by Delia Ephron
“I’m Brutus,” said one.
“Titus,” said the other.
Their absurdity was irresistible. Two middle-aged men in short skirts, plastic brown chest plates festooned with plastic gold medallions, flimsy capes that would billow behind them should they ever find themselves in a chariot, sandals with leather straps winding up their hairy legs. Every day they tumbled out of bed and dressed in gladiator outfits. Did they have wives, children they kissed good-bye before donning plastic helmets with earflaps and stiff combs of feathers—one bright red, the other bright blue—sprouting from the top?
They were pros, trapping us in a drama before we could protest, and obviously good-natured, who could resist? “Fair maiden, please kneel.” Their English was perfect.
I expected Snow to cower or make a frantic dash for her mother, but astonishingly she knelt.
“How many gladiators have you slain?” I asked.
“Hundreds,” said Brutus or Titus, waving his plastic sword.
“How many lions?”
“Twenty. For four euros, we behead you, and you can take a picture.”
“A deal.”
Brutus and Titus struck poses on either side of Snow, lunging and thrusting. I stepped back to take a photograph and bumped into Taylor. Hadn’t noticed she was at my elbow. Realized then we were surrounded.
“Snow’s upstaged the Pantheon,” I told her.
A crowd pressed in, arms raised, phones held high for an unobstructed shot. They snapped the beautiful blond princess about to lose her head to the Halloween gladiators.
Snow wore her stone face, her preternatural composure betrayed only by her eyes shifting this way and that. Was she scared, I wondered, but then she adjusted her position to give tourists on the right a better view.
Taylor would record every inch of Snow’s life as she trekked her around. My conversations with Snow at dinner were at some point snapped. “Snow,” she would call, and Snow’s mouth would stretch into a facsimile of a smile. Here, however, Taylor gaped at all the people treating Snow as a tourist attraction. She rushed in to shoo away Brutus and Titus, and, as Lizzie said later, to get Snow’s knee off the dirty ground.
I might like a child, I realized. That thought surprised and ambushed.
I liked Snow’s hand in mine, her trust. Her intelligence and curiosity, visible and masked. She was intriguing, this girl who kept her cards close to her chest. I had never imagined a child like that, although children had not figured in my imaginings up to that time.
Kath was young. She could have children. We could have kids together.
Lizzie
AFTER DINNER I DECODED our way to Via della Panetteria and the sliver of a shop, Il Gelato di San Crispino, which is around the corner from the Trevi Fountain. “Don’t go to the fountain without me. Promise?” I called to Michael, who couldn’t care less about ice cream. He lagged behind, preoccupied with his cell, scrolling for e-mail. “Fuck,” I heard him say. He’d hit the wrong key. I knew the source of his rage with no actual knowledge, the way a wife assembles a catalog of her husband’s moods and the causes. His fingers are thick. Managing his phone triggers irritation.
According to my friend Rachel, who is very reliable, San Crispino makes the best ice cream in Rome. The other gelato bars seemed to have waltzed off a boardwalk. Their flavors, in garish colors, sculpted and swirled, goopy with sprinkles and zigzags of chocolate syrup, lay side by side in long trays looking cheap and overexposed. San Crispino was sleek. The gelatos in hues so alluring they might be shades of chiffon were hidden under shiny aluminum tops and dispensed by a man more lab technician than counterman, spotless in a white collarless shirt, white pants, white apron, and a white skullcap.
Taylor and Snow consulted briefly and confidentially, and Taylor related their decision, identical doubles in cups—caramel with meringue and coconut. Finn placed their order and paid. How could anyone decide quickly? How could anyone not want to taste everything? “I envy you,” I told her. “I envy your decision-making abilities.”
She laughed. “Snow knows what she likes.” She herded her out, a sheepdog with only one sheep in her flock, leaving Finn and me to frolic.
We shared dabs off miniature plastic spoons—ginger, cinnamon, pistachio, walnut. The bright light inside tricked the world outside into near darkness. People meandering down the street or mingling as they finished their cones or cups, visible through the plate glass, were mere silhouettes. Out of the corner of my eye, as Finn was offering a taste of melone, I spied Michael, not by the shape of his head, which I might have because it’s big like a pineapple, but by movement. A hand up to his mouth, a quick jerk back.
