All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [0]
Laura Fraser
AN ITALIAN AFFAIR
LOSING IT
TO MY MOTHER, VIRGINIA H. FRASER
Contents
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One - Oaxaca, Mexico: 2001
Chapter Two - San Francisco * Canyonlands National Park: 2001
Chapter Three - Middletown, Connecticut * New York City: 2002
Chapter Four - Naples, Italy: 2002
Chapter Five - Upolu and Savai’i, Western Samoa: 2002
Chapter Six - Houston * Kansas City * San Francisco: 2002
Chapter Seven - Nevada * Provence * Paris * New York * Aeolian Islands: 2003
Chapter Eight - San Francisco * Buenos Aires: 2005
Chapter Nine - Spirit Rock, Marin County, California: 2005
Chapter Ten - Peru: 2005
Chapter Eleven - Rwanda: 2006
Chapter Twelve - San Francisco: 2006
Chapter Thirteen - San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: 2007, Week One
Chapter Fourteen - San Miguel de Allende: 2007, Week Two
Chapter Fifteen - San Francisco * San Miguel de Allende: 2007–2008
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Of course I should love to throw a toothbrush into a bag, and just go, quite vaguely, without any plans or even a real destination. It is the Wanderlust.
—VITA SACKVILLE-WEST, Letters
You never know when you’re making a memory.
—RICKIE LEE JONES, “Young Blood”
The winter sun warms the cobblestones that pave the Plaza de Armas in Oaxaca, Mexico. Heavy colonial archways shade the café tables where travelers and people watchers and expatriates come to just sit. They sip their coffees and take in the scene: small boys hawking huge bunches of colorful balloons, musicians in worn suits and perfectly ironed shirts stopping off for a shoe shine, ancient-faced Indians carrying baskets of greens on their heads. Beyond the zócalo, the Sierra Madre mountain range rings the town. There is no hurry here.
The atmosphere is relaxed, but inside I’m buzzing like one of the bees at the fruit vendor’s cart. I glance around the plaza, eyes barely resting on the balconies, the bandstand, the laurel trees, the women with dark braids and bright embroidered tops perched on the edge of the fountain. I check my watch, and it isn’t even time yet.
I’ve come to Oaxaca to mark my fortieth birthday, the passing of the decade during which I probably should have gotten married (again) and had children but did not. It didn’t work out that way. But I am going to celebrate anyway, celebrate the fact that I have the freedom to run off and be in Mexico for my birthday; celebrate with someone—a friend? lover?—for whom all of life is a celebration if you just find the right spot in the sun to sit and take it all in.
I close my eyes to calm myself and sense the faint whiffs of chocolate, coffee, and chiles that perfume the thin air. When I open my eyes, I catch sight of him across the plaza: his soft denim jacket, thick silver bracelet, and chestnut curls that somehow, still, are not gray. I jump up and wave wildly, and he sees me—everyone sees me—and he drops his old leather suitcase and opens his arms wide.
In a moment, I am pressing my face against his, breathing in his familiar smell of cigars and sea, amazed, as always, to see him again. I met this man, the Professor, by chance over breakfast in a pensione on an Italian island four years ago, right after my husband left me. Over the course of those years, meeting every so often in a different city or island, he helped mend my heart. He has his life and I have mine, but every time we’re together, the scenery seems brighter and the flavors more intense.
“Professore,” I say, breaking our embrace to search his face.
“Laura,” he says, with the soft rolling Italian pronunciation, which could also be Spanish. I like my name, and maybe myself, better in a Latin country. It’s softer.
The Professor sits at the café, orders coffee, and moves his chair close, positioning his face in the sun. He squeezes my hand. “Bel posto,” he says. Beautiful place.
“Incantado,” I say, not sure, as often happens, if I am speaking Italian or Spanish. Enchanted.
“La bella vita continua,” he says.
He tells me that