by Lou Aronica
“I love you, too, Marina.”
She leaned back and kissed me softly and slowly. Then she pulled back enough to look into my eyes. I wanted what she saw there to make it clear to her that I meant it. I’m not sure what it looked like to her. After a moment, she leaned back on my chest and I hugged her. We stayed like that for several minutes more.
“We really should get to sleep,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, and the two of us moved under the sheets. I reached over to turn off the light.
“I love you,” I said again as I lay down next to her, not sure why I felt the need to repeat it.
~~~~~~~~
The next morning, after Marina left, I could think about little else. I remembered back to the very first time a woman told me she loved me. Her name was Lisa and we dated for a month during our junior year in high school. When she said the words, I felt the thrill through every nerve ending. I immediately told her I loved her back and then played with the phrase over and over again during the rest of that date. I called a friend about it. I wrote about being in love in my journal. I said it out loud in my room dozens of times, though no one (most specifically Lisa) was there to hear me.
I wondered why I didn’t feel any of that sense of giddiness now. Why couldn’t I rejoice over the fact that a woman as remarkable as Marina had told me she loved me? Surely it had something to do with the fact that Lisa and I split up two weeks after that night to be followed by similar declarations and gradual declines with Georgia, Karen, and others. But there was something more here. By telling me she loved me, Marina had acknowledged the phantom in the room. We’d had numerous conversations about our mutual belief that few if any relationships had the power to go all the way. But while we were doing this, we’d avoided acknowledging that our feelings for each other were growing deeper. By doing so now, Marina had announced that these two notions needed to be reconciled. If we loved each other and yet believed that all love died, what exactly were we saying?
I found this notion intensely unsettling. Until now, we had been in love with each other, but chose to allow these feelings to go unnamed. Not that I had been in any way conscious of this, but it was almost as though doing so allowed it to exist as something else, something that was uniquely ours. Something that didn’t simply go away with time. As a writer, I tried to remain conscious of the possibility that I took words way more seriously than I should, that I made them larger and more concrete than most people did and that this was something to be avoided. I challenged myself with this notion, and for a short while, it allowed me some relief. It didn’t take very long, though, for me to come back to another very clear thought that had nothing to do with words: things were changing in my relationship with Marina. We were moving into new territory and we would not find it as easy to traverse as the island we’d been residing on.
I had been really happy on that island. I wasn’t sure I was prepared to return to civilization.
Chapter Twenty-One
Not having Marina there the night before had been a little odd for Mickey. She’d been around for nearly two weeks straight, and he had gotten accustomed to seeing her across the dinner table, to playing board games with her and teasing her. She really lit the place up and she was going to make someone a great partner some day – even if it wasn’t his emotionally stunted son. Last night, it was just him and Jesse. Something about some association meeting. He had to give Jesse credit, making a nice dinner and suggesting a round of chess afterwards. It was very pleasant, but it wasn’t the same.
A few times during the night, he thought about asking Jesse about Marina. Things seemed a little different between them since Jesse had gotten back from California. Maybe the absence actually made his son realize that he couldn’t possibly do any better than the woman. Or maybe those looks were all about sex. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
For whatever reason, Mickey felt inspired to talk about Gina this morning. It had only been a few days since he had told Jesse about his and Gina’s first night together and he hadn’t previously been capable of going back there with him so soon afterward, but it seemed like the right thing to do today. When Jesse padded toward the kitchen to get his third cup of coffee, Mickey followed in after him.
“How’s the work going?” he asked.
“Back to the grind,” Jesse grumbled. “I turned the Hayward story in to Aline yesterday, so now I’m back to doing another dumb-ass home repair piece. I’ve gotta get out of this end of the business.”
“Could you afford to do that?”
“No,” Jesse said bluntly. Then he took a sip from his coffee and relaxed. “I don’t know, once the Hayward story comes out, I might be able to pull together more feature pieces. But that’s months from now. Hopefully Aline will give me another article before then. But there’s no way I could get by on that stuff right now.”
Mickey didn’t really want more coffee, but adding some to his new cup that was still sitting on the kitchen table seemed to be the right thing to do at that moment. “I’ve got plenty of money, you know. Certainly more than enough to tide us over while you built up your commissions.”
Jesse looked at him oddly and Mickey wasn’t entirely sure what was going through his son’s mind. Was he considering his offer? Was he offended at the suggestion? Was he questioning Mickey’s sincerity? For a good fifteen seconds, he didn’t say anything, but then he shook his head.
“Thanks Dad, but no. I have to be able to do this on my own.”
Mickey nodded. “I figured you’d say that. But if you ever need to fall back, don’t think twice about it.”
Jesse appeared transfixed, not ready to move, but also not sure what else he should do. Mickey figured if his son didn’t have a snappy reply for him, he had somehow managed to touch him in a place he wasn’t used to being touched.
“Listen, if you have a little time, I’d like to tell you some more about Gina.”
Jesse smiled at that. “Hmm, it’s either that or falling asleep at my computer in mid-sentence. Yeah, I think I can spare the time.”
