The Lost Prince Read online

  Apart from this theatrical foray, Helprin and his wife, Lisa, a lovely Jackie Kennedy lookalike, mostly sequestered themselves in the writer’s studio, a cottage barnacled to the Aurelian Wall. There, they cooked meals on a hibachi, and Mark corrected the galleys of Winter’s Tale and did pull-ups on an overhead beam. He told me he detested parties, the smell of coffee, the taste of liquor, and the vileness of literary logrolling. When I suggested introducing him to Gore Vidal, he gave an emphatic no. He loathed Vidal’s position on Israel and his sexual politics.

  Still, we got along amicably, and I viewed him as a superb comic character, a bit like Evelyn Waugh whose curmudgeonliness contrasted with his regal writing style. I regarded Helprin’s work, at its best, as beautifully fine-grained, and at worst as overstuffed as a Thanksgiving goose. Winter’s Tale followed the furrow first plowed by South American magical realists; its New York City setting was full of flying horses and a bridge built of light beams. What he made of my writing he never divulged, which was fine by me.

  Along with the Conroys, we ate out with the Helprins at La Tana de Noantri in Trastevere, a trattoria around the corner from the Pasquino, the city’s lone English-language movie theater. La Tana was a cheap treat which, we didn’t learn until much later, the Conroys hated. Yet they loyally remained silent, mindful of our budget.

  Pat and Mark had the same agent, Julian Bach, and the evening began with lit biz chat. But then the Gellers joined us, and something about eight people jammed around a table for six changed the dynamic. Steve Geller had recently started writing a satirical column, Disaster Agent, for National Lampoon that skewered the film industry and publishing pretentions. Now, as if trial-ballooning material for future columns, he unspooled hilarious vignettes, which Pat tried to top. Then I tried to top them both.

  “You think that’s bad?” all the stories started. “You think you came out of that book contract or that movie deal with egg on your face and shit on your shoes? Well, listen to this one.”

  But Mark Helprin didn’t catch our drift. After Pat portrayed himself as Li’l Abner lost in a world of his betters and Steve Geller described walking down Hollywood Boulevard beside Daryl Hannah looking like a hairy spider in danger of being stepped on by a stiletto heel, Helprin boasted about his exploits during the Six-Day War. Self-deprecation wasn’t Mark’s mode.

  “Wait a second,” Pat said. “Weren’t you still at Harvard in 1967?”

  “The war lasted from June fifth to June the tenth. Harvard was on summer break. I hopped the first available flight.”

  “Were commercial airlines flying to Israel?” Steve asked.

  “I flew to Cyprus, then caught a ferry to Haifa.”

  “So by the time you got there, it must have been . . . what? A four- or five-day war?” Pat teased him.

  Mark sprang to his feet in a karate stance. To demonstrate his military expertise, he executed several close-quarter combat moves he had mastered in the Israeli Army. “The same principle applies whether it’s a man with a knife or a vicious dog that attacks you. Take the first strike on the fleshy part of your arm. Then once the blade or the dog’s teeth are firmly embedded in your muscle, rip out his throat with your free hand.”

  “Goddamn, Mark,” Pat exclaimed, “I wish I had known this back when Dad was walloping me.”

  “Sit down, Mark,” Lisa begged her husband. “Your pizza’s getting cold.”

  THE DAY I FRETTED TO Pat about my mother flying to Rome for the Christmas holidays, he recommended, “Take it on the fleshy part of your arm. I survived Peggy’s visit. You’ll survive this.”

  I wasn’t convinced. Mom hadn’t seen us since Sean’s birth in Texas eight years ago. She had never met Marco. That was her choice, but somehow she had shifted the guilt onto me. True, I felt sorry for her. Was that the same as loving her? After telling me by telephone about her visit, she posed what struck me as a trick question. “Did I ever beat you when you were a little boy?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Something your sister said set me wondering.”

  “What did Karen say?”

  “She said I used to slap the shit out of you and her.”

  Was she coming to Rome to apologize? “Karen’s right,” I told her.

  “Strange,” Mom said. “I don’t have any memory of that.”

