The Worst Kind of Want

by Liska Jacobs

  A group of Italian boys enter the café car, hollering and roughhousing. Donato drops my leg and I sit up in my seat. The largest of the group is looking over. He has a hawkish nose and beady eyes. An ugly boy. He nods in my direction.

  They sit in a booth near us. Two of them have braces. When they smile, I can see the metal contraptions. They look painful, as if they’d cut their delicate inner cheeks. They laugh and yell over one another in Italian. Louder than they need to be.

  But then the hulking one with the tiny eyes tilts his head, brings his shoulders up to his ears, smiles an unsure half smile. Maybe not that unattractive after all. What is wrong with me?

  I catch the attendant glance over, and I have to look away this time.

  “Hannah is probably wondering where I am,” I say, standing.

  I feel the effects of the alcohol as I make my way through the cars. I’m queasy, but less aware of my sore, aching body. When the train jerks, I brace myself. Scusami.

  In our car the yelling children, the odor of their prepubescent bodies is heady, like the animal markings left by feral cats.

  “Have they still not turned on the air-conditioning yet?” I ask.

  Paul has taken the seat beside Hannah. They’re playing a card game with Marie and Tonio.

  “Cilla,” my niece says when she sees me. “Did you find something to eat?”

  “Sorry to take your seat,” Paul says. He lays a card down on the table.

  “We’ve started a game of bridge,” Marie tells me without looking up from her hand.

  Hannah rolls her eyes. “Papa is determined to teach me even though it’s a game for old people.”

  Marie clicks her tongue, and the four of them laugh.

  The train rushes through a tunnel. The children hoot and holler. I try to unclog my ears but the tunnel stretches on and on. Another train speeds by in the opposite direction. I feel the vibration of the tracks as if it were ricocheting in my bones. Doe-nat-oh-Doe-nat-oh, the train beats along.

  “The noise,” Tonio complains.

  At last we emerge. The cabin feels overly bright.

  I rub my eyes. “I didn’t sleep well last night, I’ll try to take a nap.”

  “Good luck,” Paul says, motioning to the group of girls and boys, who are as rambunctious as ever.

  The other pair of seats isn’t far from them. I can hear Paul and Tonio speaking in Italian. Instructing, I’m sure, Hannah or Marie on how to play the game.

  When Donato comes back into the car, I pretend to be asleep. I hear him with the others. He’s brought them all snacks. “Mio figlio,” Marie exclaims. I imagine how she must take him by the face, kissing his cheeks. There is the sound of lips smacking against skin. A rattling of Italian endearments, which I don’t understand, but the tone is unmistakable. A proud mother of a beautiful son. He has even brought Hannah’s favorite candy bar. “You remembered,” she gushes. He stands with them for a while, the five of them speaking Italian—probably discussing the game. Their voices are low and focused. The children have quieted too, the length of the trip having outpaced them.

  Outside, the Italian countryside is a blur of farms and vineyards. In the distance smoke billows, streaking the sky red.

  “The farmers,” Donato is saying. He’s leaned across me, so he can see what I’m looking at. “They slash and burn. It is an old practice. May I sit?”

  He angles past me and makes himself comfortable in the window seat beside me.

  “Or it is Mafia. The Triangle of Death is over those mountains.”

  “Donato,” I start because he’s looking at me the same way he had in the café car. “Your parents are right there. Hannah and Paul—”

  He grins. “We sleep, all we do is sleep.” He drops his head onto my shoulder.

  “Donato.” I push him away. I try to be stern. “No touching.”

  He purses his lips. “Allora,” he says, shrugging. Still there is that teasing smile. He takes off his overshirt, rolling it into a makeshift pillow and sticking it between him and the window.

  I strain to look behind us. I can’t see Hannah or Tonio, who have the window seats, but I can see Marie, she’s concentrating on her hand. And Paul, who’s across from her, has his back to me, but I recognize his coat hanging over the chair. Every so often I catch a glimpse of his arm as he plays a card.

