by Jen Carter
I was glad. Grateful. Orphaned but blessed nonetheless.
It must have been that Florentine air.
***
That evening, we went to a little restaurant near the Ponte Vecchio, which was the beautiful, historic bridge crossing the Arno River—the one that Dad had sketched nearly three decades ago. The bridge itself was lined by shops stuffed full of jewelry and leather goods, probably priced specially for tourists, and while Holly and I had promised to peruse the goods with Stella after dinner, it was really the view from the restaurant that I was most interested in. I imagined that the bridge all lit up at night was a must-see.
Holly made us order the bistecca alla Fiorentina, which was a specialty in Florence. According to Holly, it was an extremely-thick steak coming from a specific breed of cow in Tuscany, and it was meant to be eaten rare. I wasn’t a fan of rare meat, and neither was Stella. But Holly insisted that we try it. Trust me, she said.
Famous last words.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Holly said after we ordered our bistecca alla Fiorentina. “About Dad. And those drawings. It bothers me that he didn’t get to pursue what he was passionate about. He was really talented, and that talent went to waste. I mean, it basically went to waste.” She paused. Stella and I waited for her to continue. “I don’t want something like that to happen to me.”
I sipped my water. Last night on the pier in Vernazza, Holly was pretty content with her life. But now, something about Dad’s story resonated with her, and she wasn’t so sure. I wondered where this was going. Was she finally coming to her senses about that snobby boyfriend of hers and how he held her back? Was she realizing that she needed to move out of Aldo’s house and live on her own like an adult? I couldn’t believe it.
“What do you mean?” Stella asked.
“Well,” Holly said slowly, “I’m not so happy in school. I don’t really know if I should continue.”
Stella’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.
“You don’t want to finish your PhD?” I asked. “But you love Art History, and you’re almost done. You just need to finish writing your dissertation so you can defend it. You have, what, less than a year to go?”
“Maybe I loved it at one point, but I’m not really happy now. When Mom and Dad died, I was just about to finish my bachelor’s degree. I had applied to grad schools because everyone expected me to, but I hadn’t really imagined that I’d go. Then when they died, I felt like I had to. For them. And because I had nothing else I really wanted to do.”
“So, are you saying there’s something else that you want to do now?” I asked.
Holly scrunched her nose at the table and tapped on the side of her wine glass. “I just want to pour wine.”
I looked at Stella.
“Like, you want to study wine?” Stella said. “Become a sommelier?”
“No,” Holly said. “I just want to keep working in our tasting room at the winery. And not worry about school.”
I leaned back in my chair and fought the urge to cross my arms. This wasn’t happening. After hearing about Dad putting off his passions, Holly came to the conclusion that she should quit school and pour wine?
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “You are by far the smartest person I know. You speak five languages and are practically a concert pianist. You didn’t get a single question wrong on your SATs—and what was that other test you took for grad school? Didn’t you get a perfect score on that, too? You’re less than a year away from finishing your PhD. You really want to throw all that hard work away?”
Holly hemmed and hawed for a moment, her eyes still cast down to the table. “It wasn’t really hard work. I mean, it was fine. I didn’t mind doing it. It distracted me from the fog of losing Mom and Dad.”
“Okay, so you just proved my point. The PhD program hasn’t even been all that hard for you. You probably could have finished it in half the time if you weren’t so lazy.” My surprise had very quickly turned to anger. “And now you’re just going stop? Seriously?”
Holly shrugged.
“What you need to do is get rid of that annoying boyfriend of yours, finish your dissertation, and then use it as the basis of a book to publish. And then, if you’re so enamored by wine, study to be a sommelier. Become an expert on it. You’re halfway there already with what you know, but go all the way. That’s what you need to do.”
“Labels and titles and pieces of paper with big, pretty stamps don’t mean that much to me.”
“It’s not about the piece of paper,” I said. “It’s about finishing what you started.”
Holly was the biggest mooch I knew, and she got away with it because she was brilliant, and everyone made exceptions for that kind of brilliance. It was that whole beautiful mind thing. But come on. Quitting? Less than a year away from being done and after mooching off Aldo for five years? This was absurd.
“Okay, Jill,” Holly said. “Thanks for your input. Good talk.”
Her response made me even madder. Was she being sincere or condescending? I had no idea. And it didn’t matter.
The waitress approached with a huge slab of meat resting on an even bigger wooden board. Apparently the three of us were sharing that monstrosity for dinner. I was quiet as I watched Stella cut the steak into thirds and slide our portions toward us.
Holly was right about the steak. It was delicious. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.
In fact, no one spoke throughout the rest of dinner.
FIFTEEN
And the silence pretty much continued the rest of the night and into the morning. Stella chatted aimlessly after dinner as we walked up and down the Ponte Vecchio for jewelry that none of us ended up buying, but I was too mad at Holly to talk, and she remain quiet as well. Once Stella was done window shopping, I went back to the hotel, and they stayed out to do who-knows-what. I insisted on walking back by myself.
