Chapter 7 #2
“She say she has eight other apartments that are only short-term. For you, they not good. There is one prima casa, the right one for you. But there is a perdita. A—how you say? A leak.” Maria’s young nephew Stefano was doing his very best to translate for his aunt the real estate agent as Lora and Vilmari stood with them outside the town house they’d just toured.
Andrea had made an appointment for Lora to see whatever was available in town.
However, Maria spoke zero English, and Stefano only spoke as much as he’d learned in school and whatever practice he got playing Fortnite.
The house had not been lived in for the last eight years, smelled of mold, and didn’t currently have a toilet, just a hole in the floor where it should be placed.
Lora recognized rodent droppings inside the kitchen cabinets and a large burn mark next to the fuse box.
She didn’t dare try to flip on the lights before ushering Vilmari outside onto the street, shaking her head the whole time.
They’d spent the last ten minutes trying to find the kindest way to translate “Hell no.”
“A leak?” asked Lora.
“Yes, the roof.” Stefano nodded solemnly.
His aunt looked back down at her clipboard as they stood outside a row of empty town houses on the east end of town and shook her head.
She launched into a discussion with her nephew that was largely incomprehensible, but Lora didn’t need an interpreter for the bit of shoulder shrugging signifying, There’s not much I can do here.
“There’s one more,” Stefano said, eyeing his aunt while she prattled on. “But the owner must give permission. He has not yet.”
“And why hasn’t he given permission?” asked Vilmari. They all turned to Maria as Stefano conveyed the question.
“Eh, che ne so?” she replied, full-body shrugging again.
“She doesn’t know,” said Stefano, mimicking her movements.
“Can we find out where the house is? Maybe we can ask the owner personally?”
“è il sindaco.”
Lora almost visibly flinched but caught herself. She thanked Maria and Stefano profusely and said goodbye before rolling her head back in utter exasperation.
“This has got to be some kind of joke,” Lora said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure there’s a very good reason why he didn’t mention—” Vilmari tried.
“How stupid we are! I bet it’s the house he was working on the other day.”
“Maybe he’s going to move into it,” Vilmari said, pulling out her phone and snapping a photo of an open window flanked by sunflowers where some kind of baked good was cooling.
“That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t he just live there already? Do you think he’s actively trying to hide it from me?”
“Are you serious? Why would he set you up with a real estate agent if he was trying to do that?”
“I don’t know. To prove a point? Maybe it’s some sort of reverse diplomacy. Maybe he gets a kickback for holding back citizenship petitions. Maybe it’s all part of a secret international plan!” Lora’s voice echoed in the empty street.
“The mayor of this town drives a thirty-year-old beater and uses a landline, Lor, what secret plan do you think he is executing? Did you eat breakfast today?”
“Well, guess what!” She opened her arms wide and shouted to the cacti. A dog barked a few streets over. “I’m not going to fall for it!”
“Not going to fall for what?” asked a voice behind them. Andrea stood holding a newspaper and a small metal box.
Lora froze, her arms still winging out in defiance.
“Mierda.” Vilmari shook her head.
“For you trying to hide the only place to live,” Lora said, whirling around at him.
“How did I do that? And by the way, good morning.”
“Good morning, ha! According to Maria, you are the only person in town who owns the only possible house that can be used to establish residency, and you haven’t given approval for it to be rented yet.”
“I didn’t realize it’s the only house. It can’t be,” he said, seemingly to himself. He shook his head. “My house isn’t ready for rental yet.”
“What do you mean, it’s not ready? It’s a house, right? It has four walls and a front door?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“So rent it to me,” she said, placing her hand on her hip.
“I can’t.” Andrea shook his head.
“See?” She turned to Vilmari, crossing her arms at the wrists like a football referee. “Blocked!”
“Lora, it doesn’t have bathrooms. Or a kitchen. I haven’t even connected the water yet,” said Andrea.
“And why not?”
“Because the house was built three hundred years ago and I made a promise to only use local labor to finish the renovations. I’ve got three people who help me.
One of them is a single dad, so he’s home with his kids a lot.
The other two are over seventy and only come in when they are feeling up to it.
The rest I fill in myself. It’s a slow process. ”
“Oh,” she said, the edges of embarrassment creeping in.
Had she forgotten that she slept on the sunporch of the bungalow she shared with her mom for years before they had the money and time to enclose it like a proper room?
She was practically bullying the guy to let her move into this house.
This was so not her. Vilmari was right; she was rattled just being here.
“Listen, I am on my way to help Carola, who owns the fruit stand. Will you be at the office later? We can talk more then. Is that OK?”
“Yes, that will be great,” said Lora, her voice small. She turned to Vilmari when he walked away. “I’m awful.”
“You’re not awful, but damn.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what is wrong with me lately. I don’t recognize this hysterical version of myself and she’s starting to piss me off.”
“You know I’m not the one you should apologize to, right?” Vilmari put her arm around Lora as they started walking back toward city hall. “I think it makes sense why you feel a little bit off here. This is emotional!”
“I don’t know if it’s emotional or just plain frustrating. But you’re right. I do need to apologize to him. And I will when I see him later.”
But she never ended up seeing him later.
In fact, she barely caught a glimpse of him for the next three days.
She and Vilmari took their places at the table in his office every morning around nine, but he was always about to leave or deep in conversation with someone.
She saw him getting into the little old car with the town seal on it once or twice, and he did wave across the piazza one afternoon while she and Vilmari were tucking into more of Giada’s homemade pasta.
They spent all day searching through the documents, then usually came back to the hotel too tired to do anything beyond munching on some fruit while watching an old American movie dubbed in Italian on TV.
There was nothing weirder than watching The Princess Bride with everyone calling Buttercup “Bottondoro.” One night, they drove up the coast to have dinner at a restaurant that used to be a famous beach club and spent the whole time sitting in a pair of chairs in the sand, laughing at old stories.
It wasn’t exactly a vacation, and she was still stressed out about where and how she’d find a residence, but she had to admit that they were having a lot of fun.
Still, the need to apologize to Andrea continued to tug at her. She just had to find the right moment.
Lora thought that when she finally found the birth certificate, she and Vilmari would scream in elation.
She imagined running outside and spinning around in the piazza, clutching the document to her chest while trumpets played and a small cloud of songbirds encircled her head.
In reality, she’d been alone in Andrea’s office one afternoon while Vilmari was off doing her best Serena Williams with Nico.
She’d been listening to Maggie Rogers on her phone and sipping the citrus soda she’d picked up at Giada’s on the way over to city hall.
And suddenly there it was. Upon seeing the name “Ivo Giordano” written in loopy script next to “10 maggio 1956” on the certificato di nascita, the only thing she actually did was mutter a single syllable, “Hmm.”
It was only then that she realized that she had grandparents.
Romeo Giordano and Flaminia Parodi were listed as father and mother, both aged twenty-one when he was born.
That meant that they were only sixty-four when their forty-three-year-old son was thrown from a horse and killed instantly.
How long had they lived after his death?
Did they stay here in Baia Santa or perhaps move somewhere else like so many others?
After Pamela died, it was possible that her only living relatives could have been Romeo and Flaminia.
She put the paper down on the desk and stood, her vision wobbling slightly.
She had a bad habit of forgetting to breathe when she was concentrating on something important.
It happened all the time when she was writing academic papers.
She needed to get some air. She slid the document into the plastic folder she’d kept on standby on the corner of the table, put it in her bag, and stepped out of the office.