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That was the last word I would have used to describe him after watching him in his kitchen.
“Andiamo!” I started swimming back to shore, long, strong strokes. It was Aunt Rose who taught me to swim. Or rather we taught one another. No one ever bothered to teach her as a child, and in her seventies, she finally decided to learn, taking Carla and me to the county pool. The three of us started out with fat orange flotation devices strapped to our biceps. Rosie laughed the entire time, even as she struggled to stay afloat while Carla and I took off in a furious doggie paddle. But once Rose got the hang of it she never stopped, even joined the Scranton synchronized swimming team for ladies over eighty, the Chicks with Kicks. They came in second in the seniors national tournament a decade ago with a routine set to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” When Rose did something she did it with every ounce of her body and soul.
Giusy and Fina had never made it into the sea. They were laughing their asses off when I returned to the beach, clutching one another and the bottle of orange liquor. I could see where the day was heading, and I wasn’t into it anymore. The water sobered me up and I didn’t want to drink myself senseless.
I asked Fina if I could drive her car up the mountain and pick the two women back up in the morning. She told me not to bother to come back down. They would find their way home. I was off the beach before Luca returned. He was still tending to his nose, or his pride, out beyond the waves.
My butt squelched into the passenger seat as my hair dripped a puddle around me. The sun was starting to slip closer to the horizon as I headed back to the mountain. I’d never felt less secure, but I also hadn’t felt this alive since I found out we had to shut down the restaurant.
You notice things while driving that you don’t see while being driven. I had the sudden urge to turn into each gravel tributary of the main road just to see what I would find. On the way up the mountain, I spied a sign I hadn’t seen on the drive down—puglisi olio d’oliva biologica. This must be it, the farm adjacent to my family’s land. I pulled the deed from my pocket and examined the hand-drawn sketch of the area to determine I was right. Our land was the next parcel.
I parked when the shoulder of the road widened and walked along the fence line until I found a break, unsure where the Puglisis’ land ended and ours began. I wondered when I began to think of it as “ours” anyway. There was a gap in the barbed wire fence that I thought I could shimmy under, next to a weather-beaten shrine to the Virgin Mary. She was a blue woman in a blue box, the paint peeling off her skin and face, her feet perched on what appeared to be a full moon. A lipstick stain graced her foot, the imprint of a mouth. It looked fresh.
I hesitated for a moment. It wasn’t like me to wander onto private property, but my curiosity outweighed my trepidation. I impetuously ducked beneath the wire, a sharp spur catching the skin above my left eyebrow.
The air was thick with the scent of wild lavender on overgrown terrace paths. An imposing stone tower rose above the trees in the distance, intact but crumbling amid a patch of lush meadow and windblown grass. It was attached to a larger building that was mostly just piles of rubble. Beyond it was a small terra-cotta cottage that blended into the orange brown of the earth. I approached the structures. There was no door on the tower, just a human-size hole in the ancient stone wall leading to a cool bare room with a dirt floor and a spiral of stairs going up to the top. I climbed without thinking. At the top of maybe a hundred stairs there was a waist-high wall that I leaned against while drinking in the view of the village; the mountain on one side and the endless expanse of pastures filled with a profusion of rollicking wildflowers painting a path to the sea on the other. The setting sun above the water turned the sky a chaotic swirl of pinks and purples and the air had a gauzy haze to it. You didn’t even need to squint to make it the most beautiful scene in the world.
This tower was the highest structure for miles, and I felt both exposed and powerful. What if a small part of this sunburnt land was mine? I didn’t need much, definitely not an entire farm, just a small patch of earth overlooking the mountain. I pictured Sophie here, running wild, always barefoot, whining in an Italian singsong for more gelato. The thought of Sophie had me dialing Jack’s number. It rang this time, but he ignored my call. This was the longest I’d ever gone without hearing my daughter’s voice. I didn’t just miss her. I longed for her awe-filled childlike description of this place where I was standing. This tower would be a castle. The irrigation canals beneath it a moat. She’d be certain that a dragon lived over those cliffs and that the terra-cotta cottage belonged to a fairy. More than anything I missed seeing the world through my daughter’s magical eyes.
I made my way down the stairs, out of the tower. I crouched low and dug my fingers into the dirt. I wanted to smell the soil, taste it even.
A large boom, like a thunderclap exploding directly above my head, nearly knocked me flat on the ground. When I turned my head, a snarling dog bared its teeth inches from my face. I scrambled back in horror and saw the animal was at the end of a short chain. There were two men standing there. The one with the dog and another pointing his gun at me, the one he just fired into the air above his head. They murmured back and forth in dialect, their voices low and angry.
It was almost dark. I was so stupid for thinking I could trespass like this. So classic American, never thinking about the consequences of any action on foreign soil. “You idiot,” I chastised myself. No one knew I was here. The two people who could possibly vouch for me were miles away and probably heading toward a drunken blackout.
The first man turned his gaze to me and twisted his mouth into a sneer as I stood. He was a head shorter than me. A pair of expensive-looking sunglasses dominated the top half of his face despite the fact that it was nearly dark. His belt spelled out Armani over and over again. The bright gold buckle gleamed in what was left of the sun. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it. The other guy was his exact opposite, a string bean with a mighty nose and a mop of hair that kept falling into his eyes in a way that made him look more innocent than he probably was.
“The American. We know who you are.” Armani Belt glared at me.
I remembered something Aunt Rose said to me when I started dating in high school. “Men are easy to manipulate. You just have to know when to play the Madonna, when to play the whore, and when to play the broken bird. There was really only one part I could play. I thought hard about how to phrase what I needed to say in Italian.
Mi dispiace molto. Mi sono persa. I am so sorry. I am lost.
Per favore aiutami a tornare in paesa. Please help me to get back to town.
I begged and cast my eyes to the ground. The small one took pride in his appearance. If the belt weren’t enough I could tell from the shine of his impractical loafers. The other one wore tight acid-washed jeans with dirty old Reeboks.
My eyes fixed on the gun dangling against his thigh. He kept tapping the barrel against his leg. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. I backed away slowly. He spoke in English.
“Why did you come here?”
“I’m lost. I was just taking a walk. It was so pretty. I wanted to see the tower up close.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” I got the sense he didn’t just mean here, on this land. He meant here in Caltabellessa. In Sicily.
“I’m a tourist on vacation. Please let me get back to town. My husband is waiting.” News spread fast in this place, and they must have known I was here alone. But maybe they’d believe that my husband had only recently arrived, that I had a man waiting for me, a man who would come looking for me if I went missing.
I inched backward. “My car is right there,” I said. “I am so, so sorry. I did not know I couldn’t walk here.” They made no move to stop me and I kept going, not taking my eyes off them. One step at a time.
“Have you been on our land before?” the little one suddenly barked as he took off his sunglasses. When I met his eyes, I realized why he looked familiar. He was Giusy’s cousin, the one from the restaurant the other night, the one she described as one of the biggest Cosa Nostra in town, the one with the large ears and the little dick. His voice was low and rough.
I didn’t let on that I recognized him, that we would have any possible connection. I shook my head. “No. No. This is my first time here. Like I said. I was only passing by and now I need to get back to my husband. My husband is waiting for me.” I’d never said the word husband so many times in such quick succession, not even when I had an actual husband. But here the word felt like a necessary shield.
They let me continue until my back pressed against the barbed wire fence and I could feel the sharp spikes digging into my spine. They approached me again. I could feel the dog’s breath on my bare legs. Either man could reach out and grab me by the hair or strike me in the face.
“That is not your car.” The tall one pointed over the fence.
“It belongs to Fina, the police officer.”
