One Italian Summer, page 4
I put my phone along with my jewelry in the safe.
When I sleep, I dream of her—here with me, vibrant and alive.
Chapter Five
The ringing of the bells begins early, and it is this that, despite the jet lag, pulls me out of bed and onto the terrace, to greet the day.
Morning in Positano is reminiscent of the evening, but even lovelier. The marina is swathed in blue light—the day hasn’t fully broken open yet. A hint of a chill still hangs in the air, ready to be blown away by the first speck of sun.
I stand on the terrace in my striped poplin pajamas emblazoned with KS. We all have the monogrammed set—me, Eric, my mom, and my dad. They were for a holiday card we did two years ago. I remember my mother delivered them to our house. Eric’s are blue; mine are yellow; hers and my father’s are red. A family of primary colors.
“Carol, these won’t fit,” Eric said, holding them up. They looked a little truncated, and Eric is not a short guy.
“They’ll be perfect,” she said. “It’s one picture.” She smiled at him, which meant: Try them on.
“Now?” he asked her.
“Why not?”
Eric did a half eye roll, half laugh and went into the powder room. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Eric! It’s not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before!” I remember my mother calling after him playfully. It was true, she’d seen him in various stages of undress—when he got his appendix out, every holiday in a bathing suit, Saturdays at their pool.
“We’ll take the photos Saturday,” she said to me while he changed. “I want to get them done early this year.”
It was October. A bright, lingering summer day.
I should have known then that something was wrong. I should have known when she called the following week, after the pictures, to ask if Eric and I could come for dinner. I should have known when she said, over our pumpkin soup, “I have some news.”
The pajamas fit, incidentally. She was right.
I change, into a plain pink cotton sundress and sandals and a wide-brimmed hat. I tuck sunscreen and a wallet into my small Clare V. cross-body bag and leave the room. When I open the door, there is a man standing a foot away from me.
I scream and jump back. He yelps.
“Ay!”
“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry.”
His hands are held up in surrender, and in one he is holding A Moveable Feast. I realize he has been browsing the small lending library outside my door. A nook of books, tucked into the side wall. I usually bring two to three books with me on a trip, and even if they don’t get read, I leave them behind. I have paperbacks I’ve picked up along the way, too. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt from an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him from the Fontainebleau in Miami. This is the first trip I can remember that I didn’t pack a single novel. Ironic, as there’s no one else to keep me company.
“Just making a trade,” he says. “Crichton for Hemingway. Not a fair one, but not meant to do bodily harm, either.”
He takes a copy of Jurassic Park off the shelf and shows it to me.
“No thanks,” I say. “I already saw the movie.”
He cocks his head at me and smiles. “Never heard of it.”
“Funny.”
He’s American, with a confident stance and a sky-blue linen button-down he’s paired with brightly colored board shorts. The whole thing practically screams Cape Cod clambake.
“Are you trying to browse?” He gestures to the shelf.
“Oh, no, thanks. I’m just going to…” I point to the hallway down to the stairs.
“Right, yes.” He slips Hemingway under his arm. “See ya around.”
I leave him at the books and walk downstairs.
Breakfast is on the same terrace as dinner, and the sun is lighting the town on fire. The chairs have been swapped out—what were red last night are now bright florals this morning. The water below us sparkles like it’s made of actual crystals.
“Buongiorno!”
Tony is not there, but a stout man with a wide smile is. He comes up to me and greets me by grabbing onto my forearms. “Ms. Silver,” he says. “Welcome!”
He smiles and gestures to the same table I had for dinner.
“Be our guest,” he says.
“Has Monica left?” I ask.
He looks around. “She is somewhere, probably. I will tell her. I am Marco. I’m glad you have met.”
I sit and am brought a silver carafe filled with coffee. It comes out steaming and strong—nearly black—and I pour a touch of cream into it and watch it transform.
Breakfast is a buffet set up inside. There are platters of fresh fruits fanned out like rainbows—melons and kiwis and bright yellow pineapple. There are breads, muffins, cinnamon rolls, and croissants next to ramekins of butter dusted with sea salt. There are eggs, sausage, and cheeses—Parmesan and blue, Halloumi and a soft chèvre.
I put a buttery roll, a chunk of juicy grapes, and some pear on a plate and take it outside. When I emerge back out onto the terrace, the man from upstairs is sitting at a table two feet away from mine.
He waves.
“Hello,” he says. “You again. How’s the spread this morning?”
I tilt my plate toward him in answer.
“I’ve been here a week,” he says. “I think I’ve put on ten pounds of pure zeppole.”
He’s in very good shape, so I take his self-deprecation to be hyperbole.
I look to the seat across from him. It’s empty. But who comes to Positano alone? Who but me.
“It looks great,” I say. “The spread, I mean.”
He laughs. “Your plate looks like a warm-up.”
I look down at it. The sliced pear is already wilting. I think about last night’s ravioli. “I think you’re right.”
He stands, tossing his napkin down on his chair.
“Follow me,” he says.
