《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 29 (59):我的姐姐來了大綱

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."

我的姐姐幾天後來到羅馬，幫我把注意力從對大衛的悲傷中牽引出來，帶我走回正途。我姐姐手腳利落，渾身充滿精力。她比我大三歲，高三吋。她身兼運動員、學者、母親、作家。在羅馬整段期間，她都在做馬拉松訓練，也就是黎明起身，跑九公里路，大約是我閱讀報上的一篇文章、喝兩杯卡布奇諾的時間。她跑起來簡直像頭鹿。她懷第一個孩子時，有天在黑夜中游過一整座湖。我沒陪她去，而我甚至沒懷孕。我太害怕，但我的姐姐不害怕。她懷第二個孩子時，助產士問凱瑟琳是否對嬰兒可能發生的任何閃失，有任何無法言說的恐懼——比方先天缺陷或生產途中的併發症。我姐姐說：“我只擔心他長大後加入共和黨。”

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?"

我姐姐的名字就叫凱瑟琳。她是我唯一的兄弟姐妹。我們在康乃狄克州郊區長大，就我們兩人，和我們的父母親住在一間農舍，附近沒有其他小孩。她盛氣凌人，指揮我的整個生活。我對她又敬又怕；除了她以外，誰的想法都不重要。和她玩牌的時候，如果我作弊，只爲了輸給她，以免她跟我發脾氣。我們未必時時友好。我讓她不耐煩，她使我恐懼，我相信自己直到二十八歲纔對這樣的關係感到厭倦。那年我終於起而反抗，她的反應大約是說：“你幹嘛憋這麼久才說？”

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.

我的婚姻失控時，我們纔開始爲我們的關係制定新條款。凱瑟琳原本可以輕而易舉地從我的失敗取得勝利。我向來是受寵的幸運兒，受家庭和命運眷顧。世界對我來說向來比對我姐姐來說更舒適；她緊貼生命，有時反倒傷得很嚴重。凱瑟琳可以很輕易地對我的離婚和憂鬱回以“哈！瞧瞧陽光小姐現在的下場！”然而，她卻把我推舉爲優勝者。在我身陷悲苦時，她三更半夜接我的電話，發出慰藉的聲音。在我尋找爲什麼如此哀傷的答案時，她會助我一臂之力。很長一段時間，她幾乎以共鳴的方式分享我的治療。每次療程結束，我即致電給她報告我在治療師那裏瞭解的一切，她於是放下手邊的事情，說：“啊……這說明了許多事。”是的，也說明了許多有關我們兩人的事。

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."

現在我們幾乎天天通電話——至少在我遷居羅馬之前。現在我們其中一個搭飛機前，一個人總要 打電話給另一個人說：“我知道這有點神經，我只想告訴你，我愛你。你知道……以防萬一……”另一個人總會說：“我知道……以防萬一 。”

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，萬事俱備地抵達羅馬。她帶了五本指南，每一本都已讀過，她腦子裏已預先畫好這座城市的地圖。即使在離開費城之前，她即已完全搞清楚了東南西北。這是典型的例子，說明我們之間的差異。我在羅馬的頭幾個星期到處漫遊，百分之九十迷路，百分之百快樂，將周遭一切看作不可解釋的美麗之謎。我也一向如此看待世界。在我姐姐看來，只要善加利用圖書館，就不存在任何無法解釋的事情。這名女子把《哥倫比亞百科全書》擺在廚房的食譜旁邊——只是爲了消遣而閱讀。