Apricot Kisses (27 page)

“Do you really mean it?”

“You should know by now that I always mean what I say. Let’s shake on it, little brother.” I lift five fingers. Marco tilts his head, and then does what I would do when we were kids: instead of shaking my hand, he punches it.

At the house, we sit in the sun in front of the woodshed for a long time, enjoying being silent together. A smiling Lucia brings us two bottles of beer and then leaves us alone. Amazing how things work out. I hope the same rule will apply to the emptiness I feel inside. We open the bottles with our teeth, a trick that cost Marco a piece of incisor when he was sixteen. We grin at each other and clink our bottles.

Mine is almost empty when Alberto strides by in his beekeeping gear. He reaches the other side of the yard, but then turns and comes back. Marco smirks and I have to suppress a grin, too. Alberto’s gear makes him look like an astronaut.

“This is the last time I will say this, Fabrizio.” His words sound hollow from under the beekeeper’s hat, which Alberto made himself out of an old motorbike helmet and mosquito netting. “Bring Isabella’s daughter home!” Then he shuffles off looking at the ground. Marco looks at me.

“Who is Isabella?”

I shake my head. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, the name rings a bell, but I can’t make the connection. “I’d like to know that, too.”

Hanna

When I put the key in the lock that evening, I get a jolt—the door to my apartment door is slightly open. I remember for sure that I locked it when I left—twice, as is my habit. My heart pounds as I stare from the eerie opening—wondering if I should escape at once—to my new doormat, which shouts a bright-yellow “Welcome.”

My unwillingness to haul the armful of foliage back down the stairs again finally defeats my fear. Cautiously, I tap the door, listen with bated breath, and take one step inside. The aroma I thought I smelled outside intensifies, and within seconds I recognize it. My fear evaporates. Annoyed, I squat down, put Eve on the floor, and storm into the kitchen.

“Ah,
carissima
! There you are!” My mother is standing barefoot on my expensive leather stool, rummaging in a cupboard. “Don’t tell me you have no dried beans in this house.” She sniffs at an open bag of nacho chips in disgust. “You shouldn’t eat this junk,” she scolds, and throws the bag into the sink. “Salt, pepper, and olive oil—that’s all you need on potato chips.”

“They’re corn chips,” I say, trying hard not to lose it. “What are you doing here? And how did you get in?”

“I’m cooking ribollita for you . . . if you have beans somewhere, that is.” Now she turns around for the first time and exclaims, “Oh no, you cut your beautiful hair.”

“Mamma! You can’t just break into other people’s apartments to cook soup.”

“It’s not ‘other people’s apartments’ I broke into—it’s my daughter’s. And it’s not breaking in if you have a key, is it?” She seems pensive for a moment but then waves the thought away. “Anyway, your new landlord is a nice man. Maybe a little lazy, and I don’t like his limp handshake. But he promised to take care of the damaged blinds in the guest bathroom first thing tomorrow—”

“Mamma!”

“You know, you could help me instead of standing around.” As she climbs down from the stool it wobbles dangerously, but I stubbornly stay at the door. Fine with me if she falls on her nose.

But she doesn’t fall. Instead Mamma lands elegantly on the linoleum with both feet, steps into her killer stiletto heels, and smooths her pleated skirt—for no particular reason. That’s the only sign that she’s nervous.

“Happy Birthday,
principessa
.”

I exhale sharply. “It’s not my birthday.”

“You were put in my arms on April 12, 1983, at seven nineteen in the morning. Every day since then has been your birthday for me,” she says quietly. Then she comes toward me, her arms extended.

She only reaches my chin, and her arms look like a twelve-year-old’s, but her embrace feels like an enormous fluffy blanket on a chilly autumn day. I try to stiffen, but my resistance melts away. And then the floodgates open and I sink, sobbing, to the ground—Mamma with me, since she doesn’t let go.

“Oh, my darling,” she whispers, and caresses my back. I hate myself for collapsing into a sniveling picture of misery, but I can’t change it.

“I’m sorry that I was so mean to you,” I say.

“I’m sorry that I was such a bad mother.”

“You weren’t a bad mother.”

“Oh yes, I was.” She releases me from her embrace and holds me in front of her. “But I’ll make it up to you. I’ll stay with you as long as you want—today, tomorrow, the day after. And we’ll make up for what I missed these past few years.” She traces my wet cheeks with her thumb.

“But you’ve got to go in to—to your people. Isadora will be desperate without you—”

“Who is Isadora?” Mamma says calmly. I just look at her.

