Jun 29, 2018
Of course Nigel was not here—the inability to smell tea brewing would be to him worse than all the tortures of hell combined (if hell existed: thus far no evidence suggested that it did). She was suddenly desperate to be as far away from breakfast as possible. Her...
Jun 22, 2018
Before you decide to become a bunny person, know that you will have your heart broken, on average, every five or six years (every two to three if you have more than one bunny). A hard-core rabbit person accepts this, opens her heart, and loves anyway. ~ Rabbits, too,...
Jun 15, 2018
An exercise in imagination: let’s picture an Italo-American man, sixty-ish (though he might have been older, some people wither on the vine at a certain point in their lives and age no further), smoker’s rasp and cough. Skinny, and not in a healthy way; Coke-bottle...
Jun 8, 2018
We repacked our stuff right there in the arrivals hall in JFK, making ersatz weekend travel cases out of duty-free bags, wrapping the whiskey and the vodka in sweaters. Husband #1 did not have enough sweaters. His coat was not heavy enough. He did not know this yet,...
Jun 1, 2018
I saw us yesterday, in Midtown. I was walking up Lex toward 52nd and my hotel. Ghosts, holograms—we were reflected, Husband #1 and I, in faded-denim blue, in the plate glass window of an upmarket chain retailer—globalized clothing. We looked like we wanted things. And...
May 25, 2018
A screening interview with the American Consulate—anywhere, I’d imagine, but ours happened to take place in Madrid—makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong, criminal, even if you can’t remember what. Even though we knew where the moles and the birthmarks were....
May 18, 2018
There was a honeymoon to Argentina, over Christmas. Winter in Europe, flip-flop and cut-offs season in the southern hemisphere. Obvious choice. Was it fun, you ask? And my answer: I have absolutely no idea, because I wasn’t invited (Husband #1 and his...
May 11, 2018
When I got married for the first time I was drunk, wearing black leather pants. When my mother got married for the only time, she was about twenty-four hours the right side of an appendectomy. But you’d never know it from the wedding pictures, where she looks sweet...
May 4, 2018
There was a waterfall. Our waterfall. I was sure—naked, sun-dappled, still high from the after-lunch smoke-up, the two or three cognacs (damn, I could hold my liquor in those days)—that we were the only two living beings who’d ever seen it. Me, Husband #1 (though he...
Apr 27, 2018
I know I promised you bad, bad love in Ávila, and you will get it. I promise. In next week’s post, cross my heart and hope to die. But this weekend I’m putting in my garden, which means flowers. Flowers remind me of my mother—my mother lived to put in her garden every...
