A Semester Abroad (21 page)

“I’m fine,” I said. I was walking as fast as usual, despite how heavy the bag was. I shouldn’t have expected any more from him. It was wrong to be annoyed. He was, as he told me constantly,
un uomo italiano
. It was impossible for him to have a female friend. It wouldn’t be any different with me. I should have understood that I was not in any way unique, but I wished his standards were higher than Janine.

“Do you want me to get you a drink to take with you on the train?”

“No,” I said. “I can get one on the train.”

At the bus station, he insisted on buying my ticket for me at the
biglietteria
so I wouldn’t have to maneuver into the office with my bag. Though I didn’t want to ask him for anything else, I was relieved not to deal with mispronouncing the word for
ticket
again. I had enough language fear for one day.

Once I had the ticket, I tried to say goodbye. He insisted on staying with me until the bus came. He helped me put the backpack under the bus, reminding me to stamp my ticket when I got on, as if I hadn’t taken the bus dozens of times.

He kissed my cheeks. I didn’t kiss him. I couldn’t stop myself from being mad at him, even though he was being kind to me. I was just being bitter and blue.

“Have fun in Parigi, be careful,” he said pulling away to look into my face.

“You, too.” I got on the bus, stamped my ticket and waved at him. I sat across the aisle, so that he could no longer see me.

Somehow I knew that Gaetano was waiting on the curb. Even when I closed my eyes as the bus pulled away, I knew he was watching the bus until he couldn’t see it anymore. In spite of how mean I was and how undeserving, he would stand there watching nothing until I was far away from Siena.

On the overnight train to Paris, I made friends with the conductor. My Italian was improving steadily so that I could express more of my character in the language. The conductor was an older man, who smiled at my open journal and told me that writing down my thoughts every day was a sound idea. When another man tried to sit in my couchette, the conductor called him out. And from there on in, he put only other women into my cabin, winking at me each time, telling the women to sit with his “
amica.
”

At night, the three women and I pulled the bunks from the wall. We climbed into our beds, smiling at each other but not saying anything. How weird to sleep with strangers. But I was dead tired, so I was out when I hit the pillow.

When the train pulled into the station I still felt like I was in an Italian city, but of course everything was French. I looked around for Kaitlin, and then I saw her bright red hair. She ran toward me with open arms. I pulled her close, squeezed her tight.

“How are you? How was your trip?” Her voice made me feel peace at once.

“Good, good. I’m glad to be here.” My friend regarded me carefully, looking me up and down. How could I have forgotten how I longed to be looked at with that quizzical gaze, those scrunched-up blue eyes? What a familiar comfort it was.

“You look different.” It was almost accusing.

“Yeah, I guess, I’ve been letting my hair grow a bit.”

“You sound different, too.” Kaitlin looked like she might cry.

“Well, I’m not an imposter, K, you just haven’t seen me in three months.”

“You’ve changed; you’re different.” I shrugged and laughed a bit. Had I shaken some sadness she knew? Her suspicion was innate. It was one of her most lovable traits.

“Give me a chance, K, we’ve got a week, you can figure out if I’m for real.” Kaitlin considered this for a few moments and then nodded her head begrudgingly.

“You see you’ve gone soft, Gabriella. You have changed.” I couldn’t have looked that different; it was just because she hadn’t seen me in so long, after seeing me every day back at college.

“I’ll be back to normal tomorrow. I’m just happy to see you today.”

Kaitlin, still suspicious, seemed to accept this. And I hugged her again, confirming that I was softer.

“Enough,” she said, pulling away. “Let’s go. I have plans for us.”

And then Paris. Paris was perfect. It was the end of March, but I kept singing “April in Paris” everywhere I went. This was a city. I loved Siena, but being in Paris made me realize what a sleepy town it was. Paris was where we ate Somali food one night and cheap upper-class French food the next. I spent the week going around Paris. Sometimes I went to class at the Sorbonne with Kaitlin. Sometimes Kaitlin had assignments in one of the many museums, so I managed to get in free with her class.

In the mornings, we woke up together in Kaitlin’s big comfortable bed. We were awakened by the sound of pigeons, a low vibrating hum. They were nesting outside the window of Kaitlin’s room. Every morning Kaitlin screamed, “Fucking pigeons,” before I rolled over and cheerfully said, “
Bonjour
.” This routine was delightful. I never wanted to leave Paris. I never wanted to be unrecognizable to Kaitlin again.

One day when Kaitlin had exams, I slept later. I ate madeleines and drank
café au lait
with the ninety-year-old woman, Madame Marie, who Kaitlin lived with. I didn’t speak French and Madame could not speak English, but although I couldn’t answer the woman, I understood everything she said. Or rather, I understood what she was trying to communicate without knowing the words. My mind was opening to understand people.That day I used my weekly metro pass to get around the city. I went to the Rodin museum and got trapped there by a rainstorm. I never got to see the sculptures in the garden outside. But I saw enough of Rodin’s white stone embracing bodies within the museum to be affected.

When the rain let up a bit I found a café. I ordered some water and soup. I said
carafe d’eaux
as Kaitlin taught me and pointed to the vat of liquid behind the counter, hoping it would be a type of soup I liked. I wrote in my journal, looking up at a poster of a large woman’s butt.

