1990

31 years old. Last days in Italy.

By now I was entirely set in my Italian life, even though my marriage was pretty much ready to end. We weren't fighting, but we weren't intimate, either. Betty assumed that I was out screwing Italian girls every night, which was never true, not that I didn't flirt a lot. I never really had the heart to cheat on her, but she didn't love me and didn't want to hang around me, so we were over each other in every way except legally.

I never entirely lost hope that she would somehow snap out of it, and we continued to do things like go to Vienna together to meet our friend Sue Leonard from the old U City days. As far as her family knew, there was nothing wrong with us.

I was walking around Bologna on my lunch hours, drifting in and out of my favorite churches, thinking in my primitive Italian to myself when I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop thinking in Italian. I never wanted to live in the US ever again.

My work life was suddenly disrupted by a terrible tax-related scandal at Studio D'Elia that had something to do with the singing balls. One day Renato sat me down and asked me to quit so that he wouldn't go bankrupt, in exchange for a huge severance package of a month's salary for every year I'd worked for him. I had to accept.

Betty and I decided that it would be best if I went back to the US for a while to try to scare up some easy freelance money, using the portfolio of beautiful design I had amassed in Italy. I was too naive to check and see how the economy was doing in the US.

My last summer in Italy Betty gave up on me completely and went on vacation with her new boyfriend instead of me. I was supposed to not know about it, but couldn't help realizing it anyway. I, too, hooked up with a lovely girl and we toured the frescoed country palazzi of the Veneto together, in a romantic yet doomed relationship of one summer.

Once back in America, I found an apartment at the corner of Hampton and Chippewa, a few blocks from my mom, and met Marnie Mills. We started a relationship, even though she knew I was married, and Betty and I started to break up over the phone in short, angry talks where there was no one to blame and nothing to be angry about except that we both had been kidding ourselves for far too long.

I went back to Italy to try to find a job and a place to live after Betty told me I was no longer welcome in our house, and failed to find anything I could afford or get any assurance of income from anyone. I signed divorce papers and then found out afterward that I could no longer renew my permission to stay, which meant I could never legally work again.

It was over, suddenly, this life I had made for myself, because it had been based on a simple and seemingly true lie, that one could be happily married without being in love.

Please let me stay, Mr. Bureaucrat!