One Italian Summer, page 18
I dissolve into a chair by the desk. I sink my head down into my hands.
“Ms. Silver,” Nika says. “What is wrong? What is happening?”
I do not know. I do not know where to begin. My mother died, and she left me with no instructions. Nothing on how to live or who to be in her absence. Now she’s here, and she wants to stay. Oh, and last night I slept with a guy who isn’t my husband, thirty years ago. What isn’t wrong?
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing. Everything is fine.”
“Okay…” Then Nika holds up her hand like she’s just remembered something. She disappears in the back and returns a moment later holding a letter. “This was returned,” she says. “Your friend Carol mailed it a few weeks ago, but it came back.”
I see the stamp, the Los Angeles address.
“Will you give to her?”
Nika hands it to me, and I tuck it into my shirt. “Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Nika.”
I turn and walk up the stairs, take the elevator, and arrive at room 33. I put the letter down on the bed. I take a shower. I go through the motions of this day. The utter incomprehensibility of everything that has happened, is happening.
I put on a dress; I brush out my wet hair. I think about Carol, right now, getting ready for this meeting. I don’t know if she heard me on the path. I don’t know if I got through to her.
I take out some sandals. The ones I bought at the Century City mall with my mother two Augusts ago during an end-of-summer sale. I didn’t like them. I still don’t. Why did we buy them then? Why did I bring them? They’re my shoes. They’re my feet.
So I don’t put them on. Instead, I put on a pair of white flats. I take a look at myself in the mirror. I’m tanned, freckled—rosy, even. There is no other way to put it: I look healthy. It’s startling after so many months of sunken, hollow skin.
I take my room key and then head back downstairs. I have to go intercept that meeting. I have to make sure Carol understands. She cannot stay here. This is not the life she is meant for. She cannot take this job, and they cannot offer it to her.
I have realized, between the time I left Carol at her door and right now, walking the stairs back down to the lobby, something important. Something obvious. The truth of why I have come and why I have found her here. My mission—to send her home.
“Listen,” I say to Nika when I’m back at the desk. “I need you to do something for me. It’s really important.”
“Of course, Ms. Silver. Anything you need.”
“I need you to tell me how to get to the Sirenuse. And then I need you to please call them and ask if they can find Adam. Tell him I’m on my way and not to meet with anyone until I get there. Not a single person. Can you do that?”
Nika looks at me curiously. “Katy,” she says. The first time she has used my first name. “Are you all right?”
“I will be,” I say. “Everything is fine. I just have to hurry.”
She nods. “Okay,” she says. “You follow the same road down, and then by the church, you turn up. It is a big red building—you cannot miss it. If you get lost, you can just ask. Everyone knows the Sirenuse.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I do as she instructed. I take the path down to the ocean, and when I almost get down to the marina, I follow the road up. On the right-hand side, right on Via Cristoforo Colombo, is the Sirenuse. It is set back from the road with a small driveway, the outside of the building a deep and striking red.
It’s a beautiful hotel. Immediately upon entering I feel swept away. I consider her suggested renovations. The scope of the place. In my opinion, it is perfect. I wonder why we try and change anything. We should do it less. Some things do not need to be tampered with.
“Excuse me,” I say to the girl at the front desk. “Do you know where Adam Westbrooke is?”
Her face folds into a frown.
“The meeting about the hotel?” I say. “I’m here to present my designs.”
She brightens. “Yes,” she says. “They are downstairs, in the restaurant.”
I follow the stairs, and then I’m in a mint-green dining room, the ocean behind me, and I see Adam and two older gentlemen seated inside.
“Katy,” Adam says. His face is befuddled. “I thought we were meeting in the marina at two? Is everything all right?”
“Is she here yet?” I ask.
“Who?”
I shake my head. “I need to talk to you,” I say.
The men exchange a glance. Adam shoots them a placating smile.
“Can it wait until lunch? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”
“No,” I say. “No, I’m sorry, it can’t. She’ll be here any minute now.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“Carol.”
“Who is Carol?” Adam asks.
“The designer.”
“The designer?”
One of the men says something I can’t make out in Italian, and Adam holds up his hand to them. “I’m so sorry, one minute.”
He walks out of the room toward me. We step into the hallway together.
“Did they give you my message?” I whisper.
“No,” he says. “What message? What’s going on?” Adam’s face is expectant, concerned, even a little annoyed. And it’s at this moment that Carol comes walking down the stairs.
She looks first at me, then at Adam.
“Hi,” she says. “Katy… what are you doing here?”
“Are you Carol?” Adam asks.
She nods. “Yes, hi.” She tucks her portfolio folder under her arm and extends her hand. They shake.
Carol drops her hand, and then she’s looking from me to Adam and back again. The question still hovers: What are you doing here?
I’m saving you. I’m making sure you don’t make a mistake. I’m making sure that everything will turn out exactly as it has. I’m doing what you always did to me: protecting me from a different life.
