“Sicily.”
“Ah.”
I immediately wished I had said Calabria. Calabria sounded more glamorous than Sicily. Some mainland Italians called us Sicilians “Terroni.” But only Mama was from Calabria and Papa’s side, the Sicilian Caputos, easily overpowered Mama’s family and their influence. I watched Mrs. Gardner’s gaze drop to my shoes and then dart back up to my dark hair. She gave another of those smiles, the ones that didn’t reach her eyes.
“We’re very proud of Alex,” she said.
I nodded, and felt a drip of condensation from my glass of Coke hit the top of my foot.
“He’s a very smart boy.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Gardner looked at her feet. “He’s always made very sensible . . . choices.”
I didn’t say anything.
She lifted her head and smiled at me. “He’s never been a child to worry about. A source of pride for Marshall and I. He thinks things through and makes the right choices. We expect he’ll become a lawyer, like his father, or go to business school.”
I didn’t tell her he was talking about studying biology.
“It’ll mean he’ll have to go away to college, I’m afraid.”
I nodded. Alex and I had talked about that. He didn’t want to leave Washington State. I’d wanted it to be about missing me but something told me it was probably the ocean he couldn’t part with.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alex and his father standing by the barbecue. His father was wearing a striped apron. Daniel was there too, carrying a plate of steaks.
Mrs. Gardner leaned towards me. “Never mind, Francesca. Enjoy being young. It’s a fun time, isn’t it? Not real, you know, but fun.”
I stared at her, but she’d been diverted by Mr. Gardner calling for the tongs.
“I’d better help them out,” she told me, already stepping away across the lawn. I watched her go, her mauve silk skirt moving around her calves.
Alex had waved to me, his smile sweet, his eyes concerned. I’d forced a smile to reassure him and he had winked at me before turning back to his father.
* * *
“Daniel?” It’s Bella’s voice, puffing a little, coming out from the trees.
“Bella? Bella Caputo?” Daniel stands up quickly.
Bella’s cheeks are red and she’s smiling. “Daniel Gardner.”
Daniel blinks. “You look . . . different.”
Bella laughs. “I’ve been for a run. Well, jog.”
“No, I mean different like . . .”
He’s still standing.
“Not sixteen?”
“The hair . . . and . . .”
“Oh, yeah, the hair. You look just the same.” She has her hands on her hips, getting her breath back.
Daniel glances at her car, then tips his head at the cabin. “Are you staying here too?”
Bella looks at me and then back at him. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t know—” he starts.
“She’s not really staying,” I say.
“I am,” she retorts.
“No, she’s not. She’s sleeping in her car.”
“There’s only one bed in there. You need another bed,” Bella tells Daniel. Like it’s a hotel.
Daniel looks at me, then to Bella, and back to me again.
“You don’t need another bed,” I say.
“Another bed would be good, I think. Also a hot tub.” Bella laughs. “Vinnie was saying he thinks they should get a hot tub,” she tells me like I don’t already know.
“Vinnie’s a testa ri pipa,” I reply angrily. A lead head.
“Sure,” she says, shrugging, “but he’s right about the hot tub. It would be amazing.” She looks up into the forest canopy.
“Why are you even here?” I hiss at her.
She stares at me.
Daniel says, “I thought you were back in Seattle with your dad.”
“So did I,” I say. “Nice surprise.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says, completely missing my sarcasm. “I got the group e-mail when you went to Rome, to the museum by the Spanish Steps,” he adds, his voice rushed.
“Oh, yeah? That was a few years ago. Giorgio—”
“Chirico,” he finishes. “I looked him up. I really like his stuff. Actually I bought a print—The Red Tower?”
Bella grins. “Love Song is my favorite of his.”
“Love Song—yeah, that’s great too. Do you like Dalí?”
Bella went to Italy with our cousin Giulia a few years back. Giulia’s a travel agent and she won a trip for two with one of the airlines. I hadn’t read my sister’s group e-mails—I don’t like group e-mails—and Bella always writes lazily with dozens of exclamation marks.
