The Worst Kind of Want

by Liska Jacobs

  I touch my lip where Donato kissed it yesterday when we were in the parking lot. How his expression changes when he looks at me from across a room. How terrifying and nerve-racking and exhilarating—I pick up my pace, jogging through the orange trees.

  “Donato?” The cave is large and dark, with crude rooms cut into it, a round slab in the middle where a donkey would have been attached to a mill.

  He sneaks up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist.

  “Zia Cilla!”

  “Don’t call me that,” I say, but, really, if it means he’ll let me lead him deep into the olive groves, away from the masseria and Tonio and Hannah and everyone else—he can call me whatever he wants.

  “Was that my papà with you?”

  “He wanted to tell me the history of the masseria.” I take his hand. “Did you know it was built by monks?”

  “I thought maybe he was on to us.” He grins. “Where are we going?”

  “On a little walk, or do you not want to?”

  He kisses my palm. “Sì, voglio.”

  The olive trees were planted in vast grids, their trunks large and knotted. The earth around them has been tilled, making the dirt boglike. I can hear him breathing hard behind me. My own heart is pumping fast, I feel it in my temples. My lungs burn.

  “Is here good?” he asks, his forehead slick with perspiration. It’s that time of day just before the sun begins to set when it feels like there is more sky than earth. The groves are pungent and rich.

  “Here in the dirt.” I make him sit against one of those ancient tree trunks. He pats the hard ground beside him. “Did you not bring a blanket?” I ask.

  “Mi dispiace.” He instantly sheds the striped shirt, laying it on the ground for me to sit on.

  “I’m teaching you chivalry.” I laugh, kneeling on it. “How to be a good man.”

  We share the split of prosecco, watching the swifts dart over the fields. Then I kiss him. He tastes of sweat and alcohol and something I can’t name, but which keeps me up at night.

  I’ve given him my mouth, but his hands want more. They seek entrance to parts of me that I have not given him access to. “Why do you not let me touch you?” he pants. A question I don’t have an answer for. Something to do with Hannah maybe, but also Emily and Guy and the fear that I may have limitations as a woman.

  Eventually he stops protesting and gives me what I want. Then there is only his labored breath, an occasional Italian word I can’t understand and don’t want to. His fingers become knotted in my hair so that my eyes water—and afterward, he has to gently, gently untangle them.

  * * *

  I’m following Emily and our mom, down the courtyard path toward the sea. How similar they are from behind, dressed in matching eyelet dresses, their hair swinging at exactly the same pace. How slim and delicate their bodies are, so unlike myself. You take after your father, my mom would often lament. One daughter tall, the other petite. It is the same in the animal world. Mockingbirds nested in our orange tree late one spring, and after their two chicks hatched we could hear their harsh chack, calling for their mother to feed them. The louder, smaller one always ate first. I can hear the sea crashing—but this isn’t the Pacific, it’s the Adriatic. There is no mistaking the two, the air here is almost alkaline.

  I wake on the rocks near where Hannah, Donato, and I have laid out towels and pads lent to us by Agostina. The hot afternoon must have lulled us to sleep. Donato is curled on one side of me, Hannah asleep on the other. I hear him gently snoring. It is the hour of the riposo, when the midday heat is strongest. We are beneath the shadow of a cliff, but even in shade the heat is leaden. A wave crashes against the rocks, the wind catches its spray and sends it toward us.

  We spent the entire morning trying to find a beach free of crowds, a near-impossible task. Most places turned us away at the parking lot.

  Donato’s skin is hot. I lift his hair and blow onto his neck. Cool down, child, I think. I can see where the water has dried across his back, leaving smears of salt. I would like to lick him there. Just to know the taste.

  He had gotten into an argument at the last beach club we tried. The parking attendant was a boy his own age, shirtless and heavily tattooed. At first Donato was trying to be casual, I could tell by the cadence of his voice. I am one of you.

