by Jen Carter
As we left the hotel room, Holly whispered to me, “Are you hungry?”
“Not hungry enough to ask Stella if we can stop for lunch first,” I whispered back. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I wanted to keep it that way. Stella could call the shots for the time being.
Holly nodded. “Maybe I have some lint in my pocket I can gnaw on. And maybe I shouldn’t tell her that I hid her clipboard in Vernazza before we left either.”
My sisters. Seriously.
***
I’d been profoundly confused a handful of times in my life. The most prominent time was when Mom and Dad died. There was also the time when my soccer team lost the state championship after being ahead four goals. And there was the time when Holly got into an Ivy League University but opted to stay in Southern California because she didn’t really like cold weather.
Walking through the doorway of the first Florence post office we tried became the fourth profoundly confusing moment in my life.
Nico was standing at the counter talking to an elderly worker who happened to look a lot like Aldo—except Aldo didn’t have quite so much hair growing out of his ears.
What was Nico doing there? Was I seeing things? We had taken a train to Florence that morning…hadn’t we? I was pretty sure I hadn’t dreamed that.
Nico turned as the bell over the door chimed. He grinned at us. “Hey, there they are. The honeymooners. Perfect timing.” He picked up the scrapbook that had been laying on the counter and waved it at us.
My sisters and I started talking at the same time. While it was probably hard to tell exactly what we each were saying, I’m sure Nico got the gist. What are you doing here?
“This morning Paola showed up at my shop,” Nico explained. “She said you left this scrapbook behind, and she was wondering if I knew how to get ahold of you. I knew where you were going, and I knew the scrapbook was pretty important since it belonged to your parents. I also haven’t been to Florence for at least a couple months, so I figured I’d bring it to you.”
“How did you get here so fast?” Stella asked.
“I guess I got lucky with the trains—barely any layovers.”
“How did you know where to go once you got here?” she asked.
“Good guess.”
I did some mental math. A trip to Florence and then a trip back to Vernazza—that was going to be a pretty long day for him. “What about your shop?” I asked. “Did you close for the day?”
Nico grinned again. “I put Vincenzo in charge. We’ll see if it’s still standing when I get back.”
“That’s ironic,” Holly said.
Stella gave Holly a stop-it-right-now look. Nico looked a little confused—and I felt a little confused myself—but before Holly could say anything else, I said, “Thank you so much. Losing this would have really thrown us for a loop.”
Nico’s eyes turned toward me. “Just paying it forward. But hey, there’s more.” He tilted his head to the postal worker. “This here is Lorenzo. I’ve been chatting with him for a couple minutes, and I think we have some good news.”
THIRTEEN
Lorenzo smiled and lifted his hand in greeting. We mirrored the gesture.
“Lorenzo used to know your grandfather,” Nico said. He looked at Lorenzo. “Aldo, sì?”
Lorenzo nodded. “Sì, sì. Aldo, sì.”
Nico turned back to us. “When I asked Lorenzo if he had seen you three and he said no, I told him you might be coming in with questions about a really old post office box. I didn’t give him many details—just that three twenty-something sisters might come around asking about something their parents left here decades ago. And that sparked a memory—”
Lorenzo interrupted Nico. His rapid Italian sounded so poetic and, to me, completely incomprehensible. I looked at Holly. As she listened to Lorenzo, her expression was unreadable.
The last two minutes had gone from confusing to straight weird. Nico showing up in Florence and talking to a postal worker about our grandfather in a language I didn’t understand—what?
“Okay,” Holly said suddenly. She pulled out her phone and tapped on its screen. “I’ll call him.” Glancing at me and Stella, she added, “Lorenzo would like confirmation that we’re Aldo’s granddaughters before anything else is said. He doesn’t really doubt us, but it’s the whole keeping-his-job responsibility thing. More or less.”
“It’s really early in California,” I said. “Is Aldo going to be awake?”
Holly didn’t reply. She pulled up Aldo’s number, placed the call, and then put the phone on speaker.