“I love Dalí,” she replies. “I want to go to his museum.”
“Where is it?”
“Catalonia, Spain. It’s a trip—you should check it out online. It has these enormous . . . egglike things dotted all around the top of the outside wall and it’s pink and it looks like a castle. . . .” She laughs. “It’s hard to explain.”
“It sounds awesome,” Daniel says, nodding.
Silence falls between the three of us. Daniel shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
Bella clears her throat. “Anyway, I’m not going to be traveling for a while. I’m using my vacation time now.” She looks down at her feet. “I work at a senior citizens’ home. I lived in, actually, for a while, but now I have my own apartment. It’s tiny but it’s all mine.”
“You own it?” Daniel asks.
“Oh, no,” she replies, laughing again. “But I used to live with a lot of others and now I’m happy to be by myself. Though my neighbor’s cat thinks I’m her second mommy. She eats me out of canned fish.”
“Who’s there now?” I ask, then curse myself for being curious.
Bella beams at me. “A friend’s house-sitting. Valentina. She just came back from a volunteer project in Sierra Leone so it worked out pretty well. Work gave me extended leave. I’ve chalked up a lot of vacation days.” She turns back to Daniel. “Bet that’s not where you thought I’d end up, in a seniors’ home?”
No, I want to answer for him.
Daniel shakes his head. “It seemed like you just vanished.”
I wish, I think, cruelly and unfairly.
Bella’s smile fades fast. She turns to me as if she can read my thoughts. “Well, I didn’t,” she whispers. “Anyway,” she says, turning back to Daniel. “What are you doing here? Have you come to check up on Frankie?” Her tone is strange now, a little prim.
“Yeah,” he says.
They look at each other, as though I am not there or I am a child they are discussing, and I suddenly want to be out of my pajamas and in real clothes.
“Mom and Dad might sell.” His voice is more convincing than before but it still has an inflection that makes the statement sound like a question.
“Is that so?” Bella says, folding her arms across her chest. “They’re going to sell a heritage cabin that’s been in the family for generations?”
Daniel’s cheeks grow pink. “The land is quite valuable.”
“Sure.” Bella’s voice is cynical.
I stare at my sister, whose gaze at Daniel is now cool and glassy.
“I didn’t know you were here too,” he mumbles again.
“I cannot believe your parents are trying to kick my sister out.”
I watch Daniel swallow.
“What kind of people—” Bella continues, but he cuts her off.
“Mom’s having a really rough time.”
“And Frankie isn’t? You’d think your mom would be pleased—rapt—that she could offer Frankie a place to get away to think. To be away from it all.”
I stare at Bella. Away from everyone but you, I want to say, both incredulous and speechless. None of the Caputo has been knocked out of her, I realize. She has always been more comfortable being upfront than I have, showing her cards.
Daniel’s look
ing at me, apologetic. “I know . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I mean, I can go . . .”
I can’t say it. I picture the closet with Alex’s clothes hanging in it; the bed with one side empty. The toilet seat always down. A single espresso cup. I feel my stomach lurch and look, suddenly, to Bella.
She catches my glance and turns to Daniel. “Frankie isn’t leaving. She’s staying here. You can tell your parents that.”
Daniel is looking at me but I don’t meet his eyes.
“Frankie . . .?”
Shit. He sounds so much like Alex I feel dizzy.
I see Alex’s toothbrush in the cup next to mine. His towel on the hook on the back of the door. A surfing magazine next to the couch. That framed photo of us at the New Year’s party where I’m laughing so hard my eyes are squeezed shut, and he’s wearing one of those dumb headbands with glitter numbers on top and his mouth is so wide open I can practically see his molars. Caro Dio. I feel myself drooping towards the ground.
“Frankie?”
Alex.
“Leave her, I’ll help her,” I hear Bella say. Her voice is a murmur now as she talks to Daniel.