I let Jonas come to me then. The letter
j
exists in the French alphabet unlike the Italian. I was using it a lot as I tried to communicate. Maybe it was Rodin’s sexy frozen sculptures or that seeing Kaitlin reminded me of another time when I didn’t feel so strong. But Jonas sat beside me at the window. I saw his reflection in the glass. I didn’t question it for once. I let myself feel his presence beside me. On this rainy day, he could lie with me in Kaitlin’s bed and listen to the pigeons. He followed me when I left the café, stopped with me in the film bookstore, pointing out a screenplay for me to buy. We walked around the city together, him just talking, finding words to explain it all, to make it okay.

I knew this was Crazy. A disguise of Crazy’s, but it made me feel safer and less alone.

He left when I met up with Kaitlin. He had come and gone again so quickly. This time it was easier because I didn’t fool myself that it could be permanent.

Kaitlin took me to the Jewish part of town. We bought the falafel, and then we went to a jazz club. It was a cliché that must be done, she said. I would have gone for anything.

We sat in the club, drinking wine, chain smoking, losing ourselves in the sounds of the band, in the French woman singing American standards. I had one more night in Paris and I didn’t want to leave.

On the train back to her apartment, Kaitlin told me that she hated Paris, hated the French people, but she liked it better when I was there. She was having trouble with the language. Most of the Parisians pretended not to understand her. I told Kaitlin all about Siena, my roommates, school and Gaetano. With one night left together, we kept talking when we got back and into her bed. We whispered late into the darkness three months’ worth of gossip until we were talking in our sleep.

My last day. We went to the Eiffel Tower. Kaitlin waited for me to do this. She didn’t go when she had other opportunities. We were speaking with a kind of urgency. We were trying to update each other on everything we have been up to. It was so unusual for us not to have all the same references. We wouldn’t be apart for much longer, in four weeks Kaitlin was coming to Italy for her spring break.

Then I did it, I could see Kaitlin measuring my face, but I did it. I would have regretted not doing it. I asked about Jonas. I kept my face still. If you took my pulse, you would see no change. I had to stay composed so she wouldn’t worry.

Kaitlin took a minute before she answered me. No one mentioned him to me anymore, but I knew she still got letters from friends in the know. She took a deep breath, and I told myself that no matter what she said, I would stay stoic.

“I don’t know, Gabriella. I hear they still fight about you,” she said hesitantly. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“No, of course not. I was just wondering.”

I was happy she believed I was getting better, that I shut the door on Crazy. Maybe that was why she didn’t recognize me at first. Maybe I was getting a little of myself back, standing taller. I was not so openly shaky and unsure. She wouldn’t have indulged me with news of Jonas if she didn’t think I could take it. I wondered if I was getter stronger or just faking it better.

I turned my attention back to the city. I didn’t want Kaitlin to see the painful sick bit of hope she had given me. I didn’t want her to regret it. We had walked around the city below together, Jonas and me. Paris was our city. I imagined that he still thought of me and that Kaitlin thought I was better. This was a victory. I knew that I couldn’t react to it until later when I was on the train alone in my couchette. Instead, I pointed down to Paris and told her again how much I enjoyed the city and my time with her.

I swallowed Crazy down.

We went back to the Jewish section. I wanted another delicious falafel for the train trip. Kaitlin brought me to the train. We tried not to spend too much time saying goodbye. We hugged and I pressed my forehead against Kaitlin. Then I got on the train.

In the couchette, I ate the falafel quickly. Eggplant, chickpea, potato and pita blended together in my mouth. Oil dripped onto my jeans. The stain would never come out. When I got home to the states, it would be the souvenir of the long lonely trip away from Paris, away from Kaitlin. For as long as I kept those jeans, that oil stain made me think of making my way from the freedom of walking around with Jonas in my mind, the sick possibility that if he was fighting about me, if I was still an issue, that he missed me too.

But I didn’t have much of a chance to revel in that because on this train there were no friendly conductors. I was alone in my couchette. I couldn’t sleep. There were no other sweet tourists in my cabin. There were scary Italian
militario
passing by in fifteen-minute intervals, looking in at me, circling for an attack.

They shouted things in their rough dialects. I considered lugging my backpack to the bathroom and locking myself in for the entire ride, but I was scared to pass them in the corridor.

Everything changed so certainly from hugging my closest female friend goodbye to feeling like prey. I thought of Olivia and how she had sat on the train as we headed back from Switzerland, making a list of things that we needed for our next trip. How then I had seen traveling as full of promise and fun. It had been an adventure. Now I was alone and cornered. This was another side. I would have given anything to have a companion in my couchette, a friendly face to assuage my fears of the imposing men. But I remained alone.

And so I didn’t shut the light. I didn’t even feign sleep. I sat upright in my cabin alone. I undid the top bunk and waited. Threatened. Vulnerable. A woman. I kept my dull Swiss Army knife in my hand.

I traveled this way, learning there was always something to be afraid of. It was another one of the ways a woman travels. I was reminded of my breasts, reminded of the appealing dangerous parts between my legs all the way into the
ferrovia
of Firenze.

Then I caught the bus back to Siena. And then only when I saw Santa Caterina’s church, the
duomo
in the distance, and the Torre del Mangia, I exhaled and let my shoulders widen, let my thighs loosen a bit. Only then, I relaxed. The city opened its arms without reproach for having left and having been slightly inebriated by someplace else.

And only then, inside the protection of the city’s walls, when I sighed and appreciated my city’s beauty, did Siena welcome me home.

The house smelled of sex when I got home. Someone was calling my name. I opened the door to Michelle and Janine’s room and found Janine on her bed. She sat up and ran to me.