“Right. Who in the world is she?”

We start to laugh at the same time. Well, Mamma laughs. Mine is something between a giggle and a sob.

“I could use a drink now,” she finally says with a smile. She helps me up. “And then you’re going to tell me the name of the guy who broke your heart.”

Startled, I stop crying. “How do you know?”

My mother smiles serenely. “Child, there are only two reasons for tears like those: death and love. And since I hope that nobody died, there’s only one answer.”

“Mamma?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She brushes a strand of hair off from my forehead. “Forget about soup. Let’s have a drink and talk.”

I snap my fingers. “I think I have exactly the right drink for us.” In the bathroom, I splash cold water over my puffy face for a few minutes. When I look in the mirror, I still see sadness in my eyes, but also something else. I turn away with a smile and get the small, slender bottle from my suitcase.

Liquore di Albicocche della Nonna.
I gently touch the label and Lucia’s handwriting. I’ll write her a long letter tonight. Then I go back out to the kitchen.

“This is a very special liqueur,” I say. “You’ll love it. I brought it from Ita—” I stop short. My mother has turned deathly pale, staring at the bottle as if I’m holding a grenade. “Mamma? Are you all right?”

She opens her mouth, but what comes out is eerie—the sound of a hurt little animal.

“Where did you get that?” she asks, barely loudly enough to hear, her eyes wide open. And then something unimaginable happens: she cries.

Chapter Fifteen

Hanna

My mother is still totally flustered. She’s been turning the little bottle in her hands for twenty minutes, staring at it as if it were Pandora’s box—something to be both revered and feared.

I sit next to her on the couch, waiting for her to be able to speak again. Other than some incoherent stammering—I make out the words
Tre Camini
repeated a few times, like a mantra—she hasn’t said anything. So I tell her a cleaned-up version of my Italy trip, leaving out the parts about the urn and the marriage deal, since I still feel ashamed about both.

As I finish recounting my hasty escape from the estate, her tears finally subside. She blows her nose noisily.

“I believe that some things we call coincidences are actually no such thing.” She wipes her nose again and crumples the tissue into a little ball in her hand. “Here I’ve been trying to forget Tre Camini for half my life, and then my daughter falls in love with none other than Giuseppa’s grandson.”

“I wish it had turned out differently, too.” Thinking of Fabrizio, I almost start crying again—and wonder when I’ll run out of tears.

Mamma scrutinizes me. “The Caminis were always very likable. If the young man takes just a little after Giuseppa, I can understand how you feel.” She clicks her tongue. “But before I bombard you with questions, I owe you a story, too. After all, you asked me more than once about Italy and I never gave you an answer.”

“I never understood why I never got an answer,” I say, which makes Mamma stare off into space.

“Homesickness is an awful feeling, especially if you know you’ll never go home again. So you try everything to avoid reopening old wounds—including silence.”

“Go home? Does that mean—”My eyes fly wide open with a sudden suspicion. “Am I—I’m not related to Fabrizio, am I?”

“No, no, Hanna.” My mother smiles. “Blood is not the only thing you need to make a home. Giuseppa was . . . I don’t know the right word for it. We met when I was nine, a Sunday in church, and I wore a black dress because—it was my mother’s funeral. Her name was Matilda Colei, and she was only thirty-nine when she died of lung disease. I was hiding in a corner of the choir loft, and I was only going to come out when Mamma came to fetch me with her angel’s wings. She didn’t, of course. Instead someone else came up the stairs, a very beautiful woman in a glittering dress and heels. She sat down at the organ and looked up at the sky like she was asking permission. Then she started to play like an angel—and I suddenly knew that Mamma had sent me this woman. I crawled from my hiding place, and she made room on the bench so I could watch her flying fingers. When the song was over, she asked if she should show me how to play. I said yes.”

I take a deep breath, suddenly realizing that I’ve been listening without breathing the whole time. “And then?” I gasp.

“Giuseppa Camini came to our house that very evening and talked with Papa . . .” My mother’s voice trembles. “The next day after school, I ran to the yellow house on the hill to practice scales and chords. Soon two days a week turned into three and then four. In half a year, I could play Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
with my eyes closed. You probably don’t remember, but I used to play it to you when you couldn’t fall asleep.

I nod silently. How could I have forgotten? Mamma played the piano beautifully, and I always loved listening to her.

