I’m sweating out the last of my Diavola pizza as I write this. It’s a Sunday night, nearing the end of July, and I can’t believe I’ve been back for only two weeks. It feels like a decade, or it always feels like a lifetime. I examine the final few drops of house white that is left in my glass. I didn’t order water tonight at the pizzeria, because I didn’t want it to do much to me, anyway.
Sometimes I wonder how far I’ve come, or if I’ve even come far at all. Rome stays the same. Rome always stays the same. And in Rome, it’s a sin if something changes. But there is something romantic, something comforting about that. Who I’ve been with, who I’ve been linked to, who I have loved, and who has loved me - it will always stay with me. In the atmosphere, and in the ether.
“You’re always the highlight of my night.” Franco tells me as he brings a second glass.
“And you are mine.” I mean it. I’ve seen Franco…maybe six times since I’ve been back.
It’s always too hot to cook in July.
Are we just the sum of those who loved us unconditionally? I take a sip of the dry chardonnay and write this down. Sometimes, I feel like I am. When someone says, “You remind me so much of her.” “When I talk to you, I feel closer to her.” And I know I am carrying on her legacy. Or maybe just a legacy. Or maybe I am carving out a legacy of my own.
-
I tell the Man at the Front that I always feel like I’m being watched at the bar, being studied, and being observed.
“Well, when people see you, they're reminded of him.” He tells me. “That’s why they’re nice to you. That’s why they treat you well. But Emily, can you really blame them? They thought you two were involved for years.”
But there is a certain magnetism and comfort that being loved unconditionally offers you.
Don’t you know your daughter? She loves the drama.
“You want to know what’s strange?”
He takes a lighter out from his pocket, and I lazily hold out a cigarette. I’ve only been back for two nights, and the six hour time difference is getting to me.
“He never gave me any issue about you. Except for that night. And then he got…well. You know how it ended.”
“Can you tell me that story again?” 35 degrees, and two martinis in. I feel like I’m asking my dad for a bedtime story. A hazy, dreamy, bedtime story.
Sometimes, you just want to remember. But, I think, most of the time, we want to be remembered.
“You had left. The bar had closed. He came outside, looking for you. Wondering why you stayed out here, and why you never went in. And he kept repeating: Where’s that crazy girl? And I stayed silent. I stayed silent the entire time.”
I sigh.
“I thought you guys had gotten into a fight inside. And that’s why he came outside to look for you. I didn’t realize until you told me after, that you never went in.”
I nod. That was the night where everything changed.
“It’s the new guys who will always ask me about you. About who you are. And I tell them about you, and I tell them about him.”
I roll my eyes. “Can you not think of anything else to say about me? Like maybe “she’s a writer”. Or “she’s a regular.” Or “she’s just always in the neighborhood.”
“Oh come on, Emily. Everyone already knows.”
-
I leave the bar and take a walk down the street. The street lights always seem to be out, but the light of cars and taxis is what keeps me going. I end up back in a piazza with the fountain, with other men lighting women’s cigarettes as the water flows behind them. Your place or mine? Their eyes will say. The air is sticky, and people have left their empty beer bottles on benches. Folded chairs, and final spritzes. Rome is closing for the night.
I see another familiar bartender and give him a wave.
“Something dry?”
I nod. “Always.”
This bar is interesting. Old newspapers line the walls, and there are only a few seats inside.
My two martinis are truth serum, and I need a stranger’s wise ear to end the night. He makes me something with vodka in a crystal glass.
“And a cherry on top.” He places a cherry on top of an ice cube. I smile.
“You look like you’re in your head about something.”
“I’m always in my head. That’s what makes me a good writer.” (And you know I’ve had too much to drink when I acknowledge myself as good.)
I sit down at a table. He sits down at one a few seats away.
“When I came here a few years ago. I made a promise to myself. That I wasn’t going to be like every North American foreigner who fell for an Italian man.”
He starts to laugh. It’s a big laugh. “And let me guess.”
“Girlfriend. Family. And it happened so long ago. So long. And when I go to his bar…it’s like it still haunts me. They all knew. And I just want to be seen as more.”
“More than just his ex-sidepiece?”
I smile and nod, even though the word sidepiece stings.
“Have you tried to form relationships with other people there?”
I don’t know how to answer this question, other than a smile and “it’s a long story.”
“But you know what it is? I’m just so scared of being jaded. I’m scared of looking at a guy, and predicting the downfall before it even happens.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while. Until,
“I think, the key… is to hold on to the good.”
-
“You wanna know something?” I look up at the Man at the Front.
“Tell me.”
“I haven’t written in a long time. Like…in a really long time. And I think it’s because I’m not in love.”
“Well. What do you love about your life right now?”
I smile and look up at the sky. At the tower in the center parking lot.
It always calls me back, it’s always here.
My usual position beside the Man at the Front. Passing a cigarette back and forth, back and forth. Discussing the drama, discussing the chaos, but really, discussing life.
It’s this moment that I love. I love this moment.
“Being back here. And being back here with you.”
He looks down at me and smiles. “You’ve been part of this family for two years. And maybe, writing about what you love isn’t as thought-provoking and emotional as what you usually write about. But it’s just another facet of it, really.”
Holding on to the good.
-
So, here it goes.
I love quiet neighborhoods. I love eating fresh melon and peaches on a Roman terrazza. I love floral wallpaper. I love how the 34 degree weather feels like a reprieve. I love little dresses, I love little purses. I love the smell of hibiscus. I love drinking rosé on a patio, and watching as the full moon rises. We’re letting go of something, and we’re starting something new.
I love how I never dreamt of a lofty life, just of a good one. I love quality over quantity. I love how I can be alone, and I love how I can find strength in it.
I love an early aperitivo, and I love a late dinner. I love an Emily Mais date night, because I know I will always manage to find my way into something, and I love how I always know how to have a good time.
I love my curiosity. I love how I will let it get the best of me. And I know the Man at the Front thinks that I was in love with the idea of someone, but I love how I will fight tooth and nail to say: no, I think I loved the whole thing.
I love my stubbornness, and I really do love my Aries moon. I love telling someone how I feel, and I love the way they look at me after. Sometimes in shock, sometimes in surprise, and sometimes in relief.
I love my neon nails and I love my naivety. I love how my spiritual friend tells me, “Your innocence is your superpower.”
And I love how, by writing this, I’m realizing something. Maybe I’m not getting jaded. Maybe I’m not just the sum of someone else’s love. Maybe, by writing this, I am holding on to the good. To the love that exists in and around me. In whole and in equal parts.
That beautiful, that messy, that unexplainable, and that crazy, unconditional love.