  At the end of the train car the group of girls who were laughing with the boys are now in deep conversation with one another. Such serious excitement for whatever trip they are on, which will become, like most parts of their childhood, unimportant or forgotten. Unless something happens that defines the moment, this too won’t matter.

  Donato has his eyes closed. His top lashes are long and dark. The T-shirt he is wearing is very thin; I can see his chest rise and fall with each breath. The pace quickens when I lower the seat tray in front of him, spreading my cardigan over both of us. It is broad daylight, I warn myself. But I can’t stop now. Under the tray my hand is undoing his belt, which is an easier and quicker task than I thought it would be. There is no time to think. I like the way his face looks while I do the searching. The tiny facial tics, how his tongue wets his lips a little. He slouches farther into the seat so that I can get a better grip. The heat I find there is enough to match my own.

  But then I hear Hannah or Marie, or maybe both of them—and I take my hand out of his pants.

  I don’t know what I’m doing. I get up, I need somewhere quiet. Somewhere away from everyone. There is not enough air in here. That’s what it is. The lack of oxygen is to blame. The next car isn’t any better. It’s just as packed and stuffy. My legs feel weak. My hands have a tremor. Maybe my body is changing after all.

  Donato has followed me into the bathroom. He closes and bolts the door. He looks upset. I don’t understand a word he’s saying. He’s only speaking in Italian.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, pulling him to me. I’m sorry. Although I don’t know who I’m apologizing to. Marie? Hannah?

  Doesn’t matter, I’m already kissing him. It could be chaste, forgivable, except for my hands, which are holding his face, grasping at him. How hot my breath is, and I am moving against him. His hands are under my blouse. This should be embarrassing, my tongue is in his mouth. We are in a public bathroom with the toilet water sloshing about from the speed of the train.

  “You did this to me,” he says, and places my hand on the hard bulge in his pants. I can hear my own breathing, still taste his mouth. We must be going through another tunnel, because I’m light-headed.

  All right, I think. All right. I undo his belt again, and kneel on the floor. It’s easy then. His labored breath, the simple reflex of the motion. Up down, up down. Stroking with my hand, switching to my mouth. He tastes like sucking on the end of a balloon, and then, like sweet salty earth.

  TORRE CANNE, PUGLIA, ITALY

  “Look at my son.” Marie points across the pool, where Donato has climbed an olive tree. His swim trunks cling to his thighs, his hair dripping from his last jump into the water. Behind him the countryside is flat and dotted with more olive trees. When the breeze picks up and their branches bend, I can make out a sliver of the Adriatic, cobalt against the horizon.

  “Woohoo!” Donato whoops from the top branch. “I can see Greece from here.”

  “Jump,” Hannah taunts. She’s stretched across a pool float looking slim and tan.

  “He is showing off,” Marie says to me from the table where she’s sitting with Paul and Tonio, their papers and laptops surrounding them.

  The sun is different here. It has bleached the countryside white: the villages, the roads, the rocks and cliffs along the ocean. There are only bold colors in Puglia, Agostina, the masseria’s owner, an old friend of Marie and Tonio’s, had said when she first picked us up at the Bari train station. And she’s right. Against all that white, the ocean is a lovelier teal, the bougainvillea a brighter fuchsia, the palms and olive trees a deeper green.

  Splash!

  Donato has j
umped from the tree into the pool. When he surfaces he shakes his head, sending water everywhere.

  “Ahh!” Hannah cries, covering her face.

  “Cucciolo mio!” Marie exclaims.

  He’s gotten water on me, too, which had been the point. He swims to the edge of the pool where I’m lying out and hoists himself up. I watch him settle into a recliner, stretching his lean body. Sleek like a seal. Water drips, pooling beneath him. The few hairs on his chest matted and dark. He raises one arm, tucking it behind his head. His sunglasses flash at me.

  When we arrived at the masseria, several days ago now, we went on a winery tour. The owner was a friend of Agostina’s. He showed us his vineyard and we toured the big tankers in the warehouse. Then we hit the wine bar in the centro storico of a nearby hillside town, where we could sample the product.

