Referred Pain: Stories Read online

  “Of course not!” With all her sophistication, she seemed shocked, as children are invariably shocked at their parents’ adventures. “They were kids to her. She and my father used to joke about them after they left. He would guess which ones liked her and she would correct him. I remember them laughing over their coffee. They could never agree on which ones.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you mean, you see? What on earth does that mean?

  “I don’t know, it’s just something to say when you don’t know what else to say.”

  “Don’t worry, it wasn’t malicious laughter. They loved being around the students. They said it kept them young.”

  I was newly disturbed when we parted. So close, she had said the very first day. So devoted. But I couldn’t lose myself in brooding all over again, at this late date. I would understand no better, only feel more pain. What did it matter now? She was dead. The boy I had been was as good as dead. Except for Francesca, that is.

  A few days later she turned up in my office, very businesslike, with the translation. I thanked her and made a note to have the secretary send her a check. She said to contact her if there were any problems with the text and wrote her phone number on a slip of paper.

  “Do you live in the dorms?”

  “No, I’m a grad student, remember? I’m too old for the dorms. I have an apartment across campus.”

  “1 see.”

  “Ah,” she laughed, “there you go again. Seventy-four Crabtree Street, if that’s what ‘I see’ meant this time.”

  “No, it didn’t, actually.”

  “I see,” she said, still smiling, taunting. There are countless rules, nowadays, regarding the most tenuous innuendos chanced by professors. One has to be wary, even someone like me who has never chanced anything of the kind. No rules for the opposite, I thought.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” It was fatherly interest—I hoped she would say yes. I could invite them over together. It would be easier for me, as well as for my wife.

  To my surprise, her face turned sober. Younger. “There’s someone back in Rome I’ve known a long time, and I always thought … but now I’m not sure anymore.”

  “You mean someone from before college? But you were so young.”

  “Well, yes. We both knew there might be other people. We’re far apart and I’m not … shy that way—” She paused and gave me the oddest look, half-earnest, half-coy, utterly young, yet I had seen enough of her, not to mention her mother, to know it was also maddeningly canny. Economical as ever, she was accomplishing a great deal at once. “Still, there was some understanding … When I went back last fall, when Mother died, we spent a lot of time together. And at a time like that, when someone is close to you and acts kind, you tend to accept what they do for you, and then they think … Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “But now I wonder. I feel it would be retreating, in a way. From I don’t know what. From life. I see people around and I’m, well, interested, what’s wrong with saying it? Everybody is. Why should I have to hold back because I promised things when I was almost a child and didn’t know any better? And yet he’s a dear friend of the family, he’s—Oh, look, I’m sorry. Why on earth would you want to listen to all this? I’ve got to be going.”

  “No, really, I am interested.”

  “You are? Why?”

  “I just am. I guess because I knew your parents, and, well, you’re such a lovely young woman.”

  She mistook my words again, willfully, it seemed, and as easily as slipping out of a dress, she slipped out of her earnest, girlish mode. I was sorry, for I loved hearing it, loved her talking to me as if I might be a father. A father figure, anyway.

  “Indeed,” was all she said. She sounded like her mother. I could see how she might be irresistible.

  “‘Indeed.’ That’s hardly better than ‘I see,’” I teased.

  “You’re right. What else can I say to a mixed message?”

  “Mixed message? Not at all. I meant just what I said. Look, you really must come over for dinner one night, meet my family.”

  “Meet your family?” She looked dubious. “Well, thank you. That’s very kind. Do you want to check it out with your wife first, maybe?”

  “I’ll see what night is convenient and let you know. She works some nights. And thanks again for getting this to me so promptly, Francesca.”

  I told my wife about the translation. I told her the almost unbelievable coincidence of the translator being the daughter of a couple who had been generous to me in Rome when I was a student. I told her I needed to go over some small points in the articles with the girl and would like to invite her for dinner one night, partly out of gratitude to her parents and partly to be kind: her mother had died recently. I had never been duplicitous with my wife in this way, but found it remarkably easy. It was what Janet and I had had to do, with her husband, her babysitter, my fellow students. Like riding a bicycle, it all came back. I even remembered it was not necessary or propitious to add lies, such as that Francesca seemed lonely and found it hard to make friends, and so on. My wife was struck by the coincidence. Okay, she said, how about Friday night?

  Ah, she had many guises, my old-world young daughter did. She performed graciously the role of foreign student enjoying the hospitality of kind Americans. She praised the food, bantered easily with the boys, helped clear the table, and answered with tact and patience all the usual questions asked of foreigners, comparing life abroad and in the States. After dinner, in my study, we went over a few small points in the translation. I saw I could relax: she was quite professional, as of course was I. I remembered how her mother had chilled my caresses when the professor and the students were in the next room.

