One Italian Summer, page 5
“For lunch? No. Just walk in and say you’re a guest of Hotel Poseidon. They will take care of you.”
“Thank you, Marco.”
“Pleasure. You need anything else, you ask. No hesitating.”
He leaves, and I head downstairs. I spot a young woman at the front desk. She’s stunning: dark hair, olive skin, probably in her mid-twenties. She has a beautiful turquoise pendant around her neck, held together by a leather chain.
She is helping a couple in their sixties plan a day trip.
“Is a small boat better for seasickness or a ferry?” the man asks.
The woman at the desk gives me a small wave, and I wave back.
I walk outside and am met with cheerful noise. A store across the street sells produce outside. Lemons sit next to plump tomatoes. Two young women spill out, speaking fast and furious Italian. They swig from sweating lemonade glasses.
I put my hat on and start following the sidewalk downward. Tiny Italian cars and Vespas pass, but the road isn’t super busy. When I get a few paces down, I spot a cluster of clothing boutiques. Dresses hand painted with oranges. White linen and lace cover-ups. I finger an ocean-blue slip dress with spaghetti straps and tiered hem.
I keep walking. Viale Pasitea is the main and only road that leads down to the ocean, unless you take the steps. In and around shops and pensiones, hotels and markets, there are staircases leading up into the hills of Positano and down to the sea. Hundreds and hundreds of stairs.
The dome in the center of town belongs to the church, where the bells ring out. Right now they are silent, but as I pass by the square where the Church of Santa Maria Assunta stands I see the ocean. It’s down one short flight of stairs and then a pathway filled with shops. When I get down, there is a clothing stand, then the restaurant, splayed out right in front of the sand.
I move quickly toward it, my heart rate accelerating. It is early, but there are still some customers sitting and smoking. Turquoise chairs are tucked under white-clothed tables. A seashell sign contains the words Chez Black.
“Buongiorno, signora,” a waiter says. He can’t be more than seventeen, with bright green eyes and pockmarked skin. “Can I help you?”
“Just looking,” I say. I can feel my heart in my lungs, the surge of anxiety and excitement, the possibility, the hope.
“Perfetto.” He gestures his arm toward the inside of the restaurant. I scan the tables. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find—some relic she left behind thirty years ago, her name scrawled into the wall, or a message telling me what to do next?
But the restaurant is near empty, the patrons undisturbed. She is not here, of course. Why would she be? She is dead.
I hear the familiar siren of oncoming dread. The sound of a roaring engine before a tsunami. The past forty-eight hours have been a reprieve of this grief, the intensity of her absence. But now I feel it curling back—about to crescendo and sweep me under.
“Excuse me,” I say.
“You eat, miss?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I leave, take up my sandals in my hand, and pace down to the ocean. Some families are already at the small beach, on towels, playing in the sand. Charter boats bob close to the dock where people huddle, waiting for the next ship to Capri, Ravello, the beach club for the day. A woman on the dock trips, and a man catches her. They embrace, their lips meeting. The roaring in my chest gets louder and louder.
At the water’s edge, I sink down. I don’t have a towel, so I sit in the damp sand. I want to call Eric. I miss my mother. I suddenly feel utterly and completely foolish for coming here. What did I expect to happen? Did I think I’d find her, sitting at a table at Chez Black about to order lunch?
I realize what a long way from home I am, how many planes and trains and cars it will take to get back. I’ve never even been on a weekend away by myself, and now I’m alone on the other side of the world.
I miss her I miss her I miss her.
I miss her warmth and her guidance and the sound of her voice. I miss her telling me it was really all going to be okay and believing it, because she was at the wheel. I miss her hugs and her laughter and her lipstick, Clinique Black Honey. I miss the way she could plan a party in under an hour. I miss having the answers, because I had her.
I look out over the horizon, the sun high overhead. The wide expanse of sea. It seems impossible she is nowhere. It seems impossible, but it’s true.
