All Over the Map (31 page)

I try to cheerfully tell him a little bit about Mexico and the election, how wonderful that everyone is so excited. We talk about his son, who is thinking about coming to San Francisco, and he asks if I will help him, and I say of course, anything, but a nineteen-year-old who is nearly as handsome and charming as his father won’t need any help at all. He laughs.

I ask about his trip to India. It was beautiful, incredible, he says, from north to south, and a good thing that he traveled when he did. If he had known, he never would have gone, never would have experienced the place he dreamed about for so long. When he returned home, he had a pain in his stomach. I don’t want to ask, but he offers that it is liver cancer, not an easy kind, but he
is feeling okay for now. He has many friends who visit and care for him and keep him company, and he is full of hope. I ask if he is still with the same woman, and he says, “The same beautiful woman,
meno male,”
a good thing, so I know she is nearby, listening, and I’m so glad she is there for him.

He asks if I have any romances, and I say nothing right now.
Niente
.

“I can’t believe that,” he says.

“We’ll see,” I say. “Someone always turns up.”

I tell him I send him a big, big hug and kiss and say I hope that all this will be nothing, a small, forgettable episode in
la bella vita
. As I say it, I believe it to be true.

“
Grazie, bella
,” he says. He asks if maybe I have plans to come to Europe sometime soon. I say I don’t know, but of course I always love to come to Europe, and we say
“Ciao, ciao, ciao,”
many times, the way the Italians say good-bye, reluctant to hang up.

I climb the stairs to the terrace, hear the ranchero music playing from next door, then a child’s laugh and a rooster’s crow, and sit with the warm rays of sunshine drying my face. I spend a long time like that, trying to breathe evenly. Church bells ring, and dogs bark in response.

In a little while, I will go see about booking a ticket to Paris, to visit an old friend, a love, a piece of my heart. But for now I am just going to sit in the sun.

By late fall, the plants in my house have grown, delicate periwinkle vines dripping down the atrium, lavender and jasmine blooming, cactus and aloe plants growing into Dr. Seussian proportions. My parents have decided to visit for my mom’s eightieth birthday.

This wasn’t an easy decision; since she’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, it’s been more difficult for my mother to travel comfortably. It dismays her not to have new adventures to recount to her friends; it makes her feel less like herself, though her friends know she has a lifetime of being quietly daring. I tell Mom and Dad it’s easier to get to Mexico than it was when we came in 1971; instead of taking a crowded bus from Mexico City, a driver meets you at the León airport with a sign with your name on it and drives you directly to my house.

When they arrive, they open the door and are astonished at the enchantment that makes eleven feet wide seem so huge. Though they’ve been following the progress in photos, they say they could never imagine how much better it is in person, and right away they’re glad they came. My father, a perfectionist, admires the craftsmanship, the wrought iron and the wood cabinets, and pronounces himself impressed. After they explore the house, Mom calls my sister and has tears in her eyes. “It’s just wonderful,” she says. “Darn it, maybe it’s the Parkinson’s, it makes me cry.”

In the morning we wander around town, Mom with her walking stick to maneuver the cobblestones. I explain that on the narrow sidewalks, as an elderly woman, she is at the top of the sidewalk hierarchy and never has to give way to someone else (men step off the sidewalk for women, younger women make way for older women or those burdened with bags or children). Mom and Dad don’t recognize anything about the town until we come to the blue-doored bakery, and then La Parroquia, and then everything suddenly seems familiar.

Over the next few days I show them this world they introduced me to so many years ago. We have breakfast with Finn
and lunch with Anja, we visit Jody’s house, as well as folk art galleries, an artist’s mosaic-covered house, and photography collections. Dad practices his Spanish running errands to the hardware store, to buy groceries, to get a paper. On Mom’s birthday, we take a taxi up to the Charco, the botanical gardens, and she is in her favorite kind of place, a cool and sunny blooming desert. We have lunch in La Aurora design center with Finn, drinking wine at noon, and Mom agrees, at this time of life when she is trying to throw everything away, to let Dad buy her a necklace.

In the evening, we go to a party in a Frida Kahlo–colored house, where a friendly group gathers on the roof, and Mom and Dad mingle with these latter-day hippies and artists. When it gets cold, we all go inside, and the hostess gets up to make a speech, greeting everyone, celebrating birthdays and weddings and visits, saying she’s grateful for her friends and the wonderful place we all live in. “Paradise,” she says.

Then she asks if anyone has anything else to say, and I offer that it’s my mom’s eightieth birthday, and that I want to thank her for having had the daring and foresight to bring me and my sisters here thirty-five years ago, when it was difficult to do so. “That trip,” I tell the group, “had a lot to do with making me who I am, with me being back in San Miguel today.” They all clap for Mom, who deserves a toast and a party, even among friendly strangers, on her eightieth birthday.

