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language. More volumes appeared in the seventies and eighties, all celebrating his trickster persona, his inauthentic voice,his disconnection from language: Bad Words, Baby Talk, Nonsense Syllables .
    There were other, less flattering versions of his life, of course, and this is what I wrote about. Some claimed that Romei had learned Italian not as a student of literature, but as a prisoner of war, or as a collaborator—making him both older and less innocent than we liked to believe. He was by one account a Red Brigades sympathizer, by another, an unrepentant monarchist. One Dutch historian claimed that he’d manufactured his Jewish heritage—though whether to create sympathy for himself or deflect attention from a fascist past, she couldn’t say. A self-inflicted circumcision at the end of the war became septic, she said, leading to lifelong problems with erectile dysfunction.
    What was true? The Great Man wouldn’t say. And if he did, we couldn’t believe him. We couldn’t believe a word he said (he said), about anything.
    When I gave up on T. in grad school, gave up on Dante, Romei taunted me: Told you so, told you so .
    This has nothing to do with you! I shouted. Dante is a fake and a liar! I hate his stupid freakin’ lyin’ Dante guts!
    He became my virtual companion, then, my only friend. I kept a copy of his latest in my back pocket as I wept in the stacks, or watched T.’s house, hidden by a stunted tree. Romei forgave me my failures. Why try, he seemed to say, when it was folly, all folly? We could count on nothing, certainly not the generosity of the gods. There is no order , he’d say, consoling me with tough love. There is no beneficent judge! We are lonely nomads, monads all alone—get used to it!
    That made sense to me so I gave up on love, quit grad school, and married Ron, the accountant, because he asked. Romei quit, too—some said to care for his wife, who was sick, or maybe because he’d written himself into a corner.
    Eleven years later, when the world had lost interest in Romei, when one could have been excused for thinking him dead, he won the Nobel.
    It’s about time, he grumbled on CNN. I’m broke and need to get my teeth fixed. He opened his mouth before 200 million viewers, and showed them a black tooth in back.
    America was charmed. A half dozen celebrity dentists offered to do the work for free.
    They rushed him onto Larry King , where he complained he couldn’t find a suit to fit his, uh, portly posterior. Ralph Lauren asked for his measurements.
    Maybe we were tired of hectoring laureates with their big words, their excess gravitas. Romei was a man of the people, or so he’d have us believe. We loved his curmudgeonly style, his malapropisms: he became our poet icon, though few of us read his work. But everyone saw him on Letterman , his goatee mostly white, his hair thick, his stomach carried high and tight like a late-term pregnancy. His wry humor, his outrageous insults made even Letterman laugh, a little.
    Are you serious about anything? a starlet asked.
    I’m serious about my spaghetti, he replied.
    Journalists persisted, intent on solving the mystery of Romei. Barbara Walters inclined her head ten degrees to the left and said, Romei, may we get serious for a moment? You’ve said we mustn’t talk about your wife. Why is that?
    He walked off the set.
    But now this very public, very private man was writing about that most off-limit topic: his wife. And it was I— I —who would bring that work to the (English-speaking) world.
    Carramba! I shouted. It wasn’t Latin, but it would do.

5
    BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD

    I’d planned to do laundry that night, but Ahmad rescheduled bowling so we could celebrate. We sent Andi, newly returned from Pammy’s with cinnamon on her lips, to get ready for bed, then Ahmad toasted me with what was left of the cabernet. At forty-five, he still looked like the boy I’d known thirty years before in Rome—fine skin, narrow frame, hair