Siracusa by Delia Ephron

dependent on cars like the rest of America or can get anything delivered, or boast the best museums, theaters, can dine in a restaurant after ten at night, blah, blah, blah, but because of our conversations. They are wittier, more brilliant. I know my dad agreed. That’s why I made my way here.
    How my dad would have loved him.
    Finn is an extrovert. His gift is the moment. In the end, that may be the greater gift or the one that wears better—better than thinking deeply. How did it reflect on Taylor to have married a man whose gift is to be present but never to consider the implications of his actions?
    Marriage. With whom do you want to take the journey? The thinker, Michael? The confabulator, Michael? Or the free spirit, Finn? Do you want to take it with someone who knows you, even intuits your secrets, or from whom you can remain hidden? By that last standard, which choice did I make? I’m still unsure. And why do most of us want marriage? Crave it for status or for stability that is an illusion. Marriage can’t protect you from heartbreak or the random cruelties and unfairnesses life deals out. It’s as if we’re chicks pecking our way out of our shells, growing into big birds splendid with feathers, and then piece by piece, we put the shells back together, reencasing ourselves, leaving perhaps an eyehole, minimal exposure. Having pecked our way out to live, we work our way back to survive. Deluded, of course. Shells crack easily.
    Do you realize what I’m doing? I’m delaying, my need to tell wavering. As long as I can drag it out, it’s not over.
    In Siracusa I saw three women standing at a steel railing. There is no shore, only rocky cliffs where they were, in Ortigia, the ancient preserved stone island contained within that falling-down place, connected to it by a short, also very ancient, stone bridge. Ortigia is the jewel of Siracusa, dating back to 700 B.C., and of course where we stayed, where all tourists stay. What passes for a beach there is a huge boulder rising out of the sea.Lo Scoglio, it’s called. In Italian, the rock. To reach it, sunbathers walk along a narrow metal grating bolted to a cliff, then negotiate the uneven surface of a lesser boulder and cross a short metal bridge over a drop, at least fifteen feet I’m guessing, into shallow water spiked with bleached rocks.
    These women, whom I saw only from the back, were standing on this metal bridge, lime-colored towels at their feet, one in a white bikini, one in pale pink shorts—she’s leaning forward, her elbows on the railing—one in loose khaki pants and a light blue pullover. Their bodies were real in that this is what women look like who have let nature take its course, who have accepted that at some point in our middle years we become pudding. The woman in the bikini was tanned to a dark copper, either ignorant of the evils of the sun or too in love with it to care. They faced the Ionian Sea, a choppy blue-gray. The sky above and behind was a blindingly bright blue but in the distance, in the direction they were facing, an enormous black creature of a cloud hovered, thick like mattress stuffing. Was it moving their way? Was it moving too slowly to discern its progress but advancing nonetheless like some plot development everyone expects but no one can predict either its time of arrival, force, or ultimate consequences?
    Dinner had been an adventure. See, I am rewinding to Rome once again. Finn ordered anything anyone voiced the least curiosity about—grilled artichokes,
fritti
of all sorts to share, forks colliding in the excitement, zucchini flowers voted best. The setting was a candlelit patio cloistered between crumbling architectural survivors in a humbler part of Rome.
    “Writing seems so hard,” said Taylor to Michael.
    He puffed up. His voice, a seductive bass, waxed more mellifluous than usual. “After my first play, which I wrote stoned without sleep, eating only fruit cocktail for nourishment—”
    “Fruit