Racing the Sun

by Karina Halle

  My heart sinks.

  Derio doesn’t wear one of those.

  I burst into tears. It comes suddenly, like a bomb gone off inside of me, and I am ripped apart violently, ruined and destroyed. I am gutted, like a dying fish, my very being cut out, yanked out, discarded on the floor.

  My grief is too powerful, too devastating for me to survive.

  I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

  I can only cry. The pizzeria fills with my wails, the inhuman cries coming out of me that I don’t even recognize.

  Eventually, someone mentions getting a doctor and I think they mean for me. I can’t stay here anymore. Before they can call someone or take me somewhere, I burst out of the pizzeria and into the chaos of the streets.

  I can hear them yelling after me in concern but I can’t stay there. I have to leave. I wildly hail a cab, arms flailing, and throw myself into the backseat. When the door closes I feel like I’m hidden from the world, if just for a moment.

  The cab driver is listening to cheesy Italian pop music and has rosary beads hanging from his mirror. He’s asking where I want to go but I don’t know. I want to go back in time, when Derio was alive and I had his love, but I don’t think he can take me there.

  I tell him Rome. I want to go to Rome.

  He tells me I’m crazy and can’t take me there, but he can take me to the train station. I start crying again, banging my head against the window. He’s frightened now, unsure what to do, and I yell at him that my boyfriend is dead and he is in Rome and would he please take me?

  His voice softens but is still firm. I frantically dig through my purse and pull out a wad of euros. There are three hundred of them. I reach over the seats, tears blurring my vision, and shove them in his hand. “Per favore,” I plead.

  He looks at the money and nods. “Okay.”

  Rome is not a hop, skip, and a jump away. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour cab ride up the highway, which I spend drowning in guilt. Derio made a mistake during the race and it was all because of me. He wasn’t thinking clearly, he couldn’t have been. What was I thinking? Breaking up with him right before his first race in a year? Couldn’t it have waited? Would it have killed me not to be so selfish for once?

  It killed him. My selfishness killed him.

  It.

  Killed.

  Him.

  And Derio died on that track, alone. He died in the horrible way I left him, thinking he wasn’t worth it, thinking I didn’t love him, wondering how he was going to take care of the twins without me there. He died with a broken heart.

  He died with my broken heart.

  I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to break any further, but now it has been completely obliterated, turned to dust, the ashes swept away into the abyss.

  The driver asks where I am going once we reach the crowded outskirts of Rome and I repeat the name of the hospital I saw on the news. He nods and then starts asking what happened, why I am going, but I don’t know enough to respond to him. I can only cry to myself, trying to hide those strong, rolling sobs that rip the air from my lungs.

  When he pulls up to the hospital, I see a crowd of reporters outside. No one pays attention to me and I slip inside while they talk excitedly to an exhausted-looking doctor.

  I don’t know where I’m going. Compared to the small Capri hospital I went to, the Rome one is a whirl of confusion, full of baffled cries and painful whimpers and the smell of iodine and sour skin. I start wandering through the halls, ignoring the nurses who glance my way, knowing if I even make eye contact with them they’ll ask me why I’m here and haul me away.

  I think I want to find the morgue. Maybe the emergency room. I want to find Derio. I want him to be alive so I can tell him I’m sorry. I want so much but can afford so little.

  I end up in a long hallway past the noise and smells of the ER waiting room. The hall hums with fluorescent lights.

  Then I see her, leaning against the wall, hugging herself.

  Felisa.

  I start running toward her, amazed that she’s here but craving the embrace of someone I know in a land where I don’t really know anyone.

  “Felisa!” I cry out, and when I see the tears streaming down her face, I know the truth.

  It nearly knocks me off my feet.

  Instead, I collide into her and she wraps her arms around me and cries. I cry. We don’t have to say anything, I can feel her grief just as I feel mine, raw and bleeding.