“Hello, Holly,” Aldo said after two rings. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?” Holly said. “By the way, you’re on speaker. I’m at the post office in Florence with Jill and Stella. And Nico and Lorenzo.”
“Hi, Jill. Hi, Stella,” Aldo said. Then he switched to Italian. I caught Nico and Lorenzo’s names but not much else. I assumed he was saying hello to them in a very long-winded manner. Typical Aldo.
Lorenzo launched into another lengthy Italian speech, this time directed at our grandfather on the phone. Every now and then Aldo responded with a word or two. I glanced at Stella, feeling my patience wearing down. When would we finally find out what was happening? Stella showed no signs of the impatience I was feeling—no pursed lips, no crossed arms, no nothing.
“Okay, okay,” Aldo said, finally switching back to English. “I will tell the story. Girls, are you ready?”
“Yes,” all three of us answered.
“Okay, good. Let’s see. So, Lorenzo and I grew up together. Of course when we were adults, he stayed in Italy, and I moved to America. Over the years, we stayed in touch so-so. You know, cards at Christmas. His wife was always good at sending the cards. Things like that. When your parents died, Lorenzo found out through friends and family. He didn’t know at the time that Lia and Marco had a post box from their honeymoon. But when a new payment for the box came due a couple years ago, he recognized the names. He connected the dots and called me. I didn’t know your parents had a post box either, but I told him that I’d pay to keep it until the next time I came to Italy. I thought maybe, you know, it would give me a good reason to take a trip.” Aldo chuckled. “But then I forgot. Maybe I should have told Lorenzo to mail me what was inside. But, well, I didn’t expect to forget about it.”
“Can we get in the box?” Holly said.
Aldo went back to Italian, which I assumed meant he was asking Lorenzo the question Holly just posed. Lorenzo responded to Aldo and then disappeared into the back off the building.
“Nonno,” Holly said into the phone, “Why were you expecting us to call?”
“Well, you called me two days ago from Vernazza about another post box. That reminded me of the box in Florence. I thought maybe if you knew about the one in Vernazza, you probably knew about the one in Florence. And you told me when you where getting there, so I knew you’d call again soon.”
Holly, still holding the phone between the three of us sisters looked up and shook her head as though to say, This is nuts.
Lorenzo returned with three rolls of paper. He placed them on the counter and spoke to Aldo again. After Aldo responded, Holly put her phone on the counter next to the papers.
“Okay,” she said. She reached for the first roll and slid off the twine encircling it. “Jill, help me.”
I grabbed the next roll and did the same. After Holly finished the first one, she handed it to Stella and grabbed the last one. As she slid the twine off that one, Stella and I unfurled the rolls we were holding. Once Holly unrolled the third, we laid all three on the counter.
They were pencil sketches. The first was Florence’s famous bridge, the Ponte Vecchio. The second was Mom sitting at a café. The third was a field of sunflowers.
“Nonno, they’re drawings,” Holly said. “And in the corner of each is Dad’s signature.”
“Oh yes, yes,” Aldo said. “Your father, he was a fantastic artist.”
> Holly looked at us, her mouth falling open slightly. Her look expressed exactly how I felt.
“Nonno, Dad was an artist?” I said. “Why didn’t we know this?”
Aldo didn’t respond right away.
“Well, you know, art is wonderful,” he said finally. “It’s beautiful. And your father had a lot of talent. But he knew what kind of life he wanted to give you girls. Art didn’t pay the bills like engineering did. So, I think, he put off his art. He wanted to focus on his family. His job. Responsibilities.”
It took a moment for Aldo’s explanation to sink in.
“When we were young, he drew cartoons on napkins and put them in our lunch boxes,” Stella said. “And instead of buying us coloring books, he made them for us.”
I had forgotten about all that, but Stella was right. I loved, loved, loved those lunchtime cartoons. When Ryan McMartin pulled on my ponytail or Carla Fenty made fun of my braces, those cartoons brightened my day. I used to put the napkins in my desk after lunch and look at them whenever someone gave me a hard time about being a bookworm.
The long-lost memory brought tears to my eyes.
