To Rome With Love

Dinner with Julie March 2017My fork plied the leaves of bright green lettuce on the plate. It shuffled the crisp half-moons of red pepper and toasted slivers of almond while it flicked bits of sesame seed and toppled droplets of the dressing from each layer to the one below. I say my fork did all this because it seemed to be detached from me, held by a hand that mindlessly stirred the assembled salad without any motive force from my brain. “Mom?” Julie's voice seemed to appear suddenly from a void, although she was sitting next to me at the kitchen table. Her question drew me from my thoughts. “You seem so quiet,” she added. “Everything okay?” “Of course, honey. Of course.” To prove my point, I stabbed some lettuce and plunged it into my mouth. Julie continued staring at me, showing a bit of concern and I wanted to reassure her. But how could I reassure her without telling her the whole story. “Your father loved you very much, Julie.” That opening sounded odd even to me. What did my daughter's father who passed away two years ago have to do with my blue state this evening? “And, of course, I did,” I added. “I mean, I do, of course!” An embarrassed chuckle caught in my throat at my sudden inability to speak clearly. My hand resumed stirring the contents of the salad plate while my gaze wandered over the carved pattern of the chairback across from me, teasing out every curl and rosette etched into the darkened wood frame of the chair. My eyes were searching mindlessly in much the same way that my hand was stirring carelessly through the salad. “Giorgio.” I spoke the name out without much thought or hesitation, then wondered whether my tongue had taken a cue from my disconnected hand and eyes. “Huh?” Julie asked. I engaged my brain just in time, realized that I was on the doorstep of a story that Julie had never heard, a story that would bring some pain, one that might fill in gaps in my history that she didn't even know existed. But my toes were on the threshold, and I felt that now, suddenly, I couldn't pull them back out of the doorway. “Giorgio,” I repeated, and I began to tell my dear daughter of the man before her father.