The Lost Prince Page 13

  Sean and Marco, having spent their young lives in Rome, had heard all too much talk about terrorism to get riled up over yet another incident. But when RAI reported that Michael Simpson had been shot in the stomach, and his father, Victor, in the hand, they were riveted. Then it came out that Natasha Simpson had died at the scene, and Marco fell apart. No matter how many times we tried to explain things to him, he asked over and over whether Natasha would be on the bus when school resumed after the holidays.

  At this remove in time, when terrorism dominates public discourse, it seems unfathomable that this incident played no part in the discussion between Linda and me about whether to remain in Rome. Nor did it dissuade the Conroys from returning. Did we imagine that we were immortal? In Piazza Navona somebody had scrawled in chalk, “Americans, you will be sent home in boxes.” But we went there every weekend to watch the boys ride bikes.

  While terror didn’t change our plans, it insinuated itself into my writing. The same held true for Pat Conroy. In Beach Music he re-created the Hezbollah attack on Fiumicino with such grisly specifics that friends of the Simpson family grumbled that he had exploited their tragedy. But everywhere Pat turned, the terror inside him found an objective correlative outside him, and all his novels, no matter how humorous, hinged on violence.

  MY MOTHER-IN-LAW ALERTED ME TO an intriguing double murder near their retirement home in Naples, Florida. A young businessman, Steven Benson, allegedly planted a pipe bomb in his mother’s Chevy Suburban and killed Margaret Benson (sixty-three) and her son Scot (twenty-one), and badly burned her daughter Carol Lynn Benson Kendall (forty). Prosecutors argued that Steven had an overpowering motive—the desire to inherit an estate estimated at $16 million.

  The story had all the ingredients of a successful true crime book—wealthy flamboyant characters (boring criminals and poor victims needn’t apply), a posh gated community (trailer parks held no appeal), and a secret scandal involving Scot Benson who was actually his sister’s, Carol Lynn’s, illegitimate son. I drafted a ten-page proposal, signed a contract, and over spring break Linda and I brought the boys to Florida, where we stayed with her parents. It could hardly escape me that this was a ghoulish vacation; while the rest of the family frolicked on the beach I studied autopsy photos.

  Then the defense petitioned for a delay and the trial was postponed until summer. While Linda, Sean, and Marco flew back to Rome, my in-laws asked me to drive their car, packed with their belongings, to their home in Pittsburgh. En route, I stopped at the Conroys’ in Atlanta, where Pat was alone with Gregory and Emily. A storm had just passed through, stripping the azalea bushes and strewing petals like snowflakes over Peachtree Circle. But the windows of the house were wide open and the three of them sat at the kitchen table in tee shirts as if on a sundeck. Not that they looked relaxed. They appeared tense, perhaps petrified by the cold. Pat told me to pull up a chair and listen to Emily. Now twelve, she recounted in an eerily calm manner how her father, Alan Fleischer, had sexually abused her since the age of five.

  It all started, Emily said, with father and daughter snuggling in the same bed. Then he began kissing and touching her. Later he started masturbating on her and sticking his penis into her mouth. This past summer in Tucson, things had gotten much worse.

  She painted a lurid picture that appalled me and enraged Pat and left Gregory looking sick. Pat roared that he would ruin Fleischer, would have him jailed, would kill him. The more theatrical his threats, the calmer Emily became. As she continued her clinical narrative, the two of them seemed like flint and straw; every word she uttered had a kindling effect on Conroy.

  I couldn’t judge the truth of what she told us, but everything about her affect struck me as odd. Of course, this wasn’t the place and we weren’t the people for her to talk to. She should have been speaking to a therapist or the police, not her overwrought stepfather, stunned brother, and me. But she had spent much of her childhood listening to Pat enthrall crowds with tales of his father’s abuse. Was that what persuaded her to share such intimacies with an audience?

  The phone rang, and Pat answered it. Andy Karsch was on the line from LA with an update about The Prince of Tides. Barbra Streisand was in negotiations to star, direct, and produce the film.

  Gregory left the table; I sat there in the cold kitchen, gazing across at a child with curly dark hair and an astigmatic eye that gave her a slightly evasive look. I wanted to reassure Emily, offer solace. But before I could decide what to say, she told me what her father had done to her the last night in Tucson.

