18.
Jacopo almost hadn’t expected anybody to answer, and the sound of a voice saying, “Hello?” in English startled him so much that he nearly dropped the phone. White noise was buzzing in his ears, and he licked his lips, trying to speak.
“Hello?” the person on the other end repeated.
It was a woman, but he wasn’t even sure it was her, and panic flooded Jacopo’s chest as he wondered if he had the wrong number, after all, if there was no way to contact her and no way to make things right. His tongue felt numb, and he forced himself to ask, “Lucia?”
“Oh, sei italiano? Pronto, chi è?”
It was her. Now that she was speaking their native language, he recognized her voice, from hours of discussing literature in cafes, wreathed in cigarette smoke, from late nights spent studying in the library, from drunken confessions in the back corners of bars.
“It’s me,” he said, hearing his voice crack. “Jacopo Brunetti.” Stupidly, he felt the need to add his last name, as if maybe he wasn’t as memorable to her as she had been to him.
“Minchia! Jacopo? I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you. I wasn’t even sure if you had the same email.”
“I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “I was too afraid to call you until now.”
“What changed?” There was a silence, achingly awkward, and then she spoke again, before he could answer. “No, no. You’ll have to tell me in person. We’re both so bad at talking.”
“I know. I–I want to see you. And I want to meet her.”
“Where are you? Still in Carmosino?”
Jacopo shook his head. “No. Are you still in Napoli?”
Lucia laughed. “I haven’t been there in years. We live in Dublin, the two of us and–my wife.”
“Wife?” Jacopo exclaimed. He felt dizzy, and a little bit unreal, like he was watching himself from far away.
“Well, yes.” He could practically hear her shrug down the phone, even if he couldn’t see it. “You weren’t the only one trying to prove something that night, it turns out. Come see us, Jacopo. Noemi would love to meet you.”
*
Lucia’s flat had three flags waving outside: Irish, Italian, and rainbow, and the door was painted a bright magenta. There was a tinny, staticky taste in Jacopo’s mouth as he rang the bell, his fingertips tingling. He stared at the shiny wood and time stretched out and a cascade of panicked thoughts tumbled through his head–that he had the wrong house, that Lucia would shut the door on him, that this was all a joke and he’d be stranded in Dublin with a suitcase full of old paperbacks and a jacket that was already too thin for the evening air–and then the lock made a loud clunk and the door swung open and there she was, different but also the same, older, her face bearing unfamiliar lines.
“Jacopo,” Lucia said, with an uncertain smile. “You’re just as skinny as ever.”
“And you’re–” He took her in, her dark lipstick and the expensive cut of her clothes, the way her hair glowed silver-blond in the fading afternoon light–a huge upgrade from bleaching it over the bathroom sink. Beautiful? Jacopo couldn’t say that; he wasn’t attracted to her, and he didn’t want to be weird, considering their shared history. But she was beautiful, really. She was a grown woman, far more adult than he felt, and a strange sort of pride glowed in Jacopo’s chest, seeing who she was now. There had been so many facets to their friendship besides that one drunken, embarrassing night, and it was a relief to see that it had left no stain on her. Lucia was Lucia, after all this time.
“–you’re still much cooler than me,” he concluded.
She laughed. A cat threaded around her ankles, giving Jacopo a suspicious look on its way past him, out into the front garden. “You’d better come in. Noemi’s just gotten back from school. I told her you would be here.”
Noemi. He hadn’t known her name until Lucia had said it earlier, on the phone, and it had been all Jacopo could think during the short flight from London, looking down at the dark, glassy surface of the sea, the patchwork fields and jagged coastline of Ireland, so intensely green that it had reminded him for a moment of the trees in Nate’s home town, the riotous brightness of the leaves and the nearly iridescent moss. His daughter’s name was Noemi, and she was a real person, not just an idea to torture himself with at night, another thing to feel guilty about, but a whole life lived without him. Jacopo’s mouth was dry as Lucia led him into the flat, and he barely registered the room around him, because there was a staircase and someone was thundering down it, making the kind of unself-aware noise that only a lanky teenager can, and then she was standing there at the bottom of the stairs with her hands on her hips, looking at him, the assessing expression on her face a mirror of Gracie’s, or his mother’s, or his own.
“This is awkward,” Noemi said, in Irish-accented English, her voice high and clear and wonderfully foreign to Jacopo’s ears. “Am I allowed to say that this is awkward?” She had Lucia’s large, thick-lashed eyes, and she was all elbows and nose, as Jacopo had been at that age.
“Noemi.” Lucia let out an exasperated sigh. “Say hello.”
“Hi.” Noemi held out a hand. “Do you speak English? I speak Italian. And I’m learning Irish in school, but it’s hard.”
