by Liska Jacobs
I peered out from the fitting room, and saw Donato in a flashy two-piece jacquard suit, Hannah modeling a slim-fit dress in fuchsia hibiscus print. She looked so much like Emily, not only her facial features, but how she unwittingly awed the room. The saleswoman who had been so partial to Donato was now doting on her. Such a lovely figure, she said.
“Mom, Emily’s at peace,” I try. I can hear her weeping now.
I find a pack of cigarettes on the desk. I hid them a few nights ago just as Paul got home. They are Donato’s.
Quietly, quietly, I open the desk drawers, moving papers and Post-its, stamps and knickknacks. Finally, I find a box of matches.
“I miss her so much,” she says, sniffling a little.
“I know, Mom. Eat the rest of your lunch and I’ll call again soon.”
She sounds tired now. “Don’t forget to text me that photo.”
“I promise,” I tell her.
We hang up and I slide a cigarette out, bringing it to my nose. It smells just like him. I fix the filter between my lips, tonguing it a little, just so I know what it tastes like. Starchy, slightly floral. The match makes a satisfying sound, a loud scratch. I inhale deeply. It tastes delicious. I get light-headed, but I don’t put it out. I let it burn, like incense.
* * *
The university isn’t far, but I have to pass the train station, which is large, industrial, and packed with people. It’s the kind of crowd that wouldn’t give a second thought if I were pushed into traffic. And most of them would do the pushing—businessmen with roll bags, students with huge lumbering backpacks, families trying to stay together. They’ve all got places to be and I’m in the way.
When I cross the street, a hustler follows. He’s hawking jewelry, water bottles, miniature electric fans. He seems to know I’m American and speaks English.
“Signora, let me give this to you, it’s free—gratis, gratis. A gift because you are so beautiful. Bella, bella.” But then he must second-guess himself, because he switches to French, breaking into song, “Parole, parole, parole, Je t’en prie, Parole, parole, parole, Je te jure.” He covers his heart as if struck by Cupid’s arrow. I give in and buy a bracelet. I buy two, one for Hannah and one for Donato.
I got my period this morning, but to describe it that way seems wrong. More like dried seeds, crushed together to make a stain. Not like the periods of my youth, when the bleeding was so heavy I sometimes napped in the nurse’s office during school.
This morning I waited in bed, while Paul, trying to be quiet, urged Hannah, Get a move on. Drawers in the bathroom opening and closing, then Hannah hissing back, Where’s my fucking hairbrush? When they finally left I could only find super tampons.
But of course that’s what I would find. She’s fifteen years old, for God’s sake, her womb probably gushes blood and mucosal tissue.
As I turn onto Via del Castro Pretorio, a sense of calm returns. The street is lined with broadleaf trees, dappling the road and sidewalk cafés, the buildings are faded gold and orange. Lampposts decorate the sidewalk, mopeds are parked outside busy shops. I try to remind myself that these buildings don’t just look Renaissance, they probably are Renaissance, or at least Renaissance revival. But it’s no use, it still doesn’t feel real. A backdrop for a big-budget thriller, or an independent melodrama, maybe. Hollywood has ruined me. I’ve lived in an imitation world my whole life.
The walk is longer than I thought it would be. It’s early, but the humidity is already thick. I consider flagging down a cab, but they aren’t lined up and waiting like they were outside the tourist spots. Several race by, I can’t tell if they’re in service. The trees grow thinner, the sidewalk more worn and cracked. There is graffiti and trash; the assaulting stench of human feces, made sharper by the heat. Even this feels scripted. The ancient city turned modern and ugly.
At the entrance of the school, I text Paul and try to adjust the tampon string in my underwear without the heavily armed guards noticing. Itchy and so uncomfortable. I can’t remember the last time I used a tampon, let alone a super tampon. It’s probably stuck in there for life.
“Cilla, ciao!” Paul says, coming out to fetch me. He kisses my cheek.
“Oh, Paul, I’m exhausted,” I tell him. “I could fall asleep right here.”
