by Delia Ephron
The cost of a single glass of wine in a restaurant is generally the price of the bottle, according to Finn. I had no idea.
Finn started his meal with grilled fresh anchovies followed by spaghetti with sea urchin, a briny dish that Taylor said Snow would not like when he offered her a taste. Finn was far and away the most adventurous of us. He insisted we finish the meal with limoncello. From the travel and all the drinking, I was loopy.
“If you could return to any age, what would it be?” I asked.
Michael shoved back from the table to signal he wasn’t participating. “I know your answer. Twenty-one. That’s when Dealing opened.”
Finn answered fifteen, and I fell on him in protest. Who picks the most awkward, insecure time of life, but he said he’d gotten laid for the first time at fifteen. Actually he said he had his first girlfriend, a concession to Snow’s presence, but the meaning was clear. Taylor’s favorite was thirty. Snow was a year old. Taylor had stopped being exhausted and was now content. “I understood my destiny,” she said.
Why do I think her remarks about the satisfactions of motherhood were barbs directed at me?
I picked thirty-two. Michael and I had been together a year. My career was blooming. I was getting plum assignments, did a profile of Nancy Pelosi before she was speaker, covered food as the organic movement grew and food became a national obsession. My favorite was one I did on Emeril Lagasse, the telegenic chef of the Food Network. My dad would have been proud, not only of my writing but for snaring Michael, a great literary talent. His second play had been admired but a disappointment, running only six months, but his memoir, Bastard, about his missing father, was about to be published and we had big dreams. Bastard, I should explain, has a double meaning, himself as a fatherless child and his father for abandoning him. It got fine reviews, “respectable” is the word, although it didn’t sell as well as hoped. That’s what gave him the fear, although he never admitted it, that the novel he was working on was his last chance to secure or reclaim his literary reputation.
My dreams were more humble and equally elusive.
We met at a book party. I had tagged along with Rachel, who used to freelance like me. These days she’s what the newspapers refer to as a stay-at-home mom. Over lemon-berry smoothies at Crush, we often lamented being sidelined too young, too soon, like athletes. She’d cycle. I’d do yoga. One week she switched to green tea and, while we talked, she did some origami, folding a napkin into a swan.
Michael had been the center of attention as he often is, even though it was not his book being published. As I passed behind him, he caught my hand and pulled me into the conversation. “Does everyone here know—?”
“Lizzie Ross,” I said. “And they don’t.”
“Elizabeth,” he called me for some time, the only one besides my dad who ever did, but eventually Michael conceded that I am essentially earthy. Not without a New York style, but too ethnic for a name as genteel and cool as Elizabeth.
Michael loves the female body. I’d never been with a man who enjoyed mine quite as much as he did, and, when I met him, I’d slept around. He loved knowing how to play me. An impatient man in life, but he took his time in bed. He was generous, curious, for me an addiction—that was another reason I picked thirty-two. Our sex was rollicking. Edgy sometimes—quickies in elevators, games played in bars. It had been hard to be disconnected while he rode this novel home. I had been looking forward to the erotic anonymity of hotel rooms. I had hopes. Our vacations had always been sexy.
Taylor and Finn parted ways at the hotel. Without a discussion or a good night—it must have been routine—or even a kiss for Snow, Finn took off down the street, his lopsided gait familiar and dear like an animal with a limp.
“Finn, wait up. Lizzie is going with you,” called Michael.
“I’m not.” I waved Finn on. “I’m exhausted. I could sleep standing up.”
In the elevator I fell against him. “Kiss me.” It was one of those small, beautiful old elevators, its polished wood the color of almond. I like to kiss in them.
“Lizzie, behave.”
“Seriously?”
“You’re into Finn.”
“What are you talking about? Oh my God, you’re jealous. I love it that you’re jealous.”
I trailed him to the room, thinking, Do I want to get into this? No. He’s cranky. I’m cranky. We’re jet-lagged. Over the years—eight married, thirteen altogether—I’ve gotten smarter about when to fight. Never at night.
Besides, Michael’s not into kissing, never has been.
