Kissing in Italian

by Lauren Henderson

  I assume we’re going to the hotel, where Mum and Dad are staying; so I’m surprised when, after barely a minute, Mum guides me onto another little dock. Or rather, stops in front of a very smart gate, beyond which blue, red, and gold pillars run down the length of the pier. Mum presses an intercom button and says:

  “It’s Mrs. Routledge. Could you please send the boat back for me?”

  “Eet is already on eets way, signora,” buzzes a voice through the intercom, and the gate clicks open; we step through.

  “We’re staying at a hotel over there,” Mum explains, pointing across the lagoon.

  “On Giudecca,” I say, showing off the local knowledge I’ve learned.

  “Yes, it’s called the Cipriani. It’s very lovely, Violet. You can stay there with us if you’d like. There’s a swimming pool! You’d like that. Really, you can have anything you want, darling … anything at all.… We’re so sorry.…”

  Her voice wobbles dangerously: I squeeze her arm and say swiftly:

  “Mum, don’t cry! Don’t! It’s all right. I love you.”

  She pinches the bridge of her nose hard and takes a deep breath. A water taxi is coming straight toward us, like an arrow fired from Giudecca Island directly to the dock; as it gets closer, I see HOTEL CIPRIANI painted in white letters down its side. It slides into the pier, a very smart couple dripping in Gucci and Missoni step off, and Mum and I are handed in by the smiling, liveried driver. We sit in the back, our arms around each other, her long blond hair blowing across my face, and don’t say a word for the entire short trip.

  I’m in suspension, waiting for the big revelation. I’m terrified, of course, how could I not be? But having my beloved mum with me makes me feel stronger and more secure than I have in absolutely ages. I know I wanted to stand on my own two feet, and I think I’ve done pretty well while I’ve been in Italy. But sometimes, even if you’re growing up and trying to be adult, you really need to run back to your mum and hug her and smell the special mix of scents that are so familiar they mean home and love and security to you.…

  The boat pulls up in front of another little dock with the same blue, red, and gold pillars: very smart. And as the driver hands us up, and we walk down the dock, beautiful gardens open up in front of us. On the right, through high planted bushes, I can just about glimpse the bright artificial blue of swimming pool tiles. The hotel is directly in front of us, a beautiful white building with a plush, red-carpeted reception; white walls with every molding detail picked out with gilding; smiling staff behind the big reception desk; and Mum guiding me over to a bank of lifts. There’s even a lift operator in a cap and more livery, who slides the cage doors open for us and takes us up to the floor Mum tells him; this hotel is beyond five-star.

  Dad is definitely paying for this, I think. No way does Mum have this kind of money.

  We go down a thickly carpeted corridor lined with the gilded tables and elaborate flower arrangements that posh hotels always seem to feature, and halfway down Mum stops in front of a door and presses the small gold bell set into it. It swings open almost immediately, and standing there is my father, his face lighting up with happiness to see me.

  “Violet! My darling!” he exclaims as his arms open wide.

  I thud against his chest, wide and solid, and hug him; after Mum’s very slim frame, Dad seems huge. I can’t get my arms to close around him; he’s put on a bit of weight. He hugs me back so tightly that I can barely breathe. I pound his back with my fist, and he loosens his grip. I’m giggling—Dad always does this after I haven’t seen him for a while.

  “I don’t know my own strength!” he says, looking down at me, as I say simultaneously:

  “You don’t know your own strength!”

  It’s a long-running joke of ours, and we both laugh at it.

  “Darling daughter,” he says with enormous tenderness. “My darling daughter.”

  And then, as these words sink in, they emphasize exactly the reason that we’re all here, and we both fall silent.

  All I’ve seen so far is Dad, his big bulk looming in front of me. But now he puts his arm around my shoulders protectively and leads me out of the lobby and into the sitting room of a suite, all brocaded and padded out and tasseled and hung with curtains over other curtains, the way posh ones always seem to be.