Jacopo shut his mouth, aware that it had been hanging open. He cleared his throat. “I speak English. It’s nice to meet you, Noemi.”
And they shook hands, which was both more and less than he had hoped for. It was awkward, as Noemi had said, painfully awkward, and it didn’t get much better when Lucia invited him into the kitchen for a glass of wine, Noemi flouncing along behind.
“Don’t you have schoolwork?” Lucia said over her shoulder.
“Really, Mamma? On the night that my long-lost father appears?”
In the kitchen, Lucia leaned against the counter, studying them both with the same focus she’d once devoted to picking apart the lines of a poem. “Why don’t you get to know each other?”
Jacopo took a long drink of wine, not really sure what to say. “Um,” he said finally. “Do you like to read?”
The question unleashed a flood of information; it was as if Noemi had been waiting all her life for someone to ask her about her reading preferences. She loved fantasy, and the classics, and Oscar Wilde, Dublin’s own native son. There was a whole list of fictional characters who she was obsessed with and wanted to fall in love with each other. Jacopo believed it was called shipping, though he couldn’t have guessed why. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she talked, cataloging her mannerisms, trying to understand this bright, confident, gawky girl who dressed like she was straight out of the 1990’s and used all sorts of slang that Jacopo didn’t know, who was eager to show him the TikToks she’d made of her cat and the pictures on her phone of almost supernaturally pretty Korean boys from her favorite bands. She seemed incredibly foreign but also like someone he’d known forever. Every so often one of her gestures would remind him of Gracie or Mirabella, or her expression would mirror Lucia’s, and when Lucia’s wife, Caitlin, came home, Jacopo figured out where Noemi had gotten her outgoing nature, as well: not from either of her biological parents but from the woman she called Mum.
“Jacopo!” Of the three of them, Caitlin was the first to give him a hug, her jacket covered in raindrops and a cloth bag, filled with clinking bottles, slung over her shoulder. “Oh, you’re very welcome! Lucia has told me so much about you. I’m sorry I’m late, I had to stop by the shop for Italian wine. Thought it was appropriate.” She was the distillation of what Jacopo would imagine an Irish person would be, strawberry blonde and pale as milk, her cheeks covered in freckles, and she had an infectious smile. The house seemed brighter with her in it, more complete. Jacopo watched in equal parts awe and embarrassment as she swept Lucia into a hello kiss and ruffled Noemi’s hair, asking her about her homework. He wondered what it must feel like to be so at ease. To fit so perfectly somewhere.
Before he had too much time to sink into self-pity, skulking like an interloper on the edge of their lives, it was time for dinner, a simple affair of cheese toasties and chips that Caitlin threw together, apologizing that they hadn’t been prepared for guests. Another bottle of wine washed away some of the awkwardness, and soon Noemi was showing Jacopo her favorite music videos, and Lucia was telling stories from university.
“Jacopo pulled our whole study group through second-year Latin,” she said, smiling at him from across the table. “He’s always been good at languages. He always got better marks than me, and I don’t think he really had to try in most of his classes. Well, except–do you remember that visiting professor of American Literature, Jacopo? The cute one with the blue eyes?” She nudged Caitlin, telling her, “Oh my God, Jacopo agonized over that class. He would spend hours poring over his essays, trying to make them perfect. We were drunk one night and Jacopo got this grand idea that he was going to call this man’s office and leave an anonymous confession of love, but he didn’t have a cell phone, so we spent hours wandering around Napoli looking for a pay phone–”
“A pay phone?” Noemi said. “That’s absolutely tragic.”
“Lucia. Please.” Jacopo ran a hand across his face.
She gave him a playful look over the rim of her glass, and for a moment it was like they were back in that rickety little student apartment with the yellowing paint and the overflowing ashtrays out on the balcony.
“How did you meet?” Jacopo asked, desperate to change the subject. “And when did you meet?”
“Oh, it was about twelve years ago,” Caitlin said. “I was at a hen do in Rome, and she was working the bar, and when she came out from behind it, I noticed what great legs she has.” She smiled at her wife with easy affection. “And so I invited her to join us after she got off work.” She clinked her glass against Lucia’s. “It was a little complicated at first, what with living in different countries, and me not sure how I felt about being a mum at such a young age, but we got through it, didn’t we, Lu?”
Noemi rolled her eyes, obviously having heard this story a thousand times. “Mamma says you live on a small island,” she said to Jacopo. “And that your family has to take care of a castle in case the duke comes back. It all sounds very romantic, really.”