  SHE LANDED AT FIUMICINO ON a dank December morning, worn to a nub by the overnight flight. Although her marriage had always teetered on the brink of mayhem and murder, she and Tommy had been completely co-dependent. Now she was alone for the first time in her life.

  Dressed in lace-up shoes and a quilted beige parka that she might have bought at a charity shop, she resembled those women with cardboard suitcases and dazed expressions who traveled by bus from Poland, intent on receiving Pope John Paul’s blessing before they died. Her hair was dyed in a frowsy Eastern European fashion, shiny black as patent leather.

  As I stepped forward to kiss her, she drew back. “What are you doing to your hair?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, then, do something. White as it is, you look like an old man. People’ll think I’m a hundred.”

  The VW Derby, by now dented and rusty, offended her almost as much as my hair. “Is this jalopy safe?” When we stalled in traffic on the bleak ring road around Rome, she muttered, “I might as well be at the Baltimore airport.”

  To defend the city, I detoured onto the Aurelia Antica, a scenic route past beautiful villas swagged with geraniums and bougainvillea.

  “What do you call those trees?” she asked.

  “Umbrella pines.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said scornfully.

  “Call them whatever you like.” It shamed me to sound so hostile. Mom looked like a broken doll, no longer the monster who had bitch-slapped me from childhood into adulthood. Softening, I pointed to the Villa Doria Pamphili park, where Sean and Marco played.

  “It’s pretty,” she agreed. “But I don’t know where I am. I look at this place and I look at you and I can’t figure out who you are.”

  In the succeeding days I did my best to prove who I am. Pat did his best too, putting on a full-court press of Southern charm. At dinner on Via dei Foraggi, he showered her with affection and praised me as a fellow novelist and friend. “I love your boy’s behind”—he pronounced it bee-hind.

  “You sound like a homo,” Mom said.

  “I probably am one. But I promise not to lay a finger on your son. I just want you to know he’s a special guy.”

  “Of course he is. I raised him the same way I raised all my kids.”

  “I bet you raised them by hand.” Pat made a slapping motion.

  “What if I did? It’s none of your business.”

  Unaccustomed to anyone he couldn’t win over, Pat was an impeccable host, steering Mom to the most comfortable chair in the warmest corner and topping her glass up with wine. It amused him that she behaved just as I had described her. Unlike his mother, who gloved her talons in velvet for my benefit, Mom kept her claws out.

  ON THE DRIVE HOME THAT night, Mom squeezed into the backseat with Sean and Marco. Rust had pocked small holes in the rear floorboard, and while the boys tranced in on the road zipping past beneath them, she said, “That baby Susannah is a living doll. Too bad she’ll grow up to look like her father. What does Lenore see in him?”

  I struggled to stay calm. At least to sound calm. “You mean other than the fact that he’s smart and generous and funny and a famous writer?”

  “He’s a big bullshit artist, if you ask me.”

  Before I could bark, Nobody’s asking you, Linda spoke up. “He had a terrible childhood.”

  “That’s what everybody says.”

  “So you’ve read what he went through with his father?” Linda asked.

  “Not a word. It’s just everybody these days claims they had it awful as a kid. You wait—Sean and Marc will grow up and complain about riding around in this rattletrap.”

  W
E GOT MOM TOGETHER WITH the Helprins, the Gellers, and Harry Antrim, a professor from my grad school days at UVA, who was honeymooning with Mary Volcansek, a political science professor whose specialty was Italian law. Mom cheerfully predicted marital disaster for all three couples. What she made of my marriage she revealed obliquely by sympathizing with Linda. “I bet you had a nice break while he was off watching tennis.”

  As for her estimation of my parenting, I anticipated that she’d find me too lenient. Instead, she admonished me for being too strict on the boys. When Marc knocked over a candle and set fire to the tablecloth, and Sean spilled a bowl of bucatini all’amatriciana on the carpet, she wouldn’t hear of my punishing them.

  In theory, the heat in our apartment functioned eight hours a day—four in the morning, four at night. In reality, the radiators remained cold around the clock. Mom kept her quilted parka on indoors, wisecracking, “This is like camping out.” Yet she volunteered to sleep on a glassed-in porch that had previously been a greenhouse. “If it was good enough to keep plants alive, I guess I’ll survive,” she said, as though we had sentenced her to the bed she chose for herself.

