A Semester Abroad

by Papa, Ariella

  “I look you from deh,” Gaetano said in English, gesturing to the other side of the piazza. “I say you are Kaiti, de fren of dis beautiful. I look your,” he pointed down to her bare feet “ and know beautiful americana.”

  “Cool,” Kaitlin said, smiling. She looked at me. I was smiling at the way he said her name. “No idea what he just said, but I caught the beautiful part and I like it.”

  I laughed. It was weird to hear Gaetano speaking English. It had been a long time. He couldn’t express exactly what he wanted. I wanted Kaitlin to understand how smart and funny he was and worried it wasn’t going to translate.

  “They think it’s weird to go barefoot here.”

  “She doesn’t understand my English?” he asked, almost hurt.

  “It’s not your words,” I lied. “It’s the, uh, accent.”

  “HHHHow de tren?” Gaetano asked, trying again. Did he really hear my h’s that hard when I spoke English?

  “The train?” Kaitlin said, looking at me to confirm. When I nodded, she answered, her voice louder than usual. “It was long.”

  “You slep?” Gaetano asked and this time held his hands up to the side of his face to convey sleep.

  “No, I couldn’t,” she said, dramatizing her disappointment. “Too much–” She moved her hands like the motion of the train and Gaetano nodded.

  “Where are you going to take her?” he asked me. “You have to show her a good time. You should show her that Italy is beautiful. You should take her to my town, but Siena will have to do.”

  I laughed. “He’s worried that you won’t like Italy.”

  “No, I like it. I like it already,” she said, nodding emphatically. She was talking so much louder and more exaggerated than she usually did. People were so funny in other languages.

  “Okay,” he said. He pointed to her face and used a word I didn’t know. “I like.”

  “What did he say?” she asked. I shook my head, then I got it.

  “Oh, freckles, he likes your freckles.” He mentioned her red hair and I translated.

  “Thank you.”

  He took her hand. “Very beautiful Americana.”

  She was smitten. “I love it here. Are they all like this?”

  I shrugged. It was good and bad.

  “Where are you going? Do you want to hang out with us?” I asked him.

  “No, I’m going to the library to study. What about tonight?”

  “Dinner and then the bar. Don’t worry yourself. That’s all I have to show her to make her love Italy. Will you be at the Barone Rosso?”

  “Yes, but you should see. She looks tired,” he said, smiling at her. “She should sleep.”

  “She’ll be okay. Tomorrow, we’re going to Cinque Terre.”

  “Brava,” he said, approvingly. He lit a cigarette and put his sunglasses on. He offered us cigarettes that we took and smoked with him. Kaitlin was appreciating all of this. When he was done, he nodded and kissed Kaitlin again. “Okay, bella. Mi raccomando con questa pazza. Ci vediamo stasera.”

  “Whatever,” Kaitlin said, smiling, accepting his kisses.

  “He’s warning you about hanging out with me, I think, and says that he’ll see you tonight.”

  “Oh, okay, ciao,” Kaitlin said.

  “Brava, she spek Italian,” Gaetano said in English so she would understand. He kissed me goodbye. And Kaitlin sat back down on the ground. He looked at me. “Have fun tonight. If you don’t make it tonight, call me when you get back.”

  “Okay, ciao.”

  I sat back down next to Kaitlin, and she looked at me.

  “You didn’t say how hot Gaetano is,” Kaitlin said. I shrugged. She studied me. “You didn’t even notice, did you? You never want what you can get.”

  I looked away. There was truth to what she said. And I wondered when I was going to stop wanting the things I couldn’t have.

  We went to my favorite osteria with the Etruscan ceilings. They sat us at my favorite table, which was like a little cave. We drank a lot of wine, and Kaitlin learned the heavenliness of the truffle. I laughed at her expression when she took the first bite.

  I wanted to take Kaitlin to the Barone Rosso, but she was spent. After the overnight train, she was content to sit in the stone alcove with the complimentary cantucci and Vin Santo that came after the wonderful dessert of tiramisu. I taught Kaitlin how to dunk the small hard cookies into the pink dessert wine.

