Chapter 11 #2
“I don’t see it as settled down,” he said, shaking his head.
“Yes, there have been plenty of people who I have loved and lost, but I have this incredible life with my companion, Emanuela. We travel, we live well, we both work at what we love. I’m on the same adventure as ever. I just chose to share it with her.”
“That is perfect. It’s so simple,” said Lora, a buzz humming in her ears. Maybe she was just hungry.
“Eh, amore, the older you get, the more you realize that those two words usually mean the same thing.” He picked up the hairdryer. “Now, I can’t make you more beautiful, but I can make you fabulous. Ready?”
She nodded, and Ottavio fired up the dryer, filling the room with a din louder than her thoughts.
By the time Ottavio finished drying her hair, applying shine spray, and taking a few photos for Instagram, the shops were open again. Lora needed a snack immediately, and Carola’s fruit stand beckoned her over with its shining apples, fat peaches, and juicy cut pineapples.
“Ciao, Loretta!” Carola called, waving from behind a stack of watermelons.
“Ciao!” Lora screwed on a smile at hearing the name that still sounded odd to her ears and walked toward her.
“Vuoi un po’ di anguria?” Carola gestured toward the watermelon.
“Oh, OK. Anguria,” Lora repeated, wondering if repeating a word also counted as conversation. Two in a day! Nice!
“Ti taglio un pezzo?” Carola made a cutting motion with the side of her right hand against her open left palm.
“Sì, OK.” Lora smiled, watching as Carola pulled out a gigantic knife and expertly cut the watermelon into four long pieces.
The fruit fell open, revealing the reddest, juiciest interior dotted with shining black seeds.
She wrapped a piece in plastic, slid it into a shopping bag, and handed it to Lora.
“Quanto?” Lora knew that she was forgetting a word but hoped that Carola would figure out that she was asking how much it was.
“No, no, no.” Carola waved her hand away at her. “Sei figlia di un amico. Non é necessario.”
“What? No. Please,” she said, reaching into her bag for her wallet.
“Per favore.” But Carola only waved her hand again.
Lora persisted, pulling out a five-euro bill, but this seemed to escalate Carola’s protests to the point where an older couple who were in deep contemplation of a display of lettuce began to take notice.
“She don’t want,” said the older woman in English, wagging her index finger.
“I see that,” said Lora, “but I want to give her something.”
“No, no, no,” Carola repeated, turning to walk back into the shop with a smile.
“She don’t want,” the woman repeated, shrugging.
“Mamma, ciao.” That was a voice she knew. He was everywhere, wasn’t he? Andrea looked surprised as he double-kissed the couple hello. “Ciao,” he said, turning to her. “Lora, these are my parents, Paola and Antonio.”
“Oh! Ciao, piacere,” she said, wondering if her pronunciation was terrible.
His mother reached her hands out to half shake, half hold Lora’s.
Andrea said something to her, but Lora understood the words “Ivo” and “americana,” which elicited an immediate grin.
Then he said “cittadinanza,” which she knew meant “citizenship.” This word somehow had the power to turn Paola’s expression into something dark with a puffing of air through pursed lips.
“You want live here?” his mom asked, her brow stitched with concern.
“No,” she replied. The smile was back.
“Good,” she said, tapping Lora’s hands. “America is beautiful.”
Andrea spoke to his parents while she stood, the handles of the plastic shopping bag beginning to dig into her arm.
And while she thought of slipping away to ask Giada if she could have a fork and a quiet corner to tear into the fruit, she reminded herself that, irrespective of what happened yesterday, she was about to become his tenant and should wait and say a few polite words.
And this was exactly why what happened yesterday should never happen again.
But she should not say that. She should also not say, Thank you for that stellar kiss, though you kind of ruined it, or Let’s pretend that never happened.
Of course she had no idea what Andrea and his parents were talking about, but was she imagining it, or did it seem like they were talking about her? She shifted the bag to her other arm.
“Hi, sorry,” he finally said, once his parents had paid for their vegetables and walked away from the piazza. His clean and pressed shirt did little to offset the dark circles expanding down under the edge of his glasses.
“Hi. You don’t look like you slept very well.”
