Intermission

My wedding was in June. I had never wanted to be a June bride, but it turned out to be the only time that both the church and everyone on my “must be present” list were available. Twenty-seven people attended, none of which were any of my brothers. I wore a dark blue empire-waisted gown to hide the fact that I had overlooked the warning on my prescription pills that they negated oral contraceptives. My father made an appearance, but he spent more time talking to my groom than to me. Mom made a point of flirting with the best man. The priest spoke in Italian and I wondered why the wedding had to take place in a Catholic church when no one present was a practicing Catholic. The food was excellent, but everyone but me was smashed by the end of it, so I had to be the one to drive the get-away car, which is terrifying on crowded Roman streets.

I spent my first morning as Mrs. Giordi Mancini holding my husband’s hair back while he vomited up our wedding cake.

Fortunately, he returned the favor and took better care of me during my first pregnancy than I would ever have dreamed him capable of. The impending birth of our child wrought some miraculous change in Giordi. He grew up a little bit. Not entirely, of course – Giordi came from a line of men that never really grew up. But he held a steady job, came home in time for the microwave dinners I threw together in between conversations with the toilet, and spent four hours trying to assemble the crib before admitting he couldn’t read the Italian directions and calling his dad for help. How Giordi had been raised by pureblood Italians and never learned more than light conversational Italian and dirty insults was beyond me.

When our daughter was born on November 13th 2000, I was happier than I had ever thought possible. When we added a son two years later, I decided once and for all that I didn’t mind that my own career aspirations had fallen by the wayside. Giordi and I had left London shortly after I’d graduated, and we had actually been living with his parents in Rome before Genevieve was conceived. But I hated Italy –ironic, I realize, since I married an Italian—and we left shortly after we married, moving to Vegas to be near my mom. There we bought our first house together. I got a job as a substitute teacher –which I hated—and Giordi managed an Italian restaurant –which he hated. But that’s perfect, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that you’re supposed to hate what you’re doing. Having a career you love throws off the balance of your life and something else has to give. I had loved being in school, but my life had been plagued with all manner of miserable social drama and I had been broke off my ass. Now I hated watching poorly made and outdated science videos with smelly junior high students, but I went home at the end of the day to the two most perfect children in existence, and a good husband who made me frequently made me laugh –unintentional as it may be.

Then I got offered a job as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor and the bottom dropped out of my marriage because it was my dream job and would require we move cross country. I wanted to go; Giordi refused. I threatened to leave him; Giordi threatened to sue me for custody. I pointed out no court in their righte mine would give someone like him custody; he relented and we moved.

The irony of my job and my family life were also not lost on me. The first day on the job, I grinned to myself every time I met someone new. I envisioned the conversation I wanted to have over and over again. I’d hold my hand out to my colleagues or my patients and introduce, “Hello, I’m Joslyn Mancini. I’m a drug and alcohol abuse counselor.” Then they would ask, “Well what got you into this job?” and I would say, “My brother died of a heroin overdose, and another of my brothers is still an active addict.” Then they would ask, “Well what’s your favorite part of this job?” and I would say, “Going home and laughing at the irony of my life.” They would then of course ask, “What irony?” and I would answer, “My husband is an alcoholic and this job is probably all that’s kept me from leaving him.”

But that’s cruel and untrue. I loved Giordi. Somewhere during that last semester in the 409, sometime between fucking my best friend and watching him propose to a whore, I learned to settle. I learned to love what I had, which was a good guy who loved me in his own strange way, who adored our children, who struggled a bit but inevitably let me do things the way I wanted them done. I learned to appreciate the love you can have for things that you might be able to live without but would rather not. Because the other love, that intense, overwhelming, consuming love that you harbor for things you don’t think you could ever survive losing . . . that’s deadly. Inevitably those are the things you lose. My children were the only consuming aspect of my life, but that was acceptable.

I also find it ironic that the things it hurts the most to lose are the losses you are most frequently reminded of.

