You Have Seven Messages (20 page)

“I talked to your boyfriend.”

“What? Oliver’s not my boyfriend.”

“Well, whatever. He feels bad. I think he’s lovesick.”

I look over at his window. The curtain is drawn.

“What did he say?”

“He said your friend Rachel was a fake.”

“Wow, shocker.”

“Moon, I think you should forgive and forget.”

I stand up to go inside.

“We’ll see about that.”

“Will you call us from there?”

“Yes, Tile. They have phones in Italy.”

He smiles and goes back to his game.

At the gate, Richard gives me his first-class seat and he takes the one in coach. “I’m just going to pop a pill or two and pass out anyway,” he says. “You enjoy yourself.”

As the plane backs off from the gate I feel a stirring in my heart. Yes, I am excited, but I’ve never been to Europe on my own. Richard feels more like a friend and less like a parental figure. What will life be like there? Will I fit in seamlessly? The man next to me smiles and reminds me to put on my seat belt. I strap myself in, knowing somehow that this trip will be all about the opposite. Loosening, letting go, feeling free. Still, there’s the pit of my stomach saying,
Are you ready for this?

For the rest of the flight I watch two movies, eat steak with a Diet Coke, and listen to the new Imogen Heap.

When the plane starts to descend, I picture all the drama from New York falling off me piece by piece, like petals off a flower.

The ride to Richard’s house is bumpy, or at least the part I wake up for. There are people on the side of the road selling fruit that looks bigger, stronger, and more colorful than the fruit they sell on Central Park West. Finally, we follow the long driveway to Richard’s house, nestled in the nook of a small hill. The house is made of weathered brick and there’s a major smell that I can’t place. It’s sweet, and very strong.

“He’s basically planted a country of basil in the garden,” Richard says while pulling our bags out of the trunk. “We’re supplying all of Thailand.”

I’m still very groggy, and I’ve yet to see Julian, who’s on one of his bike tours. Richard leads me to a small room on the second floor. The walls are painted a deep red and there’s a little window that looks over the pool. I sit on the bed and before Richard can even come back with my bag, I fall asleep. I wake up at four in the morning and see a pitcher of water on the table by my bed, along with two
small plums. I’m famished, so I devour the plums while staring out the window at the first sign of light creeping over the hill. I’ve seen pictures, but now that I’m here I realize I could never imagine a place so beautiful. How did Richard and Julian do it? They just found each other, moved here, planted basil and plums and tomatoes, and bought the cutest little house in the world that happened to have a pool? I go downstairs and find my way out to the deck. I have never skinny-dipped when it’s light out, but something tells me this is the time. The water is cool but not too shocking, and glides over my skin as I swim to the end and back. I see an orange towel that had been used by someone the day before, and I step out to dry myself off. The sun is now actually peeking over the hill, shining immense rays over the valley. I’m in Italy!

I go inside to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. There’s so much food in it that my mouth drops open for a bit. Everything seems to be homemade, yummy leftovers in Tupperware. Before I can even choose something, a voice startles me.

“Early bird has arrived. How was the water?”

I realize my hair is dripping onto the floor and for a moment I feel like an intruder, caught in a strange house. Julian’s friendly gaze immediately diminishes my fear. Instead of scrutinizing me, his eyes drape me with kindness. His body is long and lean and from what I can see, doesn’t have an inch of body fat. I smile back and he tells me to sit down, hands me a mug of tea.

“This place is so amazing.”

He beams proudly for a moment, then starts picking some fruit out of a giant bowl. As he expertly arranges a fruit salad, I try to picture myself living here, but it doesn’t really work. I go upstairs to get dressed, and when I come back down Julian is still chopping fruit.

“I hear you’re a photography sensation now.”

Coming from Julian, this makes me blush. From what I know, he used to be a Gucci model, and then he toured the world as Van Morrison’s piano player. During that time he developed an exercise regime that was a combination of yoga and Pilates, which he taught privately to people like Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock in L.A. Now he runs bike tours here for people in the British aristocracy. Suddenly my Brooklyn photography show sounds like I starred in a grade-school play. I promptly turn red, smile, and put up my hands.