“Ah, yes,” Aldo said. “He loved to draw. He knew it couldn’t be a career, but he still shared his talents with you in his own little ways. I think, maybe, he hoped to do more art in retirement.”
Aldo stopped there. He didn’t say what we were all thinking.
Dad never made it to retirement.
“Can we keep these?” Stella asked. “Can we keep the drawings?”
Aldo addressed Lorenzo in Italian. Lorenzo nodded and responded with a simple “Sì.”
Holly started wrapping up the conversation with Aldo, and I continued to stare at the drawings with tears in my eyes. I managed to tell my grandfather that I loved him before Holly hung up, but it was hard to focus with the new information that Aldo had just shared.
Our parents. I had always known that they were generous and kind. But on this trip, it was becoming clear that the depths of their love and sacrifice went further than I imagined. It saddened me that I never got to say thank you for all that I hadn’t known.
Dang.
After Holly hung up, she gathered Dad’s drawings, and we thanked Lorenzo. Walking out of the post office with Nico, I tried to dry my eyes. Why was I always crying around this guy?
Outside, Stella turned to Nico. “We’ll never be able to repay you for how you’ve helped us, but can we buy you lunch before you go back? Maybe treat you to a walk through a museum? Maybe the Galleria dell’Accademia?”
“That’s a really nice offer,” Nico said. “But I better get back home. I need to check on my ironic decision to leave Vincenzo in charge.” He gave Holly a sideways glance and then took a step back, giving us a little wave.
And then I did something really impulsive.
I rushed forward and threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you,” I said as he hugged me back.
As soon as I did it, I felt like I stepped over a line. But I couldn’t help myself—he had ridden trains for two or three hours to solve a problem my sisters had created and helped reveal pieces of my dad’s life we hadn’t known about. It was a lot to take in, and a hug seemed appropriate. At least, it did until it seemed inappropriate.
After I let go and stepped back, Nico smiled at me in a way that left me feeling even more embarrassed. He was really too good looking for his own good.
“Hey, let me give you honeymooners my number in case you need anything else,” he said. “Just in case.”
Holly still had her phone out, but I quickly snatched mine from my pocket so I could be the one to get his number. She may have been faster in Vernazza when we both wanted to call Aldo, but I beat her this time.
After he recited the number to me, I almost asked if he wanted a way to reach us, but I managed to stop myself. Of course he didn’t need a way to reach us. We were the numbskulls bumbling around Italy and losing things. He didn’t need us.
I may have nearly knocked him over with an unnecessary hug, but at least I didn’t insist on giving him my phone number.
As he walked away, I was sad to see him go.
Once he was out of earshot, Stella smacked the back of Holly’s head. “What is wrong with you?” she said. “Why did you say it was ironic that Nico left Vincenzo in charge of the shop? That was so rude.”
“Hey, ouch—stop!” Holly said, ducking away from Stella. “I couldn’t stop myself. It is ironic. I know that I shouldn’t have said it, but I did, and there’s no going back. Sorry.”
“I’m lost,” I said. “What’s the irony?”
Stella gave Holly a long death stare. Holly responded with a string of Italian, and I could only assume she was calling Stella some colorful names.
Stella finished giving Holly the evil eye and then turned to me. “When we went out that night in Vernazza—the night you stayed in—we ran into Vincenzo. We were at a little wine bar, and we got to talking with him. He said that Nico’s wine shop used to be his. And Nico swindled him out of it—stole it right out from underneath him.”
“That seems unlikely,” I said.
Did I even need to point out that the only times we saw Vincenzo were when he was drinking, including pre-noon drinking? My sisters couldn’t possibly think that Vincenzo was a credible source. Surely I didn’t.
“And,” Stella said with a sigh, “Vincenzo said that Nico’s married.”
The reasonable response to Stella’s statement probably was, That’s nice. Because who cared if some guy we met in Italy was married?
But instead, I stupidly said, “Paola said that he lived alone.”