Example one: For some reason I thought it would be great to name my son after my brother that I had clearly never come to terms with the death of. Tobias Bryce Mancini. My brother had gone by his middle name, and I made a point of calling my son Tobias, or Toby when he was being sweet and playful, or Tobias Mancini when he was asking for a time out. But never Tobias Bryce because then I would just remember my goldenbrother stretched across his beanbag chair, his hair a greasy mess, as he shrugged, “People care too much what other people do. If you’re doing what you want to, all the power to you. People need to get over themselves and let people be who they want to be.” And then my chest would constrict because I knew if he was watching me, he was disappointed.

I had married my boyfriend because I got knocked up, and I stayed with my alcoholic husband because what kind of drug and alcohol abuse counselor can’t cure her own husband?

Example two: my old-heartbreak-that-is-never-talked-about was famous. I don’t mean famous as in you heard through your friend’s sister’s cousin’s hair dresser that he was starring in some Off-Broadway show. I mean famous as in his face is plastered on every fucking magazine, movie screen, and gossip column. Famous as in he starred in an adaptation of your favorite book series ever. Famous as in your son wants to be him for Halloween and your daughter has been begging you since her birthday to go to Disney Land for the Pirates of the Caribbean premiere because she really wants more than anything in the entire world to meet Elizabeth Swan. Famous as in you have to train yourself to disassociate those brown eyes from the ones you watched the firelight reflect in the one night you let yourself admit your love.

I’m not a big fan of irony, but it’s a big fan of mine. It’s made itself my constant companion in life since birth, really. No matter what trials life has tossed at me, irony has been standing there holding my hand, promising me that someday I will look back and laugh, like I was supposed to at the photo of my concussed smile at Christmastime, like I was supposed to at all the scrapes I got into between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. Like I was supposed to at the damn butterfly tattoo that I had spent two years at my old job covering with make up and turtlenecks. Fortunately, it didn’t remind me so much of Orlando. It just stood as a reminder of my own naivety, my own trust that life would go exactly as planned, my own damn words: “I never back out.” How true that had always been, and how desperately I frequently found myself wishing that I did back out on things.

Such as the stupid, stupid commitment I’d made with Dora. She and Grant were living in LA for the time being but had hopes of moving back to London soon. He was making quite a living for himself as a recognized artist, whereas Dora had gone into costume design and had already been on several award-winning crews.

She called me in mid-May, early evening on a bad day. Work had been stressful and upsetting; heroin addictions took a toll on me for personal reasons. Genevieve needed a dozen cookies that nobody could possibly be allergic to, and I hadn’t known about it until the day before Mother’s Day. I found it obnoxious that I would be up all night making cookies for my own celebration. Toby’s daycare said he was refusing to play with the other children.

Dora called and I dropped everything to talk to her because it had been a couple weeks, and she opened with, “I want you and the kids to come to Disney for the Pirates premiere.”

It was a bomb. I was speechless, thoughtless, breathless. She had done costume work on the film, but had worked in the costume shop, never having to worry about crossing paths with any of the stars. Or one star in particular, whom none of us had spoken with or about since he’d left us. Well, we had left him, but he left us first for all practical purposes.

“You’ve been saying you want to take the kids for years. You could use a vacation. And I might even be able to figure out a way for Ginny to meet Keira Knightley.”

Well shit. As much as the idea of being even in the same state, much less at the same event as that dark figure from my past terrified me, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my kids. Meeting Keira Knightley would be life-changing for my daughter.

“I can’t promise it,” Dora warned, and I could see her pursing her lips, pacing in the kitchen of her and Grant’s condo. “We can spend the day at the park, there’s a buffet dinner, watch the movie, and then . . . I’ll see what strings I can pull, if any, but maybe I can call in a favor.”

I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to go through all that trouble for my daughter, but of course she did. She would regardless of what I said. She and Grant were just beginning to think about starting their own family, but always they had gushed about my children as though they were their own. There were no lengths Dora wouldn’t go to in order to hear Genevieve’s squeal of delight.

