Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Lexi
My third day in Italy, and I cannot wait to get started. Today, I’m keeping to my schedule no matter what. Research, plan, and execute.
After I finish a few tasks on the computer for the festival, I slide the envelope labeled Spanish Steps into my bag with my journal. Donning my silver aviator sunglasses, I step out of the hotel, stomach growling.
A half block before I arrive at the open door of Il Dolce Far Niente, the air starts to whisper a song of honey and espresso, like an intense, swelling symphony.
This cafe isn’t the closest to my hotel, but thanks to its name (The Sweet Idleness) and its ambience with industrial lighting, tiny wooden tables, and a massive brick wall, it’s become my habitual morning stop.
The more routines I build into my time in Rome, the more Italy will feel like something deeper than vacation.
I order a cappuccino and a maritozzo, Rome’s signature pastry, from the barista. Today I choose the fluffy bun with chocolate-flavored whipped cream.
“Oh, you didn’t enjoy the honey and raisin one?” The barista and I chatted yesterday. His name is Cassio, and he grew up a half mile from here.
“I loved it, but leave no stone unturned is my motto. And by stone, I mean maritozzo.”
“It’s the only way to find your favorite,” he says, nodding at the credit card reader.
I hover my card over the device until it beeps. “What’s yours?”
“When I was a kid, it was the chocolate. But now, I prefer the savory choices.” He pulls a pastry from the display. “Not that your palate isn’t mature, but I don’t need everything sweet like when I was little. Life is all kinds of emotions.”
I drop a few euros into the tip basket. “And a maritozzo should echo our emotional mood?”
He flashes a wide smile. “Of course. Or create it. That, and time with family, is what food is all about.”
I wish. You have to have a family for that.
We talk for twenty minutes, a few locals joining our conversation at the bar, before I head into the city center. Every piece of Rome’s culture I soak in is a joy to me.
The Spanish Steps lead from the Piazza di Spagna up to a church, and they’re impressive.
Wide and smooth, flanked by historic buildings, palms, and lamps, the stairs split halfway up to create a picturesque landing.
The travertine stone sparkles in the sunshine, and the fountain at the bottom in the plaza tempts giggling children.
It’s not a tourist site, it’s Mom’s famous watercolor of the Spanish Steps, it’s the envelope in my hand she sent me to open here, it’s the lack of her in every experience.
Did she talk to baristas? Did she eat Italian breakfast? Did she find a favorite cafe?
That is the shadow that follows me.
I climb the stairs and stop, taking a moment to commit the watercolor scene on the envelope to memory before I open it.
The painting is of a narrow street and laundry hung between buildings, a typical Italian vignette.
She’s captured the feeling of a brisk crosswind flapping the shirts, white socks, and an apron with yellow dots and tiny cherry blossoms.
I can’t wait any longer to read what she wanted to say to me.
Dear Lexington,
You remember my obsession with the Romantic poets, right? One of my favorites, John Keats, lived in the house on the corner of the Spanish Steps.
My last day in Rome, your dad wanted to ask me to date upon our return to the States.
He thought he might have a better chance getting a yes if he used a Keats quote, poor deluded soul.
So he brought me to the Spanish Steps and said, “‘I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.’” Which I actually found kind of cheesy, until he said, “But we aren’t butterflies, and I do hopefully have years to fill. Maybe with you.”
That’s how he was—a straight talker. He told me later he rolled his eyes with every recitation trying to memorize those lines from Keats. I was flattered he thought me worth the torture, but it was his humorous honesty that hit the mark, not someone else’s poetry.
Visit the Keats-Shelley House while you’re at the Spanish Steps. “Nothing ever becomes real ’til it is experienced.”—Keats.
I frown and read it again. This is about the Spanish Steps and her time here, but it’s not.
There’s nothing in the letter to use for the speech at the festival or even a hint about the temple painting she kept from the public.
I love the picture she paints of Dad here, and I see a bit of myself in him.
A straight talker. Not a fan of poetry. The fact they didn’t have everything in common.
Most of that I already knew. After he died in an accident when I was four, Mom did everything she could to keep his memory alive for me.
Pictures, stories of him flying me around the living room or fumbling with the straps on the car seat.
That he rolled his eyes but did something hard anyway.
The Star Wars rewatch he’d coerce her into every summer.
His refusal to eat raspberries and his atrocious puns. (Mom’s words, not mine.)