I put my plate down and pivot back inside. He hands me a fresh one from a stack. They’re warm. I press my palms into the underside.
“Okay, you got fruit, that’s good,” he says. “But you skipped the watermelon. It’s the best they have.”
He piles some juicy, bright pink slices on my plate.
“Now the cheese. Skip the soft ones, but a small slice of Parmesan in the morning is a delicacy. Trust me.”
He uses silver tongs and slips a grainy piece onto my plate. Then puts another.
“For good measure,” he says.
“Next we skip the eggs and head to secure a cornetto. If we come at eight-thirty, these are gone.”
By the window there is a tray of Italian croissants. He lifts two onto my plate.
“Trust me,” he says when I begin to object. “They put a hint of lemon in them. You will want another.”
“I am beginning to see what you mean with the ten pounds,” I say.
“It’s Italy,” he tells me. “Pleasure is the cornerstone of the program.”
He holds his arm out in front of him, and I lead the way onto the balcony.
When we get back, we each stop in front of our respective tables, but neither one of us sits.
“This seems silly,” he says. “Would you like to join me?”
“Is someone else coming down?” I look up toward the stairwell, a ceremonious gesture.
“Nope,” he says. He sits, rotating his plate in front of him. “It’s just me. I’m here for work.”
“Not a bad gig.”
He looks up at me, and I notice how symmetrical his face is. One eyebrow doesn’t even lift higher than the other. Everything in equal and perfect order.
I sit.
“How about you?” he asks. He pours me coffee from the pot. “What brings you to Positano?”
When we first decided we wanted to go, for real, it was almost three years ago, nine months before she got sick. My mother wasn’t someone who put things off, but even though she spoke often about Italy, about wanting to return, the idea was not made manifest until then.
There was always a reason not to. It was far, true. She didn’t want to leave my father for that long. The cost was prohibitive to do it the way she’d want to. But I could also always tell how she felt about this place. The reverence with which she spoke about it.
It was Eric who told me I should buy the plane tickets and surprise her for her sixtieth birthday.
“Just do it,” he said. “She’ll love it, and she won’t say no.”
I printed out the receipt and slipped it onto the table the next Friday night at my parents’ house.
“What is this?” my mother said, picking it up.
“Read it,” Eric said. He was grinning. He took my hand under the table.
She looked from the paper back up to me. “Katy. I don’t understand.”
“We’re going,” I told her. “You and me. For your sixtieth. We’re going to Italy.”
Her eyes got wide, and then she did something I rarely saw my mother do. I can count on one hand the number of times, in all thirty years I spent with her, that I remember seeing my mother cry. But that night at the kitchen table she looked over the paper, and she wept.
Eric looked alarmed, but my eyes welled with tears, too. I knew this meant something to her—to go, to show me who she was before I came along—and I felt a fierce pull of love for her, for all the women she had been before me, all the women I never got to know.
“Are you happy?” I asked, even though I knew.
“Darling,” she said. She looked up. Her eyes were wet and open. She touched her fingertips to my face. “I couldn’t have dreamed it better.”
The man across the table stares at me. His question hangs between us: What brings you to Positano?
“A small vacation,” I say. “I was supposed to come with a friend, but she couldn’t make it.”
I realize, when I say this, that I do not have my wedding and engagement rings on. I took them off yesterday when I arrived—my fingers swollen from the travel and humidity. They are in the safe with the rest of my jewelry and cell phone. I have not opened it since.
“Her loss,” he says. “My gain.”
It is not flirtatious, at least not entirely. It’s more just a statement of fact. He uses a knife to cut a watermelon slice diagonally and then spears it with a fork. Some sticky juice runs down the side of his plate and pools in the center.
“So good,” he says, mouth full. “You need to get in on this.”
I do the same. He’s right: it’s perfect. Cold and crisp and sweet.
“What job requires you to eat breakfast on a balcony in Positano?” I ask him. “Travel writer?”
“I work for a hotel chain,” he says.
“Ah,” I say. “Which one?”
He doesn’t immediately answer.
“Do you want me to guess?” I ask.
He squints. “I would love that, actually. But you’ll never get it.”
“Hyatt.”
He shakes his head.
“St. Regis.”
“Nope.”
“Hilton.”
“Well, now I’m just offended.”
“I give up,” I say.
“The Dorchester,” he says. “I’m on the team in charge of new acquisitions.”
I spring forward, surprising us both. “The Bel-Air, right? It’s one of my favorite places in Los Angeles.” I smile, a little embarrassed. “That’s where I live.”
“The Beverly Hills,” he says. “But yes.”
“You live in LA, too?” I say. “That’s a coincidence.”
He shakes his head. “Officially Chicago. But I’m there often for work. Can’t beat the weather.”
“Can’t you?” I gesture outward, toward the emerging day.
“Point taken, but only for the prime season.”
“You’ve been here a week?”
He nods. “Scouting some locations, more or less. It’s just special here, special to me. Positano took a hit a few years back, but this town doesn’t change much. It’s been popular for a long time, and I feel like I’ve been coming for almost that long myself. I imagine it will only continue, so now my company wants to invest. Own a little piece of paradise, so to speak.”
