A Semester Abroad (29 page)

As we were standing at the door, Michelle came out.

“Where you going?” I asked.

“Duccio’s parents are going to visit his aunt. I’m going over there.”

“You’re not going to Janine’s
festa
?”

“
Mi piace sexa piu di festa
,” Michelle said murdering the language for the humor and the rhyme.

“Shit,” I said.

Gaetano repeated, laughing, “Shit.”

“What? I thought Olivia was coming,” Michelle said.

“No, Olivia’s semester is done for the most part, but she has to finish a paper by Monday. I think Suzie’s coming, but I wish you were going to be there. I hate those guys Andrea hangs out with. They’re so arrogant.” I was speaking fast, so Gaetano wouldn’t understand. I didn’t like the way they looked at the American girls, but I didn’t want Gaetano to know that.

“Yeah, well, Duccio’s no fan either. That’s why we aren’t going. It’ll be fine though. Listen, do you guys want to come to the stable with us on Sunday? Duccio’s friend has horses.”

“I will, but Gaetano has
calcio
.”

“Right,” Michelle said. “
Senti,
I’m sorry you are stuck here tonight. Just drink wine.”

I nodded. “Of course, isn’t that the Italian solution?”

“Ciao, guys,” Michelle said waving goodbye to us.

“Please try to come tonight,” I said to Gaetano.

“Okay, Gabi, I’ll try, but we may go to Arezzo.” He squinted at me and pinched my arm. “
Tesoro
, I’ll try.”

I took a nap before the party, sleepy from the wine and the sun, and when I woke up, it had already started. There were girls from the group and wine bottles everywhere. It was going to be a night of “American drinking.” I wanted to bail on the whole thing and see if Lucy was around, but I had already, stupidly, invited Suzie so I had to stay. I prepared for a long night.

When Suzie arrived, Janine looked her up and down. Then Janine shot me a look for inviting a girl who might have been competition for her. Suzie seemed less of herself, edgy and on the verge of tears. Somehow, it made her even more attractive and even more of a rival for Janine.

Suzie dressed for the night, dressed for eyes of Italian men. Her arrival meant that I was going to have to be at the party and not retreat to my room. She was smoking like a fiend, which she never used to do. She brought two bottles of wine, and she opened one for us, offering it to the girls. Janine took a glass and continued to size her up but smiled the whole time.

Then Andrea arrived with his friends. In their black leather jackets and hemmed jeans, they took over the apartment. Suzie and I polished off one of her bottles of wine then another. If I have wine in my mouth, maybe I won’t have to talk to any of these guys
,
I thought.

I yearned for Olivia, Gaetano, Michelle or even Duccio. Someone who was real to me. No one in the apartment was saying or doing anything they really felt. Everyone must have had a script they were going by, but no one had given me my lines. I was sure they were acting, certain that every single person in the room was a fake. And to what end? I wasn’t sure.

I hoped Gaetano was on his way. Alone. I worried about how he would get along with the men here. They were all local, Sienese, northerners. Duccio and Dino never made any regional distinctions that I could perceive. For them the issues of north and south were always made into a joke.

These boys were different. They were passionate about their city like all Italians, but they were the bad eggs. They were the ones who started fights outside Il Barone Rosso. Southerners,
stranieri
, even the rest of Tuscany, they felt were beneath them. They managed to put their feelings of superiority aside for the soul purpose of fucking American girls and the American girls at the party didn’t mind.

I wasn’t sure I could deal with it. I tried to remember the me of that afternoon. Now everything around me was false; Janine’s laughter, Pam’s intentional American accent, and the shadow on Suzie’s eyes. It was so wrong to me. This was not the Italy I wanted to see. This was created by us, by American women who thought it was what we wanted, thought we could control it. But it was empty and I was being filled up with emptiness.

I thought about Jonas. If he were here, there would not be a script. We might sit in a corner with one of the bottles of wine and talk and laugh and not give a shit what anyone was saying. But he wasn’t here and I wasn’t sure I could do it alone anymore. Any of it.

Then Lorenzo, urged on by the girls, took out his guitar. He toyed with them for a while, strumming bits of Nirvana and the Beatles. He laughed, showing white perfect northern teeth. Finally, he settled on a song. He started to play “Wish You Were Here.” The opening chords pulled me back to my dorm room.

“How does it sound?” Jonas asked so long ago, when it was just us, before she got well and came back.

“It’s good.”

“You like it?”

“Of course.” He put the guitar on the floor by my small bed. He was smiling. I crossed the room and sat on the bed. We kissed long into the night. He touched me. I held him and looked at him. I believed that he was mine. Never took it for granted, not ever. But believed.

But what happened next? Did we go to the greenhouse the next day or was that the day we spread a blanket out on the hill? Which was it? Yesterday I remembered it too clearly as if it was happening at that moment, but now…

The girls were singing the words they weren’t sure of, the Italians sang hesitantly, not wanting to look foolish in front of their future conquests. They didn’t understand what a sure thing it would be. I closed my eyes. This was wrong. I was not where I should be. Where was he? Where was my American boy right now? Was he thinking of me? He must be. Wasn’t he tired of this, too? Hadn’t he had his fill yet of being away from me?

Why can’t I go home?

I decided to call him. I could say his name to him and he would hear it and it wouldn’t be like whispering into the darkness anymore. I remembered that I had two 5,000 lire phone cards. That was enough to call the U.S. I could figure out what else to say on the way. No, I wouldn’t think. Just speak what came to my head.

I went to my room, searched through my clothes, looking in pockets of pants and jeans. Where were the damned cards?
Cazzo
. I hadn’t used them up. Where were they? I emptied out my school backpack; I looked in the big travel backpack. They would not be in there, but I looked anyway. I looked in all my pockets again. Frantic. I looked everywhere.