“I’m sorry,” the Alex-voice says. I don’t know if it’s talking to Bella or to me. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” says Bella, sounding like the sea.
Chapter Twelve
• • • •
I’m not entirely averse to acts of rebellion. Not that you’d know it. I did well at school, got a good job—even if others thought the council was boring—and was about to marry a good man. A conventional life had always appealed to me. I wanted to marry my high school sweetheart, wanted a house with a picket fence, a son for Alex and a daughter for me, and wanted us to become snowbirds in our old age. I know the thought of that kind of life sends shivers up a lot of spines, but it suited me. It was safe. A cookie-cutter kind of life, perhaps, but to me it seemed so happy, sweet, and American. It was all I ever wanted.
But I did rebel sometimes, in my own way. Generally in ways no one else noticed. I stuffed our circulars into neighbors’ mailboxes rather than take them to the trash. I walked around our apartment naked with the curtains open. Once, drunk at a house party, I peed in the corner of a coatroom because the toilet was occupied. I giggled all the way home and Alex couldn’t work out what was so funny.
Whenever I did anything rebellious or “bad,” I never got caught. People always assumed it was someone else, or an innocent mistake. They never gave Bella the same benefit of the doubt. She got blamed for all sorts of things, whether she did them or not. Plucking the nasturtium flowers off their stalks and tossing the petals about the yard; pressing a fingertip into the blanket of fresh cake frosting. Bella was always assumed guilty.
And, for the most part, I was a good girl. Because I wanted to be. I didn’t want to try drugs or stay out all night partying. I wanted to be wrapped in Alex’s arms, watching the moonrise, talking about furniture and baby names. Now it feels as though I’ve been cast adrift from my life. As if the thick rope that kept me bound to it, to Alex, to my things, has been hacked through, the threads sawed and frayed and unraveling. Now I’m staying in a cabin that isn’t mine, and where I’m not wanted, and which I can’t seem to leave.
I’m vaguely aware of being put to bed, of something being slipped into my mouth, of the Alex-voice apologizing over and over. I want to ask him to stay but can’t seem to manage the words. I’m tucked under covers and someone strokes my back. There’s the sound of the ocean—shhh, shhh, shhh—above me and around me. I realize I am crying when I notice the pillowcase beneath me is wet.
The room grows quiet; the sound of the waves meeting the pebbled shore slowly subsides. My body lifts a little as a weight leaves the bed, and my breath falls into a slow and steady rhythm. It’s one of those sweet days where the light is like water, like honey, liquid and slow. The dust motes sway and sparkle like phosphorescence. My eyelids feel as though they are weighted. The light in the room fades . . . returns . . . fades. . . .
* * *
Mrs. Gardner had been right about Alex deciding to go to business school. But he had stayed in Washington State to study rather than considering an Ivy League college, much to his mother’s chagrin. I was sure she blamed me for that but she had no further to look than the ocean if she wanted to find the responsible party. Besides which, Alex wasn’t that keen on change, much like Mrs. Gardner herself.
Alex studied accounting and before he started an internship in an accounting firm—organized by his father, who played golf with one of the partners—we took a road trip with his friends, Jason and Angela, to Cape Disappointment State Park. It had been a strangely hot summer that year, hotter than any I remember before or since. We didn’t know, of course, that it would be one of our few vacations all together. That summer is perfect in every detail in my mind, as if captured on film. All four of us in the car, singing as loud as we could, and falling apart into laughter.
We rented one cabin for all four of us, to save money. The days were so long, even though we didn’t wake up till practically noon, by which time the cabin was steaming hot. We were always up late into the night, drinking and talking and laughing, and a few times the camp caretaker had to come tell us to keep the noise down. We were too young to care about disturbing other people’s sleep; we were wrapped up in our own little universe. It was our summer, the one we’d never forget. Eating whatever junk food we picked up at the gas station down the road, sunbathing till our skin tingled, pushing one another into the cold sea, roasting marshmallows, slugging beer straight out of the bottle, and dreaming about our lives to come.