Oh, no, he’s having fun without me. That was my thought.
Michael carried a sterling silver flask in his right front pocket. Occasionally he might spike our coffees with brandy or his favorite Scotch, enlivening some otherwise quotidian moment, having BLTs at BJ’s on Lexington Avenue. At dinner parties while guests were dissecting the drama of the moment like Bernie Madoff, Michael would tap my knee under the table. If we weren’t sitting together, he might simply reference the door with his eyes, and we would meet someplace private like the powder room or the hall and take a slug. A quickie juice-up. Afterward, he would pocket the flask and slide his hand up my thigh or cup my breast. This was a promise: more later at home.
Since liquor was served, why did we do it? Because it was our secret society inside a society—New York’s literary world—that wasn’t secret but it was exclusive. Our saucing up—the flask—was infrequent. Michael, in charge, was unpredictable. We weren’t going around tipsy. I know couples who traded looks at dinner and it always bugged me, these silent opinions they were exchanging that might be about me. When it was our game, I loved it. We made wagers too. I bet you Sam will mention Harvard. Or Miranda will serve pasta. Will it take Ray under a half hour or over to mention that print is dead and to drop six digital terms that no one understands? The payout was usually a sexual favor. Michael participated in all things social. People wanted to know what he thought, and he told them, and made fun of them later (like Julien, Michael’s alter ego, the hero of his work in progress).
When Michael was introducing me to his world, he pointed out that in so many “smart” conversations, the subtext was the superiority of our way of life. Not only that, he said, it’s true, our life is superior, confirmed in every aspect, not simply because we’re not dependent on cars like the rest of America or can get anything delivered, or boast the best museums, theaters, can dine in a restaurant after ten at night, blah, blah, blah, but because of our conversations. They are wittier, more brilliant. I know my dad agreed. That’s why I made my way here.
How my dad would have loved him.
Finn is an extrovert. His gift is the moment. In the end, that may be the greater gift or the one that wears better—better than thinking deeply. How did it reflect on Taylor to have married a man whose gift is to be present but never to consider the implications of his actions?
Marriage. With whom do you want to take the journey? The thinker, Michael? The confabulator, Michael? Or the free spirit, Finn? Do you want to take it with someone who knows you, even intuits your secrets, or from whom you can remain hidden? By that last standard, which choice did I make? I’m still unsure. And why do most of us want marriage? Crave it for status or for stability that is an illusion. Marriage can’t protect you from heartbreak or the random cruelties and unfairnesses life deals out. It’s as if we’re chicks pecking our way out of our shells, growing into big birds splendid with feathers, and then piece by piece, we put the shells back together, reencasing ourselves, leaving perhaps an eyehole, minimal exposure. Having pecked our way out to live, we work our way back to survive. Deluded, of course. Shells crack easily.
Do you realize what I’m doing? I’m delaying, my need to tell wavering. As long as I can drag it out, it’s not over.
In Sirac
usa I saw three women standing at a steel railing. There is no shore, only rocky cliffs where they were, in Ortigia, the ancient preserved stone island contained within that falling-down place, connected to it by a short, also very ancient, stone bridge. Ortigia is the jewel of Siracusa, dating back to 700 B.C., and of course where we stayed, where all tourists stay. What passes for a beach there is a huge boulder rising out of the sea. Lo Scoglio, it’s called. In Italian, the rock. To reach it, sunbathers walk along a narrow metal grating bolted to a cliff, then negotiate the uneven surface of a lesser boulder and cross a short metal bridge over a drop, at least fifteen feet I’m guessing, into shallow water spiked with bleached rocks.
