Her: A Memoir

by Christa Parravani

  “No. No gracias.” I did like the mask, but I didn’t want it.

  “It’s grazie,” Cara corrected. “This isn’t Spain.”

  The mask in my hands was the crying Pierrot. I pulled the elastic string on its back, slipped it over my head, adjusted the fit to see and breathe. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said from behind Pierrot, to Cara, changing the subject from language to directions. “We’d better ask someone else or we’ll never find the hotel.” My voice was muffled by the mouthless mask.

  “What? I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  I flipped up the mask and showed myself, but Cara wasn’t attempting to hear me; she was admiring herself in the shop’s mirror. She wore a Zanni mask with eyes cut like a cat’s. A plume of feathers covered her forehead. A long nose hooked down over her mouth. I lifted her disguise. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re no fun. You’ve never been fun.” Cara frowned at me. “I’ve planned for this, of course, for your lack of funness. We’ll have to have gelato first, then pasta. No one, not even you, can mope after gelato.” Cara plucked a tiny chocolate bunny from a dish beside the cash register and tossed it in her mouth. “Tastes like Easter.” She grabbed a second chocolate and placed it in my palm.

  “If we ever find our way to the hotel,” I said, “I’m sure I’ll be plenty of fun.”

  An hour later, we found our tiny hotel, nestled in the center of a small piazza, next to a pasta restaurant with terrace dining. The bistro wasn’t special, just a stop-off for tourists. We dined outdoors there, sharing a deliciously salty Bolognese. Our room had a view of a fountain in the center of the piazza where teenagers gathered to share wine and soda tonics after dark. At dusk men congregated outside a tavern directly downstairs from our room, hobbyists with guitars and drums. We danced with other girls who were staying in other run-down inns. Two doors down from our abode, the old bell of a gray, stone cathedral rang out every hour.

  The hotel was run by a married couple. The innkeeper dressed well in brightly stitched handmade Italian suits sewn from tweed and twill. He combed his hair back in graying blond waves and wore small round wire specs. He was a dead ringer for Jeremy Irons playing Humbert Humbert, his well-practiced Italian charm—the accent, the dress, his harmless seduction—put on in hopes of more advance bookings.

  We spent our days wandering the maze of streets and eating gelato and talking about our mother and father, Cara’s divorce and recent romances. Over a plate of grilled sardines, she confided her regret over her infidelity and her fears of ever finding new love.

  “Will I always be alone?” she asked, moving a bite of fish around on her plate with her fork. “No one will ever love me. I’m damaged.”

  “Don’t say such a thing,” I said. “That’s not fair.”

  “You don’t understand.” She set her cutlery down and pouted. “You’re perfect.”

  I told my sister her affair was of no consequence, that she should not burden herself with remorse. I understood how she must have needed to feel the warmth of a new body, a lover who hadn’t known her before she’d so nearly been snuffed out. “You’ve survived to live,” I told her, drunk, not knowing what I meant. If only that had been true.

  There were many pasta dinners, just as I’d imagined there would be, and shopping trips where we browsed trinkets that we’d never need. I have all of the things Cara bought then on my desk now: a Virgin Mary key chain, four Venetian masks—one with rabbit ears and a crying clown face, and a red leather diary embossed with a roaring lion—this Cara stole, sliding it into her handbag in a crowded shop as the store clerk helped a woman carry a ceramic Jesus to her waiting gondola. We also searched tirelessly for a birthday gift for Jedediah to help him ring in his twenty-eighth year. I would miss his birthday, and thought I should send Cara in my place to have dinner with him and present him with my gift.

  I looked and looked but no gift said everything this one needed to: I love you, but I hate you for not being here. Thank you for allowing me to see the world, even if it’s without you.

