Chapter Nineteen
I FaceTime my parents. It’s midday in Los Angeles, and they’re at the natural foods store in Los Feliz, down the road from our house.
It’s an ordinary Friday for them. They’re no doubt prepping for a weekend of pickling, gardening, and jam-making.
“Mommy,” I say when I see her appear onscreen.
I haven’t called them Mommy and Daddy since I was in third grade, but now, I need to. “I want to come home.”
My mother’s brows furrow. “Izzy, what’s wrong?”
I see my dad pop onscreen. “Iz, check out this strawberry.” He shows me a massive berry but his face contorts into the same look of concern as my mother’s when he sees me crying. “What’s wrong?”
“I just. . .” I can barely croak out a phrase through the sobs. “I need to come home. Can I come home?”
They look at each other before looking back at me. “Of course,” my mother says. “Come home. As soon as you can.”
“Use our credit card,” my father says.
“Ok,” I say. “Thank you.” I hang up and search for flights on my computer. There are only two direct flights from Rome to Los Angeles, and there’s an open middle coach seat on the 3:10 p.m. tomorrow. It’s over two thousand dollars, but I book a one-way ticket.
Tomorrow. I’m leaving tomorrow.
I take my suitcase out of the closet and stuff my clothes into it. It takes less than an hour to pack up my entire life in La Musa, and in 24 hours’ time, I’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic, like it never happened at all. It stings. It doesn’t feel right to leave, but how can I possibly stay?
Sleep doesn’t find me all night as I toss and turn, periodically jumping out of bed convinced I forgot to pack my passport or my phone charger or my yellow sundress.
As soon as the sun is up, I’m out the door, quietly creeping out of the house and lugging my suitcase down the same path I took up the cliff barely three months ago.
The first train leaves La Musa at 8:45, and I am on it as it barrels toward Rome.
Half a day later, I land in Los Angeles, and I float to baggage claim.
My parents are standing there, waiting for me.
Everyone knows you only pick someone up at LAX if you truly, truly love them, and the sight of them makes me cry again.
They rush over and hug me tight, just like they did the first time I returned from Italy, more than 10 years ago.
I wish I was still her. Not a kid but not really an adult.
A human still forming. A person who believed everyone when they said she could do anything she set her mind to.
They help me load my suitcase into their old SUV.
Los Angeles unfolds before me as we make our way home.
It feels like a lifetime since I’ve been here.
Could you always see the Hollywood sign from this far away on the 10?
Did the sky always reflect so brilliantly against the skyscrapers that dot downtown?
Is it always so clear that you can see the snowcapped mountains that border the city?
I’ve lived here most of my life, but now I feel like a foreigner.
More tears fall as I walk inside my parents’ home.
It’s just as it’s always been with the afternoon sun cascading through the big bay window, the old wood floor creaking as I walk across it, the stairwell banister dented from where I took a LEGO to it in 1995.
I want to disintegrate into it. I want to become as stationary as the teak furniture that’s always been here.
I want to exist, but as nothing more than a monument of where other people lived.
The rocking chair in the corner that no one ever sits on, but no one would ever dare give away.
My childhood bedroom is stripped of the décor of my adolescence but remains otherwise untouched.
I draw the thick beige curtains and collapse onto the lumpy mattress of my old full-sized bed.
I crawl under the covers and pull the quilt my mother made for me when I was a baby up to my chin.
How hard would it be for me to stay here forever?
I shut my eyes and wait for the darkness to find me. It quickly does.
I wake with the sun the next morning. I slept 15 hours, longer than I’ve ever slept.
I’m in the same clothes I wore on the plane, and I feel grimy, so I run a scalding-hot shower for myself and change into an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt that I find in my dresser.
When I go downstairs, my father is making buckwheat blueberry pancakes.
“Morning, Iz!” he says, with a cheery grin. “Hope you’re hungry.”