  Then I stop dead. The suite is so crammed with furniture and occasional tables and big gilt-framed pictures that it’s taken me a moment to realize that there are other people in it. They’re sitting on one of the sofas, staring at me. Not together; at opposite ends of the sofa, as if they want to make it clear that they don’t want to be close to each other. And after everything that’s happened, that isn’t really a surprise. I wouldn’t exactly have expected Luca’s mum and dad to be sitting next to each other holding hands.

  Beyond them, I see movement on the balcony, a trail of cigarette smoke rising into the air, and I freeze.

  Is it Luca? Did he come back here last night after we left him in the Piazza San Marco? I honestly don’t think I could bear to see Luca with all our parents here. To be told that he’s my half brother. To be expected to hug him and say how happy I am to have a half sibling …

  And besides, I think idiotically, Luca promised me he’d stop smoking! And then the person on the balcony drops their cigarette to the marble floor, stubs it out with a diamante sandal that is definitely not Luca’s, takes a deep breath, and rounds the brocade sweep of curtain to step inside.

  I’m holding Dad’s hand, and my fingers clench on it as tightly as if I’m trying to break his bones.

  Because the person smoking outside was my aunt Lissie, and she’s looking at me with such an awful, guilty, hangdog expression that suddenly the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.

  And I understand absolutely everything.

  Some Sugar Would Be Good

  “We were in Milan, for the shows,” Aunt Lissie is saying.

  She’s sitting next to me on the sofa, holding my hand; Mum’s on the other side, holding my other hand. Aunt Lissie smells of cigarette smoke, her Lola perfume, and hair spray; the combination is stronger than Mum’s, drowning her scent out. I realize that I’m fighting an impulse to crawl onto Mum’s lap, wrap my arms around her neck, and bury my face in her hair, as I used to do when I was little—even though I probably weigh more than she does by now.

  “That’s me and Daisy,” she adds quickly, looking over me at Mum. “Daisy was modeling, and I’d just started as a junior editor on Vogue Italia. We were very young,” she says rather sadly, and, across from us on the other sofa, I see the principessa flinch. “Daisy was modeling for—”

  “Versace,” I say. “We saw some photographs in the castello.” I manage to look over and meet the principe’s eyes briefly. “You were at the Versace show. Mum was in the picture too.”

  “I was in the picture?” Mum asks. “Oh, Violet! You must have thought—oh, darling …”

  “It’s okay, Mum,” I say, managing a smile for her. The relief in her eyes as I call her Mum is incredibly sweet.

  Aunt Lissie heaves another sigh.

  “So, we were in Milan,” she continues, “and I met Salvatore.” She looks over at the principe, then back at me. “Oh, Violet!” she adds in a sidebar. “I’m so sorry you’ve been having to wait so long after emailing Daisy, but it was my fault. Your dad came straight over from Hong Kong, but your mum had a really hard time getting hold of me because I was on a meditative yoga retreat in Thailand and had my phone and iPad switched off.…”

  I can’t meet her eyes. I’m looking down at my lap, concentrating on keeping my knees together, my skirt pulled down decorously, as it’s a cargo mini I wore to go to Murano and Burano and it feels too short for such a serious occasion. It gives me something else to think about, some other small distraction from what I’m hearing Lissie tell me. What I know is coming.

  I notice my mum jerk her head at Lissie a bit impatiently, as if to say Get on with it, and Lissie says quickly:
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  “So, yes, we were in Milan. I met Salvatore at a party, and we—well, we had an affair. Like I said, Violet, we’ve all discussed this already, all five of us here. So you don’t need to worry that anyone’s being surprised, or will get cross about anything I’m telling you. Well”—she says ruefully—“anyone but you.”

  Lissie takes a deep breath.

  “We had an affair,” she says. “Not a long one. We agreed that we weren’t going to hide anything from you, and that you can ask any questions you want. So, I’ll tell you honestly that he was married then, and I knew he was married. And it was wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it.”