  In a shop near our hostel, we found a toy maker who constructed three-dimensional puzzles. The puzzles were pre-painted brightly in blues, magentas, and golds. The toy maker had miniature puzzle gondolas, buildings and cats in windows backlit by moons. We liked the facsimile Venetian houses best for Jedediah and bought one of the few unpainted ones and a set of watercolors. I liked the bare sanded wood of the house we bought, and was happy that we could choose any color palette we wished to anoint our house for Jedediah. Cara and I spent our last night in Venice designing Jedediah’s house.

  The upstairs had arched windows that we painted dark gray to show that nobody was awake on the top floor. The light on the second floor, above the entrance, we painted yellow. The life of the house was there; our beaming yellow windows made it so. I imagined that’s where living quarters would be: a hearth full of fire, vases of flowers on polished tables, sleeping dogs. We colored the front door red and the eaves, green; the roof, gray; the chimney, black to match its soot.

  After the house dried, we disassembled it and put it in a long, flat, silver box that opened at the top. Taken apart, the house looked like a wooden children’s puzzle, good decoration for a nursery. I wrote Jedediah a loving note on the back of a postcard I’d selected at the hotel gift shop; the card featured the commedia dell’arte character Pantalone. Cara and I both signed our birthday wishes.

  * * *

  I gave my husband a children’s house puzzle for his birthday, and had it delivered in pieces to him by my sister, who insisted he assemble it in front of her. The card was stamped with the image of an ego-driven, needy philanderer and bachelor. I hadn’t bothered to read the significance of the character. But Jed did. The broken-down fragile house and card worried him.

  He wasn’t always so perceptive, though. He gave me pages of his novel to read as soon as he’d written them. I waited eagerly for each new batch. The week before I left for Spain he had given me a new section. In it, his protagonist had been kidnapped by a set of identical male twins. The pair played cards in a bar and were known to be con artists, hit men. The twins knocked the detective unconscious and left him for dead, setting his body off floating on a barge filled with stolen alarm clocks. The detective woke heavy headed and confused from the twins’ assault and realized the gravity of the situation: in order to survive his abduction, he’d have to kill the twins, an act that was out of character for the gentle, passive detective. In the rain, on the barge, he did just that—but the detective murdered only one twin. He did it in full view of the other, escaping both, leaving the forlorn surviving twin to rock his limp brother’s body. Killing one was the same as killing both, worse. It was the detective’s ultimate revenge. I read the pages and wept. Jedediah asked me if I liked them. I said I did. I said I liked them very much. Had he no idea how much we feared this? His plot was so like our life.

  Chapter 16

  A little more than a year after our trip to Venice, Cara came for a visit. It was the last time I ever saw her.

  She’d just defended her MFA thesis. Her divorce had just been finalized. She’d recently moved in with our mother in Albany, to save money after classes ended. Her new degree gave occasion for her stay in the turn-of-the-century cottage where Jedediah and I lived in Massachusetts. Before she arrived, I put fresh sheets on her bed and made sure that the guest-room closet was empty of winter coats.

  I liked that Jedediah and I owned the house, and I fussed over it. I wanted the home to be a haven for sleep and books and reading. I stoked fires in the hearth. I made dinners with lots of olive oil and salts. I decorated the porch with plants, and with candles that flooded in the rain; I emptied the pooled water out of the candleholders, and always set them back outside, but the wicks were soppy and wouldn’t relight. The plants, by contrast, grew wild. Roots poked out from their plastic buckets and terra-cotta pots.

  An excellent vacuumer and a dreadful dishwasher, I liked to drag the vacuum over the floo
rs and watch the cat hair and dust disappear. The house had hardwood floors throughout, except for the guest bedroom, which had bead board. Cara stayed there when she visited. I painted that floor laurel green by hand. I made those walls cobalt blue and painted the trim a sunny fiesta yellow. I chose the colors by flipping open a book of Edward Hopper’s paintings, stopping at an image titled Chop Suey. A pair of women sit in a café next to a window, an afternoon glow casting heavy, stark shadows. The women are in conversation, holding cups of tea, slouching in to listen. The woman with her back to the viewer has said something. Her friend in the flapper hat looks over the rim of her teacup, past her friend in the smart navy cloche.