  Finally, she pulls apart and smooths down my hair affectionately. “I look for you,” she says, her English thick and mangled. She clears her throat. “I am sorry, my English is not used much. I thought you would be here.”

  “I was in Naples,” I tell her, afraid to tell her any more than that. That I left him, that I’m a deserter.

  “I saw it on the news,” she says, taking a heavy breath. “I was with my partner, Lorenzo, in Umbria. I made him drive me here right away.” Tears well in her eyes again, and if I had any more left in me I would cry at the sight of an old, strong woman like herself moved to such grief. “He is like a son to me. I never should have left him. Or the twins. Or you.”

  We have far too much in common now. We’re drowning in the mire of our guilty consciences.

  “I left him, too,” I admit and the words burn through my throat. “Just last night. I couldn’t handle it anymore and I snapped. We broke up. We were together, you know. After you left. We fell in love and this is all my fault.”

  Without you, I am nothing. Please come back to me.

  His last text cuts painfully across my mind, digging in like barbed wire.

  I can never go back to him now.

  “It is no one’s fault but mine,” Felisa says, staring up at the ceiling. She looks at me and sighs. “You know, I knew he was in love with you. From the beginning. You made his eyes light up, just like the sun coming through a cloud. I had never seen that before. I thought you were a blessing.”

  “I was a curse,” I spit out bitterly, wiping my nose on my shoulder.

  She digs into her purse and hands me a tissue. “You mean more to him than I think you know.”

  I can’t even be bothered to correct her use of present tense.

  “Where are the children?” she asks me.

  I shrug helplessly. “I don’t know. If they are not here he would have left them with someone on Capri. Maybe Signora Bagglia or Signora DiFabbia.” The realization that they are truly orphans almost floors me. I look at her. “Should I go back to them? They have no one now, no one at all.”

  “If you don’t, I will,” she says, her head held high. “I just have to convince Lorenzo. It is funny, but like Derio, Lorenzo is afraid of the sea. Or like Derio was.”

  I don’t understand how anything can be funny now, nor understand how Felisa’s eyes can grow so warm when she says Lorenzo’s name. How can her guilt, her sorrow, allow her even a moment of happiness? I feel like I’m six feet underground and buried alive, my screams lost in the dirt.

  “No,” I say quietly, and in my heart I find the truth. “I have to go back. I am the one who should take care of them. They need me. And now I need them.” I can’t even imagine how they are going to handle the news. “Do you think they will let me?”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, the government. Do you think they will let me take care of them? Do I have to adopt them?”

  She frowns at me and wipes a tear away from her eyes with long, wrinkled fingers. “If you want to be their nanny again, then be their nanny. I am sure Derio wouldn’t mind. He would be happy.”

  “Yes, he would be happy if he were alive, but that doesn’t have much pull now.”

  Felisa’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. “If he were alive?!”

  I wonder if she’s gone senile in the stress of it all. “I don’t think the government will care what Derio would have wanted if he’s . . . he’s . . . passed on. Unless I was in his will?”

  “Passed on?” she repeats, her hand c
lutching at her collar.

  Now I have to frown. Maybe she doesn’t know the extent of it. “He’s dead.” Saying the words nearly breaks me open.

  “No,” she says wildly, shaking her head. “He is not. They would have told me.”

  I give her a hopeless look. “It was on the news.”

  “Yes,” she says and gestures down the hall. “And they brought him here. He has burns, a bad shoulder, and broken leg but he is not dead.” She arches her brow and gives me an incredulous look. “Mamma mia.”

  Hope wants to bloom inside of me. But it can’t, it can’t . . . “But the man who died, he was wearing red and he passed on the outside and this man, this man on the other bike, he was wearing a bracelet,” I tell her fervently.

  “Yes, it was a shame,” she says. “Poor soul. These kind of things don’t happen so often but when they do, they are very bad.”

  “But the bracelet!”