So instead I pressed hesitantly, “What about . . .”

“We won’t see him, Joz. It’ll be a huge event and he’s a big deal now. Doesn’t mingle with us peasants. I mean, I made a movie with the guy and never saw him once. Promise. I mean, they airbrushed him so much on the posters that it doesn’t even look like him, so you won’t really be seeing him at all.”

Except on the big screen. I had sat through the Lord of the Rings movies at home without throwing up. And I had made it through the first Pirates movie. I was a big girl; I could handle it. Or rather I had become excellent at disassociation. But it’s easy to pretend you don’t have memories of someone when they’re dressed like an Elf and don’t even look like themselves, or when all the freckles on their neck are edited out. Only for Genevieve could I do this.

When I’d broached the subject to Giordi, he thought it was a great idea. He agreed with Dora that I needed a vacation, pointing out that my job was wearing my down, and even suggested we could move to Los Angeles if I wanted to be nearer my cousin. He hated everything about Massachusetts, namely the price, the people, the weather, and the Patriots. It wasn’t like California would be any better, though. But no, I didn’t want to quit my job, and I didn’t want to move, I just wanted to go visit Dora. I didn’t mention Disney Land, though he suggested it, and I didn’t mention the movie premiere that Orlando would probably be at, because I’m a bad wife. If there was one thing Giordi didn’t do, though, it was vacations with the kids. He loved them, I truly believe that, but his tolerance for noisy children lasted two hours tops, and then he needed to be able to leave the room and not deal with them for a bit. It wasn’t something I held against him; my parents, actually, had pretty much been the same way with me.

So come June 21st, 2006, I packed the kids up and flew cross-country for a week’s respite in the land of milk and honey. Only when we landed did I remember how much I hated crowds and theme parks and sugar-saturated kids and . . . and Orlando Bloom. Easily, I knew, this was going to surpass “spending thirty-four hours in labor” on the list of things I held over Genevieve’s head for the rest of her life.