  “Are you sure you don’t care if we pass? Is Gaetano going to be waiting?”

  “No, it’s no big deal. We can go when we come back from the coast. We left it open. It’s funny, he knew you were going to be tired.”

  “I like him. You should hop on that. Have you hooked up with anyone?” I shook my head and held my cantucci in the Vin Santo.

  “No, not really.”

  She nodded. We didn’t say anything for a minute.

  “Thank you,” I said. It was so many things, just making sure I was okay every day and being there to listen to me. She was such a friend.

  “For what? We’re going Dutch,” Kaitlin said, winking.

  “For last year.” Kaitlin nodded, knowing exactly what I meant but still uncomfortable talking about it for too long. I gripped the cantucci a little tighter.

  “You’d have done the same for me.”

  “I know, but I didn’t have to.”

  “I know,” she hesitated. “Do you feel better? You seem to.”

  “I do. I really do. How could I not?” I looked around the room.

  “Well, I mean, you can always feel bad even surrounded by this. Do you still think about him at all?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. It’s on and off, you know. It’s better than before, though. I really think it is,” I said, aware that I was trying to convince both of us. “You know, I really really cared about him, I did.”

  “I know.” Kaitlin touched my hand across the table. “For what it’s worth, I think he cared about you too.”

  “In his way, maybe,” I said, feeling something dark begin to pull back my covers. “Maybe.”

  “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding, knowing that it was best not to. I finally took a bite of my cantucci. It was soft from all the time dunked in the wine.

  I was feeling good as we came back into the apartment, but my mood soured immediately when I saw Lisa in the dining room. In front of her on the table were wrappers from candy bars and the kinds of packaged breakfast sweets that they sold in the coffee bars. It was a mess worse than any we had so far.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked.

  “Non sta bene,” she said. I kind of laughed, thinking that she was at it again, trying to outdo everyone with her language skills. I didn’t get why she would be showing off in front of Kaitlin, but then I realized that she had looked past me toward the front bedroom when she said “is not well” in Italian. Michelle. I looked on the table and understood. The gelato, the panino she had so close to lunch. Didn’t I know when I saw her that something was a little off? But instead of asking, I thought I could just ignore it and enjoy my day.

  “K, just hang out, okay? This is Lisa. Kaitlin.” I introduced them as I went back into the bedroom that I had planned to sleep in that night. I banged on the door.

  “Just a minute,” I heard Michelle say when it had already been that long. I pushed the door open. My senses were assaulted.

  “Nice to wait,” Michelle said. She was going to try to make a joke of it, but she saw my sickened expression.

  Across both beds were empty bags of potato chips, more chocolate wrappers and the thin oily pieces of cardboard that came under take-away pizza. And the smell was of human waste. I could see vomit in the trash can she had pulled out of the kitchen. I knew what I would find in the shower, toilet and bidet if I went into the bathroom. But I wasn’t going to go in there. The thought of it made me want to gag.

  I looked at Michelle, pale with reddened eyes. She was in baggy swea
t pants and a tank top. Her chest glistened with sweat. For the first time in my life, I thought I saw Crazy reflected in someone else’s eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. Part of me hoped there would be some other explanation.

  “Nothing. Stop freaking out. I just had a snack and then I felt sick. Must have been the panino.” She went over to the trash can and started to tie up the bag. “I just wanted to clean up, but you burst in. That’s pretty rude.”

  “Is this because of Duccio?”

  “What? Is what because of Duccio?” Her eyes narrowed, defensively. “I’m feeling better, thanks for asking.”

  I was shaking. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help, but I didn’t have the words. I tried. “Michelle, you can’t do this.”

  “What?” She tried the smile again, as if I was being out of line.

  “This. You’re hurting yourself. You can’t–” I stopped, speechless. She didn’t say anything. She looked down at her legs. I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t, my stomach was still churning. I was scared to be near her. Scared to smell her and get too close to Crazy. I will always regret that about myself. I will always be ashamed of being such a selfish coward.

