They settle into the heavy chairs on the balcony looking out over the city; Kathy is insistent that Tia also have a glass of wine, and after the day she's had Tia isn't inclined to fight her on that score. The wine gives her something to do with her hands, something to look at that isn't Kathy, Kathy who is beautiful and blonde and sweet and radiating a quiet, vengeful sort of rage that gives Tia the urge to flee.
"Kathy, where's Eli?" she asks, as gently as she can manage. Elliot is not home, has vanished into the night, and Kathy has blamed that on her, on Olivia, and Tia doesn't know what Eli might have witnessed, what he might have overheard, and she is concerned for the boy. Elliot's son is nearly the same age as her own, and he's a sensitive soul, and someone ought to be thinking about him while his parents are coming unglued.
"In his room," Kathy says. "I don't think he heard anything. If he did he's not coming out. I don't want to go in there yet, though. I don't want him to see me like this."
Like what? Tia wonders. Angry, hurt? What has Elliot said to his wife, and where has he gone? Was he stupid enough to tell his wife that his mistress is in town? Did Kathy throw him out, tell him to sleep in a hotel, or did he leave on his own? Did they scream at one another, did old sins come to light, is he about to come walking back through the front door, calmer now and begging his wife's forgiveness? Honestly, Tia half expects him to. He's been married to Kathy his entire adult life; Elliot doesn't know how to be apart from her. He doesn't want to be.
Does he?
"Kathy-"
"Did you see her today? Olivia?"
The question is fast, and sharp, the ripping off of a band-aid. Kathy is staring at her, intently, as if she is searching Tia's face for answers, but Tia can't meet her gaze.
"Yes," Tia says warily. Yes, she did see Olivia. And heard her, and witnessed an altercation between Elliot and his former partner that she can't quite wrap her head around, but Kathy doesn't need to know all that.
"How did she look?" Kathy asks. "Good?"
Olivia is an arrestingly beautiful woman, but somehow Tia knows she can't say that to Kathy. She looked strong, and confident, and I'm jealous of her ass; no, she cannot say that to Kathy, Kathy whose husband has fucked Olivia, whose husband Tia would fuck herself, if given the opportunity.
"What's going on, Kathy?" Tia asks instead. It seems the safer option.
Kathy sighs, runs her finger around the rim of her wineglass, stares out at the city.
"I'm going to miss it here," she muses. "I love this place."
"Kathy," Tia repeats her name, alarmed now; why the fuck is Kathy talking about leaving? It hasn't been so very long since they left the station, just long enough for Tia to eat and shower, and she can't imagine that Elliot has blown up his entire life in so brief a time.
"You saw them together," Kathy points out, like that explains everything. "Her, and him."
"He told me they used to be partners," Tia allows. "They seemed to…get along. But she was angry with him."
A sound that is too dark, too bitter to be a laugh bursts out of Kathy's chest.
"I bet she was," Kathy mutters. "I'm surprised she didn't kick his ass."
"She did slap him, once."
"Good for her." It sounds like Kathy means it, like she's glad Olivia hit him, like she thinks he deserves it. Like even Kathy, the long-suffering wife, Kathy who won the ultimate prize and kept Elliot for herself and built a fairytale life in Rome, believes that Elliot ought to be punished for what he did to Olivia. For leaving the other woman behind.
"I never hated her, you know," Kathy says then. All that Tia can do right now is listen; she knows what she knows, but she does not know what Kathy knows, and she will not risk causing further damage to Elliot's marriage, not right now. Sure, she's thought about a tawdry affair with him, but she never wanted to take him away from Kathy permanently. Has never wanted the resentment and complications that come from actually destroying a marriage. All she ever wanted was a bit of fun, but she has found herself tangled in an incomprehensible mess instead.
"She always kept him in the road. She'd send him home when he got too in his head, made sure he had Christmas off every year. And she helped us, me and the kids. She was good for him. Sometimes I think…sometimes I think if it wasn't for her, our marriage would've ended a long time ago."
The confession makes Tia shift uncomfortably in her seat. She thought she had the measure of this thing between Elliot and Olivia, thought it was obvious that they'd been in love with each other, that they'd slept together, that Elliot had been unfaithful, but Kathy does not speak of the other woman with derision. Instead there is something almost rueful about her, something that seems begrudgingly grateful to Olivia, and Tia knows, deep down, if she'd ever managed to sleep with Elliot, Kathy would never have spoken of her so kindly. She would not have been good for Elliot. She never wanted to be.
"Did something happen between them?" Tia asks carefully.
"Did they fuck, you mean?" Kathy fires back, and it is uncomfortable, hearing her swear. Kathy never speaks like that. It is as if, Tia thinks, she never knew either of these people at all.
"No," Kathy answers when Tia doesn't respond. "She wouldn't have let him. And if she had…he never would've been able to leave her. God, can you imagine? I used to live that way. I used to live knowing that the only reason I still had my husband was that Olivia hadn't decided to take him yet. I don't even think he realized it. All she ever had to do was ask, and he'd have been gone. He promised me that our family was more important, but…I knew."
The wife always knows, Tia thinks. Maybe it's for the best, that she never managed to bed Elliot. Kathy would've known, and they wouldn't have been friends, after that.
"What happened tonight?" Tia asks. That's what really matters. Whatever happened in New York, that's in the past. The question is what has Elliot done now, and will he turn up for work tomorrow?
"He came home and I just knew something was wrong. He was wrong. I could feel it."
Of course she could; Kathy has been married to Elliot for damn near forty years. She knows him, inside and out. She knows what he's supposed to be like, and she knows when he's off. She knows how he is with Olivia, and without her. She can spot the difference.
"And he told me she was here. And I just…that's it, you know? That's it."