  I writhe, because there’s nothing more embarrassing than adults apologizing to you, confessing their faults, asking for your forgiveness. It makes me want to dig my nails into my palms till it really hurts. Like when Mum and Dad were getting a divorce, and sat me down to tell me about it, and explained about people falling out of love with other people but still caring about them, and that nothing would change between them and me, and a whole lot of other rubbish, frankly, that made me really angry and sad and frustrated all at the same time.

  Yes. Well. No point thinking about that right now. Aunt Lissie has misread my flinch, and has paused, staring at me nervously; I give her a quick nod with my head to say Go on, because words are pretty much beyond me right now.

  “And I got pregnant,” she says bravely. “With you, Violet.”

  It’s as if there were a huge invisible pressure in the room that has suddenly released, as if everyone were holding their breath and has let it out all at once. Because it’s been said. We’ve all heard the words and we’ve all survived hearing them.

  I feel like a deflated balloon. I’ve been wound up as tight as a coiled spring with so much stress and doubt and uncertainty: and now that the doubt and uncertainty have vanished, the stress has released along with them. I sag back against the sofa cushions, floppy and exhausted all of a sudden.

  Aunt Lissie pushes on.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “I wasn’t in touch with Salvatore any longer, and I didn’t want to tell him. I mean, he was married, and he had a little boy.”

  I manage not to flinch again at this.

  “So of course, I went running to Daisy,” she says, and the warmth in her voice when she talks about Mum, her sister, is lovely. “I always went running to Daisy when I had problems. And she said—she offered—Robert too, he was wonderful, you were both wonderful—” She’s looking at Mum and Dad now.

  “We had been trying to have a baby for a while,” Mum says, clearing her throat and forging on as Aunt Lissie loses it for a bit. “And we just couldn’t get pregnant. The doctors couldn’t tell us why. They called it unexplained infertility. So as soon as Lissie told us she was pregnant with you, I thought instantly that we should take you and bring you up as ours. And Robert agreed.”

  “It felt like it was meant to be,” Dad says simply. “We couldn’t believe it, really.”

  Lissie and Mum nod emphatically.

  “You were theirs from that moment,” Aunt Lissie says. “Honestly, I felt as if I were being their surrogate. That’s what I told them. This is your baby, and I’m its aunt. I’m just carrying it for you two.”

  I am not going to cry in front of the principe and principessa. So I swallow really hard at how lovely it is of her to say this, and nod again.

  “We agreed that I would just be your aunt when you were growing up,” Aunt Lissie says. “Well, I am your aunt, as far as we’re all concerned.”

  “We were going to tell you when you were eighteen,” Mum says quickly, and Dad nods vehemently. “I read up on all the stuff about adoption I could find, and they said that you either tell the child straightaway, so it grows up taking for granted that it’s adopted, or you wait till it’s old enough to process everything.”

  “And this probably sounds ludicrous,” Dad chips in, “but we honestly barely even thought of you as being adopted, Violet my love. You were already ours, a few months after Lissie conceived you. It was as if she were carrying our baby for us, just like she said.”

  I find myself looking up now, at the principe, who’s sitting directly opposite me. At my biological father.

  “Were you going to tell me about—” I can’t manage to say “biological father” out loud. “About him?”

  “We didn’t want to. But we knew you would have to know,” Mum says with her usual honesty. “We’d decided it would be the three of us to tell you, and then we’d all discuss what to do about contacting the principe, if you wanted to, darling. It was going to be left to you to make the decision.”

  “Salvatore, please,” the principe murmurs.

  “We didn’t think there would be the issue of you”—Dad glances from the principe to me—“looking so much like your biological father.”

  It was obviously very hard for him to get those last two words out; he stumbles over them, determined to do it but almost stammering in the process.

  “You’re my dad,” I say passionately, the words tumbling out. I jump up and run over to him; he’s been sitting in an armchair but he stands up swiftly and catches me in his arms, hugging me. I feel his heart pounding in his chest, thumping against his rib cage as if it’s trying to break his bones; I know my own is doing just the same. “Mum’s my mum,” I say firmly, “and you’re my dad.”

