All the Way to Italy

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Rome, Italy. Present day.

Little was trying to get a good look at Sira out of the corner of her eye; she needed an idea of what the older woman might be feeling. There had been a time when they lived in almost total symbiosis, when Little could tell how Sira felt by the arch of her eyebrow, the way she outlined the bones of her jaw with an index finger when she was annoyed. She could feel nothing now. She was too tired and too far out of her element.

She contented herself with watching her aunt as she busied about the kitchen, making brodo as their family always did when someone came in from a long journey. The homemade broth made from chicken stock was so revered in the Italian countryside that Little had believed for years growing up that it was the reverently spooned-out brodo that had nursed her back to health after bad bouts with the flu. Sira had tried to teach her how to use odori to spice the broth, the “scents” given away at local markets that would spice a dish, give it flavor. Carrots, celery, rosemary, and what else?

Sira was slight in her old age but still as beautiful as a statue, her dignity draped over her like a gossamer shawl, paired with still-brilliant eyes and an unwavering, unapologetic gaze. The world and the way that it passed inside of her had caused her beauty to become more pronounced. She was warier, sharper. Those who knew Sira knew that she had never cared much for her looks but had invested, deeply, in her mind. She had passed this trait on to the children she had raised, both the one that was her own and the one that she had raised for her brother.

“You’re blonde now?” Sira began, and Little was grateful that she hadn’t had to speak first.

“Yep,” she replied, pulling at a lock of travel-worn hair and glancing at the frizz with a sigh. Her hair never cooperated in general, much less after traveling. She pushed it back into a semblance of neatness.

“It’s a thing,” she said.

Sira grinned. “You know what I was thinking the other day?” she said, stirring the liquid in the pot lightly. “About the way you write your little sentences at the end of things. Little captions. Do you still do that?”

Little’s smile was lopsided. “Yeah, zia, of course I do.” She had a feeling that it would upset Sira to tell her that she hadn’t had the heart to write much in the past few years.

“Sometimes they didn’t seem to have much to do with what had happened, but it was what came out for you. A form of digestion, a release.” Sira was smiling at her now, reminiscing, and Little remembered suddenly that though she had always been unreasonably private about these snippets of her world, she had always read them eagerly to Sira. Sira always listened.

“So,” Sira said, turning away from the stovetop, “how is San Francisco?”

“It’s great.” Her mind traveled back to her last stroll through the city, walking up the steep steps of Lyon Street to the breathtaking view at the end; how every time the vista was somehow different, the light playing on something new to see. Something she had somehow missed the times before. Had she really been there only a day ago? “There’s always something to do, somewhere to go, and I love school, even though the classes are hard.”

“You don’t mind studying political science?” asked Sira, standing at the sink.

Little had always wanted to study literature or creative writing, subjects her father had frowned upon. He thought that a college degree should be sensible, something she could fall back on, and that the creativity could come on the side.

“I don’t, actually. This way I get to learn about stuff I don’t know about, something different from what I tend to lean toward. And,” she said, shifting forward in her seat in excitement, “I get to take literature courses on the side as electives, and I just finished an awesome psych course, so I think I want to take more of those.”

Sira was looking fixedly at the pot again, and Little realized she should address Sira’s request, the phone call she had made to Little a few weeks prior. Come home.

“I looked at some of the courses offered by the Political Science department at the Italian university here, and I’ve also been talking to one of the American universities in the center. I have my transcripts with me.” She was working hard to sound upbeat, confident. “So, either way, if I decide to stay after the summer, I’ll be set to start something here by September. It’s only May, so I have the whole summer to figure things out.”

“That sounds like a good plan!” Sira sounded relieved. “What about your apartment?” She began rummaging around in the refrigerator, pulling out various bits of vegetables.

“Aleth said she doesn’t mind living there alone for the summer, and then if I decide not to go back she’ll get a new roommate in the fall.”

Sira nodded. “Are you in touch with any of your old friends from here?”

“A few. Mostly Barbara.”

“That nice blonde girl that used to spend the summers at the house across the street from ours in Sperlonga?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, it’ll be nice to see her,” Sira ventured. Little nodded slowly. “Get you used to being home.”

“I feel like I left home yesterday,” she blurted out, almost without meaning to. She had promised herself that if she agreed to her aunt’s request to return to Italy, she was going to stick to it without complaining, at least through the summer. But almost immediately the smells and colors of Rome had felt shrill and unreal to her, even in the twilight of her cab ride to the apartment. She needed to say something to alleviate the pressure building inside of her. Sira turned. She suddenly looked her age, and Little felt a thrill of fear at remembering that Sira was not, after all, immortal.

“You know how that feels?” she tried, looking up at her aunt.

“Yes. I do know.” Sira brushed her hand lightly against her niece’s flushed cheek. “You look so tired, Little, and you’ve come so many miles. I know that trip always wore me down to the bone. Maybe you should get some rest.”

Little leaned her cheek into her aunt’s open hand. Sira smiled, her green eyes crinkling. “Welcome back, piccola.”

***

She woke with a start in the dark room in what felt like the stark middle of the night. She vaulted almost all the way out of the bed before remembering where she was. Rome. Her father’s apartment. Her apartment now, her sleep-addled brain reminded her, and this cut through the fog of her dream. I don’t want it, she thought. Bring him back, I don’t want it, he can have it back. She tried to close her eyes again and conjure an image of something that normally helped her find rest, like a deeper point of sea off the island of Ponza or the view of the bay from the Tiburon pier, but her heartbeat did not slow down. With a sigh she opened her eyes again and looked out the window.

She had insisted on sleeping with the window shutters thrown completely open, although Sira had disagreed. Rome was not as safe a city as it once was, she argued, and they were on the ground floor. Then she had taken one look at her claustrophobic niece and helped her to open the window as far as it would go.

Now Little could see what she hadn’t paid attention to in her earlier exhaustion. The high rise of the immortal Aurelian Walls carpeted the view before her, the protective rings of stone that delineated the ancient city of Rome. She had grown up with this view. Now it felt even more etched by time, and unfamiliar. Her fingers smarting, Little realized she had scratched her left hand, her writing hand, while she dreamt.

The dream had started comfortably enough, in gray, which she did not mind. For many years, her sleeping self had harbored and nested these tinctures, the husky brown, clay tan, musky half-pigments. Then an unsettling dream event had occurred, colors flooding everywhere: fuchsia gushing from her fingers, vibrant turquoise leaping from her neck, chartreuse twining down her legs and mixing with spreading citrine. Her fingerprints left behind halos of chrome, and when she began to cry her tears flowed violet, lavender, lemon. She had turned away to deny them, and to her horror they had only grown more fiercely vibrant. She had burst into a violent run, only to find gold and tangerine footprints scattering in her wake. Alone in a clear blue night, her heart had swelled suddenly with the joy of her hues, and she thought that maybe she knew what she could do with them. But the dream had again taken a turn, and she felt as though she were on a high ledge preparing for a great leap, the sensation of isolation sharp in her gut. She had backtracked to safety, and when her heel had hit the edge of something sharp she had awoken, the pads of her fingers brushing the air. Staring up at the ceiling, not yet fully awake, she somehow knew that if her dream self had leapt, her wings would have unfurled, and she would have found a tempest of colors tattooed on feathers that would have granted her flight. She had a fleeting vision of what it would have looked like, a minute plunge before a bursting rise.

Little looked out the window at the soft glow of the Aureliane as they stood the same guard they had stood for thousands of years, feeling uncomfortable and afraid. She never felt like this at home, never had chimerical dreams, never felt like her heart was exploding out of her chest. At home? She had to leave this city.