Page 681 - A Little Life: A Novel

ON THE SECOND anniversary of your death, we went to Rome. This was
something of a coincidence, and also not: he knew and we knew he’d have
to be out of the city, far away from New York State. And maybe the Irvines
felt the same way, because that was when they had scheduled the ceremony
—at the very end of August, when all of Europe had migrated elsewhere,
and yet we were flying toward it, that continent bereft of all its chattering
flocks, all its native fauna.

It was at the American Academy, where Sophie and Malcolm had both
once had residencies, and where the Irvines had endowed a scholarship for
a young architect. They had helped select the first recipient, a very tall and
sweetly nervous young woman from London who built mostly temporary
structures, complex-looking buildings of earth and sod and paper that were

meant to disintegrate slowly over time, and there was the announcement of
the fellowship, which came with additional prize money, and a reception, at
which Flora spoke. Along with us, and Sophie and Malcolm’s Bellcast
partners, there were Richard and JB, both of whom had also had residencies
in Rome, and after the ceremony we went to a little restaurant nearby they
had both liked when they had lived there, and where Richard showed us
which part of the building’s walls were Etruscan and which were Roman.

But although it was a nice meal, comfortable and convivial, it was also a
quiet one, and at one point I remember looking up and realizing that none of
us were eating and all of us were staring—at the ceiling, at our plates, at
one another—and thinking something separate and yet, I knew, something
the same as well.
The next afternoon Julia napped and we took a walk. We were staying

across the river, near the Spanish Steps, but we had the car take us back
over the bridge to Trastevere and walked through streets that were so close
and dark that they might have been hallways, until finally we came to a
square, tiny and precise and adorned with nothing but sunlight, where we
sat on a stone bench. An elderly man, with a white beard and wearing a
linen suit, sat down on the other end, and he nodded at us and we nodded at
him.