Stella nodded. “Vincenzo said there was a big scandal with Nico and his wife. He didn’t say it exactly, but he implied that Nico’s wife kicked him out. And even though they don’t live together, they’re still married.”
I still didn’t really think Vincenzo was a reliable source, but I could have lived without hearing his claims.
“We weren’t going to tell you,” Stella said. “You seemed to like Nico, and since we thought we’d never see him again after leaving Vernazza, there really wasn’t any point in bringing it up. But then Holly opened her big mouth and ruined that.” Stella whacked Holly again.
I nodded. “I guess I did kind of like him. And I don’t believe Vincenzo, but it doesn’t matter. Like you said, we’re not going to see him again.”
Stella whacked Holly for a third time.
“Stop!” Holly said.
We started walking back to our hotel.
This had been a very strange afternoon in so many ways.
FOURTEEN
My sisters and I didn’t talk much about Dad or his art after vising the post office, though I’m sure we were all thinking about it. Stella had planned for us to visit the Duomo later that day, and as we climbed more than four hundred steps to the top of the dome, I wondered why I hadn’t known more about what an incredible artist Dad had been. How much joy did it bring him? How much of that joy did he miss experiencing because he was too busy making sure we lived comfortably? I wished he had more time to do what he loved.
And I wondered about Mom’s parents in Rome. We would be there in just a couple days. I probably needed to tell Stella and Holly that I had tracked them down, and yet with the new revelation about Dad, it seemed like too much for one afternoon.
I wondered if Mom’s parents knew she had died. It seemed like that news would have traveled back to them. But then, they hadn’t returned to America to bury their daughter. Would they have—it they had known? Did they regret disowning her?
I’d probably never know.
But I couldn’t think too much about Mom and Dad because the climb to the top of the Duomo required a good bit of concentration. Despite being decently-lit, the stone steps and walls were remarkably dark and medieval in a creepy way. The stairs were steep and narrow, and although I was fairly athletic, I could be clumsy if I let my mind wander off. I was more than happy once we made it to the top
, and I tried not to think about the return trip down. Steep steps were easier going up than down for clumsy people like me.
The view was breathtaking. At the very top, we could step outside on a railed balcony that ran all the way around the dome. The whole city stretched out below us: the red roofs of all shapes and sizes, the halo of green hills surrounding the red roofs, and beyond that, the blue sky completing the masterpiece. No wonder Florence was the birthplace of brilliance during the Renaissance. Of course great artists during the Renaissance weren’t treated to the view at the top of the Duomo—it hadn’t been completed yet—but there was something about the green fields, the blue sky, and the air itself. It was different there. If the formula for falling in love could be bottled, I’d guess that the air in Florence would be a main ingredient.
Firmly grasping the railing and breathing in the special Florentine air, I turned to Stella on my right. “I know that you have tomorrow all planned out for us. There are lots of museums for us to hit. But I did run across a website that suggested renting bikes while here and seeing some of the surrounding city. I’d like to do that. Could we squeeze it in?”
“Nope,” Holly said on my left. “I want to go to the museums. And I haven’t ridden a bike in fifteen years. I’d rather not spend the rest of the trip in a hospital after a catastrophic fall into a priceless monument or fountain.”
Fair enough. I also didn’t want to spend the rest of the trip in a hospital, and come to think of it, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in Holly on a bike either.
“I ride bikes with Hudson and Thatcher just about every day at home, and I’m rather enjoying not riding bikes right now,” Stella said. “But why don’t you do that tomorrow morning? I bought front-of-the-line museum passes, so maybe Holly and I can go to the museums you don’t care much about while you’re gone, and then when you’re back, we’ll visit the museums you’re most interested in. Sound good?”
That did sound good.
In a way, I was starting to appreciate being on this trip with my sisters. Holly and I were different enough that we happily went our own ways sometimes—and I loved that. Stella was a control freak, but she was gracious when I threw a wrench in the plans she painstakingly put together for the trip. The three of us were so different, but it worked out. Probably because Mom and Dad sacrificed to give us the kind of lives where we could grow into who we were meant to be. We never had to fit a mold.