two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond. And what I ultimately had
to respond to was the reality that every speck of my being was telling me to get out of my
marriage. Somewhere inside me an early-warning system was forecasting that if I kept
trying to white-knuckle my way through this storm, I would end up getting cancer. And
that if I brought children into the world anyway, just because I didn't want to deal with
the hassle or shame of revealing some impractical facts about myself-- this would be an
act of grievous irresponsibility.
In the end, though, I was most guided by something my friend Sheryl said to me that very
night at that very party, when she found me hiding in the bathroom of our friend's fancy
loft, shaking in fear, splashing water on my face. Sheryl didn't know then what was going
on in my marriage. Nobody did. And I didn't tell her that night. All I could say was, "I
don't know what to do." I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the
eye with a calm smile and saying simply, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth."
So that's what I tried to do.
Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal/ financial
complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me
wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional recoil that kills
you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the
embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever. To create a family
with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and
meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big
reunion of my mother's family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so
reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager,
then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you
are a grandparent--at every stage you know who you are, you know what your duty is and
you know where to sit at the reunion. You sit with the other children, or teenagers, or
young parents, or retirees. Until at last you are sitting with the ninety-year-olds in the
shade, watching over your progeny with satisfaction. Who are you? No problem--you're
the person who created all this. The satisfaction of this knowledge is immediate, and
moreover, it's universally recognized. How many people have I heard claim their children
as the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It's the thing they can always
lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy-- If I
have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.
But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this
comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the
reunion? How do you mark time's passage without the fear that you've just frittered away
your time on earth without being relevant? You'll need to find another purpose, another
measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being. I
love children, but what if I don't have any? What kind of person does that make me?
Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a
sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order,where "all is correct." But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross
it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion. Nothing follows a
regular course."Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may
bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more
perilous.
I'm lucky that at least I have my writing. This is something people can understand. Ah,
she left her marriage in order to preserve her art. That's sort of true, though not
completely so. A lot of writers have families. Toni Morrison, just to name an example,
didn't let the raising of her son stop her from winning a little trinket we call the Nobel
Prize. But Toni Morrison made her own path, and I must make mine. The Bhagavad
Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny
imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So now I
have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me
now, thoroughly.
Anyway, I bring all this up only to admit that--in comparison to my sister's existence, to
her home and to her good marriage and to her children--I'm looking pretty unstable these
days. I don't even have an address, and that's kind of a crime against normality at this ripe
old age of thirty-four. Even at this very moment, all my belongings are stored in
Catherine's home and she's given me a temporary bedroom on the top floor of her house
(which we call "The Maiden Aunt's Quarters," as it includes a garret window through
which I can stare out at the moors while dressed in my old wedding gown, grieving my
lost youth). Catherine seems to be fine with this arrangement, and it's certainly
convenient for me, but I'm wary of the danger that if I drift about this world randomly for
too long, I may someday become The Family Flake. Or it may have already happened.
Last summer, my five-year-old niece had a little friend over to my sister's house to play. I
asked the child when her birthday was. She told me it was January 25.
"Uh-oh!" I said. "You're an Aquarius! I've dated enough Aquarians to know that they are
trouble."
Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I
had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I'm not careful: Crazy
Aunt Liz. The divorcee in the muumuu with the dyed orange hair who doesn't eat dairy
but smokes menthols, who's always just coming back from her astrology cruise or
breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of
kindergarteners and says things like, "Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I'll
let you wear my mood ring. . . ."
Eventually I may have to become a more solid citizen again, I'm aware of this.
But not yet . . . please. Not just yet.
31313131Over the next six weeks, I travel to Bologna, to Florence, to Venice, to Sicily, to Sardinia,
once more down to Naples, then over to Calabria. These are short trips, mostly--a week
here, a weekend there--just the right amount of time to get the feel for a place, to look
around, to ask people on the street where the good food is and then to go eat it. I drop out
of my Italian language school, having come to feel that it was interfering with my efforts
to learn Italian, since it was keeping me stuck in the classroom instead of wandering
around Italy, where I could practice with people in person.
These weeks of spontaneous travel are such a glorious twirl of time, some of the loosest
days of my life, running to the train station and buying tickets left and right, finally
beginning to flex my freedom for real because it has finally sunk in that I can go
wherever I want. I don't see my friends in Rome for a while. Giovanni tells me over the
phone, "Sei una trottola" ("You're a spinning top"). One night in a town somewhere on
the Mediterranean, in a hotel room by the ocean, the sound of my own laughter actually
wakes me up the middle of my deep sleep. I am startled. Who is that laughing in my bed?
The realization that it is only me just makes me laugh again. I can't remember now what I
was dreaming. I think maybe it had something to do with boats.
32323232
Florence is just a weekend, a quick train ride up on a Friday morning to visit my Uncle
Terry and Aunt Deb, who have flown in from Connecticut to visit Italy for the first time
in their lives, and to see their niece, of course. It is evening when they arrive, and I take
them on a walk to look at the Duomo, always such an impressive sight, as evidenced by
my uncle's reaction:
"Oy vey!" he says, then pauses and adds, "Or maybe that's the wrong word for praising a
Catholic church . . ."
