Italian for Beginners

by Kristin Harmel

  “His mother-in-law?” I repeated in a voice so high I didn’t recognize it.

  The girl glanced at me and nodded slowly.

  “Oh, my God,” I murmured. I felt like someone had just slapped me across the face and I was still reeling from the impact. Had I just imagined the connection between us, the electricity in the air, the chemistry? Was I supposed to have become his unwitting mistress? Or did he think I’d be on board with this plan, just because I was almost thirty-five, pathetic, boyfriendless, and boring? Like I couldn’t do any better than a smooth-talking restaurant owner who was married?

  I couldn’t believe I’d almost fallen for it.

  I felt physically ill. The butterflies had been replaced by an almost overwhelming wave of nausea.

  “Great,” Michael muttered under his breath, as if discouraged that the inconvenient little detail of his marriage had come up so soon. “Um, listen, Cat, it’s not what it sounds like.”

  I wanted to cry. But I had never cried in front of a man. And I wasn’t about to start now, in front of someone I barely knew at all and had very clearly misjudged entirely. “No need to explain,” I said crisply. I was already gathering my things to go.

  Michael looked even more wounded by my sudden coldness. I don’t know what he had expected. Was I supposed to be jumping up and down with glee that I had begun falling for a married man, that I had just shared the best kiss of my life with someone else’s husband?

  “But, Cat!” Michael exclaimed. He raked both hands through his hair in obvious agitation. “It’s… I mean, I…” He didn’t seem to be able to spit out words. I waited, glaring at him. “It’s just… I mean, she lives with us, and, um…” His voice trailed off.

  “Your mother-in-law lives with you?” I repeated in horror. I snorted. “Oh, perfect! This just keeps getting better.”

  “No, it’s not what you think!” Michael said. “I mean, it is, but it’s not. I mean, you don’t understand.” He looked desperate. He paused and turned to the hostess. “Anneliese, can you ask if I can call her back in a few minutes?”

  She hesitated and glanced at me. “Mr. Evangelisti, she says it’s about your daughter.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Daughter?” I repeated. “You have a daughter, too?” Is this what my life had come to? He had a wife and kids? I felt short of breath, like something heavy was suddenly pressing down on my diaphragm.

  “Listen, please, wait right there, and I’ll explain everything,” Michael said. He looked panicked. “I, um, I really have to take this. She never calls. It must be an emergency. I’m—I’m sorry.”

  And with that, he quickly strode out of the office, while I stared after him, slack-jawed and momentarily frozen to the spot. After he’d disappeared toward the kitchen, I took a deep breath and shook myself. I had to go. I suddenly wanted to be as far away from this place as possible. I glanced at the hostess, who was still standing there staring at me.

  “Unbelievable,” I muttered to her. “He has a wife?”

  She looked at me for a long moment and nodded. “Duh,” she said noncommittally. Then she rolled her eyes, looked bored again and went back to snapping her gum. And why shouldn’t she? She was all of eighteen or nineteen. Her whole life stretched before her.

  Mine, on the other hand, seemed to be rapidly closing in on me, leaving me fewer and fewer chances for happiness every day.

  Chapter Four

  That bastard!” my sister declared later that evening, her voice sounding closer and clearer than it should have given that she was thousands of miles away in Cozumel, on her honeymoon. She had called to say hello, but she had noticed right away that something about my voice sounded funny.

  I told her what had happened with Michael. “The worst part of it,” I said, “is that I can’t believe my judgment was so off, you know?”

  Becky sighed. “It’s not your fault, Cat,” she said. “You’re just in a bad place right now. And he took advantage of it. Or he tried to, anyhow.”

  I blinked a few times and tried to steady myself, even though I was sitting down at my desk at home. “It was just that he made me feel”—I searched my mind and then filled in—“hopeful. He made me feel hopeful, for the first time in a while. Like maybe I’d finally met someone who was different, you know?”

  “He was playing games with your head,” Becky said softly.