  Along with shock, a great sadness settled over me. As deeply as I sympathized with Emily, I also felt sorry for Pat. I knew he would punish Alan Fleischer. You could depend on that. And in the process he would punish himself. Now that his first novel in six years was about to come out, now that he was ready to move back to Rome, I was sure he would take on yet another rescue mission. Although determined to talk him out of it, I had little hope that he would listen to me.

  12

  In June, before I decamped to Florida to cover the Benson murder trial, the Conroys landed in Rome in time for a farewell dinner and the next day helped carry our luggage down to the taxi for the airport. They had rented a duplex penthouse on Piazza Farnese, and from the rooftop terrace they had commanding views of the Campidoglio in one direction and in the other the dome of St. Peter’s, which French author Henry de Montherlant called “the candle-snuffer of western thought.” Pat savored that quote.

  The front windows opened onto the piazza embossed like a silver medallion on the centro storico’s breast. Two Egyptian fountains, pilfered from the Baths of Caracalla, babbled as pleasantly as brooks. Off to the left loomed the Palazzo Farnese, a sublime example of Renaissance style, its upper facade designed by Michelangelo. Currently it housed the French Embassy.

  The scene enjoyed by the Conroys was seldom static; it altered by the hour. In the morning, the Caffe Farnese set out tables, unfurled its umbrellas, and sold the best cornetti in town. Then an old man in a peaked hat pretended to be a parking lot attendant, pocketing a few lire from each motorist. By evening, weather permitting, young couples congregated on the ledge in front of the French Embassy. At first they confined themselves to kissing and caressing. But as darkness fell, they stretched out full-length, convinced of their impregnability under the watchful gaze of armed guards and surveillance cameras.

  In an adjoining piazza, Campo dei Fiori, Lenore did the daily shopping, undaunted by her comic-opera Italian. She spoke to merchants with great brio, and even though she suspected what she said was not just ungrammatical, but obscene, she generally brought home what she needed. She was devoted to an establishment she called Fratelli Ladri, the Robber Brothers, where the owners scolded her for pawing at the produce and smudging her fingerprints on the canned goods. She didn’t care. She liked that they remembered her name and sang out, “Ben tornata,” as if she were a family member.

  While I was in Florida, we corresponded regularly, and to my dismay, Pat’s and Lenore’s letters sounded no less anguished than those they had sent from Atlanta.

  “I believe having hit rock bottom,” Lenore wrote, “with no place to go but up, we are on the mend. The biggest problem has been the frustration of dealing with our rotten two-faced landlord, but today the SIP people made a live appearance in our apartment to deliver 2 (count ’em!) new telephones. I’m confident that by the time we do have [a working phone] we will have fully adjusted to not having one and most of our friends’ telephones will be guasto.” (broken)

  Some of her unhappiness, Lenore revealed, derived from the news that Steve and Joan Geller intended to divorce. Because life in Rome often resembled a marriage afflicted with hysterical shouting matches and passionate reconciliations, the last thing anyone could abide was for the turmoil in the streets to invade a home. That this had befallen a couple who meant so much to us, a husband and wife who seemed to have expat life figured out, deepened the distress.

  Lenore mentioned no
thing about the fortunes of The Prince of Tides, but Linda and I had read about its multi-million-dollar paperback and film deals. Pat also said nothing about his success. It was as if he feared that whatever he gained, he was bound to lose. Instead he indulged in orgies of humorous self-abasement.

  The return address on his letter of August 5—“Piazza Farnese 51, Atlanta, Georgia 30309 (Oh Jesus)”—suggested his head and his heart inhabited different zip codes. “I’m sure you’ll return soon, get me laughing again and put this horror in perspective. Forget that it’s a hundred degrees inside the basilicas, that the rondini [sic] all died of the heat, that the telephone just came last Friday, that the landlord has begun eviction service, that the kids talked me into buying a turtle, that we’ve had 95 teenage visitors from Atlanta . . . Forget all that.

  “We do know now why everyone leaves Rome in the summertime. Far too many people come through the city and we ought to move to Bonn or the Orkney Islands as a defensive measure . . .