“I like the one that the
Times
printed. The sidewalk art? It has this animated quality, almost like you could step into it and watch it come to life.”

I blush even more. He serves me a bowl of the finely chopped fruit with a dollop of yogurt, topped off with thin almond slices. It’s simple, but it tastes like heaven.

“One of the great things about living here is the produce. Even the processed food is not as processed as it is in the States. I get the yogurt from a family up the road, and the oranges are from our tree.”

“So you’re a cook, too?”

“I dabble. I’m making some lasagna for the villagers tonight. In your honor, of course.”

“The villagers?”

“That’s what we call our close group of friends. They’re quite the bunch.”

Richard comes down the stairs in a robe with his hair ruffled and his eyes watery. Despite his disheveled appearance, he still looks totally handsome. He kisses Julian on the cheek and starts a pot of coffee. They speak a few words to each other in Italian.

“Okay,” Julian says, seeing that I’ve finished. “Next course.”

Richard stands behind me and rubs my shoulders while Julian fries an egg in olive oil, topping it with black pepper and what looks like fresh Parmesan cheese. He puts it in front of me and I take the first bite.

“So,” Julian says as he cooks himself and Richard eggs, “you said things were crazy in New York. How do you mean?”

“Well, I get the feeling I’m far too young to be learning some of the things I did, and to have my heart broken, but that’s the way it worked, so …”

The two of them sit down with their eggs on the other side of the breakfast island, and suddenly I feel like I’m at a job interview.

“I don’t know, I guess you could say it was a lot to take in.”

Richard turns to Julian and says,
“Nostra ragazza granda
sta imparando che le relazioni sono complicate
. All but ours, of course.”

“English at the breakfast table, please,” I say.

“Richard was just saying how lovely you look today,” Julian says.

“Yeah, right. Anyway, even though Dad lied to me, I feel so bad for him. As far as I knew he was a mostly perfect husband.”

They give each other what is supposed to be a clandestine look, Richard slightly rolling his eyes, and I wonder if they’re holding something back. If there’s more, I might just lose it.

After we finish, Richard heads to Rome for his weekly conference, and Julian goes on a “private” ride, taking an Australian couple on a thirty-two-mile loop through Tuscany. I spend the day relaxing by the pool with my iPod and the latest Twilight book. I doze off, swim, read, tan, doze off again, then go inside for Julian’s famous tuna salad with cranberry and walnuts.

In the late afternoon I decide to take a walk along the road toward the square. When a car goes by, it kicks up dust in the afternoon light and it strikes me as romantic. I think about Richard and Julian’s secret look when I mentioned my father.

You hurt me, but I love you
.

I know it’s strange, but I wish Oliver were here. He and Julian could jam together. We could laugh in the pool and splash each other like they do in the movies. If only.

I get to the small square, where some old men sit smoking pipes in the shade of a tree. A woman walks her baby in a stroller that looks like it was built in 1920. There’s a small store, and I see what Julian was saying about the produce. It looks so colorful and fresh, like it all just fell off a tree into these cute little wooden boxes. I try to buy a peach but have only a five-dollar bill in my pocket. The shopkeeper lady is wearing some kind of bonnet that actually looks cool. Only an Italian woman can pull off a bonnet. She smiles and waves her hand, giving me the peach for free.

I sit in the square and watch the world go by: mostly little European cars, a couple of kids in what look like school uniforms, a hippie guy strumming a ukulele. On my way home, I pass a man on a pony. He looks at me like everything is totally normal, just taking his pony to the store.

When I get back to the house, I go into Richard’s den and email Janine, describing the town and the house and the man with the pony. I email Daria basically the same thing, except I go easier on the exclamation marks. Then I call my dad.

“Yes, I made it safe. Richard and Julian are so nice. And everything is … just right.”
Well, almost everything
. “How’s Tile?”

