I gathered that. You’ve been together a little while now, no?”
Cleo was trying to keep her voice casual, but it had taken on the flinty edge of interrogation.
“We just got a place in Brooklyn,” he said. “I was going to tell you.”
“Brooklyn!” Cleo’s voice jumped an octave. “Wow, things must be serious.”
Frank scrubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “Not far into Brooklyn,” he said. “Just across the bridge.”
“Brooklyn,” Cleo repeated to herself incredulously. “That’s very grown-up. Well, I guess you are both grown-ups. How old is she?” Somehow she had been flustered out of all her intended graciousness.
“Thirtysomething,” Frank said, equally rattled. “Does it really matter?”
“I was just wondering,” said Cleo. “She seems mature, is all. More mature than me.”
This could have been a dig, but her voice was matter-of-fact.
“She turns thirty-eight next week,” said Frank uneasily.
Cleo took a deep inhale on her cigarette. The embers tumbled down the leg of her jeans.
“That’s great,” she said, ferociously batting the ash off her knee. “Tell her happy birthday from me. Buon compleanno, Eleanor!”
She had been straining for cheerful, but she had overshot and ended up in the territory of manic. Frank gave her a long look, then dropped his cigarette and stepped toward her. He clasped her narrow shoulders in his hands.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before I came.”
Cleo looked at her feet. “You don’t owe me anything.”
He shook his head. “I owe you everything,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”
Cleo raised her eyes to his, and her expression softened.
“I left the country, remember?” she said. “You’re allowed to leave Manhattan.”
Frank exhaled. Now was the time to bring up the divorce. It couldn’t be a more natural time. After all, Cleo had landed herself in hospital trying to end their marriage; a divorce was a remarkably gentle approach by contrast. But something stopped him.
“It was actually Eleanor who suggested I come here,” he said instead. “To make sure you were okay.”
Cleo’s fair eyebrows creased into a frown. “She did? You didn’t want to come yourself?”
“Of course I did,” he said quickly. “I just meant—There’s no animosity on her part, is what I mean. She cares about you. I think she admires you.” He was talking too much, but he couldn’t stop. “She’d like to get to know you if, um, circumstances should ever allow.”
Cleo’s brow furrowed further. So Frank had come because of Eleanor. Of course it had not been for her. And there it was, the feeling she had been trying to deny, the dark, oily jealousy rising in her that Frank would do for Eleanor what he would never do for her. Eleanor got this version of Frank, the sober, thoughtful man who took her suggestions, while Cleo had endured the drunken predecessor like a fool.
The urge to puncture the smooth surface of his new love shot through her. It would not have been hard; she had met Eleanor, after all, and knew she was hardly the kind of glittering person Frank liked to see himself reflected in. Just one remark, and she could pierce his happiness like a poison-tipped needle.
But she stopped herself. She would only regret it. And in her heart, she knew Eleanor was good for him. She had not been lying when she said she liked her. Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried. Better to let him go, better to send him off with her love at his back like the warm Roman breeze, even if it carried him toward someone else.
“I’d like to get to know her too,” she said. “She seems … sensational.”
Frank smiled with relief. “She’ll be pleased to hear that,” he said. “And she is. You both are.”
“You two … you are happy?” Cleo searched his face with her usual concentration.
Frank thought about how to answer honestly without hurting her. The first time he and Eleanor had slept together, he’d thought he might die of happiness. He had never waited to have sex with anyone before, certainly never fallen in love with them beforehand. He’d been incredibly nervous, as had she. Everything went wrong; he couldn’t unhook her bra, she’d elbowed him in the stomach, half winding him, and then when he finally did enter her, he’d lasted about thirty seconds before exploding. They had both laughed until tears came. She’d collapsed onto his chest, his arms tight around her back, and fallen asleep right there, right at the center of him, her heart beating against his, and he’d slept too, pinned under her, happy, yes, happy at last.
“We’re trying to be,” he said eventually. “And you? Are you happy here?”
Cleo cast her eyes around the courtyard. It struck her that somehow, miraculously, she was. In the seven months since she came to Rome, she had made art every day, rediscovering the pleasures of both solitude and community. She ate breakfast in the kitchen with the other artists on residency and reconvened with them every evening to discuss the day’s work over wine and pasta. She had seen the single bed where Keats took his final breath and walked with her face upturned through the Sistine Chapel, devouring the medley of gold and flesh and sky.