by Vendela Vida
“I’ll come back later,” I lie.
We continue down the promenade. A breeze from the sea below scatters the heat. We pass two Carabinieri talking to a photographer.
“Do you know it’s illegal to be a paparazzi here?” Maria Fabiola says. “Yesterday Hugh and I were out on the water and all these fishing boats around us were filled with men with cameras with long lenses. They were desperate to get photos of the party on some rapper’s yacht.”
I don’t know what the correct response is. “Shameful,” I say.
We pass a church where a wedding is about to take place. The bridesmaids pose outside with white bouquets. Their dresses are silk, dark fuchsia, and too heavy for this heat.
Maria Fabiola and I approach the piazza. We pick a casual, relatively empty restaurant and sit at a shaded outdoor table. The waiter approaches and we each order a glass of wine and a prosciutto and melon appetizer and caprese salad to share. A boy kicks a soccer ball into the middle of the piazza and I watch as he runs after it.
“Do you have children?” she asks.
“One,” I say, “a boy.” And then, for no reason, I feel the need to explain. “I became a mom late,” I say. “I was married before and it ended. Then I miscarried twice—both times were devastating. I’m happy to have the one.” I tell her about Gabriel and how we spend every weekend, it seems, on a train. “He’s at that age,” I say. I reach for my phone so I can show her a photo.
“Oh, no, let’s not be cliché,” she says. “Let’s try to be European and not bring our phones out on the table.”
“Okay,” I say, replacing my phone in my bag. I remember how she had a way of making me feel crass. “What about you? Do you have children?”
She hesitates. She stares at me and a smile overtakes her face. “Three daughters,” she says.
“Ah, that’s like out of a fairy tale,” I say.
Her smile vanishes. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“You know, the number three is always in fairy tales. Three bears, three pigs, three daughters. Three’s the charm.”
“You were always so into reading your stories,” she says.
And you were so into making up yours, I want to say. But we’ve grown up now, and so I refrain.
We drink our wine, we laugh.
Before long, a large table near ours is populated by a group of beautiful young women.
“They must be models,” I whisper to Maria Fabiola. She says “Yes” without looking at them. The tables around the models fill quickly. People the world over believe beauty is contagious.
We listen to the models speak accented English with one another. Russian, Slovakian, Dutch, we guess. Three of the four are smoking. Passersby stop, stare, move on. Soon, though, the attention seems to be waning, so one of the models stands up and takes two loping steps into the piazza. “Hey bitches,” she says, far too loudly, “can you tell I’ve been working out?”
All the young women compliment her physique. Now the attention of the piazza, two hundred pairs of eyes, is back upon the table of models. The models look away, feigning disgust.
“I hope my girls don’t grow up to be models,” Maria Fabiola says. But there is something in her voice that implies that this will be difficult to fight—their beauty will pull them inexorably toward modelhood.
The food arrives and over lunch Maria Fabiola tells me about her daughters. Their names are Simone, Cleo, and Mirabella. The youngest is interested in ballet, the two older girls play tennis, like their father.
The church bells start to clang loudly. We watch the newly married couple emerge from the small church, holding hands. Everyone in the restaurant and in the piazza stands and applauds. The bride’s and groom’s eyes blink quickly, like newborns adjusting to the light.
“So how much time do you spend translating?” she asks, turning toward me.
“A lot,” I say. “It’s what I do.”
“That’s really your job?” she says. “Like your profession?”
“It’s on my business card,” I say and shrug.
“Can I see?” she says.
“My card?” I ask, taken aback. “Sure, I just got new ones.” I open my purse and hand one to her.
She studies the card and turns it over. In her hands I see that the paper stock is flimsy. She turns her profile to me as she looks out into the distance. “Sorry I’m so distracted,” she says, “but I’m here on business.”
I can tell she’s waiting for me to ask what kind of business and so I do.
“I’m thinking about buying the hotel.”
“The hotel we’re staying in?”
“Yes,” she says. “And maybe the festival, too.”
“It’s for sale?” I ask.
“Oh, Eulabee,” she says. “Everything is for sale.”
I try to catch her eye, but she starts looking through her purse for something. “Ah, found it,” she says, and produces a tube of lipstick.
To get back to the hotel we have to return the same way we came. I take in the fact we are together on the promenade with the electric blue water below. We spent much of our youth walking side by side, and here we are again, on another cliff, above another ocean.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” I say and pause.
We continue walking and she looks away, at the many boats below, as though something has caught her attention, as though knowing what I’m going to ask.
“What do you think happened that day when we walked to school and there was the white car . . . ?” I say. I try to speak casually, but it comes out sounding planned.
“What?” she says.
“Remember the white car? There was a man in it, and the police were called and came to school.” I look at her to see if she really could have forgotten.
We walk in silence for a minute longer.
“Yeah,” she says. “That was really weird.”
“Yup,” I say.
Yeah, she said. Yup, I said.
I look at her and try to see her eyes through her Celine glasses. But her silence and her body, which is tense, tell me I have lost her again.