These women, whom I saw only from the back, were standing on this metal bridge, lime-colored towels at their feet, one in a white bikini, one in pale pink shorts—she’s leaning forward, her elbows on the railing—one in loose khaki pants and a light blue pullover. Their bodies were real in that this is what women look like who have let nature take its course, who have accepted that at some point in our middle years we become pudding. The woman in the bikini was tanned to a dark copper, either ignorant of the evils of the sun or too in love with it to care. They faced the Ionian Sea, a choppy blue-gray. The sky above and behind was a blindingly bright blue but in the distance, in the direction they were facing, an enormous black creature of a cloud hovered, thick like mattress stuffing. Was it moving their way? Was it moving too slowly to discern its progress but advancing nonetheless like some plot development everyone expects but no one can predict either its time of arrival, force, or ultimate consequences?
Dinner had been an adventure. See, I am rewinding to Rome once again. Finn ordered anything anyone voiced the least curiosity about—grilled artichokes, fritti of all sorts to share, forks colliding in the excitement, zucchini flowers voted best. The setting was a candlelit patio cloistered between crumbling architectural survivors in a humbler part of Rome.
“Writing seems so hard,” said Taylor to Michael.
He puffed up. His voice, a seductive bass, waxed more mellifluous than usual. “After my first play, which I wrote stoned without sleep, eating only fruit cocktail for nourishment—”
“Fruit cocktail?” said Taylor.
News to me. I remembered cantaloupe.
Michael smiled, delighted with his memories. “Del Monte in those miniature cans. But after that, after the first success, I blocked. I expected writing to come easily. I waited for the magic, for pixie dust, for the great god inspiration. Ha. Nothing. After months of feeling like a fraud.” There are words that Michael gives living, breathing life to. His voice is rich, his storytelling so gifted that some of his words arrive with legs and walk around the room. “Fraud—” He christened that one, sat it down to dinner, and poured it some wine. He slid his arm along the back of Snow’s chair and leaned toward her to deliver his wisdom. “Writing is sheer willpower. Discipline. That’s what made me a writer.”
I laughed.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said, disbelief evident.
The guy was a stoner. He couldn’t write without weed. (Look, it’s no big deal. I read a book, Daily Rituals, that documented the routines of famous creatives of all sorts. Auden took amphetamines daily. Thomas Wolfe fondled himself. Everyone relied on something.)
“With writing, first comes habit, then comes love,” said Michael. “With marriage, it’s the opposite. First love, then habit.”
It was a slap. I’d mocked him. He’s sensitive to disloyalty. “Habit is my favorite thing about marriage. What about you?” I asked Taylor.
“Our marriage works because—” She came around the table and planted a kiss on Snow’s forehead and then fussed with her bangs, which she’d disturbed.
Finn set down his wine and waited. I knew he was wondering, genuinely wondering why in the world she thought their marriage worked. “Because we’re parents,” said Taylor. “Because we both know this beautiful girl comes first.”
This is something she’s selling to Finn. I remember thinking that. The car’s bought. It’s nearly eleven, and she’s still delivering the sales pitch.
“Marriage is like nicotine,” said Finn. “Nicotine is the most addictive drug in the world because it’s an upper and a downer.”
“Why is marriage a downer?” said Taylor.
“I’m kidding,” said Finn.
“No, he’s not, he’s backing off,” said Michael.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Finn in a friendly sort of way.
“It’s a downer because of habit. That’s why we’re in Italy.” I raised my glass. “Here’s to the unexpected.”
Did I clink with Snow? Michael must have, but the odd thing was, she had this way of being present and not, as if she’d perfected the art of invisibility. As I said, and maybe it doesn’t sound so hateful now, in the beginning she was wallpaper.
In the gelato place, that’s where I left us, didn’t I? With Michael outside fortifying himself. I knew I should be with him, but Finn had fallen in love with stracciatella, the word not the flavor.
“Stracciatella.” Finn spit it like a swear word. “Stracciatella,” he purred as if it were an endearment. “Stracciatella,” he whispered, the code in a spy film. “Stracciatella.” He brushed my shoulder to knock the pesky thing off, whatever it was, dust, a very small Italian bug. I will be so dumb, you cannot resist me.
Snow turned up, sliding between us without touching.
