“Are you sure?” Magda hurried her pace to keep up. “I have family that’s rather high up in Germany. They have power.” The box under the bed flashed in her mind, but she blinked rapidly and tossed her hair off her face, and the image faded.
“Yes, I’m sure. We’ve consulted with multiple lawyers. There’s no chance of getting her and her son out. Now we’re just trying to help her enjoy her time here. Which is complicated since she hates Italians at the moment.” The tourist tried to laugh but the sound got caught in her throat.
“Well. Italians can be difficult.” Magda thought about all the Italians she knew that never took her up on her offers to sit in her garden and gather cherries from her trees, that kick she felt in her chest at every rejection. “But! Your sister will need to look on the bright side! She has a child! She is living in a famous, if overly trafficked, city! She must learn to make the best of every situation.”
The tourist stalled and considered Magda who stopped alongside her. After a pause, she began walking, but more slowly, “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
The light blared through Edoardo’s eyelids. A visual foghorn that sent him pressing the covers over his eyes. Until his own rank breath forced him to whip the sheets away from his face as he panted to catch a full swallow of air. It wasn’t just his breath, his whole body stank. Edoardo looked down at his bare chest. Was it his imagination or was his skin coated in a thick layer of something shiny and slick? He rubbed his eyes and thought, what happened last night?
Sketchy images danced across the screen of his mind. Pounding music. Strobe lights skittering across bare skin. Foreign-sounding drinks. Pills people kept pressing into his hands. And the drive home in the morning. The car, the crunching shock.
Oh, Madonna, his head hurt.
Gingerly, Edoardo shifted his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet on the floor. Where was this pain in his legs coming from? The accident? But the airbag had inflated, he remembered the flying wall of white. He didn’t even have any scratches except along his forearm when he winched himself out of the car and scraped himself along the road. His left big toe though, that was oddly swollen. And purple. He sucked in his breath as he remembered a large man, possibly Spanish, reeling backward and stomping on his foot as he windmilled over a table, crashing in a heap. The left toe throbbed helpfully, as if in confirmation. It was discolored and a bit swollen, but other than that, didn’t look terrible.
Nothing really looked too terrible. But the inside of his head seemed to have been filled with mildewy cotton batting. His left hand gripping the headboard, he pulled himself to standing.
Whew. Mission accomplished.
The contents of his stomach lurched dangerously, and Edoardo lunged for the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time to void the liquid contents of his belly.
Shower, he needed a shower. But first, he waved his hand through the medicine cabinet until he clutched the packet of pain reliever.
As he swallowed the powder with warm water gulped from the faucet, he wondered what possessed him to go so overboard. He knew how to pace himself, how to eat and drink so that he never got carried away. Something prompted him to attempt oblivion. Edoardo decided he didn’t want to remember what it was.
He stumbled to the shower and turned it on. Gripping the side of the stall he waited for a fresh bout of nausea to pass. Would he need the toilet? No, this one passed with only a twisting of his stomach. Pulling off his underwear, he stepped into the shower and sat down, letting the water rain on his head and run down his shoulders. He hugged his legs to his chest and rested his chin on his knees.
How was he going to get through this day? He moaned aloud at the image of himself in the bar, with the acrid coffee and cigarette smells, the relentless chatter of the customers, and the infernal binging of the register, and the relentless sound of jackhammers slamming into the piazza’s concrete.
Please, please, start working, he begged the pain reliever.
This wasn’t his first hangover, but he couldn’t remember a worse one.
What was he doing?
This wasn’t living, this was procrastinating.
It scared him that last night was so hazy. He couldn’t remember who he danced with, what chest his fingers lingered over in the dark, who he kissed. There was someone, that he knew. He had a clear memory of lips pressed against his in the darkness, a tongue searching his mouth as the music pounded. But the eyes connected to those lips? The body? It was a mystery. A hollow, scorched-out, iridescent mystery.
The more he tried to remember what happened after the club, the more his memory became pockmarked. A haze of driving home, like a flip book with pages missing. The car crumpled against a wall more solid than anything he ever imagined. The white balloon around his face, the smell of asphalt against his nose, the sudden blackness, the relief at finding his phone in his pocket, his shuddering fingers as he called his aunt.
Chiara.
Oh, God, what would she think of him now? She’d probably kick him out. No good, he was never any good.
He wondered what shape his life would take if he were a worthy person.
It seemed he wasn’t ever to know.
His future wasn’t the wide open door he’d imagined as a child. Rather his unceasing string of tomorrows was rumpled, dingy. The days and years ahead filled with emptiness.
Luciano was out of breath. He tired so easily. It was discouraging, and he had to keep reminding himself that he was able to walk farther today than yesterday, and that had to be worth something. It had been a week or more since Fatima had sat with him as he recovered from his rage in Giovanni’s alimentari. Was it the next day that he had caught sight of himself in the mirror? It must have been the next day, or perhaps the day after. All he really remembered as he pulled himself out of the muck was the sight of his face, his eyes set in ravaged sockets, the lines etching his cheeks into gristly patterns, spittle crusting around his mouth. A monster. He looked like a monster. His wife, his daughter, they would never have recognized him.