  One morning, Sean left a note, printed in block letters and spelled out phonetically, informing us he was sick of scrambled eggs for breakfast and was running away from home. Convinced he had to be somewhere in the apartment, Linda and I didn’t panic. We prowled around, cajoling him to quit hiding. When coaxing didn’t work, I bellowed as I imagine the Great Santini would have. That proved futile, and Linda started sobbing, which upset Marco, who started crying too. Tears misted Mom’s eyes. “I knew it. I just knew from the way you treated the boys, something bad would happen.”

  “Nothing’s happened,” I protested. “I’ll find him.”

  Linda cuddled Marco, comforting him and at the same time herself. Rigid with worry, Mom prayed the rosary. When the phone rang, I feared it was the police or a hospital. It was Pat wanting to play tennis. When I told him Sean was missing, he blurted, “I’m on my way.”

  I threw on a coat and reached the street just as Pat thundered up Via Maurizio Quadrio in his BMW. He bumped over the curb and parked on the sidewalk, all’italiana, and together we patrolled the neighborhood block by block. I dreaded Sean had been flattened by speeding traffic. Or had some predator enticed him into a car? Unlike Mom who had warned me early and often about sex maniacs, I had never lectured Sean about child molesters.

  “I was always running away,” Pat reassured me. “I never got far.”

  We checked at the American Academy, where the portiere swore he hadn’t seen Sean. So we retraced our steps up Via Giacomo Medici, a lover’s lane affectionately known as Jack’em Off Medici. Through an arch in the Aurelian Wall, cars sluiced down to Via Dandolo. At the age of eight, Sean was forbidden to cross streets alone. Had he sprinted past this death trap to Villa Sciarra and its merry-go-round?

  On a wintry day, the gravel paths were deserted, a fountain gurgled into a marble basin like a leaky bath tap, and the calliope was mute. Pat spotted Sean on a bench next to a boxwood hedge that topiary artists had sculpted into triangles. He appeared sheepishly relieved to be rescued—so happy that I hesitated, unsure whether to hug him or spank him. While I dithered, Pat slid in beside him, joking and jostling him, warning him never ever to worry us like this again.

  Persuaded that her prayers had been answered, Mom claimed full credit and granted Pat Conroy no gratitude. But I did. “I’ll pay you back,” I promised.

  “Don’t say that.” Pat and I were out on the terrace, freezing our butts off while Sean was inside fussed over by his mother and grandmother. “Whenever somebody promises to repay me, I’m afraid I’ll lose a friend.”

  “Are we talking about repaying a favor or cash?”

  “Either one. I have this sick habit of throwing money around. To me a tightwad is the lowest life-form.”

  People in Rome had already hit him up for thousands of dollars. A mutual friend here borrowed $20,000 for a down payment on an apartment. In the States Pat reckoned he was owed roughly $800,000, none of which he expected to get back.

  “Jesus, don’t put me in that category, Pat. I’d never ask for money.”

  “If you need it, go ahead and ask. Just don’t make a big deal about repaying me. Consider it a gift.”

  “You’re nuts not to collect what people owe you.”

  “That’s what Lenore says. But how’s that supposed to work?”

  “Hire a lawyer if you have to.”

  “And what? Sue my relatives? Sue my friends? I regard it as bread cast upon the water.”

  THAT NIGHT WHILE LINDA READ the boys a bedtime story, I stayed in the living room with Mom as wind blew out of the north, blustery enough to shake the Persian blinds. Curled up in her parka, feet tucked under her rump, she had her face set in the distant, distracted expression she assumed when praying. I tried to picture myself in her place, an exercise I had vainly attempted since childhood. What made her the way she was? What accounted for her alternating currents of anger and exhilaration, her saintliness and satanic temper?

  She had been diagnosed as manic-depressive—the term “bipolar” hadn’t then been invented—and prescribed lithium. When she couldn’t tolerate that drug, doctors suggested different ones, and her life devolved into a quest for the precise elixir whose side effects wouldn’t make her more abrasive. Meanwhile, she prayed for her special intentions, which included the salvation of John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon.

