Chapters (47)
- 1. Cover Page
- 2. Title Page
- 4. Author’s Note
- 5. Dedication
- 7. Prologue
- 8. Part One: Umbertina 1860 - 1940
- 9. Chapter One
- 10. Chapter Two
- 11. Chapter Three
- 12. Chapter Four
- 13. Chapter Five
- 14. Chapter Six
- 15. Chapter Seven
- 16. Chapter Eight
- 17. Chapter Nine
- 18. Chapter Ten
- 19. Part Two: Marguerite 1927 – 1973
- 20. Chapter Eleven
- 21. Chapter Twelve
- 22. Chapter Thirteen
- 23. Chapter Fourteen
- 24. Chapter Fifteen
- 25. Chapter Sixteen
- 26. Chapter Seventeen
- 27. Chapter Eighteen
- 28. Chapter Nineteen
- 29. Chapter Twenty
- 30. Chapter Twenty-One
- 31. Chapter Twenty-Two
- 32. Chapter Twenty-Three
- 33. Part Three: Tina 1950 –
- 34. Chapter Twenty-Four
- 35. Chapter Twenty-Five
- 36. Chapter Twenty-Six
- 37. Chapter Twenty-Seven
- 38. Chapter Twenty-Eight
- 39. Chapter Twenty-Nine
- 40. Chapter Thirty
- 41. Chapter Thirty-One
- 42. Chapter Thirty-Two
- 43. Chapter Thirty-Three
- 44. Chapter Thirty-Four
- 45. Chapter Thirty-Five
- 46. Afterword
- 48. About the Author
- 49. About the Feminist Press
- 50. Also Available from the Feminist Press
“Duke, face it. We would never have made it. We’re too different. You don’t want anything, just lazing around in the summer catching fish and swimming in the river, or lying in bed and watching the world go by. How long can hanging around the National Lampoon and feeding your ideas to the others fill your time? You know me, I want a lot—most of all I don’t want to end up like my mother. I don’t want to live thinking of what I might have done or what might have been. It makes us inoperable, Duke.”
“Why so, Tina? Whoever said that in a couple both had to be achievers? I’d just as soon let you do the achieving. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that there’s this strong thing between us and you’re going to let it slip for no good reason.”
“I keep thinking of Mom,” Tina said quietly, her eyes filling with tears. “She had a way of seeing into things and telling how they were going to come out.”
“Oh, come on, Tina, don’t be fatalistic. And besides, this is not the time for you to be deciding things. You’ve been through too much. Just come back from Rome.”
“I’m not promising. . . .”
“Don’t promise. You know what Weezy says: ‘Have-to’s aren’t nice.’ I don’t want you to think you have to come back from Rome, I just want you to want to.”
“I’ll send you something from Rome.”
“Make it from Pompeii.”
She smiled, and thought of all the good times they’d had. Duke. The guy who had showed her an easy, relaxed way to live. Deceptive. Like some charming facade behind which there was nothing; like grasshoppers fiddling all summer and then being caught in long, long winters.
It had been good while it lasted and she had no regrets, but their time together had no seeds for the future. The guy with the thin hair would become a middle-aged and then an old guy with thin hair, and no more would have been accomplished in their life together than some good times in bed.
He put his arms around her as they heard the boarding announcement for her flight; they had a long embrace, then kissed. She moved away, took a look at him and waved, then turned toward the boarding ramp. She didn’t look back again.
35. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-five
How beautiful Rome is, Tina thought as she stood on the terrace in the late afternoon. The air was still thick and fulvous with sun, and swallows were swooping and wheeling through the Roman sunset as they had since the day the city first started on the Palatine.
“Duke sends his love, Tee.”