Find Me

by André Aciman

“Split a cab, then,” she said.

  We heard the announcement of Roma Termini, and as the train crawled toward the station, we watched row upon row of shabby buildings and travertine warehouses come into view, each displaying old billboards and faded, dirty colors. Not the Rome I loved. The sight unsettled me and made me feel ambivalent about the visit and the reading and the prospect of being back in a place that already stored too many memories, some good, most less so. Suddenly, I resolved that I’d give my reading that evening, have my de rigueur cocktail with old colleagues, then find a way to duck the usual dinner invitation, and come up with something to do by myself, maybe catch a film, and then stay indoors the next day till my son dropped by at four. “At least I hope they booked the room with the large balcony and the view of all the domes,” I said. I wanted to show, despite my son’s phone call, that I knew how to look at the brighter side of things. “I’ll check in, wash my hands, find a good place to have lunch, then rest.”

  “Why? Don’t you like cake?” she asked.

  “I like cake fine. Can you suggest a good spot for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “My father’s. Come for lunch. Our home couldn’t be closer to your hotel.”

  I smiled, truly moved by the spontaneous offer. She was feeling sorry for me.

  “That’s very sweet of you. But I really shouldn’t. Your father is having a cherished moment with the person he loves the most and you want me to crash his party? Plus, he doesn’t know me from Adam.”

  “But I know you,” she said, as though this would change my mind.

  “You don’t even know my name.”

  “Didn’t you say Adam?”

  We both laughed. “Samuel.”

  “Please come. It will be very simple and low-key, I promise.”

  Still, I couldn’t accept.

  “Just say yes.”

  “I can’t.”

  The train had finally arrived. She picked up her jacket and her book, shouldered her backpack, wrapped the dog leash around her hand, and took down the white box from the upper bin. “This is the cake,” she finally said. “Oh, just say yes.”

  I shook my head to convey a deferential but determined no.

  “Here’s what I propose. I’ll pick out a fish and leafy greens on Campo de’ Fiori—I always buy fish, cook fish, eat fish—and before you know it, I’ll throw together an amazing lunch in no more than twenty minutes. He’ll be happy to see someone new at the door.”

  “What makes you think he and I will have anything to say to each other? It could be terribly awkward. Besides, what do you suppose he’s going to think?”

  It took her a moment to catch on.

  “He won’t think that at all,” she finally said.

  Clearly, it hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  “Besides,” she added, “I’m old enough, and he’s old enough to think whatever.”

  A moment of silence elapsed as we stepped off the train and landed on the crowded platform. I couldn’t help but give a hasty and discreet look around. Perhaps my son had changed his mind and meant to surprise me after all. But no one was waiting for me on the platform.

  “Listen”—it suddenly occurred to me—“and I don’t even know your name—”

  “Miranda.”

  The name struck me. “Listen, Miranda, it’s really lovely of you to invite me, but—”

  “We’re strangers on a train, Sami, and I know talk is cheap,” she said, already fabricating a nickname for me, “but I’ve opened up to you and you’ve opened up to me. I don’t think either of us knows many people with whom we’ve been so casually honest. Let’s not make this the stereotypical moment that happens on a train and then stays on the train like an umbrella or a forgotten pair of gloves left behind somewhere. I know I’ll regret it. Plus, it would make me, Miranda, very happy.”

  I loved how she’d said this.

  There was a moment of silence. I wasn’t hesitating, but I could right away tell she had interpreted my silence as acquiescence. Before picking up her phone to call her father, she asked if I didn’t have to make a phone call as well, perhaps? Her perhaps moved me, but I wasn’t sure why or what precisely it suggested, nor did I want to speculate and be proven wrong. This girl thinks of everything, I thought. I shook my head. I didn’t have anyone to call.

  “Pa. I’m bringing a guest,” she shouted into her phone. He mustn’t have heard. “A guest,” she repeated. Then, trying to keep the dog from jumping on me: “What do you mean what kind of guest? A guest. He’s a professor. Like you.” She turned to me to make sure she had inferred correctly. I nodded. Then the answer to the obvious question: “No, you’re totally wrong. I’m bringing fish. Twenty minutes absolute max, I promise.

  “This should give him time to put on clean clothes,” she joked.

  Would she ever suspect that if I had already resolved to cancel dinner with colleagues tonight it was because, without quite admitting it to myself, I was already coddling the distant hope of having dinner with her instead? How would that ever come about?

  When we finally arrived on the corner of Ponte Sisto, I asked the driver to stop. “Why don’t I drop my bag in my room and join you at your dad’s—say in ten minutes.”

  But she grabbed my left arm as the car was about to stop. “Absolutely not. If you’re anything like me you’ll check into your hotel, drop your bag in your room, wash your hands, which you said you’re so eager to do, and then after letting a good fifteen minutes pass, you’ll call to say you’ve changed your mind and decided you can’t come. Or you might not call at all. Maybe, if you’re anything like me, you’ll even find the right words to wish my father a happy birthday and mean it as well. Aren’t you like me?”

  This too moved me.

  “Maybe.”

  “Then if you’re really anything like me you probably like being found out, admit it.”

