Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

1. I Can’t Go to Italy

There is no possibility on earth that I can go to Italy with my husband in the fall. I am too firmly rooted in my California life to pick up and move to a different continent, though he promises me we will have a fine adventure. “I can’t tell you exactly what will happen, but something will. And it will all be new and interesting.” I explain to him patiently that Italy is irrelevant to the center of my life, which—as he knows—is my mother’s endless dying. I can’t be across the world when she dies. Joe points out that my mother has been dying for an extremely long time, more than five years. We are moving along ourselves—if we want to travel, the time for us is now. To each of my arguments he offers a solution. My sister will be here to look after my mother. Our daughters are grown and independent; perhaps one or all three of them can come to visit us in Italy. The cat? We will hire someone to feed him. My writing? I can do my work in Italy as well as here; we’ll take along my laptop computer. He points out the many virtues of this opportunity for him to teach a group of students in Florence for next year’s fall term. “We’ll have three months in Tuscany, with an apartment provided and my regular salary to live on. How else could we ever afford to live in 1 1 I Can’t Go to Italy Italy for three months! I think we should definitely do this,” he says. “It’s our chance.” The next day I go to my mother’s bedside at the nursing home, where she lies paralyzed and on a feeding tube. I ask her what she thinks about my going to Italy for three months. “You can’t wait for me, I could live to be a hundred. Go and do what you have to do. I’ll just be here. And if something happens . . . don’t come back.” “Meaning?” “Meaning if I die, don’t come back.” Even with her permission, I am resistant. Do I really want to leave my friends, my comfortable life, my familiar surroundings? Do I want to leave my kitchen appliances, my computer, my down comforter? Each evening at dinner, as the deadline for Joe’s decision approaches , he and I debate at the kitchen table, he using words like “adventure” and “travel” and “new things to think about” while I counter with “comfort, obligations, our life here.” Who will water the plants? Who will take care of the house? I remind him of the scene in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, where—after the mother dies and the family abandons the summer house—the place is invaded by the elements , by wind and rain, by rats and mice, and goes to ruin. Joe seems incredulous that I am worried about the grass in the yard, and a few scraggly houseplants. The problem is, he’s not a worrier. He doesn’t have my highly developed skill of being able to imagine catastrophes. In secret I invent private, infantile arguments I can’t bring myself to say to his face: “I’ll just be a tag-along teacher’s wife. I’ll be a third wheel. You and the Italian teacher will be a team, and I’ll have nothing to do. The students won’t be interested in me; you’ll be too busy to pay attention to me. I’ll be bored.” Bored in Italy? I’d have to be in a coma, I assure myself. One day I am talking to the clerk at the Post Office and remark: “I may have to go to Italy for three months.” He replies: “My Merrill Joan Gerber 2 heart is breaking for you. You really have my sympathy.” He hands me a roll of stamps. “Could I come and carry your bags?” “Okay,” I tell my husband at dinnertime one night. “Okay, I’ll go to Italy.” My tone of voice suggests I have been coerced, have no choice, that I must give in, go to this foreign country and possibly lose my mind there, maybe even my life. “Good,” Joe says cheerfully. “I’ll tell the director of the studyabroad program that we accept the offer.” He...