He reckoned he must have sat there for fully ten minutes, staring aghast at what he had done to himself, to his life.
To be frank, it was closer to an hour. Time is a blurry thing when one is emerging from a liquor-laced existence.
He leaned back and let the sun warm his face. Closing his eyes, he breathed in the scent of the groves behind him and the fog flowing across the valley, caught in ragged pieces in the clustered trees. He imagined that fog’s journey from sea mist on the Le Marche coast, creeping and mingling with the smoke from snapping fires roasting chestnuts and meat. To land here, in this valley that had seen footsteps of man since the ancient Umbri roamed in search of their next meal. And here he was, a teacher, a man. More than a little flawed, and yet still a part of this divine play, this humanity.
Startled, Luciano noticed that he had followed a complete idea, one thought to another.
He closed his eyes and breathed the fog-laced breeze deep into his lungs. He coughed spastically, then sat tall and tried again. He felt the air fill his ribcage like a balloon, before falling into his legs and swirling around his toes. He smiled.
Stretching, Luciano hoisted himself to standing. Noticing that he was less reliant on his cane, he ambled through the streets of Santa Lucia to the park, hoping to catch a glimpse of his granddaughter. He’d avoided her face for a year. It had been too painful to see that little smile follow her mother’s familiar pathway. But now, the despair was less insistent, heard as if behind a door. Giving him a breath of freedom to seek out those dark curls.
The park was empty, but as he paused, Patrizia passed him holding hands with her little grandson. He watched her settle the boy onto the swing. Her face was pinched with worry as she adjusted his jacket which had bunched around his armpits. From where Luciano stood, the boy’s eyes looked distant, gazing through his grandmother. Wh
en the swing began moving his focus cleared. The boy cackled and then laughed.
Patrizia’s shoulders dropped from their position around her ears, and her face relaxed. As Luciano stood beyond the cypress trees, he heard the twining laughter of grandmother and grandson rise into the air. He smiled, glad to witness this moment.
He ambled to the rosticceria and stepped in. How could he have forgotten about the homey smell of cheese melting into a savory tomato sauce? Luciano ran his tongue over his upper lip, deliberating over his choice. Strange to notice his hunger.
Finally he selected a slice with mushrooms and eggplant. The girl, Bea’s granddaughter, he was fairly certain, slipped the pizza into a square of wax paper and handed it to him in exchange for a euro. He walked out of the shop, nibbling a corner of the pizza, wanting to make it last.
Luciano considered returning to the park to eat, but then decided to head back to the center of Santa Lucia.
Passing the alimentari, he heard the footfalls of goblins persuading him to enter this place where there was wine. His mind lurched into a ghost-land inhabited by his wife and daughter shaming him for his half-life. They taunted him to join them, they mocked the cowardice that kept him rooted to the earthly plane. Luciano shuddered, and took a step toward the alimentari door. He still had some money from his October pension. He wouldn’t have to steal or beg. He could purchase his wine like anybody else. Other people bought wine and it wasn’t a problem, why should it be a problem for him? He deserved this. After all he’d been through, after the week—almost two weeks!—of abstaining, how could one bottle hurt?
He heard a giggle behind him and turned to see Stella, the mayor’s wife. He was surprised, the laugh had been unexpectedly girlish from this staid housewife. Then again, she didn’t look like a staid housewife. She’d exchanged her usual navy polyester smock for a fitted, patterned dress in vivid colors. And she was engaged in eager conversation with Vale, the town handyman.
They passed, their whispered conversation peppered with chuckles, and Luciano was fairly certain that they trailed the scent of perfume.
He smiled to himself, watching them drift up the street as he finished his pizza.
Luciano wanted to follow them, to take the long way home and perhaps check on Bea’s chickens.
But the roar of wine was too loud to resist.
Luciano turned into the alimentari. One glass at dinner. Only one glass. He’d done so well today, after all. He needed the wine to beat away the shadows that were sure to come at night.
Even days after the accident, Chiara noticed that Edo still winced at the sound of the register. He walked gingerly, like a dog waiting to be thwacked on the snout with a rolled up giornale. She kept hoping he’d say something, but his attempt at conversation had been limited to periodically asking if the new credit card machine was causing any problems. It wasn’t at all. Mostly because no one paid her with anything other than euro coins.
When Bea and Ava left the bar, pausing to talk to Elisa on her way to the park with Carosello at her side, Chiara took a breath. Before she could say anything, Edo turned and said, “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you hoped for you when you took me in. I understand if you need me to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“I don’t know. Get another job, another apartment. I didn’t show up for work, you had to close the bar and get me from the side of the road, you had to arrange to have my car towed. I have no idea when I’ll have enough money to pay you back. I blew it. I know I blew it.”
“Edo . . .”
“No, I get it. I wouldn’t want me around either.”
“Edo! Seriously, what’s with all the self-flagellation? Yes, the accident was terrible, and avoidable. But wearing a hair shirt now is hardly going to change that.”
He hung his head and repeated, “I blew it.”
“Yes, you did.”
Edo’s wounded eyes met hers. Chiara added, “You did, Edo. No use pretending otherwise.”
