Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

“I am not saying you are frivolous or adulterous, by the way. Don’t mistake me. But it’s a story of reappraisal, similar to your own circumstances. Should I spoil the ending for you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “He dies. It’s literature, so of course we need that drama. The final scene is quite interesting. She returns to London and happens to run into her former lover. She passes him in the street and she hardly bothers to notice him. He’s not a fraction of the man her husband was and now she knows it. She has learned to value other things.”

  “As I must do.”

  She gazed directly into the screen. Remarkably, her eyes glimmered with tears. I had never seen her exhibit any emotion in all my sessions with her. She spoke softly when she continued.

  “Look, Kate, you can’t blame yourself. Our inexperience is a box that we can’t escape except by experience. Ironic, isn’t it? Ozzie played his part, too. Maybe he wasn’t quite ready for the kind of life you had imagined. That kind of compromise that couples must learn to do, that’s a perspective we gather along the way. You’re what? Three years older now? You wear different eyeglasses today than you did then. Kierkegaard says, Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. That’s the human condition. It’s the source of our unquenchable anguish.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Kaufman. That’s more than you’ve ever said at one time before.”

  Now she smiled.

  “Sometimes we therapists can share perspectives that might be useful. You can borrow my eyeglasses for a moment. You’re grieving your former husband and the dissolution of your marriage. Those are not small things.”

  “No, they are not small things.”

  “Step by step. Be charitable with yourself. We’re all doing our best. You and Ozzie and everyone else.”

  I nodded. I finally asked if she would point the computer toward the window so that I could see the birds. She did. We signed off a few minutes later.

  33

  I landed in Rome with no plan to speak of, except to work my way south. I thought of renting a car, but I wasn’t sure I could drive confidently in Italy. I found a train—the Leonardo train—to take me into the center of town. I had never been to Rome, but I loved it at first sight. It was warm, for one thing, and the sun created beautiful mosaics everywhere I looked. It was different from Ireland. Ireland was butter; Italy was olive oil. Motor scooters buzzed everywhere, and the streets contained a lovey languor, an invitation to sit over coffee and watch the world pass. I loved the fashion, the men in tight-fitting suits and heeled boots, and the women in black trousers with fabulous tops, and purses that picked up their outfits and carried them to a logical conclusion. Yes, Rome. It was the first bright thing I had experienced in weeks.

  I took at room at the Villa Duse. I splurged and asked for a room at the top of the hotel, with a terrace. If I was going to have a brief stay, I figured, I might as well spend it properly. Besides, it was off-season, and the room was moderately priced. A young man with Elvis sideburns carried my bag to my room. I gave him a tip—how much? I was never good at that—and then closed the door after him. I opened the doors to the terrace and stepped outside. Rome greeted me with warm winds and buildings that had stood vigil for longer than anyone knew.

  I ran a bath and stayed in it for a long, long time. When I got out, I dressed in jeans and a black sweater and went out to find something to eat. If possible, my love affair with Rome grew in the half light of early evening. It was the hour of the bella figura, that period of time in early evening when locals parade and present themselves. I knew about it only from books, but when I sat at a small table at the Café D’Angelo, I watched the promenade with pleasure. I ordered a prosciutto mozzarella tomato ciabatta with basil pesto and a glass of Antinori Villa Antinori Classico Riserva Chianti from an older, whiskered waiter, who took my order with boredom dripping from every sigh. But he was competent and quick, and in no time I had a succulent meal in front of me, steaming, and a glass of excellent wine.

  “Anything else?” he asked me in English.

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  “Prego.”

  I sat and ate and watched the people, and in my deepest recesses I tried to imagine Ozzie here. Ozzie in Italy. It did not quite fit. It was not his natural habitat. He was a north man. He would only come to Italy with a purpose in mind.

  I was drinking my wine when my phone buzzed with a call from Milly. I didn’t want to be an obnoxious American who spent her meal time talking on the phone, but at the same time I wanted to speak to Milly. We still hadn’t confirmed final plans.

