Page 73 of 32 Days in May

He throws his head back and laughs.

We drive out to Fregene for a classically late Italian dinner, taking the beltway through a neighborhood that looks, theoretically, rough, but still, I find myself wondering desperately what it would be like to live in one of never-ending rows of brutalist, concrete apartment buildings with pollution-stained balcony railings. To line dry all my clothes. To sit out by a single-pump gas station and smoke a cigarette, watching the sunset over the umbrella pines, knowing that once upon a time, Hannibal and Julius had done this, too. Through thin lace drapes, I spy TVs turned to the news, soccer matches, and game shows; kitchen tables set with colorful cloth; overflowing ashtrays; and I see my parents.

This is where they fell in love. Young and beautiful and full of hope, under this sun.

Here, I kind of see Evergreen. The last few days have been an insulated bubble of privilege, completely submerged in Marco’s world. A wonderful, warm escape. But I miss home, I realize. Not Philly, not the ultra-cool studio I used to rent near the El.

I miss Evergreen, the little beach apartment with the leaking skylight. Sitting on the balcony with my sister, smoking a joint with Soph and Allie on the beach. I miss the produce stand, I think when we drive past an Ape truck selling peaches out of its minuscule bed. I miss my peaches.

Marco squeezes my thigh when we’re stopped at a red light, and I startle out of my daydream just as the road opens up and we turn toward the sea.

Paola’s family home is a low-slung vermilion villa on a gravel-coated country road that juts right up to the beach. When we pull up to the gate, it unlocks with a horrifying electric buzzing sound and then slowly, noisily rolls open. Paola’s on the other side—all limbs and angles in a pair of linen overalls and a bandanna tied around her head. She’s tanned deeply, even though it’s only May, her black hair pulled over a shoulder.

“Buona sera!” she calls, waving us over to a parking spot under the shade of an olive tree. As soon as we step out of the car, she begins a double-speed monologue in near-perfect English, including a posh British accent, while taking my hand in hers. To my surprise, it’s warm and soft.

“Welcome to the countryside! We’re so glad you two could make it. Giorgio’s always sort of sad around his birthday, but I convinced him a dinner with our American friends isn’t even about him.” She throws a wink at me, leading us down a stone-lined path, past a pond and a row of squat palm trees, toward a pergola. Cicadas write their music all around us, and everything smells like honeysuckle. “Tia will bring a cake—of course, not for Giorgio. Who has dinner with no cake? And Martina, his sister—hold on, Martina!” Beneath the pergola is a long wooden table, already set for dinner. A woman with honey-colored hair, still wet from the sea, jumps up at the sound of what must be her name. “Martina brought a parmigiana, and Giorgio will grill lamb. Do you eat lamb?” This question is aimed at me.

“I-I’ll eat anything,” I stutter. In a house like this, I really would eat anything. Suckling calf. A human heart. The last Atlas lion. “Everything. Whatever you have.”

She grins, revealing an adorable chip in one of her front teeth. “Good girl.”

The meal unfolds like an orchestral symphony.

The best part is, for the first time all week, I don’t feel like I need Marco. Of course I love having him next to me, squeezing my thigh under the table, his fingertips grazing idly over my upper arms as I answer Giorgio’s questions about the upcoming American election and the newest litfic starlet. I love knowing he could drive us back to our hotel if I suddenly became too anxious, that if I said I needed a Band-Aid or wanted to eat half a dozen cream puffs, he’d be the first person to hunt down either.

Conversation flows easy, like the plum-colored wine Paola retrieves from inside the house. Giorgio sloshes out generous portions from the wicker-covered cask (to everyone except Marco and me), and about halfway through the bottle, the Overton window shifts when Martina tells us titty-fucking is called “Spanish sex” in Italian.

“That’s so beautiful,” I say. “We just call it titty-fucking. That’s the only name it’s got.”

“Tit-tee fucking?” Martina repeats, her mouth pulled down into an exaggerated blowfish frown, a cigarette burning down to the quick between her manicured fingers.

“Uh huh,” Marco says dryly, leaning back in his chair. He has one arm draped around my shoulders, his thumb burning a lovely path as it grazes up and down my skin. “It’s like trash can or crosswalk. We just call things what they are.”

I let out a deep hum of agreement and take my final bite of lamb chop. “Exactly. Well said.”

Marco’s eyes slide sideways to me. He’s smirking, eyes flickering like the last embers in a bonfire. “Thanks, baby.”

“How vulgar.” Martina guffaws. Then, she holds up her glass for a refill. “How horrible this tit-tee fuck sounds.”

After cake and sorbet, Giorgio and Marco wander off toward the property line to stare out at the last boats coming back in from sunset cruises or a day of fishing. In lieu of singing “Happy Birthday,” Tia demands that I make some sort of writerly statement. It’s such a crazy demand and all I can do is flap my jaw like Slappy. They all egg me on and eventually I pull a quote out of my ass—something I’d read in a book by Ferrante, underlining it until my ballpoint pen ripped through the paper.

Eventually, I’d written it down on a Post-it note and put it on my vanity mirror, next to the note from Audrey.

It was a line about fucked-up people from a fucked-up place trying desperately to make sense of their own violence, against each other and themselves, each choice another turn down a dark hallway. That was how I’d felt, always.

Each time I made a decision that drew me farther away from my family, I turned another corner. Each time I tried to double back, I found the last place I’d been was now consumed by darkness. So, I wandered, room to room, darkened corner to darkened corner. All I wanted to be was a new whole version of myself—instead, I kept breaking apart.

Now, months later, I realize maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what being alive is. You don’t get to resurface, new. You break away; you start again; you molt old skin, altogether too tight and wrong, and while scars fade, they never disappear. At least not right away.

I lift my glass filled with water and say, “In what disorder we lived, how many fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into splinters.”

Giorgio, with his big, wet eyes and kind smile, tilts his head. “Ferrante. Impressive.”

I nod and lift my glass in his direction. “Cheers to another year of splintering.”

Tia brings out a platter overflowing with fresh fruit alongside tiny glasses filled with grappa. We watch the men trolling around the parameter with their fists pressed into their hips, giggling at how much they remind us of our fathers’ friends.

“You’re Italian, right, Nadia?” she asks, setting another scoop of lemon sorbet into the crystal plate.