by Liska Jacobs
My patience with my niece is starting to wear thin. After dinner she moped on the walk back to the masseria. Paul had to stop several times to wait for her. Keep up, I called, but she did not respond. She never asked about my ankle either, which is scratched and bruised from when she pushed me off the faraglione. I can tell she means to go on like this, slowly transforming into the disconsolate teen that Emily became. Stop mothering me, just stop!
When I come downstairs everyone’s buongiornos echo on the tufa walls. It’s a cavernous space, carved directly into the rock. Skylights fill it with gentle light. Donato is sitting with Hannah and his mother, Tonio and Paul are loading their plates from the sideboard.
“You have to try this omelet,” Paul tells me.
There are cakes and cookies, yogurts and homemade jams, an array of dried meats and cheeses. I take a kiwi from a bowl, and two tiny apricots, one of which, I realize after I bite into it, is bruised.
Hannah pouts. “But I want to go to the beach again.”
“You can go later,” Paul tells her.
Agostina brings out a ceramic pitcher full of hot coffee. “Apulia is more than its beaches,” she says.
“Why did we come here if you aren’t planning to go to the beach once?”
He blinks at his daughter. “But you’ve gone almost every day.”
“You haven’t, and I want to go again.” She crosses her arms. “Cilla and I were planning to buy snorkeling gear, weren’t we?”
I take a piece of omelet from her plate. “Oh, that is good, Agostina, what’s in it?”
She smiles. Un segreto.
“Wouldn’t you rather go to the beach than to see another ruin?” Hannah tries again.
“Actually, I’m a little sunburned.”
She narrows her eyes. “Then Donato can take me,” she says, looking at him.
“Cucciola mia,” Marie says, laughing lightly. “I have barely seen my son. You will like Egnazia, it is right on the coast. We can walk to the beach afterward.”
Hannah looks at her plate. Her nostrils flare slightly, just like Emily’s would have.
“An old student of mine is giving us the tour,” Tonio tells me, looking very pleased with himself. “I helped him get the position.”
Paul leans in. “The necropolis is a smorgasbord of changing burial rites, built almost on top of each other.”
“I don’t want to see any more stupid ruins!” Hannah jumps up from the table, sending the ceramic pitcher crashing to the floor.
“Hannah,” Paul shouts. “Look what you’ve done.”
My niece’s face is pink. “Why can’t you talk about anything else? Don’t you think there’s enough death around us? Don’t you think we see it all the time?”
Marie tries to take her arm but she pulls away.
“I refuse to go.” She stomps a foot. There are tears now, and when she looks at Donato she chokes back a sob and rushes from the room.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say, but Paul stops me. Agostina is already cleaning the spilled coffee and bits of broken ceramic.
“She can stay here,” he says. “It’ll do her good to be on her own. She can think about how she’s been behaving.”
The ruins of Egnazia are on the wrong side of the highway to be considered seaside. It’s more seaside-adjacent. They’re different from any that I saw in Rome, maybe because the Forum and the Colosseum had a city bustling around them. There are no wailing ambulance or police sirens here. No music from street performers, no bus exhaust or diesel fumes. Only the smell and sound of the sea and the stone foundations where a city once stood, knobs of columns still crumbling. The valley stretching out on either side. The wind increases, pulling at the weeds and flowers and short scrub brush. It is shockingly bare. The kind of emptiness made louder because there had once been something here.
Tonio’s colleague is waiting for us inside the museum, which is quiet except for the hum of the air-conditioning. He shakes hands with Tonio, looking respectful and eager. It’s clear the tour is meant for him and Paul—and Donato too, since he is Tonio’s son. It isn’t long before he’s no longer speaking in English. Marie translates as we go from display case to display case. Gradually, though, I realize she’s not reading the labels or listening to our tour guide; she doesn’t have to. She knows this information as well as her husband, who has moved on with the others to the next room.
“These are findings from female burials,” she tells me. “Mostly objects associated with women’s work.”