  “Where are you?” she asked when I answered.

  “In Italy. In Rome. At an amazing little café.”

  “Can you wait another day there? Maybe a day and a half?”

  I felt my stomach roll.

  Will you come tonight? Or will you come tomorrow?

  “Are you coming, Milly? Please say yes.”

  “I am. I just booked. I’ll be there tomorrow evening, I think.”

  “Are you serious? Oh, Milly, how can I thank you? You don’t know how much this means to me. I don’t know if I could do this without you. I feel a little alone in the world right now.”

  “I sensed that, Kate.”

  I had to stop speaking for a moment. Milly was coming to join me. With Milly by my side, I could do anything. I felt grateful beyond words.

  “You’ll love it here, Milly. I’ve been here half a day and I already love it. It’s everything you want it to be. And it’s warm.”

  “I can’t wait. It will be an adventure.”

  “We’ll go south, but we can stay and see Rome for a day or two.”

  “I’d like that. But I know you only have so much time. I know you’re eager to find out what you can about Ozzie.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. I nodded before I spoke.

  “He’s dead, Milly. I’m only going to see if I can find a trace of his memory.”

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  “We’ll have a stay in Rome, and then we’ll go south. Joy and sorrow mixed. That’s life.”

  “Yes, that’s life. It’s damn hard, but it’s life.”

  I broke down. I cried over my meal and I heard on the other end of the line Milly’s patient breathing. When I finally composed myself, she gave me her flight information, asked me a little bit about what to bring, and said she couldn’t wait to see me. I promised to message her my hotel address, then signed off. The waiter returned and looked at me.

  “The food is not that bad, is it, Signora?”

  He meant that it had caused my tears. He meant it as a joke. He poured me a little more wine.

  “The food is excellent. Sorry. It has been an emotional time.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Have a sweet tonight. Treat yourself well.”

  “Yes, please. Recommend something. And coffee, thank you. Black coffee.”

  He brought me zabaglione, a pale light custard that was a café specialty. I Googled it on my phone down by my lap after he served it. It had been invented in Florence during the sixteenth century in the court of the Medicis. That seemed the right kind of dessert for my first night in Rome. I put my phone away and took deep breaths. Milly was coming; I was going to go south to see what I could see. The world would keep spinning. Ozzie had gone east of the sun, west of the moon.

  The night had grown darker. How strange it all was. I was in Rome, and I was the widow—was I?—of a man who had left me wealth. I was drinking fine chianti and eating zabaglione, a dessert I hadn’t known an hour ago. Life seemed too random, too unpredictable to be trusted, and I thought of the Ferriter on the ocean on our passage to Dublin, the wave slashing me against the gunwale, the sizzling sound of water as it spilled past me and invited me over the side and into the gray-green water.

  I ate slowly, relishing every bite. Then I paid and walked slowly back to the hotel. A young man sitting on a scooter made a kissing sound at me. I ignored him. I went up to my room and
I left the terrace doors open as I fell asleep. Soft breezes pushed the white curtains back and the sound of scooters sounded almost like crickets.

  * * *

  Milly texted every step of the way.

  Just landed, she wrote from the airport. In love with three Italian men already.

  Later: On my way. Coming to the hotel. The driver knows it.

  I went down to the lobby and waited. I brought a book, The Autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island, a book that usually filled me with serenity, but I couldn’t focus on it. I sat on a green, overstuffed chair that rested too close to a potted fern. I got up and moved to a second chair, this one next to a window that looked out on the street. I checked my phone for messages. And again. And again.

  And when she finally arrived, I nearly missed her.

  I would have missed her arrival entirely, except I luckily recognized her stride as she went across the small lobby to the check-in desk. I let out a dog-yowl of happiness and surprise and unnamable emotion. It was Milly. Presto-chango, she was there. She turned and propped her small pull-behind bag on the ground beside her. It tipped over, and the handle made a loud whacking sound on the tile floor. She started to reach down to put it right, but then she stepped away and waved it off. It could wait, she said with a shrug. She walked toward me with her arms expanding to hug me. She looked a great, happy bird landing or preparing for takeoff and I stepped into her arms, put mine around hers and then we both began laughing.

