Dancing On Sunday Afternoons
Two Husbands Giulia D'Orazio 1983
I had two husbands--Paolo and Salvatore.
Salvatore and I were married for thirty-two years. I still live in the house he bought for us; I still sleep in our bed.All around me are the signs of our life together. My bedroom window looks out over the garden he planted. In the middle of the city,he coaxed tomatoes,peppers,zucchini--even grapes for his wine--out of the ground. On weekends, he used to drive up to his cousin's farm in Waterbury and bring back manure. In the winter, he wrapped the peach tree and the fig tree with rags and black rubber hoses against the cold, his massive, coarse hands gentling those trees as if they were his fragile-skinned babies. My neighbor, Dominic Grazza, does that for me now. My boys have no time for the garden.
In the front of the house, Salvatore planted roses.The roses I take care of myself.They are giant,cream-colored,fragrant.In the afternoons,I like to sit out on the porch with my coffee,protected from the eyes of the neighborhood by that curtain of flowers.
Salvatore died in this house thirty-five years ago. In the last months, he lay on the sofa in the parl ... read full excerpt from Dancing on Sunday Afternoons ebook
