by Liska Jacobs
I e-mailed when I found time. Made up stories about being on movie sets, tidbits about actors and actresses. Things I thought would entertain her. Hannah had been a mature child; an old soul like me. I think this, more than anything, caused the rift between Emily and me. That her only child took after me.
Before Emily got sick, the last time I’d been to their house was when she invited me to an award banquet in honor of Paul. Please. I don’t want to be around those university wives alone, she said when she called. They’re so aggressive. I was surprised, we hadn’t been close for years, not since Dad died. But I went anyway, and of course Emily was completely in her element, the professors’ wives all half envious and half in love with her. I had spent the better part of the night by her side, playing the role of big sister—champion and bodyguard—before I realized that she invited me not to give her support, but to bear witness to her greatness. To the spectacle of her in rare form. Queen even in a world that pooh-poohed Hollywood. If religion is the opium of the people, one of her tenured professor friends said within earshot of me, then film is our partial lobotomy.
Then, after the award was given, after the speeches, there was an intimate dinner at a nearby restaurant. Hannah got upset about where she was sitting, down at the end with the high chairs and toddlers—her face turned red and blotchy. I remember she smacked the table, knocking her glass over, spilling water everywhere. Emily was quick to get up and shield Hannah from the rest of us, putting her lithe body between her child and their friends. I watched the bent curve of her spine, was sure that she was first pacifying and then threatening, because that’s what our mother would have done. Everything was for show. And it worked: when my sister moved away, Hannah had tucked her lip into her mouth, but gone were the hysterics.
“Aunt Cilla!” my niece cries from the front door. She drops her backpack on the floor and without kissing her father—who stood waiting, hopefully, in the kitchen, apron on, dirty dish towel over his shoulder—runs toward me, throwing her arms around my neck.
“Hello, sweetheart,” I say. She is warm, a bit damp, and panting from the climb up the stairs. “Let me look at you.”
The resemblance is startling. She’s grown, nearly my height, slender and fair, her hair almost blond. My sister’s eyes, deep blue, a little silvery too. The same dark brows, a similar sweetheart mouth and pert nose. It is utterly disarming. Something in my abdomen tightens. She is posing, letting me admire her. Then she bursts out laughing, hugging me again.
“Auntie, I am so glad you’re here.”
“Hannah,” I say, squeezing her to me. “You’re practically an adult.”
She pulls away, keeping hold of my hand. “Please talk some sense into Papa.”
Paul comes out from the kitchen. The apron’s tied tight around his midsection, his fine hair combed back. “Cilla is here to help me with you.”
She makes a face at him.
“Don’t move me to Italy, where every goddamn person smokes, and not expect me to take it up.”
“Language, cucciola mia,” Donato’s mother says.
Donato shoots up from where he’s been watching, a teasing smile on his lips. He should be ungainly with such long limbs, but he crosses the room gracefully.
“Haahnaa,” he says near her ear, flipping her ponytail. He tosses his pear core into the trash can.
She swats playfully at his passing hand.
“I don’t care how young Italians start smoking,” Paul says. “My daughter doesn’t smoke. And she doesn’t steal, either.” He’s trying to be tough. I can tell because he’s giving his daughter the same look he sometimes gave my sister when she was alive. A look that says, I have authority, so won’t you listen to me, please?
Donato is saying something to Hannah, in Italian maybe. It’s too quiet to make out. Whatever it is, it makes her giggle.
“I’m so happy you’re here,” she says, turning her attention back to me. “Come and see my room.”
The corridor is warmer and stuffier than the rest of the house, and I can feel the perspiration beneath my blouse. I hadn’t expected Rome to be this hot; it’s July and ninety degrees. There was a heat wave in Los Angeles when I left, record digits since late spring. Even in Malibu, where it can be twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the city, it was sweltering, the sun beat down; plants and people were shriveled and thirsty. But here in Rome the heat is different, cloying and leaden—crowded between buildings, pressurized. And the cicadas—the windows are closed, but still I can hear them, a constant din.
