We were in Florence when we chose it, and we were completely enthralled with the magic of the place, the ancient streets and buildings making us feel so hopeful and powerful in our artistic and intellectual pursuits. I was dreaming of opening my dance school and of the recitals I wanted to do—“Petrushka” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” adapted to make every child feel included and important. And your father talked about the book he wanted to write; he was studying burial practices, and all the myths and history of the ages, with particular interest in Paleolithic cave art, dating and researching when humans first paid attention to the care and ritual of the dead. He talked about things like art for the sake of art, or if those drawings were there to tell a story, to reveal something specific about the death of an individual, and then he would answer all of his own questions without me saying anything at all: Doesn’t all art communicate something? Isn’t that the purpose? And I just listened, his voice going back and forth with the rhythm of an oscillating fan, the distant hills and old buildings shimmering in sunlight. I listened. The Neanderthals and the Homo sapiens—had the two been able to communicate on any level at all?

“Oh, I hope so,” I said every now and then, or something like that, lit a cigarette, and poured us each a little more wine, the carafe between us nearly empty. “I really hope they all got along.”

I asked: Did our sweet Margot understand when I said I didn’t want to put her down but the vet said I had to? Has any child ever understood when a parent says, “This hurts me more than it hurts you”? Do people really believe what they say they believe? And I told about the experience my father and I had had at the drugstore.

That whole stretch of time in Florence has always felt removed from the rest of life; it was big and magical-feeling as we walked along, your father studying the cobblestones and every odd-shaped window, or anything etched above a doorway. I was completely transformed by the Foundling Hospital and those beautiful sculptures of swaddled infants there on a background of beautiful sky blue, like giant cameos.