The last time I went to Europe I fought with my husband every day. We fought every day in regular life, but in Europe I thought it would be different.
I remember Venice, the moment I knew it was over. Our room overlooking the Grand Canal with its soft morning colors, temples, statues rising from the water, and me throwing open the double windows and leaning out to smell the sewage, or maybe to fall.
I turn from the boats, the perfectly dressed Italians, the everything-you-ever-wanted-in-a-vacation window scene, to regard the man I married.
Chuck doesn’t look up.
A woman prays her husband will never stop looking when she undresses. We’ve come so much further than that. Chuck doesn’t notice me at all.
He sits on the bed and fiddles with his things: cameras, lenses, film containers, Woolite, pocketknife, maps, Carmex, compass, coins, guidebooks, and he’s got his socks soaking in the bidet. I’m afraid to say anything at all to this man. The words fry up in my throat and turn dumb.
I keep the scene inside, it eats me up all day. We go around these magic streets and it’s looking like Cleveland. My husband renders everything around him normal.
The sun starts to go down, lovers prepare to get juicy. You can smell it from the canal, from under their arms and between their legs as they walk by. The sugar spots they haven’t tamed yet.
Women’s shoulders go soft. Men’s lips thicken. Italy makes ready for love. Restaurants change shifts. The lighting softens. Menus have buttery sauces, warm lobster. They touch in Italy. Like Paris, only mustier. Men grab a breast, the rump of the woman they want, give it a wenchy squeeze. The women laugh it off. The children whisper to each other in the tunnels.
I turn to the man I married and touch his arm. He doesn’t turn to me. He’s looking for something in shop windows, hundreds of shop windows. He looks at fountain pens, pipes, ties, and shoes. I look to see what he’s seeing but I don’t care about these things. We haven’t talked. We haven’t played and I know we never will. In my calves and my breasts I know it.
Chuck, I say. Chuck, we need to connect. My words are wrong. They are always wrong. Connect. Sounds like a plug, a conduit.
Butter to bread, breast to mouth, this is what I want. I want to suck in his tongue for a minute, then talk about strangers. I picture us laughing, and how that would feel, then he buys me something unexpected. Then we make love. This is what I want.
I have lots of time to consider all this because he never answers me. Minutes go by. Time goes by. I touch his arm again but now I have become a nag. He’s mad, I’ve bothered him again.
In Florence, he sits in the luggage car protecting the baggage from the Italians because I hadn’t bothered to learn train seats are by reservation only.
I get a table from the maitre d’ in the dining car with peach roses and white linen because I speak a little Italian and talk with my hands. Mi dispiace, I tell him, I forgot to reserve a seat, do you have room for my husband and me?
He stops polishing the wine glass and regards me up and down. Signora, he says, could you be able to eat very, very slowly?
Yes.
Would you remember every bite?
Yes.
Then I have room.
Chuck, the man I married, sits white lipped in the luggage car, his army jacket so fully functional it lacks only refrigeration to become a model city.
I go to the dining car alone and eye a Swiss man who is just the right age, a little too old. We are the only ones here with the maitre d’. The Swiss man flirts delicately and offers me some of his Times. He looks thin, financial, and I like the way his legs cross at the knees and swing slightly.
After a time Chuck comes to the table, laden with fresh arugula in olive oil, Chianti in a hand-labeled bottle, warm focaccio.
The maitre d’ stares at him. Chuck is sweating. His jacket weighs fifty pounds. He is sweating from the jacket and the strain and responsibility of keeping everything together for the world.
Half an hour after he sits down, he sees the meal. He sees the veal parmigiana, the buttery risotto, the chocolate wafers, the Alps, the lakes, and the perfect Swiss businessman who now no longer looks my way.
This is romantic, he says. I’ve always wanted to be in a dining car, he says. Like in the movies. Like Claudette Colbert. Like Cary Grant. He says all this but it isn’t enough. I am a husband’s worst nightmare. I want to fuck the Swiss man. I want to fuck the maitre d’. I want to fuck the veal parmigiana because I imagine its rich red sauce staying in places I have hidden since my marriage.
This story first appeared in The Amaranth Review.
