Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 10

Ava

The stone that holds up the massive archway that hovers above the cobblestone street leading up into Urbino’s city center reflects a pinkish hue in the late afternoon sun. The walls, the turrets—every piece of the town seems to have shifted from the gold in my memory of last night to a soft blush. I want to bottle the color. Paint my nails with it so that every time I see my hands I remember what they’ve touched.

I pull my hand off the stone and rub my thumb to my fingertips, imprinting the sensation of something so old and so solid. There’s no time to dawdle here. I must stay focused on the task at hand. There’s five hundred years of Renaissance art history to catch up on in these walls. No way in hell am I going to let Professor Assholio catch me unprepared again.

After pleading my case to Dean Russo, it has become painfully clear that there’s no escape from this assignment. If I want the international studies credits needed for matriculation, I’ve got to assist in a class that covers some aspect of a foreign culture. There was a moment in the conversation when I nearly pulled the mom card and explained that this class would bring up too much grief, but I bit my tongue and kept the panicky feeling in my chest locked down. It’s not like I can avoid art forever. Especially while I’m in Italy. Besides, Leo assured me this was the only possibility.

So I’ve laid out my plan into three simple, foolproof phases:

Phase 1: Get to know the city. The paper map in my left hand was procured after a few terrible attempts at Italian conversation at the visitor’s booth a few hundred yards behind me, where they also sell bus tickets. I believe I have a one-way ticket to Pesaro now.

Phase 2: Capture images. Leo has lent me a camera that looks like it belongs in a museum. Extra bonus is that it belongs to James and I have an inkling that he wouldn’t like me using it. So I’m going to use the hell out of it. I will catalogue every piece of art known to Urbino. And basically dive head first into whatever said art might stir up inside me.

Phase 3: Gather information. There’s nothing James knows that Google doesn’t. Please see the aforementioned paper map where I have circled an internet café for art research—and maybe some light Ethan stalking.

I bump into a woman as I stare at the map and she murmurs, “Americana,” like it’s a contagious disease. I dump the map into my purse.

Point taken.

I step beneath the archway, the momentary shade doing nothing to quell the swelter, and look up along Borgo Mercatale, the infamous entrance street of Urbino. As much as I love my pumps, this climb would cramp the finest of calves. And the uneven stones would eat my heels for breakfast. The road is narrow and I’m reminded why the Italians drive such tiny cars. The street is lined with four-story stucco buildings, each painted a varying, soothing, earthy shade with a pop of seashell pink sneaking in every now and again. There is no space between them, they are stacked together like the book spines on the shelves in my apartment, so tightly packed that the shift in color is the only sign that one has ended and another begun.

I begin the steep trek upward, noting the group of older gentlemen in hats smoking cigars outside of a tiny osteria. Kate Middleton would be proud of their male millinery. One looks my way and smiles—blows out two perfect rings—the scent of them reminding me of my father.

I wave the last puffs of smoke away and continue the climb. My quads are already burning. Oooooh. Wine in a window. I read the sign—or try to. Enoteca. This is not part of the plan, but there’s no harm in picking up a bottle now for Nina since it says they’ll close soon for dinner. And I’m sure there’s art to be catalogued in here.

I dip my head and step under the low entrance, and I’m immediately greeted by the glorious combo of cool air and dim lighting. There are bottles everywhere—in the wall-to-wall shelving, on the floor at the base of the shelves, along the bar. The only break in bottles is a few framed black-and-white photos that remind me of the ones in my guest house. I start to lift the camera to snap pics of them. If wine could be a country, this would be its capital. My fingers are twisting the view into focus when an older gentleman appears on the stairs that lead down into the belly of the wine shop. I’m staring at a round, smiling face with two tufts of white hair over each ear that transition into a beard that Gandalf would envy.

“Salve!” he says.

“Hi—ciao. Buongiorno,” I stammer.

Three hellos for the price of one.

“Do you need help?” he asks, saving me—or himself—from botched Italian.

I look around, prepared to grab at random, and get back to the mission, but he is making a clucking noise at me and shaking his head as he approaches.