On our way home, Mom is tired, and she leans on my father, who, hearty and handsome, still seems fifteen years younger than his age. All my friends have remarked on how charming my father is, and though I appreciate how personable he’s become in
his later years, my mother isn’t able, any more, to fully project who she is to new people, her vitality and passions. I wonder if I’ll have someone to lean on when I’m older, someone who will take my arm and cherish the fullness of me—the curious wanderer and the woman who likes to stay home, chop vegetables, and hear compliments about her cooking—even when I’m no longer able to dance, to flirt, to pack my bags at the last minute and board a plane.

“I love you,” my parents each say to me, as we hug and they step into the taxi at the end of the night. It’s a phrase I hear and say more often the older I get, and I take that as a good sign.

In fall 2009, I was in Europe for a couple of months and wrote to the Professor to say I’d like to visit him in Paris. He replied that he was in the hospital—“the least sexy place in the world”—and suggested I come later, when he was recovered from surgery. After a few weeks, he was still in the hospital, and this time he said sure, why don’t you come by, and gave me the room number.

When I knocked, the nurse opened the door and asked me to wait a few minutes. In that brief flash, I’d glimpsed what the Professor looked like now, and I was glad for the chance to collect myself. When I returned, he was on his feet, IV trailing, hugging me and telling me what a pleasure it was to see me. His curly locks were shorn and dark from indoor light; he was all ribs and sunken cheeks, but he was there.

We chatted for a couple of hours, and I returned a second day. He told me I looked the same, and I said he was handsome with a beard, small stretches to remind us of our younger, sexier selves. I talked about the Poussin paintings I’d recently seen at the Hermitage—a favorite among the many artists he acquainted me
with—and reminisced about our travels, but he waved away the topic. “I think that part of my life is over,” he said. So we spoke of ordinary things. He showed me photos of his wedding and children, and I showed him pictures of Golden Gate Park on a spring morning. I described an amusing art exhibit I’d seen that morning at the Pompidou and thanked him for teaching me so much about how to experience art.

I was cheerful, maybe too cheerful. But the Professor laughed at my stories and then caught himself laughing. “This is the first time I’ve forgotten I’m sick,” he said, marveling. “You make me feel good, like myself.”

He thanked me for making a special trip.

“Any trip to Paris is special,” I said.

He held my hand. “Some relationships,
cara
, are important for life.”

He asked if I was seeing anyone, if I was in love, and I told him I have bad luck with men. Seeing him, hearing his still-vibrant voice, I wondered if I was still single, after all these years, because he always had been in my life, and in my heart. At least I’d never met another man I loved as much.

The Professor said he was looking forward to going home soon. The cancer was inoperable, but these days they treat it like a chronic disease.

“Like AIDS,” I said, wanting to believe it.

“Brava,”
he said.

I kissed him on each cheek and reminded him that he always said we never knew when or where we were going to see each other again.

“Spero che ci vediamo,”
he said. I hope we’ll see each other again.

“Ci vediamo,”
I said, glad there’s no other way to say good-bye in Italian. I walked out of the hospital, and kept on walking, all the way across gray Paris, from Montparnasse to Montmartre.

Three weeks later, I received an e-mail from a friend of the Professor’s letting me know that he had died. Reading the message, I felt bereft, as I had standing on the platform at the train station in Naples, saying good-bye to the Professor after our first few days together on the island of Ischia, ten years ago, when I thought I’d never see him again. But I felt a similar sense of hopefulness, too, as after that delightful chance meeting, a sense of life. The Professor had reminded me whenever I needed reminding that I could still experience
la bella vita
, I could be desired, I could embrace something less than perfection, and, most important, that I could love.

T
hank you to William Zinsser, for encouraging me to stop worrying about the publishing world and write what I please. I’m grateful to Kit Miller for giving me time at Orchard House to write, and have fondest memories of Maya Miller, who cheered me on with my daily thousand words. My fellow members of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, especially Ethan Watters, Tom Barbash, Elizabeth Bernstein, and Po Bronson, gave me invaluable support, suggestions, and community. Many wonderful women offered their wisdom along the way: Cristina Taccone, Cecilia Brunazzi, Cindy Fraser Taylor, Katy Butler, Sharon Salzberg, Martha Borst, Giovanna Tabanelli, Kimberly Easson, and Alyce Musabende.
Saludos
to Anja Fauske, Cheryl Finnegan, and Lamine Thiam in San Miguel de Allende. Zoë Rosenfeld was an amazingly perceptive and helpful reader. Thanks to Suzanne Gluck, Erin Malone, Shaye Areheart, Penny Simon, and everyone at Harmony Books who helped bring this book to light.
Caro Michel, sempre ti ricorderó con molto affetto e spero che ci stia una bella isola per te nel cielo
. Hugs to my parents, Charles and Virginia Fraser, for their constant love and support. And a big kiss to Peter, one of those wonderful Wesleyan men I missed, for looking me up thirty years later.

Laura Fraser is the author of the bestselling memoir
An Italian Affair
and
Losing It
, an investigative look at the weight-loss industry. She is a contributing editor to
More
magazine, and has written for
Gourmet; O, The Oprah Magazine;
the
New York Times; AFAR; Self; Glamour; Vogue; Elle; Redbook; Tricycle Buddhist Review;
and more.