He was asleep before I was out of the bathroom. I think he took an Ambien. I woke him up. Not to be coy but I know how to do that, who doesn’t? And before he was fully awake, I had come.
“Jesus, Lizzie,” was the last thing I heard before I dropped off.
I woke him the next morning the same way, straddling him before he was fully awake.
Rome, Day 2
Finn
“HE’S FULL OF SHIT,” I told Taylor the next morning, and she blew up at me. Blowing up for Taylor is a silent-treatment thing. Her lips pinch, sometimes she sniffs as if there’s a bad smell and I caused it, and she stiffens like she’s got a stick up her ass. I dropped the subject, but what the hell, something was wrong there. And why was he paying attention to Snow? He’d looked right through her in London.
“Michael’s nice, isn’t he, Snow?” said Tay. “We’re going to the Forum now. We’ll see him later.”
Snow’s a smart girl. Smart the way I am. She keeps stuff hidden, but she’s got those sneaky glances that tell you she knows more than she’s saying, and she slid one of those my way. “He could go, not you,” she said.
“You’re kicking out your dad?”
“You don’t want to go,” she said so softly I had to ask her to repeat it.
“All that crap about the miracle of his first play,” I said, “getting tossed from—”
“Yale,” said Taylor.
“A three a.m. fairy tale.” That’s what we call the ramblings of drunks at the bar before closing.
“Snow, your dad’s ridiculous. I remember his play. I remember my parents talking about it. It’s not a secret. He won the Pulitzer.” Tay pushed me into the bathroom and shut the door. “I want this to be great for Snow. I want this to be a vacation she’ll never forget. Michael is such an opportunity for her.”
“Want to fuck in the shower?” I said.
“Snow would hear.”
“You would otherwise?”
I got a smile out of her, tight-lipped sure, but I wasn’t shooting for the moon.
“Forget it,” I said. “I like the guy. I do. He’s smart. Just not as smart as he thinks.”
What had bugged me at dinner (and was bugging me already that morning) was where could I smoke? How could I find a way to get outside and scratch the itch? Taylor had been gaga, listening to his stories, Snow wishing he were her dad for all I knew, and I was all, God give me nicotine.
Michael’s right for Lizzie. At any rate, Lizzie wanted me to think so, wanted me to think she was happy. Was he right for Lizzie, not my Lizzie, but they’re both Democrats, and the truth about Democrats, no surprises there. Gun control, abortion. (Personally I don’t get that sales pitch about a fetus not being a person until it’s twelve weeks old.) They should try being a bleeding-heart liberal and owning a restaurant. They’d go broke, the endless fucking laws, every friggin’ one protecting the employees. I’ve got to write chapter and verse on folks to fire them. By that measure I’ve written more than Michael. And you’ve got to let the bartender steal from the till, acknowledge it up front, make some rules about it. And deal with your waitresses’ STDs, seriously you can’t believe the shit they tell you, the sobbing about the losers they’re involved with. Sometimes you have to fuck them to cheer them up.
Just playing you. I don’t do that b
ut I could.
If I said that to Lizzie, she’d start screaming about how I’m a pig.
I’d never been to Rome. That afternoon I had a glass of Chianti and a smoke near the tomb of Marcus Nonius Macrinus. It got to me, how insignificant each life is basically, all the stuff we go crazy over. I’m in Rome. There a guy next to me texting, and down the via is the tomb of a Roman general who died in the second century.
I tease Taylor, but she’s right. Travel rocks your perspective.
Beppi’s was excellent. I had fresh anchovies. They aren’t salty, a bit tangy, and if you’re into that part of the female anatomy, I’m not, fresh anchovies are in that ballpark but milder. I could never get my diners to order them. Anchovies and capers are not popular in Portland either with the natives or the tourists. They like chowder, the lobster roll of the day, the fresh fish I get off the day boats. I wish I had a dollar for every time a diner ordered a Caesar salad, hold the anchovies. I can get fancy with the lettuce, serve sockeye salmon crudo, spike a tartar sauce with jalapeños, but tourists tend to be conservative. They come for a Maine experience and we’ve got to give it to them.
