by Liska Jacobs
“Look at this view!” she says to me. “Can you believe it?”
The moon is big and blue, and hangs over the park, making the trees shimmer in the darkness. The piazza below is quiet, except for the cicadas, and the sound of the fountain at its center, and the occasional raised voice of a cabdriver waiting for a fare. Cristiano gets the record player to work, and jazz spills over and into that silence.
“Not so loud, amore,” Silvia says to him, and he turns it down to a faint din.
“Is Hannah up here?” I ask.
“Come drink with us,” she says, tossing her dark head and patting the seat beside her. “We toast Donato, so you cannot say no.”
Gabriel is with them, slouched in a chair, eyes like slits. The moonlight must be playing tricks on me. All of them look illuminated, glossy and lethargic. The only movement is from Cristiano, who I think is kissing the girl next to him. I don’t want to stare—but I can hear their mouths on each other.
“Gin spritzer,” Silvia says, motioning to my glass. “That was Donato’s favorite.”
“I know.” I immediately regret saying that. I feel heat rise in my face.
“Here, drink,” she says, handing me a shot glass. “We toast Donato, salute!”
The others stir from their seeming stupor. Cristiano breaks away from the girl. We clink our glasses and down the clear, fiery liquid. I feel it hit my stomach, unpleasantly hot.
“I was looking for Hannah, have you seen her?”
The British sister takes my hands. I feel bad that I can’t remember her name.
“She peaked early,” she says, touching my face. “You are soft. Wow.”
I pull away. “What do you mean, she peaked early?”
“We’re doing MDMA.” She smiles, her teeth look fluorescent in this light. “It’s okay, we only gave her a half dose. She went to Silvia’s with some of the others to go to sleep.”
Instantly I remember Emily’s later teenage years. She had older friends too, all of them wealthy and reckless. It had started with weekends spent at friends’ houses, then spring breaks in the desert. You should have come with us, my sister said when she came home looking gaunt and hungover. It was wild. What had I said? Only voiced my disapproval. Tried to make her see reason.
“I should be with my niece,” I say, getting up. The ground spins, and I reach out for the armchair where Gabriel’s sitting.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask him. I motion between us. “In private—alone. You and me.” Talk.
I can hear that argument between Emily and me. What’s the plan? I had demanded. You’re going to go from party to party, snorting whatever up your nose? Model for a living? You’ve turned into Mom. And Emily, nearly spitting, If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it, okay? Stop mothering me, just stop!
It wasn’t like on the beach, when she laughed at me with those surfers—or later, when we fought about Guy or over how best to care for Dad. It had, at the time, felt like a rejection of me, of everything I had done for her. Fine, I remember thinking. Then I’ll wait until you come calling for my help. I did not reach out, even when she moved across the country. And neither did she. I heard about rehab from our mom. But having a sister is a complex thing. A myriad of major and minor betrayals and confidences, yet some unshakable bond persists. It was why she reached out when she was pregnant, and why I suddenly miss her so much I almost cry out. She would understand, more than anyone, and forgive me.
Gabriel is offering a cigarette. “No,” I tell him. “Thank you, no grazie.”
The sky above us is starless, just matte black and pulsing. “Don’t tell Hannah,” I’m trying to explain. I kneel beside him. “Hannah can’t know.” I shake my head. Never.
“Zia Cilla,” Silvia says behind me. “Hannah already knows.”
The British girl giggles. “We all know. Hannah found photos on his phone.”
It’s like jumping from the faraglione—not the moment in the air, but when I splashed into the water and felt the weight of my body and the pressure of it exploded in my ears.
“What do you mean?” I ask dumbly.
“And Donato told Gabriel,” Cristiano says, and then he switches to Italian. I imagine he’s saying something vulgar, because Gabriel snorts and repeats it. My whole face is hot.
“Scandalous!” One of the other girls laughs.
Silvia helps me stand, dusting some grit that has stuck to my dress. She takes my hand and drops a gold chain into my palm.
“Hannah wanted you to have this,” she says, folding my fingers over the pendant. I can feel the coolness of the gold, the sharp corners of the lapis.
“And she says goodbye.” She kisses both my cheeks. It’s a gentle, sweet brushing of her lips. Arrivederci.
I stumble inside, down the stairs and into the club, where the house lights are on and the DJ has stopped playing. I can see where the carpet is peeling, the stains on the couches, the waitresses looking tired and worn out. It smells of ammonia and bleach and something on the brink. There it is—that surge again, I’m going to vomit.
In the bathroom I retch into the toilet. My eyes are watering but I don’t start crying until I see the necklace on the floor beside me. The gold has been polished, the lapis in the center is deep blue, streaked with flecks of gold. Like stars, like faraway planets. It could hold a whole galaxy within it. I imagine how happy Hannah must have been to have something precious of her mother’s. I can picture both of their smiles perfectly.
Light feminine voices come from the other side of the stall door. A polite knocking. They ask in Italian, and then in English.
“Are you okay? Signora?”
Two girls in sequin dresses, purses over their shoulders. Someone’s daughters, sisters probably. They help me to the bathroom sink. Thank you, thank you. Because one of them is holding my hair so I can drink from the faucet, the other rubbing my back.
“Passerà,” she repeats. It will pass, it will pass.
I want to tell them about grief, about how after Emily’s funeral, when I took Hannah down to the beach, she asked, Do you miss her? The surf was so gentle. Kitten waves, Emily would have called them, because they lapped at the shore. I’ve been mourning Emily since we were teenagers, I told Hannah. Because that was what I believed at the time.
“What happened?” one of the girls is asking. She touches the sleeve of my dress. But how can I explain what I have gotten wrong? I did not understand what I had lost.
“My sister,” I choke out, tears in my eyes. “My sister is dead.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Second books are strange, feral animals. You need a crack team. Thank you, Daphne Durham, Sean McDonald, Lydia Zoells, Naomi Huffman, Sara Birmingham, Chloe Texier-Rose, Dara Hyde, and Kari Erickson, for being just that.
My love and thanks to Yanina Spizzirri, Gallagher Lawson and Tim Walker, Megan Eccles, Mark Haskell Smith, Linde Lehtinen, and my unwavering source of support, Jordan Bryant. Thank you to my family—I’ve tried to do right by Papa, may he rest in peace. Thank you also to Karin Lanzoni, Karen Dunbar, and the Michael Asher Foundation for the encouragement. And I will be forever grateful to Tod Goldberg and the entire UCR Palm Desert staff and faculty.
Lastly, this book was written over the course of several trips to Italy, where I’d like to extend my gratitude to the wonderful Rosangela Natalizi Zizzi and everyone at Masseria Brigantino; Alessandra Sperduti in Trastevere, whose Airbnb served as a second home; Marco Proietti, who always welcomed us with a smile; Annamaria Tanzarella and Cynthia Leone at Museo Archeologico di Egnazia for their generosity and time; and Ekaterina Stepanova and Valentina Abodi for their hospitality—thank you, thank you. Mille grazie.
ALSO BY LISKA JACOBS
Catalina
A Note About the Author
Liska Jacobs is the author of the novel Catalina, and her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and The Hairpin, among other publications. She holds an M
FA from the University of California, Riverside. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Brentwood, Los Angeles, CA
Monti, Rome, Italy
Torre Canne, Puglia, Italy
Monti, Rome, Italy
Acknowledgments
Also by Liska Jacobs
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2019 by Liska Jacobs
All rights reserved
First edition, 2019
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71673-8
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