He moved toward the kitchen table and sat down. Mickey sat next to him.
“You’re a good audience,” he said, not sure that the statement was entirely true. “So anyway, we won’t pretend that we can’t remember where we left off. After that, Gina and I saw each other every chance we could get. Meanwhile, she had this two-week trip to Italy planned for a month down the road. Just going alone to Tuscany for a couple of weeks. It was so like her to be that independent. Anyway, I couldn’t bear the idea of being away from her for two weeks. So we did a little moving and shaking and created a little subterfuge – you know unmarried couples didn’t just dash off to Europe together back then – and I wound up going with her.”
~~~~~~~~
Gina slept on his shoulder for the last two hours of the flight. Before then, they had talked incessantly about their plans for the vacation: the sights they were going to see, the food they were going to eat, the wine they were going to drink. Gina had a girlishness to her during this conversation that compared to their first visit to Schraft’s (there had been others since then). Like everything else about Gina, Mickey found it intoxicating.
Landing in Rome, Mickey saw that there were signs that the great city was still recovering from the war. Several of the posters in the airport spoke of rebuilding, and these same efforts appeared in the headlines in the newspapers. It seemed odd to Mickey that the vacation he’d been so anxiously awaiting was taking place in a country he had contributed in his own tiny way toward defeating only a few years earlier. That this country was also the home place of his ancestors made it seem even stranger. But he reminded himself, as he did during the time that he worked on the American war effort in Brooklyn, that it was not the country that he and his fellows were defeating, but rather the oppressive rulers who’d tried to change it so completely.
Gina had chosen an inn in the walled hill town of San Gimignano. Mickey had never seen anything lik
e it: a rolling landscape that gave way to a huge stone edifice, an archway that led to tiny cobbled streets bustling with shops and history. They had to park their car about a quarter of a mile away from the inn. Mickey noted as he carried their bags that it was a blessing that the walk was downhill. He mused that carrying their luggage up would be just one more reason why he wouldn’t want to leave. The sights had already charmed him, none more so than the dazzled expression on Gina’s face.
As fairy-tale-like as the setting already was, checking in confirmed for Mickey that he and Gina would be embarking on an elaborate game of pretend for the next two weeks. As they walked in the door with the bags, the innkeeper welcomed them as “Mr. and Mrs. Sienna.” Gina could speak Italian and Mickey could patch together certain heavily dialected sentences based on words he’d learned growing up, but the innkeeper spoke to them in English.
“How did you know who we were?” Mickey said.
The innkeeper smiled at him. “You are our only Americans this week.” Mickey paused at the notion of being conspicuously American, but was still tingling at their being addressed as “Mr. and Mrs. Sienna.” When he’d decided to join Gina on this trip, she’d cancelled her reservation at one inn and made the new reservation here. They couldn’t announce they were unmarried. Their reservations might not even have been taken. And they preferred the illusion of a marriage to the illusion of separate rooms. Mickey knew all of this, but still this was the first time he had actually heard the words. His heart leapt as he looked over at Gina, who was admiring the surroundings. How many times had he already imagined their being married? And now, at least for the next two weeks, they would be.
The room itself was a little fussy for his tastes, but Gina seemed to like it, and that made it fine with him. He walked to the window to look down on the brimming street. So much activity, so many shopkeepers calling to one another, welcoming patrons, directing staff. All at a volume that Mickey could recognize from the household he grew up in.
When he turned back around, he noticed that Gina had flopped down on the bed and was smiling up at him. Her traveling dress had ridden up above her knee and at that moment the vision – the woman he adored lying invitingly in a bed in a small hotel in Italy – seemed to him to be the sexiest thing he’d ever seen in his life. He moved over to the bed, his hand immediately going to Gina’s exposed knee, and leaned over to kiss her with the slow passion that had become the trademark of these past few weeks. He lay next to her.
“We’re here,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re actually here.”
“Just you and me with the entire rest of our lives an ocean away.”
They kissed again, and Mickey found his desire for Gina was at an almost unbearable level. He always wanted Gina, had from the moment he first saw her, but at this very moment, in this secret place with their fantasy marriage, all he could think of was her skin and her lips and her almost painfully beautiful ankles.
Eventually, they made it down to the street to peruse a ceramics shop and eat dinner at a restaurant the innkeeper had recommended. About halfway through the meal, Mickey’s body finally began to acknowledge that they had been traveling a very long time.
They walked slowly back to their room, the wine having more of an effect on their steps than Mickey would have expected. Soft music played through the door of a taverna just outside of their hotel, and they stood for a moment to listen to it, Gina resting her head on Mickey’s shoulder.
When he was growing up in Brooklyn, Mickey had often talked about sex with friends from his neighborhood, getting their information from older boys and in turn passing it on to younger ones when the time was appropriate. But in none of those conversations, or any others he’d ever had on the subject, had anyone mentioned the sheer satisfaction to be derived from holding the woman you loved in your arms all night. Each time they’d made love at home, Gina nuzzled into his chest and they dozed briefly, but there was always the knowledge that they would need to get up shortly to return Gina to her parents’ apartment. On this first night in Tuscany, though, no such condition pertained. The night was all theirs, as would be the twelve that followed it. For several hours, Mickey willed himself to awaken regularly, to rub Gina’s arm, to kiss her head. Eventually, he fell into a deep sleep, one that lasted well into the next morning. When at last he awoke, Gina was looking up at him.
