Six Days in Rome

Maybe all Roman brides are serene. This one is.

I watch her from the café, at one of the outdoor tables that's still catching the last of the early evening sun, in the middle of the island in the middle of the river. I can see details that someone walking by might miss, like having good seats at a play. Her dress flashes with cheap sequins or crystals, scattered across the waist and skirt like an afterthought. The fabric is gathered between her shoulder blades, pinching. The light hits her square in the face, but she doesn't even squint. Her gaze is distant, focused on something that's invisible to me.

The stone paving this piazza is sloped, a defiant, imperfect tilt toward the river on one side. This café seems built into the dip, old books wedged under table legs to compensate. The church is at the center of the square, flat on its own thick foundation, a nonnegotiable.

A child, maybe hers, chases one of the groomsmen around the square in a makeshift game of tag. Her mother, or soon-to-be mother-in-law, talks loudly on a cell phone, too quickly and far away for me to try to understand.

There's none of the hushed drama that comes with American weddings, no pageantry, no nerves. The mood is calm and still, in deference to the higher power at work here—if not God, then maybe just familiarity, the inevitability of two compatible or similar people being together. Making promises, eyes shining, in front of a select few.

The groom is lingering by the door, not giving her the reverence we've been taught that brides deserve. He shows no signs of becoming overwhelmed or tearing up when seeing her in a white dress. Even the thought of something that choreographed or contrived feels laughable here, watching them. He's seen her before, will see her again. The white dress, what it purports to mean, pales against what these ancient walls are holding up, what they've kept out and let through. There doesn't even seem to be a photographer.

The untouchable look on her face, as if she were floating just an inch above the rest of us: it's familiar. Her gaze like those of the saints I'm starting to see immortalized in frescoes and mosaics all over this city. Eyes focused far away, sure of some delicious secret.

I've been to Rome once before, but years ago and never alone. My parents brought my brother and me when he was eight and I was twelve. We stayed in an apartment by the Spanish Steps, furnished with hanging tapestries and thick rugs and delicate, antique furniture. The wooden beams that framed the doorways and held up the ceiling were from the owner's family house in Puglia. I remember being fascinated by that, how pieces of one home could be used to support another.

One day, there was a guided tour of the Vatican: giggling at Swiss guards, running through the gardens, a few minutes in the Sistine Chapel, necks stretched, before being ushered out. I sped through the museum, doing a quick scan of each room, picking my favorite piece before moving on, while my brother listened intently to descriptions of brushstrokes and marble quarries, patronages and papal states, the artist's connection to the church and all it meant. He got as close as possible, his face sometimes only inches from a painting or sculpture.

A breeze slips its way across my skin, still damp with my sweat and water from a fountain I passed on my walk here, a wolf's head carved out of stone. I let it fill my hands, splashed it on my arms and face, threw the rest on the back of my neck so it dripped between my shoulder blades, flowed down my spine. Something I'd only ever seen old Italian men do in movies.

There are empty tables behind and in front of me now, all of us keeping some distance. Even with the air, light, time of day being what it is. No one is speaking English. The glasses in everyone's hands glow red and orange with Cappelletti, Aperol, and Campari. A mother gives her baby an orange-slice garnish to chew on.

I sip an Averna, on ice with a lemon peel, my third of the day. These cocktails, their variations and what they mean, were a big part of my pre-Rome education. He made samples, playing bartender in my kitchen. Measuring out vermouth and splashing soda like an amateur chemist. I was schooled on the differences between a spritz and an Americano. A classic Negroni and a sbagliato. How delicately his tongue hit the back of his teeth at the end of that satisfying, foreign word.

His hands moved. His voice rose and fell, eyes studying my face, maybe imagining what it might look like in Italy. How it might change.

It's not surprising, that I miss him a little more each time a new drink arrives. It's hard to see an empty chair and not imagine him in it, stretching his long legs out, head tilted back a bit to feel the last of the sun on his face, his flat fingers flipping the pages of a menu.

He was present in every decision I made for this trip: the apartment, the restaurants, the day trip to Pompeii, which he'd never seen. We chose the dates to align with his birthday. Late July, even though it was, as he said, the worst time to be in Rome. I thought of what he might order for a late lunch, the hint of a smile as he read a book under a tree in the Borghese, maybe his hand on mine after we stopped for a drink and watched day turn to night, and other things I didn't even know to anticipate, that would have been surprises.

And there was the untold potential of what I might say or do or encourage, what possibilities might present themselves, to make him more devoted, convinced he'd come to the right city with the right person. I've heard time away changes relationships, gives them longevity, maybe offers a life raft. The freedom of a strange place, to be someone else, to try on whatever feels like it might fit.

The postcards I bought earlier are fanned out on the table. A ritual almost every time I go somewhere worth chronicling: write to a few people, trying to capture what I see, how being in a particular place makes me feel.

