The art of mending: a novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,4

Dr. Madeline Marrone, who asked me to “start our work” by telling her about my favorite place as a child. I saw that therapist on a dare by my chronically unhappy college roommate, who insisted she saw signs of a deep unacknowledged depression in me, but who actually, I came to believe, merely wanted a companion in her own dark trench. The therapist suggested that a serious disorder in my family made me seek such specific comfort in my own small “home.” But I didn’t think so. I thought I just liked caregiving and eating cookies warm from the oven. I declined to make another appointment, and I changed roommates.

My relatives still make fun of me for my love of things domestic, especially my Aunt Fran, who, whenever we visit, always tells me she’s saved her ironing and mending for me. Actually, I wouldn’t mind doing it. I like ironing. It’s the physical equivalent of staring into middle space. I think it waters the mind, if you know what I mean. As for mending, I think it’s good to take the time to fix something rather than throw it away. It’s an antidote to wastefulness and to the need for immediate gratification. You get to see a whole process through, beginning to end, nothing abstract about it. You’ll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there’s an art to mending: If you’re careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the thing, because it is testimony to its worth.

My sister, Caroline, got married early, at barely twenty years old. She’d stayed the weird one, the one we all thought would never find anyone. But she married another architecture student she met when she was a freshman at the University of Minnesota. She’s been married for thirty-one years now and lives in a house an hour away from my parents. Her daughter, Eva, is grown and gone, a public relations consultant living in Los Angeles.

My brother, Steve, got married before me, too. He’s gotten married a lot. He’s on number four, a sweet woman called Tessa—I hope this one will last. No kids for him. His children are his boat and his airplane, the new car he buys every year, and the bar that he owns, called Pud’s. It’s located on Rush Street in Chicago, and according to him it’s the hippest place in the city.

But I waited a long time to get married. I was forty when I finally fell in love with a man who was a widower. He’d been married exactly one week when his wife died. Car accident—she’d gone out for butterscotch topping for the sundaes they were going to have after they finished wallpapering their bathroom. He didn’t date for five years after her death, and he didn’t think about marrying again until fifteen years after that, when he met me. Her name was Kate. She was a lovely black-haired woman who taught nursery school and wrote exquisite poetry. I know Pete is devoted to me, but I also know that a corner of his soul is reserved for her. I don’t mind. She deserves it. And so does he.

Pete comes from a big Italian family. His parents, Rosa and Subby (for Sabastiano) Bartone, visit us at least twice a year, making the voyage by RV from their retirement village in Arizona to our ramshackle house in North Dakota. I can honestly say I’m always sorry when they leave. I put flowers in their room before they come; they leave homemade pasta sauces in my freezer before they go.

Pete and I have a daily routine, which started when we were dating. Every night, sometime after dinner, we tell each other about an incident that occurred that day, and then we share a memory from the past. It began as a corny but extremely effective way for us to get to know each other. Now it’s part of the way we stayed grounded and entwined. My neighbor and best friend, Maggie, says you have to have a lot of sex in your marriage because it works like glue. So does this.

Many of the memories Pete has shared have had to do with his parents. He’s told me about vacations to Alaska and about smaller moments spent sitting at the kitchen table. One of my favorite memories has to do with a time he sat with his three sisters and his little brother, eating biscotti dipped in cocoa for an afternoon snack while they watched