  Who knows why?

  Nerves, eagerness, sadness, joy, happiness. A collection of feelings that expressed themselves, somehow, in a deep, deep laughter. We hugged and hugged and wrestled each other gently from side to side. Then she pushed me back and wiped her eyes with her sleeve and smiled brightly.

  “We’re in Rome!” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Rome, Italy.”

  “I know, I know, I know.”

  “It’s a dream. I’ve always wanted to come here.”

  “I have, too.”

  “I couldn’t help feeling … it was the oddest thing. I thought, I am a grown-up. Kate is a grown-up. Grown-up ladies fly to Rome and meet each other. They just do. I think we’re grown up now, Kate. What do you think?”

  I thought it was marvelous to see her, to have her beside me, to feel her kind, bubbling energy. I grabbed her arm and held it in mine and scooted her bag after us as she registered at the desk. They gave her a key to our room, and then I whisked her away. She smiled at everything. She wore skinny jeans and fabulous blue-black boots. Her eyes, as always, drew people’s gazes to her. People checked her and wondered if she was someone famous. She looked as if she could be. Her energy lit up the world around her.

  Stepping into our room, she went immediately to the terrace and looked out. She took a bunch of deep breaths with her hands on the cement railing, then turned to me and took me in her arms again. This time it wasn’t a bear hug, but a hug that was quiet and calm and dignified.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry about Ozzie. I’m excited to be in Rome, but I also remember why we’re here. You lost your husband.”

  “He wasn’t my husband,” I whispered.

  “Once someone is your husband, he always will be. You two were still married.”

  “Only on paper, Milly. I want it to be true, but it isn’t. We were estranged. Isn’t that the proper word for it?”

  “You were married in your hearts. That’s what counts.”

  We broke apart. Our eyes stayed locked on each other. Then she made a funny face, and then held out her arms to indicate Look at us, look at where we are, look at where we find ourselves! I nodded. It was a million miles from New Hampshire.

  “Are you exhausted?” I asked.

  “A little. I feel dried out, mostly. Flying is inhuman.”

  “There’s water in the fridge. We’ll share a bed. We can spend a night or two here, then go south, Milly. It will be fun.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You’re not in the mood for fun. You’re in mourning, for god’s sake. This isn’t a vacation.”

  “No, of course not. But we may never be back in Rome again. We need to experience it a little. Ozzie would even tell us to do that. I thought we could have one perfect day in Rome.”

  “One perfect day? One perfect day, you say? I like the sound of that. Well, if that’s the case, then I am not sleeping. I’m going to pretend the flight never happened. One night and one day. Then we go south to see what we can find out. What about your classes?”

  “My classes are falling apart. They’re in shambles. I am doing a horrible job with them. The semester is almost over, thank goodness.”

  “Any problem with that? Pushback from the administration?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have blamed Dartmouth for firing me. I wouldn’t have blamed my students for reporting me to the dean. I didn’t intentionally put them in this position, but the fact remained that that’s where we were. I couldn’t side-step that. I had already prepared myself mentally for accepting whatever outcome had to occur from my absence. That was life.

  “They can’t be happy with me. It’s not what you do to climb up the tenure ladder.”

  “But life sometimes gets in the way. They must understand that.”

  “Life always gets in the way. That’s what I’m learning.”

  She smiled. She nodded. There was little she could say to make things right back in Hanover, New Hampshire.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Milly said to cut away from that topic, pulling her bag into the bedroom. “We’ll play things by ear. I’m here for you, Kate. When you say we go, we go. No questions asked. We can go right now if you want to.”

  “A day.”

  “Okay, a day. One perfect day. And a night,” Milly said and wiggled her eyebrows at me.

  “You’re such a witch.”

  She stepped toward me and hugged me with one arm.

  “I love you, Kate,” she said.