“It’s not that romantic,” he told her, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “There are a lot of goats, and not much else.” He tried not to think of Nate, but there was a little flicker in his chest, like a butterfly just learning to open its wings. He looked across the table at Lucia and Caitlin, how their shoulders touched and the lines of their bodies tended toward each other, as if each one was in the other’s gravitational pull.
“Well, I want to see it.” Noemi tossed her hair. “I hardly remember Italy. And I’m already a bit notorious at school for having two mums, so having a gay dad and a family who guards a castle will really give me, like, a special cachet, I think.” Noemi toasted with her glass of soda as Caitlin suppressed a giggle and Lucia smiled fondly across the table.
The night wound on, and although Jacopo couldn’t remember everything they talked about, he remembered how easy it was, how he didn’t have to worry about the words getting caught in his throat on the way out of his mouth, or formulate a dozen sentences in his head before managing to spit out the right one. His body felt loose thanks to the wine, and when he finally stood to excuse himself and go outside, the spike of pain that he’d come to expect in his lower back didn’t happen. It was as if the fibers in his muscles had changed from wire, to silk, all the tension washed away.
Out in the garden, Jacopo looked up at the moon, wreathed in mist. The air was crisp and mossy-smelling and colder than he was used to, and underneath it all was a hint of salt from the sea. He could hear the clank of pots and pans from Caitlin and Lucia’s kitchen, the sound of the TV in a neighboring flat. He had just lit a cigarette when the door opened and Lucia came out onto the front stoop, pulling on a jacket.
“You’re still smoking those, huh?” she said in Italian.
“I know, it’s terrible.” He looked at the lit end of the cigarette, the bright orange flare of the coal. “I might quit.” As he said it, it seemed almost possible.
“Well, give me one, for old time’s sake.” She reached out a hand.
They smoked without talking for a while, looking out onto the quiet residential street. Jacopo had missed this easy silence, almost more than he’d missed the rest of their friendship. The cat from before, a little calico that Noemi had named after a character in something called a K-drama, came in through a gap in the fence and rubbed against Lucia’s leg, then wandered back off into the dark.
“It’s good that you came,” Lucia said at last, exhaling smoke into the sky.
“I should have come sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t. I was–so afraid that she’d hate me.”
“She doesn’t, obviously.” Lucia put a hand on his arm. “It’s a little strange for her, but I think she’ll adjust.”
“I felt guilty for not being there. Not that–that I know anything about being a father, but I felt awful that she didn’t have one.” He swallowed. “But I see now that she has two wonderful parents already. And I’m so glad.”
Lucia’s face lit up, but there was sadness behind her smile. “Thank you. And please don’t feel guilty. I should have told you sooner, and in person. I–well, you know how I am. I panicked, and I acted on impulse. She had just started to get interested in boys, and Cait and I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought it would be good for her to have a father figure in her life.”
“I don’t know how much I can tell her about boys,” Jacopo said ruefully. “Or how much I should.”
“Really,” Lucia insisted. “I should have told you as soon as I knew. But–you had to be with your family. And I was worried you’d try to–you know. Fix it. Say we should get married. And then we’d have been miserable.”
“I would have,” he sighed. “We would have.” Jacopo tried never to think of that night, the phone call that his father might be dying, the father he’d always felt so ambivalent about. How afraid he’d been that he wouldn’t make it home in time to say goodbye. How grief and panic and alcohol had blurred the lines of their friendship and how comfort had crossed the line into physical. And he felt a pang of sadness for the two of them at nineteen, how young and sad and jumbled up inside they had both been. He still was, he guessed, though Lucia seemed to have moved beyond it. “Lucia, it shouldn’t have happened. If I’d just been honest with myself–”
“Don’t. It was just one drunken night between friends. We don’t have to dwell on it. And if it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have that weird, wonderful, brilliant girl in there.” Lucia touched her cigarette to his in a makeshift toast. Her eyes were glimmering in the moonlight, and Jacopo felt answering tears prickle at his own. He looked away. The stars blurred and grew haloes before his eyes, an Impressionist painting.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I’m so glad I met her, Lucia.”
“This isn’t it, Jacopo. You should be in her life.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Not sure how to reconcile how hopeful he felt, and how jagged inside, and how unmoored.
“How long can you stay?” Lucia asked.
“I don’t know.” Part of him wanted to stay forever. Maybe he could make a life for himself here in Dublin, speak English with a lilting accent and wear long coats and learn to like beer, and the rain. It was a tempting fantasy, but it wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right without Nate. He sighed.
“You have someone waiting for you at home,” Lucia said.
“No, I–”
“Oh. I’m sorry, I just assumed. You’re different. I thought maybe you had met someone.”
