One Italian Summer, page 17
“You are so fucking sexy,” he says. “Open your eyes.”
I do. “Say that again.”
Adam stands. He moves his mouth to my neck and whispers in my ear, “You are. So. Fucking. Sexy.”
I reach up and pull his lips down to mine. Our tongues battle.
“What do you want?” he says into my mouth.
“More,” I say.
Adam puts his hands on my arms. And then he removes them, places them down by my side, presses his thumb into the dip of my hip bone. I exhale out. I grab for his fingers but he leans back, bringing his hands up to my chest and stroking them back and forth below my collarbone.
I take his hand and place it flat down against my stomach. I can feel my heartbeat everywhere.
His hand is warm on my cold skin. I inhale. He doesn’t move, not a muscle. And then he replaces his hand with his lips. He kisses down my stomach and then loops an arm under my low back and lifts me onto the bed.
I reach up and grab for him. I unbutton his shirt, and it falls away. The rest of our clothes, gone.
And then he’s on top of me, naked.
I must have felt this before, I must have inhabited my body like this, but I can’t remember.
I drop my lips to his shoulder. I trail the flesh there, biting down. He moves on top of me and then I feel his hand underneath us, flat up against my back.
I arch against him and then it’s like something else, someone else, takes over.
“Kiss my neck,” I tell him.
He brushes his lips along my collarbone and then presses them into the skin right below my ear.
I clutch at his back. He moves his hand underneath us down, cups the flesh below my back.
I lift my legs and wrap them around his torso. I feel like I’m on fire, like I’m going to be returned to ash.
“Turn me over,” I tell him.
He looks up at me, kisses me, and then rolls us. I pin his hands up, over his head, and then I start moving my hips in circles. I see him looking at me, a mix of curiosity and intensity. Everything is foreign. Everything feels different.
I close my eyes. His hands escape mine and find my hips. He pulls me down, hard. He does it again and again and again. I tear at his shoulders, then the sheets around us.
I’ve never had sex like this. It feels like I’ve never had sex. Like I’ve been living right under the surface, watching the reflections above, no idea that the boats and people and birds weren’t shimmery images but in fact real, tangible things. Everything has been a mirror; everything I’ve seen has been skewed and reflected. None of it has been real.
I fall apart on top of him; my eyes squeeze shut, my pulse lighting through us like a laser beam.
“Holy shit,” he says when it’s over.
I don’t say anything. All I can feel is this rapidly contracting moment. Everything that once was, evaporating.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Adam falls asleep—I hear his restful snoring next to me. But the more we descend from the high of sex, the more I feel the reality of what has just occurred—what I just saw—landing.
My mother left. Carol left. She lied to me. Not just here, on this trip, but throughout my life, in everything she did. She told me she had all the answers, that she knew. She made my life into a reflection of her own. But she didn’t know. She didn’t have all the answers. Here she is in Italy—singing and drinking and forgetting. She made me in her image, but she forgot the most important part. She forgot that one day she’d leave, that she already had, and then I’d be left with nothing. When you’re just a reflection, what happens when the image vanishes?
I pull a robe around me and head out onto the balcony. The storm has broken: it’s not raining anymore, and the air is light and new. I think about that night, the last one, the one I swore I would lock away forever.
I knew the end was close; they had warned me. The hospice nurses who came and went knew what it looked like when there was no more time left. It could be days, hours, they said. Stay close.
We had already moved home. Moved up to her bedroom. She hadn’t left the retractable bed in days. There was nowhere to go.
My father spent his days in a chair next to her. He changed her straws after every sip and kept fresh ice in a bowl, even when all it did was melt. At night he’d sleep in the family room, falling asleep to old episodes of Full House, Friends, whatever was on.
I’d wander the house, sometimes falling asleep in my old room, sometimes on the bath mat by the tub. Eric came and went, the only prisoner allowed outdoors.
I’m embarrassed to say that in those last weeks, I didn’t want to be around her. I was, all the time, but I hated it. I was embarrassed by what the disease had done to her, how it had shrunken her down to a fragment of her former self. How she could not lift her head to drink water, and grew fitful and irritated at the suggestion of medication. The disease made her hostile, and I felt that hostility, I felt it down into my bones.
For months I had felt a quiet rage inside me. It bubbled, it had been bubbling, and that night, her last, an ember jumped and caught fire. It felt like I could burn the whole house down.
Her breathing was haggard; she was struggling for air. I looked at her and felt wild, maybe even evil. I wanted to lie down next to her and cut my veins open. I wanted to slam a pillow over her head. I wanted to do anything except exist there, in that room, with her.
“Katy,” she whispered. I bent down close to her, but that was all, that was the whole ask and answer: Katy.
Those were her last words to me. The reminder of my own singularity, the impossibility of my name without hers.
How could she do this to me? How could she tell me year over year that it was okay, that I didn’t need to know, that I didn’t need to have all the answers, because I had her? How could she make herself so indispensable, so much a part of my life, my very heart—so woven into the fabric of who I am—only to leave? Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know that one day I’d be left without her?