I swallow down an unsteady breath and stand. I cannot be here for two weeks. I cannot even be here for two days. I hadn’t considered the fact that I’ve never been alone in my life, not really. I didn’t think about how I went from my parents’ house to a dorm room to an apartment with Eric. I do not know how to do this.
I’ll go home. I’ll tell Eric I made a mistake, that this is hard and I’m sorry. I’ll make amends, and life will go on.
I climb the stairs back up to the church. I take the road back up to the hotel, past the shops. A woman calls out: “Buongiorno, signora!” I do not turn. I am already gone.
Outside the hotel, a young man arrives for his shift. He parks his Vespa out front as he chats with a woman across the street, the one who must own the small grocery. They speak quickly, and I do not understand them.
I take the four stairs up to the lobby, and when I step inside, there she is. She is talking to a man behind the desk. She is wearing a dress from one of the shops in town—green with yellow lemons, revealing her slim and tan shoulders. Her sunglasses are perched high atop her head, holding her long auburn hair in place. She waves her arms around. A small package sits on the welcome desk in front of her.
“No, no, the hotel always mails for me. I have done it before. Many times. I promise.”
“To post?”
“To post, yes.” She looks relieved. I have not exhaled. “Yes, to post! And here, for payment.” She slides a bill across the table.
“Perfetto, grazie,” the man at the desk says.
I am trying to get a good look at her, to confirm what it is I already know to be true, when she turns. And when she does, the wind is knocked out of me. Because I’d know her anywhere. I’d know her in Brentwood and I’d know her in Positano. I’d know her at sixty and sixteen and thirty, as she stands in front of me today.
Impossibly, the woman at the desk is my mother.
“Mom,” I whisper, and then the world goes black.
Chapter Seven
When I come to, I am lying on the cold marble of the lobby floor, and my mother—or the thirty-year-old version of her—is holding me.
I open my eyes and quickly close them again because I’m right, she’s here, and this feels so good, being in her arms, I don’t want to lose a single second of it. She smells like her and sounds like her, and I want to live here, in this moment, forever.
But I can’t, because in an instant she’s gently shaking me, and I force my eyes open again.
“Hey, are you okay? You just fainted,” she says. She peers at me. I have a flash of her ten years from now—bent over me with a thermometer during a particularly bad bout of the flu.
The man from the desk is crouched next to us, too. “Is hot, is hot,” he says. He fans himself as if demonstrating, then me.
“Water,” my mother commands, and he scurries off. “We’ll get you something to drink, just a second.”
She studies me, and I study her back.
Her skin is smooth, young, and tan—subjected to a sun that has not done its damage yet. She looks exactly as she did in the old photos, the ones dotting the shelves of my parents’ television room. Her hair is down—long and straight, nothing like my curly mane. Her eyes are liquid green.
“You’re here,” I say.
Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re going to be all right,” she says. “I think Joseph is right—you just had some heatstroke.” She looks over her shoulder, toward the direction he disappeared in. “Do you know your name? Where you are?”
I laugh, because it’s absurd. My mother asking me for my name. It’s me, I want to say. It’s me, your daughter. But I can tell from the way she’s looking at me that she’s never seen me before in her life. Of course she hasn’t.
“Katy,” I say.
She smiles; it’s almost sympathetic. “That’s a very nice name. I’m Carol.”
I scramble to my feet, and she stands up, too. “Easy, now,” she says as Joseph appears with the water.
“Thank you.” She takes the bottle from Joseph and twists the top off before handing it to me. She looks on encouragingly. “Go on,” she says. “You’re probably dehydrated.”
I drink. I take four large gulps and then replace the cap.
She looks satisfied. “There you go. Do you feel better now?”
How can I possibly answer that? My dead mother is standing in front of me at a seaside hotel on the coast of Italy. Do I feel better? I feel insane. I feel ecstatic. I feel like something might be seriously wrong with me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her.
She laughs. “Right place, right time, I suppose,” she says. “Joseph was helping me with a package. I rent a little pensione not far up the road. It’s just a room, really.”
