by Paige Toon
‘She doesn’t like Rebecca much, but that doesn’t mean she likes me.’
‘On the contrary, I think she likes you very much.’
‘As a friend.’
I shrug. I’ve said enough. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. Time to butt out. ‘How was your trip home?’
‘So so,’ she says. ‘More of the usual. “When are you going to find a nice man and settle down?” ’ she mimics an old person with a squeaky voice, then she cups her hands around her mouth to form a loudspeaker and shouts, ‘ “I’m gay, Nonna, so that would be never!” ’
I’m assuming she does this because her grandmother has bad hearing, rather than Cristina simply shouting at the ignorant old dear.
‘That was what bothered Rebecca above everything else,’ she says. ‘The idea of telling her family. She’s the golden girl. She wants an easy life. An ordinary, normal, boring life,’ she adds sourly.
‘There’s something to be said for ordinary,’ I interject casually. ‘If you find the right person, I mean. Fireworks are exciting to begin with, but they get a bit tired after a while and then all you’re left with are charred remains. There’s something to be said for a slow burn that keeps you warm as the years go by.’
I think of Bonnie and Mick, and Jimmy and Vicky and Nan and Grandad before they were parted.
‘Rebecca is definitely fireworks,’ Cristina says darkly. ‘And sometimes she’s a bloody hand grenade. BOOM!’
She mimes her heart being exploded into pieces.
‘That doesn’t sound like much fun to me.’
She shakes her head. ‘It’s not.’
‘So do you think it would be better to let her go?’
‘I don’t have a choice. She’s chosen her boyfriend.’
‘She’s done that before, though, right? If she comes crawling, what will you do?’
‘I will try to resist,’ she states, chinking my glass. ‘Can I try this cake?’
‘Of course,’ I reply. ‘It’s yours.’
She wants to know what my week was like so I fill her in, telling her about Julia and Nino, the new servers.
‘A couple of Aussies came in yesterday, which made me feel a bit homesick,’ I admit.
She’s so canny, it won’t be long before she realises that I’m struggling. I’d rather she think it something to do with home than confusion about Alessandro.
‘I’m sorry.’ She’s sympathetic. ‘That’s made up my mind, then.’
‘Made up your mind, how?’
‘We’re definitely going out. Pour yourself another glass and turn up the music while I get ready!’
We catch a taxi into the centre and, as I’m already tipsy from prosecco, I don’t fear for my life as much as I normally would, even though we’re taking corners at crazy speeds and narrowly missing other cars driven by proper, serious mental-heads.
Stefano did the lunchtime shift at Serafina’s so he comes to meet us at the bar, along with Lindsey and a few others. Cristina says she didn’t bother asking Alessandro because he’ll be working and he ‘doesn’t do clubs’.
We go on from the bar to another bar and then to a club, hitting the dance floor with reckless abandon. I dance like nobody is watching, even though that is not the case, as Stefano keeps telling me.
‘I will protect you, Angel,’ he declares, swearing at a guy who gyrates against me before proceeding to do practically the same himself.
I edge closer to Cristina and Lindsey – no one is bothering them, probably because Cristina thumps anyone who so much as bumps into her.
We end up back at ours in the early hours of the morning. Cristina drags Lindsey and Stefano into the kitchen and points at the Lamington cake.
‘Angel made me a mountain cake,’ she tells them, her eyes welling up with tears. They all fall over themselves to gush about it. Lindsey can’t get over the tiny Cristina.
‘This is so beautiful, Angie! It looks like her!’
‘She’s very talented,’ Cristina says, putting her arm around my waist to give me a squeeze. ‘No one has ever made me a cake like this. And did you see the card!’ She rushes to the table to get it.
‘Oh wow, I would love someone to make me a personalised card,’ Lindsey says.
‘When’s your birthday?’ I ask.
She tells me and I make a mental note in my not-entirely alcohol-riddled brain. I switched to water about four hours ago, managing to draw on the inner strength I used to need when I actually had responsibilities towards someone other than myself.