  But something about Donato rubs these country boys the wrong way. His expensive collared shirts, his slim build—he is not muscular or tattooed like them. The boy said something in a hardened, biting Italian, so unlike the polished language Donato speaks. Suddenly they were shouting at each other. Hannah joined in, which made the attendant boy guffaw. He pointed at her, and whatever he said made Donato start to get out of the car. I had to insist we leave. He was fuming afterward.

  What did he say to you? I asked Hannah as we hiked down to this small cove.

  Oh, the usual, she said, looking pleased. If I want a real man, yadda yadda.

  Lying beside her like this, I can smell her hair. Earthy and rich. Almost exactly the same. It’s a strange thing, to know the scent of a sibling. An embarrassing intimacy.

  “We should go for a dip,” I say, nudging Donato.

  He stretches and turns toward me, grinning. “I was having a good dream, you were in it.”

  “Shhh, don’t wake Hannah.”

  He looks across me, at my niece. That mop of black curls, wild in the light wind.

  “You have freckles,” he says, tracing my bare shoulder. I like how brown his hand looks against my skin, the soft downy hairs on his forearm.

  We have to step carefully: salt deposits have dried, making parts slick. Donato leads the way, hopping from spot to spot. There is one part of the craggy rocks that juts out into the turquoise water. It isn’t high, maybe a foot, but I hesitate.

  Donato has already dived in; he motions for me to do the same.

  The water is very clear, I can see large boulders at the bottom, and the sun reflecting on the surface makes the water seem alive.

  “Jump fast,” Donato calls. “Or you could get hurt.”

  I get down on my butt and slide in.

  Donato swims over to me. “I thought you grew up on the beach,” he says, and kisses me. I look at the rocks where Hannah is still asleep. I can see her bright orange bikini bottom, her T-shirt fluttering in the breeze.

  “In Malibu you don’t have to jump into the water, you walk right into the surf and swim out.”

  He’s floating on his back, an easy thing to do when the water is so salty and buoyant.

  “You can show me when I visit.”

  I push on his chest so that he sinks. Then he’s laughing and swimming after me. That’s how Hannah finds us, playing and rolling on top of each other in the sea.

  “Hey!” she yells. I shield my eyes from the glare. I think maybe she’s frowning, but then she leaps into the water.

  Cannonball!

  A good way off in the water is a vertical column of white rock. When we first got here, a group of teenagers were swimming near it, a few jumped from the top. Faraglioni, Donato had said. They are made by the sea and wind. But now the teenagers are gone, and the rock tower looms behind us like a prehistoric ruin.

  “Let’s swim to it,” Hannah says, pointing.

  “That’s pretty far,” I say.

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Come on, Donato.” She chides him in Italian.

  The image of them swimming away: how complementary they are, in both youth and looks, and with that aquamarine sea stretching out around them, the impossibly white faraglione rising out of the water—it’s searing into my brain.

  I swim after them.

  At the base of the rock the current is stronger. It smashes me against it with each swell. Hannah has already started to climb, but Donato’s waited for me.

  “It looked smaller from the shore,” I tell him.

  “Put your hand here,” Donato directs. A swell pushes us together, for a moment our legs intertwine beneath the waves.

&
nbsp; “It’s too high,” I tell him.

  “The view is wonderful,” my niece shouts from the top.

  Another swell, and he uses it to press against me. He’s got my earlobe in his mouth. I can feel his tongue, soft and warm.

  “Put your foot here,” he says, turning me to face the rock. “I will lift you.”

  With the next swell he lifts me and I’m able to scramble up.

  Everything is ocean, the entire horizon. It expands the lungs seeing that much blue. I breathe in, feeling where Donato nibbled on my ear, and the salt water drying like a briny layer of skin that needs to molt.

  “Where do you think we should jump?” Hannah asks Donato, once he’s joined us.

  I can see the goose bumps along her arms and thighs. The wind is stronger up here.

  Donato is breathing hard from his climb. He wobbles when he looks over the edge.

  “Please be careful.” I grab his arm. Then, because Hannah is looking at me, “Your parents would kill me if something happened to either of you.”

  “Here will be good,” Donato says. “Wait for a swell, there might be rocks below.”

