by Delia Ephron
The day before we left, Snow and I drove to CVS to buy sunblock. “Call me Tawny,” she said.
“Tawny?”
“I want to be Tawny.”
“Why? I love your name. You were born in a blizzard and the next morning the world was blanketed in beauty. That’s why we named you Snow.” I had told her this time and again. I thought of it as a lullaby. “Where did you come up with Tawny?”
“Celebrity mug shots. On the computer. There was a woman named Tawny Nichols.” Snow is very graceful, and with one movement she smoothed her hand over her head, drawing all her long sleek hair, blond like mine, to the side and over her shoulder. “I’m ready for my mug shot.”
“Mug shots are taken when you are arrested.”
“I know,” she said.
Snow is sometimes unintentionally provocative. It comes from innocence, her naïveté. While I am careful never to react, Finn gets off on it. He laughs and she’s never sure if his laughing is good or bad. She looks at me wondering. If it’s appropriate I smile. Otherwise I shake my head.
I often think about that conversation with Snow and wonder if it wasn’t a warning, if I should have been more protective. No, according to April. Mothers feel guilty about everything even when it’s not their fault.
Michael
PROMISED K I’D GET OUT OF IT. Had every intention. Mornings I’d lean against the counter drinking coffee watching Lizzie make a smoothie. The speed with which she can do things in the kitchen used to dazzle me—tops popped on plastic containers, bits of banana, blueberries, whatever tossed into the blender. A handful of ice. The freezer kicked shut while she tipped in the soy. Masterful.
I’d drink my coffee intending to tell her. Any second now. Days went by. Weeks. Aware of my cowardice, if that explains it, I considered telling her while the blender was making that god-awful noise. Telling her when she couldn’t hear—a sick amusement. Evenings mostly I wasn’t around, and Lizzie provided the excuse, assuming I was at my office. Writing. “You’re so involved with that novel.”
“You’re so involved with that novel, you haven’t taken your suitcase out of the closet yet and we’re leaving in two days,” said my wife, sipping Pinot Noir. Lizzie was obsessed with an Oregon Pinot Noir. She fixes on things and brags about them, in this case because the top twisted off.
“Someone should have invented this no-cork thing years ago,” she said.
Why am I even mentioning this?
Spoken words are irretrievable. They can be bombs.
I don’t love you anymore, the man said to his wife, telling one horrible truth, omitting others.
I don’t love you anymore and haven’t for some time, Elizabeth. I’m not going to Italy. Almost said it out of curiosity. For some excitement. To wake the dead.
But didn’t. Couldn’t face the hysteria. Her energy turned on me. I understand why men leave notes on mantels and disappear.
The night before the trip, she swabbed a piece of bread in olive oil and was about to pop it in her mouth when she looked up. Here it comes. I saw the thought flit through her head. I’m happy here. She was reassuring me, isn’t that ridiculous? It doesn’t matter that there is not a fucking thing left to say. I’m happy here.
There was so much familiarity in our marriage that I didn’t need her to be there to be there. I could supply her lines. Her thoughts.
But then I’m a novelist. That’s my job.
I recalled a comment Lizzie once made about a couple we knew. “Casting,” she said, about their marriage. Probably that’s what has kept our marriage going—we’re whom we think we should be with, whom everyone else thinks we should be with. Everyone who matters in New York City. In our circle. Journalists. Editors. Writers. I’m being ironic. I’m not that much of an asshole.
At least we were traveling with Finn and Taylor and that child of theirs who keeps to herself. It would relieve the monotony of scraping the bottom of my brainpan to find something to say to L that isn’t hostile. That was my thinking to the extent I thought about it. I couldn’t be friends with Finn. He doesn’t read, that I’d ever noticed. Not that I have a lot of male friends. The very idea of friends seems female. But he’s a great traveler and I am not. I prefer to be home, especially preferred it then.
