Promise Me

We have accumulated nothing but memories. How happy we are.

Beth Cardall’s Diary

Ironically, one of the things Marc said to me last summer had now become my personal mantra: I’m not going to waste a single day. It’s a shame most people don’t have the advantage of knowing when their time’s up. If they did, they would probably live differently. They would stop trading time for trinkets. They would live like they were dying.

We had 314 days until Christmas Eve—7,536 hours. I meant to live them all.

That afternoon I sat down with Matthew and a steno pad, and we began making a list of everything we wanted to do in the time we had left. What people today call a “bucket list.”

“I want to go to New York City,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and watch a real Broadway play.”

“Nineteen eighty-nine,” he said, searching his memories. “I think Phantom of the Opera has opened. You’ll want to see that.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“You will. You’ll like it. It will become the longest-running Broadway musical in history.” He wrote it down on our list. “What else do you want to do?”

“I want to see Europe, or at least some of it. London, Paris, the Eiffel Tower. And Italy . . .” I paused, waiting for his scribbling to catch up. “I want to do what you did. I want to live in Italy.” From his expression I could see this pleased him.

“When was the last time you were there?” I asked.

“Four years ago. We went there on our honeymoon.”

It was still weird for me to hear him say things like that. It was weird imagining my six-year-old on a honeymoon.

“In June we’ll fly to Monaco. The food is amazing and I need to put down a bet.”

“On what?”

“It’s the NBA finals. The Detroit Pistons beat the Portland Trailblazers four games to one.”

I grinned. “It’s so funny how you do that.”

“It’s like having the answers to the test in your back pocket. Fortunately, I was a young sports geek and have a head full of worthless sports trivia. But, if I was really smart, I would have learned how to make an iPod.”

“What’s an iPod?”

“It’s an MP3 player. It plays digitized music.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll give you one someday,” he said. “So we will travel the world, and when we are weary of traveling, we’ll rent a villa in Anacapri, the small village at the top of Capri and we’ll drink limoncello and go for long walks and do nothing all day but look down over the water and watch the boats come and go.” He looked at me. “How does that sound?”

“Let’s pack.”

“Now?”

“There is only now. We have three hundred and fourteen days. I don’t want to waste a single one of them.”

Matthew, Charlotte and I were on a plane to New York just two days later. New York was cold and rainy and everything I hoped for. I had the best steak of my life at the famous Keens Chophouse, then, after dinner, we took a horse carriage to Broadway, where we saw the musical Phantom of the Opera. I thought it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Maybe it was just that the theme of unrequited love was so relevant to me, but I was so moved by the production that Matthew insisted we go back the next night and see it again.

We took a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and afterward toured Ellis Island. Charlotte ate a bunless hot dog from a street vendor, had frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3 and spent two hours in the Barbie section of FAO Schwarz.

When we finished with New York, we flew to London. We toured Westminster Abbey and watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. We visited a handful of museums, the British Museum in Bloomsbury, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Winston Churchill war cabinet rooms. We bought Charlotte a new dress and took her for afternoon tea at the Ritz. We rode a red double-decker bus through the city and sat on top even though it rained. My favorite afternoon in London was spent wandering through the market on Portobello Road in Notting Hill. (Matthew told me that in ten years, Notting Hill would become the scene of one of Charlotte’s and my favorite movies.)

At the end of the week we took a train to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we watched a presentation of King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company, ate authentic fish and chips in an English pub and stayed at a Stratford bed and breakfast.

These were the happiest of days. We had plenty of money and the only things we wanted to own were our lives. We did nothing in haste and we frequently lost track of days.

Sometime in April we headed south and crossed the channel to France. We rented a car and visited Normandy and the Omaha Beach Memorial before making our way east to Paris where we climbed both the Eiffel Tower and the bell tower at the Notre Dame Cathedral. We spent several days at the Louvre and if it hadn’t been for Charlotte (how much art can a six-year-old stand?), we would have spent many more. I got to see the Mona Lisa, which thrilled me. I suppose it was like meeting a celebrity.

We drove through the vineyards of Bordeaux, staying in small inns and dining in family-run restaurants, and continued south to Madrid where, after we’d done all we wanted, we abandoned our car and flew to Portugal, spending two relaxing weeks in Lisbon.

In June we flew to Monte Carlo, where we stayed at the luxurious Hôtel de Paris and lived in opulence I had only read about. Matthew put money down on the basketball playoffs, and we stayed to watch the televised tournament, though we spent most of our time at the beach.

When the tournament was over (and we had made substantially more than we had spent since we had left the States), we headed to Italy, flying directly into Florence. It wasn’t until we were on Italian soil that I realized Matthew was more Italian than American. It was joyful to watch. He became more passionate and could no longer speak without using his hands. I had bought an Italian phrase book before leaving the States, and Matthew taught Charlotte and me Italian between cities.