In Hannah’s room she switches on the A/C unit. Watching her in her linen dress, I realize maybe I should have packed some dresses too. But there wasn’t time to shop for new clothes. The haircut was squeezed in, and was probably a mistake. I should have left it long. I stand in front of the A/C unit, pulling my hair off my neck to let the skin there cool. Does it feel thinner? It’s probably just from stress, the hairdresser tried to reassure me.
First, Hannah wants to show me her newest pair of strappy platform sandals, then dresses and skirts she’s bought from the boutiques along Via del Boschetto. She pulls out her phone and shows me pictures of girls she calls her “squad.” Trish and Tina, two tall redheads, high shining foreheads, dotted with freckles; and a dark-haired girl, long-lashed, flashing a sultry look to the camera, a cigarette hanging from her lips. They look older than her, and in every photo, they have Hannah in the middle of them, as if she were a prized pet.
“You know, she’s the one who got me into trouble?” Hannah says, sitting beside me on her bed. But I’ve lost which one she’s talking about. I’m picturing Donato’s smile, how he flipped her ponytail when he walked by. A finger brushing the back of her neck; just a quick knuckle against soft skin. I wonder if he could smell her shampoo when he flicked her hair, if that was why he had moved so close.
“I left a pack of cigarettes at her place, and when her mom found it she went absolutely apeshit. Trish had to tell her they were mine or her mother would probably have killed her.”
Then she’s up again. “Do you know what I really wanted to show you? It’s here somewhere.” She’s pulling open drawers, humming to herself. Then she swings around. “Do you remember this?”
A gold-and-lapis pendant, the size of a silver dollar. I’d forgotten how ’90s it looks, which I suppose is back in fashion. My niece has threaded it onto a gold chain, which she fastens around her neck. “I wish I had a picture of her wearing it.”
Something to match the color of your eyes, our mom had said when she gave it to Emily for her sixteenth birthday. I found it just before Hannah left. Somehow it had made its way back into Mom’s jewelry box. They were always sharing things. Your mother wore it all the time when she was your age, I had told Hannah. And I remember there hadn’t been time to find a box, I had wrapped it in old tissue paper.
“Isn’t this chain perfect?” my niece says, fingering it. “It’s eighteen karat.” The pendant glints in the light, and I’m reminded of all the times it flashed on my sister’s jean jacket or smock dresses. I feel a little light-headed. Something about seeing this young version of my sister—with her confidence, her mannerisms. I am faintly nauseated, uneasy—like when I saw my mother in the hospital after her accident. Her white hair unruly, face gaunt, flat gray eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was in there or not.
I shiver.
“Cold, Aunt Cilla? The humidity can do that here. God, I hate it.”
“I’m just tired, I didn’t sleep much on the plane.”
She takes my arm. “Come on, let’s go to your room, it’s got a nicer view.”
Watching the tanned backs of her legs climb the stairs two at a time, the thin curve of her ankles, her hair long and bouncing from each step, I feel more worn out than I should.
My room is rectangular and narrow, with a small A/C unit rattling above a writing desk, and a twin bed pushed against the opposite wall. Hannah has put a bouquet of daisies in a turquoise vase on the bedside table. My niece was ri
ght. The view is lovely. The large window faces the rear of the neighboring apartment buildings—their façades burnished yellow, gold, or orange. Their shutters in bold contrasting colors, all thrown open. Flowering vines droop down their sides, or hang from clay pots, large cumulus clouds cross the sky. Laundry lines swing in the breeze. Between the buildings, below us, is a courtyard, where a lemon tree rests in the center, ripe with fruit.
“It must feel like living in a film,” I tell her, my body half out the window. The color of the sky—I can’t imagine what a lighting director would have to do to get that sheen, that sharp golden glow. I feel a flutter of excitement; Los Angeles is so far away.
My niece plops onto the bed. “It’s fine. I wish Papa wasn’t so strict. He won’t even let me go out to dinner with you guys tonight.”