The next morning, I was up and out of the hotel room before either sister awoke. I had hoped to enjoy coffee on the balcony with the incredible view of the Duomo, but after biting Holly’s head off the night before, that no longer appealed to me. I just wanted to get out of there.
At seven o’clock when I exited through the hotel’s lobby doors in search of coffee, the city was calm. Quiet. Big vans were making their morning deliveries to various shops, and a few people milled about, but it was nothing like the crowds from the day before. This was one of the reasons I loved mornings. While I didn’t love waking up, I loved the quiet and peace filling the hours before everyone else rolled out of bed.
The espresso in Florence was amazing. I hated that the only word I could come up with to describe it was amazing. At school, amazing was one of the Ten Bad Words Banned from the Classroom listed over my white board. It was such a vague and subjective word, but there I was sitting at a café in Florence, staring at my half-gone espresso and thinking, This is amazing.
Luckily I didn’t have to go back to ninth grade English and describe my summer vacation. I would have irritated the teacher with my pathetic descriptions.
But seriously. The espresso was amazing. Super-hot, bitter in the right way, and smooth like the wine my grandfather made.
Somehow, sitting at that café and drinking espresso, I could see the Florence in my grandfather. He so very clearly came from this place. The spirit, the creativity, the love—Florence was everything I loved about Aldo.
The bike rental place I had researched the night before opened at eight, and I was the second person in line when I arrived. I rented a cute purple bike with a basket within five minutes of the shop opening its doors, and I was on my way. I promised Stella that I’d be back by noon to picnic in the Giardino delle Rose, which was supposed to be a beautiful garden with stunning views of the city. That meant I had about three hours to ride around. I wanted to make sure I had enough time to return the bike and find the garden by noon. After the fit I had thrown the night before, it was probably best to show up on time.
&nbs
p; With a good night’s sleep, some fresh air, and the effects of espresso kicking in, I was beginning to see that I had been out of line. I didn’t understand Holly, and that was okay. I never had really understood her, but she probably didn’t understand me either. Was it my place to judge? Did it matter if she lived with Aldo and mooched off him? If he didn’t mind, I had no reason to care. Our parents had left us money when they died, and Stella and I had decided to put it into funds for our children. Obviously I didn’t have kids yet, but I hoped to—one day. I had always assumed Holly was using her money for grad school, and if she didn’t want to finish her program, that was up to her. It wasn’t disrespectful to their memory to drop out. It was just her path.
I didn’t think it was the best path for her, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t my path. It was hers.
I rode my bike along the Arno River and then found my way out to the Porta Romana, which was the original gate into Florence. Since Florence was no longer a walled city as it was in the Middle Ages, the Porta Romana was now just a big, brown, brick archway that cars traveled through. In front of it was a grassy roundabout with a huge statue of a woman. On her head was a slab of something. I didn’t know what it was. Did the artist seriously just slap a big slab of concrete on the woman’s head? That couldn’t be right.
Holly would have known what was going on with that statue, and she probably could have explained it so simply that a preschooler would have understood. But she wasn’t there. So I just stared at it, not knowing.
I set my bike down and sat near the huge woman statue. Then I pulled out my phone and found Nico’s number. I had meant to send him a follow up thank you text for delivering the scrapbook yesterday, but then I forgot after Holly’s big announcement.
Hey, it’s Jill, I wrote. One of the honeymooning sisters. Just wanted to say thank you again about the scrapbook. It was really nice of you to bring it to us.
A couple moments later, he responded.
Happy to do it. Hope Florence is treating you well. Vernazza is quieter now that you three are gone.
I smiled. I thought about replying that I could ship Holly back to Vernazza if he needed some loud sarcasm in his life, but I refrained.
I miss Vernazza, I replied. I’m so glad it was part of our trip.
Okay, I needed to stop with the texts. I didn’t believe what Vincenzo had said about Nico being married or stealing the wine shop from him, but just in case the married part was true, I needed to stop.
He replied with a string of wine glass emojis.
I loved wine.
***
“I got you gelato,” I said, holding out a dripping cone to Holly. She and Stella were sitting on the grass in the middle of the Giardino delle Rose, a spread of olives, cheeses, cured meats, and bread between them.
Holly reached out and took the cone from me as I sat down. “What is this? Pistachio, chocolate, and…what’s the orange?”
“Mango.”
Holly licked dripping gelato off the side of the cone. “You are officially my favorite sister again.”
Good. My apology was accepted.
I glanced at Stella. She was smiling and probably relieved that I made a peace offering—and that Holly had accepted it.
“Just so you know,” Holly said, “I’ve thought a lot about what you said last night. Also, the best thing on this plate is the prosciutto.”
“Noted,” I said.
