by Jill Kargman
18
“When a woman steals your husband, there’s no better revenge than to let her keep him.”
I took Miles for some gelato at Sant Ambroeus after school and we walked through the October leaves down Fifth Avenue toward the park. He wanted to run around before he started his homework (yes, homework—in first grade), so we went into the park. I watched him climb up the Alice in Wonderland statue on Seventy-sixth Street, and as he sat in big bronze Alice’s lap and waved to me, I felt such love for him that I knew I would be okay. Even if I never met the perfect guy, I was raising the perfect guy, and I loved him more than anything.
My cell phone rang, and I looked away from my precious son to fish out my phone and found Kiki on the line.
“Hey where are you guys? I just stopped by your building—”
“Hi, we’re in the park by Alice in Wonderland, come by!” In five minutes Kiki was there, huge sunglasses, spike heels, fur coat, and cigarette, which I made her extinguish. She was larger than life, my friend.
“So. I have another guy for you—”
“We’ll see. I’m not so sure I’m ready.”
“Fine. I have another thought, then. When Tim takes Miles to London for Columbus Day weekend, why don’t you come with me to Vegas?”
“Vegas? Are you crazy? No!”
“Why? You’re just gonna sit here alone and mope? I think you need to break the rut and get away. I mean really away.”
I noticed a gorgeous guy with a camera taking pictures of the fiery changing leaves. He then snapped the statue with Miles on it. My kid would end up in some tourist’s memory book of New York.
“Isn’t this statue great?” asked Kiki, flirtily, to the man, who was next to us.
“Yes, I love this,” he said in an American accent. We were both surprised, as he had an aura that was too cool to be local.
“I’m Kiki and this is my friend Holland,” she said in a Madonna-style quasi-Brit accent trying to make me sound more exotic than my low ponytail and unglam flats would project, pushing me forward. So embarrassing.
“I’m Elliot,” he replied, shaking our hands.
Suddenly his cell phone rang.
“Excuse me, I’ve been waiting for this call—” He walked to a nearby bench and sat down.
“No worries,” said Kiki as he turned to take it. Then she leaned in to me. “Gorgeous, right? Go for that!”
“Please. I don’t pick people up in Central Park. Least of all weird tourists.”
“Maybe he’s not a tourist. He sounds normal.”
I stared at her blankly to let her know she was being insane. “Fine, okay, so, anyway, this guy I met for you,” continued Kiki. “It’s a friend of a friend. Investment banker. I know, I know—”
“Kiki. What did I say? NO WALL STREET. No hedge funds, no brokers, no one who even glances at the Wall Street Journal! Got it?”
“Understood. Back to square one.”
I always hated the sound of that phrase. It was like getting that one dreaded wild card in Candyland or Chutes and Ladders and going all the way back down the path to the beginning.
Kiki took Miles’s hand.
“I’ll race you, Aunt Kiki!” he challenged.
“I’ll beat you in my high heels, you little critter!” she taunted.
“On your mark. Get set. GO!” The two sprinted up the hill that led to the Fifth Avenue exit as I slowly meandered up. As I rounded the bend in the park path, I saw Elliot, still on the bench on the phone, looking up at me. He waved good-bye, as did I.
That night Miles and I made dinner in the kitchen, chopping veggies for a frittata. I remembered once seeing a T-shirt that read “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche,” but I knew my son was more of a man with his big heart and unedited love than most schmucks out there. As we ate our concoction he started telling me about his studies in school. They were doing geography continent by continent and now they were on Africa.
“Mommy, did you know that in some cultures you get married and you don’t even know the person? You marry a stranger!”
“Yes, I did know that. Crazy, huh.” Little did he know it was the same thing here in the free world. Tim had turned out to be stranger. But he had given me my kid. And I couldn’t dream of any child more delicious.