It’s madness to travel with a woman you’ve lost interest in. The isolation. The sexual expectations, which I had no intention of fulfilling. At least in that manner I could be loyal.
Finn
I CAN TELL MY STORY as well as the rest of them. Although I’ll mess with you now and then, I warn you. I like to do that. Until I took this trip, I didn’t grasp all the angles I could play.
“Forget Michael and Taylor. Let’s just us go,” I told Lizzie.
I said things like that to frazz her. Lizzie’s cute when she’s frazzed. She pretended I hadn’t said it and went all Hillary Clinton on me, super serious, like she was planning a Mideast summit. “I think we should go to Siracusa.”
“I’m not kidding. Let’s ditch them.”
“Siracusa looks falling down and great.”
“You know you’d rather travel with me than Michael.”
She kept repeating it. “Siracusa.” Like I knew where it was. What it was. Like anyone did. Lizzie’s nuts. Wherever it was—in Sicily it turned out, western or eastern coast, whatever—I figured it was good for Tay. I said, “Get Taylor someplace real.”
Taylor is a good person, she’s a great mother, and she knows how to take care of things, but if she never spoke to a foreigner she’d be happy. She works up a sweat about these trips, about all the art, the architecture, the culture, then hires a guide to whisk her and Snow around and about. Nothing unexpected. Nothing left to chance. Spending money. She’s genius at spending money. My money.
On the buildup to this fiasco, Lizzie and I were texting ten times a day. I started hounding her at Christmas. “Italy in June. Remind Tay, remind Tay, grazie prego.” Badgered Lizzie’s brains out. Taylor had no idea I was feeding Lizzie, making it happen, getting a bit of control. What’s that called? Passive aggressive. I was having a passive-aggressive field day pulling Lizzie’s strings so she’d pull Taylor’s, and getting off on it. It never crossed Tay’s mind.
I swear I could come home dead drunk—I have—and as long as it didn’t interfere with Snow’s homework or bedtime, Tay wouldn’t notice.
I was smoking again. And worried she was going to detect it and go ballistic. Smoking. It’s worse than drinking in this fucked-up world. Worse than some felonies but don’t quote me on that. I’m just blowing smoke. Thank God for Binaca. I used it like bug spray. Round the clock.
I was considering seeing a shrink.
That’s not what you would expect. You’d expect one of the other three would have been going that direction, but I was screwed up. Cheating. It was on my mind.
I should have married Lizzie, although she wouldn’t be half the mother Taylor is.
“Taylor is very organized and efficient,” said Lizzie. “She’s brilliant at what she does.”
Taylor, who runs the Portland Visitors’ Bureau, has single-handedly increased tourism by five percent, and yours truly benefits from that. But who was Lizzie kidding? She thought if she said that to me about Taylor, I’d think she liked Taylor. She tolerated Taylor because Lizzie had a thing for me. Women think men are stupid, or at any rate stupider than they are.
“Taylor will take care of me in my old age,” I told Lizzie. “If I get an awful disease, I know she’ll be there at the hospital, bossing the doctors.”
“How do you know you’ll die first?” said Lizzie. “You know what? I hope you get a horrible disease so she can take care of you. I hate to think you’re staying in a marriage for something that’s never going to happen.”
Not that she’s wrong, but over time Lizzie’s personality could do you in.
But she’s fun. First
Siracusa night and day and then she was off and running about how Sicily invented ice cream, it’s her favorite food, and we had to go there and eat it. Those tourist books are full of crap. But Siracusa sounded great, Lizzie great. She’ll take a meaningless thing and spin it until we’re like dogs, tongues hanging out, panting to go. Signing her e-mails Angelina Pistachio, Carmela Vanilla.
Siracusa fucked up Taylor’s whole trip, which, truth be told, I loved.
