Yes, she had her problems. She couldn’t let Dr. V. add to them with his poco Zen comment. Did he imagine that love could be only joy? The truer the connection between her and Massimo the more she would suffer, the more she would feel.

“Love isn’t just a picnic,” she told Dr. Verdile, and he looked at her through his pipe smoke and smiled.

Maybe he thinks it’s not love, she thought, and began again to dislike the idea of being there to discuss things that were, after all . . . what? Personal? How absurd could she get. Everything she had ever told him had been personal, had been the very flesh flayed from her bones.

“I thought it was you who didn’t want complications,” he continued, smiling amicably and knocking the ash from his pipe. “Wasn’t your idea a kind of lover with whom you could have a brief experience of purely sensual abandon and then he would obligingly disappear so as not to disturb your new freedom and your new balance?”

“It’s my good fortune to have found more. Look at all the time we’ve been together.”

“Why do you measure it in time? It’s the intensity that counts.”

“It is intense—it’s everything.”

“Then why don’t you enjoy this relationship more? Why is it so full of anxieties for you?”

Oh, Christ! Would he never understand? Should she tell him only of the good times . . . of the conversations after lovemaking . . . of what Massimo was doing for her?

Like just last week, when he had come to the studio and had gone over to her worktable and leafed through her pile of photos. “Your work is getting better and better,” he said as she watched. “Brava! I knew something had to be born from us—a child, a book, something!”

“Madonna! Not a child—Audrey Hepburn just had one.”

“And so?”

“And so I’m glad it wasn’t me.”

“You take the pill, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Still, something has to be born from us.”

“Your book, Massimo. The one that will win the Strega.”

“I’m pleased that you’re working. This is important for you.”

“I’ve always wondered why you’ve taken it so seriously.”

“Amore,” he said patiently, “what have you done in life up to now?”

“Two husbands, three children,” she said, unloosing his tie. “And the library at St. Gregory’s school.”

“And?”

“I learned Italian.” She unbuttoned his shirt.

“And?”

“I’ve done a part of Alberto, too.”

“Now it’s time to do yourself. You’ve tried to be an Italian wife, but now it’s time for you to develop your own personality. The most important thing in all this business is our work.”

“More important than life? Whatever I’m able to do now is only because my life is going well.”