  “But it makes me feel so much better,” she said, her voice far away and breaking a little. And still, I stood there frozen in shock. She was almost in a trance, but then she seemed to remember herself. “I’ll just clean up and you guys can sleep in here.”

  “I’m not ever going to sleep in here,” I said quietly. I wasn’t being intentionally hurtful, but at that moment, I never wanted to be in that room again. Michelle shook her head.

  “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Then get the fuck out.”

  I did. Back in the hallway, I took a deep breath and shuddered. In the dining room, Lisa was sitting, looking stupidly at all the wrappers. She told me that Kaitlin had gone to bed.

  “What did she say?” Lisa asked. At last she was speaking English.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Niente,” I said. “Is that better?”

  “We have to do something?”

  “We? You haven’t even cleaned all this shit up.” I started to gather up the wrappers. The residual scent of chocolate and sweet nauseated me. I realized that there was nowhere to throw them away. The trash bucket was still with Michelle. I wanted to throw them out the window, but I went into the kitchen to where we kept the garbage bags. Lisa followed me.

  “But is she okay?”

  “I don’t know, Lisa,” I snapped. She was an easy target. “You could have gone in there instead of waiting for me.”

  “No I couldn’t. I couldn’t.” Lisa said, shaking her head. She was almost in tears. And it made me feel better to be angry with her than really think about what I saw in that room.

  “You’re not going away tomorrow. You can’t.”

  “I am,” I said. “I want out of this shithole. She doesn’t want my help.”

  Then I went to my room. Kaitlin was lying on top of the bed I had made that morning. I wanted Kaitlin to be sleeping, but she opened her eyes when I came in.

  “Sorry, I was just exhausted. Are we changing rooms?”

  “No. Change of plans. We’re sleeping in here. I’ll take the floor. Just go to bed. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”

  Kaitlin closed her eyes and I heard her steady sleeping breath, but the time I lay down on one of the blankets on the floor.

  I thought of how Lisa spoke Italian so Kaitlin wouldn’t understand. She knew enough to protect Michelle from letting anyone else know. It was so shameful to both of us. And still we didn’t know how to help her. We were too scared. Every bit of our behavior was worse than the smell of that room.

  19.

  There are five coastal cities of Tuscany that are linked by train and mountainous roads. Within Cinque Terre there was no specific tourist attractions to see, no churches or art that you had to check off a list. Everything there was to see was not made by man, unless you counted the pastel-colored houses that ascended the hills. What there was to see was beautiful beaches and hills.

  I breathed the clean sea air deep as Kaitlin and I sat on the side of the road, taking a rest from some of our strenuous daily hikes. We enjoyed watching eighty-year-old village women speed by us. In spite of the physical activity, I felt restful. We filled those days with kayaking, hiking and meals of fresh fish caught five kilometers from where we ate it. It was still too cold on the coast for most tourists, and after dinner and a short walk in giro, we turned in early and I slept well.

  I wasn’t stressed about speaking Italian either. It was okay being the translator for Kaitlin, and I rose to the occasion. It was starting not to matter so much if I messed up words, to me or to anyone. And I realized that the more I relaxed, the fewer mistakes I made.

  It was peaceful. Kaitlin was excited about traveling in the summer, and she welcomed the idea of going with Olivia. There hadn’t been a reason to worry about it at all.

  When my mind wandered on some of those hikes it wasn’t to Jonas, it was to Michelle and Lisa and the way I had acted. I felt guilty for leaving and still, relieved that I was away.

  We spent four nights in Cinque Terre. And then we returned to Siena.

  Lisa and Janine were home when we got back. Michelle, the person that I wanted to see most, was not. But then I was scared to see her also, so it was easier. I watched Janine give Kaitlin the once-over when I introduced them, but she had no idea where Michelle was. I studied her face to see if she knew anything, but it revealed nothing. I didn’t bother to ask her how she enjoyed her time in Venice with Adam.