I appreciated how elegantly the Romans prepared their food without turning it into something pompous. I try for that too. These waiters were lifers and proud of it. That’s something I have respect for. I wasn’t happy to spend the entire meal with my hand in my pocket rolling a Camel Light between my fingers. I never carried a pack. Taylor could spot the bulge in my pocket. I knew that because, way back when, she had. I engineered a tour of the kitchen to duck outside and take a couple of drags.
Why didn’t I tell her?
It’s never good to be honest with Taylor. It’s an invitation for her to fix me.
Smoking is a reason to get up every morning. If I pass a smoker, I breathe deeply and for a second, life is better. I could spend all day scarfing other people’s nicotine, and this obsession gets in the way of, no question, in the way of just about everything. I quit cold turkey when I met Taylor thirteen years ago, which does not feel like yesterday, it feels like thirteen years. It’s dumb when people say it feels like yesterday, at least it’s not a feeling I’m familiar with. When we got engaged, she called it “a pledge of love.” I would have promised her anything. I felt clean when I was with her. Clean, classy, and kind of powerful. Smokes had no place in that scenario.
Right after we got married, I started up again. One a night. Stashed the pack under the bar and extracted a cigarette at precisely one a.m. I capped every night with a beer and a fag, and finished it off with a Tic Tac.
That was when I was into beer. Taylor said I was getting fat. I had to agree. I’d been downing a six-pack a day since I was eighteen, no side effects, and suddenly I’ve got a pouch you can pet. My face was getting puffy. I caught a glimpse of myself walking by the bar one night—there’s a long mirror, Tay’s idea, hung across the back, that cost me two thousand dollars—and didn’t recognize myself. I switched to wine. I know a hell of a lot about wines now. They’re interesting. They’re kind of like customers with their quirks and ins and outs.
After a while, one smoke wasn’t cutting it, and I added another with my morning coffee in my car, holding the damn thing out the window so it wouldn’t smell up the vinyl, and then, boom, I was back up to a pack. Tay’s fault. She got sick when Snow was born. Sick enough to die, the nurses were white-faced, and it scared me. What would I do without her, what would I do with a baby? I spent the whole night outside, smoking, freezing, and praying. I called my mom and asked her to hustle her ass to church, light some candles, and pray to Saint Jude.
I was a rube about marriage. I believed all that shit about sharing. I believed in honesty, and this is when it started changing for me. “I’m smoking again,” I told Taylor.
It began as a trickle, pretty little tears, then Tay was bawling that I was going to get lung cancer and leave Snow without a dad. Taylor, sitting up in bed, in her white frilly nightie her bitch mom sent, had got Snow sucking her tit while the tears flowed.
“Whoa, stop,” I said. “The baby’s not getting your milk, she’s getting your feelings.”
I wonder. It crossed my mind and continues to—Tay was wacko those first few months. Wailing like that wasn’t like her. Did her mood swings affect Snow? Did they cause the shyness thing? They say, if you breast-feed, the baby gets all your good stuff, antibodies and shit. If they get that, can’t they get other stuff too? It doesn’t make sense that breast milk when you’re happy tastes the same as breast milk when you’re bawling. Besides, all Tay’s wailing was a lot for a baby to handle. Did it make her bashful? She didn’t get it from me.
I tried to comfort Tay, but the baby was in the way. She used the baby’s blanket to wipe her eyes, which was cute.
“Cheer up, I’ve got an insurance policy.” I’d signed it the week after Snow was born. “You’ve got a reason to murder me.”
She laughed.
That was when she laughed. All my dumb was funny then.
I like to look at Tay. She’s a babe. I like it that other men look at her and she’s married to me.
After dinner everyone went to bed and I was free. I’m a night guy. Like a vampire or a werewolf, I come alive when it’s dark and when I’m on the prowl. I lit up and walked. There were people out everywhere, teenagers in huddles, guys straddling their Vespas, groups of tourists, lots of fat ones, I noticed. Rolls stretching out their tees, fanny packs sitting on big round butts. Some real beauties—Romans, I’m guessing. The women seemed to know where they were going and they had that southern Italian flavor—black hair, dark eyes, skin the sun loves, smooth and silky, shiny lipstick. Noisy with laughter and brio. Brio—where did that come from? I told you I could tell this as well as the next. Did I use it correctly? I passed a piazza, jammed—which one I was clueless—music screaming from boom boxes, nuts shooting red flares, other nuts sticking carnations in my face. I gave a beggar with a scrawny Pekingese a couple euros and got out of there.