“You didn’t walk, did you? Christ, Cilla, that’s nearly three miles and the last bit is a pretty rough neighborhood.” He slips my purse from my shoulder and takes my arm.
“You must be starving. We can eat with Marie and Tonio first.” He leads me past the guards, who laugh when Paul says something to them in Italian.
“Carabinieri,” he says to me. “Every university has them now. The churches and museums and the tourist sites—Rome is always allerta.”
“Did something happen?”
He sighs. “This is a city that lives with anxiety,” he says. “So much has happened here. Romans have seen the best of humankind, but also the worst.”
Tonio is waiting for us in the cafeteria, looking very much like the studious professor in a three-piece suit. From afar I can tell he once had the same slim, long-limbed build as Donato. A pang, brief but sharp: What is he doing right now? I picture that easy breezy smile, and blush stupidly when Tonio takes my hand and kisses my cheek.
“Marie will be late,” he tells us.
Lunch is disappointing. The cafeteria is lackluster, more like an Internet café than a proper restaurant. Even with the fans the air feels dormant. Flies lumber over congealed pizza, there is hardly any green in the salad. But Paul and Tonio don’t seem to mind. They fork piles of pesto linguine into their talking mouths. Paul uses a roll to wipe the remaining sauce from his plate. The beer is good and cold, though.
“The campus is not beautiful,” Tonio apologizes. “Many of the buildings were built by the Fascists.”
“Ignore him,” Paul says. “He’s worked here for thirty years.”
“It feels much longer.”
“Is this where Donato will go?” It feels good to say his name out loud, so I say it again. “Donato mentioned he was taking a year off first, but afterward will he come here?”
Tonio frowns, shaking his head. “He will go to the university when he is done with scuola superiore.” He launches into Italian then, and Paul listens closely.
I can’t shake the feeling of being an accessory. I’m reminded of when Emily and I were little, before our parents left us at home with just the housekeeper—back when we had a housekeeper and the house was new and money wasn’t tight. Sometimes we accompanied them to a premiere. Mom spent hours getting us ready. There were shopping trips to Bullock’s and Bloomingdale’s—she’d have the same person who did her hair and makeup do ours. How sweet the four of us looked in those early photos. A brief happy period, but then Mom’s career took a turn, and for almost a decade she did not work. Only threw parties at the house. She had a brief resurgence in the ’90s, cast in another soap. It meant part of the year she was alone in New York, but it also meant she was photographed again. This time with only Emily—in TV Guide and People, photographed in matching Jenny Packham. “Mother and Daughter Look-alikes,” the headline read. Which was fine, because I had Guy by then. Someone needs to take care of you …
I almost breathe a sigh of relief when I see Marie. She waves to us from the cafeteria entrance. Paul waves back, motioning for her to come over. But then they are all about work. I try to keep up, to feign interest, but the three of them with their books and papers spread out on the cafeteria table; their little intimacies—sharing a coffee, ordering for one another, never arguing over who will pay a bill, how deep and seamless their conversations are—there isn’t room for anyone else.
Donato is probably already at the park with Bruce. I wonder how quickly I can get away. I’m thinking about last night, when we were at a hotel bar and the DJ started to play music. Donato asked Hannah to dance—how radiant the two of them looked. And how she erupted into laughter when he tried to dance with me. No, no, not me. I do no
t dance. Ahhh, he said, grabbing at his heart exactly like the street hustler had grabbed at his. Then he whisked Hannah up again. The look she gave me from his arms—she was reveling in it.
I realize Marie is talking to me. “Have we worn you out completely?”
She’s in a printed dress, cinched at her waist and long, covering her short legs. A voluptuous woman. With her hat perched slightly at an angle, her round pink cheeks and large dark eyes, she looks like a cherub come to life. I’m suddenly more aware of my small breasts; of how broad and tall I am in comparison. My bear, my dad used to call me. Emily was always his little lamb.
“No, not at all. It’s the heat and I can’t shake the jet lag, I keep waking up early,” I lie. “My mind is mush.”
She’s sympathetic, patting my arm. “Tomorrow I have a treat planned for us.”
After espressos we part, and Paul takes me to see the university’s sculpture collection.