When we return to the hotel, she holds my shoulders with her hands and kisses me on both cheeks. This is the exact way she greeted me at the pool.
* * *
I DINE WITH INÊS and several of the other festival authors and translators. The restaurant is elegant and we are all underdressed. Inês talks about her day at San Michele, and how the owner of the estate, someone named Munthe, was the personal doctor to Queen Victoria of Sweden, who was unhappily married to King Gustaf. Munthe required the queen come to him on Capri for treatment, and everyone suspected that their relationship was more than that of doctor and patient. This story is discussed and laughed about through the first three courses. But after the fourth, we each look at the menu, discreetly trying to ascertain how many courses are left before we can leave.
We excuse ourselves before dessert—we blame jet lag (me) and old age (Inês)—and walk arm-in-arm down the maze of steps that will eventually take us to the hotel. We stop to ask directions from local residents walking their well-groomed dogs. Back at the hotel I escort Inês to her room. She seems worn out by the trip, and disappointed in the day. I think she had romantic intentions for the young man who escorted her to San Michele, and things did not pan out as she wished.
I stand on the tiled balcony off my room, staring out at the terra-cotta roof of another hotel. I was looking forward to this weekend and now I just want to be home with my husband and his suede-colored eyes, and my son and his trains and warm hands. For years I wanted to see Maria Fabiola again and talk about what happened with us. I wanted an ending, or an explanation for why she had started the avalanche of lies all those years ago. Instead I met her husband, who had been told so little about her past.
* * *
I SEE HUGH AT BREAKFAST. He’s wearing a peach collared shirt and eating alone at a table set with silver. Maria Fabiola is skipping breakfast becaus
e she doesn’t want to run into me.
“Good morning,” I say to him.
“Good morning,” he says, and wipes his mouth. He stands and gestures for me to join him at the table. I sit and he helps push my chair in before returning to his seat.
“Heading off today?” he asks.
I tell him my mother-in-law is packing and after breakfast we’ll take the ferry back. He gives me a recommendation of a restaurant he loves in Naples and tells me the name of the maître d’. This is what the wealthy do, I think. They spend their expensive meals talking about other expensive meals.
The waiter comes by and offers me a cappuccino. “Signora Batista was already here,” he says. “You missed her.”
“Yes,” I say. “I slept in.”
“Hotels,” Hugh muses when the waiter has left. “They know everybody’s business. They probably know my wife is having a massage right now. She’s the only person I know who gets massages at ten in the morning.”
Hugh is easy to talk to. I have forgotten what he does for a living and settle into thinking of him as a tennis pro. His conversation is an intermediate lesson given to a new pupil. He lobs me a ball and waits for me to hit it back. If I miss, he serves me another ball.
Hugh tells me he’s happy to meet me since he has met so few of his wife’s friends from childhood, from San Francisco. “I always imagine what it would be like to live there,” he says. “My company has an office near Cupertino so I could make the switch. We know a man who works in real estate. High-end properties. His name is Wallenberg. Do you know him?”
“I used to,” I say. The last time I saw Axel Wallenberg in person was at the welcome-back party for Maria Fabiola. “He went to a different school.”
“That’s right. It must have been so strange for you women to grow up in an all-girls school. You know what Maria always says.”
My eyes open wide. He calls her Maria.
“She says that you were all molded into being replicas of one another. She says the only way out was to be extraordinary.”
I’m at a loss for words. “Well, she is extraordinary,” I finally say.
He smiles a polite smile. This is something he hears often. He signals to the waiter that he’d like coffee.
“Do you think if you moved to the Bay Area you’d send your daughters to Spragg?” I ask.
Hugh stares at me. “My daughters?” he says. Something about the way he looks at me makes me fearful. “Who told you I had daughters?” he asks.
Oh god, I think. “Maria Fabiola told me . . .” I say. “She told me about her three daughters.”
“Can we go outside for a minute?” he says and stands without waiting for my response.
We walk out onto the balcony and find two middle-aged women admiring each other’s bracelets. “No,” he mumbles and turns. I follow him to a staircase off the rear of the breakfast room. He suddenly looks like a man who desperately needs a vacation, not like a man who is in the midst of one.
“You have to understand,” he says, as though he is going to tell me the secret to life. But instead of sharing he is so silent I can hear the still air. “She does this . . . ,” he starts to say.
A maid ascends the staircase with fresh tablecloths. She seems surprised to see us there. “Scusatemi,” she says, but Hugh seems unaware of his surroundings and barely moves to let her by. She hustles past us.
“We don’t have daughters,” he says and opens his fists like a magician at the end of a trick. “We’ll probably never see you again, but I wanted to correct the record in case you talk to your other friends.” Hugh looks at me meaningfully. It’s clear he’s been in a situation like this before.
I stare out at the ocean. I think back to my lunch with Maria Fabiola. Of course she said she had three children. I had one, and had two miscarriages. That made three. I contemplate asking Hugh if Maria Fabiola’s really planning to buy the hotel, the festival, but suddenly I’m exhausted, and besides, I know the answer.