  “I always forget about the struggle of daily life in Rome but Lenore tells me it’s all worth it. Lenore seems happy as a pig in shit to be back. Of course, she’s about to be evicted from her home for non-payment of rent, so we’ll see how she adjusts to living under a bridge on the Tiber . . . No, I’ve not written a single word of deathless prose since I got here. Yes, you need to worry about my Roman attitude, but I’ll be cured by your prompt return.”

  STEVEN BENSON WAS CONVICTED ON two counts of first-degree murder. The jury spared him the death penalty and sentenced him to consecutive life terms. The courtroom had seethed with so many authors, agents, and screenwriters the trial might have been a cutthroat literary conference. The bloodletting hit slimy bottom when a reporter, pretending to be from USA Today, claimed he was writing profiles of the half a dozen writers who had book contracts. After milking each of us for information, he churned out a general backgrounder that made it appear he had covered the case from the start.

  Once I returned to Rome, I had ninety days to submit a finished 500-page manuscript of Money to Burn. (Pat Conroy supplied the title.) Our new apartment, above a tire dealership and a TV repair shop, had a cubicle off the kitchen, barely adequate to accommodate a table and a chair. There I gobbled breakfast and lunch as I scribbled, frantic to meet my deadline. The publisher wanted my book to hit the market first. I suspected that all the accounts of the Benson murders would be reviewed together and kill each other off. Still I pressed on, well aware I wouldn’t receive the last installment of my advance until I produced an acceptable draft.

  In late September, the Conroys invited us to their apartment for dinner. Since the Communist Party was throwing a street fair in Piazza Farnese, it looked as though Pat had hired a cast of hundreds and a brass band to welcome us. The grown-ups sipped aperitivi on the terrace, marveling at the sky where scraps of salmon-colored clouds clung in a herringbone pattern. The kids ran downstairs to rub elbows with the comrades and play dubious games of chance. Gregory and Megan, Emily and Marco broke into applause when Sean won a skateboard at the chuck-a-luck wheel.

  Ever alert for opportunities to demonstrate to Linda the wisdom of living in Italy, I asked where else in the world we could witness such splendor, allow our children such freedom, and rest confident that no harm would come to them even in the clutches of Godless communists.

  Lenore concurred. Linda kept her counsel. Pat blew a lip fart. I assumed his grousing was good-natured. But it soon became apparent that he was seriously pissed off at all things all’italiana.

  “I can live with a certain amount of aggravation,” he said. “I’ve rented apartments here before and I know what to expect. I don’t mind paying an extortionate price, and we’ll eventually get the place furnished. But when we went to sign the lease, I found out the owner refused to list the actual price. He said this has to be a secret agreement between us. Yet I had to give him a signed assurance that I’d vacate the flat at three months’ notice. In exchange he gave me a verbal promise that we’ll be able to stay for three years. I feel like a guy who just bought an underwater lot in Port Alligator, Florida.”

  I laughed and thanked him for supplying my next “Letter from Rome”—“Real Estate in a Surreal State.” But that didn’t jolly him out of his malign mood. Like the rabble of starlings flying overhead, Pat noisily flittered from grievance to grievance, until he lit on Alan Fleischer. “He’s the first person I’ve ever met with no conscience whatsoever. He’ll do anything to hurt Lenore and me even if it means hurting his children. Especially if it means hurting his children. Know what Emily told me the other night?”

  “Pat, please don’t,” Lenore said. “Mike and Linda are here to celebrate our return.”

  “How can I celebrate after what she said? It was bad enough that he beat off on her.”

  “Pat, you promised,” Lenore wailed. “You swore to Emily it was safe to talk to you.”

  “She knows I’m going to file a report with the police.”

  “Mike and Linda aren’t the police.”

  Grudgingly, he changed the subject, and almost as grudgingly he updated us about The Prince of Tides. He insisted he never read reviews, positive or negative. Once a book was out, he said he didn’t care what critics thought. Nobody, he said, was more aware of his shortcomings as a novelist than he was. Anyway he had bigger things on his mind.

  “Your worries are over,” I tried to convince him.