  “I love you, too, Milly.”

  “We’re grown-up ladies in Rome.”

  “It appears so.”

  “Amazing. Simply fabulous.”

  34

  If I could have ordered online a girlfriend who would be sensitive, fun, lively, quiet, attentive, self-reliant, and ready to do anything I asked, Amazon would have delivered Milly by drone and dropped her on the terrace without ruffling the curtains. She emerged from the bathroom wearing a white robe, her hair tucked into a fluffy azure towel, her phone packed already with the addresses of restaurants her friend, Jennifer Donnelli, a native of Rome now studying at Dartmouth, had told her she must visit. Milly held the phone up.

  “Here’s what I think. Seafood, maybe pasta. Good meal. Then we go out and find the best bar we can afford. We drink a post-dinner martini, or maybe cognac, I don’t know. What does one drink in Rome after dinner?”

  “Sambuca?”

  “I thought only old Italian ladies in Sons of Italy weddings drank Sambuca.”

  “Stereotype much?”

  She waved my prissiness away. She plunked down on the bed, her finger zooming across the phone screen.

  “We only have so much time, so we have to streamline everything. I plan to be making out with an Italian boy later tonight, so that’s just the way it is. Before that, though, we need to see the city from Capitoline Hill. Jennifer says it’s a must. And then the Roman Forum. She says night in Rome is pure theater. How is this sounding so far? Too much?”

  “It’s sounds like the perfect start of a perfect day in Rome.”

  “That’s what I thought!” she said gleefully. “I agree! We probably have to see the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain … maybe we can get a boy on a motor scooter to take us. Isn’t that the dream? Buzzing around Rome with two boys who should be in school somewhere?”

  “Too much,” I said.

  “Okay, okay, okay, I got carried away. I know. But we do need to see the Tr
evi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. Maybe Porticus Octavia, too. Jennifer ranks it a B. She says see it if we have time, and it’s over by the Coliseum, so we probably should.”

  She looked exotic sitting in her towel, her face lit by excitement. She was transformed from New Hampshire Milly to Italy Milly. Water dripped down her shoulders. Her eyes had fatigue etched into the skin around them, but I didn’t doubt she could keep going for days. In traveling to Ireland, I had lost track of her emotional rhythms. She was certainly in an up phase.

  We left the hotel at eight twenty, a time we assumed was late enough to be chic. We dressed well, but not extravagantly. We walked in sensible shoes, giddy as schoolgirls at the sights and sounds and smells. Milly kept my arm locked in hers and she filled me in on the New Hampshire gossip, who was dating whom, who had broken up, who had gone into a rehab center, who was definitely getting divorced. I listened, half drawn in and half aware that I, too, probably lived on the tongues of gossips in Hanover. Did you hear about Kate? Kate Moreton? Her ex-husband, or was it her husband, anyway, some man she was with years ago drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Then they would move on. I would be forgotten, a mere juicy item, but the consequence of the little spurt of gossip would stay with me for years. Real people lived inside of gossip. I patted Milly’s hand and she got the message and changed the topic, glancing at her phone to chart our way through the Roman evening.

  We ate at Ristorante Crispi 19, on the Via Francesco Crispi. It was a gorgeous restaurant, with a dark wooden doorway and crisp white tablecloths, and Milly said we wouldn’t be able to get a table during the regular tourist season. We paused at the entrance, slightly timid, but a tall, gray-haired man wearing a beautiful navy suit stepped out for a cigarette and saw us. He clicked his lighter and blew a stream of smoke up to the heavens.

  “Table?” he asked in Italian.

  “Si,” Milly answered.

  “Americano?”

  “Si,” Milly said again.

  “Good food. I’ll take you in … two more puffs.”

  We watched him smoke. Milly tightened her hand on my arm. The man was out of central casting: tall, distinguished looking, happy to enjoy a cigarette on a warm evening. He was as good as his word. He took two more puffs, then extinguished the cigarette on the cobblestone ground beneath him.