“They’re only plaster casts of more famous works,” he says, carrying my purse for me. “But it’s a grand collection nonetheless.”
On the way he recites the history of not just the school, but various neighborhoods in Rome. He wants me to see the botanical gardens in Trastevere, the Appian Way outside the city center. “There’s not enough time,” he laments. I don’t tell him that Donato has already taken me to the botanical gardens, that I have pictures of him in front of the greenhouse in a sea of orchids.
He clears his throat when he catches me glancing at my phone. We’ve stopped to admire a modest statue of a man in a cowl. “The politician Cola di Rienzo,” he gestures. “He was murdered by an angry mob.”
“That’s terrible,” I say. My phone vibrates. A text from Hannah.
—I got out early.
“Is that Hannah?” he asks anxiously. “How is she doing? She’s become such a stranger to me. When she was little, she’d cry when I’d leave for work.”
My phone vibrates again.
—Meet us at Silvia’s!
There’s an address. I feel a stab of jealousy, and miss what Paul is saying. He’s sitting down on a bench, running a hand over his face.
“I think about how you and Emily at least had each other—”
“Having a sibling isn’t always a blessing. And she’s fifteen, Paul.” I sit beside him. “By then Emily and I were different people—she was already picking up surfers on the beach.”
I remember that day easily because I think of it often. Emily, flipping her hair and lowering her lashes, beaming at whatever the surfers said. I tried to get her to go home with me—she was maybe fourteen, and I could see gray in the surfers’ chest hair. One of them called me a prude, and I remember Emily laughing. It was such an affected laugh, so docile and unlike her, that I shielded my eyes against the glare, and tried to make her out. There she was in her teal bikini, my little sister, openmouthed, laughing at me. Prude, she repeated. If you only knew. I shoved her hard enough that she fell into the surf. She had a bruise on her thigh for the rest of that summer.
“I used to wish I had a brother or sister,” Paul is saying.
“You do.” I nudge him, and he chuckles.
“Em used to tell me how you watched out for her when you two were little.” He looks at me. “What happened? You were close when she was pregnant with Hannah. Was it because we moved?”
I don’t want to talk about this. It’s as if the air has changed suddenly, I swear I can smell the Pacific, her banana-perfumed sunscreen. “San Clemente isn’t that far,” I mumble, and get up from the bench.
He follows, but a group of students have entered the gallery, their footsteps echoing off the marble walls. One of them stops. Professore.
Another text from Hannah.
—Are you on your way?
I text back, I’ll be right there. I add a taxi emoji and then delete it at the last minute.
“I have to meet Hannah,” I tell him. “Thanks for the tour.”
I leave, Paul looking after me. I can’t help it. Sisters leave wounds, I wanted to tell him. Minor betrayals, petty grievances—over time, they add up and create an impassable distance. Hannah should consider herself lucky.
I give the cabdriver the address Hannah texted, and ask him to turn up the air conditioner. He doesn’t understand, though, and the leather seat is hot from the sun. My thighs will stick when I get out. “A/C,” I repeat. The driver nods but doesn’t do anything.
I pull up my e-mail on my phone. The roofer has come through with an estimate, and the gardener has sent a landscape quote. I start to reply, but then stop. I look out at Rome, let myself be dazzled by its metallic sheen, the sagging sycamores over the Tiber, how their branches sway and broad leaves rustle in the warm, lively breeze. I can feel myself slipping into it, or maybe it’s slipping into me.
I take a compact out of my purse. I don’t wear more than mascara, but when I searched Hannah’s bathroom I found a makeup bag packed with lipsticks. I took a tinted lip balm that smelled like artificial strawberries. My niece hasn’t noticed; they’re probably all stolen anyway.
I spread it across my lips, smacking them together. This the cabdriver understands. He smiles at me in the rearview mirror.
* * *
Time is different in Rome. Maybe it’s the light, which is languid and delicate. The blue afternoon bleeds into twilight like a watercolor, and I realize we’ve been up on Silvia’s terrace drinking aperitifs for nearly five hours. Donato’s friends in crisp suit jackets, hair slicked back, plumes of smoke climbing into the now golden sky. Hannah and her girlfriends, their boisterous chatter mixing with the city noises below: a car horn, a motorcycle, a police siren, sandals clack-clacking on the narrow cobblestone streets.