Our first Italian destination was the small, medieval town of Arezzo, just southeast of Florence, to watch the jousting of the Saraceno. Knights in colorful armor paraded their horses into Piazza Grande preceded by flag wavers, acrobats and trumpeters. Charlotte clapped as the knights charged across the square toward their target, the Buratto, a metal armored dummy holding a shield.

We bought Charlotte colorful flags that represented each of the city’s competing teams so she could wave each one in turn. Afterward, she gave them away to the Italian children seated on the bleachers around us.

The next day we took a train north to Venice, where I had my first gondola ride and taste of gelato. We went to Murano and watched them blow glass, then to Burano, where we had the most amazing seafood.

Leaving Venice, we traveled west to Verona, where Charlotte and I stood on the marble balcony of Juliet Capulet’s house and waved down to Matthew, who was being our Romeo. There is a bronze statue of Juliet in the small courtyard and, as is the custom, Matthew rubbed Juliet’s breast for good luck, though all he got from it was a playful slap from me.

Next we traveled to La Spezia and hiked through the five cat-infested, Kodachrome hill towns of the Cinque Terre.

In late July we went south again to Florence and spent several days visiting the sites: the Duomo and Baptistery, the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia with Michelangelo’s David, and the Ponte Vecchio. We stayed in a Tuscan bed and breakfast—an agriturismo—where the proprietor gave us bottles of his home-pressed olive oil and we sampled Tuscan cheeses to our hearts’ delight.

Everywhere we went the food was extraordinary, and Matthew made sure I tried it all, from ravioli alla crema di noci (ravioli with cream of nut sauce) to arancina (little oranges). There was plenty for Charlotte to eat as well, though her favorite food was always gelato.

In Florence we rented a Vespa and the three of us drove out to the medieval town of San Gimignano, the “city of beautiful towers.” Over the next week we traveled the countryside on our little scooter, stopping wherever we pleased on our way to Siena. We arrived in Siena in time to watch the Palio horse race and celebrate Charlotte’s seventh birthday.

Two days later we took the Eurostar train south to Rome. We began our Roman holiday in lo Stato della città del Vaticano (Vatican City), where we toured St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, then, after lunch, took a tour through the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Piazza Venezia. It was a full day, and I was exhausted when we finally settled down for dinner at a tourist-free, subterranean restaurant called Alle due Fontanelle. The food was spectacular though I was almost too tired to eat. I don’t think my exhaustion was due just to the day; I think it was the accumulation of the last five months.

I was poking at my tiramisu when Matthew said, “Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. And Monaco is the second. I wonder what the third is.”

“The Pitcairn Islands,” I said.

“Where?”

“Pitcairn Islands. In the South Pacific.”

He looked impressed. “How in the world did you know that?”

“It’s where the Mutiny on the Bounty took place.”

“What’s the Mutiny on the Bounty?”

“It’s an old movie. Before your time.”

“It’s always weird when you say that.” He reached over and rubbed my neck. “Are you okay?”

“I think I’m ready.”

“For coffee?”

I smiled. “To settle down.”

“Mamma mia, finalmente,” he said. “You’ve been running me ragged. I’ve been on fumes since the Cinque Terre. You’re like the Energizer Bunny.”

“The what?”

“Sorry, that’s after your time.”

I wagged my finger at him.

“So, why don’t you and Charlotte just take it easy tomorrow, sleep in, go shopping, have fun, and I’ll make arrangements for Capri. Bene?”

The thought of it filled me with joy. “Bene,” I replied. I turned to Charlotte, who was lying with her head on the table, barely keeping her eyes open. “Do you want to go live on an island?”

“Are there tigers?”

I smiled and Matthew stifled a laugh. “No, honey,” I said.

“Okay.”

That night as we went to bed, I said to Matthew, “There’s something I don’t understand. The younger you . . .” I wasn’t sure how to ask this. “In nineteen ninety you were ten years old.”

“Right.”

“That means you’re still in Italy. But you’re also here now. Are there two of you?”

“I really don’t know. I’m not sure how this works. But I’m pretty sure that my parents are in Sorrento.”

“What if you accidentally run into them?”

“Then there will be a clash of time continuums and the world and universe will come to an abrupt end.”

I stared at him. “Really?”

He burst out laughing. “No. I just saw that on a science fiction show once. They wouldn’t know me, of course, any more than if a thirty-year-old Charlotte walked up to you right now and asked for directions.”

“But what if you see yourself?”

A slight smile crossed his face. “That would be cool.”