  I can see where our towels are, and on top of the cliff, Paul’s rental car. They look tiny and far away. Below, a wave smashes against the rock, spraying us.

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” I say, looking at where Donato is pointing.

  But then someone’s shoved me and I’m falling. I hit the water hard enough that my ears pop. I stretch my legs out, hoping to shoot off the ocean floor. I kick a rock, hard and jagged, feel it scrape my ankle. I surface with salt water in my eyes, my nose and mouth.

  There are two splashes nearby, and when I see Donato’s grinning face, eyes glittering, I want to throttle him.

  “What were you thinking!” I choke out.

  Ha-ha-ha, that childish cackle. “It was Hannah.”

  “Last one back is a rotten egg!” my niece cries as she swims toward shore.

  * * *

  When I come out of my room I hear Marie singing softly. The masseria, despite its thick walls, is uncomfortably warm by the end of the day. Usually the group waits in the courtyard for everyone to gather. But there in the living room, the soaring windows thrown open, are Agostina and Marie with Matteo.

  “An Italian lullaby,” Marie says to me and continues to sing.

  The boy is sitting on Agostina’s lap, eyes nearly closed, head tilted so Agostina can better comb his hair.

  At night, the masseria is lit by large ceramic egg-shaped lanterns. Their light along the walls is lacelike from their honeycombed pattern. Pumo di fiore, a bud about to bloom, Agostina had explained to me. In Puglia they are a symbol of prosperity, or fertility, or a kind of good luck charm. I could not tell which, the translation got lost somewhere in the middle.

  “The combing is good for him,” Agostina whispers. I haven’t noticed before, but in this light, I can tell she’s had work done. Her forehead is unwrinkled, she has swollen, artificial lips. She must be in her sixties. Marie has been staying here since she was a girl. When Agostina first greeted us, she kissed both Marie and Donato right on the lips. I have known Donato since before he was born, she had said. My plum cake is in his blood.

  I can hear the comb, raking over the toddler’s head.

  “If you can believe it,” Marie is saying to me, “Donato was bald at birth. The doctor told me to do the same thing. Now look at him.”

  “You brush to stimulate the follicles,” Agostina says, still combing away. There is a distinct expression of pleasure on her grandson’s face, which embarrasses me.

  The restaurant is not a far walk, but the fields of olive trees are very dark. We have to take flashlights, and even then, it’s hard to see the length of the curving shale road. Without the buildings of Rome, the cicadas are unhindered. They are blaring. Other animals prowl the night too—bats and owls and wild boar. They sometimes attack children, Marie had said. She and Agostina keep Matteo between the two of them.

  Out in that black our destination looms like a solitary star, lit up by tiny lights strung along the building and vineyard and in the branches of their stately olive trees.

  “Was this masseria built by monks as well?” I ask Paul, who takes the seat next to mine. Donato is quick about sitting across from me, his father beside him. Poor Hannah is stuck with Marie and Agostina and the baby at the end of the table.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It looks eighteenth century,” Tonio says, surveying the patio, the vine-covered pergola. “A fortified farmhouse, probably.”

  He asks the waiter in Italian, and then tells me with a grin that he was right. It must be maddening to be married to him. Or to be his son. I see how disparaging he is. Just because Donato’s uninterested in books and school, like any young person. A dreamer, Marie had defended him. My little Donatello is a dreamer. She is constantly treating him like a child, something that I think frustrates Donato more than his father’s derisive remarks. They don’t understand me, Donato complained to me one afternoon. We were in the olive fields, or maybe it was the dark corner of that hilltop ancient town. Time has ceased to matter. I silenced him with my mouth. Hush, I murmured. Let me have you.

  “Ah,” Donato says when the waiter fills his wineglass. “This is the life, no?” With a tan he is almost luminous.

  When the focaccia comes, still warm, the cherry tomatoes split open from the oven’s heat, we tear chunks and eat it, watching one another from behind our wineglasses.

  Be careful, Cilla. Be careful. But it’s hard to care anymore. It’s become difficult to think of anything else other than what’s in the foreground: Donato and those twinkling lights in the olive trees just behind him. How easy it is to ignore the darkness in the distance. To pretend that this is all that there is.

