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Society of Midland Authors AwardChapter OneWhere I Want to Be I was twenty-nine years old when the Arno flooded its banks on Friday 4 November 1966. According to the Sunday New York Times the damage wasnt extensive, but by Monday it was clear that Florence was a disaster. Twenty feet of water in the cloisters of Santa Croce, the Cimabue crucifix ruined beyond hope of restoration, panels ripped from the Baptistry doors, the basement of the Biblioteca Nazionale completely underwater, hundreds of thousands of volumes waterlogged, the Archivio di Stato in total disarray. On Tuesday I decided to go to Italy, to offer my services as a humble book conservator, to help in any way I could, to save whatever could be saved, including myself. The decision wasnt a popular one at home. Papa was having money troubles of his own and didnt want to pay for a ticket. And my boss at the Newberry Library didnt understand either. He already had his ticket, paid for by the library, and needed me to mind the store. There wasnt any point in both of us going, was there? The why dont I go and you can mind the store? Because, because, because . . . Yes? Because it just didnt make sense. He couldnt see his way clear to granting me a leave of absence, not even a leave of absence without pay. He even suggested that the library might have to replace me, in which case . . . But I decided to go anyway. I had enough money in my savings account for a ticket on Icelandic, and I figured I could live on the cheap once I got there. Besides, I wanted to break the mold in which my life was hardening, and I thought this might be a way to do it. Going to Florence was better than waiting around with nothing coming up. My English teacher at Kenwood High used to say that were like onions: you can peel off one layer after another and never get to a center, an inner core. You just run out of layers. But I think Im like a peach or an apricot or a nectarine. Theres a pit at the center. I can crack my teeth on it, or I can suck on it like a piece of candy; but it wont crumble, and it wont dissolve. The pit is an image of myself when I was nineteen. Im in Sardegna, and Im standing high up on a large rock-a cliff, actually-and I dont have any clothes on, and everyone is looking at me, telling me to come down, not to jump, its too high. Its my second time in Italy. I spent a year here with Mama when I was fifteen, and then I came back by myself, after finishing high school at home, to do the last year of the liceo with my former classmates. Now were celebrating the end of our examinations-Silvia (who spent a year with us in Chicago), Claudia, Rossella, Giulio, Fabio, Alessandro. Names like flowers, or bells. And me, Margot Harrington. More friends are coming later. Silvias parents (my host family) have a summer house just outside Terranova, but were camping on the beach, five kilometers down the coast. The coast is safe, they say, though there are bandits in the centro. Wow Its my birthday-August first-and weve had a supper of bluefish and squid that we caught with a net. The squid taste like rubber bands, the heavy kind that I used to chew on in grade school and that boys sometimes used to snap our bottoms with in junior high. Life is sharp and snappy, too, full of promise, like the sting of those rubber bands: Ive passed my examinations with distinction; Im going to Harvard in the fall (well, to Radcliffe); Ive got an Italian boyfriend named Fabio Fabbriani; and Ive just been skinny-dipping in the stinging cold salt sea. The others have put their clothes on now-I can see them below me, sitting around the remains of the fire in shorts and halter tops and shirts with the sleeves rolled up two turns, talking, glancing up nervously-but I want to savor the taste/thrill of my own nakedness a little longer, unembarrassed in the dwindling light. Its the scariest thing Ive ever done, except coming to Italy in the first place. Fabio sits with his back toward me while he smokes a cigarette, pretending to be angry because I wont come down, but when I close my eyes and will him to turn, he puts his cigarette out in the sand and turns. Just at that moment I jump, sucking in my breath for a scream but then holding it, in case I need it latter, which I do. I hit the Tyrrhenian Sea feet first, generating little waves that will, in theory, soon be lapping the beaches along the entire western coast of Italy-Sicily and North Africa, too. The Tyrrhenian Sea responds by closing over me and its pitch, not like the pool in Chicago where I learned to swim, but deep and dark and dangerous and deadly. The air in my lungs-the scream and I saved for just such an occasion-carries me up to the surface, and I strike out for the cove, meeting Fabio before Im halfway there, wondering if like me hes naked under the water and not knowing for sure till
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