She points out loom weights and spindles, jewelry, makeup containers made out of shells.
“There were not many jobs for ancient women,” she says.
“I think you mean women of the ancient world, but you’re right either way.” We both laugh even though I don’t see any gray in her hair.
“What’s this?” I say, pointing to a large vessel.
“Enchytrismoi,” she says sadly. “Containers to bury dead children.”
She presses a finger against the glass. “Do you see the toys shaped like animals? There would be a bell inside, like toys today, no? They were buried with the child.”
In the overhead lighting we watch dust float beside them.
Marie sighs. “Most babies did not survive to adulthood.”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I would have liked more children, but Tonio…” She sighs again. “What about you? You’re so good with Hannah, you did not want children of your own?”
Another question I don’t have an answer for. A different kind of fear, a certain type of tiredness. I want to point at the primitive toy horses and crushed baby bottles and the ruins around us and ask how anyone can want children. And besides, what was I to Emily? And later to my dad as he got sicker and sicker, and now to my own mother? Maybe in another language, an ancient one, there is a word for motherhood that makes space for me. That includes what I am.
“It was never the right time,” I tell her.
Outside, the men are waiting for us at the entrance to the excavated necropolis. From this angle Egnazia looks like ruins from nineteenth-century landscape paintings. Emily and Paul had prints like it framed in their living room. I remember the peach and purples—a sheep herder in the foreground, and the ruins in shadow, or jutting up into the sky, refusing to collapse. They had been wedding presents, I think. From Emily to Paul.
We descend a short flight of stairs into a multiroomed tomb, Marie translating for me.
“He is saying females are found with pomegranates and bones from sacrificed piglets—there is a link between women and the fertility of the land.” She points to letters carved into the rock. “Tabara Damatria. Priestess of Demeter, this is her tomb.”
I can hear the wind above us, moaning across the ruins. There are many more tombs, each empty and dark. I can understand why Hannah did not want to come. There is a limit to how much death a person can bear witness to. I shiver even though it’s muggy and there is sweat at the back of my neck. Donato is ahead of me, standing with his father and Paul. He turns then, smiling at his mother—or me, or maybe both of us.
“Do you think it’s okay if I go back?” I ask.
Marie has wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you want me to go with you?”
I shake my head. “No, you enjoy the tour.”
She hands me a map from the museum. I hear Paul ask where I’m going, and Marie answer in Italian. I walk quickly in case he’s decided to follow. The wind is gusting again, blowing in great tufts. I can hear it in my ears, a boom-boom-booming. I watch it shake the tops of the olive trees, bending the sparse grass along the ancient walls.
Other tourists are wandering among the ruins now. Their polos and khakis, their pastel vacation clothes, cameras around their necks, those sun hats and visors—they comfort me. Clothes for the living. I turn toward the sun, try to feel its warmth, but the wind is blistering, kicking up dust and dirt from the highway, sending leaf litter across the ruins. I watch the tourists shield themselv
es from the sudden assault and then retreat into the museum or the necropolis.
Signs of mortality are everywhere—in the overturned bricks, the broken mosaic floors, the remnants of an amphitheater. Here is the road Trajan built; there, a furnace for a kiln; what might or might not have been a basilica or two. A whole city. Gone. Something presses into me, a heavy burden.
I’ve climbed over a short wall and found a hidden out-of-the-way corner, beneath a large olive tree. Swifts swoop across the sky. There must be twenty of them, all diving and soaring against the wind. My eyes sting, the tears seem dried up.
“Cilla,” comes Donato’s voice. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see his beautiful boyish face. Maybe this is why people have children. He hops over the wall and crouches beside me. “You aren’t supposed to be over here, did you not see the sign?”
I wipe at my eyes. “I can’t read Italian. Do you have a cigarette?”
He takes the unlit one from behind his ear and hands it to me, leaning over to light it.
“Thank you,” I say, inhaling deeply.
We watch the swifts for a moment, calling to one another. It’s a sharp and urgent sound.
“What is Cilla thinking?”