And then something hits. Recognition. Like a lightning bolt. I look at Carol now, a crisp white linen dress on, her sandals tied, ready to have the meeting of her dreams—and I don’t see my mother. I see a woman. A woman fresh into a new decade who wants a life of her own. Who has interests and desires and passions beyond my father and me. Who is very real, exactly as she is right here and now.
Who am I to rob her of them? Who am I to tell her who she is and isn’t? I do not have the answers. I do not have the answers for her life any more than she has the answers now for mine.
My eyes well with tears. I swallow them back down.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had to tell Adam something, and I forgot we had lunch plans and…”
“You two know each other?”
“We’re staying at the same hotel,” Adam says.
Recognition dawns on Carol’s face. She does a terrible job of hiding it; maybe she doesn’t want to. She looks at me with a small smirk. This guy?
“I’ll see you at lunch, okay?” Adam asks. “We really do need to get this underway—now.”
I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
Adam squeezes my forearm, and then he turns and opens the door. He holds it for Carol, and then the two go inside. I stand in the hallway for another thirty seconds. And then I head back up the stairs. In the lobby a harpist plays something light and melodic. I wander out onto the terrace. There are sweeping views of Positano. It’s beautiful up here, magical. I understand why she’d want to have a hand in it. I understand why she’d want to stay. Why they both do. There is no denying that Positano is something incredibly special.
I sit down on the terrace. A waiter comes over. “Buongiorno, signora.”
“Buongiorno.”
“Would you like a drink?”
He sets down a glass of water.
“No thank you,” I say.
I drink the water. It’s cool, refreshing.
Right now, downstairs, my mother is having a meeting to determine her future, and therefore mine. If she gets it, she may very well stay. She will design this hotel and I won’t know her, not like I did, not like I do. What will that mean for my life? What will that mean for who I turn out to be? It’s all too mind-bending to think about. I let the thought pass out to sea. Posa posa. Stop here.
I sit on the terrace for another twenty minutes. And then I walk back up to the Hotel Poseidon. I go upstairs; I lie down. And then I go to the safe in the closet. I turn the dial and wait for it to unlock. There inside on a black wooden panel are my wedding and engagement rings, just as I’ve left them. And tucked beneath them is my cell phone. I take it out. I dial Eric.
The phone rings—once, twice, three times, four times. It continues on until there is a staccato sound, like a nail on concrete, and then the phone disconnects. He is not there; that is not his number.
I hold my engagement ring between my fingers. I remember that day in my parents’ kitchen. The memory comes back strong, almost like I can smell it. How Eric got down on one knee right there, right by the sink. He had bought me my favorite cupcakes—ones from this tiny Pasadena bakery that used to make my birthday cakes as a child—and they were sitting on the counter. “Check the frosting,” he said.
He had to lick the ring before he put it on my finger.
I check my watch: 1:30.
I put the rings and phone back, and I tuck the letter Nika had given me from Carol with them. I lock the safe and take one last look in the mirror. Once again, I’m met with a woman I do not entirely recognize but who feels more familiar to me than any version I’ve previously known.
This is who I am, I think. This healthy and strong and alive. And for just a moment, I understand. I understand what she saw when she looked at herself here, too.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Adam is seated at a front table at Chez Black when I get there, feet in the sand. I see him before he sees me—his broad shoulders and hair that looks blond in the midday sun. He’s dazzling. He’s staring ahead at the horizon. He seems distracted, though. He adjusts his shirt, pulling at the collar.
“Hi,” I say.
He stands to greet me, placing a kiss on either cheek. “Hi,” he says. “Are you all right?”
I think about my earlier outburst. “Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry about that. I should not have just shown up there. How did the meeting go?”
We sit down, and Adam fills my water glass. “Well,” he said. “She’s talented. She has some really innovative ideas. I think she’d be a great pick.”
Inside, my stomach tightens. “Did they hire her?”
“I don’t think they know yet. There’s a lot that has to be sorted out.” He peers at me as he hands me the glass. “Why?”
“I know Carol,” I say. “We met here. The friend I was telling you about, the one who took me to dinner. She’s important to me.”
Adam nods. “I liked her vision. She would bring the hotel right into the current moment.”
The waiter comes with a bottle of uncorked wine. Adam pours.
“So,” Adam says. “About last night.”
I think about his mouth on my neck. My naked body under his.
“Yes,” I say. “Right. I’m sorry if I just…”
Adam wears an amused expression. He’s flirting, now. There’s a part of me that wants to climb into his lap, right here. “If you just?”
“Attacked you?” I feel my cheeks flush pink.
“Trust me,” Adam says. “I welcomed the attack. I wanted last night.”
I feel his words lace through me. “Me too.”
I look at this man I barely know. Who has helped bring me back to life here. Whose passion and insight and intelligence I find incredibly sexy. And for a moment, I think about what it would be like to fold myself into the past and everyone who remains in it. To continue to have dinners with Carol and afternoons on the boat with Remo. To travel with Adam. To make my world here, to stay.
“Adam, listen,” I say.
He laughs, but it’s quiet, maybe even a little sad. “Uh-oh,” he says. “Nothing good ever comes after listen.”
