Wish You Were Italian

by Kristin Rae

  Tears prick my eyes and my throat is officially on fire.

  “Morgan filled in the blanks for us.”

  I refrain from pointing out that more involved parents would have noticed right away that their daughter wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Maybe in the back of my mind I wanted them to figure it out all along. To worry about me. And now that I know they didn’t, that they were content with me out of their way and getting groomed so they could get their work done …

  Just another crack in my heart next to the one with Gram’s name on it. Next to the one with Darren’s name.

  Unable to stop fidgeting, I sweep my tangles into a sloppy pile on top of my head and secure it with a band. The ends are crunchy from the salt water, but I push the happy memory with Darren aside.

  “Pippa.” Dad sighs for the millionth time since we sat down. I can feel his eyes burning holes through me as he waits for me to look at him before continuing. “Do you have any idea how scared we were? To find out that you’d been lying to us for two months? That we didn’t know exactly where you were? If you were safe?”

  “Morgan knew where I was. And it’s not like I didn’t keep in touch with you guys. I e-mailed Mom all the time. I even Skyped with her,” I say, but my confidence is waning. “And I talked to Gram every week, sometimes more. She was fine with it.”

  He ignores me. “You are a young, beautiful girl gallivanting alone across a foreign country during high tourist season. You could ha—”

  “And whose fault was that?” I say, raising my voice.

  He leans closer and keeps his tone down. “You’re completely oblivious, aren’t you? At how lucky you are. Lucky you didn’t get killed, or worse. Do you know how many young girls get kidnapped and sold into sex slavery?” He squeezes my hand tighter. “How could you just … not think? I don’t understand you. I know we raised you better than that. You’ve completely disrespected us.”

  “I did think. I saw all the money you gave me and I thought, wow, I can do whatever I want now that I’m here and no one’s dictating me anymore.”

  “Oh, the money. That’s great. Your mom will love to know it’s my fault. I suppose I practically told you to skip town.”

  “No one told me to skip town, that’s the point. I made my own decision for, like, the first time in my life. I did what I wanted.”

  He rubs his temples. “You’re almost eighteen and I’m sure you’ll try to find a college as far away from us as possible.” He shifts in his seat, the leather squeaking underneath him. “Soon we won’t be able to tell you what to do anymore. But I want you to think for just one minute how dangerous that was. And lying to—”

  “I get it, I lied. It was wrong. I was horrible. What do you want me to say, I’m sorry? Okay, I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  “I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry I didn’t think about how dangerous it was.”

  But I can’t be sorry I met Darren, even if I die a little every time his face pops into my mind. Although if I hadn’t even gone, his face wouldn’t come to mind at all, and I wouldn’t know what I was missing. And Gram …

  “If I hadn’t gone,” I manage to say despite my quivering chin, “Gram might not be in a coma.”

  “Don’t play that game, Pippa,” he warns, his angry tone matching mine.

  “What game?”

  “The ‘what if’ game.” He reclines the seat and closes his eyes. “You won’t win.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  She was supposed to wait for me. At least until I was able to say good-bye while her heart was still beating. But she died before my plane even landed.

  They call it Talk and Die. She hit her head on the wall as she fell and everything checked out fine when they examined her. She even made jokes, they said. But the next day, her brain began to bleed, weakened from the impact. By the time they realized what was happening, she’d slipped into a coma and it was too late to do anything.

  Dad takes care of the paperwork right away so Mom doesn’t have to think about it. The rest of us zombies are ushered into a private waiting room.

  “Why didn’t she hang on so everyone had a chance to say good-bye?” I ask softly, the shock of knowing I will never hear Gram’s voice again slowly taking hold of my body. “They always hang on—”

  “This is real life, Philippa, not one of your movies,” my mother says, her tone even, flat. Beyond a fierce hug when Dad and I arrived at the hospital this evening, she’s hardly looked at me.

