One Italian Summer, page 8
She smiles; it makes me laugh.
We stand up there, side by side, not speaking.
“Carol,” I say. The word sounds both foreign and familiar. “I have to tell you something.”
She turns to me, and I see the sweat running down her face. Her green eyes flashing in the sun.
I want to tell her that she’s my mother. I want to ask her to dig deep, to see if she can access some other time and place. I want to know if she can peer into the future and see her child swaddled against her chest. I want to know if she can see the two of us in contrasting floral dresses running down the beach in Malibu, me at her heels. I want to know if she can see herself, in our kitchen, plucking my fingers out of the cookie dough. Does she know? How could she possibly not remember?
But of course she doesn’t. Here she’s just a woman out for a summer adventure, and I’m the other American tourist with whom she happened to cross paths.
“Yes?” she says, still looking at me.
“I’m not sure I liked Da Adolfo,” I spit out.
Carol laughs. She squints her face together and shakes her head. “Then I have to tell you something,” she says. “I’m not sure I do, either. But you can’t really beat the scenery.”
“The food was not so amazing,” I say.
“The standards are high here,” she says. “Especially if you’re staying at Poseidon.”
“Where do you go back home?” I ask her. “I mean, in LA. Where do you like to eat?”
She smiles. “I cook a lot,” she says. “I have this very cool apartment on the Eastside. You’ll come over, when we’re back. I make a lot of pasta and fish. The secret to LA is that downtown has the best restaurants. They’re few and far between, but they’re sensational. And Chinatown has my heart.”
I flash on my mother, dim sum splayed out before her, clapping happily as we all sing “Happy Birthday” to her. We haven’t been in ages. Why did we stop going?
“I’ll also never pass up In-N-Out.” She clears her throat. “Shall we?”
We head down the stairs together, side by side. When we get to the landing, I stop and gaze back down over the sea. It’s so much hotter than when we began, and my bottle of water is nearly empty.
“I’ll see you at four?” my mother asks.
“Do you want to have breakfast at my hotel?” If she comes back with me, what will happen?
“I’d love to,” she says. “But I have this project I’m working on.” She looks sheepish when she says it, the first time I’ve seen the emotion on her since I encountered her here.
“What kind?” I ask.
I’m reminded of sitting on floors of showrooms as a young child with my mother. Watching her pick out rugs and fabrics for drapes and furniture for her clients. I’m reminded of playing on the floor of my father’s flagship store, watching my mother arrange dresses on mannequins. I loved seeing her in her element.
“It’s such a long shot,” she says. She places her hands on her hips and shrugs.
“Tell me.”
“I’m working on a design for the Sirenuse.” She puts a hand on her face. “Remo told me they’re remodeling the hotel, and I decided on a whim to submit a proposal. They have all these really famous people from Rome and Milan presenting. I don’t know, it’s silly…”
The Sirenuse is the nicest hotel in Positano, and it has the price tag to match. When my mother and I thought about going, it was seventeen hundred dollars a night.
She told me it was gorgeous, though.
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“We just met! But no one does, really. Design is kind of a passion project of mine. I was an art history major, and I work in a gallery now, but it is—it’s not really what I want to do. I want to design interiors. This hotel would be a dream.”
She doesn’t know yet, I think. She doesn’t know that she’ll do it.
I think about walking into my mother’s office at home in Brentwood. The floor was soft white carpeting, and there were all sorts of movie posters framed on the walls—like she wasn’t a decorator but instead a producer. They were films whose sets she loved. “Your home is your set” is a thing she’d often tell clients. I knew what she meant. That the homes in movies have to work—they have to show the audience who these characters are; they have to be revealing. She wanted people’s homes to be reflections of them. She wanted you to be able to walk inside and say “No one else but Carol Silver could possibly live here.”
“I’ve heard it’s beautiful,” I say.
She nods. “I stayed there when I came with my parents so many years ago. I never forgot that place.”