I feel a smile spread over my face, too, mirroring her own. It’s so simple and wonderful and obvious. A room of her own. I rented this little pensione up the street from Hotel Poseidon. We slept until noon and drank rosé on the water.
I’ve found my mother in her summer of freedom. I’ve found her in the time before me or my father. I’ve found her in the summer of Chez Black, days on the beach and long nights spent talking under the stars. Here she is. Here she actually is. Young and unencumbered and so very much alive.
I got her back, I think. Come to me.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes,” I say. And then, empowered by her, here, in front of me now, I plow forward: “I’m sorry, you’re right, it must be the heat. I just got in and I’m not used to it. Probably dehydrated from the trip yesterday, too.”
“You just arrived!” she says. “How wonderful. From where? There aren’t many Americans now, seeing as it’s still early in the season. I’ve been here for a few weeks, and I feel like I already live here. It’s a small town.”
She talks with her hands, just like always. Animated and energetic.
“It’s perfect,” I say, watching her.
She’s beautiful, I realize suddenly. Not that I didn’t always know my mother was pretty; I did. She had impeccable style, and her hair was always in place, and her features were sharp and striking. But here, now, she glows. Her face is radiant, not a stitch of makeup, the light shining through her sun-kissed skin. Her legs are strong and lean, wearing just the slightest dusting of a bronzed tan.
“California,” I tell her. “Los Angeles.”
Her eyes get wide. “Me too!” She throws her hands up and then lets them settle on top of her head. “What are the odds?”
Zero. One hundred percent.
“I’ve been in LA about five years now, and I love it. I came from Boston, can you believe it? It’s freezing there just about all the time. Who are you here with?” She glances up the stairs and squints, as if she can intuit the answer.
“I’m alone,” I tell her.
She smiles wide. “Me too.”
Joseph looks back and forth between us. “Okay, miss?”
“I think so,” I say. “Thank you so much.”
“I should get going,” my mother says. She flips her watch over.
I grope forward. She cannot leave. I cannot let her leave.
“No!” I say. “You can’t go.”
She looks curiously at me, and I recover.
“I mean, we should have lunch.”
Her face relaxes. “I’m going to Da Adolfo today. You can join if you’d like. The boat leaves at one or one-thirty.”
“Sorry, one or one-thirty?”
Carol laughs. “It’s Italy,” she says. “Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s one-thirty, sometimes it’s not at all.” She holds her hands out like a Roman scale. “You just show up and hope for the best!”
She gives Joseph a little bow. “Thank you, truly.” To me: “I’ll meet you at the dock at one, then, yes?”
I nod. “Yes. I’ll be there.”
And then she leans in close to me. I breathe in the heady smell of her. My mother. She kisses me, once on each cheek. “Ciao, Katy.”
It’s when she pulls back that I realize I’m still clutching her arm.
She places her hand over mine. “You’ll be fine,” she says. “Just water and a little prosecco, maybe. Have a coffee and lie down. All the beverages!” Another rule of Carol’s: you can never drink enough water.
She turns, waves, and walks through the doors, disappearing down the steps and into the street below.
When she’s gone, so is Joseph, and Marco comes strolling inside. I rush up to him.
“Marco,” I say. “Did you just see a woman leaving here? She had lemons on her dress. Her hair was brown and long and straight. She’s beautiful. Please tell me you just saw her.”
Marco lifts his hands. “Half the women in Positano have lemons on their dresses,” he says. “And they are all beautiful.” He winks at me.
“What time does the boat for Da Adolfo leave?” I ask him.
Just then the young woman appears behind the desk.
“This is Nika,” Marco says. “She is family. She works here with me. Nika, say hello to Ms. Silver.”
“We met earlier,” I say. “Briefly, at the desk.”
“Of course,” Marco says. “That is right. Nika, she is everywhere.”
“Hi,” I say.
Nika blushes. “Hello,” she says. “Buongiorno.”