“I know! I know.”
“The question is, Edo, why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, it’s not my job to push you, but I think you can do better than that. I think you deserve better than that.”
Edo turned and began dropping spoons in the canister.
“Edo?”
“Yes, I heard you. I’m thinking.” He turned back. “I don’t know. When I party . . . all my walls come down. I feel part of something.”
Chiara frowned, “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know if I can explain it. I just . . . I feel like me. Not like . . . this.”
“Edo.”
“No, I get it, Chiara, I do. That’s on me, too. Sometimes I just feel a million miles from everything. Separate. Different. Going to clubs, with the music, and the, well the drinking, and, and—”
“Drugs,” Chiara prompted.
Edo looked at her with surprise. “You knew?”
“I figured.”
“I didn’t—”
“I’m not that oblivious, Edo.”
“I know, it’s just hard to say even to myself. Anyway, you wouldn’t get it. You fit in everywhere.”
“Ha!”
“What?”
“You heard me. That’s ridiculous. What gives you the idea that I fit in everywhere?”
“But . . . well, because I see you. Everyone loves you. You can talk to anyone. I’m not like that. I never was.”
“Edo, I hate to shatter your illusions, but I hardly fit in. Look at me. Look at my life.”
“But you’ve gotten past all that.”
“Maybe I’m just better at pretending.”
Edo rubbed the pile on his towel back and forth while he mulled over her words.
Chiara added, “And maybe I’ve realized that we’re all pretending. Just a bit. So I don’t know, I accept people. Life can be rotten, the best we can do is hold each other up when the weight of that pushes us down. In that way, I guess I figure we all sort of fit in.”
Edo scratched his cheek. “Does this mean you forgive me?”
“I do. But I think the important piece is that you need to forgive yourself.”
Edo face twisted in confusion. “For crashing the car?”
Chiara stroked her nephew’s cheek and sought something in his eyes, “For whatever it is that’s haunting you.”
“Ciao, Elisa!”
“Ciao, Fatima! Come va?”
“Good, thanks. Are you hungry?”
“I just ate,” Elisa lied. Her brothers were gone all day at a soccer game, so there had been no reason for her mother to leave her bedroom to restock their bare cupboards. Elisa wasn’t worried about being hungry so much as dreading the eruption that was likely to take place if her father came home to nothing to eat.
Fatima chewed on her lower lip as she regarded Elisa. “Well, I’m starving, I’m going to get a piece of pizza at the rosticceria. Will you share it with me?”
“Sure!”
Fatima linked arms with Elisa, and they walked from the park to the shop. The smell of browning cheese filled Elisa, and she stopped to breathe it in. Fatima tugged on her arm, “What kind? I usually get the potato kind, with rosmarino.”
“Okay.” Elisa gazed off beyond the walls.
“Elisa? Where’d you go?”
“I was just remembering. A long time ago we went on a field trip to a castle. I don’t even remember where or what it looked like because I found a giant rosemary bush and hid inside it the whole time. I pretended it was my house and I was a wood sprite.”
Fatima smiled and said, “I bet it smelled good in there.”
Elisa said, “It did. The teacher was so mad, though.”
Fatima took Elisa’s hand and squeezed. She considered the slices of pizza in the case, then turned to her friend and wh
ispered. “I think today I want to get sausage.”
Elisa shrugged. “Sure, perchè no?”
Fatima ordered and then picked up two plastic containers of peach tea and added them to the square piece of pizza on the counter. Digging in her pockets she pulled out a five euro note, swept the change into her hand, and led Elisa back out to the park. Elisa’s eyes lingered on the change. Could she take money from Fatima now? Now that they were real friends?
The girls found a bench and sat down. They speared the tops of the tea with the thin straws, and then Fatima pulled back the waxed paper of the pizza and took a bite, before handing it to Elisa. As Elisa accepted the pizza with both hands, Fatima closed her eyes and chewed slowly.
“Wow,” she said.
“What is it?”
Fatima paused. “Sausage. Sausage doesn’t taste at all like I expected. It is so good. “
“Of course it is.” Elisa frowned. “Wait, this is your first time eating sausage?”
Fatima nodded.
“Oh! It’s pork, isn’t it? I never think about it.” Fatima had told Elisa last week that her family didn’t eat pigs, so she had never tasted cured pork. She’d breathed the confession after she had traded one of the girls her cornetto for a panino with prosciutto. They had laughed because after the first bite, Fatima had said that it tasted like salty soap that she wanted to eat forever. Elisa had never thought about it, but when she took the bite Fatima offered, she could see what she meant.
Fatima nodded again.
“I still don’t get why you can’t eat pork.”
Fatima accepted the pizza that Elisa handed back. “I don’t really understand either. It seems like a silly rule.” They chewed in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the breeze swoop up sun-warmed leaves before tossing them up and over the fence and down the hill.
Elisa asked, “Will you tell your parents?”
Fatima coughed on her pizza. “No! They are already worried that I will forget how to be a good Moroccan girl. If they knew I ate pork . . .” Fatima paused, considering, before saying, “And have a crush.”
Book One of the Santa Lucia Series Page 13