I kept my face close to hers, I held her hand, and all the while, as I walked her to the other side, I kept thinking: How will I get there without you? How did you not tell me while you still could?
Standing on the balcony in Positano now, the world freshly washed, I feel the emotion rise up in me again. The fire, the anger. But now it is mixed with grief. It is mixed with all the things I did not see, because I couldn’t, all the things I believed because she told me they were true.
Mom, I think. Carol. How could you? She’s just a little girl.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When I wake up after a fitful sleep, I’m hit with a certain numbness—the sun is shining and the French doors are open, revealing an already-awakened morning. And then the events of last night smack me in the sternum. I put my hands to my chest and press, like I’m trying to arrest the flow of blood out of my body. So this is what it feels like to see the world as it is. This is what it feels like to reach out and find nothing but your own hand.
Next to me, Adam sleeps. He’s naked, and I see fingernail scratches—mine—along his back.
He stirs next to me. One eye opens. “Hey.”
I sit up, gathering some sheet with me. “Hi.”
He stretches, slings an arm over toward me, and rubs my knee. “What time is it?”
I glance at the clock on my nightstand. “Eight-forty-five.”
“Shit.”
“Are you late somewhere?”
Adam starts searching for his clothing. He gets dressed hastily. “Yes, sorry, shit. I need to shower. I’m supposed to be at the Sirenuse in a half hour.”
“For what?”
Adam looks at me, stops what he’s doing. He puts a knee on the bed and leans forward. “It’s just a meeting.”
“Adam,” I say slowly. “Are you thinking about buying that hotel?”
“It’s not even on the market,” he says. He picks up his shirt and pulls it over his head.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m just having a meeting.” He slides a shoe on. “It’s for a friend; I said I’d help them out with some plans.”
“And what about Poseidon?” I say. “They’re in trouble here, Nika told me. Is that over?”
“Marco is stubborn; what am I supposed to do? Steal it from him?”
“Talk to him.”
“I have. Look, I need to go home with a win. I want to. I need an excuse to keep coming back.” He winks at me. It feels hollow, though. Like a gimmick. Like he’s done it many times before.
“What about knowing the hotel and loving it and all of those things you said about this place feeling like home?”
Adam sighs. He sits back down. “All of that is true, all of it. I love it here. And also, money is real; his will is real. If they don’t want to sell, they don’t want to sell.”
He finds his other shoe, slides it on. “I have to run, but can we please have lunch later? I’ll meet you at Chez Black in the marina. We can talk about everything.” He gestures to the bed. To what has transpired here.
I nod. “Okay.”
Adam leans over me. He touches his lips down to mine and then plants a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”
“What time?”
“Let’s say two?”
“Yeah, sure.” He gives me another kiss on the cheek, and then leaves.
When the door shuts behind him, I feel a strange calm. There is no cacophony of thoughts. I do not think about Eric, although I should. I do not even think about my mother. What I think about is Carol. I think about the thirty-year-old lady standing in her flat in Italy, a world away from her baby.
I need to find her. There is one thing I know for certain, the only true thing I can place right now, the only thing that’s real: Carol needs to go home.
I toss on jean shorts and a T-shirt and my pink Birkenstocks. I grab a bottle of water from the lobby and wave goodbye to Carlos. And then I take what is now the familiar path upward, toward the stairs.
I know where she lives now. I was just there, just last night, before the entire world changed. I’ve never been able to find her—the whole time we’ve been here it’s just been her finding me—but I have to now. Now it’s different.
I get to the landing, where the stairs split off, and I see the turquoise door. It looks faded, more worn blue, in the daylight. For a moment the practicality of our realities gives way in my abdomen. The questions mount. Is this possible? What reality is she in? Am I finding her here now? Or is she back lost to her time? Is she even inside?
I knock. Once, twice. There is no answer. I try the doorknob, but it is locked. I sit outside. I try again. Nothing.
I think about my options: stay and wait or head back to the hotel. And then a third dawns on me. And it’s the right one, the true one. I know where she is. I know where I can find her.
I start climbing. My sandals slip, and I grip on with my toes. I should have worn sneakers, but it doesn’t matter now. Up, up, up.
As I walk, I feel her. Each step I take I know she has taken before, I’m certain of it. Thirty years or fifteen minutes she has just been here. She has just cleared the way. Somewhere in time she is walking, and somewhere in time I am walking, too, and we will find each other on this path. We will be here together.
And sure enough, just as I am cresting the final staircase, right in view of the Path of the Gods, I see her.
She’s wearing a sundress and sneakers, with a sun hat on, a linen shirt tied at her waist. I spot her first, the back of her head, the curve of her waist. Her long hair looped in a knot down her neck. She flings an arm up and rests it on top of her head, surveying the ocean below. What is she staring at? What is she thinking about? Is she looking for me, too?
And then once I’ve asked it, as if in answer, she turns downward and sees me. Neither of us says anything; we let the recognition pass between us like bathwater—it moves, changes direction. It flows both ways now. It always has.
