Chapter 10
Ding!
“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the seat belt sign. It is now safe to move about the cabin,” a flight attendant announces in a smooth British accent.
It’s been a whirlwind of a week getting ready to leave for two months, although to be honest in the end there wasn’t that much to arrange, which seems a little sad.
I didn’t leave much behind. Solomon and Sandra are watering my plants while I’m gone and gathering the mail.
Truthfully, I’m not sure who was more relieved when I told them I’d be gone for the summer, them or me. It’s a toss-up.
My job is a question mark. I talked to my captain at Trader Joe’s and got approval for an unpaid leave of absence for the summer to “take care of family matters.” Hopefully, I can get back on the schedule for enough hours when I return, but he warned me there’s no guarantee.
My friends and colleagues from work gave me a little break room send-off party after my last shift yesterday.
With any luck it’s not a permanent send-off.
And now here I am, headed for Italy. And I am not alone.
Sipping my ginger ale, I sneak a furtive glance at my half sister sitting in the window seat beside me.
Alex has an enormous pair of Beats headphones on and is concentrating hard on a documentary about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Except to go through security, she hasn’t taken the headphones off since I picked her up in a taxi to head to the airport hours ago.
Nor has she said more than six words to me total.
I survey her with a sideways look, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
At five foot three, I’m pretty petite, but Alex is even smaller boned, waifish in a baggy black sweater that I suspect cost a fortune and looks like it’s from Goodwill.
Along with the sweater, she’s wearing acid-washed jeans and chunky black loafers, rocking the casual rich kid NYC prep school look.
I know that look. I spent a miserable junior and senior year not fitting in to one of those schools where all the kids dressed like that.
I reach over and tap her shoulder. She slides one headphone off her ear and glances at me briefly. “Yes?” Her face is impassive, waiting. On the screen, the Notorious R.B.G. is giving a dissent wearing her black Supreme Court justice robes and a fancy bejeweled beaded collar.
“Hey, are you excited to be going to Italy for the summer?” I ask, giving her a friendly, encouraging smile.
She shrugs, glancing back to the documentary. “Not really.”
I survey her a little more boldly. In the years since I’ve seen her, Alex has grown into a pretty young woman.
She looks like a character from the manga graphic novels she has stuffed in her backpack, all huge cool gray eyes and a Cupid’s bow mouth.
We have the same mouth, I realize with a start of recognition, although I favor bold lipsticks and she is barefaced.
Her shoulder-length hair is pulled back in a sleek ponytail.
While my hair is a dark, burnished brown with a decided wave to it, hers is more of a light ash-brown shade and pin straight.
She resembles Ted more than she looks like any of the rest of us, but still when I look at her now, I see parts of my face in a stranger. It is a little disconcerting.
“Are you sad to miss camp?” I try again.
She pauses the documentary, then gives me a narrow look and snorts. “No.”
“Yeah, me neither. I hated that place.”
For a brief moment, a look of surprise flits across her face, replaced almost instantly by a slightly skeptical expression. “You went to Camp Champlain?” she asks.
“For one horrible summer the first year I lived with you guys in the city. I don’t think you’d remember, though.
You were a baby. I hated camp,” I tell her.
“I’m pretty sure I still have bug bites.
And I’m terrible at tennis. I got put with the elementary kids when I was going to be a junior in high school. The third graders beat me.”
Alex looks at me with a flicker of interest and maybe a touch of amusement, then shrugs again. “Tennis is okay. It’s the other kids who are the worst.”
I nod. I know what she means by that too.
A lot of the kids there come from families who have tons of money and little time to spare on them, raised by a revolving door of au pairs.
Many of them have spent their lives being shuttled from prep schools to enrichment activities to camps that run all summer.
By the time they reach high school, they’ve had to socially and emotionally fend for themselves for years.
It’s a tough, privileged crowd with an often brutal pecking order.
I never broke in, nor did I want to. I wasn’t rich enough, connected enough, or interested enough to try.
And the fact that I had just lost my dad and was still sort of a mess and also had a Seattle offbeat sense of style made me hopelessly uncool.
“Well, this summer is going to be great,” I tell her. “Nonna Bruna is my favorite person in the universe, and the olive farm has been in our family for seven generations. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, and it’s right on Lake Garda. You’re going to love it.”
She looks at me and shrugs unenthusiastically. “Okay.”
She un-pauses the documentary and puts her headphone back on. I’m a little taken aback. Clearly, she does not want to be here doing this. I blow out a breath, wondering just how I’m going to handle a prickly teen for two whole months.
The reality is that my half sister is virtually a stranger.
I know so little about her. Maybe I should have tried harder when she was younger, but her presence always stung.
If I’m honest, she’s always been a constant reminder that Lisa abandoned Dad, Aurora, and me for Ted and a new life and family.
I’ve given up trying to understand my mother’s choices, yet I’m still dealing with the fallout.
And now here I am, in charge of Alex for the summer, a responsibility I haven’t fully grasped until now.
I wonder what she thinks of this trip. Did she even want to go?
It doesn’t seem like it. I frown, considering the situation.
Like it or not, she’s going to be with me in Italy for the rest of the summer.
How are we going to relate to each other?
How will this all pan out? I sigh and take a sip of my ginger ale, mulling things over.
Just then the flight attendant leans over my seat. “I have a vegetarian meal for 13C?” She holds out a tray.
“Oh, sorry, I think there must be some mistake. I’m not a vegetarian,” I tell her.
Alex pulls her headphone away from her ear again. “It’s mine.”
I stare at her in surprise. “You’re a vegetarian?
” I ask. When did that happen? And we’re going to spend the summer in Italy ?
Oh boy. It’s going to be tough to bond over cooking.
I don’t remember Nonna’s recipes being super vegetarian friendly.
The flight attendant hands her the meal and offers me chicken or pasta.
I take the chicken, peeling back the foil and staring at the naked little shriveled white chicken breast on a bed of mashed potatoes.
“How long have you been a vegetarian?” I ask Alex, still trying to connect with her.
Alex rolls her eyes and stirs her rice and grilled vegetables. “Since seventh grade. I think eating meat is cruel, unethical, and environmentally irresponsible,” she informs me coolly. She shoots a pointed look at my tray, then spears a slice of her eggplant and turns back to the documentary.
I stare down at my little dry oval of chicken, at a loss for words. This could be a very long summer.