“I didn’t ditch you,” said Lee. “Calm down.”
“You did ditch me,” said Cord, close to tears. He felt like an abandoned boy again. “You did ditch me,” he repeated.
Cord remembered the day Lee had boarded a plane to go to college. During the drive back from the airport, sitting next to Regan in the backseat of Charlotte’s VW Rabbit, Cord had sipped his McDonald’s orange soda, cold through a plastic straw. Charlotte always got lost. She sometimes forgot to buy dinner. Once in a while, the power company cut the electricity. Lee had always been the one to find the bills and pay them, to make the lights come back on. Without Lee, Cord had realized, he was the one in charge. The world outside the car window seemed suddenly huge and fraught with possible disasters.
“Cord,” said Lee now. “There were…therearethings you don’t understand.”
“Spare me,” said Cord. “Just spare me your theatrics, Lee.”
“Okay,” said Lee. “You’re right. I should have called. I’m sorry.”
She looked immeasurably sad. Cord knew something had been pried open—he had pried it open—but suddenly all he wanted was to shut it again. “And furthermore,” he said: a joke, a plea.
“And furthermore,” said Lee.
“BUON GIORNO!WELCOME TOmy family home!” cried a man in a polo shirt wearing sunglasses and a red cap. Two black Labrador dogs rushed toward Regan as she and her family entered a courtyard surrounded by palm trees.
The villa owner led them into his gardens, talking about his rainwater collection system, the “artifacts such as this olive press carved from a single piece of lava,” the pepper trees, aloes, prickly pears, persimmons, chestnuts, and apricots. Regan sighed as he showed them an aquamarine pool hidden behind the gardens. All this beauty—this sparkling pool, these gardens—existed beyond her tiny Savannah life.
“Come-a to the kitchen!” called Diana. “It is time for Sicilian cooking school!”
In the villa’s kitchen, Diana tossed eggplant caponata with red peppers. “Now, I set aside to fester,” she said, placing the bowl on a steel-top table. In the cramped, blue-tiled kitchen, she handed out vegetable peelers and explained how to create long, silky ribbons of zucchini, which would be tossed in olive oil, lemon juice, and mint to createcarpaccio di zucchine.
Cord was an eager student, grabbing a vegetable peeler and getting to work. Lee and Charlotte stood on either side of the schlump in the Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, who had found a bottle of unlabeled red wine and was struggling to pull its cork with a rusty wine opener.
Regan, realizing that she herself was festering in the hot kitchen, situated next to a fierce stove on which two pots of boiling water sent plumes of steam into the air, headed for the wooden doors of the farmhouse.
“Regan!” cried Lee. “Where are you going?”
Where was she going? God only knew. In the courtyard, Regan sank into a chair. The sun felt nice on her scalp, and she noticed the scent of sage coming from somewhere, with a faint edge of lemon. She took a deep breath and looked at the ancient patio stones. The villa owner came outside, opened a pack of cigarettes. “Is it a bother?” he asked.
It was a bother, but of course Regan said, “Oh, no.”
The man didn’t pull out a phone or chat. He lit his cigarette and smoked it. The silence weighed on Regan. Her mind churned, trying to think of what to say, then berating herself for not knowing what to say. “Oh, dogs,” she blurted out. “I just love dogs.” She did not, in fact, love dogs. Regan actually disliked them—their dirty mouths and the way they went right for your crotch.
“Eh,” said the man. He shrugged and looked the other way.
Regan smiled. “Eh.” She was going to have to use that one. What would her days be like, pondered Regan, if she were the sort of person who answered inane statements by saying, “Eh”? What a cool, stress-free existence, to disconnect from other humans, to not give one hoo-ha about what they thought.
Regan stood. It was time to sayeh.“I’m going to need a taxi,” she told the man. He turned to her, raised an eyebrow. “All I do is make food,” said Regan. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner. I don’t know who signed up for a cooking class on vacation, but I didn’t come all the way to Sicily to stand in a hot kitchen and get lectured by Diana!” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“You want taxi?” said the man.
“You’re goddamn right I want a taxi,” said Regan.
LEE WATCHED HER CLOSETEDbrother, her lonely sister, her mother, who was growing old. Pain seemed to radiate from them, and Lee felt it enter her bloodstream. She wanted to lie down and sleep. At the same time, she was ravenous. Ever since Kiko’s incredible picnic lunch—that bread! Hot from the little AGA stove in his sweet kitchen in the house he’d grown up in!—it was as if a switch had been turned on. Lee felt as if she’d been starving for years and now couldn’t get enough.
Her mind frightened her. How could she be a mother when she felt so unmoored, her emotions all over the map? And what of her giant appetite—did it mean she was pregnant? Paros had bought her a test in Valetta, delivered it to her room in a subtle brown paper bag, but Lee had been too frightened to even open the box. If she didn’t know she was pregnant, she didn’t have to make any decisions. Lee was good at compartmentalizing: it was what had kept her heading hopefully to auditions even as her prospects dimmed.
Did she want to be pregnant? Lee didn’t know. She wasn’t skilled at understanding what she wanted. She could tell you what everyone in the cooking class thought of her, but she truly didn’t have any idea what she desired. When she tried to ask herself, there was a trembling silence.
Lee’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down. There was a text message from a number she didn’t recognize. Lee frowned and opened it.
Dear Lee, I cannot stop thinking about you. Do you believe in true love? Yours, KIKO
He had asked for her number as they waited in line to board theMarvelosoand she had spoken it aloud, not thinking he’d ever call. He was handsome, and she had felt so safe in his cave house. But did she believe in true love? No, she did not. Lee typed back:
I’m sorry but I don’t.
