Honeymoon
J. JEZEWSKA STEVENS
For our honeymoon we went to Tuscany. This got a big sigh from me. I love my job, this city, my life. At home, in our apartment, the kitchen tiles are a deep maroon, a chess-board for girls. I was sitting on them, like a squat little knight, unwrapping a casserole dish, when my husband wheeled a suitcase into the room. One of the most difficult things about being married, I find, is that those thoughts you choose not to say out loud don’t register at all. No one reads your mind. He gently snapped two fingers near my face.
Babe, he said. You look a little dazed.
THE FIRST THING I DID when we arrived at our villa was set up my salves and creams and serums on the vanity. I laid out my hairbrush handle first. The tweezers. The tints. I like to keep everything in little rows, the jars lined up like soldiers ready for battle. It was Cicero, I believe, who while on an Aristotelian riff proclaimed that the essence of style is appropriateness with respect to time and place. A vanity is no exception. I looked at my platoon of jars. The bouquet of brushes. The glint of the sun on the edge of a cup. All at once it struck me as too much. Perhaps it wasn’t so tasteful for a married woman to disclose all the secrets of her face; she ought to keep some for herself. One by one, I replaced the vials and jars in their quilted armory. An air of mystery immediately settled over the room. I was soothed. But the vanity looked rather spartan. Shouldn’t there be a nail file or at least a tube of lipstick? I glanced at my husband, asleep on the bed. The shape of him. Half my vials returned to the stage before the mirror, though this, too, seemed a losing compromise. At dinner, I spooled spaghetti onto my fork. I ordered a Negroni—or three. It struck me that a partial vanity capitalizes on only half the virtue of femininity, while retaining all its vice.
I can’t really say that I enjoy vacations. I’m on vacation all the time, so when I’m away it feels like work. I am a jewelry consultant at a five-star hotel, where I tend to a nook filled with gems. All week long I daydream to the sound of heels clacking across a polished marble floor. My mind melts. I could be miles away. I could be at the beach! Occasionally the