*
I experience a bit of an alcohol low the next day, though, and Cristina is suffering from a pretty hefty hangover. We sit on the sofa and watch old movies together and in the afternoon have another heart to heart.
‘What did you want to be when you grew up?’ Cristina asks me at one point.
I shrug. ‘I didn’t know. I was pretty good at school. I assumed I’d go and work for someone one day. And travel. That was all I really wanted to do. What about you?’
‘I didn’t think I’d be a waitress,’ she says drily.
‘What are you passionate about?’ I ask.
‘Snowboarding.’
‘And you’re good at it?’
She shrugs. ‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘Could you teach it?’
‘It’s not a year-round job. Anyway, I’m not sure I’d be a very nice teacher.’
‘I bet you’d be fine if you were doing something you enjoyed. If you love the slopes so much, why do you live in a city?’
‘I don’t really know. I moved here because I wanted out of my small town, but I keep finding myself thinking about the mountains.’
‘Why wouldn’t you get a job there, then? You could work in a bar or a restaurant at night and snowboard during the day.’
‘I’m a bit old. That’s the sort of thing people do when they’re in their late teens and early twenties: head to the mountains for a season in the snow.’
‘That can’t be true of everyone. And anyway, I’m not talking about a season. I mean actually going to live in the mountains, somewhere that inspires you, living the life you love.’
‘I don’t know if I’d love it if I lived there full time.’
‘So do what Alessandro does. Waitress for six months of the year in Rome and spend the other six months working somewhere snowy.’
‘I doubt Giulio would let me do that.’
‘Of course he would. You’ve been with him for so long you’re practically family. You’re loyal and deserve loyalty in return. You should talk to him about it. See if you can take some time off next year.’
‘Maybe,’ she says hesitantly, but I can see that she’s thinking about it.
Chapter 32
A text from Alessandro arrives on Monday morning at nine o’clock, making my pulse race a little bit faster. Friday night and Saturday morning have taken on a dreamlike quality, and yesterday my joy from the previous day was replaced with a feeling of foreboding. Today I’m somehow removed from it all. It helps to be going another day without seeing him, but I’m on edge as I read his message: Don’t let Giulio drive you home if he drinks today. Call me. I’ll pick you up.
Warmth pushes away yesterday’s doubts. I reply with a thank you and he instantly responds with: And bring your photo album.
Maybe he thinks Serafina will want to see it, but it’s a nice suggestion. I slip it into my handbag.
I’m nervous waiting for Giulio to arrive. He’s fifteen minutes late, which doesn’t help, but he’s his usual exuberant self when he does appear.
‘Aah, you bake!’ he exclaims when I open the door, my tin of Monte Carlo biscuits in hand.
‘Yesterday,’ I reply with a nod, opening up the lid so he can see the domed biscuits sandwiched together with jam and buttercream.
‘Very good! Mama will love these.’
He leads me outside to a compact greeny-grey car. The badge tells me it’s a Fiat Panda 4x4. I haven’t been driven by Giulio before.
‘This is cute.’ I hope that’s an okay thing to say.
‘Yes. Alessandro say if his van had a baby, this is what it would look like.’
This makes me laugh. I can see what he means – they’re the same colour and both sort of boxy and utilitarian in appearance.
‘How is Alessandro this morning?’ I ask casually when we’re buckled up.
Giulio flashes me a black look. ‘Being a pain, as usual.’
Have they had an argument about Giulio’s excessive drinking? I ask him to elaborate but he brushes me off.
It’s weird, I’m never normally stuck for words, but I do find my father hard to talk to. Maybe it’s because he rarely asks questions in return. It’s not a conversation, it’s hardly even an interview, because he’s happy to talk without interruption. Thankfully he does this predominantly in English so I can understand him, but occasionally he’ll slip into Italian, which is confusing, to say the least.
As we drive east out of Rome’s suburbs, he begins to tell me a long and convoluted story about one of his friends who has a very impressive house on the Amalfi coast. He wants to sell up and buy something on the island of Capri, maybe even open his own restaurant.
