She is also acutely jealous. I wanted to bring him home to the place where we live, where she doesn't live. . . . I was afraid she'd drain the life out of him. And I needed his life. These fears and jealousies seem to be related to her view of women as naturally alone and lost, like the autistic children.
All women do, or many.
They see themselves wandering, holding everything they own in a bag, sleeping against the warm sides of buildings in the freezing night. Essentially, this strong and gifted woman can help only those she sees as weaker than she. Infinitely patient and kind at work, she is impatient and unkind to Lauro when he's ill. As a girl in Italy in the 1920's, she is taught to devalue herself, to conceal her knowledge and defer to male opinions. Though Paola marries and has children, she passes the next 63 years in a state of emotional numbness.