I couldn’t find the cards, but I had to call him. I was back at the party. Lorenzo was playing another song. I asked each of the American girls for a card. No one had one. None of them cared about me or what I needed. Only Suzie asked me if I was okay. What could I say to Suzie?

I asked the Italians. They made a joke out of my request. They offered me coins,
spiccioli
. Lorenzo got upset about the commotion.

“
Che cazzo voui
?” he asked, stopping his song to everyone’s dismay. What the hell did I want? None of this mattered to me. My purpose was clear. I put on a sweater and ran out of the building onto the dark street.

The bits and pieces of my plan came quickly to me. The store across the street was closed. I could go down to the game alcove, but there was no way to get a phone card from there. All of the stores were closed. I crossed the piazza and went over to area just before one of the doors to the city where there was a piazza filled with phones. Maybe I could find a phone card there. I was desperate. I had two calling cards. How could I lose those cards? I bought them to call Kaitlin in Paris. I used a little bit of one to call Gaetano a few times, so I bought the other. They would have been enough to call the U.S. How could I lose them?

I would find something. I had to reach him. I had gotten too far away from him, from his memory. I thought of what I would say when I heard his voice.

I’m coming home. If you will have me, I will leave when my semester is done. I will forget about traveling. It will be done soon. I will come back. I miss you. I believe you miss me, too. I am starting to lose sight of you. All the wrongs we can right. We can be together for as long as we want. We can exhaust ourselves on each other. We can stay together till we don’t want each other anymore. You can decide. You can do anything. I’m tired of fighting this. I want to come back.

There was a man by the phones. He finished his call. Perhaps he could help me. I was desperate but polite.

“Scusa. Ho perso la mia carta. Per cortesia, lei ha una carta. Posso pagare,”
I begged in the formal Italian.

The man smiled at me. He wanted to show off his English. “I no ’ave dis, but you very beautiful. Why no we go dance?”

Madonna
! I didn’t want to be stopped. I shouldn’t have asked him. “
No, grazie.”

I walked away. I could try to find a Tabac. But I knew that none were open. It was late. It was too late for me. I had the cards. I lost them. I had lost everything. Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps he was not alone. Perhaps he was with his Mono Girl, touching her body, touching her hair making her believe him, without saying a word of truth.

Doubt crept carefully into my mind. I could not say the things I thought I could. The card had been lost for a reason. I didn’t want to go home to Via Stalloreggi or to the states. I could not go to him. Never again.

There was no place for me. There was not an us. I couldn’t go any further. That was the truth. I longed for Crazy. All the time I fought her, she was just trying to make everything okay for me. She was a friend who would protect me from the blackness I felt now. Crazy was my crutch. Anything was better than this, the truth was so painful and far from what I wanted. The truth I had to accept. It hurt my heart. Crazy would have taken that away, but for once she was nowhere to be found. I was on my own with this. At last feeling it all.

I thought of going to the Piazza Tolomei to see the statue of the wolf,
la lupa.
What I wouldn’t give to switch places with that wolf. I could howl for her if she would turn me to stone.

I walked by the bench in front of the Academy of Music. It was a gray stone slab. I didn’t sit on the bench. I crouched next to it and leaned my hands on it. There was no one
in giro
. The streets of Siena were empty.

Siena was mine. He was not.

It hurt so much.

I didn’t believe I would wake up in the morning.

But if I did…I could not live like this anymore. It was over. I had to say enough was enough.
Basta
. It was done. It had to be.

And I cried for him, knowing I was going to abandon him and that special way I was when I was with him. How could he have not held on to that? How could I have not? There were no answers. It just was. We didn’t hold on to it. We let it go. It must never have been what I thought.

If we were to meet again, we could never be the same. It was my fault as much as his. I could never get that back again. It was lost. Always.

Basta
was the word you used when you had enough. Someone pouring wine in your glass, filling it up more than you wanted, you said
basta. Basta cosi
. This is enough.

I shouldn’t have been satisfied so soon by one boy. You weren’t meant to be with the person you love at nineteen or twenty. But maybe I would never be satisfied again.
Non mi basta mai.

But how I missed him. It was so strong. He always used to know what I was thinking. Could he now?

All the way across an ocean, American boy, can you feel how much I miss you?

I waited and there was nothing. No him. No us. Only me. Only black.

I walked back up the street to my apartment. I didn’t bother to turn on the electric light in the stairwell. I heard the party still going on. There was no more guitar music. Maybe people were getting ready to hook up. I hoped I could push my way through and back to my room and my bed. I opened the door, taking my usual deep breath.

But there was Gaetano.

He was sitting at the table, talking to Andrea. It was calm. There was no reason to worry. He could handle himself among these people. When he looked up at me, I felt my face almost crumble. I sat beside him. He kissed me on both cheeks. He looked into my eyes, confused. They were certainly still red.

“
Che c’è
?” I shook my head. I said nothing. I didn’t want him to hear my voice. He watched me for a second and picked up a bottle of wine. “
Vino?
”

I nodded and accepted the glass of wine. Andrea beckoned him back to their conversation, and Gaetano went but he kept turning to me, searching for clues. I wanted go to bed, but I couldn’t move. I needed to feel kindness. Gaetano was not a part of this fake play. He was real. As if he could read my thoughts, he rubbed my leg gently under the table. He wasn’t coming onto me for once; it was a connection. He might have rubbed the life back into me with those hands. They were hands that could hold the weight of my heart if only I would let them.

Eventually, Janine sat on Andrea’s lap. She began to kiss his neck in front of us. I looked away to where Lorenzo still occasionally strummed his guitar. Some of the girls hummed along. Gaetano reached up to my neck.