  “If you’re anything like me you’re already wondering Why did I even invite this fellow?”

  “Then I’m not like you.”

  We both laughed.

  When was the last time?

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Right!”

  Had she read this too?

  When we got out, we rushed to Campo de’ Fiori, where we found her fish vendor’s stand. Before ordering, she asked me to hold the leash. I was reluctant to approach the stand with the dog, but they knew her there, and she said it wasn’t a problem. “What kind of fish do you like?” “The easiest to cook,” I replied. “How about some scallops as well, they seem to have plenty today— Are they from today’s catch?” she asked. “This dawn,” replied the vendor. “Are you sure?” “Of course I am sure.” They’d been doing this for years. As she leaned over to inspect the scallops, I caught sight of her back. I had an impulse to put an arm around her waist, her shoulders, and kiss her on her neck and face. I looked away and instead eyed the liquor store across from the stand. “Would your father like a dry white from Friuli?”

  “He shouldn’t drink wine, but I’d love a dry white from anywhere.”

  “I’ll get a Sancerre as well.”

  “You’re not planning on killing my father, are you?”

  When the fish and the scallops were wrapped, she remembered the vegetables. On our way to a nearby store, I couldn’t resist: “Why me?”

  “Why me what?”

  “Why are you inviting me?”

  “Because you like trains, because you were stood up today, because you ask too many questions, because I want to know you better. Is that so difficult?” she said. I didn’t press her to explain. Perhaps I didn’t want to hear that she liked me no more, no less than she liked scallops or leafy greens.

  She found spinach, I spotted small persimmons, touched, then sniffed them, and saw that they were ripe. It was, I said, the first time this year that I’d be eating persimmons.

  “Then you have to make a wish.”

  “
What do you mean?”

  She affected exasperation. “Every time you eat a fruit for the first time that year you need to make a wish. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

  I thought for a few seconds. “I can’t think of a wish.”

  “Some life,” she said, meaning either that my life was so enviably put together that there was nothing left to wish for—or that it was so hopelessly bereft of joy that wishing something was a luxury no longer worth considering.

  “You have to wish. Think harder.”

  “Can I yield my wish to you?”

  “I’ve already had my wish.”

  “When?”

  “In the taxi.”

  “What was it?”

  “How quickly we forget: that you’d come for lunch.”

  “You mean you wasted a whole wish on having me over for lunch!”

  “I did. And don’t make me regret it.”

  I didn’t say anything. She squeezed my arm on our way to the wine store.

  I decided to stop by the florist nearby.

  “He’ll love the flowers.”

  “I haven’t bought flowers in years.”

  She gave a perfunctory nod.

  “They’re not just for him,” I said.

  “I know,” she said ever so lightly, almost feigning to overlook what I’d said.

  * * *

  Her father’s home was a penthouse overlooking the Tiber. He had heard the elevator coming up and was already waiting at the doorway. Only one of the doors was opened, so that it was difficult to fit in with the dog, the cake, the fish, scallops, and spinach, the two bottles of wine, my duffel bag, her backpack, my bag of persimmons, and the flowers—all seemed to want to thrust their way in at the same time. Her father attempted to relieve her of some of her packages. Instead, she let him have the dog, who knew him and right away began jumping and nuzzling him.

  “He loves the dog more than me,” she said.

  “I don’t love the dog more than you. The dog is just easier to love.”

  “Too subtle for me, Pa,” she said, and right away didn’t just kiss him but, with her hands still holding the packages, slammed into him with her whole body and kissed him on both cheeks. This, I presumed, was how she loved: fiercely, no holds barred.

  Once inside, she dropped the bags, took my jacket, and laid it down neatly on the arm of a sofa in the living room. She also took my bag and placed it on the rug by the sofa then fluffed up a large sofa cushion that seemed to bear the imprint of the head that must have been lying on it moments earlier. On her way to the kitchen, she also straightened two pictures that hung slightly lopsided against the wall, then, opening two French windows that led to the sunbaked roof terrace, complained that the living room was too stuffy on such a beautiful autumn day. In the kitchen, she cut off the bottom tips of the flower stems, found a vase, and set the flowers in it. “I love gladiolas,” she said.

  “So you must be the guest?” said the father by way of welcome. “Piacere,” he added, before reverting to English. We shook hands, hesitated outside the kitchen, and then watched her unwrap the fish, scallops, and spinach. She rummaged through the cabinets, found the spices, and right away used the zapper to light the stove. “We are going to drink some wine, but, Pa, you decide whether you want to drink it now or with the fish.”

  He mused for a moment. “Both now and with the fish.”

  “So we’re already starting,” she said reprovingly.

  Pretending to be chastened, the old man said nothing then added an exasperated, “Daughters! What can you do.”

  Father and daughter spoke the same way. The father then ushered me down a corridor lined with framed pictures of past and present family members, all so formally clothed that I failed to recognize Miranda in any of them. The father was now wearing a colorful ascot, under a very bright striped pink shirt; his blue jeans were creased to a crisp and looked as though they’d been put on minutes earlier. His long white hair was combed back and gave him the telltale look of an aging movie star. But he wore a pair of very old slippers and obviously hadn’t had time to shave. His daughter had done well to call to warn him of a visitor. The living room bore the lingering spare elegance of a Danish fad that had gone out of fashion a few decades earlier but was on the verge of being the rage again. The ancient fireplace had been refurbished to fit in with the decor but seemed a defunct remnant of older times in the life of the apartment. The slick white wall displayed a small abstract painting in the style of Nicolas de Staël.