	Intermission My wedding was in June. I had never wanted to be a June bride, but it turned out to be the only time that both the church and everyone on my “must be present” list were available. Twenty-seven people attended, none of which were any of my brothers. I wore a dark blue empire-waisted gown to hide the fact that I had overlooked the warning on my prescription pills that they negated oral contraceptives. My father made an appearance, but he spent more time talking to my groom than to me. Mom made a point of flirting with the best man. The priest spoke in Italian and I wondered why the wedding had to take place in a Catholic church when no one present was a practicing Catholic. The food was excellent, but everyone but me was smashed by the end of it, so I had to be the one to drive the get-away car, which is terrifying on crowded Roman streets. I spent my first morning as Mrs. Giordi Mancini holding my husband’s hair back while he vomited up our wedding cake. Fortunately, he returned the favor and took better care of me during my first pregnancy than I would ever have dreamed him capable of. The impending birth of our child wrought some miraculous change in Giordi. He grew up a little bit. Not entirely, of course – Giordi came from a line of men that never really grew up. But he held a steady job, came home in time for the microwave dinners I threw together in between conversations with the toilet, and spent four hours trying to assemble the crib before admitting he couldn’t read the Italian directions and calling his dad for help. How Giordi had been raised by pureblood Italians and never learned more than light conversational Italian and dirty insults was beyond me. When our daughter was born on November 13th 2000, I was happier than I had ever thought possible. When we added a son two years later, I decided once and for all that I didn’t mind that my own career aspirations had fallen by the wayside. Giordi and I had left London shortly after I’d graduated, and we had actually been living with his parents in Rome before Genevieve was conceived. But I hated Italy –ironic, I realize, since I married an Italian—and we left shortly after we married, moving to Vegas to be near my mom. There we bought our first house together. I got a job as a substitute teacher –which I hated—and Giordi managed an Italian restaurant –which he hated. But that’s perfect, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that you’re supposed to hate what you’re doing. Having a career you love throws off the balance of your life and something else has to give. I had loved being in school, but my life had been plagued with all manner of miserable social drama and I had been broke off my ass. Now I hated watching poorly made and outdated science videos with smelly junior high students, but I went home at the end of the day to the two most perfect children in existence, and a good husband who made me frequently made me laugh –unintentional as it may be. Then I got offered a job as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor and the bottom dropped out of my marriage because it was my dream job and would require we move cross country. I wanted to go; Giordi refused. I threatened to leave him; Giordi threatened to sue me for custody. I pointed out no court in their righte mine would give someone like him custody; he relented and we moved. The irony of my job and my family life were also not lost on me. The first day on the job, I grinned to myself every time I met someone new. I envisioned the conversation I wanted to have over and over again. I’d hold my hand out to my colleagues or my patients and introduce, “Hello, I’m Joslyn Mancini. I’m a drug and alcohol abuse counselor.” Then they would ask, “Well what got you into this job?” and I would say, “My brother died of a heroin overdose, and another of my brothers is still an active addict.” Then they would ask, “Well what’s your favorite part of this job?” and I would say, “Going home and laughing at the irony of my life.” They would then of course ask, “What irony?” and I would answer, “My husband is an alcoholic and this job is probably all that’s kept me from leaving him.” But that’s cruel and untrue. I loved Giordi. Somewhere during that last semester in the 409, sometime between fucking my best friend and watching him propose to a whore, I learned to settle. I learned to love what I had, which was a good guy who loved me in his own strange way, who adored our children, who struggled a bit but inevitably let me do things the way I wanted them done. I learned to appreciate the love you can have for things that you might be able to live without but would rather not. Because the other love, that intense, overwhelming, consuming love that you harbor for things you don’t think you could ever survive losing . . . that’s deadly. Inevitably those are the things you lose. My children were the only consuming aspect of my life, but that was acceptable. I also find it ironic that the things it hurts the most to lose are the losses you are most frequently reminded of. Example one: For some reason I thought it would be great to name my son after my brother that I had clearly never come to terms with the death of. Tobias Bryce Mancini. My brother had gone by his middle name, and I made a point of calling my son Tobias, or Toby when he was being sweet and playful, or Tobias Mancini when he was asking for a time out. But never Tobias Bryce because then I would just remember my goldenbrother stretched across his beanbag chair, his hair a greasy mess, as he shrugged, “People care too much what other people do. If you’re doing what you want to, all the power to you. People need to get over themselves and let people be who they want to be.” And then my chest would constrict because I knew if he was watching me, he was disappointed. I had married my boyfriend because I got knocked up, and I stayed with my alcoholic husband because what kind of drug and alcohol abuse counselor can’t cure her own husband? Example two: my old-heartbreak-that-is-never-talked-about was famous. I don’t mean famous as in you heard through your friend’s sister’s cousin’s hair dresser that he was