The Light in the Piazza

At age 12 the child, Clara, was kicked in the head by a pony with resultant brain damage. She grows up mentally disabled to some extent, though physically intact. Her mother, Margaret, gets resigned to being an ever-present, lifelong monitor.

When Clara is 26 they go on a vacation trip to Italy. An Italian young man (Fabrizio, 20) falls in love with her. She feels that it’s mutual. Being impulsive, she starts to talk of marriage. Fabrizio is thrilled, but Margaret knows that he is not fully aware of the circumstance. He speaks very little English.

After conversing with her for any length of a time, it would occur to an English speaker that something is amiss with Clara. But it is not clear to Fabrizio. Margaret’s inclination is to discourage a potentially disastrous relationship.

Margaret’s own marital relationship is rocky. A disabled child tends to be stressful for a marriage, and that’s the case with her and her husband. In a phone conversation the husband tells Margaret that she must forbid the marriage of Clara and Fabrizio … it would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

Margaret, instead, decides to handle the situation in another way: She’ll stay in Italy, integrate herself into the extended family of Fabrizio and his parents, and actively help Clara cope as a wife and a mother . . . a bold, dramatic, loving, and independent-minded decision.