“I can see why,” I say.
She smiles. “So anyway, I should get going. But thank you for the major exercise. It completely cleared my head. I need to remember that!” She turns and walks off before I can stop her. “See you later!” she calls over her shoulder.
I watch her disappear down the steeply descending staircase. I am watching her becoming, I think. Here she is, at the start.
Chapter Twelve
I’m a sweaty mess and nearing dehydration when I get back to the lobby. Marco is gone, but Carlo is at the desk.
“Hot morning,” he says. “Water?”
“Yes, please.”
He hands me a bottle, and I down it in one long swig.
“Thanks, Carlo.”
I turn to head upstairs, and he calls after me.
“You have a message, Ms. Silver,” he says.
My first thought is my mother. Not Carol, not the woman I just left on the stairs, but my mom. That she’s at home, arranging flowers and sending me a telegraph all the way to Italy: How is the shopping? Buy me something for the house, I miss you. Xx.
But of course there are no such things as telegraphs anymore, to start.
The second is Eric.
“Oh?” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “A gentleman named Adam who is a guest here wanted to know if you were free for lunch.”
I laugh. It comes out like a snort. Carlo notices.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll track him down.”
I take the stairs up to the restaurant, where breakfast is in full swing. Nika is talking to a well-dressed couple in their sixties. They look French, impeccably matched up in white linen.
“Look who it is!”
Adam is bright and cheerful this morning, in striped swim trunks and a gray T-shirt. His hands are empty, and I glance over to see his room key perched on his usual table.
“Hey,” I say. “I just got your message.”
He looks me over. “You look worked.”
“I am,” I say. “I did the stairs this morning.”
I feel my body, alive. The blood pumping through my veins, the sweat on the back of my neck, the heat from the exertion and sun. It feels good.
“Did you enjoy it?”
I smile, thinking of Carol, her head back, the ocean below us. “Yes. You can join me tomorrow if you think you can keep up.”
A man in a Hawaiian shirt balancing a plate of eggs and sausage walks by, speaking fast Italian. “But now I’m going to eat all the watermelon on this table.”
Adam cocks his head to the buffet. “Want company?”
He’s squinting at me, his hand over his forehead like a visor, blocking the sun. “Sure,” I say.
I ignore his recommendations. Today, I go for everything, the whole spread, like I’m on a cruise ship or in Vegas. I don’t hold back. Two plates. One with fruit, pastries, and a yogurt parfait. The other with scrambled eggs, potatoes, and bacon. I sit them both down across from Adam, who is back at the table sipping coffee.
He looks up at me, impressed.
“Now we’re talking,” he says.
I plunk into the seat, down another glass of water, and then start on the fruit. I eat with a voraciousness I can’t remember. The watermelon is sweet, the eggs are creamy, and the bacon is crisp and salty.
When my mother got sick, food immediately tasted like cardboard. One day I was coveting the salt and sweet of pad Thai from Luv2eat on Sunset, the next I was force-feeding myself a piece of toast after my stomach had gone unaccompanied for eight hours. Food had lost all sensation, all meaning.
Soon after, my mother lost her appetite as well. Before that she tried—she still cooked for us, putting on a brave face of enjoying roasted salmon and Broccolini or her famous linguine and clams. But treatment made her nauseous, and eating started to become painful. Hospitals, needles, and the pulse of medication do not pair well with an appetite. She got thinner and thinner, and so did I.
“You need to take care of yourself,” Eric would warn me. He’d pick up pasta or pizza or a Caesar salad—things I liked, things I found palatable—and I’d nibble at them. I stopped opening our refrigerator. Pretzels became a meal.
The thing I never told Eric, because I didn’t know how to say it without inviting in another conversation, because I didn’t know how to tell anyone, is that I had no interest in doing anything that would sustain my life anymore. Food, water, sleep, and exercise are meant for those who are trying to stay alive, who want to thrive. I didn’t.
