Her father had looked old when she had arrived, but to be in his presence was to discern that he was inwardly illuminated by a perpetually boyish ingenuousness. “Remember, figlia mia,” he said at their leave-taking, “that wherever I am is your home and Weezy’s. Whenever you need me I will be with you, no matter what distance is between us. Things have worked out that we have gone a separate way for the moment—like the miller’s sons in the fairy tale who, upon their father’s death, were each given a small something and told to go out in the world and make it into a fortune. Just so I have come to Venice, you have gone to New York, and Weezy is elsewhere. But in spirit, which is all your mother and I had to bequeath you, we are together. And that is what counts. You are too emotional, mia cara; remember to discipline yourself. Remember to add life to life, to go on surviving in the ongoing compromise between one’s beliefs and reality that is the daily game of living. Remember that life is generous when you are.”

Tina knew her father’s disappointments; she knew he had suffered from her mother’s unhappiness and restlessness; “la mama è bambina,” “la mama è difficile,” he used to write to her in college, showing how protective he had to be, and all the time he was dead wrong—her mother wasn’t a child, her mother was a woman. She saw disillusionment in his aging face, his creased brow; she saw his sense of failure in his human works and his realization that his writings remained but his children were gone. She saw his frailty and fear of death. And she honored him for his sensitive and gentle soul and knew that though he was not always right, even his mistakes had been generous impulses. Just as her mother’s had been.

She felt compassion toward them both.

That fall, in New York and back to her teaching schedule while preparing at the same time for her orals in December, Tina began to feel out of sorts with Missy.

She took as the metaphor of her discontent the sight of paint hanging in huge obscene peels from the living room ceiling of their apartment and the sight of a broken rocker that still stood in a corner, unrepaired. Their sublease was almost up, they’d have to move soon.

Tina felt beset, restless, unhappy. She began to think of herself as the incarnation of her mother, always having to be on the move. She saw her life as a scaled-down version of her mother’s: Whereas her mother had had great loves in great settings, she, Tina, had nothing but encounters in temporary quarters. She thought of Duke, Ferruccio. And Jason.

“What are you doing to yourself, Tee?” Missy asked her finally. “You’re like this tormented soul—you’re so jittery and tense.”