I only buy a certain breed of postcard. No "Ciao from Rome" in red, green, and white lettering. No lettering of any kind, actually. No Colosseum or Forum or any other obvious monuments. No gladiators. This eliminates a lot. The ones that meet my criteria are usually more expensive, €3.00 instead of 1.50. All chosen with their recipients in mind, in hopes the cards might live magnetized to their refrigerators, pressed between the pages of a book, or tucked away with worn ticket stubs and dusty photos and other things to keep.

One shows the Piazza Navona at night, fountains at full blast and lit with an eye for drama. Gods and horses and waves sculpted midcrash, all illuminated from below. The always-crowded square is empty, which seems impossible. No packs of tourists or restaurant hosts trolling for customers or men selling cheap toys and counterfeit handbags. Resting everything on old sheets, ready at any moment to snatch it all up and run.

Another: jasmine wrapping its way around the ancient column of a ruin, hit hard with afternoon light. And, for effect, an old woman looking out the window of an adjacent, equally crumbling building. She stares directly at whoever is taking the photograph, as if to say, So what?

The one in my hands right now: the Bocca della Verità, staring dead ahead with blank eyes, its gaping mouth meant to swallow the hand of any liar. Where did that story come from?

I drain the last of my Averna, turn the statue's wide eyes over, and write to my parents.

The words barely fit. I make my handwriting smaller as I realize how close I'm coming to the end. The sentences are cramped, a little slanted. The last few drift over to where I've written my parents' address in Hudson. Not the artfully spaced, just-spare-enough message I'd seen in my mind before I started.

Everything about this seems a little wrong, or at least odd. It's been months since I've seen them: an unseasonably warm dinner at their house, a night that still makes me shudder when I think of its details. Weeks since we've spoken: clipped conversations with my mother, nothing from him at all. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prove, sending something like this. Maybe the fact that I can rewrite history, select my memories and discard others, if that's what I decide I want.

It can be exhausting, the consideration I give whenever I write or draw or do basically anything. You could call it perfectionism or commitment, but that suggests usefulness or efficiency. Even what I just wrote: it looks sentimental, pointless almost. Too carefully balanced, with no hint of how I actually feel now, sitting here.

I slip my feet out of my sandals and rest them on the stone, something I wouldn't dream of doing at home. But here it's all smooth cobblestones and dull asphalt, worn down by slow, poetic, vague decay, instead of once-white New York sidewalks gone gray with thousands of footsteps, decades of dog shit, endless wilting bags of garbage.

The Bocca della Verità, if it had any magic at all, would have known to grab me, even twenty years ago. It would have seen what kind of liar I am. Not pathological, more creative than deceptive. Why say I read two books last week, when I can make it three? Yes, I saw that movie or met that person, ate at that restaurant, shared that opinion. A few embellishments, a catchy line of dialogue, invented in the moment. Something to make a story memorable. At worst, the lies I tell are some embarrassing combination of laziness and impatience. But also the occasional flicker of imagination. There's comfort in it, knowing I can reliably become more than I am.

Another drink arrives, though I didn't order one. Deep red, alive with carbonation, a blackberry resting on ice cubes. An older man to my left points at the drink, the tip of his finger within poking distance of the rim of the glass. He's alone at the table next to mine, but sitting only a few inches away, close enough to put his arm around me if he wanted.

"The blackberry," he says in slow Italian. "That's what they give when they like you."

Now I know the word for blackberry, by process of elimination. La mora. I pop it into my mouth, smile in the man's direction and say nothing.

The church doors open and cheers spill out from inside. Bride and groom walk quickly to a waiting car. His hand is around her waist, pulling a little. Finally, a bit of life behind her eyes, a fraction of something to lose.

I imagine an early communal dinner somewhere, maybe followed by a party for the adults. Cold red wine sweating in water glasses, children falling asleep on laps. A small band, someone's brother playing guitar.

The screen of my phone flashes a particular shade of blue, which it only ever does for one reason. For one person.

I should have known. This day can't possibly pass without some word from him, some nudge, some challenge. I stare at his words until the screen goes dark, then remind myself where I am. A tree bending precariously toward the river. Late light streaming through its thin leaves, making them almost translucent.

The sun setting on Michael's birthday, though he has six more hours of it than I do. We'd planned all of it this way, his birthday being our first day, waking up to Rome, to a whole new year. My hands shake a little until I trap them between my knees. Take a deep breath, stare into the light until it hurts a little.

What could I possibly say in response? That I'm delirious, with lack of sleep, with the beauty and current of this place, and wish he were next to me? With such force it almost aches? That I don't know exactly where I am or why? Why this café, this table, watching this wedding, right now?

I've always been so careful of what I say to him, and how. It's hard to write to a writer, though he'd tell me it shouldn't be, that I'm overthinking, that whatever I say is fine because it's me saying it.