  It was easy to slip away from the others when we were all a little drunk and eager to explore. Many of these towns are circular to confuse invaders, Donato said as I pulled him along a narrow alleyway. Paths start and stop. At any moment we might have run into Paul or Marie or Tonio, or Hannah—who had been the most difficult to shake. But it never mattered, Donato was saying. We had found a dim corner, in front of a restaurant that had not yet opened. They were always slaughtered anyway. The sun was setting and had turned the limestone and travertine buildings pink. In that kind of lighting he looked radiant.

  The next day there was an olive oil tasting at a farm in nearby Fasano, where I could get Donato to myself by falling behind from the others. There are so many olive trees, I said when we finally rejoined them. We got turned around. Then a cheese-making demonstration in Alberobello—the town’s whitewashed stone huts looking like something from a fairy tale. Trulli, Donato said, as I pushed him into a café bathroom. Built by enterprising peasants. It was easy because what I wanted from him required little time. If only I can hear that quick intake of breath, fill my mouth with his scent.

  “Are you coming in, Aunt Cilla?” Hannah calls from the water. “You don’t want to lie out too long or you’ll end up looking like Papa!”

  “Ha, ha, very funny,” my brother-in-law says from the shaded patio table. His face bright red, shiny from where he applied aloe. On our last group outing, a bike tour along the coast, Paul got a severe sunburn. It was decided then to abandon the remaining trips Marie had planned. Paul and Tonio are content to work alongside each other now, poolside, while Agostina brings them iced mint tea and plum cake.

  “I have sunscreen on,” I tell my niece, and roll over so I can better watch Donato without her noticing.

  Paul’s mishap has left it just the three of us. In the afternoons we borrow the rental car. I insist Hannah take the passenger seat, beside Donato, who does the driving. I make sure she’s between us whenever we are together—until she’s not. You guys ditched me, again, she said, pouting, after the last time we went into the nearby beachfront town.

  On the way there, she had been excited, talking about Malibu. Mom and Cilla used to have beach days when I was little, she told Donato, who drives with casual abandon, never signaling or honking, simply accelerating around drivers he thinks are going too slowly.

  We have a beach house, she said, and that we startled me. Hannah and myself. We are family. The weight of that—of my responsibility—I suddenly felt it so completely that I looked away when Donato winked at me in the rearview mirror.

  After we parked, as we walked to the end of the harbor, which gave way to a curving sandy beach, Donato flirted with Hannah, keeping her gushing at whatever he said or did. I felt duplicitous, and almost feigned a headache so we’d return to the masseria. But then down at the water’s edge, Donato slipped out of his shirt and dove into the blue-green waves, coaxing us to follow him in. That smile, his boyish good looks. All the women and girls noticed him: the moms with babies playing in the sand; the older women at the beachfront bars; girls on their towels, sunning themselves, hoping he might look back at them. It wasn’t just me, they had all fallen under his spell.

  It was why I stopped in front of an entirely ordinary shop—blown-up pool floats hung from the ceiling, snorkeling equipment and fins and boogie boards and sand toys cluttered the aisles. Hannah, I said. Let’s look in here.

  It was so littered with cheap summer items that I lost her almost instantly. I pulled Donato outside, behind the shop where no one could see us.

  There is still a bit of gravel in my shin from kneeling.

  “It’s too hot,” I announce, getting up from my recliner. I can feel Donato watching me. I wish there was more embellishment to my bathing suit. It’s a plain black one-piece. I had packed it because at the time I thought it suited a possibly premenopausal aunt. But now I’m embarrassed by how dowdy it is.

  Agostina has come out with her grandson, Matteo. He’s a quiet toddler with fine blond hair that is so white his tan skin glows beneath it. Amore, amore. Marie starts singing an Italian rhyme. Agostina claps along, the baby on her lap. The child is enraptured. He has dimples on either cheek. His eyes are big and an unnerving bright blue.

  “I used to sing to Donato when he was a baby,” Marie says when she’s finished.

  “He’s very beautiful.” I smile at him. Molto bello.

  “Grazie,” Agostina says.

  I pinch his plump, dimpled cheek. “Ciao, Matteo, ciao.”

  He pushes his face into Agostina’s bosom.