  When we returned to the living room the boys had gone upstairs and my wife was curled up in the easy chair, reading the paper. I said I would drive Francesca home. She and my wife exchanged the customary thank-you’s and hopes to meet again. They didn’t kiss as some women do even on first meeting—neither was expansive enough for that—but the warmth between them seemed genuine.

  “Crabtree, was it?” I said in the car.

  “You remembered.”

  “It’s nothing special. I have a good memory for details.”

  “Oh. Well, you have a very nice family. I enjoyed meeting them. You must be quite pleased with yourself.” The lower part of her face was buried in her scarf; she was peering out at me sideways.

  “I’m pleased, yes, I suppose so.”

  “Your wife is a good cook, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you accomplish what you hoped from the evening, then?”

  “I had no specific hopes. I thought it went nicely. Why, were you disturbed about anything?”

  “Not at all, it was fine.” She was silent for the rest of the short ride, except, near the end, to point out the house, an old-fashioned three-story frame house divided into apartments, with an ample porch.

  “I’d invite you to sit on the porch for a while, but it’s too cold.”

  “Freezing for this time of year,” I said. “Anyway, I should get back.”

  “Yes, you should. Definitely.”

  “I’m very sorry you’re irritated. I can’t explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. It’s not too complex to understand.”

  “Please don’t be angry, Francesca.”

  “Oh, all right.” She gave a bit of a laugh and again seemed to shake off the mood as easily as a dress. “I’ll see you around.” And she laid her hand on my arm, just the barest touch.

  “Yes. Good night. Thanks again for the translation. You did a terrific job.”

  “Good night.” She leaned over and kissed me very lightly and swiftly on the lips. It was nothing really, no more than a fleeting feathery brush, but then she waited. I was supposed to kiss her back. And maybe it would have been better if I had—just once, and properly, with ardor; then she could have kept her illusion tha
t, like many a timid professor, I wanted her but didn’t dare risk my domestic peace. A benign, bittersweet illusion, not one of the noxious kinds. Better than my sitting there unmoving and righteous. Yes, I suppose I did the wrong thing. I suppose it was a disgrace not to kiss her, but I feared the disgrace, in my own eyes, of kissing her even once. Besides, I didn’t want to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her mother.

  Back home, my wife was still reading the paper in the easy chair. “That was quick,” she said.

  “She doesn’t live far.”

  “Still, I thought you might take longer.”

  I threw my coat on a chair and headed for the stairs. I was utterly exhausted.

  “There’s something between you and that girl, isn’t there?”

  I stopped on the third stair and faced her. “Nothing of the kind. How could you think that?”

  “I’m not wrong. Maybe nothing yet. Maybe you don’t even know it yourself yet, but there’s something.”

  “You don’t know how wrong you are. It’s out of the question. I’m surprised you should even suggest it.”

  “You should be surprised by me once in a while.”

  “That may be. That may be. But this is inconceivable.”

  “All right, never mind then,” she said, and turned back to her paper.

  She didn’t speak of it anymore, but she thinks it.

  I have never invited Francesca home again. I see her on campus all the time. I watch her from afar and try to avoid coming face to face, for when I do she is cool. To talk to her, to ask her to lunch, which is what I long to do—simply to sit across from her and look at her—would be unfair. In a couple of years, when she finishes her studies, she’ll go away, and I’ll be relieved and bereft, never knowing whether she goes home to marry her childhood sweetheart (doubtful, I think) or falls in love with someone new, maybe an American. It’s not inconceivable that I could run into her somewhere in twenty years, and then will she smilingly, ironically recall how she once had a slight crush on me, very slight, just a vague sense there might be something between us—but I wouldn’t give it half a chance? Would it be possible to tell her then? Or even worse than now?

  All this might happen, unless something changes erratically in me and I do what she wishes and my wife suspects. I believe I am incapable of that, but I know some organisms are capable of the most unpredictable, riotous, malign behavior. I hope I am not.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The following stories have appeared in these publications: “Heat,” in The Ontario Review; “Twisted Tales,” in The Denver Quarterly; “The Stone Master,” in Tri-Quarterly; “The Trip to Halawa Valley,” in Shenandoah; “The Word,” in The Threepenny Review; parts of “Intrusions” (under the title “Full Disclosure”), in Fourth Genre; “Sightings of Loretta,” in Agni; “Deadly Nightshade,” in Artful Dodge; “Francesca,” in American Short Fiction.

  copyright © 2004 by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  cover design by Kathleen Lynch

  978-1-4532-8813-9

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  EBOOKS BY LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ

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