Chapter 24. From The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

24.
Sorry I had to harass you about marriage and children over the phone with such distance, but you really need to think about it. Shit or get off the pot. It's going to be seven years this fall and I'm not going to keep waiting around. I certainly don't want to force you into something you don't want to do, so if you don't, let's go our separate ways. You've already had my best man catching years - I'm not waiting around for you anymore. I'm serious. I want an answer by the time I'm 30. And for your information, I'm not drunk. I Love you, Cassi.

This was the email that I had put off since my arrival in Florence. Thirty. She would be thirty the following month. An ultimatum! Not that I didn't expect it - the subject came up now and then and most recently on the phone - but what timing! Here I was already wavering with YaYa and now I was handed this.

I called to find her in tears.
"I just got your email. I said.
"It doesn't matter. I'm not coming.
"What?
She choked and moaned. "I can't.
"Wait a minute - what are you saying? I thought everything was in place.

"I called the passport agency to make an appointment to renew and they said it was so busy that the earliest I could get in was on the 5th. That's a week after I'm supposed to leeeeeeeavvahhhhh.

"What about imminent travel? The internet? A paralegal?

"I called. It's the same everywhere. It stinks. The fucking system is choking on security. Nobody can do anything.

"Oh baby, I'm sorry. Shit!

"Well, that's what you wanted wasn't it? Your time alone? Freedom. Some Italian pussy.

"Hey - calm down. This isn't my fault. I wanted you to come and you knew about your passport for months - way back before it was even an issue. You could have easily renewed it by mail.
"It doesn't matter. I'm never going anywhere. I'm just gonna sit here in this stupid house and be an old maid. Besides, you never came out and said you wanted me to come until now when I can't....

She trailed off in a wail and when she came back she apologized for fucking it up. It was too much.

"I should have been more decisive," I said, "Look, why don't you see it through now. Maybe it can happen later.

"No, this was the only time I could go and still have the shop together for the street fair. Believe me, I've been over it. Besides, it doesn't matter right? I know what your answer is anyhow.

I hadn't really thought about her sitting there waiting for an answer. On the one hand the ultimatum was music to my ears - a green light fit for betrayal. And now this- no imminent visit on the same day? The fates seemed to be intervening in a definite direction. How could I ignore that? I didn't orchestrate it after all - I could never have done such a fine job - and yet there it was, a tantalizing mix of despair and license.

"Look, maybe we shouldn't get into the other stuff right now - everything's all lousy," I said.

"I don't want to talk about it anyhow. I want a letter Shakespeare.

"What do you think I do?

"No. Not an email. It's not the same. You write differently.

She used to taunt me with this when our weekend marathons of drinking and fucking would start to wear thin.

"Go home and write something then Shakespeare, she would say, to get the ball rolling, to get me out of the house, out of her hair. It always annoyed me. This time was no different.

"OK fine, you'll get your letter but just remember you asked for it."

I hung up and went back to the little writing table in my room and lined up several photos I'd been carrying in my pack.

There was a picture of Cassi when I first met her, leaning against a tree in our favorite park, wearing an man's dress shirt that was buttoned wrong. She looks 18 and relaxed, or stoned maybe, and pretty - before all those years of me.

There is a picture of us, just before I left. We were outside, against a tropical bar I finished building that very day, and we were laying in the goods for a farewell barbeque and having umbrella drinks. We're both wearing Hawaiian prints and she is teetering on some cheap platform sandals that show off her painted toes.

There were the dogs pictured like children over and over again - doing nothing, rolling on their backs, sleeping on the bed, smiling, eating, drooling.

There was a picture of my mother and father in their seamless twilight together. They made forty years look worth it, not easy at all mind you, but worth it. I looked at them and tried to envision the next forty for Cassi and myself.

How could I have children and engage them in the world I was keeping at bay? How could I indulge them with all the senseless crap that stirred inside of me?

Besides, there were already plenty of warriors and consumers to make the world go round. Sure another Gandhi would be nice, or Jesus, but what were the chances?

It was irresponsible. Sustainability was the issue. Creating more helpless mouths to feed meant more competition for the world's resources. Even under the banners of love and family and progress it didn't seem sensible. For a child to be raised as an American meant that another four or six or ten children would go hungry elsewhere, or work in sweatshops, or become maimed or dead from one of our wars of empire.

I couldn't persist in the grand illusion. The gap wasn't closing. Technology still delivered more bombs than drinking water. Those who talked about peace and freedom and full stomachs were selling snake oil.

I was outside the garden again, and to my thinking, I wanted it that way. Besides, not everyone did it.

It! I meant make baby. But if she was not getting what she needed, then I was sorry, but we should end it. As her friend I couldn't keep her. I wanted the impersonal pronoun best for her and I told her as much in a letter and then I went on a maudlin reminiscence about each of the photographs. The letter was not easy to write, and even as I sealed it and hesitated, I knew I must mail it decisively or not at all.

Rife with dread, I walked to the station, to the mailbox. Cassi was the one thing that was truly good and solid in my life. I knew I would regret it for a very long time, but the alternative was to make a sure mistake, with the added implications.

I hoped that Cassi would understand and that she would find what she wanted. And maybe one day I'd wake up and find that I wanted something too. Sooner or later I'd pull my head out of my ass and ask myself, where is everybody?

Deep down I knew her ultimatum was an emotional plea. Everywhere she looked people wanted to know how I could leave for such a long time and the implication was, leave her, unattended, and myself gone without daily restraints. Did I have friends abroad they wanted to know? Was I rich - knowing full well our circumstances. Was there an Italian girlfriend then? How could he manage alone?

What kind of friends were these? They fed her desperation and they weren't even right.

But Cassi was right to have her concerns, and the ultimatum was something to arm herself with - not something to wave and carry through the streets, but something inside her and next to her at night in the empty bed.

But she was also practical. Of course she felt the urgent clocks and milestones of 30, but mainly she wanted to hear it from me - that we were in it for the haul. And that was the matter I faced -after seven years there was no middle anymore.