I didn't sleep on the plane. I never do. If I take a pill or let an edible dissolve under my tongue, I hallucinate, instead of drifting off like I'm supposed to. If I drink enough cheap red wine to sedate myself, all I get is an exhausted hangover. My body fights all of it, like it might resist anesthesia or a blindfold.

The man next to me slept from takeoff to landing. All eight hours and twenty minutes. He was one of those, the kind of person who's out as soon as the landing gear folds in on itself. A sound and sensation I've always found soothing, though never so much as to put me to sleep. His mouth stayed open for the whole flight, gaping in my direction with no air seeming to flow in or out. His expression so open and empty I wanted to slap him awake.

When I did finally fall asleep, it was in the taxi from Termini to the apartment I'd rented for six days in Monti. Well, technically, Michael had chosen the place and paid the deposit, after a meticulous online search. We needed a quiet street, high ceilings, a decent kitchen, a big enough bed. In this neighborhood, never that one. Most important, a balcony. He never asked for his money back. I never offered.

"Signorina! Signorina?" The driver woke me in time to see a few seconds of the Colosseum. I tilted my head upward, leaning into the turn of the car, then weakly met his eyes in gratitude. An odd, but charming gesture. Something that almost surely gets him a bigger tip. One of the carabinieri guarding the barricade, thousands of years of history behind him, yawned into the hand not gripping his machine gun.

This trip was supposed to be important, maybe even monumental. There were certain touchstones I planned on passing, checking them off in my mind like mile markers in a race. Him seeing me paralyzed by jet lag, needing a shower, battling no sleep, a foreign language, maybe a lost suitcase, and loving me anyway, being glad he came. The two of us bickering over where to go when, whether to window shop along Via Condotti or walk the twenty minutes to the modern art museum. A verbal tic or pointless worry or slowing pace that would charm, then irritate, then charm him again. Things I'd been told were harbingers of intimacy, a word I pretend to cringe at but secretly worship like some powerful, unknowable deity.

Being in Rome, this was supposed to be different.

I've walked the length of London Bridge in the deep cold of a December night, wind blowing my mind blank. I've stretched my legs in the grass by the Canal Saint-Martin, sipping lukewarm rosé from a plastic cup, catching the last of the late summer. I've looked past orange trees flowering, Alhambra looming, exhaled hookah smoke drifting by.

All of it alone. All of it practice, I'd thought, for now. Though, if I'm being generous or optimistic or simply open, this time could be a different kind of practice. An experiment in self-sufficiency, instead of waiting for something to happen, for someone or some circumstance to tell me what to do. I could, maybe, fill all this absence with something that matters.

I'm surrounded by devotion, passing small altars everywhere. From carved-out sanctuaries housing statues to prayers spray-painted on bus stop shelters. So many Virgins behind plexiglass, in alcoves between clothing stores and specialty food markets. Her ever-plaintive looks upward, immortalized in tile on the sides of buildings. Coins scattered at her feet, arrangements left hastily in water bottles. The flowers are either dead or fake, dyed unnatural colors like the magenta or cerulean from a box of crayons. I walk in decadent loops, turning whenever the mood strikes, when a street seems more inviting, stopping when I get too hot or tired or just feel like it. Over and over, when given a choice, I take the quieter path. Holding someone's hand would feel oppressive.

I fought jet lag with churches all afternoon, going into every one I saw. No matter how grand or abandoned looking, open or closed. The hot and cold, light then dark, helped keep me awake. The last one I found, twenty slow steps from the rental apartment, sucked all the warmth from my body. The heat, making me feel dumb and desperate moments earlier, was just a memory, suddenly absurd.

There are more than nine hundred churches in Rome.

All the frescoes and murals and windows are puzzles to parse. It's usually clear who's most important: Jesus, Mary, various apostles. Painted in the midst of their most meaningful, devout moments, set in glass in poses to inspire awe and piety. The women in these scenes are usually off to the side, bearing witness to whatever miracle is happening at the center. The young female martyrs stand out among them, painted to glow from within. That much holier, within an already chosen group.

Even their names have the air of permanence, demanding respect. Agnes, Cecilia, Perpetua, Catherine. They were sold into slavery, whipped with heavy metal chains, burned with boiling animal fat, dragged naked through the streets of the city. They starved themselves. Their throats were slit. Through it all, they placidly believed.

I lit a candle for someone with each stop, starting with the obvious: my parents, their parents, my brother Jack, close friends, then lapsed friends, and, when I exhausted them, people I've lost track of completely. These meditations grew increasingly random, wishing happiness or even just peace for people from across my life, who might not be able to pick me out of a crowd. Sometimes I couldn't even remember their names, just a detail about a face or something they said or whether they made me feel nervous or hopeful or safe.