Music spills out from the open shutters of a bar as we stroll down the street, people jostling for space yet everyone seeming to smile, and we soak up the atmosphere. Everything feels different, more vibrant and alive, the street full of people and noise, everyone living life to its overflowing brim—the wine, the music, the laughter, the smells of delicious food and moped fumes, and the bougainvillea in the window boxes combining to form a heady scent. We are alive.
The thought of eating a nice meal in a restaurant in a beautiful city fills me with a happiness and even an excitement that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Soon enough we find ourselves in the back courtyard of a little trattoria, sitting at a rickety table with a bottle of Chianti with a candle stuck in it between us.
“This would seem cliché, except it’s real,” Eva says with a laugh, and I have to agree. I feel almost as if I’m in a movie, the imagined version of Italy rather than the real thing, and yet it all feels wonderful—the food, the wine Eva insists we order and which I am more than happy to drink, the violinist who serenades us at as we eat our antipasti, insisting that we are ‘Bella, bella, molto bella!’
“Can we make a deal?” Eva asks as a white-aproned waiter clears our plates, ready for our main course—parmesan and truffle risotto for me, tortellini in cream for Eva.
“A deal?” The wine has made me relaxed, but I am still the tiniest bit wary.
“Yes, just for tonight. That we won’t talk about… any of it.” She bites her lip, her gaze searching my face. “Not the social media stuff, not the treatment, not Emily or James or anyone. Let’s just… let’s just have a regular conversation. Talk about anything else. Just to relax. To be.” She continues to scan my face, looking anxious. “Is that okay?” I can tell she is afraid she’s offended me, but she hasn’t.
“That sounds like a pretty good deal to me,” I say, and Eva smiles in relief.
And so we don’t mention any of it, and it feels like such a relief. We end up sharing our life stories, in dribs and drabs. I tell her about being a bookish nerd in high school, working on the school newspaper and avoiding all sports, with academics for parents, and how I tried to become cool in college and failed, but that was fine, because I realized I didn’t actually want to be cool. I wanted to be me.
Eva tells me she was a cheerleader for all four years of high school—I snort my wine as I burst into laughter, saying I am not surprised—and she laughs, too.
“I know. I annoy myself, thinking about it. I had it all—the pom poms, the high ponytail, the short skirt. I thought I was amazing.”
I bet she did. There is a whimsical cast to her face now, something almost a little sad, and so I ask, “what happened?”
She smiles and shrugs. “I went to a college that didn’t have a cheerleading squad. A college where even admitting you were a cheerleader was embarrassing. So I didn’t.”
“So if you weren’t a cheerleader, what were you?”
“Something almost worse.” She laughs. “A pretentious college student. I even bored myself back then. And after that, I was a career woman in the making, city smart and focused, living in New York, trying to get to the top.” She shakes her head ruefully. “It’s always something, isn’t it? You
always have to be something.”
“Yes, you do.” It surprises me, to realize how similar we have been, re-inventing ourselves to suit the circumstances, to fit other people’s expectations. Eva became the straight A student; I became the best hospital mom. Do all women do it, I wonder. Do we all bend ourselves into whatever shape we think others want to see, so somehow we fit, even if it hurts?
Our main courses come, and we exchange conversation for food, both of us savouring the rich sauces. I’ve drunk too much wine, and my head is starting to spin, but I don’t care. I want this evening to go on forever, almost as much as I want tomorrow to come. For Emily to start her treatment, and begin to get better.
For everything, finally, to change.
Yet right now, with the food and wine, the music and laughter, with Eva, I don’t think about Emily. I don’t think about anything, except the pure enjoyment of the evening, the setting sun sending vivid orange streaks across the sky, and my friend sitting across from me, sipping her wine and smiling.
22
Eva
I sneak a glance at Rachel as we sit on hard plastic chairs in the waiting area of the Centro di Neuroscienza, where we’ve spent most of the last week.
Her face is pale and wan, her gaze abstracted as she nibbles on her lip. We haven’t spoken in over an hour as we wait for Emily to finish today’s treatment—something we are not meant to see. Rachel balked at that at first, but Dr. Rossi gently insisted.
“Sometimes the stimulation can cause effects that seem troubling,” he said, and Rachel’s face paled.
“It doesn’t hurt her—”
“Not in the way that we experience pain. But it is stimulation. And, to tell you the truth, Signora Lerner, we do not want to be distracted. This is treatment for your daughter, but it is also research, in controlled conditions.”
Rachel nodded, accepting, even if she looked frightened. “I can see her afterward, though?”
“Yes, of course.”
As a result, the last seven days have been mostly about waiting, with less time with Emily than either Rachel or I expected. With the treatment, the recovery period, and Dr. Rossi’s assessments afterward, we are only allowed to see her for a couple of hours each morning, and then for a little bit in the evening. I try to give Rachel some alone time with her daughter in the mornings, and so I end up wandering around the outskirts of Bologna, trying not to sweat into a puddle in the relentless heat, or wonder what I am doing here.