The next morning was cloudless. We took a picnic of wine and pastries to
the grounds of the Villa Borghese. The sun was hot, the pastries ambrosial. I
could not remember ever feeling more present. Someone said something
about Hobbes, and without thinking I recited a line from Mill. It seemed the
natural thing, to bring this voice from the past into a moment so saturated
with the past already, even if the voice was mixed with my own. There was a
pause while everyone checked to see who had spoken, then someone asked
which text the line was from, and the conversation moved forward.
For the rest of the week, I experienced Rome as they did: as a place of
history, but also as a place of life, of food and traffic and conflict and
thunder. The city was no longer a museum; it was as vivid to me as Buck’s
Peak. The Piazza del Popolo. The Baths of Caracalla. Castel Sant’Angelo.
These became as real to my mind as the Princess, the red railway car, the
Shear. The world they represented, of philosophy, science, literature—an
entire civilization—took on a life that was distinct from the life I had known.
At the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, I stood before Caravaggio’s Judith
Beheading Holofernes and did not once think about chickens.
I don’t know what caused the transformation, why suddenly I could engage
with the great thinkers of the past, rather than revere them to the point of
muteness. But there was something about that city, with its white marble and
black asphalt, crusted with history, ablaze in traffic lights, that showed me I
could admire the past without being silenced by it.
I was still breathing in the fustiness of ancient stone when I arrived in
Cambridge. I rushed up the staircase, anxious to check my email, knowing
there would be a message from Drew. When I opened my laptop, I saw that
Drew had written, but so had someone else: my sister.
I opened Audrey’s message. It was written in one long paragraph, with little
punctuation and many spelling errors, and at first I fixated on these
grammatical irregularities as a way to mute the text. But the words would not
be hushed; they shouted at me from the screen.
Audrey said she should have stopped Shawn many years ago, before he
could do to me what he’d done to her. She said that when she was young,
she’d wanted to tell Mother, to ask for help, but she’d thought Mother
wouldn’t believe her. She’d been right. Before her wedding, she’d
experienced nightmares and flashbacks, and she’d told Mother about them.
Mother had said the memories were false, impossible. I should have helped