There wasn’t supposed to be phosphorescence at the beach. I’d never seen it before that night. I think it had something to do with rising salinity and an algae warning that everyone had ignored. Alex and I went down to the water in the pitch dark. There was something unusual about it, even from a distance: it was as though the dark water was reflecting the starry sky above. But the glow was moving, shivering. Alex took my hand but said nothing as we stood at the edge of the sand and stared at the glittering, shimmering water, the tiny sparkles moving with the gentle lap of the waves. We were the only people on the beach.
We kissed on the shore with our toes cooling in the wet sand, Alex’s hands in my hair. Then we looked at each other and giggled, both thinking the same thing. He lifted my T-shirt off of me, and I did the same to him, then we wriggled out of our shorts.
He pulled me against him and kissed me again before flicking the bra strap off of my shoulder. “Race ya,” he said, thumbs already hooked into the elastic of his boxer shorts.
“No fair!” I cried, but he was already in the water, stirring up fluorescent-crested waves.
I fumbled with my bra, and then almost tripped getting out of my underwear. Alex, watching me, roared with laughter. The image of him, as I waded in, is burned into my memory. Torso deep in black water, surrounded by glowing phosphorescence, lit from above by a full moon, he looked like a kind of sea god. More beautiful than Michelangelo’s David, which I’d seen in Florence.
The water was cold on my bare skin. My nipples puckered and stood straight. When I reached Alex he pulled me to him and they grazed his chest. We kissed and laughed and splashed, watching the sparks of the phosphorescence that seemed to activate with our movement. We dragged our fingers through the water, swatted the tops of the ripples and kicked our feet. Then Alex gathered me into his arms and laid me horizontal against the surface of the water, as if ready to be baptized, moving me round and round in a slow circle. I remember the sound of the water in my ears, the dazzle of the phosphorescence, and, behind Alex, the luscious, buttermilk moon.
We could have rushed back to tell Jason and Angela about the phosphorescence, but instead we stayed there alone, as long as we could, in the water. Then we dashed up the sand to fetch our clothes, before stumbling, wet and naked, along the shoreline. We made love under a tree, where the beac
h became grass and we were tucked away from view. It was late by the time we dried ourselves off and wandered back to the cabin. By then Jason and Angela were fast asleep, curled into each other in a single bed like a pair of caterpillars.
* * *
I struggle through memories and thoughts as though wading through syrup. I open my eyes a little but they quickly fall shut again. There is a presence in the room and movement. Voices. Not Alex’s.
“Shit. There’s enough food here to sink a tanker.”
“Battleship.”
“Huh?”
“The saying is, ‘enough food to sink a battleship.’ ”
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry.”
“This bread is actually good.”
“It’s from Flourfarm, a bakery in Edison. There’s a girl who works there, Summer. She dropped it off.”
“Is she cute?”
“I’m going to ignore that. She seems really nice. I think she knew Alex.”
I screw my eyes shut even tighter, then try to open them. The voices are by the sink, putting things into the cupboards.
“Don’t eat that, it’s for Frankie.”
Through a mouthful: “She’s not gonna miss a few cookies. Seriously. She could live out here for a year with all this stuff.”
“Well, she’s not going to live out here for a year.”
Laughter, muffled. “Yeah? Like you’re an expert. You get a degree while you were in Portland?”
I hear Bella sniff. “No, but I’ve seen grief. A lot of it. Don’t act like you have a clue. She’s my sister.”
“Sure.”
The movements stop. I manage to open my eyes and see two figures by the cupboards. The light from the window makes them difficult to see.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bella says.
“Nothing.”
“Go on. What were you going to say?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing, Vinnie. Say it. Don’t make comments like that and then not say it. I’ve been away too long? I don’t act like a sister?”
Vinnie shrugs. I want to lift myself onto my elbows but I’m still too groggy.
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