  “We didn’t think of the resemblance issue at all,” Aunt Lissie says, sounding guilty. “I mean, Daisy and I look so alike we could almost be twins. We just assumed there wouldn’t be any problem. We did the paperwork, of course—we legally adopted you. But in all of our eyes, it was just a formality.”

  “And as soon as you were born, you were just you,” Mum chimes in. “Our beloved daughter. We never thought about it or noticed it at all.”

  “But I did,” I observe, pulling a little away from Dad. “I always noticed that I was different. I’m not blaming you at all!” I add swiftly, as Mum looks horrified. “But I noticed I didn’t look like anyone on either side of the family. And I’d hear when people would comment on it.”

  “We should have said something,” Dad says soberly. “But we’d made the decision all together, and we thought we should stick to it.”

  “And you’re so nearly eighteen!” Mum practically wails. “It was getting so soon, the deadline to tell you! And you kept having exams, so we didn’t want to stress you—and you were always so happy, so secure, you didn’t seem to be feeling anything odd or negative—”

  I don’t want to let them know how aware I’ve always been of how odd-person-out I’ve felt in my tall, white-skinned, blond family. That the sight of a picture in a gallery in London was enough to send me on a quest for my origins, when another girl, one whose relatives looked much more like her, would have just thought Oh, how cool! and dragged all her friends back to show off how much she resembled a random girl from the eighteenth century.

  “It was going to the castello that set it off,” I lie. “Everyone saying how much I looked like the family portraits.”

  “It’s true,” the principe says quietly. “The resemblance is very strong. This is almost always the case with my family. The di Vesperi face comes down through the generations practically without fail.”

  The principessa hasn’t uttered a word yet, though she moves a little on her side of the sofa. Eventually she says: “This has ’appened, and it cannot be changed. We all know life is full of temptation. But we also care about family.” Her face is even whiter than usual, but she seems as poised as always. She can’t be much older than Mum and Aunt Lissie, but she looks as if she comes from a different generation because her style is so old-fashioned, with her Chanel jacket and jewelry and her Ferragamo shoes, her hair smoothed back tightly to her scalp.

  “Yes, family is the most important thing,” the principe agrees. “Donatella and I have of course discussed this,” he continues, glancing sideways at his wife. “She was sure almost immediately, when she saw Vio
letta, of the true situation.” He spreads his hands wide. “I have not been a very good husband, I must admit this.”

  Oh no, please, I think frantically, no more adults beating themselves up! I really don’t want to hear it!

  “But that is not for Violetta’s ears,” he goes on, earning my eternal gratitude. “I think the best thing to say here is that Violetta, you must take time and decide for yourself how you feel. Your mamma and papà are your parents, not me. It is for you to say how you want to go ahead with anything in the future as far as I am concerned.”

  Aunt Lissie looks at him directly and prompts:

  “And can you tell her—can you say what you told me about—”

  “Ah yes!” The principe nods. “Yes, Violetta, I also must say that I understand very completely Lissie’s reasons for not telling me about you.”

  Hearing an Italian say “Lissie” is so funny that it actually makes me smile a little, something I never would have thought could happen in this situation. Catia’s been teaching us that, to pronounce Italian correctly, you have to pronounce every letter of every word; the principe turns my aunt’s name into “Leess-ee,” lengthening it out till it sounds as long as an entire sentence.

  “She was correct to not tell me,” he says, smiling diplomatically at Lissie. “Or rather, it was for her to decide. I accept that completely.”

  “Thank you,” Lissie says gratefully.

  I’m still standing up, and I’m fighting the urge to pace madly back and forth across the room. From being exhausted, I now feel very restless, itchy, overwhelmed with information and emotions to process.

  “Should I order some tea?” Mum says, going very English. “Tea and cakes? Some sugar would be good, wouldn’t it? We must all be feeling very … well, shall I order tea? Violet darling, is there something you’d like?”

  I realize that all of them are staring at me, and they’re all looking nervous. I must be wearing a very odd expression on my face.

  “I think I need to go outside and be by myself for a bit,” I say.