I read him some stories and tucked him into bed, wiping the matted hair from his face after he fell asleep. The thought of him on a plane without me always gave me a coronary, but I’d have to get used to it. As I walked into my bedroom, I started thinking about what Kiki said: getting away. At home I’d probably just worry about Miles incessantly and brew and stew about Tim and whom they were with. Maybe a trip would be nice. But Vegas? No. I didn’t want the pressure to party and have a good time. I wasn’t in a festive mood. But the idea of travel had piqued my interest; it was a weird time of year, so maybe I could get a bargain. Because I wanted the apartment over any cash settlement, and I had no new income, I couldn’t exactly jet off to some ritzy destination the way we used to. But maybe a trip would be just the psychological break I needed. Maybe . . . I could get gelato from the source. Within minutes I was clicking away online, and within an hour I was the proud owner of a cheap ticket on Alitalia. Two nights in Florence, two nights in Venice. I had gone with Tim during our first year of marriage, and this would be a way of starting over: repaving those storied streets with new memories. That would be more strengthening than partying loneliness away in Vegas. I would embrace the loneliness instead. It would be a quick trip, but one that was right for me—instead of casino lights there would be lanterns; instead of desert, water. And instead of throngs of slot-pulling, sweat-suited loafers walking on loud carpets, there would be the quiet pitter-patter of my feet in quiet, twisting, cobblestoned alleys.
19
“The first decade of marriage, you watch TV after sex. The second decade, you watch TV during, and the third decade, you watch TV instead.”
As the plane started to descend on the Old World, I was glued to the window, drinking in the different topography and totally new visual flavor. Sometimes, to get out of a rut, you have to fly out, via 777. It was like my passport stamp was a defibrillator jolting me awake after a haze of zombie-like existence as opposed to living. The little rooftops were centuries older than anything at home, and suddenly the U.S. felt like strip mall central next to the rustic charms of Italy. You could highlight and drag one seminice building from Europe and paste it into New York and it would be an insta-landmark. But we had our own brand of magic buildings at home, and while I was thrilled to be abroad, part of me missed the glimmering Gotham skyline already.
I got from the airport to my little hotel, which used to be one family’s mansion and was pretty gorgeous considering it cost only a hundred and fifty euros. In the U.S. you couldn’t get a twin bed in a crack flophouse for that! Then I saw my room.
To say that it made a monk’s quarters look like a baronial spread would not be an exaggeration. So much for the appealing virtual tour online. The room must’ve been like eight by nine feet, with a tiny doll’s bed in the corner, a small drawer set, and a bathroom where the showerhead is above the toilet so you can pee and condition your hair at the same time. There was a tiny Shawshank Redemption-style window about the size of a Scrabble board and a framed map of the città. Okay, I thought, the plan is not to spend much time in the hotel, anyway.
So I meandered out to achieve my first order of business: gelato. I glanced in the glass-covered bins of two places before I knew I’d struck gold; the coffee gelato in the third joint was so dark, it looked like espresso. Never had I tasted anything so orgasmic. The flavor on my dime-sized spoon could kick the ass of a pint of any coffee in the States. Bliss.
With my dish in hand and bag slung over my back, I trolled the little winding streets, marveled at every church I stepped into, and crossed the Ponte Vecchio to scope out the view of the river. The freezing wind was blowing through my hair and I leaned over the wall to look at the other side of the city and f
elt so proud of myself that I had come here alone. After years of Black Falcon Club trips with Tim, this felt way more adventurous. I had a small fear that I could be abducted and no one would ever know or remember seeing me, but for some reason I felt braver than I did at home, and my ignorance of bad neighborhoods in Florence sent me exploring for hours in every dark corner. I’d never dawdle aimlessly in twisting gray streets at home, but I was so curious about the random fountain at the end of a stone path, or the hidden palatial town house or a tucked-away mosaic. The sky fell to electric blue, then darker purple, and the stones beneath my feet looked almost shellacked black, like perfect skipping stones but big. An old woman out of central casting was attending to her window box and I decided to walk back through the dim-lit streets, and change before taking myself out to dinner.
I was lured off the non-tourist-trodden path toward a small cove aglow with the orangey flicker of a fun little hole-in-the-wall café. The place must have had a total of thirteen tables, and there was loud music, big plates of food, and happy, dolce far niente, life-loving eaters. The one drawback was the gust of smoke, but hey, I was in Italia, so I smiled at the guy who seemed to be in charge. He came over and I did the universal sign for I am a loser and need a table just for me ’cause I am totally alone in the world (the index finger up as if to say one, please). I got a look of pity and even saw him exchange glances with one of his amici, but he sat me in a very cute minitable in the corner.