  “He is shy,” she says to me. “Do you want to hold him?”

  “Oh, no.” I step away. “I was about to go inside.”

  Marie takes the baby instead and I watch her bounce him on her knee, Agostina smiling and cooing until the baby lets out a bubbly giggle.

  “The salt water from the pool has dried funny,” Donato says, standing. “I need to shower.” He bends to kick water at Hannah as he passes by.

  “Hey!” she cries but looks pleased. He grins at her from over his shoulder.

  I watch Agostina and Marie play with the baby another moment. On the ground nearby a lizard does a few push-ups, emerald green against the chalky stone. I can smell the sea, saltier than the Pacific.

  “This heat makes me so tired.” I yawn. “I think I’ll lie down until dinner.”

  Tonio stands up from the table. “I’ll walk with you. I need a book that I left in my room.”

  I feign indifference. Okay. I smile.

  The pool is a considerable distance from the main buildings. We walk in silence, just the sound of the cicadas and the crunching of our sandals against the loose gravel path. There had been a German couple staying when we first arrived, but they were gone the next day. We will have the place to ourselves, Agostina said excitedly to Marie, who clapped her hands.

  “It was a monastery,” Tonio says finally. “The masseria, I mean. Built by Basilian monks in the seventh century.”

  “Paul mentioned that, it’s enchanting.” I think I can see Donato, on the other side of the orange orchards, waiting for me at the mouth of a cave where centuries ago those monks pressed olive oil. I recognize the striped shirt. He’s left it unbuttoned in the front, wearing it like a jacket, the sleeves rolled up.

  “How is your mother?” Tonio asks, holding open the gate that separates the pool area from the car park. “Is she getting well?”

  More jewel-toned lizards dart along the dry stone walls.

  “She’s a fighter,” I say. “She’ll be fine.”

  The masseria is so remote, phone calls drop. I have not e-mailed either. When I start one the cursor just sits there, blinking. My inbox has piled up with messages—from the landscaper, the real estate broker, the roofer and the exterminator and Guy—I haven’t opened any of them.

  “I am sure she is looking forward to your return home,” he says. I can’t see his face, he’s looking out toward the sea of olive trees.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “She is.”

  My room is the only one in the main house, the others are in what was once the domestic quarters. In the courtyard, where we should
part, he pauses to watch me walk the rest of the way.

  “See you at dinner,” he calls, and waits until I’ve gone inside.

  * * *

  I sit on my bed, listening for Tonio’s footsteps walking away. My room is an austere suite, made entirely out of polished stone, with high arches as if it were a basilica in miniature. Agostina wanted me to have her nicest room. A real Hollywood producer. She was thrilled. It must be very exciting.

  What is taking him so long? I peer out the window. There he is, hands clasped behind him, examining an ancient stone well.

  The clock in the living room begins to chime, the cicada drone seems louder. I’m watching the sunlight move across the Persian rug. Every moment that goes by is another second lost. Being in Puglia means more than half my trip is over. I don’t realize I’m pacing until my phone vibrates.

  —Where are you?

  I check the courtyard for Tonio. There’s only wind tangling in the bougainvillea vines, fuchsia and orange blossoms scattering across the ground. I take a split of prosecco from the mini fridge, and quietly, quietly, slip out my door.

  —On my way, I text back.

  To avoid detection, I take the stairs down to the breakfast room and leave from there. It leads to the garden where Agostina grows root vegetables and herbs. My chest is tight, my limbs tingling from committing this subterfuge. I’m reminded of those early days with Guy. Sneaking around, hiding our relationship from my parents. Something to make the blood pump, to make me aware of my heartbeat. A secret all to myself.

  The wrought-iron gate separating the garden from the orange orchard is massive and old and creaks loudly when I push it open. I pause to listen for footsteps, but there’s only cicadas and honey bees. Some ways off I hear splashing in the pool.

  I try not to think of my niece, who has become part of our deception. Emily had played a similar role, albeit a more informed one. Just say we’re going to the movies, I would beg her. Or that I was sleeping over at the same friend’s house as her. Mom will never know.