“Lucia.” Jacopo looked at her, and it all came tumbling out. Meeting Nate, falling in love. The fight on the stairs. Telling the truth. Losing him. Jacopo’s cigarette burned down to the filter as he talked. His heart was thudding, somewhere far away in his chest, but he felt calmer than he’d ever been. His cheeks were wet. He couldn’t remember beginning to cry. Lucia listened, her eyes wide and luminous, her expression giving nothing away.
“I ruined it,” Jacopo said. He tasted salt, and he wiped a hand across his face. “I ran away, and now he never wants to see me again.”
“Hm.” Lucia crossed her arms. “Did he actually say that?”
“Well, no, but–”
“Maybe you should call him, Jacopo. Give it a try. Don’t wait eleven years, like I did.”
*
He didn’t call him the next day, or the day after that. It was Jacopo’s thirty-sixth birthday, and he spent it wandering aimlessly around Dublin’s downtown, through the Temple Bar district where live music spilled out of the pubs at all hours of the day, haunting traditional songs about lost love blending with covers of Tom Petty and Aerosmith. A young woman with pink hair sang an acoustic version of I Will Always Love You that made him weep into his Guinness, not even drunk yet but hopelessly sentimental at two in the afternoon, not caring who saw. Nate was at the forefront of his mind, shining there like a star. Jacopo thought about how much he would love the vibrancy of the street, the collective feeling of celebration. And how much he would probably complain about the music.
Jacopo stared down at the call log on his phone. Three missed calls from Nate on the day he had left, and nothing after that. I can be your family, he had said, right before Jacopo had ruined everything. Lucia was right; he had to talk to him. And he’d already made the most terrifying phone call of his life, a few days ago. He could manage another, couldn’t he?
Later. When he hadn’t been drinking. When his emotions didn’t feel like syrup in his throat, threatening to choke him.
His phone stayed in his pocket as he walked through the grounds of Trinity College, keeping company with his last cigarette, rattling around in its box. Jacopo found a little slice of heaven in the long room at the library, the great arched ceiling and the rows of books that stretched off into infinity. The order of it, the alphabetical labels on the stacks, were an injection of pure serotonin into his brain. If he ever got a chance to continue reorganizing the library in Carmosino, this would be his model.
It was beginning to rain as he walked to the Oscar Wilde statue, a misty rain that saturated his hair and covered his shoulders with tiny beads of moisture. Jacopo knew that Noemi liked this author, and he knew also that Wilde had been gay, in a time when it was even harder than it was now. He felt an obligation to go see the representation of this man, felt it was significant somehow.
Only a few tourists had braved the weather and were taking selfies with Oscar Wilde, who lounged on a rock with one half of his face smiling, the other twisted in sadness. Jacopo sat there for a while, thinking about the tragedy of hidden lives and the freedom to be oneself and how, even now on the first day of his thirty-sixth year, he didn’t really know who he was, or how to be himself. Or maybe he did. But to actually do it would be like falling. Impossible to stop, or to take back.
His phone was buzzing, and he felt a jolt of surprise when he saw Gracie’s name on the screen. She never called him. Jacopo’s pulse was fluttering in his throat as he answered. Had something happened back on the island? Had something happened to Nate, or–
“Jacopo,” Gracie said in a rush. “I’m so glad you picked up. Where are you? Mirabella’s having her baby, and she wants her big brother here.”
*
There weren’t any flights available until early the next morning, so he ate a last dinner with Lucia, Caitlin, and Noemi, apologizing for having to rush off. Noemi wasn’t terribly impressed by the prospect of a new cousin, as she already had plenty on her Mum’s side, but she was excited to hear more about Jacopo’s family, and full of uncomplicated optimism about meeting them. Jacopo promised that she would, someday, though he had no idea what that would look like. He knew Gracie would absolutely love her, if nothing else.
“Wait,” Noemi said as he stood in the entryway of the flat, suitcase in hand, waiting for the taxi that would take him to his hotel. “Mamma said it’s your birthday. I have something for you.”
She thundered up the stairs, then galloped back down them with something in her hand. A battered green textbook, its pages curling, doodles and scuff marks on the cover. “It’s my Irish grammar book from primary school.” Noemi looked down at her feet, suddenly shy. “I know you like languages. And–and I have to practice it, for school, so I thought maybe–maybe you’d like to learn it too? And maybe we could write to each other? And–oh–I’m sorry, don’t cry, please–”
It was too late, the tears were pouring out of him, and it was a relief; he was in freefall and all the things holding him down had slipped away, and Jacopo felt the purest sense of exhilaration as Noemi hugged him for the first time, awkwardly, her long, skinny arms not quite sure where to go or what to do.
“Don’t cry, Dad.”
But that just made him cry harder.