Things I'm Seeing Without You

by Peter Bognanni

  “Do you see that church out there? That giant cement teardrop? It’s supposed to be the site of a miracle. Did you know that? There was a statue of the Virgin that wept actual tears for three days in the 1950s. Now people go there to see the origin of the miracle and pray for more.”

  I looked out over the city and found the church. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. It was the oddest-looking building I had ever seen. A gray conical structure coming to a point at the top.

  “It looks like an upside-down ice-cream cone,” I said.

  Grace smiled, but only for an instant.

  “Hey,” I said. “Seriously. What’s going on?”

  “I’m here to bring you home,” she said, and took a drink of wine.

  I grabbed the bottle out of her hand.

  “I understand that,” I said. “But why are you drunk?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Today’s the anniversary,” she said.

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Of my daughter’s death.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s been three years.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Why did you even come here? I’m fine. You must have known that.”

  She reached for the wine bottle. I held it away.

  “Your father was so worried,” she said. “He was a mess. And I thought it might help me to get away.”

  She paused.

  “Also . . . I think I’m falling in love with your father.”

  I was too stunned by her remark to guard the bottle, and she quickly snatched it back.

  “I hope that doesn’t make you too uncomfortable,” she said. “It probably does. But I was going to have to tell you sometime, so why not now in another country?”

  I just stood there like an idiot. Grace started talking again.

  “If someone had told me there was a place giving out miracles in Sicily or anywhere else when Avery got sick, I would have come. I would have done anything. Collected tears from a weeping statue. Even after she died, I would have been here.”

  An older couple spilled out of the enoteca and walked across the bridge, holding each other up for support. I watched them pass.

  “This was where Jonah wanted to go,” I said. “Part of me thought I might even find him here. I thought I saw him in the piazza, but there wasn’t that spark.”

  Grace set her wine bottle on the ground. I picked it up and took a drink. It was sweet.

  “I was in Italy after college,” she said. “Somehow I forgot that everything around here is death-related. I was reading the guidebook on the plane. Just northwest of here is this place with five thousand tombs cut directly into the limestone. It’s a huge seaside of cave graves. When your dad asked me to come here, I thought I might get away from death for a while. But I’m surrounded.”

  I sat down beside her. The bridge was empty now.

  “Why do you love him?” I asked.

  Grace looked at me.

  “My dad,” I mumbled.

  “God. I don’t know,” she said. “He tries so hard.”

  “That’s what you say about a puppy,” I said.

  “I admire it,” she said. “He’s really going for it. This wild idea of his. He believes.”

  She laughed.

  “And he loves you, Tess. Getting to know you again, even like this. I think it’s been the best thing for him. You should have seen his face when he found out where you were. He was minutes away from chartering a private plane.”

  I could hear the river lapping against the side of the bridge. I wondered if Jonah had seen this exact place where I was sitting on TV. If this was one of the places he imagined himself walking.

  “Where is he, by the way?” asked Grace.

  For a moment, I didn’t know who she meant. Then it came to me.

  “Back at the hotel, sleeping. I don’t think he knows I’m gone.”

  “Does he know that you’re still in love with his friend?”

  The wine had left a sour aftertaste in my mouth. I tried to ignore it.

  “I think so,” I said.

  She nodded and took a drink.

  “How do you know when you’re over someone. Someone who’s gone?” I asked.

  I took another drink of wine just to get the aftertaste out of my mouth.

  “I don’t know,” said Grace. “I’ll let you know if it ever happens.”

  Grace sat up straight against the bridge. Then suddenly she stood.

  “Tess,” she said, “if you just want to go home without doing anything here, that’s fine. Just because you came here doesn’t mean you have to go through with something if you’re not feeling up to it anymore. It was brave enough just to do this.”

  She looked me in the eye.

  “But if you want my help, I’m happy to work with you. Your dad told me you weren’t too excited about us being together. That it felt like a betrayal. But you were my concern from the beginning. Ever since that day at the lake. And if there’s anything I can do to help you through this, I want you to let me know.”

  She stood up and swayed in place. For a second, I thought she was going to tip over the rail and fall into the water below. I reached out and steadied her with a hand. Grace tried to take another pull from the wine bottle, but I held her arm.

  “I need you to stop drinking,” I said.

  “And why would I do that?” she said.

  “So you can tell me more about those caves by the ocean.”

  37

  Daniel was awake when I found him in the hotel room. He was sitting on the double bed in a gray T-shirt and boxers. The curtains were pulled shut and the television was playing an Italian soap opera with no sound. His small duffel bag was packed and sitting on the luggage stand.

  I stepped into the room, unsure of his mood, and sat down on the bed. The light of morning was just starting to peek around the curtains and Daniel’s face was softened by it. Still, his dark eyes were fastened on me.

  “It’s all over,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

  He licked his dry lips.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. Grace is here. We have an idea.”

  Daniel said nothing for a moment. He shifted in the bed, smoothing down the sleeves of his T-shirt.