Two hours later, there were seven people smashed around me. It began ten minutes after I sat down, with two uomini nearby who started speaking to me in broken English.
“Why you are alone, signorina?” When I replied in broken Italian, they were very impressed. How did this lonely American ragazza know Italiano?
“Studiava all’università.” First they angled their chairs toward me, then a cute couple walked in and knew them, so they introduced us. The woman had vibrant blue eyes and jet-black hair and the kind of weathered gorgeosity and extreme facial architecture that women find beautiful; guys don’t always agree. We all hung out and they told me places to go, and even gave me their mobile phone numbers. I loved disposable friends. They were like my new best buds, kissing me good night and offering rooms in their homes, and I could be an effing serial killer. Fascinating. In New York, people would probably just whisper and feel sorry for me, and in Italy, they pull up chairs.
The next day I wandered to the Uffizi and waited in an endless line to get to Botticelli’s Primavera, which was sadly behind some bulletproof glass, which I found odd-slash-annoying. Some maniac had attempted to slash it. Who are these people? I camped in front and just zoned out staring at the fabrics of the maidens’ dancing gowns, hypnotized by the ethereal gauzy haze. The women looked so serene, lost in a milky swell of lightness. And soon I felt as light as spring as well, renewed and fresh.
Seeing the painting, more because it was famous and reproduced everywhere than because I loved it, was like seeing an old friend. Way beyond a familiar face, the works in the galleries were like lost close childhood pals rediscovered on foreign soil. And because I was a lone American woman, these were connections not only to home but also to my past.
I passed an Assumption into Heaven, in which a weightless Christ with luminous skin was making his way to the sky. I saw Titians with blue so saturated and choked with color that it was as if the artist had ground up stones and spread liquid lapis on the panel. Staring at these masterpieces, in delizioso Italia, I felt poetic, romantic, with the excited chills that I normally reserved for a movie’s final sunset-dappled kiss.
The next day I went to see the giant statue of David, and in the massive hall, there were a hundred studenti hanging out. It was funny to see a European cultural icon being treated as some ho-hum regular backdrop, but Miles and his friends often played in the Temple of Dendur at the Met in the winter, throwing pennies, laughing as if they were on a jungle gym, oblivious to the treasures perched among their sneakered feet. If you live with it every day, it may lose its luster. Still, I always loved walking in that looming glass room whose stark interior bled into Central Park’s resplendent trees, and I never took it for granted.
I sat on the floor like some of the other visitors, and a guy next to me with a giant sketch pad was drawing a perfect rendition of the statue from our profile angle. It was quite impressive.
“Molto buono,” I offered, in pathetic Italian.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling. He knew I was hopeless and spared me the humiliation of fumbling.
His name was Marcello and he was a former art student, now a lawyer, who had grown up in Bologna and moved to Florence a few years before with his firm. I marveled at the other great drawings on the layered pages of his pad, and he asked if I wanted to have lunch. He was handsome in a really foreign, dark way, and we talked about America and art and my trip and ultimately, why I was taking it.
“Ah . . . starting over?” he asked in perfect English. “Italy is the best place to do that.”
On my date with Matt I hadn’t mentioned Miles. Kiki had said I should wait till date number two to drop the mom-bomb. “No need to scare him too fast,” she had said. “Rope him in a bit, and then let him know, once he’s invested.”
We never got to that point, obviously, but walking with Marcello I felt unedited and I talked forever about Miles, and then Tim, popping the cork on my emotional Prosecco. We walked through the little streets and watched the sky fall dark, and he asked if I wanted to come over.
In retrospect, I realize I must’ve been on crack to just follow him up the three flights, but for some reason it felt like a good idea. The alternative was being alone again, and I was suddenly not into that. We entered his apartment, which I thought for some reason would be a cyclone-hit mess, but it was surprisingly cute and clean, with huge arched windows overlooking a square and a little painter’s corner with pots of brushes and an easel. After he closed the door I got that weird rush of being in a total stranger’s abode. What was I thinking? He could be Gioffreddo Dahmer! Maybe he’d hack me up and make paint out of my blood and guts, Red Violin-style, and brush me onto a canvas.