  I heard Cara’s car pull up before I saw it. I hadn’t seen her for weeks. I’d been waiting, pacing by the door. Her car had a belt loose in the air-conditioning unit and made a screeching, whirling, over-and-over noise that asked, did you miss me?

  She pulled into the driveway and let herself into the house, heading straight for the guest room. She pulled a small red suitcase behind her, laptop bag hanging heavy over her shoulder, banging on her thigh. I’d followed her to the doorway and watched as she tossed her things carelessly onto the bed. Dirt from the suitcase’s wheel made a straight, greasy line on top of the down comforter. She hadn’t bothered with a hello and was already unzipping the front pocket of her bag.

  “How’d your thesis defense go?” I asked.

  She whipped around, surprised. “Oh, hi. You’re here?”

  “I live here, don’t I? I was waiting for you.”

  “It went fine,” she sighed. “I need a minute, do you mind?” She fished through her pockets.

  “Can I bring you anything? Something to drink, a snack?” I noticed the flap of a plastic baggie emerging from her suitcase.

  “Nope. I just have to pee. Do you mind?”

  Cara slid her fingers into her suitcase and wrapped her hand around the baggie, holding it in a clenched fist. Fifteen, twenty minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom looking flushed and happy and went straight back to the bedroom. “Look what I brought!” She pulled a bottle of champagne from her shoulder bag and uncorked it. “Let’s celebrate the end of thesis-writing hell!” She brought the opened bottle to her mouth and took a thirsty gulp, bubbly golden champagne running down her chin.

  “It’s noon, Cara.”

  “Yeah, but how many times do I get to be finished with the first draft of my book?” She batted her doe eyes at me and ran the back of her hand over her mouth, wiping it dry. She passed the bottle.

  I took a tiny sip. “I want to head over to the gym before it gets too late. Want to come with?”

  “You and your working out,” she complained. “I’d rather stay home and relax.”

  “I won’t be long,” I promised.

  “I see how it is,” she sighed. “I get here and you’re already leaving.” She took another long drink. “Wait!” She jumped excitedly.

  “What?” I bent down to tie my sneaker.

  “I brought something else. Hang on.” She shooed me out of the room and rustled through her bag. I heard her struggling with a zipper. She opened the door. “Ta-dah!” She wore the bridesmaid’s dress she’d worn at my wedding.

  She walked from the guest room into the living room and spun around. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. The dress—black, floor length, and spaghetti strapped—brushed the floor and pulled up some dust that collected at the hem. The outer layer of the chiffon skirt was translucent, two pieces of fabric stitched together at the empire waist with a thin braid of matte black thread. She held her arms out straight, the left a little more weighed down than the right. Her half-empty bottle of champagne sloshed and fizzed as she twirled.

  “This is the most beautiful dress I own.” She lifted the skirt of the dress up to just below her knee and did a clumsy curtsy, admiring herself. “I think I’ll sell it on eBay.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “You might have a chance to wear it again.”

  Cara sat down on the sofa, taking another swig. “I’ve got nowhere fancy enough to wear it.” She sulked. “I bet you’d have a place to wear a fancy dress like this, in your fancy life, with your fancy friends.” She picked up the skirt of the dress and dropped it. The fabric floated in waves onto her lap. “This is a dress for a princess, even if it’s black.”

  I came home an hour later from the gym and found her in the same position on the sofa—except she’d finished her bottle of champagne and passed out. The empty bottle had rolled under the coffee table, spilling what little was left over the floor. I shook Cara awake and helped her up, guiding her to her feet. I walked her to bed and pulled the covers back, kissing my drunken sister’s forehead, putting her down for the night.

  * * *

  It’s always been the same house in my dream. I see that staircase. I see the cellar where we learned to shoot pool and dance old and talk dirty when we weren’t supposed to know how. I see the bedroom with the two diagonal beds. We scared each other there with faces and deep voices until we were one, in one bed. I see the living room. The fuzzy, green carpet was like grass you could curl your toes in. This was our grandmother’s house. The windowsills she filled with plants and knickknacks are bare in my dream. She loved her figurine of an Amish couple seated on a bench, sitting too intimately apart. And they were always like that, the couple, as if they came into this world painted. The couple held hands, just like us.

