“I like to go sometimes. I’ll bring a sketchbook up. It’s a great place to draw. I haven’t been in too long, though. This just reminded me.”
“I like photography,” I say. “I used to bring a camera with me to Fryman Canyon. That’s the hike my… That’s the hike I like to do.”
“I’ll bet you’re a great photographer.”
“Really?”
She nods. “I can tell you have very good taste. With the exception of that dress from yesterday, of course.”
She smiles; it makes me laugh.
We stand up there, side by side, not speaking.
“Carol,” I say. The word sounds both foreign and familiar. “I have to tell you something.”
She turns to me, and I see the sweat running down her face. Her green eyes flashing in the sun.
I want to tell her that she’s my mother. I want to ask her to dig deep, to see if she can access some other time and place. I want to know if she can peer into the future and see her child swaddled against her chest. I want to know if she can see the two of us in contrasting floral dresses running down the beach in Malibu, me at her heels. I want to know if she can see herself, in our kitchen, plucking my fingers out of the cookie dough. Does she know? How could she possibly not remember?
But of course she doesn’t. Here she’s just a woman out for a summer adventure, and I’m the other American tourist with whom she happened to cross paths.
“Yes?” she says, still looking at me.
“I’m not sure I liked Da Adolfo,” I spit out.
Carol laughs. She squints her face together and shakes herhead. “Then I have to tellyousomething,” she says. “I’m not sure I do, either. But you can’t really beat the scenery.”
“The food was not so amazing,” I say.
“The standards are high here,” she says. “Especially if you’re staying at Poseidon.”
“Where do you go back home?” I ask her. “I mean, in LA. Where do you like to eat?”
She smiles. “I cook a lot,” she says. “I have this very cool apartment on the Eastside. You’ll come over, when we’re back. I make a lot of pasta and fish. The secret to LA is that downtown has the best restaurants. They’re few and far between, but they’re sensational. And Chinatown has my heart.”
I flash on my mother, dim sum splayed out before her, clapping happily as we all sing “Happy Birthday” to her. We haven’t been in ages. Why did we stop going?
“I’ll also never pass up In-N-Out.” She clears her throat. “Shall we?”
We head down the stairs together, side by side. When we get to the landing, I stop and gaze back down over the sea. It’s so much hotter than when we began, and my bottle of water is nearly empty.
“I’ll see you at four?” my mother asks.
“Do you want to have breakfast at my hotel?” If she comes back with me, what will happen?
“I’d love to,” she says. “But I have this project I’m working on.” She looks sheepish when she says it, the first time I’ve seen the emotion on her since I encountered her here.
“What kind?” I ask.
I’m reminded of sitting on floors of showrooms as a young child with my mother. Watching her pick out rugs and fabrics for drapes and furniture for her clients. I’m reminded ofplaying on the floor of my father’s flagship store, watching my mother arrange dresses on mannequins. I loved seeing her in her element.
“It’s such a long shot,” she says. She places her hands on her hips and shrugs.
“Tell me.”
“I’m working on a design for the Sirenuse.” She puts a hand on her face. “Remo told me they’re remodeling the hotel, and I decided on a whim to submit a proposal. They have all these really famous people from Rome and Milan presenting. I don’t know, it’s silly…”
The Sirenuse is the nicest hotel in Positano, and it has the price tag to match. When my mother and I thought about going, it was seventeen hundred dollars a night.