  “Not as long as Fleischer’s alive.”

  Later Lenore confided how thoroughly Pat had immersed himself in Emily’s troubles and assumed responsibility for what had “happened on his watch.” Each day after school, he and Emily disappeared into the master bedroom, and while his stepdaughter stretched out and shut her eyes, he took notes. The rest of the family had strict instructions to steer clear, and only afterward learned that Emily now claimed Dr. Fleischer had raped and forcibly sodomized her.

  Lenore couldn’t bear to picture what her daughter had endured. But almost as disturbing to her as Emily’s trauma was the image of her whispering secrets to her stepfather, like a patient in psychoanalysis. That Pat himself had been physically and psychically abused by Don Conroy, that he had doubtful objectivity about Fleischer, added to Lenore’s anguish.

  Was Emily telling Pat what she imagined he wanted to hear? Had he elicited from her what he wanted to believe? Lenore acknowledged that Emily was susceptible to suggestion. The two of them had attended a rally in Alabama for sexual abuse victims, where Emily spoke with a number of women who described satanic rituals. On the ride home, she claimed that Alan had driven a little girl into the desert outside of Tucson and killed her. Lenore had no doubt this was a fabrication, not something that deserved to be reported to the police. But she couldn’t decide what to make of the stories Emily told Pat.

  IN OCTOBER PAT TRAVELED TO the Frankfurt Book Fair, then proceeded to the States for a coast-to-coast promotional tour. In his absence, Lenore had us over for Thanksgiving dinner, and by then the penthouse was furnished. An immense marble coffee table looked heavy enough to crack the living room floor, Pat’s library had been shelved on three freestanding bookcases, and a life-size statue carved out of a single slab of wood appeared to stand poised to slice the turkey. The landlord had assured Lenore that the statue would be better than a husband. When I proposed a toast, I spoke as if the wooden nobleman were her husband, and expressed gratitude to Pat for a meal he paid for even though he wasn’t on hand to eat it.

  AFTER HIS WEEKS ON THE road, bloated by hotel dinners and cocktail parties, Pat couldn’t be coaxed onto the tennis court. He carped about the hollowness of his life in Italy, shut off from friends in the States and alienated by his poor grasp of the language here. He started repeating the lamentation I remembered from his first stay: “I’m tired of being the most interesting person in the room.”

  Because I loved him, I didn’t fire back that the more often he said this, the less interesting he sounded. I thought I understood his predicament. Now that he was wea
lthy and well-known, he felt no better than when he had been poor and obscure, and he behaved as if he had been gypped—literally cheated out of what should have been his. Don Conroy had stolen his childhood. Now Rome was robbing him of the recognition he had earned.

  Lenore believed Pat had been on his own so long, it was difficult for him to adjust to domestic life. For months he had lived like a hermit on Fripp Island finishing The Prince of Tides. Then he had plunged into promoting the book. “Rejoining the family,” she said, “was something he didn’t relish. In Atlanta he could go to Cliff Graubart’s bookstore or leave town for a few days. In Rome, he has no place to escape. Nobody makes a big deal about him or asks for an autograph. He feels stuck and dependent, and because he’s miserable, he makes the rest of us miserable.”

  Laughingly, she added, “He even misses American junk food. He made a mess of the kitchen cooking up a batch of salt-and-vinegar potato chips.”

  I did what I could to convince Pat he was better off away from the personal and professional stresses in the States. I introduced him to the new fellows and residents at the American Academy, I got him on the list of guests at the screenings of English-language films hosted by Variety’s bureau chief, and I took him and Lenore to a St. Patrick’s Day party at the Irish Embassy, where everybody wore green except a contingent of Cardinals in scarlet robes. I arranged a dinner with Galway Kinnell, a poet and tennis partner of mine, who knew Pat’s sister Carol Ann, herself a poet. Whenever a new correspondent arrived or an old one departed, I invited Pat to catered events where we freeloaded off the extravagant entertainment budgets of international journalists. We watched NFL games on late-night satellite TV and went to boxing matches in Parioli. One weekend, with the help of connections in the travel industry, I got the Conroy family comped at the Gritti Palace Hotel in Venice. But none of this broke his funk.