“Jesus, Katy, are you kidding?” Eric puts his hands on his face. He rubs the skin of his temples. “I fucking loved her, too, you know.”
He puts his head in his hands. He has cried this week. He cried at her memorial service and on the first day of her shiva. He cried both when his mother and sister arrived, paying their condolences to our family, and when they left. He cried when he hugged my father, and my parents’ best friends, Hank andSarah. I do not know how to feel about his grief. I know it is real, grounded in his own connection to her, and yet it feels indulgent. It feels like he’s letting something out to dance that should be locked away. I wish he’d stop.
His bottom lip quivers, trying to hold it in, but he can’t. It’s bigger than him, this emotion, and it breaks over him now.
I put my hand on his shoulder, but I do not feel the thing inside me I should. I do not feel protective of him, sorry for him. I do not feel compassion, and it does not stir my own grief. I am too afraid. If I let myself see his pain, what will that say about mine? Since she died, I have not cried. I can’t meet it, not with a plane to catch.
“I have to go,” I tell him. “I’m sorry, Eric.”
Eric says I never call himEricunless I’m upset with him. It was never “Eric, come cuddle me.” It was “Eric, it’s trash day.” Or “Eric, the dishwasher is full.” But I’m not sure that’s true. I had a million nicknames for him.Babyandbunnyandhotsauce. ButEricwas my favorite term of endearment. I loved naming him. I loved the specificity of his name. Just the one. Eric.
I’m not a romantic, and I do not think I’m a particularly sentimental person—I’m Carol’s daughter, a woman who understood the importance of a neutral palette and temperament. But Eric is. He has piles of receipts, movie tickets, the stubs from concerts. We store them in shoeboxes in the garage. He is a man who cries watchingFinding Forrester, and reading the Modern Love column in theNew York Times.
I remove my hand. He rubs his palm across his face. He exhales. He takes a solid breath then, in and out.
“I have to go,” I say one last time.
He nods. He says nothing.
And just like that, I get in the car. I feel a sensation close to relief, but heavier, thicker.
“LAX,” I say, even though the driver already knows, of course. He has an app, he’s already charting the course.
“Twenty-three minutes,” he tells me. “What a beautiful day, and no traffic!”
He smiles at me in the rearview.
He doesn’t know, I think as we drive away. He doesn’t know that here, in the backseat, there are no beautiful days anymore.
Chapter Three
Positano is not an easy place to get to. First you have to fly into Rome, and then you must make your way from the Rome airport to the Rome train station, at which point you board a train to Naples. From Naples, you need to find a ride down the coast to Positano. I land in Rome thirteen hours after leaving LA surprisingly refreshed. I’m not a good flier, never have been. And this is the longest trip I’ve ever taken, not to mention the only one I’ve ever taken alone. But I’m strangely calm on the flight. I even sleep.
The train station is a quick taxi away, and the ride to Naples is a beautiful hour and a half through the Italian countryside. I’ve always loved a train. When Eric and I lived in New York, we’d sometimes take the train to Boston to see his family. I loved the theater of it—how you could look outside and see what season it was, right there on display. Leaves in red and burnt orange in the fall, snow on the ground in December, ushering in the holidays like a red Sharpie on a printed calendar.
The Italian countryside is just like you’d imagine it: greenhills, small homes, the tan of farms mixed with the bright aqua blue of the sky.
By the time I arrive at the Naples train station—and spot a man from the Hotel Poseidon holding a sign markedKaty Silver—I’m smiling.
I am not in Erewhon, picking out the week’s groceries, wanting to call her and say they have a two-for-one on olive oil, and does she want some. I am not at the bottom of Fryman Canyon, staring out at the trail, waiting for her to join me on our weekend hike. I’m not at Pressed Juicery, waiting for her to walk down San Vicente in her wide-brimmed hat and buy us both a Greens 3. I am not in my home; I am not in hers. I am somewhere new, where I have to be nimble, alert, present. It forces me into the moment in a way I haven’t been in a year, maybe even ever. When my mom was sick, it was all about the future—the worry of what was coming, what might happen. Here there is not space for thought, just action.
We chose Hotel Poseidon because it was very close to where my mother had stayed many years ago and also a hotel she remembered fondly. “They had the kindest staff,” she said. “Really good people.” The hotel was old—everything, my mother used to say, is old in Italy. But it was charming and beautiful and warm. It had so much character and life, my mother said. And the terrace was to die for, somehow constantly bathed in sunlight.
I hand my bag over to the chauffeur named Renaldo—the hotel was nice enough to send someone to collect me from the train station—and climb in the back of the sedan. The car is a Mercedes, as plenty of run-of-the-mill taxis are in Europe, but it still feels indulgent. A Honda Civic dropped me off at LAX.
“Buongiorno, Katy,” Renaldo says. He’s a stout man, nomore than fifty, with a contained smile and what I imagine is a patient temperament. “Welcome to Naples.”
The drive out of Naples is picturesque—apartment buildings with women hanging clothes on the line, small terra-cotta houses, the wild tangle of greenery—but when we get to the coast, the real delight begins to set in. The Amalfi Coast is not so much splayed out before us as beckoning us closer. Hints of clear blue sea, houses built into the hillside.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” I say.
“Wait,” Renaldo tells me. “You wait.”
When we finally come into Positano, I see what he means. From high up on the winding road, you can see the entirety of the town. Colorful hotels and houses sit chiseled into the rocks as if they were painted there. The entire town is built around the cove of the sea. It looks like an amphitheater, enjoying the performance of the ocean. Blue, sparkling, spectacular water.
“Bellissima, no?” Renaldo says. “Good for photo.”
I grip the side of the car and roll down the window.
