mid-life.
Andi stopped jumping and stood over me.
Very interesting, Miss Greene. And what do you think?
I was still congratulating myself on a well-delivered monologue and impressive punchline.
I just told you what I think. What do you mean?
Precisely what I say: What do you think?
What do I personally think about the new life?
This is what I ask.
I think Dante’s new life is a fairy tale, something for children to believe in.
I love fairy tales, Andi said, but I don’t believe in them.
What do you mean by this? Romei asked.
Dante believes we choose new life: if we’re ready to walk the straight and narrow, we can leave our old life behind and achieve salvation. I don’t think so. Stuff happens. People get sick, they win the lottery. But they don’t change.
You think Dante believe that people change?
Of course! Why else would he switch to story-telling? Lyric poems are about the moment, but stories are about change. Dante changes as a result of his encounters with Beatrice, he becomes a better man, a salvageable man, or so he would have us believe.
Look, Mambo, my baby said, bringing her face to mine. I think a tooth is loose. A molar!
GO! I whisper-shouted. Back to your room!
Beatrice isn’t real, I added, so she doesn’t have to change. An idea can be perfect forever.
Andi stomped out of the room.
Very good, Romei said. Thank you. I send tomorrow.
11
SLEEPING WITH NANCY DREW
I had been talking rather a lot about Vita Nuova , but it had been sixteen years since I’d read it. My copies were all in Ahmad’s storage locker, together with other reminders of times past. It wasn’t a place I liked to visit.
I returned to Andi’s room. She was lying on top of her bed, reading Nancy Drew.
We’ll finish this later, I said, gesturing at the pile of clothes on the floor. In the meantime, pajamas.
Mmm, she replied.
I’m going to the basement, I said. Ahmad’s home from dinner; he’s in his studio. When I get back, bedtime.
Mmm, my daughter said, so I took a deep breath and the elevator down to the basement, where I found Vita Nuova and my translation together with three binders of notes from a box underneath six others. Which meant I had to open the other boxes and leaf through them—college papers so full of critical jargon I couldn’t understand them, mementos from a trip to Greece, matchbooks from my wedding. Divorce decree, receipt from the Delhi hotel where Andi had been conceived, baby clothes too precious to part with, early drafts of stories, a topographical map of northern India, the latter a reminderof the road not taken: Dharamsala, my destination interruptus when I found myself with child.
In another box: mementos from my freshman year of high school, which I spent in Rome, during my father’s second sabbatical. My yearbook, for example, which contained the only photos I had left of T. In his senior picture, he sits, smugly, in a rattan chair, his girlfriend of four years on his lap, even though she didn’t go to our school—that’s how inseparable they were considered to be. In Lavinia’s ears, glinting in the black and white sun, fat diamond earrings, gift of her movie producer papa. In the second shot, candid this time, T. leans against a Roman column smoking a cigarette. You can’t see what he looks at through his Ray-Bans—it’s off-camera, and away from the ruin that entrances the rest of the class. For years, I hoped it was me he looked at so possessively; I was in that art history class, I was on that field trip, wherever it was. I’ll never know, nor will I ever be sure that the boy in the semi-distance, with the floodwater pants and Indian mirrored manbag, is Ahmad, giving T. the evil eye. Ahmad knew about us, somehow; I never knew how.
Also, photos of Ahmad and me that same year. The dynamic duo doing all the great poses: cross-dressing American Gothic, Shira pursing her lips, Ahmad holding a devil’s trident. Sistine Chapel redux—our fingers almost
Andi stopped jumping and stood over me.
Very interesting, Miss Greene. And what do you think?
I was still congratulating myself on a well-delivered monologue and impressive punchline.
I just told you what I think. What do you mean?
Precisely what I say: What do you think?
What do I personally think about the new life?
This is what I ask.
I think Dante’s new life is a fairy tale, something for children to believe in.
I love fairy tales, Andi said, but I don’t believe in them.
What do you mean by this? Romei asked.
Dante believes we choose new life: if we’re ready to walk the straight and narrow, we can leave our old life behind and achieve salvation. I don’t think so. Stuff happens. People get sick, they win the lottery. But they don’t change.
You think Dante believe that people change?
Of course! Why else would he switch to story-telling? Lyric poems are about the moment, but stories are about change. Dante changes as a result of his encounters with Beatrice, he becomes a better man, a salvageable man, or so he would have us believe.
Look, Mambo, my baby said, bringing her face to mine. I think a tooth is loose. A molar!
GO! I whisper-shouted. Back to your room!
Beatrice isn’t real, I added, so she doesn’t have to change. An idea can be perfect forever.
Andi stomped out of the room.
Very good, Romei said. Thank you. I send tomorrow.
11
SLEEPING WITH NANCY DREW
I had been talking rather a lot about Vita Nuova , but it had been sixteen years since I’d read it. My copies were all in Ahmad’s storage locker, together with other reminders of times past. It wasn’t a place I liked to visit.
I returned to Andi’s room. She was lying on top of her bed, reading Nancy Drew.
We’ll finish this later, I said, gesturing at the pile of clothes on the floor. In the meantime, pajamas.
Mmm, she replied.
I’m going to the basement, I said. Ahmad’s home from dinner; he’s in his studio. When I get back, bedtime.
Mmm, my daughter said, so I took a deep breath and the elevator down to the basement, where I found Vita Nuova and my translation together with three binders of notes from a box underneath six others. Which meant I had to open the other boxes and leaf through them—college papers so full of critical jargon I couldn’t understand them, mementos from a trip to Greece, matchbooks from my wedding. Divorce decree, receipt from the Delhi hotel where Andi had been conceived, baby clothes too precious to part with, early drafts of stories, a topographical map of northern India, the latter a reminderof the road not taken: Dharamsala, my destination interruptus when I found myself with child.
In another box: mementos from my freshman year of high school, which I spent in Rome, during my father’s second sabbatical. My yearbook, for example, which contained the only photos I had left of T. In his senior picture, he sits, smugly, in a rattan chair, his girlfriend of four years on his lap, even though she didn’t go to our school—that’s how inseparable they were considered to be. In Lavinia’s ears, glinting in the black and white sun, fat diamond earrings, gift of her movie producer papa. In the second shot, candid this time, T. leans against a Roman column smoking a cigarette. You can’t see what he looks at through his Ray-Bans—it’s off-camera, and away from the ruin that entrances the rest of the class. For years, I hoped it was me he looked at so possessively; I was in that art history class, I was on that field trip, wherever it was. I’ll never know, nor will I ever be sure that the boy in the semi-distance, with the floodwater pants and Indian mirrored manbag, is Ahmad, giving T. the evil eye. Ahmad knew about us, somehow; I never knew how.
Also, photos of Ahmad and me that same year. The dynamic duo doing all the great poses: cross-dressing American Gothic, Shira pursing her lips, Ahmad holding a devil’s trident. Sistine Chapel redux—our fingers almost
Similar Books