My niece had been the one to open the door. She tried her best to be nonchalant. Auntie, she cried. But I knew that look. Emily had the same expression when I caught her smoking a joint with the neighbor. Guilty.
I almost didn’t come inside, I almost demanded Hannah leave, but then Silvia appeared, and I was thrown off. She was older than I expected, older than Donato, with large green eyes and a pretty pout. I could smell her perfume, something expensive, a fragrance that reminded me of home. She smelled like magnolias and the sea.
The two of them ushered me up to the terrace, which felt ten degrees cooler than the rest of the city. Potted palms and geraniums and impatiens shaded the patio furniture, a breeze rustling their leaves. Powder-blue parakeets, each named after a Roman deity, chirped in a large gilded birdcage.
Diana, Diana, Silvia cooed to one of them, showing me how to feed the tiny bird by hand.
Their friends were waiting on the terrace; one had already made me a drink. Cristiano, Silvia’s brother, moved so I could take his seat. The two auburn-haired British sisters, Trish and Tina, wanted to show me their head shots. Cilla knows all the right people, my niece told them. What I’m saying is, it was easy to be seduced.
“Do you want another?” Hannah is asking. I feel a wave of tenderness looking at her. The light is glossy and bright, strangely hypnotic.
I take her hand. “Maybe one more.”
“Did you like how I made it last time? More prosecco?”
“It was perfect.”
It’s hard to say no to her. Especially when she looks so eager for my approval. I remember when Emily used to look at me like that.
You look so much like your mother—too late, she’s already gotten up. I wish now I hadn’t sent her away. I want to tell her about Emily’s pregnancy. I want to explain how we had grown apart. Your mother pushed me away. But then, when she got pregnant, she wanted my help with everything. What colors should the baby’s room be? Which furniture should she buy? She wanted help quitting smoking, a walking partner in the mornings, someone to throw her a baby shower. I decorated our mom’s courtyard with mermaids and leis, and invited twenty of her girlfriends.
It’s such an honor to be someone’s mommy, I remember one of them saying over cake. How self-righteous they were, pitying glanc
es thrown in my direction. Well, I can think of other proverbs. A mother is never free, our mom used to say.
Silvia lets out a laugh at something Donato has said. She’s moved so she can stretch her tan legs across him. I’m watching him massage her feet.
“Did Donato show you Santa Maria del Popolo?” she’s asking me. “It has my favorite Caravaggio.”
Donato says something in Italian, which makes her laugh again.
“It’s where Nero’s ghost lives,” one of the British sisters says to me. “Do you know Nero?”
I remember Donato pointing out a domineering building in the piazza. But I don’t remember him telling us about any ghosts.
Cristiano is rolling a joint on his lap. “Omicida.” He lights it.
“He dipped Christians in oil,” another one of them is saying as they pass the joint around.
“And set them on fire to light his garden at night.”
“He killed his mother.”
The smoke is very strong, the air suddenly stagnant.
“How do you live with so many reminders of death everywhere?” I ask. The breeze returns and I shiver.
“It reminds us to live well,” Donato says, puffing on the joint. “That this life is short. You have to take what you want.”
I have not thought about my wants in so long that the flood of them makes me light-headed. A drip-irrigation system for the garden, my own Tiffany stud earrings so I don’t have to always be borrowing Mom’s, one of those mid-century modern houses in Benedict Canyon, a buzzy TV show—Guy.
“Sii prudente.” Silvia clicks her tongue. “Want is insatiable. Even the gods were never satisfied.”
Donato makes a dismissive motion with his hand. She gets up to play with her parakeets, Bruce barking at her heels. The others are talking about an upcoming trip to the Aeolian Islands. Donato is sitting beside me now. His eyes have darkened, that mischievous smile playing on his lips.
“You smell like strawberries,” he says. He offers me the joint. “You want to try?”
A little thrill shoots through me.