I rub the cigarette out. I don’t want to think of anything. It could have been a reflex—grabbing his hand and placing it on my breast, pinching the nipple between his fingers so that I cry out. As natural as breathing. I cannot look at him; his mouth is open in shock. I shut my eyes.
“Cilla.” I hear the alarm in his voice.
I guide his hand to where I want to feel his fingers most. I push against him. I can hear myself, a feminine throaty sound, and I can smell the dry grass, the pungent sea. It’s strange to accept that I could live a thousand lives and still it would not be sufficient. All that there is, is not enough—but I had known this already.
When I come, it’s like a jolt. I imagine this is why the swifts have moved on, flown off for the safety of the sea cliffs. Why the cicadas suddenly seem louder, why Donato is looking at me with something like awe.
* * *
Agostina rushes toward us in the masseria’s car park, frantic.
Food poisoning, Donato translates for me. Hannah is very sick. Paul follows Agostina in search of medicine, a fresh set of sheets and towels, ice water—anything to make his daughter more comfortable. After the tour at Egnazia he had been lax to leave, almost accompanying Tonio and the former student to a late lunch, but then deciding at the last minute to return with Marie, Donato, and me. Hannah is not answering her phone, he had said sheepishly. I should check on her.
“She wants you,” Paul says to me as he comes out of Hannah’s room. “Agostina’s phoning to see if any pharmacies are open this late.”
Hannah’s room is much more modest than mine. There’s no sitting room, only a bedroom and adjoining bath. She’s drawn the curtains so that it’s nearly dark. And it’s warm, stuffy. The fan on the ceiling circles, the A/C turned down low.
“She has chills,” Paul says to me.
I watch her eyelids flutter. “Maybe it’s the flu?”
He raises his hands. “Agostina doesn’t have a thermometer.” He looks as if he might cry.
I retreat to the window, where the air doesn’t feel so full with the stench of vomit.
“She’s going to be okay, Paul.”
I try to open it because there’s another, indescribable smell in the room. Sickness. A smell I know well. Not just with Mom, but toward the end, when Dad was in and out of the hospital with pneumonia.
His body is giving up, Emily would say. Death is a part of life. Such an easy platitude. Like he’ll always be with you, or she’s watching down from heaven. But she was on the outside looking in, phoning or texting instead of coming by the hospital. She wasn’t accustomed to medicine charts and bathing rituals—she never had to cross that line between parent and child, when helping a nurse with a condom catheter was on par with cleaning his urine out of the bathroom rug.
“My head hurts, my whole body hurts,” my niece groans.
“Hannah, sweetheart,” Paul says, taking her hand. “I’m here. What do you want? What can we get you? Cilla’s here too.”
“Cilla’s room,” she says in a small voice. “Her bed is bigger.”
“Sure, love, of course,” he says, helping her out of bed.
“Will you bring my phone charger?” Hannah says to me.
I follow them into my room, which has been cleaned. The bed is neatly made, everything cool and calm. A breeze comes in through the open window. I watch the bougainvillea and palms in the courtyard bend and sway.
Hannah pulls down the blankets, pushing the pillows to the floor. She takes my robe, which had been folded and placed on the bedside table, and wraps it around herself.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry we left you alone.” He kisses her head.
I know I should go to my niece, maybe sit on the end of the bed, stroke and pet her. She is hurting, she is sick. But I’m rooted to the spot. The stench has followed her, it clings to her clammy face, her oily hair. I do not want to play nurse. And I’m annoyed by how casually she usurped my things, how easy it was for her to think she could take what was mine. I move closer to the open window. I breathe in, try to remember that moment—Donato’s surprise. His fingers still pressing against me.
“I feel awful,” Hannah moans. “Will you shut that window? It’s so hot out.”
“Let me see if Agostina has left yet,” Paul says, getting up. “I want to ask if she can get peppermint tea. That always helped when you were little and had a tummy ache.” Peppermint tea, I hear him repeat to himself as he walks out of the room.