starring in some Off-Broadway show. I mean famous as in his face is plastered on every fucking magazine, movie screen, and gossip column. Famous as in he starred in an adaptation of your favorite book series ever. Famous as in your son wants to be him for Halloween and your daughter has been begging you since her birthday to go to Disney Land for the Pirates of the Caribbean premiere because she really wants more than anything in the entire world to meet Elizabeth Swan. Famous as in you have to train yourself to disassociate those brown eyes from the ones you watched the firelight reflect in the one night you let yourself admit your love. I’m not a big fan of irony, but it’s a big fan of mine. It’s made itself my constant companion in life since birth, really. No matter what trials life has tossed at me, irony has been standing there holding my hand, promising me that someday I will look back and laugh, like I was supposed to at the photo of my concussed smile at Christmastime, like I was supposed to at all the scrapes I got into between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. Like I was supposed to at the damn butterfly tattoo that I had spent two years at my old job covering with make up and turtlenecks. Fortunately, it didn’t remind me so much of Orlando. It just stood as a reminder of my own naivety, my own trust that life would go exactly as planned, my own damn words: “I never back out.” How true that had always been, and how desperately I frequently found myself wishing that I did back out on things. Such as the stupid, stupid commitment I’d made with Dora. She and Grant were living in LA for the time being but had hopes of moving back to London soon. He was making quite a living for himself as a recognized artist, whereas Dora had gone into costume design and had already been on several award-winning crews. She called me in mid-May, early evening on a bad day. Work had been stressful and upsetting; heroin addictions took a toll on me for personal reasons. Genevieve needed a dozen cookies that nobody could possibly be allergic to, and I hadn’t known about it until the day before Mother’s Day. I found it obnoxious that I would be up all night making cookies for my own celebration. Toby’s daycare said he was refusing to play with the other children. Dora called and I dropped everything to talk to her because it had been a couple weeks, and she opened with, “I want you and the kids to come to Disney for the Pirates premiere.” It was a bomb. I was speechless, thoughtless, breathless. She had done costume work on the film, but had worked in the costume shop, never having to worry about crossing paths with any of the stars. Or one star in particular, whom none of us had spoken with or about since he’d left us. Well, we had left him, but he left us first for all practical purposes. “You’ve been saying you want to take the kids for years. You could use a vacation. And I might even be able to figure out a way for Ginny to meet Keira Knightley.” Well shit. As much as the idea of being even in the same state, much less at the same event as that dark figure from my past terrified me, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my kids. Meeting Keira Knightley would be life-changing for my daughter. “I can’t promise it,” Dora warned, and I could see her pursing her lips, pacing in the kitchen of her and Grant’s condo. “We can spend the day at the park, there’s a buffet dinner, watch the movie, and then . . . I’ll see what strings I can pull, if any, but maybe I can call in a favor.” I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to go through all that trouble for my daughter, but of course she did. She would regardless of what I said. She and Grant were just beginning to think about starting their own family, but always they had gushed about my children as though they were their own. There were no lengths Dora wouldn’t go to in order to hear Genevieve’s squeal of delight. So instead I pressed hesitantly, “What about . . .” “We won’t see him, Joz. It’ll be a huge event and he’s a big deal now. Doesn’t mingle with us peasants. I mean, I made a movie with the guy and never saw him once. Promise. I mean, they airbrushed him so much on the posters that it doesn’t even look like him, so you won’t really be seeing him at all.” Except on the big screen. I had sat through the Lord of the Rings movies at home without throwing up. And I had made it through the first Pirates movie. I was a big girl; I could handle it. Or rather I had become excellent at disassociation. But it’s easy to pretend you don’t have memories of someone when they’re dressed like an Elf and don’t even look like themselves, or when all the freckles on their neck are edited out. Only for Genevieve could I do this. When I’d broached the subject to Giordi, he thought it was a great idea. He agreed with Dora that I needed a vacation, pointing out that my job was wearing my down, and even suggested we could move to Los Angeles if I wanted to be nearer my cousin. He hated everything about Massachusetts, namely the price, the people, the weather, and the Patriots. It wasn’t like California would be any better, though. But no, I didn’t want to quit my job, and I didn’t want to move, I just wanted to go visit Dora. I didn’t mention Disney Land, though he suggested it, and I didn’t mention the movie premiere that Orlando would probably be at, because I’m a bad wife. If there was one thing Giordi didn’t do, though, it was vacations with the kids. He loved them, I truly believe that, but his tolerance for noisy children lasted two hours tops, and then he needed to be able to leave the room and not deal with them for a bit. It wasn’t something I held against him; my parents, actually, had pretty much been the same way with me. So come June 21st, 2006, I packed the kids up and flew cross-country for a week’s respite in the land of milk and honey. Only when we landed did I remember how much I hated crowds and theme parks and sugar-saturated kids and . . . and Orlando Bloom. Easily, I knew, this was going to surpass “spending thirty-four hours in labor” on the list of things I held over Genevieve’s head for the rest of her life.