We watch the Sabines getting raped right there in the middle of the sculpture garden with
nobody doing a damn thing to stop it, and pay our respects to Michelangelo, to the
science museum, to the views from the hillsides around town. Then I leave my aunt and
uncle to enjoy the rest of their vacation without me, and I go on alone to wealthy, ample
Lucca, that little Tuscan town with its celebrated butcher shops, where the finest cuts of
meat I've seen in all of Italy are displayed with a "you know you want it" sensuality in
shops across town. Sausages of every imaginable size, color and derivation are stuffed
like ladies' legs into provocative stockings, swinging from the ceilings of the butcher
shops. Lusty buttocks of hams hang in the windows, beckoning like Amsterdam's
high-end hookers. The chickens look so plump and contented even in death that youimagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly, after competing among
themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fattest. But it's not just
the meat that's wonderful in Lucca; it's the chestnuts, the peaches, the tumbling displays
of figs, dear God, the figs . . .
The town is famous, too, of course, for having been the birthplace of Puccini. I know I
should probably be interested in this, but I'm much more interested in the secret a local
grocer has shared with me--that the best mushrooms in town are served in a restaurant
across from Puccini's birth-place. So I wander through Lucca, asking directions in Italian,
"Can you tell me where is the house of Puccini?" and a kind civilian finally leads me
right to it, and then is probably very surprised when I say "Grazie," then turn on my heel
and march in the exact opposite direction of the museum's entrance, entering a restaurant
across the street and waiting out the rain over my serving of risotto ai funghi.
I don't recall now if it was before or after Lucca that I went to Bologna--a city so
beautiful that I couldn't stop singing, the whole time I was there: "My Bologna has a first
name! It's P-R-E-T-T-Y." Traditionally Bologna--with its lovely brick architecture and
famous wealth--has been called "The Red, The Fat and The Beautiful." (And, yes, that
was an alternate title for this book.) The food is definitely better here than in Rome, or
maybe they just use more butter. Even the gelato in Bologna is better (and I feel
somewhat disloyal saying that, but it's true). The mushrooms here are like big thick sexy
tongues, and the prosciutto drapes over pizzas like a fine lace veil draping over a fancy
lady's hat. And of course there is the Bolognese sauce, which laughs disdainfully at any
other idea of a ragu.
It occurs to me in Bologna that there is no equivalent in English for the term buon
appetito. This is a pity, and also very telling. It occurs to me, too, that the train stops of
Italy are a tour through the names of the world's most famous foods and wines: next stop,
Parma . . . next stop, Bologna . . . next stop, approaching Montepulciano . . . Inside the
trains there is food, too, of course--little sandwiches and good hot chocolate. If it's raining
outside, it's even nicer to snack and speed along. For one long ride, I share a train
compartment with a good-looking young Italian guy who sleeps for hours through the
rain as I eat my octopus salad. The guy wakes up shortly before we arrive in Venice, rubs
his eyes, looks me over carefully from foot to head and pronounces under his breath:
"Carina." Which means: Cute.
"Grazie mille," I tell him with exaggerated politeness. A thousand thanks.
He's surprised. He didn't realize I spoke Italian. Neither did I, actually, but we talk for
about twenty minutes and I realize for the first time that I do. Some line has been crossed
and I'm actually speaking Italian now. I'm not translating; I'm talking. Of course, there's a
mistake in every sentence, and I only know three tenses, but I can communicate with this
guy without much effort. Me la cavo, is how you would say it in Italian, which basically
means, "I can get by," but comes from the same verb you use to talk about uncorking a
bottle of wine, meaning, "I can use this language to extract myself from tight situations."
He's hitting on me, this kid! It's not entirely unflattering. He's not entirely unattractive.
Though he's not remotely uncocky, either. At one point he says to me in Italian, meaning
to be complimentary, of course, "You're not too fat, for an American woman."
I reply in English, "And you're not too greasy, for an Italian man."
"Come?"
I repeat myself, in slightly modified Italian: "And you're so gracious, just like all Italianmen."
I can speak this language! The kid thinks I like him, but it's the words I'm flirting with.
My God--I have decanted myself! I have uncorked my tongue, and Italian is pouring
forth! He wants me to meet him later in Venice, but I don't have the first interest in him.
I'm just lovesick over the language, so I let him slide away. Anyhow, I've already got a
date in Venice. I'm meeting my friend Linda there.
Crazy Linda, as I like to call her, even though she isn't, is coming to Venice from Seattle,
another damp and gray town. She wanted to come see me in Italy, so I invited her along
on this leg of my trip because I refuse--I absolutely decline--to go to the most romantic
city on earth by myself, no, not now, not this year. I could just picture myself all alone, in
the butt end of a gondola, getting dragged through the mist by a crooning gondolier as