“He’s okay. Lucky he’ll have the distraction of camp soon.”

Whenever anyone says the word
camp
, my heart breaks
a little. That was where I found out Mom was gone, almost a year ago. On a dock, on a lake, the sun almost down, the water reflecting the trees, the sky a swirl of colorful clouds. A beautiful, terrible night.

“Where is he now?”

“I’m not sure, but I think he may be hanging out with your friend from across the street.”

My breath cuts short.

“Oliver?”

“Bingo.”

“What?”

“I think they have something in common.”

I sink down to the floor, unable to fight gravity.

“What is that?” I ask.

“Missing you.”

I draw a bath in the claw-foot tub, the window open with a breeze coming in from the garden. I smell the herbs, mostly basil, and I start to imagine what the lasagna is going to taste like. I’m probably going to gain ten pounds being here, but I really don’t care. I’ll just have to swim a lot. When I was little and we’d go to the beach in Nantucket, my parents could barely get me out of the water. I would lie in the surf pretending to be a mermaid, or jump through the waves like a dolphin. And sometimes I’d float on my back and close my eyes, letting the ocean hold me up, the vast sky open above me, kind of like flying.

When I get back into the room I notice an old box on the table, the top of which says
Luna
in pencil. These must be the rest of my mother’s things Richard wanted
me to have. I sit down and hold the box on my lap for a long time. Before I get to open it, I hear Julian come home. I walk to the window and watch him wheel his bike into the shed by the pool. Then he peels his bike clothes off and steps into the outdoor shower. I get a glimpse of his butt, which is smooth and hard as a rock. When he’s done, he dives into the pool, still naked. He starts to swim laps really fast, doing that special flip-turn thing. Unbelievable. As if a thirty-two-mile bike ride through the mountains weren’t enough, why don’t we swim laps afterward? I open the window and lean over, resting my elbows on the sill like a swimming coach observing my star athlete. Eventually, I get my digital camera out, the fancy one I hardly ever use, and take a shot of Julian swimming. You can’t make out his butt, but one sinewy arm is extended and the water is a rich, burning blue. He almost looks like a fish.

I walk downstairs and out the front door and take a picture of the house. It looks more like a home than anything I’ve ever known.

I’m in the kitchen drinking water when I hear Julian come out of the pool. I don’t look until a few minutes later, when I know he’ll be dressed. Surely he’s not going to walk back into the house naked?

I look out and he’s picking basil, the towel around his waist. I snap a picture of his muscular back, the basil protruding all around him. A few minutes later he comes in and says, “Okay, girl, are you ready to be my sous-chef?”

I put the camera down and smile. “Sure. But you’re going to have to put something on other than that towel.”

He laughs, and for a brief instant his eyes sparkle. They’re almost as green as the basil he’s holding. He hops into the small bathroom off the kitchen and comes out a couple seconds later in a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt that probably used to be red but has faded to more of a salmon color. I remember my mother’s good friend Ben, a fashion designer from London, who would always describe his collection with fruits and vegetables. “Lots of eggplant this season,” he would say, “and limes.” At first I couldn’t figure out if he was a designer or a chef.

Julian plops a large bag of artichokes onto the table, then produces a pot that looks like it was made for a horse.

“Okay, we have to boil all these and then scrape out the hearts.”

“Sounds painful.”

He smiles. While the water boils I tell him about Oliver, and how he sort of scraped out
my
heart.

“Boys will do that,” he says. “When I was in high school, I was in love with my next-door neighbor, Roddy Johnson. On the night of the prom we were going to elope, and go to the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard.”

“That’s where my dad stays!” Suddenly I feel like an overanxious kid. I tell myself to tone it down.

“Yes, well, what can I say? I had good taste at an early age.” He gently starts to drop in the artichokes. “Anyway, he stood me up, so I went to the prom anyway, only to find him dancing with Jackie Bell. A pretty girl if you
could get past the underbite. Broke my heart. I sat under a table the whole time.”

“Somehow it’s hard for me to picture you brokenhearted.”