  I tiptoed around Lisa for a little while and then when Kaitlin was in the shower, I went into her room. I had to walk through it anyway to get to mine, but for once I knocked. She was studying as usual, and she looked up at me, surprised.

  “You can come through,” she said, looking back down at her book.

  “No, I’m not trying to pass, I wanted to talk to you.”

  She shrugged, and I took that as a sign that I could lean against her bureau and apologize for the way I spoke to her the night before I left. She nodded and accepted my words coolly. I hadn’t known what to expect, but I didn’t get the big scene where we hugged and realized that we really were more the same than different. We were different and I wasn’t ever going to be her buddy, but I was going to respect her from now on. And I was going to be a little more patient with her.

  For two days, Kaitlin slept in while I went to class. Afterward, I took her to my favorite places and met Gaetano for lunch in the piazza. Somehow, they communicated with Kaitlin picking up snippets of Italian and Gaetano sounding vaguely like a Japanese man when he spoke English.

  On Friday we took off after school and I showed her Florence, but not before I asked for and received two tickets from the man in the biglietteria without correction.

  “Brava,” he said when I thanked him for the tickets, still kind of stunned at how smooth the transaction went. I could almost detect a smile beneath the bushy mustache.

  “What? Do you have a crush on that guy or something?” Kaitlin asked as we walked to the bus station. “You’re grinning like a fool.”

  “No, I just…you wouldn’t understand. I finally asked the right way.” Kaitlin nodded, not really getting it, but I was so insanely proud of myself for mastering the not-so-silent g, the sound of the t’s and the long o. It was like getting an A+ on all my exams.

  I wanted to introduce Olivia and Kaitlin, but Olivia was still on her spring break, so I did my best to maneuver around the crowded streets of Florence. There were tourists everywhere and people outside hawking leather goods. It was a zoo.

  I forked over the admission fee at the Uffizi, so Kaitlin could see the David. That and the Ponte Vecchio were the only things about Florence that she really liked. Everywhere we went we heard English and saw overweight tourists in sneakers and ill-fitting shorts. Someone even stopped Kaitlin for di
rections in English.

  “It’s like Disney World,” she said over dinner at a place that Olivia told me about. Here we could order different small plates of homemade pasta with different sauces so we could try them all.

  Over thick curled ribbons of pesto, she said, “I thought it was supposed to be so beautiful. It’s a tourist trap. I heard more English than Italian.”

  “There are nicer parts than what we saw, but I think what people are looking to find in Florence is actually in Siena tenfold.”

  “I can’t believe tomorrow is my last day,” she said sampling another type of pasta, this one with tiny shrimp and parsley.

  “But you’re coming back. Look how quick the time passed since our last visit.”

  “Yeah, it’s only a month till I’m back in Siena and then the summer.” She looked at me and pointed her fork. “You know, you got to do something about Gaetano by then.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “C’mon, if you don’t I will,” she teased.

  “I don’t know if he likes redheads,” I said, laughing.

  “What he likes is Gabriellas. And they should like him. They should get out of this funk and get on that.”

  “Okay, you’re dirty. You happy? You went there. Do you hear yourself?”

  “Yep,” she said and sucked on the last ribbon of pasta so it squiggled in her mouth.

  The morning of Kaitlin’s last day I called Gaetano. He was going to be playing soccer all day, but promised to make it over to the Barone Rosso by ten to say goodbye to Kaitlin, his new favorite americana.

  “Good news,” I told her. “We’ll see Gaetano, later and there’s a big chance that he will bring his hot soccer buddies.

  “That is great news,” she said. “I just might get a little something before I’m gone. A souvenir of Italy, if you will.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said.

  “You should,” she said.

  We spent the day in the piazza with a bottle of red wine that I bought at the Coop supermarket. We got some gelato. Then when the sun and the wine seemed to do us in, we hit one of the pizzerias that I’d been to with Gaetano. We were already buzzing and the thin-crust pizza hit the spot.