Speaking French—alone, I’m French—I picked up a couple of tall Swedes, Brigitta and Karin, and walked across the river to a bar. The bridge, one more magnificent relic, spooked me the way I was getting spooked all over Rome, but more so because it was night. Every twenty feet or so a stone angel ten feet tall reminded me of how I never go to church and how puny I am, in the scheme of things, worthless. Vowed to give up smoking somewhere in the middle of the bridge but lit up as soon as I hit the bar. Karin said it was a hanging bridge. Not possible, it had to be sacred, not a place of execution, but Catholics are twisted, I know, I’m one of them. Ever heard of Saint Agnes? You could jerk off to Saint Agnes, stripped nude and dragged through the streets for refusing to have sex with a pagan.
At the bar full of locals we were crammed in jostling for drinks, then squeezed outside into a pen fenced off with a rope. I had the house red, downed three glasses quickly trying to get someplace else, to a dull sweet spot. Bought a couple for the Swedes and left them to head back. The river was still and black as tar and the lights along the bank reflected in fiery bursts of gold like there were bonfires in the water. I thought about calling Jessa, but the call involved too many numbers. Couldn’t wrap my brain around dialing. Wasn’t into articulation besides. In no hurry to resume the suffocation of my happy family, I stopped for another smoke by a harp-playing angel alongside a vendor whose wallets were placed in rows on a blanket in this ancient city that never stops bilking tourists. Enjoying his thrust and parry, lulled by it since I couldn’t understand a word, I leaned back against the iron grating and dozed.
The ash woke me, burning my finger. Looking around, reminding myself where the hell I was, the bridge now nearly deserted, I saw a young girl all in white. She twirled, and her dress, a gauzy thing, fanned and fluttered. Then she twirled again faster, spinning herself silly.
I believe in God and the afterlife, which makes me a sucker for ghostly visions. I know Sn
ow was in the hotel room with Tay, but she was on that bridge too, beyond reach, the way she is always beyond reach, keeping her secrets, teasing us all.
Michael
I WAS UNFAITHFUL.
My loyalties were compromised not once but twice. I enjoyed it. I won’t lie. It was a nice nightcap, an even better wake-up. Lizzie climbed on top of me.
A hostage situation. I had no choice in the matter.
If you don’t answer the phone, Katarina, what do you expect?
My mind courted madness. Spun. Fantasy. Plot. Subplot. K picked up a man at the gym. Someone sweaty. Younger, buff, taller, with the physique (a formal word) of an Olympic swimmer, no, of Michelangelo’s David, how ironic and deliciously vengeful. With half the IQ. No wit. Less technique. More stamina. Less compelling.
Had a vision of K riding me the way Lizzie did. While Lizzie showered, I jerked off.
Then it crossed my mind that Kath—princess, slut, garden of unearthly delights—now had the upper hand.
Breakfast. Lizzie was excited about the buffet. “I’ll meet you there,” she said. From the bed I watched her dress. Critically. Her breasts, sloping now, bottom-heavy. She wiggled as she adjusted them in the cups of her bra, and threw me a look, a half smile, enjoying my watching. Her waist was a memory, hidden in a crease in her sides, and her stomach, once flat, now pillowy. The lace thong she pulled on left her fleshy butt cheerfully exposed. She shook it at me. Pulled a T-shirt over her head and swore with frustration as she tugged on tight jeans. Her once gorgeous legs were getting meatier in the thighs.
She’ll order my cappuccino, she said, or do I prefer a latte? Hurry up, Michael, get up already. She’ll do a plate for me too. She was looking forward to mango. She was certain there would be fresh mango. She was happy. Solicitous. She looked out the window. “Not a cloud in sight,” she said.