Sometimes, Charlotte thought that perhaps Father Thomas was even lonelier than she.
Sighing, she set down the Gellewza. As if Father Thomas could hear her, she pronounced, “We’d love to tour the cathedral.”
Kiko drove them back to Valetta in his VW convertible. Charlotte could feel sea-scented wind in her hair (and made a note to tell Father Thomas this very detail. Sea-scented wind!).
The cathedral looked simple from the outside, with two bell towers, but the interior was so beautiful that Charlotte felt as if her brain were overheating. Baroque, Charlotte could appreciate, but this church was, as her granddaughters would say,bonkers.Every surface of the limestone walls was carved, painted, or gilded. Every inch inspired closer attention. It was the definition of glorious. But all this glory—it was almost a bit much. “Look at the floor,” whispered Kiko.
How could shenotlook at the floor? Marble angels and skeletons were inlaid below her feet. “We are standing on over four hundred tombs,” said Kiko. “They tell a story, the story of the inevitability of death, and the rapture of the afterlife.”
Charlotte was silent, overwhelmed. Lee came and stood next to her. “What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s so sad,” said Charlotte. She couldn’t bear the thought that she wouldn’t feel rapture in the precious years she had left, that she’d have to wait until she was dead.
“But hopeful, too,” said Lee, putting her arm around her mother. “Rapture sounds good to me.”
It felt wonderful to have Lee next to her. Later, when she went over every moment that led Lee to perch on her balcony high above the ocean, Charlotte would curse herself for not saying something else in this moment. What if she had said, “There’s rapture right here” or “Lee, I love you.”
What if she had said, “Please don’t leave me”?
But no, Charlotte had said, “Rapture does sound nice, I suppose.” She wasn’t thinking. She’d had no idea. She’d simply wanted to say something, while her daughter was listening.
CHARLOTTE HAD VISITED ITALYwith her parents when she was small, but all she could remember about the entire trip was standing in a chilly bathroom beside her mother. Louisa (in Charlotte’s memory) turned to her and said, “I was not crying. Now go and give your father a kiss.”
Charlotte remembered leaving the bathroom, running through a dim restaurant, flying toward her father, who wore a suit and did not look up.
And now, more than sixty years later, she woke again in Italy. Well, near Italy, anyway. In Italianwaters.Ah, bellissimo!
“I am here with a coffee,” said Paros, from the hallway.
Charlotte froze, frantically teasing her sleep-flattened hair in the mirror, rummaging uselessly in the drawer for a brush. “Um…?” she said.
“I’ll leave it here and come back later for the tray, Mrs. Perkins.”
Charlotte exhaled. “Thank you!” she called. When she’d heard his footsteps fade, Charlotte brought the pot of coffee and a raspberry Danish (what a wonderful surprise!) to her balcony, felt the Italian breeze on her face. She reached for what she thought was the bill, but saw a handwritten note instead:
Homer wrote in the Odyssey that a many-headed monster (SCYLLA) guarded the entrance to the Strait of Messina and ate sailors who tried to approach…and that the whirlpool CHARYBDIS waited for vessels…Luckily the Splendido Marveloso has already safely docked. I love the view of Sicily and the Calabrian coast and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Yours,
PAROS
Charlotte gripped the note. She wanted sex, it was true, but Paros’s attentions were exposing a deeper need: she yearned for love. She had spent her mornings alone—or with imaginary lovers—for so long. She had not allowed herself to imagine the deep satisfaction of reaching out in the night to touch a warm body next to her own.
Charlotte sipped her coffee and gazed at the rocky coastline, the deep green hills, clouds like smoke. How lonely it was to have no witness to her life. No one to guard her passage into slumber, no one to know that she had made it through the night.
HOW COULD THIS BECord’s first trip to Italy, the worldwide mecca for fashionable, carb-eating gays? It was a crime that he wasn’t here with Giovanni. Instead, Cord was with his mother and sisters, boarding a motor coach helmed by a very enthusiastic woman named Diana.“Buon giorno!”she cried, as soon as they and about a dozen other cruise ship passengers were seated. “Buon giorno!This, it means hello in Italian. Can-a everybody hear-a me?”
She spoke into a microphone with the volume turned way up: everyone could hear her.
“Isn’t thisexciting?” whispered Charlotte, who sat behind Cord and Regan, popping over the seat like a Lilly Pulitzer–clad jack-in-the-box.
“Thrilling,” said Cord. He was freshly showered and bleary-eyed. The night before, he had stayed up playing Texas Hold’em, drinking cappuccinos until his hands shook. He’d missed the Friends of Bill W meeting (code for Alcoholics Anonymous—Bill W had founded the program) and his scheduled call with Handy. He had been sober for two days and counting but had scarcely slept, his mind catastrophizing and trying to find a path from where he was now to a wedding ceremony in his mom’s backyard.
“The beaches, as you see, are small storms,” said Diana. At least, Cord thought she’d said storms. Maybe stones? “Etna down there is the wine,” said Diana. “Lava rocks, and then the sand-a. Sicily, it is so beautiful! And now you know.”
Diana sat down.
“What do we know?” said Cord. “I missed something.” Regan, who had been drawing in her notebook, looked similarly bewildered. “What are you writing?” asked Cord.