  I would wrap myself around you tight as if we could be born together again. I would hold you on the way out, like Grandma’s figurines never stopped holding each other.

  I can see the backyard that never ended and hear our giggles, lost in piles of overturned leaves.

  I dream we are home again. Where is home without you?

  Now we are married. You cried at my wedding as though it was my funeral, made me want to run toward you, break from the union I was about to enter, and remarry you. It could have been our baptism.

  You, too, have married, except better. You have a husband who wouldn’t leave you. I’m divorced now. I didn’t cry at your wedding. I wore the black dress you asked me to wear.

  Who is the husband now? The wife? The union is divided but remains the same, in shards. Do we live anywhere?

  We will always visit the same house, when we come home at night in my dream. We will be each other there, again. Just like we remember it.

  * * *

  On Saturday afternoon, a few days into Cara’s stay, we sat side by side on the front porch. “I want ice cream,” she said, cigarette in hand. She wore low-rider jeans and a green tweed blazer cropped at the waist. “This is my smart blazer,” she said, taking another drag off her Natural American Spirit. She smiled through a mouth of smoke. “I think my book sucks.” She waited for me to correct her.

  “I can’t say,” I confessed. “I haven’t read it yet.”

  “Well, don’t even bother,” she said. “I have things I want to change before you read it.”

  “There is always time to edit,” I countered. The few words I said to her about her book, which I hadn’t even read, telegraphed my opinion of her abilities—her prose was too lax and flowery.

  “You hate me,” she said.

  I did believe she hadn’t worked hard enough. I was always thinking that about her. What I feared in myself, I loathed in her. A year later, after I’d painstakingly removed all of her files from her computer, I would discover that she’d been writing feverishly before she died.

  That afternoon, though, I only said, “I don’t eat ice cream for lunch.”

  What had become of me? My sister had turned me into a scold. I had always been up for ice cream. I’d abolished my freewheeling self while I tried to establish rules that I hoped would keep her from the needle. But whom was I kidding? Strict rules about day drinking and dessert would never save her.

  She left in a huff and went inside. She walked in a disappointed slouch and retreated to the guest room, then came out quickly, looking
a bit more chipper.

  “Let’s go to the gym,” she said, and went straight into the bathroom.

  I heard her inside, scrambling around, opening and shutting the bathroom cabinets, turning the faucet on and off. She was making noise, I thought, to cover up what she was doing.

  I went to the second bedroom of our house, where Jedediah worked on his novel. I knocked on the door lightly.

  “Honey?” I asked through the closed door.

  “Yeah, Christa,” Jed said.

  I turned the doorknob and let myself into his study. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but Cara’s shooting up in our bathroom.”

  “Christa, I’m working. Can’t this wait?” Jedediah took his glasses off and folded them on his writing desk. He put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed them apologetically.

  I sat on his lap and cried. “I don’t know what to do.” I wiped my tears and nose with the dress I was wearing. “I think she’s going to die.”

  “This is between you and Cara.”

  “Please,” I sobbed. “I feel like her life is in my hands.”

  “Okay,” he said and put down his pen. “I’ll try one last time.” Jedediah knocked lightly on the bathroom door. Cara opened it just a crack, enough to peek out but not be fully seen.

  “What is it?” she asked innocently.

  “Are you shooting up in our house?”

  “Of course not,” she said and tried to pull the door closed; Jedediah used his foot as a doorstop. “I’m taking care of some cat scratches,” she said and kicked his foot out of place, closing the door on him.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t help,” Jedediah apologized to me. “If that’s all you have to say about what you’re doing, there is nothing I can do,” he said to Cara through the door. “She’s never honest.”

  “Please?” I asked him. “One more time.”