The lights go down, the writer makes his entrance, microphone twig against his cheek, and starts talking. My mother listens closely; she listens like an intellectual, nodding, following the cause-and-effect relationships in the monologue, approving with comments like “Right, right…” I can’t look at her straight on, but every time she shifts in her seat, I feel it vibrating in my legs and back. I also tend to nod and whisper, “Right, right,” and tonight, we both wind up saying this at many of the same lines. This tendency to nod and whisper that I got from her has shaped my life and world, my relationships, work, habits, lovers. In my mother, it’s a curiosity that’s survived her moral and religious choices, like people who stopped playing tennis after adolescence but immediately regain their form if they play again.

At intermission, we eavesdrop on the depressing conversations going on around us.

I mutter: “They’re all talking about people who are either sick or dead.”

“We’re an old country.”

When it’s over, we leave, and I greet some famous writers, happy for her to see. “Oh, that’s X, right?” Outside, in the cold of the colonnade, by the bookstore windows: “This was nice—thank you. And the Auditorium’s so close to home.”

Clipped sentences, restrained, fleeting, orchids that don’t flower every year.

I was sad to see her walking even a little slower than the last time I’d noticed her gait. Other times, I would’ve tried to raise her hackles: “Why are you being so normal today? So it turns out you do know how to be civilized?” I didn’t do this, and as I write now, I take some pride in knowing I refrained from lecturing her on her behavior that generally annoys me.

She lets me take her home. I park the car in their garage, hand over the keys, watch her take the stairs after the gate, down to the main entrance. I head for my scooter and, feeling emotional, I peel out in the freezing cold. Piazza Ungheria, piazza Fiume, Castro Pretorio, San Lorenzo, all the traffic lights still operational.

[I’m editing this section while wrapped in the embrace of benzodiazepine; it holds me, muffles the keys on the keyboard, and there’s some soothing digital music coming from my noise-canceling headphones—I absolutely need this cocoon to talk about her—I feel like I’m back in my father’s luxury car.]

The day after, she was sweet on the phone. The way we spoke to each other left me feeling like we’d had a relationship that was different, better, in the distant past, and she was remembering.

And the day after that, I called her from the train: “What would you say to us all celebrating my fortieth birthday here in Milan?” Because I wanted Irene to be there.

“How could we, though?—no, come on—and bring the babies? It would be so complicated.”

“Well, then we could all come down to Rome.”