The only new part is about him memorizing Keats in a clumsy attempt to woo my mother. Still, I don’t understand why Mom thought it essential for me to stand in this exact spot in Italy to read this piece of their love story.
I fold the letter and head down the steps to the lively piazza below.
My brain is too literal for me to be a fan of poetry, so the Keats house wasn’t on my itinerary.
I hesitate outside the orange and cream multistoried house overlooking the Steps.
What could touring this possibly show me about Italy?
I’m set on following Mom’s instructions, but at this point it feels like a wild-goose chase. It’s looking less and less likely that her letters are going to lead me to the temple location from her painting.
At least tickets are cheap and I don’t need to wait for a specific time. I enter, ascend the stairs, and move through the dark, wood-paneled rooms with heavy drapes on the windows.
A tour guide’s voice leads me down the hall to a small group of people. He points out the flower motif on the ceiling that Keats stared at on his deathbed, then the group troops back down the stairs.
Okay, Mom, it’s a bit morbid and weird in here. This is a far cry from the lively, sunny atmosphere of Trevi Fountain.
The last room has been set up as a workspace for a restorer, lit with floodlights.
Several busts sit on a table littered with bottles and scraps of fabric and tiny brushes.
A woman with an apron is bent over her workstation and calls over her shoulder to someone else in the room I can’t see from the hallway. “Just let me know when you find out.”
Wait. I know her. I met her at the reception. She’s the one who knows Mark and “introduced” us. “Ms. Accardi?”
She swivels and her face breaks into a smile. “Lexi Walker. How lovely to see you again.”
When I get a good look at her, I choke on my greeting. Her work apron is splattered with plaster, but the pattern is yellow dots with cherry blossoms.
Same as the apron hanging upside down from the laundry line on the envelope.
I freeze, heart pounding.
Impossible. Again.
“Lexi?” Ms. Accardi steps forward, concern etched on her face.
I can’t take my eyes from her apron. She takes a step closer and the dots and blossoms fill my vision, everything else in my periphery dimming to shadows.
Ms. Accardi murmurs to whoever is in the room with her, and just as I feel myself stumble and fall back against the wall, there’s a blur of movement and someone grabs my arms, steadying me. “I’ve got you.”
That low voice is a rumble I feel all the way to my toes. It’s Mark, wearing a blue button-down that does him too many favors.
I groan, tipping my head back against the wall and closing my eyes.
His grip tightens. “Are you about to faint?”
There has to be an explanation for all of this. The envelopes in real life, Mark in my face every two minutes. (Just because it’s a nice face doesn’t mean I want to keep seeing it. Really.) “I’m just a little stunned.”
“Stunned at what?” He’s frowning at me, and I don’t blame him. I’m acting weird.
I almost tell him everything. But if I show him the envelope that matches Ms. Accardi’s work apron, he’ll demand explanations, which I don’t have.
He also might recognize it as a Reena Brooke watercolor, and I’m not ready to dive into who my mom is, her cancer, and the envelopes with someone who will see too much and understand what I’m not saying.
“Stunned at how this city isn’t big enough for the two of us.”
Ms. Accardi peers around Mark, wiping her hands on a scrap of stained towel. “Are you okay, Lexi?”
Physically, yes. The other stuff? Sign me up for therapy. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”
She smiles and returns to her workstation, leaving Mark and me alone in the dim hall.
He doesn’t say anything, but he’s still holding my arms and looking at me like I’m a math problem that doesn’t add up.
I can’t seem to fill my lungs in this narrow corridor. “Are you here working with Ms. Accardi?”
“No.”
“So you’re here for Keats’ poetry?”
“No.”
Fine, if he doesn’t want to talk about himself, I can at least drill him about the museum.
Maybe there’s something about my mom or her artwork here she wants me to find.
Because there is no way she sent me inside so I would find Ms. Accardi’s apron.
“Are there any paintings here from modern artists?”
He shakes his head.
I guess we aren’t having a conversation right now. This is the most cagey and impossible I’ve ever seen him. He’s getting less and less communicative the longer I’m in Italy. That’s how it goes with tourists, I guess. Just blips on the periphery.
“Okay. See you around, most likely, the way this massive city seems to squash us into the same space every three hours.”
He blows out a quick breath and steps back, as if only now realizing he’s still in rescue-fainting-girl position. “Right.”
“Bye.” I spin on my heels and head down the stairs. If I’m not going to get answers, I might as well get some air.