* * *
INÊS AND I TAKE THE FUNICULAR down to the port, and board our ferry. She wants to sit on top and secures two seats near the bow. “You know that Homer wrote about this island,” she says.
I ask her to remind me. I haven’t read The Odyssey since Mr. London’s class.
“This is where the sirens called from, where they lured the sailors to their deaths. Odysseus put wax in the ears of his sailors so they wouldn’t hear their song. But Odysseus wanted to hear it, so he tied himself to the mast so he could listen without being tempted.”
The ferry pulls away from the port.
“I’m thirsty,” Inês says. “Are you?”
I walk downstairs to the snack bar. As I’m returning, my phone begins to ring. The call is from a number I don’t recognize, so I ignore it.
A second later I get a text. It’s a photo of three beautiful, dark-haired girls. Another text comes through. “My babies,” it says.
Maria Fabiola has my number from my business card. I zoom in on the photo. I’m not sure whose three girls they are, but she did a good job—they look like her, ethereal-eyed and with her full lips.
Inês is watching Naples coming toward us at a turtle’s pace. I hand her a bottle of water and sit next to her, inhaling her nutmeg scent.
Another text comes through. Maria Fabiola is asking me to submit the photo of the girls to the Spragg alumnae bulletin. “Simone is the troublemaker,” one says. “Cleo is the peacemaker,” says another. “Mirabella is the enigma,” says another. “A little bit like you.”
The texts keep coming, the arrival of each announced by the phone’s loud sing-song alert. “Hope they don’t turn out like those models yesterday!” reads one, followed by “Bitches!”
“That was a joke because of the models!” reads the next.
I turn down the volume and place the phone deep in my bag.
When we arrive in Naples, the ferry lurches forward, and then back before righting itself. The passengers all rush to the doors. I gather our suitcases and help Inês off the boat. My phone rings again, louder now. The jostling in the bag must have turned the volume back up.
I look behind me at Capri, as though I can see Maria Fabiola there calling, calling.
“Who keeps trying to reach you?” Inês asks.
“Long story,” I say.
We’re surrounded by tourists rushing to get onto the ferry, to go where we’ve been. I steer our suitcases through the throng. I’m sweating in the heat.
“This way,” I say, leading us in the opposite direction of the bright blue sea, but the ringing only grows louder.
Acknowledgments
What would I do without my family? Thank you to my parents, Paul and Inger, and to my sister, Vanessa, for so much, for everything, for a lifetime of kindness. Thank you to Dave for endless encouragement and countless reads, and to our kids, for constant inspiration and for this book’s title.
Enormous thanks to my incomparable agent, Nicole Aragi, and to Edwidge Danticat for introducing us. Thank you to everyone at Aragi Inc.and to Brooke Ehrlich at Anonymous Content. I’m indebted to my longtime editor, Daniel Halpern, and to Gabriella Doob for all her work on behalf of this novel. Thank you also to Helen Atsma, Sonya Cheuse, Elizabeth Yaffe, Michelle Crowe, Lydia Weaver, Leda Scheintaub, and everyone at Ecco. Thank you also to my foreign advocates and publishers: Felicity Rubinstein at Lutyens & Rubinstein, Karen Duffy and everyone at Atlantic, and Lina Muzur at Hanser.
I’m so grateful to my fellow McSweeney’s board members, especially those whose support during the writing of this book nurtured me in innumerable ways: to Gina Pell for many conversations about literature in general and this novel in particular, to both Isabel Duffy and Caterina Fake for literally giving me the keys to quiet spaces in which to work when I was nearing the finish line, and to Natasha Boas for her advice about covers. Enormous thanks as well to Amanda Uhle, Hilary Kivitz, and Brian Dice, and to Bibiana Liete for help with my Portuguese translation questions.
; I’m also grateful to Jennifer Bunshoft and Nínive Calegari for answering my questions, and to Eve Weinsheimer for her great eye, and to Em-J Staples for her close read. Charlotte Trounce: thank you for the stunning cover art.
And thank you to my writer friends, those indulgers and truthsayers, who read so many drafts of this book: Ann Packer, Rafael Yglesias, Sarah Stone, Ron Nyren, Lisa Michaels, Angela Pneuman, Ann Cummins, Steven Willis, Cornelia Nixon, Tiffany Shlain, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, and Amanda Eyre Ward. My deepest thanks to Heidi Julavits for her wise edits and decades of friendship.
About the Author
VENDELA VIDA is the award-winning author of six books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. She is a founding editor of The Believer magazine, and co-editor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. She was a founding board member of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing center for youth, and lives in the Bay Area with her family.
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Also by Vendela Vida
The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty
The Lovers
Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence:
The Best of the Believer Music Interviews (co-ed.)
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers (ed.)
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
And Now You Can Go
Girls on the Verge
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WE RUN THE TIDES. Copyright © 2021 by Vendela Vida. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.