  Tonio is laughing and wiping at his eyes. “Cilla missed the dance. Cilla, are you watching? Paul, do it again.”

  “I don’t think I can.” My brother-in-law is flushed. His forehead is slick with perspiration.

  The pastas have come, and I can hear Agostina’s fork and knife scrape against her plate as she cuts Matteo’s ravioli into bite-size pieces.

  “What are you guys talking about down there?” Hannah strains, trying to see us better.

  “Tarantismo,” Tonio says. He’s removed his jacket, loosened his tie. But every so often I catch his glasses flashing in my direction. He’s paying attention.

  “It was a hysteria that took over southern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” Paul tells his daughter. “If you were bitten by a tarantula you had to do a special dance or else you’d die.”

  Tonio’s rolled up his sleeves; his arms are dark and hairy. Such a contrast from his son’s. Another thing that must disappoint him. Donato takes after his mother, his body is nearly hairless. “Cancellieri described it as: One cries, vomits, laughs, cries, faints, and suffers great pain before dying—unless you dance.”

  “Why am I not surprised it’s about death.” Hannah looks at Donato for commiseration, but he’s refilling my wineglass.

  “It goes something like this,” Paul says, and flails about, arms and hands in the air.

  Matteo thinks this is hilarious, and claps his plump baby hands. We all laugh. “Did you like that, Matteo?” Agostina says.

  “Wait, I couldn’t see.” Hannah has stood up from her chair. “Do it again.”

  Paul lets out a long sigh, wiping his face with his cloth napkin. “I’m too full of wine and risotto.”

  Matteo holds out some of his food to her.

  “Hannah,” Marie says, “Matteo wants to share.”

  Tonio is still laughing. “Your face when you dance.”

  “Was it originally a Bacchanalian rite?” Paul asks, and Tonio answers him in Italian.

  I hear my niece drop into her chair. I imagine her face from dinner in San Clemente years ago, lip tucked into mouth, resigned to being excluded. I understand, I want to tell her. She’ll have to learn to steel hersel
f from the particular hurt a parent can inflict. I accepted that I wasn’t the beautiful daughter. That I would be the one doing the nurturing.

  “What is Cilla thinking about?” Donato asks. “I bet I can guess.”

  I can feel his foot caress the side of mine.

  The waiter has brought slices of green melon and ricotta for the table. He’s taking espresso and grappa orders. It is very tender, the melon. And cold, as if it were in a fridge right up until this very moment. I can feel it traveling down my throat. The juice gets everywhere, the table, my napkin—some spills onto my lap. The cheese is good as well, firm and just a little salty.

  Donato nods his head and then excuses himself from the table. I’m sure that Hannah saw it, because she follows him inside.

  “Do you want sugar with your espresso?” Paul asks. He’s offering me a sugar packet.

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you, I mean, grazie.”

  He smiles, such a reassuring smile. I remember how surprised I was the first time I met him. He was so different from Emily’s previous boyfriends. A little boring maybe, but supportive and affectionate—things we had little of growing up.

  Something else I should tell Hannah, who has come back looking more upset than before: She may learn to live without, but the need doesn’t go away. She will always be in want of a mother.

  * * *

  In the morning I take my time in the bathroom, examining my face and body. I have not been sleeping well. Donato texts after everyone has gone to bed. Come to me, he teases, because he knows that I won’t.

  I need to dye my hair again; my roots are already beginning to show. I remember once Emily and I were doing our nails on the beach, and she said, I wonder how many more times I will have to cut them. Such a sad thing for a kid to think about.

  I can hear the commotion of plates and silverware and Italian chatter coming from the breakfast room, which is beneath the main house. I imagine Paul, Marie, and Tonio are down there. Tonio has arranged a tour of Egnazia, an archaeological park that will feature in their book. He wants everyone to go, but I know Hannah will try to get out of it. Donato said she followed him inside to ask if they could go into town alone. What can I do? he asked, shoulders raised. I had to say no.