  She sniffles and gives me a look of impatience. “Derio has a rare blood type. He wears a medical bracelet when he races in case of accidents. Like this one.”

  “He’s not dead?”

  “Santo cielo!” she curses. “He is not dead!”

  I can’t contain the hope now. My smile is larger than life. “But you are crying!”

  “Because he is hurt!” she snaps. “And I should have been there for him. I don’t like to see my poor boy hurt, he has been through so much.”

  “But—” I start.

  “He is not dead,” she assures me. She nods at the nearest door. “They have treated him for his burns on his leg. It is broken, too, which is a problem with the healing. They put his shoulder back in. Soon they will come out and tell us how he is. But he is stable and he is alive and I am sure when we are allowed to see him, he will be happy to see us. I hope so, anyway.”

  I suddenly feel faint and the hallway is starting to spin. I grab for the wall and slowly lower myself so I’m sitting on the floor, my legs splayed out in front of me.

  He’s not dead.

  My heart is leaping inside my chest like an animal that’s been set free. I start crying again but these are happy tears. These are the best tears. I feel terrible that he’s so hurt, that he’s going through this all over again, and the injuries sound bad, especially the burn. But even if half of his body melted away, I wouldn’t care.

  He’s alive. Alive.

  My Derio.

  Felisa stares down at me and smiles like I’m the biggest fool. “So what are your plans now?”

  “I’m going to stay here,” I tell her without thinking.

  She nods. “You said you were in Naples. Where were you going?”

  “Home,” I say softly. I give her a worried look. “I was going home.”

  “You can still go.”

  “No!” I nearly yell it, wiping the tears away with the heel of my palm. “No, I can’t go home now. I can’t leave him like this. And the twins need me. I wasn’t kidding when I said I would go back and look after them.”

  “I know you weren’t. I can see it in your eyes. You are very kind. Very determined. Stubborn. Like Derio. That’s why you work so well together.” She exhales and straightens her shoulders, staring at the door. “You will wait with me first, until we can see him. I know both Signora Bagglia and Signora DiFabbia. I will call them and find the twins and tell them what has happened. It is better that I do it, so the language does not get crossed.”

  I’m more than okay with that.

  “Then,” she continues, “you will go back to Capri. I will stay here, me and Lorenzo, and make sure Derio is all right.”

  I frown and slowly get to my feet and dust off my butt. “Should I bring the twins here?”

  She shakes her head. “Unless Derio gets worse, don’t take them out of school. They need some, how you say, time to be normal. I am sure he will be transferred to the hospital in Naples, and seeing him will be easier then.”

  “He has friends from Naples,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t look impressed. “Yes, I met them earlier. Stupid men. All the men who race are stupid. But what can you do?” She gives me a kind look. “I know you say things were not good between you but he is going to need you now more than ever. Can you be there for him?”

  I swallow, feeling a strength burn through me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Even if it means heading backward, not forward, I am not going anywhere.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We wait for hours in the hospital. I meet Lorenzo, a funny little man with big false teeth and kind squinty eyes, who speaks no English at all, but he and Felisa seem to be madly in love. Which is cute and all, but seeing them embrace makes me itch for Derio even more. Ever since I learned that he isn’t dead, which still feels fragile, like a truth that could be blown away, I’ve gone from pure joy and relief to a nearly uncontrollable urge to see him, like I can’t see or breathe or think properly until I do.

  But the hours are long and the doctors tell us little. It’s always “soon.” But at least Derio seems to be pulling through. I knew he would. That man has a fire inside him.

  After a while I think about the hotel in Naples with all my stuff in it and realize I’ll probably have to stay in Rome overnight, though I don’t have anything with me other than a purse. I also realize that if I’m going back to Capri to look after the twins while Derio recuperates, then I’m going to have to cancel my flight. At this stage in the game, there’s no way I can get the ticket refunded—all that money will have to go to waste.