It’s hard to keep up, but I try, my mind wandering only a little as I ponder how to get him to have a two-way conversation about something that might be relevant or interesting to both of us.
It occurs to me that he might be nervous too. He comes across as so confident and outgoing, but maybe part of it is an act to cover up his insecurities.
Once we’re on the main road to Tivoli, I take a deep breath and bite the bullet. I think I’m going to have to take control.
If I can get a word in edgeways.
‘Lots of rain today.’ Way to go, Angie. Talk about the weather. ‘We didn’t get a whole lot of it in the desert.’ How insightful for your father. I press on because at least he’s fallen quiet. ‘We used to get the most incredible thunderstorms, though,’ I tell him. ‘The view would stretch for miles and the whole sky would light up with these big lightning bolts cracking down from above – it was almost biblical. Sometimes I’d go and sit in my grandad’s car so I could watch the rain pour down. It was one of the only times I wished we didn’t live underground in a home without windows.’
‘I can’t imagine living in a home without windows,’ Giulio says. ‘I like the light too much.’
‘I found it a bit hard to get used to the light here at first,’ I tell him. ‘Underground it’s so dark and quiet, but here it’s so bright and noisy. Very different.’ I pause, but he doesn’t fill the silence. ‘We’d get dust storms as well,’ I tell him.
‘Yes?’
‘They were spectacular. The sky could be blue, but the horizon would be red as this huge cloud rolled into town.’
‘Oh wow.’
‘When it hit, everything would fall dark. It was like the lights being switched off. Kind of exciting, but the clean-up used to push my nan to her limits. The dust would get everywhere as it was, but after a dust storm everything was thick with it. She hated the wind and dust. I don’t know how she could stand living in Coober Pedy.’
Nan would only sit out under the palm trees on still days, and even in the later stages of her illness I’d catch her running her fingertips along the dusty leaves and frowning with annoyance. The bench I would clean, but individual palm tree leaves would have challenged the limits of my sanity. It was enough of an effort to water the palms – at least we had plenty of waste water from doing the motel’s laundry.
‘She must’ve liked the desert,’ Giulio says.
‘She loved it, really. She loved the people, the community. She had so many friends. They’re a great bunch. I miss them too.’
‘Your mother told me about the dust,’ he says.
‘She did?’
‘Yes, the dust and the wind. She said she didn’t like them together, but she decided when she was here that she loved the wind. I remember one very breezy day that she stood on the roof of Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano, facing the wind, and howled.’
‘Howled?’
‘Yes, like a wolf.’ He’s smiling. ‘She was crazy.’
I turn towards him, wanting to hear more. ‘Basilica. . . Is that St Peter’s Basilica?’
‘Si, yes.’
‘Did you go there with her?’
‘Yes. Her first time on the roof. We go to watch the sunset.’
‘I would like to do that.’
He glances at me. ‘Maybe we go too, eh?’
‘That would be nice,’ I reply, although I can’t help picturing Alessandro taking me and holding my hand.
‘Did you love my mother?’ I ask.
Giulio nods. ‘Si. I fell for her very quickly. First, we were colleagues, then we were friends, but right from the start she make me laugh. She was so young and happy, always joking, very different to how Marta was. I feared I had made a mistake in getting married because I didn’t know how to help my wife. I was terrified that we would never find our way out of the dark. But when I came to work, there was only light. I could not help falling in love with Angie because she made me smile. And I wanted to keep her smiling, so I decided to show her everything I adored about Roma. That was how we became friends.’
‘And the first time you kissed?’
‘The night we made you.’
Gosh.
‘I thought about following her when she left,’ he adds quietly.
He would have abandoned Marta and Alessandro?
‘Why did she leave?’ I ask.