  “I like that one,” I finally said, trying to make conversation while staring at the view of a beach as seen on a wintry day.

  “That one was given to me by my wife years ago. I didn’t much like it at the time; but now I realize it’s the best thing I own.”

  The old gentleman, I gathered, had never recovered from his divorce.

  “Your wife had good taste,” I added, already regretting using the past tense without knowing whether I had strayed into delicate terrain. “And these here,” I said, staring at three sepia-toned views of Roman life in the early nineteenth century, “look like Pinellis, don’t they?”

  “They are Pinellis,” said the proud father who might have interpreted my comment as a slight.

  I’d been tempted to say imitation Pinellis but had caught myself in time.

  “I bought them for my wife but she didn’t care for them. So they’re living with me now. Afterward, who knows. Maybe she’ll take them back. She owns a successful gallery in Venice.”

  “Thanks to you, Pa.”

  “No, thanks to her and only her.”

  I tried not to let on that I already knew his wife had left him. But then he must have guessed that Miranda had told me about their marriage. “We’re still friends,” he added by way of clarifying the situation, “maybe good friends.”

  “And they,” added Miranda, handing each of us a glass of white wine, “have a daughter who is constantly being tugged this way and that between them. I’m giving you less wine than our guest, Pa,” she said as she handed him his glass.

  “I get it, I get it,” replied the father, who rested a palm on his daughter’s face in a gesture that spoke all the love in the world.

  There was no doubt. She was lovable.

  “And you know her how?” he asked, turning to me.

  “Actually, I don’t know her at all,” I said. “We met on the train today, basically less than three hours ago.”

  The father seemed a bit flummoxed and was awkwardly trying to conceal it. “And so…”

  “And so nothing, Pa. The poor guy was stood up today by his son and I took such pity on him that I figured I’d cook him a fish, feed him vegetables, maybe throw in some limp puntarelle found in your fridge, and send him packing to his hotel where he can’t wait to nap and wash his hands of us.”

  All three of us burst out laughing. “This is how she is. How I managed to put such a prickly urchin on the face of our planet is simply beyond me.”

  “Best thing you ever did, old man. But you should have seen Sami’s face when he realized he was being stood up.”

  “Did I look that terrible?” I asked.

  “She exaggerates, as always,” he said.

  “He’s been pouting ever since I got on the train in Florence.”

  “I wasn’t pouting when you got on in Florence,” I said, miming her words.

  “Oh, you were so pouting. Even before we started speaking. You didn’t even want to make room for my dog when I boarded. Think I didn’t notice?”

  Once again we all laughed.

  “Don’t mind her. She’s always needling people. Her way of warming up.”

  Her eyes were glued on me. I liked that she was trying to read my reaction to what her father had just said. Or maybe she was just looking at me, and I liked this too.

  When was the last time indeed?

  On another wall of the living room hung a series of framed black-and-white photographs of ancient statues, all in striking
gradations of black, gray, silver, and white shades. When I looked back at her, both father and daughter caught my glance.

  “They’re all Miranda’s. She took them.”

  “So this is what you do?”

  “This is what I do,” she apologized, almost as though saying, This is all I know how to do. I regretted how I’d phrased my question.

  “Black and whites only. Never color,” added her father. “She travels the world—she is going to Cambodia, Vietnam, then Laos and Thailand, which she loves, but she is never happy with her work.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Is anyone happy with their work?”

  Miranda threw me a token smile of appreciation for coming to her aid. But her look might as well have meant Nice try, I don’t need rescuing.

  “I had no idea you were a photographer. They’re amazing.” Then, seeing she wasn’t taking the compliment, I added, “They’re stunning.”

  “What did I tell you? Never happy with herself. You can beat your head senseless and she still won’t accept a compliment. She has a wonderful offer to work for a large agency—”

  “—which she isn’t going to accept,” she said. “We’re not discussing this, Pa.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because Miranda loves Florence,” she said.

  “We both know that her reason has nothing to do with Florence,” said the father, playing up the humor but casting a significant look at his daughter and then at me. “It has to do with her father,” he said.

  “You’re so pigheaded, Pa, that you’re convinced you’re the center of the universe and that without your blessing every evening star in heaven would snuff out its light and turn to ash,” she said.

  “Well, this pigheaded man needs a bit more wine before he turns to ashes—which, remember, Mira, is what I specified in my will.”

  “Not so fast,” she said, pushing the open bottle away from her father’s reach.

  “What she fails to understand—because of her age, I suppose—is that past a certain point dieting and watching what you eat—”

  “—or drink—”

  “—serve no purpose and actually cause more harm than good. I think people our age should be allowed to live out the term of their life as they wish. Depriving us of what we want at death’s door seems pointless, if not totally evil, don’t you think?”