I turn from the window, remembering why I’m here. “Don’t you have a make-up exam early in the morning?”
She gives me the same look Emily did when she was caught, guilty but about to make an excuse. She’s probably gotten away with just about anything, up until now. But I know all my sister’s tricks.
“He’s down there making dinner for you,” I tell her. “We’ll have plenty of time to catch up—as long as you stay on top of your studies.”
I sit with her on the bed that will be mine until Hannah’s Italian class is over. Then we’ll escape the sweltering city for Puglia, where the two families have rented rooms at a masseria on a working olive farm.
“How is your Italian?” I ask.
She sighs and says something I don’t understand at all.
“Sounds fluent to me.” I laugh.
“I don’t know why he moved us here. I miss…” She stops.
I think, Please don’t say it. I’m exhausted. My head is pounding. And she doesn’t.
She must see my relief as some sort of shared pain, because she gives me a quick kiss and tells me she’s so happy I’m here, that we’re going to have so much fun.
“Even if I do have stupid Italian class every day.” Her pout is exactly like her mother’s, and for a moment I think she might be Emily incarnate.
I manage to tell her something comforting—about picking her up from class, how she can show me the best gelato shops. “If I don’t gain ten pounds, I’ll consider this trip a failure.”
She laughs and takes out a pack of cigarettes. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you, Aunt Cilla?”
“Yes, I definitely mind,” I say, taking the pack from her. “Your grandmother is on oxygen because of these things.” Hannah purses her lips but doesn’t object, just drops onto the bed, stretching her slim arms and legs. “And let’s please drop the ‘Auntie,’ it makes me feel old. Cilla is fine.”
“How’s Guy?” she asks, sighing. “He’s so cool. Dad says he’s directing now. Have you been on any good sets lately? Seen any movie stars?”
“Nothing new since my last e-mail,” I say, and when she looks disappointed I add something about lunch at the Chateau Marmont, about running into the actress Sarah Paulson. “From the American Horror Story series.”
“I never really got into that show.”
I swallow. She’s spreading her hair across the bedspread. I want to say something closer to the truth, something other than a silly lie.
“Your grandmother sends her love.”
“You know,” she says, not hearing me. Her hair looks thicker fanned out like that, like the mane of an animal. “Donato tells his parents he wants to be a doctor, but really, he wants to be a movie star.”
* * *
In the cab ride from the airport we crossed the Tiber, which was wilder than I imagined, scruff growing up around its edges, not a boat on it. Hannah said that at night, clubs open right on its banks. You can walk up or down a mile and go to fifteen different bars, she said before leaving so I could take a nap. Then she bounced right back in with an adapter for my phone charger and more questions about the trip. Later, darling, later. I nearly pushed her into the hall.
I take three Advils, and also zinc because the child next to me on the plane had a runny nose. My cheeks are flushed despite the A/C cooling the room. I wash my face and administer various toners and moisturizers and antiwrinkle creams. I do the facial yoga exercises I looked up after leaving the nursing facility that day. Do I really look like I could be Mom’s sister? I look exhausted. But who wouldn’t after a long flight?
I think about when Emily was pregnant with Hannah, how at first, she was rosy and plump. She looked electric. Like in a film, when every scene is dreary, blue and gray, and then the starlet walks in emitting a vibrant buttery glow. That’s how it was. I picture her smiling, one hand on her belly, telling Mom and me the good news.
I think I hear Donato’s voice, and then the front door to the apartment opens and shuts. I can make out every one of his footsteps on the stairs. I wait at the bedroom window, which is actually quite large. I could climb right out of it if I wanted. Perch out there on the roof tiles, taking in that lush golden sky. A figure wrapped in a robe moves from room to room in a neighboring building. Below in the courtyard a black cat dozes beneath the lemon tree.