“Your company, the Dorchester Group.”
“Indeed.” He waves his hand in front of his face like he’s clearing away a bug.
“So,” he says. “Lonely traveler. What’s your name? I don’t even know.”
“Katy,” I say.
“Katy what?”
“Katy Silver.”
“Adam Westbrooke,” he says. He holds out his hand. I take it. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
We eat in silence for a few moments, punctuated by the activity of the morning. Couples come down to eat; the street below us becomes active with cars and bicycles. The bells ring out: it’s 9 a.m.
Adam stretches. “That’s my cue,” he says. “I should probably head out.”
“Busy day?”
“I have a few meetings,” he says. “But if you’re free later, would you like to meet for a drink?”
I think about my wedding band tucked upstairs. Is this a date? Or just two fellow travelers enjoying each other’s company? We just met. We’re in a foreign country. I’m alone.
“Yes.”
“Great,” he says. “I’ll meet you downstairs here at eight.”
“Sounds good.”
“Have a great day, Katy,” he says. He pushes back his chair and stands. His hair is blond, then red. It changes color in the sun.
He leans down close and plants a kiss on either cheek. I smell his smell—cologne, sweat, the scent of the sea. I don’t feel even the hint of stubble.
“See you later.”
When he’s gone, I think about what I want to do today. The itinerary is tucked upstairs, but I still want to visit my mother’s favorite places. Now that I don’t have a schedule, I can, as Monica said yesterday, explore. There was a restaurant she always talked about in town. Chez Black, right on the water. We were supposed to go tomorrow night. But today I want to explore as she did when she was first here.
Just then Marco appears, right at my chair.
“You left this,” he says, holding out my room key and gesturing to the other table.
“Oh, yes, sorry. Thank you.”
“And I see you’ve met Adam.”
“Upstairs,” I say, tucking the key into my bag. “He was borrowing a book from the little library and introduced himself.”
Marco shakes his head. “He’d borrow this whole place if he could.”
“What do you mean?”
Marco rolls his eyes. “This young guy here.” He gestures to Adam’s empty seat. “He’s trying to buy my hotel.”
Chapter Six
“Adam, he comes here every year. This year he comes and he has this stack of papers.” Marco holds his hands like an accordion in front of him. “And he tells me, proposal. He wants to buy Poseidon.”
I’m struck by two emotions. The first is anger at Adam at trying to Americanize this Italian gem. The second is bewilderment that Marco is sharing this information with me so readily, and easily. We just met an hour ago.
“I’m assuming you are not interested?” I ask.
Marco laughs. “This hotel has been in our family for many years! Never. Poseidon is like my child.”
“You should tell him to back off, then,” I say. I think about Adam’s smile at breakfast. His easy confidence. His charm. They annoy me now.
Marco shrugs. “He knows; he does not care. It is no matter, though. There is very little we must do that will not be done in time.”
I nod, although that is a blatant lie. If we had caught my mother’s cancer earlier, if we had done something about it, she wouldn’t be dead. She’d be here right now, with me, listening to Marco with a compassionate ear. She’d have the best advice for him, too.
I push back my chair.
“I have not upset you, Ms. Silver?”
“No, of course not,” I say. And then in a moment, a flash, a millisecond, I find myself crying. I cried up until my mother’s death, daily, hourly, even. Everything set me off. Touching the coffee maker before the sun came up, the elaborate one I had wanted but wouldn’t buy for myself, so she’d given it to us for our wedding. The gardenia soap in the shower we bought on a trip to Santa Barbara years ago, and which I now keep a steady supply of. The drawer of plastic forks from delivery and take-out meals, because she could never bear to throw away plastic. Everything was a reminder of what I was losing, of what was slipping away.
But after her death it was like something in me shut off. I was numb. Frozen. I couldn’t cry. Not when the hospice nurse declared her gone, not at her funeral, not when I heard my father, a stoic man, wailing in the kitchen below us. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was worried, maybe, that she had taken my heart with her.
Marco does not look surprised or uncomfortable. Instead, he puts a large, warm hand on my shoulder.
“It is hard,” he says.
I wipe my eyes. “What?”
“You have lost the one you were meant to come with, no?”
I think about my mother, radiant and alive, in a visor, white pants, and a loose open linen shirt, straw bag over her shoulder, laughing. I haven’t thought about her this way, so vibrant, in so long. The image nearly startles me.
I nod.
Marco smiles small. He tilts his head to the side. “Positano is a good place to let life return to you.”
I swallow. “I don’t know,” I say.
Marco’s face brightens. “In time,” he says. “In time, you will discover. And in the meantime, enjoy.”
He releases me and looks out over the balcony. The sun is now fully up. Things are light and clear.
“Have a lovely day, Ms. Silver. I suggest a walk to town. Take in the beach and have a lovely lunch at Chez Black.”
I’m startled by his suggestion. It’s the one place I’ve known by name for years.
“The caprese is excellent, and you can watch all the people go by,” he continues.
“Do I need a reservation?”