“Ms. Silver would like to go to Da Adolfo today.”
“Oh,” I say. “No, I don’t need a reservation. Just wondering what time the boat leaves.”
“One,” Nika says.
“Or one-thirty.” Marco holds his hands up and gently shakes his head back and forth, like, Italy.
Chapter Eight
I get to the dock at 12:45. I do not want to risk anything. I most definitely do not want to risk missing her. I’m now wearing a fringe-trimmed caftan cover-up over a bathing suit. My mother and I bought it on a trip to the Westfield Century City Mall. It was supposed to be for a weekend Eric and I were taking to Palm Springs for the wedding of his colleague. We ended up getting the flu and skipping the trip, and I’ve never worn it before. Today I paired it with waterproof sandals and my trusty, wide-brimmed sun hat.
It occurred to me, while I was getting ready, that perhaps I hit my head harder than I thought. That maybe I was in some kind of fever dream—could my mother really be here? But I saw her before I fell, and the recent memory is too real to be an imagined fiction. I have no other explanation besides the impossible.
The clock sneaks to 1:00, and I look around with anticipation. A family with two young children walks up to the dock, but they’ve booked a private water taxi. As they climb inside, one of the children, a boy probably four years old, starts yelling, “Il fait chaud! J’ai faim!”
One o’clock gives way to 1:15, and I take a seat on the ledge of the dock. The sun overhead is high and beats down hard. I take some sunscreen out of my bag and reapply it on my arms, shoulders, the back of my neck.
One-thirty. I stand. An expectant bubbling in my stomach settles into a knot. No boat, no Mom. I shake my head. Stupid, foolish, that I thought she’d show. Maybe, even, that I thought she was here at all. How could I have let her out of my sight?
And then in the distance I see a boat bobbling on the horizon. A red wooden fish is fixed to the top with Da Adolfo printed on it.
“Da Adolfo!”
In a split second, two things happen. The first is that someone grabs my arm, hard. The second is that my sandal gets caught in the wooden slats of the dock. I wobble, swinging my arms to steady myself, but it’s no use. I’m right at the ledge, and before I can blink, I fall back-first into the water. It’s not until I hit the surface that I realize whoever grabbed my arm has toppled in with me.
I come up, splashing and gasping, to see my mother, next to me, bobbing to the surface.
“Katy!” she says. She flicks some hair out of her face. “We have to stop meeting like this!”
She smiles at me, and I burst out laughing. I tread water, overcome with a relief so strong it’s comical. I can’t remember the last time I laughed, and I let it take me over now. I float up onto my back, still hiccuping in hysterics.
“Out of water!” the driver calls. The boat hasn’t yet reached us but is beginning to slow down. I see that it’s small, a tiny speedboat, and I can make out the driver now that he’s close enough. He looks young, early twenties, maybe.
“Oy, Carol!”
A man on the dock waves, swings his legs over the edge of the dock, and reaches down his hand. Carol gestures for me to be helped first. I swim over and reach out my hand to meet his, and he grabs on. It feels like my arm is being pulled out of its socket, but once I’ve gotten a little height, I plant my free hand on the dock, and with every ounce of strength in my five-foot-four body, I hoist myself onto the dock. I lie there, breathing hard.
My mother’s rescue is much simpler. She uses one foot on the side of the dock for leverage and then swings her body over. It definitely helps that she’s taller.
We stand back on solid ground, looking at each other, the remnants of laughter still bubbling through our bodies.
Our rescue hero steps forward, and my mother makes introductions.
“Katy, this is Remo. Remo, Katy,” she says, still out of breath.
“Hi, Remo,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”
Remo slips his arm around my mother. My stomach tightens.
“Ciao, Katy.”
My mother wasn’t one to talk about the details of her past, romantically speaking. She was a woman with well-drawn lines around her life. She lived in color about so much—her sense of beauty, design, her love of community—but her romantic past always seemed off-limits. She’d say things to me like “That was another lifetime, Katy. Who could remember?”