Across the way, almost exactly opposite, a light switches on. I wonder if this is where Donato lives with his parents. I can still hear Marie downstairs in the kitchen with Paul. She’s acting as secretary to Paul and her husband, Tonio, while they work on their book focused on Roman funerary art. They are researching votive offerings from the Augustan age. The most exciting find, Paul had rattled on when we spoke on the phone—and why he couldn’t let up on his research, why he needed my help—was their discovery of the most ancient remains of lemon ever found in the Mediterranean. It’s extraordinary, he said, breathless.
No wonder Hannah was acting out.
My phone vibrates, starting to turn on. There’s a text from Guy: Safe Travels!
I lie down on the bed, a nap before a late dinner with the rest of the adults—Paul, Marie, Tonio, and me. They eat late in Rome, Paul had said. Our reservations are at nine. Take a nap, I’ve got to finish this pasta for Hannah. A good man, my brother-in-law. When he and Emily met, he had been giving a talk at NYU on ancient cities’ influence on modern city planning. Somehow, randomly, Emily was there. An unlikely love story. Paul, a distinguished visiting scholar, with his easy demeanor and unassuming features—brown eyes, small nose, and long face. And Emily, a failed model living in a swanky Sober Living apartment in Manhattan, which our parents were paying for. I was the most beautiful ruin he’d ever seen, my sister joked when they came to visit. Paul, who by this time had moved to the States to be with her, blushed and kissed her hand. I’m the lucky one, he replied. A good man. It circles in my head like that as I dial Guy, my phone pressed against my ear. A-good-man. A-good-man.
When Guy answers I think I can hear the commotion of being on set, the dropping of equipment, the gruff barking of the set builders, the light, cautious voices of the PAs, someone nearby, who Guy shouts at to Take over. Then he’s somewhere quiet, his stage office probably, I hear a door shut. I think, No, no, go back, I miss those sounds most.
“Hiya, babe, how’s it going? How was the flight?”
“Fine and fine. Hannah looks so much like Emily, it’s unnerving.”
I can tell he’s smiling; I can always tell when Guy’s smiling.
“How’s Mom?” I ask.
I listen to his account of going by the nursing home this morning, making sure she is eating the oranges I gathered from the tree in our courtyard.
“She said the guy in room eight has been hitting on her,” he says.
“You can’t believe anything she says. She thinks everyone’s flirting with her—the doctor, the other patients, even the nurses. The woman is relentless.”
He laughs, sounding like an old man. I think of those long-ago parties—the cigarettes and joints, making sure there were glasses of water and Advil on my parents’ bedside tables, microwaving mac and cheese for Emily, making sure she showered and brushed her teet
h. I see Guy sitting on our living room couch, younger than my parents and their friends but so much older than me. My father’s protégé. Always the last to leave, still awake when everyone else was in bed. Someone needs to take care of you, he would say, helping me empty the ashtrays, loading the dishwasher. I think of my fifteenth birthday, when he said I looked like a young Jane Fonda and tucked a flower into the bosom of my dress, and I thought to myself, not for the first time, I’d let him kiss me.
Soon after, he made his first move. Climbing up my leg, his thumb pressing against my underwear, against that soft warmth. He touched and I watched spellbound—his mouth droop open, his other hand undoing his belt. I watched as he stroked, almost pumping, teeth gritted. Telling me, Hush, hush, don’t make a sound. The housekeeper’s voice coming from just outside the garage, the laundry room probably. Cilla? Cilla? Where is Cilla? Pricillaaa—wait, no, that was Guy’s voice when he came.
“Pricilla, are you there? I said, what do you think of Rome?”
I roll onto my side, pulling the pillow lengthwise, squeezing it into me.
“It’s like a set come to life.”
“Ha. If you think about it, every other city is the set version of Rome. You’re in the real one. It must be a trip.”
“I guess so.” But I can’t seem to wrap my head around what he’s getting at. I must be more jet-lagged than I thought.
Los Angeles, New York, America … all pretend.
I drift off again, lulled by his voice.
“Is Hannah going to be as much trouble as Emily?” I jerk awake at the sound of her name coming out of his mouth. “And Paul, how’s he doing, the old sap?”