"Where did you have stitches?"
"At the peephole sites."
"Are you going to have to come back here to get them removed?" Deborah asked.
"They told me any medical person could do it," Joanna said. "If Carlton and I are talking by then, he can do it for me. Otherwise I'll just stop in the health service."
They reached the car and Deborah went around to the passenger side to open the door for her roommate. She even supported Joanna's arm as Joanna climbed in. "I still think you should have had local anesthesia," she said.
"You're never going to convince me," Joanna said with conviction. Of that, she felt sure.
FIVE
A SHUDDER RIPPLED THROUGH the plane signaling the start of a period of mild, clear air turbulence. Joanna lifted her eyes from the paperback book she was reading to glance around the cabin to make sure no one else was concerned. She didn't like turbulence. It reminded her that she was suspended far above the earth, and not being of a scientific mind, she didn't mink it was reasonable that an object as heavy as a plane could actually fly.
No one had paid the few bumps and thuds any notice, least of all Deborah sitting next to her, who was enviably asleep. Her roommate hardly looked her best. Her now shoulder-length mane of almost-black hair was tousled and her mouth was slightly agape. Knowing Deborah as well as she did, Joanna knew she'd be mortified if she could see herself. Although the thought of awakening her passed through Joanna's mind, she didn't. Instead she found herself marveling at the transposition of their respective hairstyles. Deborah's was now long while Joanna had spent the last six months with her hair short, even shorter than Deborah's had been back when they had lived in Cambridge.
Switching her attention to the window, Joanna pressed her nose up against the glass. By doing so, she could see the ground thousands upon thousands of feet below, and just as it had been fifteen or twenty minutes ago, it was featureless tundra interspersed with lakes. Having consulted the map in the airline magazine, Joanna knew they were flying over Labrador en route to Boston's Logan Airport. The trip had seemed interminable, and Joanna was antsy and looking forward to their arrival. It had been almost a year and a half since they'd left, and Joanna was eager to set foot in the good old USA. She had resisted coming back to the States for the duration, despite her mother's recurrent pleading, which was particularly insistent during the Christmas holiday seasons. The holidays were a big deal in the Meissner household, and Joanna missed them, especially when Deborah had gone back to New York to be with her mother and stepfather. But Joanna had been unwilling to face her mother's constant harping about the unmitigated social disaster caused by her breaking off the engagement with Carlton Williams.
As they'd originally planned, she and Deborah had gone to Venice, Italy, to escape the humdrum aspect of their graduate student lives and to make sure Joanna didn't have a relapse into believing that marriage was a necessary goal. At first they lived for almost a week in the San Polo district near the Rialto Bridge in the bed-and-breakfast that Deborah had found on the Internet. After that they'd moved to the Dorsoduro Sestiere on the recommendation of a couple of male university students they'd met on their second day while having coffee in Piazza San Marco. With a bit of luck and a lot of walking, they had managed to locate a small, affordable two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a modest, fourteenth-century house on a square called Campo Santa Margherita.
As serious students, the women had quickly adapted to a strict schedule to facilitate their work. Every morning they made themselves get out of bed by seven regardless of the previous evening's festivities. After a shower they'd descend to the campo and take a short walk to a traditional Italian bar for fresh cappuccinos, which was particularly pleasant in the summer months when they'd sit in the shade of the square's plane trees. Then it was on to the Rio di San Barnaba to complete their colazione with fresh fruit purchased from the waterborne greengrocers, or verduriere. A half hour later they were back in the apartment at their respective workstations to write.
Without fail they wrote until one o'clock in the afternoon. Only then did they turn off their laptops. After washing up and changing clothes, they headed to the restaurant they'd picked out for that day's lunch, which often included a glass or two of white wine from Friuli. Then it was time to switch hats from committed doctoral students to tourists. Armed with a virtual library of guidebooks, they'd set out to visit the sites. Three afternoons a week they went to the university itself where they'd arranged to have Italian lessons as well as lectures on Venetian art.
The women's Italian sojourn wasn't all work and serious touring. Socially they had a blast dating almost exclusively Italian men who were associated in some way with the university. Deborah's first beau was a graduate student in art history who was also a gondolier in season. Joanna began seeing an instructor in the same department. But neither woman allowed herself to become terribly involved, maintaining, as Deborah described it, a decidedly male attitude toward dating: namely, treat it like a sport.
Joanna sighed when she thought of all the wonderful sights they had seen and experiences they'd had. It had been an extraordinary year and a half in every way including professionally. Tucked in their carry-ons stored above in the overhead compartment were two completed Ph.D. theses. Thanks to E-mail, which had facilitated sending chapters and their revisions back and forth, the theses had already been accepted. All that was left were their defenses, which both women were confident would not be a problem. A week after they got back, both had interviews scheduled: Joanna at the Harvard Business School and Deborah at Genzyme.
Even Carlton had come for several visits. The first time it had been totally out of the blue, and it had made Joanna furious. Before leaving for Europe she'd tried a number of times to call him, but he had gone out of his way to avoid her and had staunchly refused to return her messages. After finding the apartment, Joanna had written a letter to give him the address so he could write to her when he felt he wanted to do so. Instead he'd just shown up and rung the doorbell one foggy, rainy winter day.
If it hadn't been for a sense of guilt over how far Carlton had come to visit, Joanna wouldn't have seen him on that trip. As it was, she let him stew in his room at the Gritti Palace for a number of days before calling. They met for lunch at Harry's Bar, Carlton's choice, and although the conversation was painful at first, they managed to come to an understanding of sorts, which at least began a correspondence. The correspondence had led to two other visits by Carlton to La Serenissima, as the Venetians of old had called their fair city. Each visit was more pleasant than the previous for Joanna, yet not entirely comfortable. The perspective of her year abroad made her view Carlton as being progressively limited by the dedication medicine required. Yet the ultimate result of the contact was a truce in which they admitted they cared for one another but felt their current "un-engaged" status was appropriate, enabling each to pursue their own interests.
Another series of bumps and thuds made Joanna again glance around the plane's interior. She was amazed that no one else appeared to be upset. Then the turbulence ended as suddenly as it had begun. Joanna looked out the window again but nothing had changed. She wondered how clear air could possibly make the plane behave as if it were a land vehicle driving over potholes.
As the flight grew calmer, Joanna couldn't dismiss the nagging feeling that her life was not complete despite all the gaiety, the traveling, and the intellectual stimulation.
Deborah was convinced that Joanna's restlessness had something to do with her rejection of traditional female goals: house, husband, children. But Joanna had located a different source. Seeing the Italians' continual love affair with infants left her wondering about the fate of her harvested eggs.