***
“I arranged for a porter to pick up our luggage and secure it on the train for us,” Stella said. “This service wasn’t available on the way from Vernazza to Florence, but since it was available from Florence to Rome, I thought we might as well take advantage of it.”
Good old Stella. Always thinking. It had been a long day of bike riding, museum exploring, and eating, eating, eating. I was tired. Our train for Rome left at eight o’clock that evening, and having luggage taken care of beforehand meant one less thing to worry about. Fantastic.
“There he is,” Stella said, pointing across the platform toward a tall man in a blue uniform. As we approached, Stella greeted him and presented him with the paperwork for the bags. The porter explained the process in English, and I half listened. As long as Stella knew what was going on, it didn’t matter if I was listening. She liked details. I didn’t—at least not when I was tired.
Once we handed off our bags, we got on the train and settled in. Holly promptly fell asleep, and I looked enviously at her. How did she do that? I wished I could fall asleep that fast.
As the train left the station, Holly began snoring softly, her head tilted back against the seat and her mouth hanging open. There was no chance of her waking up any time soon. Good.
I turned to Stella, who was tapping on her iPad. I had a list of topics I wanted to talk to her about while Holly was sleeping.
“So, how was Holly after I went to the hotel room last night?” I asked. “Did she say anything about me yelling at her?”
Stella looked up and shook her head. “She pretty much pretended that it hadn’t happened. Same thing this morning when you were on the bike ride. She might have been quieter than normal, but it was hard to tell because she’s normally a little quieter when it’s just me and her together. The sarcasm and wit don’t normally show up unless there’s a third person around. We wandered through the museums separately, and I bet she was thinking a lot about what you said.”
I nodded. How could she not think about her Art History PhD program while in a Florentine museum? “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I just couldn’t stop myself.”
Stella closed the cover on her iPad and didn’t respond for a moment. Finally, she said, “I think it’s clear that we’ve all been a little lost since Mom and Dad died. I’ve tried to find my way by throwing myself into being a mother and becoming an even more-controlling and more-organized version of myself.”
She leaned forward and slid her iPad into her carry-on backpack. Then she pulled out the honeymoon scrapbook.
“You stay in your comfort zone and normally opt out when something new or different pops up,” she continued. “I know that’s something you want to change now, but over the last couple years, that’s how you’ve dealt with losing Mom and Dad—opting out.”
She placed the scrapbook on her lap and tilted her head toward Holly.
“Our little sister over there acts like she’s an opened book and easy going, but I don’t think she’s that simple. She can’t be. Not with a brain like that. The issue, I think, is that we can’t keep up with that brain of hers, so she’s turned into a chameleon who can dumb-down as needed to fit in. Sometimes she overdoes it with her nonchalant attitude, but there’s still a lot going on under the surface. It just shocks us when we find out that she’s conflicted or uncertain because we forget that she’s just as lost as we are.”
Now that was a pretty insightful assessment. Clearly Stella had given it some thought.
I wished that I had thought about it before telling Holly she was lazy at dinner the night before.
“I should have kept my mouth shut,” I muttered.
Stella opened the scrapbook to the Florence pictures. Mom and Dad standing in front of the Duomo. Dad doing his best impression of the David sculpture—clothed, of course—while standing next to the replica outside the Piazza della Signoria. Mom holding a cone of pink gelato, laughing as it dripped down her hand.
“I don’t know,” Stella said, running her hand alongside the pictures. “Maybe. But she knows you were just trying to help her.” She flipped the page and ran her hand alongside the train tickets and pressed flowers there.
“I really hate her boyfriend,” I said.
Stella gave me a sympathetic look. “I don’t think he’ll be around forever. She hasn’t called or texted him once since we got here.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“How do you not know? Have you seen her using her phone at all—besides calling Aldo?”
That was a good point.
I nodded, even though Stella’s eyes were on the scrapbook and she didn’t see me. It had been fun listening to Holly’s stories. She had been interrupted by tourists three times to find out when her next guided tour was and how to get tickets. That had to amuse her—at least a little bit.
Stella flipped a couple pages ahead to the Rome section. “She did ask me this morning if we were going to get a post office box in Florence and leave something in it like we did in Vernazza.”
Guilt filled me. If I hadn’t blown up at dinner the night before, we probably would have spent the evening talking about Dad’s art and deciding how to celebrate him with some sort of symbolic gesture. Instead, I yelled at Holly, stormed off to bed early, and took off to tour the city when I woke up.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Stella said, reading my mind. “If you hadn’t told her that she was being ridiculous, I might have. Plus, I’ve got an idea about how to help her find her way.”
“You do? What is it?”
Stella shook her head at the scrapbook. “I’m still working out the details.”
Fair enough. I still hadn’t told her or Holly that I had tracked down Mom’s parents in Rome, though I probably needed to tell them pretty soon if I was going to tell them at all. Time was running out.
Next subject. “So,” I said, moving on. “Do you think that we’ll be able to find Mom’s post office box in Rome?”