  Morgan’s in the chair next to me, her fingers running absently through the sections of my hair that fell out of the band. I don’t like people playing with my hair, but I don’t tell her to stop. She needs to comfort me, so I let her.

  I glance at my mom sitting across from us, her glassed-over eyes staring at the floor. She traces the diamond pattern on the carpet with the tip of her shoe. I know she’s hurting, but I’m jealous she was here for Gram. I wasn’t. And that’s Mom’s fault.

  “I should have been here,” I say, an edge to my voice that I don’t try to hide. “You shouldn’t have made me go to that school. You knew I didn’t want to.”

  Mom’s eyes bore through me. Morgan goes so still, I wonder if she’s breathing.

  “You didn’t even go to the program so don’t give me that.”

  I raise my voice and sit taller. “If I’d been here with her, it probably wouldn’t have happened, don’t you get that? I would have spent time with her—”

  “Yelling at me because you’re angry isn’t going to bring her back.”

  I shrink in my seat and stare at my hands. I’ve picked at my hangnails so much in the past twenty-four hours, a few of them are bleeding. But I welcome the pain. It’s so hard to believe that someone can be talking and laughing one minute, in a coma the next, and then dead. She’s dead. Gone. There’s a scarf for her in my luggage that she’ll never get to wear. It can’t be real. My greatest ally. The only person in my life who actually knew how to love, who never made me doubt she loved me for even a second. Gone.

  I risk a glance at Mom and she’s still staring at me, eyes bugged and watery. Her bottom lip is trembling. I’ve never ever seen her get emotional about anything in my life.

  I pull in a shaky breath. “Mom?”

  She looks at the floor as a single tear slips down her flushed cheek. “Was I really so terrible to you?” Her voice is so quiet, I strain to hear, watching her lips form the words.

  “What are y—”

  “I just don’t understand.” She pauses, swallowing. “What did I do to make you want to run away?”

  “That’s what you think I did?”

  “What was I supposed to think? You just take off and do your own thing, tricking us all into believing you’re safe.”

  “I was sa—”

  “I didn’t know I was going to have to hold your hand and march you into that school myself,” she mutters.

  I visualize that nightmare and inwardly cringe.

  “So what was it?” When I don’t respond, she prompts, “What made you do it? What made you lie to us?”

  I shake my head. “Gram knew where I was.”

  Mom winces. “We’re not talking about her right now, we’re talking about you and me. She wasn’t your mother. I am.”

  She wasn’t your mother. Wasn’t—past tense.

  As I bite back the lump in my throat, I slide my eyes to Morgan who looks just as terrified as I feel. This is it. My chance to tell Mom exactly how I feel. Everything I’ve been holding in for years. She’s actually asking. She wants to know.

  “You never listen to me,” I begin slowly, carefully. “If you did, you would have realized that I had no interest in going to Italy by myself to study art.”

  “But I—”

  “Please, Mom, you’re doing it even now. Just listen.” I wait a beat before continuing. “I understand you want so much for me, I get it. But it’s always what you want. I want you to want what I want for me.”

  Morgan
shifts in her seat, and I shoot her a look that I hope says, Don’t you dare leave me.

  “You pressure me and push me toward things I don’t see in my future. You don’t support me in the things I love to do.” I’m on a roll now, heart racing. “Gram bought me my camera because even she knew what it meant to me. She saw I had the talent to do something with it, and she encouraged me. Dad comes to my plays, but you hardly ever make the effort. I take vacations with Morgan’s family because we never go anywhere together. We never do anything together. We don’t even eat dinner in the same room.”

  I have to stop to catch my breath. My chin quivers and my fingers are shaking. I think I’m about to lose it. Mom doesn’t look like she’s too far behind me either.

  “Why didn’t you just talk to me?” she manages. “Told me how you felt before?”

  “Oh, I stopped trying to get through to you years ago. It never did any good. I made one last-ditch effort before Italy, but you were set.”