“Vieni. Devi gustare. You taste,” he says, so close now that I can see the twinkle in his dark eyes and smell the slight odor of hard work and garlic, perhaps from his lunch. Somehow the scent works for him.

“I am Franco,” he tells me. “You are?”

“Ava,” I tell him, sidestepping to give him room and nearly knocking over a row of bottles like dominoes.

“Down you go, Ava,” he tells me, and he slips around me to get behind. A warm hand finds the small of my back and he ushers me into the depths of wine heaven. Something tells me Franco would not accept a refusal, so I just pray that I’m not going to find plastic wrap all over the walls and floor as I descend. But instead I am surrounded by brick walls and wine barrels lit by a few Edison bulbs hanging from ropes.

He immediately goes to work setting up two small wine glasses on the small olive wood bar mounted against the bricks.

“Lambrusco,” he tells me, as he fills each of our glasses. I’m transfixed by the color of it. And the tiny bubbles that bounce upward in lines.

He lifts his glass and his white brows, then inclines his head toward my glass. I lift it and mimic the way he swirls the pink elixir, ignoring the tiny amount I lose when it sloshes over the rim.

“Salud!” He taps his glass to mine and down it goes, sending a rush of effervescence up my sinuses as I wrinkle my nose. It’s delicious, but sweet. Very unlike the dry reds Ethan and I are accustomed to.

“Non ti piace?” he asks and I’m trying to translate the words in my brain, but he doesn’t give me time to process.

“Try this,” he instructs. And there’s a fresh glass in front of me, this time with something light gold. “Verddichio,” he says as he hands it to me. I repeat the word, failing to roll the R, but nailing the short click of the hard C. He nods and turns his lips down. The Italian not bad.

We toast again and this time I slow down and enjoy the crisp taste of the liquid on the back of my tongue.

“Squisito, no?” he asks.

“Mmmhmm,” I murmur around another mouthful.

“Prossimo, you will try my favorite. La Vernaccia,” he says.

I finish off the glass and put both hands up.

“I won’t be able to make it up those steps if you keep pouring,” I laugh.

He is unfazed. His white hair ducks out of sight and there’s the sound of rummaging in the cabinets. He pops back up and drops a basket filled with long, dry breadsticks on the counter. He beams at me.

“That will fix you,” he says, wiping both hands together. “And I will make you espresso. Mangia.”

I don’t have time to argue before he’s off fetching the espresso. This man is a mover and a shaker. He reminds me of the White Rabbit. Which makes me Alice—perhaps these wines will shrink me. Or gigantify. I giggle. Shit. Do not get buzzed, you lightweight!

I break open the wrapper and gnaw on the hard breadstick while I look around before Franco returns. This place is like the Land of the Lotus-Eaters and I wonder if I’ll make it back to—whatever it was I’m supposed to be doing. My crunching echoes off the low ceiling as I stop in front of one of the black-and-white photographs.

There’s something mesmerizing about these pictures. The subject of this photo is a little girl. She’s staring at the camera, her dark eyes so wide, I step back so I don’t get sucked into them. At first you see innocence, but as you study her—the set of her jaw, the glimmer of liquid hovering just above her thick lower lashes—you can’t help but wonder what she knows. What she’s seen. A shudder runs through me and I turn to the next wall.

And then my heart stops beating. My half-eaten breadstick hangs from the corner of my mouth, then gives up its purchase and falls to my feet.

There’s an acrylic painting of Urbino at sunset hanging before me. Just another landscape to most. Albeit an enchanting one. I run my hand along the wide brushstroke of coral that forms the walls of Urbino—mimicking the flick of the wrist I’d seen her make a thousand times—that stroke more familiar to me than my own reflection.

“Ava, cara. Are you alright?”

Franco has appeared beside me, arms laden with wine bottles that clink together like wind chimes as he balances the tiny mug of espresso in his hand. The scent of it grounds me a little.

I nod, my finger now tracing the signature at the bottom right-hand corner. I’d tried so hard when I was little to make my cursive look just like that, practicing over and over in those old composition books the teachers gave us.

“You know the artist?” Franco asks, his tone more somber.

I nod again and hear my voice from somewhere very far away.

“She was my mother.”