“Stracciatella.” He greeted her with great enthusiasm as if she had just returned from a long voyage—Carthage, perhaps—and dabbed a bit of gelato on her nose.
She swiped it off with the back of her hand. “Mom and Michael want to leave.” Bowing her head, she spoke into Finn’s chest, muffling her words.
“See you later, Finn.” I took Snow’s hand. She did not return my grip, nor did she resist. “Let’s catch up with Michael.”
He was ambling in the direction of the Trevi Fountain, weaving a bit. Thanks to the wine, his body had gone slightly beyond the reach of his mind. “We’re catching Michael,” I told Taylor too, who was looking past me to Finn, her face pinched in irritation. I wondered what he’d done.
“Call Michael,” I told Snow. “So he waits for us.”
She knelt to refasten the straps on her pink jellies.
In retrospect it’s impossible for me to see anything Snow did as innocent, even the passive way her hand lay in mine, kneeling when I urged Hurry. Was she experimenting with control? What was the game here? The gain here? Did I not understand that children simply have their own way of engaging? The world interests them differently. A moment to speed up might seem the exact time to slow down. An uncomfortable shoe may matter more than a person. I still ponder and dissect events endlessly. I barely sleep now and drift to them, falling into a stupor of reflection. Like narcolepsy, memories overtake me suddenly and randomly.
The fountain. For this I need to summon my energy.
To experience the Trevi Fountain in all its glory, watch La Dolce Vita. Perhaps I feel this way because the film is special to me, personal above all others. Perhaps because, in La Dolce Vita, the Trevi Fountain is romantic. No, romance is something anyone might experience who got lucky one night. Rather, an enchantment: a turbulent crazy fantasy of a fountain in a deserted piazza, exquisite naked marble men frolicking with winged horses, the god of the sea, Oceanus, presiding over the festivities, naked too except for a swirling cloak, his body muscled perfection. The waterfalls obliterating all sound, and Anita Ekberg drifting through.
In reality, same fountain yet not. The lights were so bright, night was banished. Tourists milled about posing for pictures and tossing in coins. Shouting, loud laughter, teenagers screeching. Everyone clomping in big fat sneakers.
We couldn’t see the fountain in its entirety from the stone bench where Michael had parked himself. We joined him, S
now between us. I asked her if she wanted to throw in a coin—it meant she would return to Rome, I explained—but got that mini head shake, no. Did she want to get closer? She shook her head to that too.
For me, visiting the fountain was a pilgrimage. My dad and the Trevi Fountain were all wrapped up with falling in love with Michael.
“When I was your age,” I told Snow, “my dad took me to see a famous Italian movie called La Dolce Vita. It was his favorite film.” Snow smoothed the creases in her skirt, giving no indication of interest. It didn’t matter. I was really telling Michael. I was reminding him. Our first weekend together, the only time we left bed was to go to the Film Forum to see this movie. My dad had died the year before. Taking Michael to La Dolce Vita was my way of introducing him to my dad.
“A famous scene takes place here. An American movie star, Anita Ekberg, has come to Rome. She was—oh God, she was as remarkable in the flesh as those gods are in marble. Tall and impossibly beautiful with long sleek blond hair like yours, and miraculous bosoms.” When I talked about Anita Ekberg, all I wanted to do was use overinflated words like miraculous and bosoms. “There was something about the giganticness of her breasts. . . .”
Here’s the thing about Snow’s wallpaperishness. I didn’t always consider the appropriateness, the effect of my words. She gave so little back, but I pulled Michael’s attention with that comment. His head swiveled my way, and, since he was drunk—he doesn’t jolt easily when drunk—I felt a rush of pride in my ability to engage him. Having won the prize of his attention, I talked faster to keep it.
“Marcello, a meltingly handsome Italian, is following Anita through the deserted streets of Rome, and when he arrives at the piazza, she is in the fountain. Imagine this goddess, her mountainous breasts threatening to fall out of her black strapless dress, wafting toward the falls. ‘Marcello, come here,’ she calls.” This had become a refrain in our relationship. When I took a shower, I would shout, Marcello, come here, and Michael would join me.