  “And that’s what made you run away once you got there …”

  “Mom. I didn’t run away.” I rest my elbows on my knees and lean forward. “I just took the opportunity to stand on my own, you know? To have a couple of months where I could breathe.”

  More tears sneak down her face. “When I found out you weren’t at the school, I—” She covers her eyes with her hands and I can tell she’s holding back a sob. “I was so scared I was going to lose you too.”

  I see Morgan swipe at her eyes, and I do the same. “I’m sorry. I know what I did was wrong. I just … wish you’d be more, I don’t know, there. For me. I don’t want us to end up like—” I can’t believe what I was about to say. It might kill her.

  “Like me and my mom,” she finishes for me, eyes locked on mine.

  All I can do is nod. We both know their relationship was crap. They went years without speaking, and even when Gram came to live with us, things were tense.

  “I never knew how to be a good mother,” she says. “That magic power people seem to get when they have a child never came to me.”

  I don’t bring up the fact that Gram was amazing, so she should have known something. Why didn’t she just follow Gram’s example in the same way I’m learning from my mom what not to do with my own kids one day?

  “I thought I was doing the best I could.” A sob breaks free but she quickly regains control. “I hope you know how much I love you. I really do. I hate that you might not know that. I’m so scared it’s too late. I don’t want it to be too late for us, Pippa.”

  My eyes sting and my vision blurs. Hope blooms deep inside me. “Me neither.”

  Her chest heaves and she buckles over. She leans forward so far, she begins to slide off the chair. Morgan and I both rush to catch her. She grips my arms and I fall with her, the three of us a weeping heap on the floor.

  “My mom’s gone,” she says, burying her head in the crook of my neck, her entire body shaking. She mumbles, “I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”

  The regret in her voice is thick. My heart finishes the break, completely shattering. All that time they spent arguing is lost. It’s too late to mend fences, they’ve all been torn down.

  With my mother in my arms, completely broken and vulnerable, I feel her desperation transfer to me. We have to fix this. Us. Me and her. We can’t go through the rest of our lives like she did with her mother, because some day it’s going to be too late.

  We had Gram’s funeral on the first of August, the day before her birthday. She lived a long time, nearly seventy-eight years. Not as long as some, but longer than others. It’s what you do with your years, not the number of them, that matters most. Sounds like something she’d say. And she was my biggest fan. She believed that I was capable of everything under the sun. I’m still not convinced, but the memory of her encouragement motivates me to not do anything halfway from now on. You only live once. And she wouldn’t want me to regret anything.

  Punishment for my behavior is imminent, but to help with the grieving, Morgan’s been allowed to spend every available moment in what’s left of our summer with me. When she’s not with the boyfriend, that is. Most of the time we sprawl out on my bed, her nose in a book, mine in Photoshop, slowly working through my Italy photos.

  Sorting the Pompeii pictures into their own folder on my computer, my stomach drops when I find the picture of Darren standing in the Great Theater, that sly grin still daring me to make the image my background picture.

  “Morgan,” I say preparing to turn the screen toward her. “I need to tell you about someone.”

  “Darren?” she asks, brightening. She rolls onto her side and closes her book.

  “How—?”

  “The journal,” she says. “You wrote ‘I like Darren,’ remember? I was wondering when I’d get to hear the story.”

  I laugh. “You could have asked.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure what happened, and with Gram and everything … I was just letting you deal.” She props her head up in her hand. “Now spill.”

  I show her the picture.

  “Pippa!” Her hand flies up to her mouth, eyes wide, and she sits up to get a closer look. “He’s adorable! Man, look at all that hair.”

  I’ve been home two weeks and I miss him more every day. What went through his mind when I wasn’t there to meet him? I’d hoped Chiara saw him and explained everything, but when I talked to her a few days after I got back, she said she didn’t work that morning. Of course, had she known Darren was supposed to meet me, she would have told him what happened. If only I’d thought to tell her in the chaos of that night. But I can’t go back. And even if I could, the only thing on my mind at that point still would have been Gram.