“Coffee?” Adam asks me. I look across at him. His gray T-shirt is hiked up on his bicep, revealing a tan slice of muscle. How is it possible that just two weeks ago I was in a hospital somewhere, and now I’m sitting across from this man on the Amalfi Coast?
I nod.
He pours for me. The coffee is hot and thick and biting. Nearly deadly. Delicious.
“So what’s on your agenda today?” Adam asks me.
I think about the folded papers upstairs. “I want to explore,” I say. “My— A friend is taking me to this restaurant in the hills at four.”
Adam squints at me. “I thought you were here alone.”
“I am,” I say. “She’s— I met her yesterday. She’s also from California, so we got to talking.”
“That’s great,” he says. “It’s wonderful making friends in foreign places. Am I invited?”
I swallow a mouthful of coffee. “No.”
He cocks his head at me. “Okay then.”
“But I was thinking about exploring a little bit today. Would you want to show me around?” I gesture to the life below our terrace. “Or do you need to spend it trying to con Marco out of his family’s pride and joy?”
He sits back in his chair, threading his hands behind his neck. “Tough, Silver.”
“No one has ever called me that.”
“What, Silver?”
I shake my head. “No, tough.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” he says, but he’s grinning at me. “So you want me to play tour guide for you?”
I lift my shoulders in deference. “You said you’ve been coming here forever.”
Adam looks out over the ocean. I see a hint of something in his gaze I can’t quite place, a passing thought that’s gone before I can identify what it is. “Well then, let’s go.”
Chapter Thirteen
After two plates of breakfast, seconds of bacon, and a cinnamon roll to go, I head upstairs to shower and change. The French doors to my room are closed, beating out the morning sun. I take a cold shower—the water feels delicious on my hot skin—and get dressed.
I meet Adam in the lobby twenty minutes later. He’s still in his gray T-shirt and board shorts, but now he’s wearing tennis shoes and a baseball hat that says Kauai on it.
I point up. “Have you been?”
It takes him a second to understand what I’m talking about. “Oh. Kauai. Yes, of course. It would be weird to wear the hat if not, no?”
“I guess.” I don’t mention that Eric has a hat that says Mozambique on it. We’ve never even been to the African continent.
His eyes graze down my body. “You look nice,” he says.
I’ve changed into denim shorts and a white lace top with a blue bikini underneath. Sun hat firmly on. My belly is full, and my legs feel pleasantly wobbly from the hike this morning.
“Thanks.”
“Are you going to be able to walk in those shoes?”
He points down at my feet that are clad in pink plastic Birkenstocks. Besides my Nikes, they’re the most comfortable shoes I brought on this trip.
“They’re Birkenstocks!” I say.
“And that means…?”
“It means let’s go.”
I have my straw cross-body around me, and I tuck a bottle of water from the front desk into it. I haven’t stopped drinking since I got done with the walk. I want more and more and more water.
Adam holds his arm out for me to pass through the door, and I do. Outside, the day is bright and friendly. Tourists and locals alike are in the streets, finishing breakfast at outdoor restaurants and opening shops to begin the day’s work.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Relax,” he says. “We’re going to walk. The best way to explore Positano is to simply wander.”
We start walking down Viale Pasitea. I look at the red and orange buildings we pass. Shops and restaurants and little grocery stands. There are baskets of fresh produce, and mannequins wearing hand-painted dresses. I spot a blue one with silver stitching. There are racks of sewn dolls for children and wraps in every shade of blue the ocean and sky are capable of offering.
“It’s all so beautiful,” I say.
“The stuff to buy or the views?”
“Both. But the views really are incredible. Up high this morning… you could see the whole sweep. It was spectacular. I think Positano might be the most stunning place I’ve ever seen.”
Adam nods. “You know where the real best view of Positano is?”
“I don’t know how you could beat the view this morning,” I say. “Today was pretty great.”
“Be that as it may,” he says, “the best view in Positano is actually from the ocean.”
