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“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Grazie, bella.” He gives me a slight nod—like a greeting…like an agreement.
“Thank you,” I whisper again. It feels so strangely inadequate.
“Be careful, okay?” he says. “You’ve got friends here?”
I nod.
“Don’t be wandering around tonight without them.” He wraps his hand around the door to the stairwell and then looks back, his piercing blue eyes widening. “Sei bellissima e gli uomini sono mostri.”
I don’t understand his words, but they feel like a warning.
I watch as he disappears into the stairwell, my mind rolling outward like a rug unfurling, vast and empty all in the same moment.Volume 1Every story is a story about death. But perhaps, if we are lucky, our story about death is also a story about love.—Helen Humphreys, The Lost GardenChapter OneElise
Two Months LaterThere’s a photo on a shelf in our home’s library. It’s a Polaroid, which may be why I’ve always liked it so much. Some Polaroids are bleary, but this one is strangely clear—like a window to another time.
In the snapshot, it’s spring or summertime. I know because the grassy field we’re standing in is brilliant green. There are lots of us—thirty-four, to be exact. Arranged in four rows. Everyone is wearing dressy-casual clothes: flowing dresses for women, trousers and button-ups for men.
On the front row, surely just a few feet from the photographer, are six women. Each one holds a baby, and all around their feet are young children
If you look closely and you know Liberty State Park, you can see the lower part of the Statue of Liberty behind us. If you look closely and you know my family, you can see my mother among the six women holding babies. There’s a chunky monkey in her arms, a big-cheeked drool machine wearing a lacy bonnet and, for some reason, only a cloth diaper. My mom is eighties-tastic in a navy sundress, gold beads, hoop earrings, and point-toe espadrilles. Her hair has got to be permed. I’ve never seen it curly like that.
What I like most about this picture—and, I think, what I hate, too—is the look on my mom’s face. Her head is tilted slightly in a dreamy fashion, showing off her swan neck and her elegant collarbones. Her lips, as red as ever, are curled into a little smile, as if she has a secret. A good secret. I’m sitting up straight like a young meerkat, smiling, I think—though I can’t tell for sure. Her arms are wrapped snugly around me.
The woman to my mom’s left, Isa Arnoldi’s mother, looks similarly pleased. Or maybe proud. It’s a look that I don’t understand, but she’s smiling. She’s wearing a pale pink dress, a cross necklace baby Isa is pulling on, and a straw hat with a dark ribbon around the juncture between crown and brim. I can’t see her feet to know what vintage shoes she’s wearing, because Isa’s older brother Gabe is sitting on them. His face is parallel with the sky, as if he’s looking at a bird or plane above us.
To my mom’s right is a smaller woman, also dark-haired, though her hair is shorter. She’s not looking at the camera, but at the baby in her arms, who is a boy. He’s wearing a blue outfit, with the mother in a white dress. I don’t know her name. When I asked my mom and dad, they said they didn’t either.
“Someone at the charity picnic that day.”
The other four babies are my friends Dani, Max, Loren, and Jace. We’ve all known each other since we were in diapers. Our parents have sat on the board of the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic charity since before we were born.
The charity is for bragging and one-upmanship, and also for tax breaks. Now there is no summer picnic, only Christmas dinner at The Beekman, and an Easter egg hunt, although everyone in this picture is too old to hunt for eggs now.
At the lunch and hunt this year, held indoors at Gotham Hall, Dani and Max got drunk and kissed in a bathroom, and Isa offered me a cigarette on one of the balconies. I hate the smell and taste, so I declined, but I stuck by her as she smoked.
I look at my mother’s buoyant smile one last time before setting the frame back down and stepping over to the tall window behind my father’s desk. Objectively, I know that it’s a stunning view of the Hudson. It has a stunning price tag attached, and it’s only one of the homes my parents own.
Despite myself, I step back to the picture and look again. This time, I find my father. He’s near the back, standing beside Isa’s dad. I look from his face to Mr. Arnoldi’s a few times, searching both their features. Is there any resemblance? I can’t see Roberto Arnoldi well enough to know. Does it matter if they actually resemble? My dad speaks Italian. My Irish father speaks fluent Italian and he…well, I think he threatened someone.