‘Because I told her that I loved her. Because the situation between us was out of control. We were together only once, and afterwards, I confessed how I felt about her. I thought she already knew. I thought that it was obvious. I knew that she cared for me too. We had become close, but nothing else had happened until that night at Serafina’s when we kissed and could not stop.’ He sighs. ‘Your mother felt very guilty afterwards, as did I. Marta rarely came to Serafina’s so Angie did not know her well, but Alessandro joined me at work often and Angie cared for him. She did not want to see him hurt by our affair.’ He swallows. ‘So she left,’ he finishes huskily. ‘Four days after our one night together. She did not even say goodbye.’
‘Did you know where she went?’ I ask softly.
‘She was supposed to be going straight to Barcelona. I knew she wanted to visit Gaudí’s Sagrada Família.’
I recall the towering alien-looking spires from the front of one of my postcards.
‘I thought I could sit outside the church on the steps every day until she appeared,’ Giulio continues. ‘But I couldn’t leave. I could not walk away from Alessandro and Marta.’
‘What was Alessandro like as a boy?’
He smiles. ‘Very cheeky! Marta, her tablets make her sleepy, so Alessandro come to Serafina’s and play tricks! One day he hid my wedding ring in pizza dough. It come flying out as I toss it and hit my papà on the head!’
‘No!’ I gasp.
‘Si! My papà was very angry. But then he thought it funny, so Alessandro get off lightly.’
‘Was Alessandro happy when you married his mother?’
‘Si.’ He nods solemnly. ‘I was already Zio Giulio to him – Uncle Giulio,’ he translates, although I’d worked that out. ‘We had fun together. Alessandro was the main reason I agree to marry his mother.’
I’m taken aback. ‘Really?’
‘Si. Alessandro need a papà. He was so sad when Giorgio died.’ Giorgio was Alessandro’s real uncle, Marta’s brother, the one who had a brain tumour. He was also Giulio’s best friend.
‘For a while, we were happy,’ Giulio says and his tone has grown despondent.
Does he mean before he met my mother or after she left? I don’t need to ask because he tells me.
‘Marta getting pregnant was the best thing to happen to us. And the worst,’ he adds. ‘We had grown to love each other as husband and wife. Marta’s medication was working. Sh
e was happy or, at least, she was stable. But the doctor said that she must stop taking tablets or they harm the baby. That year was very hard. She was very low. After Carlotta was born, she didn’t want to take tablets again. She say they make her too tired and she was tired enough already. But Carlotta bring her joy. She bring us all joy.’
He falls silent. I wait until he’s ready to continue.
‘If Marta had not fallen pregnant, she would have continued with her medication and everything would be okay. But then we wouldn’t have had Carlotta. I rather have one day with mio angelo than no days at all.’
His angel?
‘That was what I called her,’ he says. ‘My angel.’ He glances across at me. ‘It is what Alessandro calls you. Angel.’
‘He doesn’t see me as a replacement for her, does he?’ I ask apprehensively.
‘No, no, no,’ he replies. ‘But maybe he think you are here to save us all.’
I detect humour in his tone. I hope so, in any case.
‘Does it bother you that he calls me Angel?’
I’ll ask him to stop, if it does.
‘No, not at all. It’s different. I had mio angelo, you are our Angel. Our angel from the other side of the world.’
I’m able to relax again.
*
Before I know it, we’re driving up the dirt road that leads to the Marchesi family residence. There’s a break in the rain, but when I wind down my window, the air is heady with the scent of it. I take a deep breath. I’ve always loved the smell of rain on the desert – the way the earth would squash flat with each raindrop collecting dust on its way to the ground. Here the scent is earthier, mustier, but just as intoxicating.
Big grey clouds hang over the sky that was blue the last time I was here, and the colours of the land are muted, the grass hills several shades darker. When I catch a glimpse of the river running adjacent to the track at the bottom of the hill, the water looks grey and white as it tumbles over the rocks.
Eliana and Enzo have gone to Venice to spend a few days with their eldest daughter Melissa, but Serafina, Jacopo and Valentina are here, although Serafina stays under the porch because the heavens open again as we pull up. Her grandchildren run forward with umbrellas, sheltering us as we splash through the puddles.