He brought me some bubbly water, smiled, and plopped down on the couch. What if it was drugged or rufy spiked? It’s poison! It was from a glass bottle, Holly. Okay, okay, he’s fine. Not Teodoro Bundy. I was being paranoid, I realized, and calmed down a bit. But I apparently still was a little on edge, thinking of people saying, as I would, “She went up there to his place? Then she’s an idiot and it’s partly her fault she got raped and hacked to bits!”
My imagination is a burden sometimes.
Marcello, as it turned out, was not a razor-wielding rapist-murderer. Not Carlo Manson. He was a sweet, honest man who had just broken up with a girlfriend, and we ended up talking about life and relationships for a few hours. I tried to extract little pieces of wisdom from him, but it all mirrored what I already knew, just in slightly different words.
“You trusted yourself to go,” he said. “You knew you could not stay and look the other way. As scary as it is to leave the marriage, it would have been worse still to stay and pretend you were happy.”
Sì.
“You got it. E vero,” I said.
There was absolutely zero sexual tension. We shared only a mutual smile where we both knew we could have had a little bacio, but what was the point? It would just be a Band-Aid for two recovering lovelorn souls who were feeling a little small. How fitting that we had met next to a giant David, the underdog who later pulled through. Maybe we would, too . . . but not together.
“Good night, Holly. It was nice spending the day with you.”
“Likewise.”
I hugged him good-bye and left to go back to my room for my last night before Venezia.
When I arrived in enchanted Venice, it transcended my gargantuan memories. How many things are actually better than you imagined? I’ve heard people say it was smelly, that there are omnipresent rats, that it was a massive sewer. They
all were wrong (then again, I was there in crisp October, not stinky July). Plus, I never saw one rat. Okay, I saw one, but it was swimming in the canal and my water taxi driver said, “Don’ta worry, they do notta eat the turisti.”
I got to my little hotel and immediately called Miles to tell him I missed and loved him. And while I could hear Avery’s voice in the background, which made me puke-ready, I took comfort in the fact that my son sounded happy. After we hung up, I unpacked and settled into my room, which was way better than the nun’s quarters in Florence—this time it was bellissima and my queen-size bed was actually long enough so that my cobblestone-weary feet didn’t hang off the end. The large single-pane window was crisply Windexed and much bigger, so the muted splish-splash of the narrow waterway outside could be heard all night, lulling me to sleep like I was in a giant womb. I walked everywhere in Venice, through the charcoal alleyways lined with creepy mask stores. Carnivale must be a really big deal there to sustain so many of them. As a rabid coulrophobe (victim of a paralyzingly traumatic fear of mimes, clowns, and worst of all, ventriloquist dummies), I had goose-bump-laced, violent reactions to the white, spooky, I-am-a-murderer visages.
The next day I walked to San Marco Square and bristled with a bad case of the skeeves when I saw the hordes of pigeons (i.e., rats with wings). But then I remembered a photo of my mother standing in the very same spot at age eighteen, smiling by the domed wonder of the basilica in front of me. I got a tear in my eye when I thought of her, and how the pain of missing her would never subside. I wished she were there to coach me through this year. But I would summon her strength, as I knew she would have wanted me to.
My final day pre-departure was spent on a gondola. I scanned the striped-shirted men and when a cute old guy smiled at me and called me bella, it was game over. I hopped in and was amazed at how he expertly maneuvered me through the tiny canals as if we were a duck. I leaned back in the love seat clearly meant for two and drank in the rooftops and filled clotheslines. Considering that this city in its aqua maze had always occupied such a hallowed place in my imagination, it felt like a miracle to absorb the reality of that moment. This soaring above my own dream gave me something I never expected: the realization that I was not jaded. Things would be fine. Because I was not wounded and scarred enough to be closed off to the details, the visual balms, that make everything feel healed inside. It was as if this trip had peeled off a few pieces of that emotional Scotch tape, and plucked out one or two staples holding my heart together. And as Mario burst into “O Sole Mio” when we crossed under a bridge, I got the rush of knowing my hope was restored. Of knowing some things are better than we dreamed when we book a spontaneous ticket online, and that the lapping water at the shiny boat’s side was a symbol that taking a risk can be this refreshing.
