“But what about you?”
“Huh?”
“What about you?” said Handy.
Cord stopped laughing. A Japanese couple having dinner at an outdoor café was staring at him. He didn’t care. “You know what I want,” said Cord bitterly.
“I sure do,” said Handy.
They were silent. Cord felt glad not to be alone. “Thanks,” he said. “You get it, I know that. That’s a lot.”
“You need me to come on over there to Italy?” said Handy. “Drag you to a meeting?”
“I can do it,” said Cord.
“Do it, then,” said Handy. “Call me afterward.”
“Okay,” said Cord.
“One day at a time, man.”
“I hate that fucking saying.”
“Yup,” said Handy.
“Handy?” said Cord.
“I’m here,” said Handy.
“Can you not hang up yet?” Cord sounded like a baby, like a goddamn baby, and though he was a bit ashamed, it felt good to ask for what he needed.
“I’m right here,” said Handy.
NO ONE BUT REGANshowed up for the Wonders of Florence tour. She sat by herself on the bus from Livorno, peeking out the window as the bus stopped at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. The cathedral was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style and sprawled over almost ninety thousand square feet. Regan stepped back to take it in: the wedding cake exterior of the basilica was fitted with marble panels in pink and green, bordered in white.Beauty—the word sprang into Regan’s mind.
Throughout high school, Regan had kept giant scrapbooks. She’d filled them with sketches, musings, Polaroid photos, and ticket stubs. Sometimes locks of hair and even (once) a bloody Band-Aid to remember the night she fell at a Green Day concert and scraped her elbow. Regan believed she was making something beautiful—even somethingimportant—from the detritus of her days.
In early marriage and after the girls were born, she’d continued her projects, adding recipes and receipts, using the girls’ finger paints and crayons, spending sleep-deprived midnight hours at work, then sitting cross-legged on the floor of the playroom while the girls created their own art. Why had she stopped? Regan remembered needing a new scrapbook and just never getting to the store to buy one. Her brain gradually filled with grocery lists, car pool times, paint swatches for the den. Regan’s art seemed less important than her family’s constant needs.
Their guide was a bespectacled blond man with a clipboard. He talked for a while about Il Duomo, the dome, which was 375 feet tall. It was made of brick, said their guide (Regan squinted to make out the name on his tag—NICO), and was a miracle of physics. Its creator, Filippo Brunelleschi, had studied the Romans’ construction of the Pantheon as he figured out how to create the dome without using a wooden skeleton. Instead, he proposed placing the brickwork in herringbone patterns between a framework of stone beams.
So it wasn’t all about beauty, thought Regan. It was also about math and showmanship. Regan felt a familiar thirst, staring at the marble façade of the church, wanting to understand more. She asked Nico how the patterns and stone beams actually worked, drinking in his explanation as he moved his hands through the air, sketching interlocking shapes.
Regan thought of her peaceful morning hours at Monet’s Playhouse. Of course, this architectural marvel was nothing like painting ceramic figurines, but the process—a vision and its eventual execution or abandonment—was the same, wasn’t it?
Nico briefed them as they drove toward the Ponte Vecchio: it was a medieval stone closed-spandrel arch bridge with three segments. While the shops along the bridge had originally housed butchers and gold merchants, they now sold jewelry and tourist knickknacks. “Please, I implore you,” said Nico. “Do not buy a lock. We have to remove the locks weekly. They are a hazard.”
As the bridge came into view, Nico pulled out a boom box. “Puccini mentions the bridge in ‘O Mio Babbino Caro,’ ” he said. “Please, be silent and enjoy.”
He pressed Play. A soprano sang, her voice rising with the music, and although Regan didn’t understand the Italian words, the song pierced her. When the bus stopped, passengers began shoving past her to get to the shops, and Regan was surprised to feel a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, into the kind eyes of Nico. He was so young.
“You understand,” he said.
Regan nodded. She did understand.
—
THEY WERE GIVEN Afew hours to wander, and told where to meet the bus to head back to the port. Regan walked along the cobblestones, peering idly at gold jewelry. The searing voice of the opera singer kept coming back to her, making her feel melancholy. She plodded forward, wishing she weren’t alone.
