My sister's arrival in Rome a few days later helped nudge my attention away from lingering sadness over David and bring me back up to speed. My sister does everything fast, and energy twists up around her in miniature cyclones. She's three years older than me and three inches taller than me. She's an athlete and a scholar and a mother and a writer. The whole time she was in Rome, she was training for a marathon, which means she would wake up at dawn and run eighteen miles in the time it generally takes me to read one article in the newspaper and drink two cappuccinos. She actually looks like a deer when she runs. When she was pregnant with her first child, she swam across an entire lake one night in the dark. I wouldn't join her, and I wasn't even pregnant. I was too scared. But my sister doesn't really get scared. When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby—such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, "My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican."

我的姐姐几天后来到罗马，帮我把注意力从对大卫的悲伤中牵引出来，带我走回正途。我姐姐手脚利落，浑身充满精力。她比我大三岁，高三吋。她身兼运动员、学者、母亲、作家。在罗马整段期间，她都在做马拉松训练，也就是黎明起身，跑九公里路，大约是我阅读报上的一篇文章、喝两杯卡布奇诺的时间。她跑起来简直像头鹿。她怀第一个孩子时，有天在黑夜中游过一整座湖。我没陪她去，而我甚至没怀孕。我太害怕，但我的姐姐不害怕。她怀第二个孩子时，助产士问凯瑟琳是否对婴儿可能发生的任何闪失，有任何无法言说的恐惧——比方先天缺陷或生产途中的并发症。我姐姐说：我只担心他长大后加入共和党。

That's my sister's name—Catherine. She's my one and only sibling. When we were growing up in rural Connecticut, it was just the two of us, living in a farmhouse with our parents. No other kids nearby. She was mighty and domineering, the commander of my whole life. I lived in awe and fear of her; nobody else's opinion mattered but hers. I cheated at card games with her in order to lose, so she wouldn't get mad at me. We were not always friends. She was annoyed by me, and I was scared of her, I believe, until I was twenty-eight years old and got tired of it. That was the year I finally stood up to her, and her reaction was something along the lines of, "What took you so long?"

我姐姐的名字就叫凯瑟琳。她是我唯一的兄弟姐妹。我们在康乃狄克州郊区长大，就我们两人，和我们的父母亲住在一间农舍，附近没有其他小孩。她盛气凌人，指挥我的整个生活。我对她又敬又怕；除了她以外，谁的想法都不重要。和她玩牌的时候，如果我作弊，只为了输给她，以免她跟我发脾气。我们未必时时友好。我让她不耐烦，她使我恐惧，我相信自己直到二十八岁才对这样的关系感到厌倦。那年我终于起而反抗，她的反应大约是说：你干嘛憋这么久才说？

We were just beginning to hammer out the new terms of our relationship when my marriage went into a skid. It would have been so easy for Catherine to have gained victory from my defeat. I'd always been the loved and lucky one, the favorite of both family and destiny. The world had always been a more comfortable and welcoming place for me than it was for my sister, who pressed so sharply against life and who was hurt by it fairly hard sometimes in return. It would have been so easy for Catherine to have responded to my divorce and depression with a: "Ha! Look at Little Mary Sunshine now!" Instead, she held me up like a champion. She answered the phone in the middle of the night whenever I was in distress and made comforting noises. And she came along with me when I went searching for answers as to why I was so sad. For the longest time, my therapy was almost vicariously shared by her. I'd call her after every session with a debriefing of everything I'd realized in my therapist's office, and she'd put down whatever she was doing and say, "Ah . . . that explains a lot." Explains a lot about both of us, that is.

我的婚姻失控时，我们才开始为我们的关系制定新条款。凯瑟琳原本可以轻而易举地从我的失败取得胜利。我向来是受宠的幸运儿，受家庭和命运眷顾。世界对我来说向来比对我姐姐来说更舒适；她紧贴生命，有时反倒伤得很严重。凯瑟琳可以很轻易地对我的离婚和忧郁回以哈！瞧瞧阳光小姐现在的下场！然而，她却把我推举为优胜者。在我身陷悲苦时，她三更半夜接我的电话，发出慰藉的声音。在我寻找为什么如此哀伤的答案时，她会助我一臂之力。很长一段时间，她几乎以共鸣的方式分享我的治疗。每次疗程结束，我即致电给她报告我在治疗师那里了解的一切，她于是放下手边的事情，说：啊……这说明了许多事。是的，也说明了许多有关我们两人的事。

Now we speak to each other on the phone almost every day—or at least we did, before I moved to Rome. Before either of us gets on an airplane now, the one always calls the other and says, "I know this is morbid, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you. You know . . . just in case . . ." And the other one always says, "I know . . . just in case."

现在我们几乎天天通电话——至少在我迁居罗马之前。现在我们其中一个搭飞机前，一个人总要 打电话给另一个人说：我知道这有点神经，我只想告诉你，我爱你。你知道……以防万一……另一个人总会说：我知道……以防万一 。

She arrives in Rome prepared, as ever. She brings five guidebooks, all of which she has read already, and she has the city pre-mapped in her head. She was completely oriented before she even left Philadelphia. And this is a classic example of the differences between us. I am the one who spent my first weeks in Rome wandering about, 90 percent lost and 100 percent happy, seeing everything around me as an unexplainable beautiful mystery. But this is how the world kind of always looks to me. To my sister's eyes, there is nothing which cannot be explained if one has access to a proper reference library. This is a woman who keeps The Columbia Encyclopedia in her kitchen next to the cookbooks—and reads it, for pleasure.

她一如往常，万事俱备地抵达罗马。她带了五本指南，每一本都已读过，她脑子里已预先画好这座城市的地图。即使在离开费城之前，她即已完全搞清楚了东南西北。这是典型的例子，说明我们之间的差异。我在罗马的头几个星期到处漫游，百分之九十迷路，百分之百快乐，将周遭一切看作不可解释的美丽之谜。我也一向如此看待世界。在我姐姐看来，只要善加利用图书馆，就不存在任何无法解释的事情。这名女子把《哥伦比亚百科全书》摆在厨房的食谱旁边——只是为了消遣而阅读。