“Good morning,” she said, reaching up and kissing him on the chin. “We’re still in Tuscany. I guess it wasn’t a dream.”
Mickey pulled her close to him and then moved down to kiss her on the lips.
“It is a dream,” he said. “But it’s a real one.”
She kissed him and stroked his cheek. “Did you sleep well?”
“It was the best sleep I’ve ever had.”
“Must be the Tuscan air,” she said with a smile.
~~~~~~~~
A few days later, they drove through the countryside and came upon the town of Chianti, where they stopped for lunch. Though the Italian food in New York was superlative, nothing matched the meals they had been eating on this trip. Gina’s lunch was thick ribbons of pasta with butter, porcini, and sage while Mickey dined on wild boar sausages and roasted potatoes. This after an appetizer of salumi that surpassed any of the cured meats he’d ever been able to buy in Brooklyn, airy bread with a crackling crust, and the densest, most fragrant olive oil that Mickey had ever tasted. It was the latter that nearly stopped him cold. He literally came close to swooning. This flavor was the dining equivalent of Gina’s smile. Tuscany was awash with great olive oils, but this was something else altogether. After tasting it several times, Mickey called the waiter over. He tried in vain to ask the man about it, but his Italian was not sufficient. At last Gina translated for him.
“He says that a Mr. Uzzano presses it on his property,” she said. “He doesn’t make very much and that he sells most of it to the restaurants in the area.”
“Ask him where else we can find it. We need to go to all of these restaurants.”
Gina asked, and the waiter smiled and responded.
“He says that if we’d like, he can arrange for us to visit Mr. Uzzano.”
“Would you mind if we did that?”
“If it means that you’ll keep this silly grin on your face, I think that would be fine.”
Gina turned to talk to the waiter, who nodded and then kissed her hand.
“I think he’s happy to do us the favor,” she said to Mickey.
An hour later, they stood on the grounds of a castle that had been erected in the seventeenth century. A town had sprouted up no more than a couple of miles away, but Mickey had the sense that this place was separated by much more than that distance. Were it not for the cars parked on the driveway, Mickey could have convinced himself that he had traveled back three hundred years. Over these past few days, he had been moved by the sense of history that filled this land. Back home, nothing seemed more than fifty years old, and it felt like a new building was sprouting up somewhere in the City every day. But here was a world that had stood the test of time, and while age had removed some of its luster, it could do nothing to diminish its magnificence.
Mr. Uzzano himself was a figure from legend. He dressed elegantly and spoke perfect English in aristocratic tones. He seemed to take great delight in displaying his manor and its grounds. The effect was a bit intimidating to Mickey, but he would soon be surprised when they got to the olive grove. There, surrounded by the heady fragrance of the fruit, Mr. Uzzano explained to him how he hired others to pick the olives but that he pressed the oil by himself in the manner of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him. His air of aristocracy disappeared, replaced by the enthusiasm of a man devoted to his craft.
After the tour, Mr. Uzzano invited them into the castle itself. Mickey could barely believe what was going on. Two hours before, they had been strolling down a modest piazza. Now they were walking among hand-woven tapestries, artfully carved furniture, and elegant staircases.
Mickey glanced over at Gina, the now-familiar starstruck smile on her face. There was no question in his mind that all of this was possible because of the magic she created.
They sat on an open balcony and sipped wine (“a private bottling done for me by a vintner down the hill”) and ate more bread with that remarkable olive oil. When Gina excused herself to use the washroom, both men tracked her exit.
“Your wife is very beautiful,” Mr. Uzzano said.
Hearing Gina referred to as his “wife” still gave Mickey a tiny charge. He almost felt guilty for deceiving his host, and thought that someone as worldly as this man would certainly understand. But he said nothing more than, “Thank you.”
“And she loves you with all of her heart,” the man continued. “This is very easy to see. My wife passed away a few years ago, but she looked at me the same way. You are very fortunate. Cherish this.”
Mickey found himself swelling inside.
“I do,” he said. “I do.”
~~~~~~~~
Gelato was a revelation. Growing up in Brooklyn, Mickey had of course tasted it before. But for whatever reason, there was nothing served in the old neighborhood that could come close to the richness and depth of flavor that sprung from every cone he tasted on every day of their trip. They had quickly adopted a routine of stopping for gelato at around 4:00 no matter where they were.
As they settled into a pair of wrought iron chairs, Mickey handed his cone to Gina to taste rather than waiting for her to ask, as she invariably did. She offered a little surprised smile before taking a lick and then took another before giving the cone back to him.
“I suppose this means you’ll want some of mine as well,” she said.
Mickey took a lick from his own cone and gestured with his free hand. “Only if you are in the mood to share.”
Gina grinned over the top of her cone. “Mmm, I’m not. It’s just too good.”
