The diary made it clear that I had taken the trip as an occasion to crown myself Queen of the Mayhem, at least in my mind. My attitude was that of a saboteur: seemingly mild and compliant, biding my time, waiting for the moment to throw a wrench in the works.
The entry from when we stopped in Milan read: When in the dumps, I hate the things that ordinarily I love.
In Florence it was: Down with bluebirds.
In Venice it was: Vivacious chumps declaring how great it is to be alive. And down with them, people who say the weather forecast should be “partly sunny” instead of “partly cloudy.”
The first time we’d visited Italy, I’d learned so much. The second time, it seems the main lesson was: Ennui dies hard.
Up until then, despite the vicissitudes of my position, I’d always felt invincible. But in Italy I had come to feel vinced.
This is it, I had written on an otherwise-blank, undated page, with regard, I believe, to my career, my marriage. The stuff you see above you that looks like higher peaks may just be clouds. This is it. This is it.
I guess I wanted more, and also didn’t trust what I did have.
Stupid brain, I wrote.
By the end of the trip, Max didn’t know what to do with me. Not that he’d known what to do before—he hadn’t for a long time. How could he, when I didn’t know what to do with—or about—myself?
That night, the night of what my various caretakers would later take to calling “the incident,” we were shipboard again, shipboard at last, headed back to New York. We were having drinks with some new friends we—or rather Max, really—had acquired, a couple whose names I heard, then immediately forgot, and only picked up again when Max used them in our stilted conversation, conspicuously for my sake: Vivian and Herb.
What happened that night embarrassed Max irrevocably—both as it was happening, and in its aftermath, which was eternity, or at least the rest of our lives. He never spoke of it, not even as “the incident.”
What’s odd is that I’ve never forgotten it. Even as the days that led to and from it were scrubbed away by alcohol, madness, and electric shocks, its details have remained perfectly clear in my mind, gleaming like the bright scales of a fish arced over turbid water.
I’ve never told anyone this. I lied to Max, Gian, Helen, every doctor I’ve ever had. Myself most of all. The truth is, I do remember.
And it is up to me—not Max, not anyone else—to decide if I am embarrassed by it. If I am not embarrassed, well, then it is not embarrassing.
So here’s what happened:
We were in the lounge when I finally scrounged up the will to do what I had been contemplating.
The conversation was about travel: places we’d been, how we’d liked them, and why.
Vivian and Herb were the relentlessly positive types. They had a theory that maintaining a positive attitude was the secret to successful travel.
Vivian was insisting that no matter how bad something was, you could always find one thing to praise about it. “Even if it’s just something like ‘Lovely salt, isn’t it?’” she said, laughing.
“Or,” said Herb, squeezing her knee, “if you’re on a terrible bus ride, you can still find a way to fixate on the scenery. America the beautiful!”
“That’s exactly right,” said Max. “Why couldn’t we meet you two on the way over? I’ve been trying to explain this to my wife for a month! See, Lillian? Maybe you’ll listen to strangers if you won’t listen to your husband, eh?” He gave Herb a big, stagey wink. “Positivity! I’ll drink to that!”
“I’ll just drink,” I said, and I drained my Manhattan, leaving the cherry skewered on its toothpick, lacking the appetite for even that much food.
I could feel Max’s disapproval. It had been my second drink, and everyone else was just halfway through their first.
“Lily,” said Herb, “you are a perfect social hooligan!”
His mirthfulness and forced familiarity seemed sincere and well-intentioned, devoid of Max’s aggressive edge. Herb and Vivian were nice people. They had no business mixing with the likes of Max and me. I was about to show them that.
“Excuse me,” I said, picking up my clutch. “Off to powder my nose. I’ll be back in two shakes.”
I had had my sea legs well under me almost from the instant we’d set sail for home, but I felt unsteady walking away from our table.
During my younger years there were moments when I’d find myself alone in my room for the first time in weeks, and it was time for a good cry. It’s not as though I had never known sadness prior to that horrible year; it’s that by then I no longer knew what to do with the sadness. How to get through it and then put it efficiently behind me.
That year I had become unable to cry. Just blank, blank. I felt like a white wall.