There is a finality, an acceptance, to Kathy's voice that Tia finds disconcerting. As if something has come to an end, here in this place, and something new has just begun.
"He promised me he wasn't talking to her," Kathy says, her eyes a little distant as she gazes out unseeing at the lights of the palazzo below. "I didn't believe him. Ten years, and he doesn't talk to her? She…back home, some days she was the only one he would talk to. And I'm supposed to just accept that he walked away from her? But the way he was tonight…Jesus. He was telling the truth." She sounds as if she can hardly believe it, still, as if it is damn near impossible, the very idea of Elliot going a decade without talking to his Olivia. "He really just left her. And now she's here."
"And in a few days she'll go home," Tia says, searching desperately for an out, for a way to make the situation seem less dire than it is. It would, she thinks, be insane for Elliot to walk away from Kathy now. A lot can change in ten years; he and Olivia might not have anything in common any more. He and Kathy have five children, and Eli is enrolled in school in Rome, and Elliot's job is in Rome. He can't just drop everything and chase another woman back to the States, abandon his family like that. He wouldn't. Tia knows what kind of man he is, and he is not that kind of man. And it's not like Olivia will stay in Italy; she has a son, too, younger than Elliot's, and a command of her own. There's no way they can work through the logistics of that, and even if they could, it's clear Olivia still hasn't forgiven him for her broken heart. She left him on that rooftop, did not linger, did not promise him anything. Whatever exists between them, it can't last, not now.
"It doesn't matter," Kathy says grimly. "He's seen her now. The way he was tonight…all these years, he's just been pretending. He's been pretending to be happy. He's been pretending that he made the right choice, that he's glad we're here. He's been pretending to be in love with me."
"Kathy-"
"We've both been pretending since Eli. We were divorced, you know."
No, Tia didn't know that. Elliot has always talked about his marriage as if it was a constant, unchanging, has never once complained or given her the impression he wanted something more.
"We were divorced, and we were both happy for once. But I got a little lonesome, and he was still feeling a little guilty, and we started fooling around, and I came up pregnant. I should've known better, that's how we ended up married in the first place."
That part Tia does know, and she's always kind of pitied Elliot for that, for the way his entire life was decided for him at seventeen. This job, this flat, this city, it was Elliot's way of making his own choices, but now Kathy has told her that even those choices have hurt him. What would he choose for himself, she wonders, if he didn't have so many other people to think about, so many other hearts he doesn't want to break?
"I couldn't afford to raise a baby on my own, and I was stressed out. He came home because I asked him to, because I didn't want to go through that by myself. And I just think…if I hadn't asked him, if I'd just moved in with my mom, if I'd just met a nice man, maybe none of this shit would've happened. But I was scared."
"He was your husband, Kathy."
"We weren't in love any more," she says it so simply, so casually, that it takes Tia's breath away. "And anything else he wanted, any regrets he had, he just bottled them all up inside, and kept going. It all came out tonight, Tia. I saw it. I think this, now, I think…I think this is the first time I've really seen him since before Eli was born."
One day with Olivia, that's all it took. One day with her, one earnest conversation on the rooftop, and all the restraint and dedication to duty and love for his family that kept Elliot chugging along in a life that wasn't fulfilling came crumbling down. What must it be like, Tia wonders, to hold such sway over another person? For Olivia to spend all that time knowing she holds that power over him? Is Kathy right; did Tia misinterpret Elliot's question about Olivia's son, did she misinterpret Olivia's answer? Has he really never fucked her, and is that really only because Olivia wouldn't let him? Why wouldn't she? And what is she going to do with him now?
"You wanna know the worst part?" Kathy murmurs darkly then.
No, Tia really doesn't want to know. What could possibly be worse than what Kathy has already told her?
"I feel guilty. I do. He was the one who fell in love with someone else, he's the one who walked out the door tonight, and I feel guilty. Like I've stolen the last thirteen years from him. From all of us."
"You love him." That must count for something, Tia thinks.
"I was just scared," Kathy admits. "I didn't really know how to be by myself. Even when we were divorced I never really let him go. And then he shot that girl, and I thought Jesus, I don't even know him. But he told me he wanted to walk away from the job and I thought this is it, you know? I thought this is the best it was ever gonna be. Maybe I just wasn't imaginative enough."
All of this, all of this hurt, just the result of a failure of imagination; it is tragic, Tia thinks. Kathy couldn't imagine a better man for herself than Elliot, couldn't imagine a better life than being married to him, and she clung to what she knew, and let the chance for something better - something better for all of them - slip through her fingers. How different would things have been, Tia wonders, if Kathy had let Elliot go? If there was no Eli, if Elliot had never had to leave Olivia behind? Would he have settled down with Olivia, would they have been happy? Would Kathy have fallen in love again? Or would they all still be sad, and lonesome; was happiness ever really in the cards, for any of them? What good could come of a love that was forged in the breaking of a home?
"Where did he go, Kathy?" Tia asks her quietly then.
"To her," she says simply. "He didn't say that's where he was going, but I know him. She's here, and now that he's seen her…he'll be with her."
"And tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow I have some phone calls to make," Kathy says matter-of-factly. "Even if she turns him away, even if he's just in a bar somewhere right now and he comes slinking back tomorrow, I can't keep doing this. It's a lie, Tia. This place, this life…it's a lie. And I don't want to live it, anymore. I'm going to go home. I think he will, too."
Home. He will go back to New York, back to winter, back to her, if she'll have him. And Tia, she won't have anything.
Maybe that's for the best. Kathy's imagination might have been limited, but Tia's has been overactive. She has conjured a vision of something that will never be; Elliot has room in his heart for only one mistress, and isn't her. She wishes them the best, she really does; after today she has realized that Elliot comes with more complications than she's willing to tackle. He isn't fun, after all.
