Chapter 21
Ava
I should have started at Aldo’s café.
The heat has bounced back on the city like a bungee cord released in a tug-of-war. And I have walked right out of the fug into a butcher shop. From heat to meat. There are legs hanging from hooks with actual fur and hooves. If I were in my dream heels, I’d head-bump a slab of mystery animal that hovers over my head. It’s like a Christmas tree in here, decorated with meat ornaments. And the smell—I’m reminded of the time in high school I had to stick my head out the window during a dissection lab.
I really should have started at Aldo’s.
“Buongiorno, Signorina.”
It’s impossible not to smile at the man who has just popped up from behind the glass showcase filled with sausages and other unknown bits. Even though the white apron covering his impressive paunch is covered in blood. I half expect him to start singing something from Sweeney Todd.
“Buongiorno,” I try. “Parli inglese?” I cut right to the chase. No use stumbling through my shitty Italian while the threat of a meat avalanche hovers just around the bend. What a headline. Young Lawyer Buried by Beef Abroad.
“Certo. Would you like to try my meat?” he asks, the smile growing a bit wider beneath his rosy cheeks. He holds up a toothpick with a slice of what might be carpaccio dangling from it.
It’s too early in the morning to try this man’s meat.
“Maybe some other time,” I tell him. And there goes the smile. His lips turn down and puppy dog eyes doesn’t even begin to cover what’s happening across from me.
I step forward, hands up. “Okay. Certo. I’ll try your meat,” I stammer, trying to make up for what was obviously an insult.
His bushy gray brows lift and his eyes widen again.
“Perfetto. Vieni qui,” he gestures me over with a huge gloved hand. “Questo è cavallo.”
I take the toothpick tentatively and angle my head for a nibble. He purses his lips and shakes his head.
“Mangia,” he says with a flourish of hand movement.
So no nibbling in Italy then. I shove the whole piece of meat in my mouth.
It’s a bit gamy for me, but the sweetness and tenderness of it are surprising. I swallow.
“Ti piace?” he asks.
I nod. “Squisito. Grazie. But I’m actually not here for meat.”
His face falls again and I realize I’m not getting out of this shop without buying some sausages.
“I’m actually looking for a painting,” I quickly add before he breaks out the meat cleaver and makes me try something else.
“The museum is just up Via Frederico.” He points out the window and to the left.
“Professor Massini—James—sent me. It is a painting by Annette Barrett,” I say.
His eyes narrow as he leans across the counter to study me more closely.
“You know Anna?” he asks.
Anna. I’d only heard her called that once when I was very young.
“Certo,” he says suddenly. “Gli occhi. Your eyes are hers.” He’s hurrying around the counter, removing his apron as he goes. “You are her sister? Cousin?”
“Daughter. Ava,” I hold out my hand to shake. He takes off his gloves and throws them in a little bin, then puts both hands on my shoulders, ignoring my hand.
“How is she?” he asks, kissing each of my cheeks.
Oh God. Here we go again. I shake my head and look down at my shoes.
“She died almost six years ago,” I say to the tile, too scared to look up and find this man’s exuberance sucked out by me.
His big rough hand moves from my shoulder and tips up my chin.
“Sincere condoglianze,” he whispers. “Anna was una forza—she swept you away.”
His eyes are filled. Or my eyes are filled and everything looks wet.
I nod and blink hard.
“Come. I will show you,” he says, patting my cheek.
He hurries away and I nearly sprint to keep up. He is leading me out of the meat maze up a tiled staircase and into what must be his office but looks more like the study of a fifteenth-century scholar. Everything is mahogany and carved, the wall-to-wall shelves filled with books. Old books bound in leather and cloth.
And there in the center of it all, against the far wall across from his insanely large desk, is my mother’s painting.
I step forward, hand extended like I’m running my fingers along those brushstrokes. It would be like touching her incredibly soft hand again.
“Amazing, no?” he says behind me.
All I can do is nod. My tongue has swollen to the size of a small balloon.
The painting is unlike anything I’ve seen her do, not in style, but in subject. Most of my mother’s work is landscape, a few that I have in storage are of me when I was young, but otherwise she stayed away from portraits and focused on scenery. But this, this is all human through and through.
The man in the painting is so obviously the man who stands behind me, the smile, the round face, the soulful joy in his eyes. But he’s young, leaner, rich deep brown where there is now gray. And he’s lying on the floor with his dog. Staring down at the mangy creature like he holds the stars in his paws.
“We were students together all’università,” he says. His voice low, as if anything louder might wake the sleeping dog in the painting. “She was studying art restoration and I was studying veterinary science.” He chuckles, acknowledging the irony of his career choice. I feel him step beside me, his eyes also on the painting, but his mind with her. Just like mine.
“We met at the market while I was helping my father—this was all his,” he says pointing downward to the shop below. “She came up to me from behind the booth, asking for scraps for some stray dog on campus. And we were instant—”
He claps his hands together and I look toward him. Lovers? Did my mother love this man?
“Friends,” he clarifies, meeting my gaze. I nod.
“There are people you meet in life that seem to just fit into a place inside of you. It’s almost as if you, or He”—he points upward—“built that place knowing who would come to fill it. It was like that. Anna just fit. And that stray—Dante,” his eyes fill again and I reach for his arm. “That dog took his place in my soul just as your mother did.”
His huge hand covers mine and I forget who is comforting who.
“You will take this, no?” He gestures toward the painting. “It is yours.”
I shake my head so hard my ponytail holder slides back an inch.
“Absolutely not. She gave that to you. It is yours. It belongs here. In Urbino.” Not in the storage container that I can’t seem to work up the courage to enter, with the rest of her paintings and pictures.
“They are still there, you know,” he whispers, pointing to his chest. For a moment I think he’s talking about the paintings. Then I realize he means those we’ve lost. “Once they take their place they never leave. Sempre con te.”
Always with you.
She’d signed every note she’d ever written me with that closing, and when she passed, I can remember reading those words with anger, thinking that it was a lie—the bullshit parents feed children to help them sleep at night.
But now, standing next to this mountain of a man, staring at the picture she painted for him, his Italian words still caressing my brain with their gentle fingertips, I feel something flutter between my ribs—something yawns and stirs in the hole she left.
“Sempre con te,” I repeat to the painting.
And the stranger beside me puts his arm around my shoulder. As if it belonged there all along.