  “I meant us,” he said.

  He spoke the words quietly, just loud enough for me to hear.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I honestly can’t answer that right now. There’s a new plan, and we have to see it through.”

  His hands would not stop smoothing down his sleeves. When I touched his arm, he flinched.

  “I thought you were gone,” he said.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Daniel started again.

  “I thought you went back to the States and left me here. I dragged us to this place, and I thought maybe you resented that. I had it all figured out. I was sure that’s what happened.”

  “But it didn’t,” I said. “I’m here.”

  “You’re here,” he said.

  I looked him in the eyes.

  “I don’t resent you. I had sex with you. Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have sex with people I resent.”

  He blinked.

  “In fact,” I said, “I don’t really have sex with people. You should consider yourself lucky.”

  His eyes moved to the TV. There was a couple fighting. A handsome man with jet-black hair threw a lamp across the room.

  “I’ll tell you before I disappear,” I said. “Okay?”

  I touched his leg.

  “Or I’ll send you a message on Post-Life.”

  He smiled slightly.

  “Do you have any real pants?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “Re
al pants,” I said. “You know. Pants pants?”

  “I think so . . .” he said.

  “Great,” I said. “I need you to put them on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re going to a funeral.”

  The ride out of the city was hot and windy.

  Grace rented us a van, and the air conditioner was broken. She drove into the morning sun with bloodshot eyes. I sat shotgun. And in the back, a quiet Daniel watched the rocky Sicilian landscape whip past the windows as the van headed out of Siracusa.

  Behind us in a Fiat was Paul from the film crew. His other project had fallen apart, and his partner had gone home. But he was still here and game for our plan. Everything in the last few hours had happened so quickly that I was grateful for a moment to catch my breath. It was a thirty-minute drive to the Necropolis of Pantalica, home of the cave graves, and I hoped to use each one of those minutes to figure out what to do when we got there.

  The desire to go to the caves had come to me so sharply on the bridge. And when it arrived, it was like a giant fist had finally unclenched in my chest. The city of Siracusa was the place for Other Jonah to live, not a place to put the real Jonah to rest. It would be better to put him in his own city of the dead like in that village cemetery I’d seen off the road.

  “North of here,” I read to Daniel from Grace’s guidebook, “in Sortino, there is a limestone ravine. It was carved over thousands of years by two rivers. The Anapo and the Calcinara. Inside the ravine is a lush valley. Cut into the limestone cliffs of the gorge are over five thousand tombs as old as thirteenth century BC.”

  We wound around the blind curves of southeastern Sicily. We were over halfway to the magical tomb gorge, and I was finally becoming fully aware of what was happening around me.

  “I probably should have mentioned this sooner,” said Grace. “But I have no license to do any of this here. And I’m not exactly sure about the legality. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site.”

  She was driving erratically, nudging over the median on sharp turns, following the brown tourist signs for Pantalica. The windows were all open, and warm air was blowing through. Daniel didn’t comment. The only thing he asked me when I told him what we were doing was about the cameraman.

  “He’s for Marian,” I said. “To make a tape for Marian to see.”

  I didn’t know that was his purpose until Daniel asked me, but then it was clear as day. I wanted her to be able to experience this, too, whatever it was going to be.

  Eventually we made our way to the entrance of the trail, driving the last few miles on a smaller road, flanked by a rustic limestone wall, where each rock looked like a puzzle piece fit perfectly by an ancient mason. The sight was calming to me, brief evidence of a world where even the most jagged, random shapes could be pieced together into something whole.

  When we arrived, the park wasn’t open yet. But the barrier was easy to get over, and we all made the decision to trespass without talking about it. Grace seemed a little less hungover, but when I watched her almost topple over the small fence, it was hard to tell how much hiking she was going to be able to do.

  “Your father would be appalled,” she said, wiping beads of sweat from above her lips. “I was supposed to bring you back yesterday. And now look at me, breaking and entering. And I might still be drunk.”

  She took a long pull from a water bottle.

  “My father has exploded dogs on a beach,” I said. “He has no moral ground to stand on.”

  Daniel hopped the fence. And Paul swore under his breath, holding his camera over his head. Then the four of us stood together, the only inhabitants of the vast space. Our sole company were the birds, already well into their morning call-and-response. Grace finished her water, dabbing her temples with a few last drops.

  “Do you have him with you?” she asked.

  I nodded to Daniel and he pulled the container of Jonah’s ashes from his pocket. The light caught the thin plastic lid and lit it up.

  “Morning, Jonah,” I said to the Tupperware.

  I allowed for a small moment of silence. Then I walked to the path where the cement switched to dirt. Grace and Daniel followed. Paul carried his camera on a strap over his shoulder. It took us a few minutes to get within sight of the gorge, but when we came around that first corner and the valley unfolded before us, the four of us stopped without exchanging a word.

