“I’m not sure, actually. One minute he’s asking her which shirt to wear with his pants and the next minute he’s googling studio apartments near campus.”
“He’s going to move out?” asked Greta.
“Well, I’m not super experienced, but I’m pretty sure that when you get divorced, you’re supposed to not live together.” Ellie shook her head. “I don’t know, it’s all so stupid.”
“Aren’t they too old for that?”
“Divorce? Or stupid?”
“Either. Both? Don’t answer that. They are behind you.” Greta said through a plastered-on smile. She waved over Ellie’s shoulder. “Ciao,Peggy!Ciao,Gio! Happy summer!”
“Well, look at you. You are just lovely! Honestly, you get more beautiful with every child. Even on my first one I already looked like the wreck of the Hesperus. This one here ruined me.” Peggy chuckled, rubbing Ellie’s arm.
“Congratulations to you both,” said Gio. “Where is Flavio, anyway?”
“Thank you, Gio! He’ll be here this weekend. He had to wrap up some last-minute client stuff in Milan.”
“Tell him to call me when he gets here. I want to ask him about a road bike,” said Gio. Flavio and Greta had met doing triathlons and had agreed to mutually pause their training while Greta was pregnant. However, since she’d been pregnant for a longer-than-expected stretch, Flavio indulged his athletic obsession by becoming a massive bike nerd.
“Are you going to become a cyclist now, Dad?” Ellie was prettysure her dad had arthritis in at least two-thirds of his still-functioning joints—on a good day. Plus, Gio in a cycling kit would look like four tree branches got in a fight with a pair of panty hose. Not cute.
“I might. It seems like a great way to meet people,” he said.
“People.” Ellie could feel the veins in her neck starting to bulge. Her eyes narrowed. “What people do you need to meet?”
“Cycling is a great way to stay in shape,” said Greta, clamping down on Ellie’s hand and pulling. “I’ll tell Flavio to find you. We’re all here anyway! I’m going to steal Ellie for a minute. You don’t mind, do you?” Greta all but yanked Ellie away from her parents and over to the stairway leading down to the beach.
“You’re going to have a stroke,ciccia. Do you want a glass of wine?” She gestured toward the café.
“No. I’m fine,” Ellie said. She wasn’t fine. The only thing she knew for certain was that this summer was going to kill her. She blew out a breath and held on to the railing.
“Come on, let’s sit.” Greta pulled Ellie over to a wooden bench and eased herself down. “I’m not going to lie, I still can’t believe what is going on with your parents.”
“Tell me about it. I feel like I don’t even know them. It’s not just them—it’s everything. I thought I knew what I was doing and now nothing makes sense.”
“Ellie, no one knows what they are doing,” Greta said. She leaned closer, her blue eyes wide. “You are aware that we are all faking it, right?”
“You seem to know what you’re doing.” Ellie looked down at Greta’s belly.
“Are you kidding me? Just because I know how to make babies doesn’t mean that I know how to turn them into people. You think Ihave it all figured out?” Greta shook her head and pursed her lips. “I did laundry with body lotion for three days last week before I figured out that my dispenser bottles were switched. Sometimes Flavio and I get so tired that we manually turn the clocks forward to get the kids to go to bed early, and I am pretty sure that I’ve fed at least two of them tripe and said it was ‘sponge noodles.’ No, Ellie. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Well, okay, but you’re juggling so much more. All I have is me, and I can’t even get that right.”
“You are being way too hard on yourself. Do you think any less of me for my screwups?”
“Never. To me, you’re always perfect, and I love you. I don’t care if you lie to your children because tripe is delicious and kids should be in bed by 4:00P.M.”
“I know, right? Thank you for that, and I love you, too, but why can’t you be as kind to yourself as you are to me? You’ll figure it out, El. You don’t have to have the ability to control and orchestrate everything perfectly. That kind of life would be so boring, anyway!”
“I get what you’re saying. And it’s the stuff I’ve been saying to other people for years, but for some reason I can’t get it to make sense for me. I’m good at planning for what’s going to happen. I mean, I was…” Ellie put her face down.
“Hey. Look, you’re not supposed to be a fortune teller. You can’t predict the future, but if you could I’d like you to tell me if I’m going to need an epidural for the fourth one or if it’s going to shoot out of me like my vagina is a waterslide.”
“You know, if you’re trying to get me to be interested in having kids one day, this is not the way to do it. But I don’t need to tell the future, exactly. I just like a little more order than… whatever this is,” Ellie said, gesturing around the terrace.
“Order? Uff,ciccia, the universe is random. You’re the only person I know who takes it personally. Oh my God, what is that?” Greta looked up toward the entrance of the beach club and pulled her sunglasses down an inch. “Is that…no,it can’t be.”
“Yep. That’s him.” Ellie was already used to the super-deluxe version of Cris and barely needed to look up to confirm.