Rome, Day 1
Lizzie
MICHAEL SUFFERS HORRIBLY from jet lag, and it takes a few days before he’s functioning on all cylinders. Upon our arrival at Cesare Due, having left the taxi and deposited our luggage with the bellman, we collided. What I mean is, while entering the hotel we attempted to pass through the entrance at the same time and nearly became wedged there like cartoon characters. “Oh my God, you want a divorce,” I said.
Michael looked startled, as if a flowerpot, dropped from above, had narrowly missed him.
I started laughing. “That’s a joke, you know, because—”
“Because what?” said Michael. He’s querulous when he’s wiped.
“Nothing. Sorry. Forget it. I’m tired. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
I have learned when to back off, but here’s the thing. Michael has the most perfect manners. He unfailingly helps me on with my coat, lets women exit an elevator first, crosses to the street side when we walk together, and has never once preceded me through a doorway. Before his appendectomy, when he was writhing in pain, he waited for me to enter the emergency room ahead of him. I always thought, and joked to my best friend Rachel, that if he ever walked through a door first, it would mean he was through with me. In Rome, lo and behold, he did it.
That’s how jet-lagged he was.
I wasn’t surprised that he wanted to sleep the day away, whereas I wanted only a short nap. After leaving a message at the front desk for Finn and Taylor, who had flown to Rome from Boston, I visited the carnival of activity at Piazza Navona, had spaghetti carbonara and a macchiato, and sat for a few lazy hours. Then I went back to the hotel, and was exploring, wandering down a labyrinthine corridor when from behind someone grabbed my hand. I swung around. Finn backed me into a corner.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Looking for you.”
“You are not.”
“Looking for the bar,” said Finn. “There it is.” He pulled me along.
With amber sconces providing the seductive glow of twilight and narrow leather banquettes, the tiny cavelike space had the requisite romantic anonymity of a perfect hotel bar. Couples who don’t want to be seen or remembered have rendezvoused here.
He peered around, saw no one serving, scooted out to wave down the hall, and scooted back. A waitress appeared a second later, slim and young in a seriously tight black skirt and a tailored white shirt buttoned to the collar, her hair slicked back in a twist.
“Do you speak French?” he asked her in English.
“No, but I speak English,” she said in English.
Finn ordered every bar snack blithely in French, and I do want to explain the significance of this. Finn speaks fluent French because, while the rest of us went to college, he crewed on French yachts. As a result, when in foreign countries, he has a status and respect far beyond his occasionally goofball demeanor and working-class roots. Speaking foreign languages can make an American something more than an American, made Finn something more than Finn. “Do you speak lingua mista?” he then asked. She smiled, and into his French he sprinkled some Italian as well as English words like martinis and olives.
“I can’t drink a martini, I’ll be on the floor. I’ll have a kir, per favore.”
“Per favore.” He mimicked my terrible accent and told the waitress that I should be locked in language jail. Now the waitress was laughing.
“Do you live with your mother?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
In a minute he’ll get her to sing the Italian national anthem. Finn can get women to do things they normally do only in front of the mirror. Not that she’s singing the national anthem into her bathroom mirror, but you know what I mean. The first time we hung out together, we were wandering around the Portland harbor past ferries and cruise ships very late at night and Finn was quizzing me about everything. Did I like the Eagles (who didn’t?), pretzels salted or not (salted), could I salsa? No, but I could tap. I performed my routine to “Take Five” from one end of the pier to the other. I’d studied tap when I was ten. I hadn’t tapped since and I have never tapped again. Finn.
“I brought you something,” he said. From his shirt pocket he handed me a shiny vacuum-sealed packet of peanuts that read TWA.
“TWA? That’s a dead airline.”
“Not to me,” said Finn.
In the middle of our fling, we’d flown to Montreal on TWA and had a big fight there, and I flew back alone. Finn had mentioned he hunts. He had a freezer full of elk steaks. “You eat them, I shoot them, so what?” he said.
“I don’t eat elk. I don’t go around pointing guns at animals, pulling a trigger, and watching them die.”
“You just ate fucking foie gras,” he said.