“We’re not…”
How do you tell someone that you’re thirty years apart? How do you tell someone you’re not in the same time?
I start over. “Last night was really great, but there’s so much I need to figure out about my life right now. There’s so much I haven’t told you.”
“I know,” he says.
“I haven’t done that work before,” I say. “I let other people do it for me. And I want to now. I think it’s time. Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
I pick up my water glass. I look at him. “What do you want?” I ask. “We’ve spent so much time talking about me, I’ve never asked. And I’d really like to know.”
Adam looks thoughtful. He doesn’t speak for a few moments. Long enough for me to take a drink and set my glass down again. “Maybe I don’t know, either. I travel so much. I love it, but it’s like I don’t know how to not be in motion. I think there are real things I want, too.”
“Like what?”
He looks out past me into the restaurant. “A home, maybe, if I found someone who made me want to stop moving. A garden.”
I think about my mom, dad, Eric. I think about nights in front of the television with CPK, weekends playing board games and eating Mike and Ikes out of glass bowls. Birthday parties in the backyard. The rose fence. Window decals for every holiday. Family.
“It’s nice,” I say. “It’s worth it.”
Adam nods. “Do you know what you’ll do?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “Not yet.”
“But you’re starting to know what you want.” It’s not a question.
I nod. “I think so.”
“I’m glad,” he says. “And I can’t believe we are here at the same time. Life is really a trip.”
Capri, Naples, the watermelon at breakfast. “It’s been a magical time,” I tell him.
We finish lunch and walk back up to the hotel.
“I’m going to go find Marco,” Adam says. “I need to be up front with him.”
“Hey,” I say. I touch his elbow lightly. “Hang on.”
“Mm-hm?”
“You don’t have to listen to me. I mean, I don’t know why you would, but don’t buy either hotel. Keep this a place you love. Don’t make it about work. Let it be pure and good, so you can bring someone you care about back here someday.”
Adam gives me a small smile. “That’s good advice.”
“Will you follow it?”
He shrugs. “I guess time will tell.”
He gives me a little wave, and then he’s gone. Nika comes through the office doors to reception.
“You found Adam?” she asks.
“Yes. Listen, Nika, I don’t know what’s going to happen with Adam and Marco and the hotel, but can you do me a favor?”
She nods.
“Do you invest? Does the hotel? The stock market, I mean.”
Nika’s eyebrows knit together. “We have a man who manages the finances. Marco usually speaks to him, but I do, too. That’s how I know we need Adam.”
“This is going to sound crazy,” I tell her. “But just trust me, all right? Can you do that?”
She nods.
“Invest in Apple. Starbucks, too. But next year, around the summertime.”
“Starbucks?”
“I’m going to write it down, okay?”
I take out a pen and paper. I make the notes.
“Promise me.”
She nods. “I will.”
Just then Carol appears in the doorway. “Hi,” she says. “I was hoping I’d find you here.”
She has a package tucked under her arm. She sets it on the desk.
“Carol, do you know Nika? Nika, you know Carol.”
“Of course,” Carol says. “Hi, Nika. Would you mind? It’s all paid for.”
“Yes, naturally,” Nika says. “Did you…” she starts, and I know she is going to ask about the letter. I quickly jump in.
“Would you like to have a drink?” I ask Carol.
Carol looks from Nika to me. “Sure,” she says. She hands off the package. “There’s a little spot up the way,” she says. “It’s a good place to sit. I’ll show you if you haven’t been.”
“Great,” I say.
We wave goodbye to Nika, and I follow Carol out of the hotel. No more than forty paces up, we come to an outside restaurant on the left-hand side of the road. It’s strung up with ivy and flowers and has a spectacular view of the water. There are only four tables: it’s like sitting in your own private gazebo overlooking the sea.
We sit.
Carol orders an Aperol and soda.
“Can I have a coffee?” I ask the server.
“Long night?” Carol asks.
“You could say that.”
She takes out a pack of cigarettes, shakes one into her hand.
“You really shouldn’t smoke,” I say. “That stuff kills.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I know I am.”
Carol tucks the pack back into her bag. “You know, for someone who considers herself to be a wallflower, you can be quite bossy.”
I smile. “Working on it.”
Carol grins back at me. “So Adam,” she says. “That’s the guy, right?”
I nod.
“He’s handsome,” she says. She looks off behind my shoulder, like she wants to say something else.
“What?”
“I don’t think I’m going to get the job. Adam said something about how they want to keep the aesthetic the same. I just didn’t feel like they were sold, if they even know what they want to do.” She pauses, and I feel the air in my chest hover. “I’d really like to design something someday, you know?”
I think about Addy Eisenberg’s Malibu home, the Monteros’ ranch in Montecito. Our Brentwood house. All remarkable achievements. All we should have celebrated more, with her, when we had the chance.
“You will,” I say. “I promise you will. I think you are enormously talented.”
“Thank you.” She shakes her head. “Adam isn’t who I would picture for you,” she says.