“How were the ruins?” she asks when we’re alone.
I watch a lizard sunning itself on the stacked stone wall.
“It was fine,” I tell her. “You were missed.”
My niece sighs. “If you’ve seen one ruin, then you’ve seen them all. I hate that I cried in front of Donato. He always says I act like a child.”
There is an image that haunts me more than the others. It was after we moved Dad to the rehab center to recuperate from that endless bout of pneumonia. His gums had started to bleed, and he was prescribed a mouthwash that cleaned his teeth so he didn’t have to brush. I was holding one of those cheap plastic basins the color of chewed bubble gum up to his mouth, waiting for him to spit. How he kept on swishing, back and forth, back and forth—and it felt like such a long time that I finally said, Spit it out, already. And the look he gave me. It was as if I had asked him to hurry up and die, which in a way I had.
There’s a knock at the door. Marie pops her head in. “May I see how the patient is?”
After Donato and I rejoined them at Egnazia I thought for a moment that maybe she suspected. I could not meet her gaze. There you are, she said to us. Donato had a deep flush beneath his tanned cheeks. She spoke to him in Italian, resting her palm on his forehead. But now she comes into the room and touches my arm gently before tending to Hannah.
“Is Donato here?” my niece asks.
“He’s in the courtyard with Agostina and your papà. They’re going to get you medicine.” She speaks endearments in Italian, rubbing Hannah’s back in a soothing rhythmic motion. “You will be better tomorrow.”
I feel the steady forward marching of time then. The date of my return flight, which had felt so far in the future when I first landed, looms closer, closer still. Every second, every blink and breath—like a conveyor belt, I can feel its ceaseless turning. That date will come and I will go through the motions—the cab ride to the airport, the boarding of the flight, the collecting of luggage when I land—and then it will be nursing homes and hospitals, but that, too, will end. Tomorrow, this week, or the next. Five years from now. Twenty. Snap. Gone.
From the window I see Donato sitting at the courtyard table with Agostina and Matteo. Every button on his shirt is undone except for one, and I’m watching the wind whip up the bottom of it. He must h
ave jumped in the pool or taken a shower, because his hair is damp and combed. Behind me Paul has returned, sitting on the end of the bed. “Is there anything else we can get you?” he asks, and I hear Hannah considering, “Hmmmm…”
“I’ll go into town,” I say, turning to them.
Paul looks at me, surprised.
“You should be here with Hannah,” I tell him. “And Agostina has Matteo with her. It makes sense that I go.”
Hannah frowns. “But you don’t speak Italian.”
“Donato can take me.” I try to keep my face blank and sincere. It must work, because Marie goes on caressing Hannah’s back, Paul nodding.
“But I want Cilla to stay here with me,” my niece moans.
“I’ll get the list from Agostina,” I say over my shoulder. I catch Paul kissing his daughter’s forehead, right where it is perspiring most. The nausea rises like a wave.
“Is she very sick?” Donato asks as he starts the car and we pull onto the shale road.
“She’s fine.” I roll down my window, breathing in that warm fragrant air. I want to tell him I’ve seen real illness, that I’ve been in the room with death, watched the final rattling breath, felt the pulse fade. But when I look at him, shirt blown open, changing gears with such brash confidence, I’m afraid I’d take something precious from him. Something I wouldn’t be able to reconcile.
A train whistles in the distance. I think I can feel each and every rock beneath the tires. When we turn onto the main highway their vibration disappears, replaced with smoothness and acceleration. The olive groves become green smears on either side of us. There it is again, the drag and pull of it. The light is changing, the sun is starting to set. Like a current, dragging me out to sea. Every bump in the road is another moment gone.
Donato slows as we come into Fasano, where traffic becomes more condensed, the stoplights less reliable. At the pharmacy we wait in line. It’s small and packed with various ointments and salves, deodorants and toothpastes. There are boxes of tampons stacked on the shelves, collecting dust, which seems appropriate. Donato buys tea and painkillers, and antinausea medicine.