  “I know,” I said. “But it got me thinking. I just keep sitting around waiting for life to happen to me, don’t I? I mean, maybe I’m not meeting the right guys because I’m not out there living.”

  Becky was silent for a moment. “I don’t know if that’s it,” she said.

  “But what if it is?” I asked, suddenly feeling like time was sifting too quickly through the hourglass, even as we spoke, and I needed to do something right away to stop it. “What if I’m just sitting in my little cubicle every day and going to and from work and living in this routine that I don’t know how to get out of?”

  Becky sighed. “But Cat, that’s you,” she said.

  Her words stung. She was right.

  Becky tried to give me a few words of support, but I could hear Jay’s voice in the background, and I could tell she was distracted. I didn’t blame her. It was her honeymoon. She didn’t need to be counseling me.

  “Go have fun,” I said firmly. “And take lots of pictures.”

  “You got it, Sis.” I could hear her smiling through the phone. “And honestly, don’t worry about Michael. He’s a jerk. The world’s full of them. You just haven’t met the right guy yet.”

  For no reason at all, except maybe that speaking of Rome last night had reminded me of him, Francesco’s olive-skinned, chiseled face suddenly popped into my mind, as clear a vision as if I had seen him just yesterday.

  “Yeah,” I said vaguely, shaking my head. “Maybe I haven’t.”

  But as I wished my sister safe travels and told her to say hi to Jay for me and to make sure to have fun, I couldn’t shake Francesco’s face from my mind.

  Maybe I hadn’t met the right guy yet. Or maybe he’d been right in front of me all along, more than a decade ago, and I’d been too scared to take that leap into the unknown and find out.

  At midnight that night, I was still wide awake in my bed, tossing and turning. The later it got, the more distressed I felt. I hated nights like this. I had to wake up again at six in order to get in my daily half hour of yoga before showering, blow-drying my hair quickly, and leaving for work by seven fifteen. I knew I’d be miserable tomorrow if I didn’t get enough sleep.

  But that wasn’t the primary thing that was on my mind. What was really bothering me was that I couldn’t shake the thought of Francesco. The more I tried not to think about the married restaurateur, the more I focused on the guy I’d fallen for in Italy more than a dozen years ago.

  So at twelve fifteen, I finally snapped on my bedside light, got up, and walked into my living room. I switched on the lamp on my desk and opened the bottom drawer. Slowly, I pulled out the small wooden keepsake box I hadn’t looked at since placing it there years ago.

  I sat down on the living room sofa with the box in my lap and cracked it open slowly, as if doing so with less caution would invite my old life to come lumbering into my new one more quickly than I was prepared for.

  The first thing I saw was the photo of Francesco, the last one I’d taken the morning I left Rome. I’d snapped the shot just hours before I last saw him. It was my favorite picture of him. I had gotten up early that morning to pack the rest of my things, most of which had migrated from my tiny dorm room to Francesco’s much larger apartment over the course of our two-month relationship. I had set my neatly packed suitcases by the front door and had crept back into the bedroom to wake him. But when I stepped through the doorway, he looked so cute tangled up in the sheets, his mouth just a little bit open, the muscles in his bare, darkly tanned shoulders rippling perfectly, that I couldn’t resist grabbing my camera and snapping a shot. He never knew I’d taken
it, but I’d looked at it so many times, especially in that first year after leaving Rome, that the edges were tattered and worn, and the photo looked many years older than it was.

  Of course, the photo was old. In the thirteen years that had passed since my time in Rome, so much had changed. I had changed. As I started flipping through the rest of the photos, which I had never put in an album because it made me sad to look at them, I marveled at how young and happy I had looked. I was like a different person. Not that I wasn’t happy here. I was, of course. It was just that, in Rome, there was a lightness to my smile, a carefree look in my eyes. I looked so excited to be there, so excited to be exploring the city, so excited to be on my own.

