My Non-Interview with My Never-to-Be Husband

Friday I non-interviewed the man I was supposed to marry, (along with his T-minus 4 days pregnant wife.) His name is John Bemelmans Marciano, and his Grandfather wrote and illustrated the Madeline series. I heard about John's newest book, Madeline and the Cats of Rome, and I immediately felt I had to meet this person. He had written a book about my three favorite things. Well, okay, I'll admit that a book about Jesus, buttcheeks and making out will never be written. Next best thing: Madeline, cats, and Rome. I wanted to write a story about him for the website I work for, wondering the whole time if anyone but me would find interest in this story, the continuation of Ludwig Bemelmans's masterpiece.

See, Madeline and I go way back. Every child has that book that they make their parents read to them 10 kabillion times until they memorize it and fool everyone into thinking they can read. Mine was Madeline. To this day, I can spew the rhythmic verses about the twelve little girls in two straight lines at a mile a minute. I become so intertwined with the characters that when I learned of God I was positive that God was Miss Clavel, and I imagined a huge Miss Clavel amongst the clouds, looking over me, all frightened about me, making me stand in lines, and brush my teeth. The reason that I was able to fall in love with the words and memorize them so easily is for the same reason people are drawn to the writing of Genesis or Gilgamesh. When you write simply and masterfully, it becomes a part of people that is so innate that memorizing it is easy -- it's as if the person is reciting the words as a personal memory, not a separate story on the pages of a book.

Sometimes when you mess with classics you really fuck things up. Like, they never should have made a live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. But this book stays true to the most beautiful, distinctive aspects of the original, with added, unique charm.

The illustrations, which Marciano sketched while living in Rome, are eerily reminiscent of his Grandfather's Parisian sketches. And each scene brings to mind specific areas of Rome, down to an indoor market I used to go to every day on my way to school.

John never met his Grandfather, but his Grandmother showed him a trunk full of Bemelman's original sketches, which he adopted with his own writing for a few other children's books. Without having ever met his grandfather, John has completely revived his Grandfather's stand-out drawings and captivatingly entertaining poetry. John claims he's not even a poet, never studied poetry, but studied the rules of poetry that his grandfather adhered to in order to mimic the style. As for the illustrations, John made another seamless transition for his own book. When the original Madeline was written, colored illustrations were too expensive, so Grandpa Marciano drew most of them in black and white, over a yellow background. John could have afforded color but chose to stay there to the "deceptionally simple" outlines of his grandfather. He intertwined brightly colored pages when he wanted to slow down the story.

I sort of fell for him as he told me about this. He has a distinctive, long, strongly built and angled face and the exact mop of loosely curled, shaggy hair that I see on handsome-but-not-trying-to-be-Italians. He is somewhat lanky, comfortable in burnt orange cords and a sweatshirt. The room we sat in was under renovation and felt like a rustic cabin. Italian cookbooks were spread out across the counter and there was a bowl full of hearty slices of bread with heavy, almost burnt crusts that reminded me of the salt-less kind in Florence. There was a copy of the Iliad on the television set. His cat was curled up in a ball on his laptop. His wife was very lucky.

I wanted to take his picture for the interview, but got too nervous. I had trouble making eye contact with him at times -- he was so beautiful and talked in such a relaxing, hypnotic way. He asked me a lot of questions and one was, "so has working for a parenting magazine made you want to have kids or never?" I mean, hey! Who's interviewing who? I immediately looked down and sort of got red, pretty sure that meant, "do you want to start dating me and marry me and move back to Rome with me and have my children?" Awkward!!!!! So I just kept my face down, looking at the sketches he had plopped in my lap (which were beautiful and genius).

We did talk about fatherhood and whether he was nervous or not. (He's not.) I told him I felt like it was as torturous as Christmas for a 7-year-old at his house, except ten times suckier because you don't know when Santa is coming. He put his hands together and nodded with excitement. "I know!"

We talked about Italy, Rome. We liked the same places. Or grandfathers were from the same town in Italy and were probably in the same earthquake. We talked about our cats -- his make frequent appearances in his other children's illustrations. One of the cats in Madeline and the Cats of Rome is a spotted cat named Cacciopepe -- the best name ever. He told me I should adopt one in the alley behind his house and I've started looking for a spotted cat worthy of the name.

Somehow, pulled pork sandwiches came up. "I'm a vegetarian." "I am too, but I still love the smell of the barbeque sauce." Agreed. This continued -- he'd say something and I'd think, "I know, I know!" but would try to stoically write down what he was saying.

But we all know that I can never be stoic about anything, except maybe my taxes or my 401K. Truly John Bemelmans Marciano probably thought I was insane. Who is this girl, I'm sure he asked himself, who is so obsessed with Madeline she's practically crying, is laughing hysterically at the pictures I've drawn of cats, and is reminiscing about Rome like a Nam Vet? In my defense: 1) Madeline and I are soul sisters, as I've explained, 2) all cat-people laugh their asses off, against all logic, at the site of cats doing basically anything and 3) my time spent in Italy was the happiest of my life. So there.

And could he tell that I was practically in love with him, hanging on his every word, sold on practically everything he says and does? I hope not. He didn't seem to suspect my crush, and neither did his wife, who came in at one point, massaging her belly a bit nervously as she talked. "It's a girl," she told me. And when I asked if they had decided on a name, John said, "no, not anything we can put in print." I'm pretty sure that meant "I have decided to name her after you, but it would be too awkward to tell you in front of my wife." Wink, wink, John. It's okay, I'm honored, really.

I left, after talking about hardly anything I could actually write about, taking zero photographs, and forgetting to record the entire conversation to begin with. I was literally skipping down the street when I left, clutching the large yellow hard copy of "Madeline and the Cats of Rome" (which he signed, "For Lauren, such a pleasure to meet a fellow cat + Rome lover! Best, John Bemelmans Marciano") to my heart, like a dorky tween in Victorian days.