A bicyclist on the sidewalk almost knocks into me. I jump back out of the way, and a car honks. All the vehicles are tiny, like we’re in a movie.
I’m reminded, when he says this, of something Eric used to say when we lived in New York. How the best view in New York was in Jersey City. The best view in a place is actually a view of the place.
Five years ago, my mother and I went for the weekend to the Bacara in Santa Barbara. It’s a hotel on the coast, with grounds that have great views of the ocean. We got massages and then sat out in big Adirondack chairs and watched the sunset.
“Look at all the colors,” she said. “It’s like the sky is on fire. Burning up the whole day. Nature has so much power if we just pay attention.”
“What’s your favorite place you’ve ever been?” I ask Adam.
“Wherever I’m going next,” he says.
We keep walking until we arrive at a bougainvillea-covered walkway. I remember it from yesterday. It leads down to the church square.
Couples stroll hand in hand as shops continue to open their doors. A few paces down, a young artist has set up a stand. Beside him are colorful landscapes of Positano and Rome and, for some reason, quite a few portraits of cats. Finally, we reach the square with the Church of Santa Maria Assunta standing in the middle, the golden dome high overhead.
“This is one of my favorite places,” Adam says, surveying the structure. He tilts his head back and rests it in the palms of his hands.
“It’s so grand.”
“It was built when the Byzantine icon of the Virgin Mary was brought here on a ship. There’s this legend that the icon was on a boat that was headed east when the ship stopped moving. The sailors heard a voice saying, ‘Put me down! Put me down!’ The captain thought it was a miracle that meant the Virgin statue wanted to be brought to Positano. As he changed course so he was headed for the shore, the boat began to sail again. It was a miracle. Incidentally, ‘posa posa’ means ‘put me down’ or ‘stop there,’ and that’s how the town gets its name.”
“Positano,” I say.
“Indeed. Come here.”
Adam motions me over to his side. He points upward, to the colorful dome. It looks gold from anywhere else, but here I see it’s actually a pattern of yellow, green, and blue tiles.
“So the whole town was made around this one church, this one story,” I say, still gazing at the sun-covered dome.
“Isn’t that how all things begin?” Adam asks me.
I drop my head down, and see that he’s staring at me. I let my eyes, protected now by sunglasses, gaze back at him. I notice the way his shirt clings to him. It outlines his torso, his sweat creating a kind of pointillism on the cotton canvas.
I was so young when I met Eric. I’d never even really had a boyfriend before him, just a series of dates and unanswered texts. He was exactly what I’d been looking for, which is to say, he was the answer to what I think was the broadest, most general question I could have been asking: Who?
At the time, I must have felt that this was right, that he was The One, but looking back, it feels arbitrary, like I’m not sure what criteria I was using to evaluate him, the relationship, any of it. I wanted someone to think I belonged to them, the way I belonged to my family. That’s how I figured I’d know. But now—
What if I got it all wrong? What if the point of marriage wasn’t to belong but instead to feel transported? What if we never got to where we were trying to go because we were so comfortable where we were?
“Where to next?” I ask him. I want to keep moving.
Adam cocks his head to the left. “This way.”
He takes me to the streets in and out of Marina Grande, the area by the water that is filled with shops. Gelaterias are next to small boutiques and stores that sell any number of overpriced Positano souvenirs. Everything seems to be printed with lemons. An irritable woman in her sixties sells all sorts of Positano merchandise. There are small glass bottles filled with sand, ceramic plates printed with tomatoes and vines, handmade gold sandals, and aprons printed with lemon trees. I pick up an apron, fingering it. It’s lovely, bright, and fresh.
Instantly, I’m transported to my parents’ kitchen, chopping onions next to my mother, who is dumping greens from the Brentwood Farmers Market into a wooden bowl. She’s wearing a navy-and-white-striped button-down and jeans, cuffed at the ankles. And over it, her lemon apron.