My stomach growls in response. I haven’t eaten since the measly in-flight breakfast service yesterday. “Starving, actually,” I say, taking a seat at the table in the nook that overlooks the backyard. My mother is outside in the garden, pulling weeds. She waves when she sees me looking at her.
“What did Italy do to make you want to get out of there so quick?” my father asks.
I freeze. How exactly do I explain all of this to him?
And where do I begin? Even though I’m over 30, my father and I don’t have the kind of relationship where I can say, “Well, there was this boy and he didn’t like me as much as I like him, which seems to be the theme of my life. . .”
“It was a mistake,” I say.
Unfortunately, my dad is not one to let sleeping dogs lie. He glances at me between flipping pancakes. “Which part?”
I sigh. “I don’t know. All of it, I guess.”
My mother enters with the brightness of the morning sun splashed across her face. “Smells good, Dash,” she says. My father’s name is Frank, but she’s always called him Dash. I’ve never asked why. “Izzy, are you feeling better after that long rest?”
“No,” I say.
She sighs. “What happened over there? And don’t say nothing. I know you wouldn’t flee so quickly if it was nothing.”
My father takes the pancakes off the griddle and piles them onto a plate. “She said it was a mistake, Coll. That’s all I know.”
“Which part?” she asks, echoing my father’s exact question.
“Can I have some of those?” I ask as my dad divides the stack into three servings.
He brings me a plate and they sit on opposite sides of the table, watching as I pour syrup on top and start eating.
“Can the interrogation wait until after breakfast? I’ve been in Europe for months and my body misses processed food. ”
My father winks at my mother. “Well, at least we know the real Izzy’s in there somewhere.”
“We’re just worried, honey,” my mother says. “It’s been so hard for you since. . . since November, and it seemed like you were finally finding some version of happiness again.”
I glance back and forth between the two of them. “Are you serious? You were against this move from the start.”
They share another look. “I’ll admit we didn’t get it at first, but we were coming around,” my mom says.
My dad nods, concurring. “We’ve been so worried, Iz. We just want to see you figure out what’s next.”
I drop my fork to my plate. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this: Nothing is next. I am not meant to change the world. That burden should not be on me.” Thinking of Benito’s words stings. Thinking of Benito stings. I am thousands of miles away but it’s like he’s in the room with me.
My mother hands me a napkin and I realize in my dramatics I have splattered syrup all around me. “No one’s saying you have to change the world, but you can’t sit around and do nothing for the rest of your life.”
My dad laughs. “You don’t have to do anything great, but you will. It’s in your nature. You’ve been nothing but driven since you were a little girl, and even if you can’t see it now, you will figure out a way back.”
I push my chair out and stand up abruptly, the friction of the chair’s legs on the creaky floor causing a loud screech.
“And why do you think I was so driven? It’s because you always told me I had no choice but to do great things.
You drove into me that I was predisposed for greatness, and then when I finally worked hard enough, when I finally earned the opportunity to do that, I crashed and burned.
I failed. I lost. What was the point of all of that drive?
What good did any of it do?” I take another bite of pancake because I’m working up to a storm-off, but I really am so hungry.
“Why do I have to do great things? Why isn’t it good enough that I simply exist? ”
I’m asking them, but I know that I’m really asking me.
That’s what this has all been about, hasn’t it?
The person I most disappointed with my failure was myself.
I went to Italy hoping to find il dolce far niente and an existence that relied on stasis, but I wound up caught in Benito’s drama and saving a town from the brink of financial collapse.
I told myself I was doing it to preserve my anonymity, but there was at least a small part of me that wanted to feel important again.
It’s not that I have to do great things, it’s that I want to.
I want to make the world better, and make other people’s lives better, but I’ve been lying to myself if I thought that was a selfless crusade.
I wanted credit. I want my name to mean something other than “flamed-out, sex-crazed congresswoman.” I want to matter.
“Sorry,” I say as my parents both stare at me wide- eyed. “Excuse me.”
I run up the stairs back to my room. I know my dad’s right; I have to figure out what’s next. But right now, all I want is sleep.