  Beneath a scenic overlook was a landscape of sheer stone cliffs, carpeted by brush, and dotted with purple wildflowers and cacti. Carved into the sides of the canyon were thousands of identical square openings, black doorways and windows to the tombs. It was a high-rise of tomb-apartments inhabited by the souls of the ancient. And barely visible at the bottom was a glittering thread of ultramarine water.

  “How far down do you want to go?” asked Daniel.

  I didn’t turn around.

  “All the way,” I said.

  We began our descent, walking down the meandering path, past orchids and oleanders, and alongside the hollow cave tombs, which looked more like little Hobbit hovels than graves. Halfway down, I motioned to Paul and he began to film my downward climb. My internal chat started up, and I didn’t resist it. I knew I had to speak to Jonah sometime.

  Me: Wild herbs and giant fennel along the path. A single falcon circling in the air. The sparkling river down to my left, growing closer with each step. The police officer on horseback fifteen feet below us.

  I blinked. When I looked down again, he was still there in his stylish baby blue uniform, on the back of a slow-moving horse.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  “What?” Daniel said, a little too loud.

  I turned around and slapped a hand over his mouth. Then I pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Paul and Grace got the message and cocked their heads to listen. The sound of horse hooves clopping echoed up the trail.

  I looked at Grace. She was dressed in one of her beige hippie funeral shrouds. Daniel held the container of ashes to his chest. Paul’s camera equipment was much too large to hide. We did not look like we had accidentally shown up to the park in its off hours. We looked like we were up to some kind of illegal shit.

  “Wait here,” I whispered.

  I left the manicured trail and tromped through the brush to the right, pushing low-hanging limbs from my path. There were thousands of tombs total, so I hoped it wouldn’t take long to find one. I saw some soon enough, both high and low, but most were rectangular slots in the stone just big enough to shelve a single body. I went a few steps farther and came to an uneven stone ramp.

  At the top was an entrance to a larger opening in the rock. I rushed back and found the others still waiting where I left them. The sound of the horse was getting closer. I waved them forward, and they began to jog, their legs whisking through wild grasses and over crunching sticks and jagged stones.

  We reached the cave in a flurry, our shoes slipping on gravel, and ducked inside the dark interior, spooking the hell out of a family of roosting birds and a small lizard in the process. For the first five minutes, we waited in silence, too afraid to make a sound, listening for a cop on a pony to discover us and put us in an Italian jail.

  From within the pitch black of the cavern, I could just see the horse trot past, the young policeman with sunglasses perched on his sunburned bald spot. He didn’t look in our direction.

  Still, the illusion of our isolation had been shattered. It was no longer early enough in the day to avoid the park’s authorities. And there were bound to be more than one. There was no way around it: We were trapped in a cave for the time being.

  At first, no one said anything. Paul was the first to move. He unsheathed a small flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. He shined it on us, making sure no one was injured. Grace’s dress had certainly looked better an hour ago, but it was still in one piece. Daniel was exhausted but un
harmed. And when the light shone on me, I found only a few scratches on my arms. So I stood up and began to feel along the walls of the chamber to see how far it went.

  “Give me some light,” I said, and Paul aimed his beam toward me. I stepped deeper into the cave, hoping there were no bears in Sicily, or if there were, that they were very small, cute bears, and not the face-devouring variety.

  Eventually, I began to feel some large bumps bulging out from the wall, and when the light caught up, it revealed them to be columns. They weren’t structural, but purely ornamental. When I reached the very back of the cavern, it had been carved into a semicircle, and, at eye level, there were the faintest remains of frescoes.

  “I don’t think this is a tomb,” Grace said.

  I looked back toward the entrance, where she and Daniel were silhouetted against the light.

  “What is it?” asked Daniel in a weary voice.

  “I think it might be a church.”

  38

  I had no speech prepared.

  For the last two days, I had been trying to think of something. But, alas, there was nothing. Maybe it was the distraction of being in another country. Maybe it was whatever was happening with Daniel. But now I was standing in a medieval cave church, where everyone felt a little afraid of what might happen next, and my time was running out.

  I knew there was a limited span in which this ancient cavern would still feel like an amazing discovery. It was a church carved into a cliff by people from so long ago that it was nearly impossible to imagine their lives. But, as incredible as that was, if I waited too long, the cave could easily transform back into just another dark musty space filled with bird droppings and invisible lizards. And I couldn’t allow that to happen. So I said:

  “Guys, I think we should get started.”

  At the sound of those words, everyone in the cave stood completely still and silent, and the trill of birdsong filtered in, echoing in the darkness. Then Grace nodded. Daniel held the bowl of ashes, and Paul adjusted his camera to the low light levels.

  Meanwhile, I thought back to the one evening I’d spent with Jonah. The one at the farmhouse. It wasn’t incredibly epic or romantic. And it wasn’t the beginning of a love that anyone would much care about. But lying on the couch with him that night, I had felt the beginning of something, and it was indistinguishable from the reverberation of the music outside and the moonlight slanting in through the windows. And even though it had all eventually fallen apart, I still had that day and the way it felt. I had lived it, and it was mine forever.