  I flipped through various poses of me and Francesco at the Trevi Fountain, me and my roommate, Kara, at the Colosseum, me and Francesco doing shots at his favorite bar near the Pantheon, me by myself outside the museum in Vatican City. I smiled as I passed photos of me kissing Francesco on his smooth, darkly tanned cheek, or of me posing near his Vespa. I felt as though I’d made a lifetime of memories in that summer. And yet there were only a few dozen photos to prove it. I’d been through them so many times over the years that I almost didn’t know whether my memories of Rome were real or whether I was just remembering the things that the pictures showed me.

  I quickly flipped through the rest of the box. There was the diary I’d kept, the one I hadn’t looked at once since I returned. There were ticket stubs from my train rides around Italy, brochures from the museums I’d visited, pressed sunflowers that I’d picked by the side of the road in Tuscany. There was also the butterfly necklace that Francesco had given me two weeks after we met. It was costume jewelry; he’d probably bought it for a few dollars from some guy on the street. But to me, it might as well have been Tiffany silver and diamonds. I had stopped wearing it a year after I came home from Rome, eleven and a half months after I’d stopped hearing from Francesco. It had almost completely fallen apart by then, anyhow.

  I picked up the keepsakes one by one, letting the memories wash over me, and I studied the pictures for a long time. I had almost forgotten how much I’d loved his bright green eyes, the way he’d furrow his brow when he was concentrating on something, the way he’d wink at me when I said something funny or referenced a private joke between us. I’d nearly forgotten how good we looked together. He had driven me crazy all the time with his haphazard, devil-may-care approach to life, his constant disorganization. I liked to think that we had balanced each other out perfectly, me with my obsession with order, him with his total lack of a schedule. I think he made me loosen up a little, if only for the summer. And I think I helped make him a little more responsible.

  But I had no idea where he was now, or what he was doing. He had never specifically asked me to stay—but I wouldn’t have, anyhow; I had to come home to help take care of Becky and finish college. He had told me he couldn’t do long distance, and I had left anyway. I could have stayed. I knew I could have stayed and built a life in Rome. But Becky and Dad needed me, and so I’d turned my back and gone.

  So, in the end, I suppose it was my fault. I didn’t even blame him when he stopped calling or responding to my e-mails two weeks after I’d left Rome. I knew I had hurt him. But I’d thought then that the world was wide open for me, that I’d fall in love again with someone new, that Francesco would one day be a fond memory.

  Instead, I was nearly thirty-five, and despite the fact that I’d been in and out of several relationships in my adulthood, Francesco remained the only man I’d ever really loved.

  How had I walked away from that so easily?

  I put the keepsakes, diary, and photos away, back in their box, and closed the lid decisively, as if banishing the memories to the past, where they belonged. But even after I climbed back into bed, turned out the light, and tried to fall asleep, Francesco was still there, lurking at the edges of my mind.

  That Sunday morning, after avoiding nine calls from Michael and deleting the six messages he’d left without listening to them, I arrived at my dad’s narrow row house in Brooklyn, juggling a big brown bag of pumpernickel bagels (our favorite), a container of cream cheese, and two cups of coffee, one of which I had managed to spill on my white T-shirt en route.

  “Hello, beautiful,” my dad greeted me as he usually did, taking the bagels and cream cheese from my hands as he bent down to kiss my cheek.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, stepping inside and pulling the door closed behind me while balancing both coffee cups in the crook of my arm.

  We settled in the kitchen nook with our usual Sunday spread of bagels, cream cheese, and the lox Dad always bought from the deli two blocks away. He poured us two glasses of orange juice from the jug in his fridge and sat down across from me, a serious expression on his face.

  “Becky told me about your date with that young man from the restaurant,” he said without any preface.

  I could feel myself turning red. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Cat, it is a big deal,” he said firmly. He paused and didn’t speak again until I looked at him. “You’ve had a lot of bad luck, kiddo. But it’s not your fault.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Yeah, well,” I said, “at some point, I think we have to start tracing it back to me. After all, I’m the one making all these bad decisions, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t think the restaurant guy was a bad decision,” my father said. “How were you to know?”