“I didn’t really.” He stood looking at her as though he’d lost command of either language.
“You want to tell me what that conversation was about? I’m not fluent in Italian, but I’m pretty sure that I can tell when someone is talking about me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, slashing his hand through the air like he’d taken care of a spider that had been found crawling inside the shower.
“No, I would like to know what you said. I was standing right here.” She tried to keep it light but knew that the tone of her voice was going to demonstrate otherwise in about five seconds.
“It’s only silliness. Your hair looks great by the way.”
“Thank you. It’s all Ottavio. I still want to know, Andrea.”
“Walk with me. I’d rather not talk in front of everyone,” he said, his eyes darting around.
A man in an orange utility uniform waved at Andrea as he crossed the piazza and called out a greeting.
Andrea waved and called back. “This way, OK?” He gestured toward the road that led to the quieter end of town.
“How is it that you always appear in this piazza out of nowhere anyway? Do you live under one of the park benches?” she asked, rushing to keep up with his long strides.
“I live right there,” he said, nodding toward the pharmacy.
“With the ibuprofen and hydrocortisone?”
“Above, Lora. I live above the pharmacy. I own the building.”
“Right.”
They rounded a corner and walked under a stone archway covered in ivy, then took three steps down to what looked like someone’s courtyard garden.
The small rectangle was crowded with terra-cotta pots filled with succulents, geraniums, and begonias.
A wooden bench that had an engraved brass plate hugged one wall, and a small marble sink affixed with a tarnished spigot was built into another.
It was cool, free of direct sunlight, and so very quiet. Andrea turned to face her.
“My parents wanted to know who you were because Carola said she didn’t want you to pay for the watermelon since you are the daughter of a friend.
I had to tell them you’re Ivo’s daughter, OK?
And I know that you don’t want to talk about that, so I didn’t want to have to bring it up to you again.
I am already sorry for bringing it up yesterday.
Or not bringing it up but taking you to it.
So now my mother wants to know if we are seeing each other and, if so, will you want me to go back to the US with you, because nothing would make them happier. ”
“You covered all of that over the pineapples? What did you say?”
“What could I say? The truth. I told them that you are here temporarily and that we are just friends. I said that you didn’t know Ivo and that you didn’t come here for any other reason than paperwork. I said that you are counting the days and will move to Switzerland as soon as possible.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s good that you set them straight.” It was all true—every word. The bag of fruit was getting heavier, so she shifted it into her other hand, but whimpered when the pain ran up the side of her head again.
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I somehow woke up with a stiff neck,” she said, setting the bag on the bench.
“Colpo d’aria,” he said. “You must have slept too close to the air conditioning. Or a fan.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the third time someone said that to me today. You do know that it’s scientifically impossible to get a stiff neck from getting air on it, don’t you?”
“Well, that’s what we call it here, OK? But I can see that you don’t like that idea either.”
“I’m sorry, I’m too American to believe in the danger of air currents.
And maybe that also makes me not want to talk about certain things, but I guess that makes you a little bit American too,” she said, turning to face him.
“Don’t you think it would be easier to explain to your parents that you are not going back to the US?
Like, ever? That way they won’t have to try to set you up with transients while lettuce shopping. ”
“I didn’t say I was never going back. It’s complicated,” he said. His hand slid into his pocket like he was looking for something that was not there—probably those white tablets in the blister pack he was always popping.
“I don’t think it needs to be. You make your own decisions, don’t you? And the outcome is your responsibility. Your life shouldn’t rely on other people or their expectations.”
“This may be your area of expertise, but for me, it’s not as black-and-white as a research hypothesis,” he said, taking a lap around the perimeter of the garden.
“I didn’t say it would be easy. That’s what people always get wrong.
Sometimes the right path is the difficult one, but people don’t like to hear that.
You’re inadvertently letting everyone think that life was so much better there, but it’s obvious that wasn’t your experience.
Don’t you think that’s starting to affect you? This thing with your stomach—”
“I don’t know what I think of my experience,” he said, gesturing to a pot of begonias. “Look, I had to leave New York in the end. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why? Did you do something awful? Get fired? Sleep with your boss’s wife? Did you get busted for drunk driving up Park Avenue the wrong way in your underwear?”