I update them on Irene: she’s doing great, she and Barbara just love each other, and I also got to see Daniela in Milan, an agent’s interested in her novel, he’s a good agent, I know him, not bad, huh, who’d have thought … (No, she didn’t ask me to read it.)

“It’s really thrilling,” my mother says, “so unexpected, really, she’s very brave to challenge herself like that, at her age.” Then, we’re onto another topic, politics, and they both start in with, “Of course that’s not what you do … all of a sudden … being so unavailable…”

“Well, it’s not like Luca’s working.”

“Still, the babies are used to a different routine.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but for Daniela, it was tragic having twins—she needed to think about something else for a change.”

“What do you mean, tragic,” Mom says in her usual voice, never letting anything past her: “A gift from God—you’re saying a gift from God is tragic?” She asks this calmly, not dramatically, like she wants my opinion on a theological question.

“I didn’t say that,” I lie. “I mean, we have to be okay with it if she’s working on something and is less available right now. Better than being depressed.”

“If she’s depressed,” my father says. “I don’t see it.”

She backs him up: “Daniela has everything. Including a free home. These days, that’s quite a lot.”

She’s wearing a dark blue raincoat. I’ve slipped into the driver’s side of their car, I run my hands over the leather steering wheel; the smell, the detailing, the trills of the gauges tuned to the sound of the doors, a designer sound.

A friend has written me about the Auditorium show—he’ll be performing a dramatic monologue. There’ll be writers, journalists. North Rome is wet: rain from inside a nice car is more vivid than in a used compact car. The rich, low sweep of windshield wipers envelops the turn signal, which, little by little, goes out of sync.

She criticizes my parking. Under an enormous umbrella we approach the three halls, three giant anthracite beetles rising above the horseshoe lobby.

We pick up our comp tickets at the box office, where I greet a blond woman I know, beautiful and sweet, her oval face covered in freckles, and I introduce her to my mother. We walk down the lobby, with its three wooden entranceways to the performance halls.

“See,” I comment on the woman I just ran into, “she’s certainly very nice.”

“So, you two are always here,” meaning me and my wife.

She’s calm; she’s walking slowly. I thought she’d be more nervous—she never goes to the theater.

“Yeah, well, Barbara gets a lot of free tickets.”

“Nice. Very nice.” She looks around.