pion. She answered the phone in the middle of the night whenever I was in distress and made
comforting noises. And she came along with me when I went searching for answers as to why
I was so sad. For the longest time, my therapy was almost vicariously shared by her. I’d call
her after every session with a debriefing of everything I’d realized in my therapist’s office, and
she’d put down whatever she was doing and say, “Ah... that explains a lot.” Explains a lot
about both of us, that is.
Now we speak to each other on the phone almost every day—or at least we did, before I
moved to Rome. Before either of us gets on an airplane now, the one always calls the other
and says, “I know this is morbid, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you. You know... just
in case.. .” And the other one always says, “I know... just in case.”
She arrives in Rome prepared, as ever. She brings five guidebooks, all of which she has
read already, and she has the city pre-mapped in her head. She was completely oriented be-
fore she even left Philadelphia. And this is a classic example of the differences between us. I
am the one who spent my first weeks in Rome wandering about, 90 percent lost and 100 per-
cent happy, seeing everything around me as an unexplainable beautiful mystery. But this is
how the world kind of always looks to me. To my sister’s eyes, there is nothing which cannot
be explained if one has access to a proper reference library. This is a woman who keeps The
Columbia Encyclopedia in her kitchen next to the cookbooks—and reads it, for pleasure.
There’s a game I like to play with my friends sometimes called “Watch This!” Whenever
anybody’s wondering about some obscure fact (for instance: “Who was Saint Louis?”) I will
say, “Watch this!” then pick up the nearest phone and dial my sister’s number. Sometimes I’ll
catch her in the car, driving her kids home from school in the Volvo, and she will muse: “Saint
Louis... well, he was a hairshirt-wearing French king, actually, which is interesting because.
. .”
So my sister comes to visit me in Rome—in my new city—and then shows it to me. This is
Rome, Catherine-style. Full of facts and dates and architecture that I do not see because my
mind does not work in that way. The only thing I ever want to know about any place or any
person is the story, this is the only thing I watch for—never for aesthetic details. (Sofie came
to my apartment a month after I’d moved into the place and said, “Nice pink bathroom,” and
this was the first time I’d noticed that it was, indeed, pink. Bright pink, from floor to ceiling,
bright pink tile everywhere—I honestly hadn’t seen it before.) But my sister’s trained eye picks
up the Gothic, or Romanesque, or Byzantine features of a building, the pattern of the church
floor, or the dim sketch of the unfinished fresco hidden behind the altar. She strides across
Rome on her long legs (we used to call her “Catherine-of-the-Three-Foot-Long-Femurs”) and
I hasten after her, as I have since toddlerhood, taking two eager steps to her every one.