  As if reading my thoughts, she broke the silence. “I’m praying your next book will be a bestseller.”

  “Just pray that it’ll get published.”

  “No. Before I die, I want to see your name on the bestseller list.”

  “I’m not that sort of novelist.” Not that I didn’t yearn to be better known and better remunerated.

  “How come a lard-ass like Pat Conroy is famous and you’re not?” she asked.

  “Pat’s my friend. We’re not in competition. Look how quick he was to help today.”

  “Doesn’t it gall you that a guy with a big gut and funny hair sells better than you do?”

  “It’s not a beauty contest. We’re different kinds of writers.”

  “Well, I’m praying you become his kind and write a bestseller.”

  To change the subject, I told her I had managed to buy tickets to midnight Mass at St. Peter’s. That was the best place and time, I pointed out, to pray for whatever her heart desired.

  STEVE GELLER, NOMINALLY JEWISH, HARBORED his own notions of the divinity and invoked “the gods of laughter,” whom he believed gummed up the gears of life and doled out random rewards. Shortly before New Year’s, with Mom still in afterglow from crossing paths with Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s, I allowed myself the luxury of praying we might make it through the holidays with no lasting damage. Linda and I hired a babysitter and took Mom to Trastevere to meet friends. Avoiding the spider trap of twisting alleys, I parked at the foot of Via Garibaldi, and we followed a staircase down to Via della Frusta—Street of the Whip.

  In the ’80s, muggers and purse-snatchers marauded through this rione. To be on the safe side, Linda and Mom strapped their purses on bandolier-style, and the three of us linked arms and marched toward the restaurant like a phalanx of centurions on guard against barbarians.

  The meal proved to be pleasantly uneventful, and afterward, because our friends were unfamiliar with the neighborhood, they asked me to walk them to a cab stand. Linda and Mom stayed behind, finishing the last of the wine, waiting for my return.

  But I got delayed by a piece of guerrilla street theater. Even at that late hour, bums and winos, backpackers and guitar pluckers surrounded the fountain in Piazza di Santa Maria. When a Fiat careened into the square, it swerved so close, it almost ran over their feet. Then it swung around for a second ambuscade, and several of the backpackers and guitar pluckers pulled guns. Maybe they were plainclothes cops. Maybe thugs. Whatever they were, they chased away the d
eranged driver, and by the time I reached the restaurant, eager to describe what I had witnessed, Mom and Linda had set out on their own.

  Hurrying to catch them, I intended to read Linda the riot act. She knew better than to roam around at this hour. Discarded syringes crunched underfoot as I scrambled up the steps to the car. The two women sat inside with the doors locked, looking shell-shocked. The knees of Linda’s slacks and the elbows of her coat had been torn and she was bleeding badly. Mom groaned, cradling one arm to her chest.

  “A man jumped us on Via della Frusta,” Linda said.

  “I thought he was going to rape us,” Mom added.

  “He grabbed my purse,” Linda said, “and tried to rip it off my shoulder. He dragged me and I kicked him in the crotch until he let go and ran away. There’s one guy who’ll never have children.” She did her best to pass it off as a joke.

  “Why didn’t you wait in the restaurant?”

  “Don’t blame your wife,” Mom growled. “She saved me from getting raped.”

  I sped to Nuovo Regina Margherita Hospital, which was anything except nuovo. Built a thousand years ago as a monastery, its only “new” section was an emergency room constructed in the ’60s and already so stenciled with graffiti it resembled an Egyptian tomb inscribed with hieroglyphics.

  In the ER, I rang the bell at the admissions desk until a yawning fellow in a lettuce-green smock stumbled out of a back room. With no urgency, he ambled along a hallway, switching on lights. Mewling cats frisked around our feet.

  In the radiology department, a well-nourished body occupied the x-ray table. It might have been a corpse laid out on a morgue slab. But the gent in the green smock nudged the guy awake and informed him there was a patient who appeared to have a broken arm. While Linda stepped behind a screen and had her cuts and abrasions treated, the radiologist instructed Mom, “Spogliati,” adding in accented English, “Off the clothes.”