  “Don’t you think I should have sensed that something was off?” I picked up a knife and began to violently slather a bagel with cream cheese. “But all I thought was, Wow, this guy is so nice. I actually thought I’d finally met a good one, you know?”

  My father looked at me sadly. “You will.”

  I set the knife down and stared at my bagel. “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this,” I said. “It’s fine. Let’s talk about something more exciting. Like the wedding. Or Becky’s honeymoon. Or your new golf clubs.”

  My dad arched an eyebrow at me. “You always do that,” he said. “But not this time. We’re going to talk about you for a minute.”

  I took a bite of my bagel and ignored him. “The bagels are great this morning,” I said cheerfully.

  “Cat…” My father looked at me sternly.

  “What?” I played innocent.

  Dad rested his chin in his hand and shook his head slowly at me. “You need to make some changes.”

  I set my bagel down. “What is this, an intervention?”

  “I think you need more than one person for an intervention.”

  “Okay, so it’s a really bad intervention.”

  “Cat,” he said. “It’s not an intervention. But Becky and I have talked about it, and we have a suggestion for you.”

  “You and Becky talked about me?” I asked.

  He frowned. “You can let other people help you sometimes, too, you know,” he said. “You don’t always have to take care of everyone.”

  “Okay. So what’s your big suggestion for how to change my life?” I took a giant, defiant bite of my pumpernickel bagel, steeling myself for what was to come. Had they signed me up for speed dating? Posted my profile to several online sites? Sent up a blimp with my number, photo, and a message that screamed, Desperate and dysfunctional? Call Cat Connelly!

  My dad took a bite of his bagel and avoided meeting my gaze. “Go to Italy,” he said with his mouth full.

  I swallowed too soon and choked on my bagel. After a moment spent dislodging a giant chunk of creamy pumpernickel from my throat and downing half the glass of water my father had jumped up to pour me, I wiped my eyes and repeated, “Um… go to Italy? What are you talking about?” I had the disturbing thought that my father had turned into a mind reader and knew I’d been obsessing over Francesco last night.

  My father looked surprisingly calm. “It’s the place where you were the happiest,” he said. “Becky and I think it would be good for you to go back there for a little while.”<
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  “What are you talking about? I’m happy right here.”

  He just gave me a look. “Cat.”

  “What? I am.”

  “Oh, yes, I can tell,” he said. “This is what you’ve always dreamed of. Working fifty-hour weeks at a dull job and delivering me pumpernickel bagels every Sunday morning while your love life goes down the drain.”

  “I take offense to that.” I paused. “All of that.”

  My father sighed. “Look. You certainly have the vacation time saved up. And knowing you, you have plenty of room on your credit cards.”

  “I do not,” I responded. “Are you forgetting I just bought an apartment?” It had been one of my proudest accomplishments yet; I had scrimped and saved for a decade to put enough away for a down payment late last year on a one-bedroom on the Upper East Side.

  “You didn’t pay for your apartment on your credit cards,” Dad reminded me.

  “No,” I grumbled. “But I save my credit for emergencies. And I’ve been using my cards to make ends meet while I earn back some of the money I spent on the down payment, okay?”

  “So spend a thousand on a plane ticket and another fifteen hundred on a month in a hotel.”

  “Wait, you want me to go to Rome for a month?”

  “You can’t change your life in a week,” he said. “Go over for a few weeks, at least. Make it worth your while.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said flatly.

  My dad looked away. “Maybe it’ll give you some time to deal with your issues with your mother, too.”

  “My issues with my mother?” I asked, standing up.

  “Stop being so dramatic,” my father said. “Sit down.”

  I glared at him for a moment and then slowly sank back into my chair. “I don’t have any issues with my mother,” I said softly.

  “Aside from hating her,” my father said nonchalantly. He wrapped his hands around mine before I could move to protest again. “Relax, Cat. I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But maybe you could pay a visit to her family while you’re there. Maybe they can help you to understand that she never meant to hurt you. Perhaps once you understand that, you’ll be able to move on.”