Chapter xviii
xviii
WHEN I GOT BACK TO MY HOTEL, I HAD A MISSED call and a voice mail from Kate. I listened: Hi Lu, just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Give a call when you can.
She picked up after one ring.
“Lucy!” she said. “I’m so glad you called back. How was the flight over? How are you?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Flight was fine. I’m a little tired, but pushing through.”
I could feel Kate nodding on the other end of the phone.
“So,” she said. “When are you going to the address?” She said “address” as if it had a capital A .
“I went already,” I told her.
“You did?” she said, surprise in her voice. I heard her kids in the background, then her voice, muffled: “I’m talking to Aunt Lucy. Give me a minute.”
“Everything okay over there?” I asked.
“Fine, fine,” she said. “They wanted me to adjudicate a dispute. But it can wait. So you went to the address?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “And I found a young man and his family.”
“And … ?” Kate said. I’d told her my initial idea about you having another family in Italy.
“Not his kid,” I said. “But a kid he meant a lot to. A kid who’s in college to be a photojournalist because he was inspired by Gabe. And he told me there are more photos Gabe had taken, in a library on an island called Lampedusa, photos I’ve never seen before. So I think I’m going to go.”
There was a pause, and then Kate said, “Call the editor. The one who wants you to gather the photos. Maybe there’s someone from the AP who’s in the area who could go with you. Or at least he can make some phone calls for you. Find you a driver or something, someone who can translate for you. Journalists know people.”
She was right. I should have thought about calling Eric myself. But I wasn’t thinking straight just then, my mind and body muddled by the time change and jet lag, and my heart overwhelmed by the realization that someday soon I needed to let you go.
“Thanks, Kate,” I said. “I’ll call him after I get off the phone with you. What would I do without you?”
“Get into a lot more trouble,” Kate said.
I laughed and heard her kids again in the background.
“I think I have to go,” she said. “But let me know what happens.”
Kate looks out for me and has the kind of mind I don’t—the one that calculates risks and ameliorates them as quickly as possible. I’m so thankful for her.
I called Eric Weiss, and when I told him why I wanted to go to Lampedusa, he said he could absolutely set something up for me, to give him the day, and he’d call me back tomorrow.
It was late by then, so I sat down on my hotel bed and ordered a room service pizza. Then I picked up your copy of All the Light We Cannot See and started to read it again, but I couldn’t stay focused on the book. I was tired and wired at the same time.
I closed my eyes. Here I was, in Italy, alone, following your long-gone footsteps. My emotions were so close to the surface. I didn’t have the strength to bury them. The sadness, the loneliness felt like a tide coursing through me, rising and rushing through my body. And I began to sob, to sob like I did when I was holding you in your hospital bed, to sob like I did after Samuel was born, like I hadn’t let myself do in years. I wanted someone to hold me, to help keep me together. I wasn’t sure I could do it myself anymore.
Lying on my bed, with my hand on my diaphragm, I breathed in and out, focusing only on that. In and out. In and out. In and out. And then I remembered the Sunday when I was twenty-four years old, and you and I were living together. My mom called to say that my grandfather had died.
I hung up the phone, and you looked at me and instantly knew something was wrong.
“What?” you’d said. “Luce, tell me. What happened? You look so pale.”
I reached my hand up to my cheek, as if I could feel the paleness with my fingers.
“My grandfather’s dead,” I said. “I’ll never see him again. I’ll never hear his voice, or hug him. Or feel his sandpapery chin against my forehead. He’ll never send me another newspaper clipping that made him think of me. I’m going to lose so much.”
You held me as I wept.
“All those things you just said,” you whispered to me, “all those things you are afraid of losing, you won’t ever lose. They’ll always be a part of you. He will always be a part of you. He helped grow your beautiful brain, your generous soul, your wonderful self. And one day, you will pass those parts of yourself on, but it won’t just be you you’re passing on, it’ll be him. He won’t ever die.”
You wiped your fingers under my eyes and dried my tears on your T-shirt.
“I never met my grandparents,” you said, “and that’s what my mother told me. That they were a part of her, and because of that they’re a part of me.”
I loved that notion. And it’s true. My grandfather is a part of me. Everyone I’ve loved and lost is a part of me. But just then, alone and weeping on that too-big bed in Rome, I wanted someone to be there, to be with me, in person.
I took a deep, shaky breath and closed my eyes.
And for a moment, it felt like you were there, your arms holding me tight.
Who knows? Maybe you were.