  My eyes sting as I fight back tears.

  “Oh, Pippers.” Morgan leans over to put a hand on my shoulder. “Tell me.”

  We lie back on my bed, staring at the ceiling, and I start at the beginning, telling her every detail. Running into him in Rome, when I hurt my ankle in Cinque Terre and had to piggyback. How he was always popping up on weekends. When he asked me to go south with him, Tate, and Nina. The kissing.

  “He gave me these,” I say, pulling the paper sack full of magnets from my desk drawer and spreading them out on my bed.

  “You’ve been to all these places?”

  “Everywhere except Florence, the one place I was supposed to be all summer.” I laugh. “He thought it was funny that Mom never allowed magnets on the fridge, so he bought me one everywhere we went.”

  Morgan smiles. “How romantic!”

  I attempt to raise one eyebrow. “Is it?”

  “It’s precious.” She bites her lip and jumps to her feet, stacking all the magnets together. “You know what you have to do, right?”

  I suddenly feel very possessive. Why is she handling my magnets? “What?”

  She starts for the door. “We’re putting them on your fridge.”

  We pad our way downstairs to the kitchen. Mom’s sitting on a stool at the bar staring at an untouched piece of toast, hands wrapped around a coffee mug. Small piles of mail surround her on the counter. Her head perks when we enter the kitchen and go straight for the fridge to arrange the magnets. We keep them as organized as possible, knowing we’re already breaking a rule so it better at least look presentable. I hold my breath as the last magnet snaps into place, and Morgan and I turn to face my mom.

  She opens her mouth and I’m sure she’s about to say “Get those off my fridge this instant.” Instead she simply says, “Those look nice.”

  Mom and I share a smile. This is progress. We’re going to be okay.

  “Something came for you in the mail,” she says, sliding a small envelope across the counter. “From Italy.”

  I snatch it and study the handwriting. It’s not Chiara’s.

  Pulse pounding in my ears, Morgan and I race back upstairs and shut the door to my bedroom.

  “Open it, open it!” Morgan chants. “Who’s it from?”

  “I have no idea.” I
tear at the thin envelope and pull out a 4x6 photo. It’s me, my profile. Eyes wide in wonder, lips slightly parted in awe. “Get. Out. This was the moment I first saw the Colosseum.”

  “What?” She looks at the photo. “Who took that?”

  There’s nothing else inside the envelope. I turn the photo over and we read the note on the back written in small, careful handwriting.

  I miss you, Pipperoni.

  —Darren

  I swallow the lump in my throat and look up at Morgan. We both have tears in our eyes.

  “Why are you crying?” I ask, laughing.

  “Because this is the single most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!” she says, swiping at the corner of her eye. “How did he get your address? I thought you never exchanged info.”

  “We didn’t.” I sit down on my bed and invent scenarios. “Maybe Chiara really did see him. Maybe she didn’t want me to know, so this could be a surprise?”

  “Oh, I would die to have something this epic happen to me,” Morgan squeals. She falls onto the bed with the back of her hand against her forehead as if she’s fainted.

  I log into my e-mail and compose a letter to Chiara, telling her to call me right away. Then I stare at Darren’s note some more, especially the “I miss you” part. And the “Darren” part. Which is basically the whole thing.

  Darren misses me.

  Goals update:

  Don’t get arrested

  Don’t make a fool out of myself in public—FAILED

  Get my picture taken at the Colosseum

  Find random souvenir for Morgan

  Get a makeover

  See Pompeii

  Swim in the Mediterranean Sea

  Have a conversation with someone in only Italian—FAILED

  Eat a whole pizza in one sitting

  Fall in love with an Italian—FAILED

  A few more days pass and Mom finally dives headfirst back into work, arranging for the gallery to be opened sooner than they originally planned. Dad’s in California meeting with some photographer about displaying his work. Apparently I inspired them to support more than one type of art. I’m even preparing some of my Italy images for display. There just might be perks to working in the family gallery after all.