  I go outside into the alley, where two orderlies are on their smoking break, dial home, and wait.

  My mother immediately answers with a “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I tell her quickly. “But I only have two minutes on my plan and I need to make this quick before they charge me an arm and a leg.” I can hear my dad in the background asking her who it is. When she tells him Amber, I know he’s going to pick up the phone in the other room. They like to tag team me.

  “Why are you calling?” she asks me. “Is your flight canceled? I thought it was tomorrow.”

  “Amber,” my father says, picking up the line, “I’m going to be a bit late picking you up from the airport. I didn’t account for the hockey game. That means extra traffic, you know.”

  “That’s fine,” I say, taking in a deep breath. “Because I’m not coming home.”

  The line goes silent. Just for a moment. Just long enough for my words to sink in.

  “I knew it,” my mother says in a hush.

  “Amber, please. Explain what you mean,” says my dad, his voice taking on that dry quality, the doctor-of-psychology one he uses when he needs to make himself look more important than he is.

  “There was an accident, and Derio was involved. Motorcycle racing, it’s really big here and he’s hurt. Pretty badly. I’m actually at a hospital in Rome right now.”

  “You’re in Rome?” my mother squeaks.

  “Yes, I had to see him. I saw it on the news. It was horrible. I thought he was dead. But his old nanny is here, Felisa, the woman who hired me for the job. He’s just really hurt. The other guy actually died. God, it’s just terrible.”

  “You made a commitment to come home,” my father says. “I know what you’re saying is sad and you feel bad, perhaps you’re even displacing your guilt, but if he’s all right and he has someone, then you need to come home.”

  “I made a commitment to those children,” I tell them, feeling frustrated. He always pretends he knows what’s best for me, even though he doesn’t even know what’s best for himself.

  “You made a commitment to your parents,” he says. “And you need to honor that commitment.”

  “No,” I tell him. “I promised those kids I would take care of them, I’m the one who ran away when the situation got too hard.”

  “You ran away because you realized you were wasting your life!” he yells, and I’m stunned into silence. He sounds ferocious, even over the phone. “This whole tri
p has been a waste of your time, and you know it. Whatever you’re looking for, Amber, it’s not out there. I should know. I traveled, too, and never found it. You might think you’re smarter and braver than your parents, but you’re not. I’ve seen the world and I’ve learned you can’t be a butterfly drifting from flower to flower. What you need, what you want, is at home. You’ll find it by using your goddamn degree and getting a proper, well-paying job and building a life for yourself here. Do you really think you can be a nanny? It’s a sad, sorry position with no respect and lousy pay. You are better than that. You have an education and you have brains. It’s time you use them. Be responsible for once in your life and come home!”

  More silence. Months ago I would have cried at his outburst but I barely flinch at his words. I watch the orderlies stub out their cigarettes and laugh heartily at some private joke. This is surreal. I’m in Rome, waiting on Derio to come out of a situation where he almost died, and my father is yelling at me like I’m not here at all. Like I’m standing in the kitchen and complaining about what to do with my life, like I’m some teenager he can still talk down to and boss around. I still don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I know I’ll do it in time. But for now, there are bigger things than that.

  “Harold,” my mother says in a softly chiding tone.

  I clear my throat, feeling all the power they ever held over me drain away. “I am being responsible,” I say quietly but with more determination than I’ve ever felt before. “I have two children who depend on me and need me more than ever. And I have a man who I love, who loves me, who needs me just as much. I have a brain and I am using it, along with my heart. I’m sorry you’re disappointed in me but I’m not sorry I’m staying. You always wanted me to do the right thing and grow up. Well, this is me growing up.” The phone beeps at the two-minute mark. “Goodbye, Mom and Dad. I’ll write to you in a few days.”

  Then I hang up the phone, put it on mute, and slip it back in my purse. I run after one of the orderlies and stop him.

  “Scusi,” I say with a big smile. “Hai una sigaretta?”