I had. At a great restaurant, Les Amis de Pierre.
“So you own a gun?” I said.
“A thirty-ought-six,” he said.
I’ll never forget the name because it was so weird. Then it occurred to me. “I bet you don’t believe in gun control?”
“Suppose I need to protect my family?” he said.
What was I doing with him? What? He was a Republican. Every digging deeper led to massive disagreement, even screaming, but I was having fun. Fun was Finn’s specialty. I felt free around him too. Fun and free turned out to be rare enough to create lasting affection.
I knew the affair was temporary. I was on my way to New York City. Besides, speaking of foie gras, Finn was dessert. To take him seriously was to commit to an all-sugar diet.
“Seriously, TWA? Where’d you get this?”
Finn grinned. I knew I’d get nowhere.
“Where are Taylor and Snow?”
“In the room. They’ll be down eventually.”
I ripped open the packet expecting to see black shriveled bits, and instead found perfectly ordinary golden-brown nuts. “Eat one, I dare you.”
Finn threw a few into his mouth and chewed.
Shortly I was on my second kir.
“Your eyeballs are spinning,” said Finn. “Wait till Michael sees you four sheets to the wind.”
“Michael might not come to dinner. He’s beat. I really love these green olives. What happened with Jessa?”
“Nothing yet. What do you think? Should I?”
“I’m not telling you to have an affair.”
“Are you available?”
“No, Finn, I’m not available. Will anyone do?”
“No.”
Finn was incapable of not flirting. I always ignored it. “When did you start smoking again?”
“Yesterday.”
“Liar.”
“Want a drag?”
“No, I don’t want a drag.”
He wrapped his hand around mine and pried the glass from it. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up.” He separated my fingers and placed the cigarette between them. At that moment I realized Michael was here.
“Lizzie smokes,” said Finn.
“Finn smokes. Take it back,” I told Finn. “I don’t want that awful smell on my hand. I thought you were sleeping through dinner?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Taylor doesn’t know I smoke. Don’t tell her.”
“Finn, we don’t want to know things about you that your wife doesn’t know.” I said this knowing that I knew many things about Finn that Taylor didn’t know (and Michael d
idn’t either). About Jessa, for instance. “We really don’t.”
“Speak for yourself. I don’t mind,” said Michael. “I like knowing people’s secrets. Then I can write about them. Disguised, of course. Macallan, if you have it,” he told the waitress. “On the rocks.”
Looking back, that trip tricked me out from day one. I was flirting. I offered Michael nuts without telling him that they were fifteen years old. In the beginning, I’d have to admit, I was collaborating with Finn.
Michael
THE MAN PHONED AGAIN, feeling a fool. Her cell was turned off. Conclusion (obvious) he drew when unable to reach his lover, when one ring triggered her voice singing “Jingle Bells.” “I love Christmas,” she’d told him.
I was getting sloppy. K was not a “contact,” but more dangerously a pileup of “recents.” Would carelessness rescue me from ambivalence? Should I leave my cell on Lizzie’s unpacked suitcase?
I enjoy concealing, lying less so. Some may claim otherwise. I did both, do both. A secret is something you can play with, to keep or give away; a gift or a poisoned dart, it can be either. Concealing may be merely letting other people draw conclusions. As for lying, in this story, which is also my life, I will make a case for the charm of it. “You will be fooled,” he said arrogantly.
I’d stopped in at Tino’s for a drink. Eight months ago. Early November. I did that occasionally when the writing wasn’t happening. Ducked out of my office and around the corner to the local Italian. Coffee break but no coffee. To jump-start the process with Macallan. Writers have been doing that forever. Imagine I’m Irish. We fell into a conversation. Knew each other’s names already. Lizzie and I ate there every few months, and K always gave us the table Lizzie liked in the corner. I was ruminating about Julien, his particular need to be accepted and his disdain for the good opinions he craved. “Problems with Julien,” I told her when she settled onto the stool next to me.