“Hi,” she says. She’s cautious but not angry, not exactly.
“I thought I’d find you here,” I say.
We are both sweaty and sun-beaten. I feel the exertion of the stairs now that I’m no longer in motion. I drop my hands to my knees and exhale.
“Are you all right?” she asks me. “You look a little white.”
“Just out of breath,” I say.
She nods. She folds her arms across her chest. “We can sit.” It’s not a question, and we do.
Carol plops herself down on a step. I sit on the one below her. Here, high up, there is no one around. We’re totally and completely alone. It occurs to me that, with the exception of Adam, I’ve never seen another soul on this hike the entire time I’ve been here.
We sit in silence for a moment. I take a long drink from my bottle of water. Finally, when my breathing slows, I start.
“I’m angry,” I tell her. I try and keep my voice level.
“I know.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think you do. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wanted to. But we’d just met, and all you knew was this fun summer girl. I wanted to be that fun summer girl. I thought you’d judge me, but maybe not as much as you did. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“That you have a baby?” I look down at my feet. They’re covered in dirt. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing to her. I don’t think you have any idea what this means.”
“I didn’t leave,” she says.
I look up at her, but her eyes are down at the marina, the ocean. Somewhere else.
“Not exactly, anyway. I always wanted to come back to Italy, it was my dream for so long, and… I got pregnant so quickly after meeting my husband. Three months, we barely knew each other. I don’t have a career, I’m still an assistant at a gallery—”
My stomach squeezes—she only knew my dad for three months? I thought they were together for over a year. She wants to redesign the hotel—will she stay? Does she want to stay? But I say nothing, I let her talk.
“We got married because we love each other, but sometimes I wonder if we would have if I hadn’t gotten pregnant.”
“But you did get pregnant,” I say. “You have a daughter.”
“And I love her, too. More than anything. But when she came, I felt like I lost… like I didn’t know who I was anymore. It’s like my old life was gone. I was gone. I used to be the woman you knew before you found that photo, and I’m still her, it’s just that no one sees that anymore. Maybe I don’t see it anymore. I just wanted to recapture a little bit of that. A little bit of who I was, or who I thought I’d be.”
“That’s why you came here?”
A long beat passes between us. The wind picks up and lifts the sweaty hair up and off the back of my neck.
“At home,” Carol says slowly, methodically, like she’s placing every word down, arranging them in one of her famous floral bouquets, “I’m defined by this role. I have a feeding schedule and a shopping schedule, and on Saturdays I clean the house. My work…” Her voice trails off. “He doesn’t mean to, but I know he doesn’t think it’s as important as his. And I don’t blame him. I barely make any money at all.”
I think about my mom, in the kitchen three years ago, talking about how she wanted my dad to retire. I think about the way his work became hers, how I never knew it wasn’t what she wanted, how I never even asked. How too often my father and I treated her design work like a hobby. Why?
“Listen,” I say. “I know this won’t make sense to you, and I’m sorry about last night, I really am, but you have to believe me. You need to go home. You’ll work it out, you’ll figure it out, and you’ll get good at it. You’ll be good at it.”
She looks at me. Her eyes are wide. I see the water there, threatening to run. “I’m not a monster,” she says.
And then, for only the third time in my life, I watch Carol cry.
She drops her head down into her hands. Her shoulders shake in small, staccato bursts.
I put an arm around her. I lean my head down on her shoulder. I hold her like she’s held me so many times before.
“You’re going to be a good mom,” I say. “A great one, even. You already are.”
“That’s not true,” she says.
“It is,” I say.
Carol straightens up. She wipes her eyes. “How could you possibly know that?” she asks me.
And then she meets my gaze, and when she does, it’s like she knows. For just a beat, a breath, a millisecond. She sees. I’m certain of it. There our life is, caught between us. All the love and pain and connection. All the impossibility of her loss and what remains. Everything, in the space between us. Then:
“I’m sorry. I’m a mess. And I’m going to be late for the Sirenuse pitch if I don’t get going. They were really clear that they have a tight schedule today, and I’ve been going over it for days. I can’t miss it.”
“That’s today?”
Something twists in my stomach.
“Yes,” she says. “I was just trying to clear my head a little before and then—”
“Who are you meeting with?” I ask her.
She stands up. She brushes some dirt off the skirt of her dress. Her eyes squint into the sun.
“A developer this time,” she says. “I think his name is Adam.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I leave Carol and dash down the stairs to the hotel. Nika is at the desk, and I go up to her, gulping air. “Have you seen Adam?” I ask her.
“He just left,” she says. “Is everything all right, Ms. Silver?”
“Nika,” I start. I want to know, but I also don’t. I’m terrified, and yet I need an answer. I need one now. “What year is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“What is the year? Right now?”
She laughs. I feel her casual, befuddled amusement. “Nineteen ninety-two,” she says. “Last time I looked.”
I feel a rush of cold air across my skin. This whole time.
I’m not finding my mother’s world when she finds me; I’ve dropped into hers. Adam, Nika, Marco. They all belong to the past.
