Mad. Funny that my little girl nickname expressed exactly how I felt. Why couldn’t my father see that?
The waiter came over and my father ordered wine and food in perfect Italian. Every morning he went off to Italian class. That’s how he was, total immersion with everything new. If I bothered to ask him, he could tell me the dates of Roman war victories, who had built which building and when. He could quote what Henry James had to say about Rome, and what was written on Shelley’s grave over in the Protestant cemetery. He could teach me to conjugate verbs.
When the waiter brought our wine, my father poured a little in a glass for me. I thought about how happy this would have made me just a few days ago. Now, it just added to my misery.
“When in Rome,” he said, and even though he didn’t have to finish the old saying, he did, maybe just to fill up the empty space between us, “do as the Romans do.”
I folded my arms across my chest and made him work hard at a conversation.
He’d ordered all of my favorite things, buffalo mozzarella with basil and tomatoes, a pizza with quattro formaggio, gnocchi in tomato sauce.
“To my prima ballerina!” my father said, lifting his glass.
I was expected to clink mine against his, to smile and adore him. But I did none of these things. Instead, I said, “Remember when I asked you if I could live with you and Ava? In the spring, when Mom told me I couldn’t study with Madame anymore?”
Slowly, my father lowered his glass, which was suspended there in midair while I talked.
“Remember you said no?”
My father took a quick sip of his wine. He sat up straight. “When you were a little girl,” he said, “I used to make you promise that when you got older you wouldn’t act like a teenager. That you wouldn’t grow obstinate or argumentative. That you would stay your wonderful self.”
“I am my wonderful self,” I said.
He laughed and said, “Yes! You are! You made the cut for that school. How many kids tried out, Mad? And how many got picked? Bravo!”
I frowned. My insides were getting all jumbled up. I always loved the way my father had of making me feel special. It was hard to reconcile that with the fact that he was a cheater and an abandoner.
“Speaking of wonderful,” he was saying, “Ava and I have some wonderful news.”
My mouth tasted sour, like I might throw up. “I have a terrific new book contract on investigating the church’s practice of canonization, and Ava and I are going to live here for a few years. Right in Rome. We’ve rented a big apartment near the Pyramid so that when you and Cody come to visit next summer there will be plenty of room.”
“You mean I’m not going to see you until next summer?” I said. That cheese was rising up in my throat, all four kinds, and I had to swallow hard to keep it where it belonged.
“Living in Europe is an incredible experience that I want my children to have,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, really.”
Once in a lifetime. That was the same thing my mother had said when she’d tried to convince me to come on this trip. Was that what adults really believed, that opportunities only came once in a lifetime? I couldn’t imagine that in my entire life that stretched before me that I would never again visit Italy if I wanted to, or never get the chance to live in a different country. But it seemed that adults forgot about possibility, that in a life there were always new chances to take, new roads to travel. How sad grown-ups seemed to me at that moment, with their vision of lost opportunities and missed chances.
I was folding my pale pink napkin into small accordion pleats, tight ones that would spring open if I let them go. But I didn’t. I held them tight.
“But I won’t be living here. Only Zoe and Ava and you will be. I’ll be a whole continent away.” My stomach churned some more. I had wanted to jettison my father, but here he was, casting me off again.
“Madeline, you’re going to have an amazing year with ballet and everything. Then you’ll spend next summer in Italy with us. And,” he added, “guess what?”
I didn’t guess.
“You’re getting another brother or sister.”
“What?” I said, jumping to my feet.
“Ava and I are having another baby. Due on New Year’s Day. The start of a great year, right?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could he think that this was going to make me happy, watching his life fall into place while the rest of us tried to fix our own?
“For you and your real family, maybe,” I said. “You ruined my life once by falling in love with Ava Pomme while you were supposed to be loving us—taking care of us. And for all this time I’ve been on your side when really I should have been on Mommy’s. There you were buying a new house and telling us how wonderful we were when you were doing what? Secretly meeting Ava Pomme? And leaving Mom with all the broken things? And now you’re moving to Rome and leaving me!”