“Then Giuseppa began to teach me other things: cooking, baking, how to make beds and apricot jam, clean out chicken coops . . . everything that needs to be done on such an estate. I became friends with Giuseppa’s son Frederico—he was only a few years older than I. I helped with the garden and the apricot harvest, and I spent every single day with the Caminis. I even had my own tiny room next to the kitchen.”

“The Cinderella chamber!” I shake my head. “But what about your father and the rest of your relatives? I’m sure the Coleis weren’t too happy that you took up with a new family.”

Mamma looks sad. “People assume that every Italian family has countless siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts. It’s nonsense. After my mother died, it was just me and my father, and my father started to drink because he wanted to forget. Eventually he forgot that he had a daughter. The sad thing was that I didn’t miss him. After all, I had Giuseppa.”

I grab her hand, but she shakes her head. “When I was sixteen, he fell down the stairs—and didn’t get up again.”

“I’m so sorry for you, Mamma.”

“There’s a lot of that stubborn know-it-all man in you. You would have liked your grandfather.”

I hide a smile. “Well, thanks.”

“You didn’t get those traits from me, that’s for sure.” She winks at me but then turns serious. “I have a box of photos at home. When you come to visit Papa and me one of these days, I’ll give it to you.”

“And I thought that I’d turned the entire house upside down.”

“Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”

We smile at each other.

“But it doesn’t sound like it ended happily. Why did you leave Italy, Mamma? Did you have a fight with Giuseppa?”

Mamma’s face hardens. “I fell in love with the wrong man.”

I lift an eyebrow.

“Giuseppa Camini was a wonderful woman,” my mother continues. “She was kind, warm, and compassionate. But I got to know her other side the summer I met your father. Back then, it was all the rage to take hiking tours through Europe, especially for students who financed their trips by taking on odd jobs—such as harvesting apricots. What can I say . . . Günther was different from the men I had met before. He knew so much and expressed himself in a way I wasn’t used to from Italian men. For him it was love at first sight, and I fell in love with him, too. It soon went beyond innocent kissing . . . and since Giuseppa watched us like a hawk . . .” She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and lowers her eyes.

“She found out,” I say. “Ouch. I’m sure she didn’t like that.” The image of arch-Catholic Giuseppa’s indignation makes me giggle.

“She was beside herself! After all, I was only seventeen, unmarried, and sleeping with a penniless student. She saw me burning in purgatory.”

“What did she do?”

“The obvious, of course. She threw Günther out.”

“No!”

“We had a violent argument and said many ugly and hurtful things. Ultimately, I packed my bags and followed Günther to Germany. My own family was dead, and there was no reason to look back. Besides, your father had asked me to marry him. When I got over my rage, I wrote to Giuseppa—and tore up every single letter. Then I got pregnant with you, and there was no more reason to look back—until two months ago, when the postcard arrived.”

I can’t breathe. “Giuseppa wrote to you?”

“She wanted to meet me on June eleventh, at a pastry shop two streets away from our apartment. Who knows how she found me after all those years.”

I groan. June eleventh was the day she died.

Mamma continues. “I contemplated not going there, but then I sat in that café for more than two hours and jumped every time the doorbell jingled. But Giuseppa never came. She probably didn’t have the heart to do it after all.”

“Mamma . . .” My heart races as I get up and cross to the windowsill, where Giuseppa’s urn sits. I pick it up and close my eyes. “What you said before about tears—that one sheds them for love or death”—I set the urn on the table—“I’m afraid someone did die—and on the exact day you were supposed to meet her.”

For a long time my mother gazes at the urn, which now looks like a harmless—and quite ugly—vase.

“It would have been a miracle if our story had really ended with reconciliation.” My mother touches the urn with her fingertips. “I have no idea how she ended up in your apartment, but I like to imagine that she did plan to come to the pastry shop.”

“I’ll tell you the entire story another time, Mamma. As to your meeting”—I wrap my arms around her and hug her tight—“if Giuseppa was just a little bit like Fabrizio, she must have been looking forward to it.”

Mamma looks at me. “You really love him.”

I can’t return her gaze. “I just think he’s someone who fixes his mistakes.”

“He’d be stupid if he didn’t,” my mother says, a strange undertone in her voice.

“Mamma, I’m not talking about me.”

“But I am.” She sits up straight. “When are we going to drink that liqueur? I think now’s a good moment to find out whether she made it the way she used to.”

I get two water glasses from the kitchen, making a note in my head to buy a set of liqueur glasses. When I return, Mamma is sitting in front of Giuseppa with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, mumbling. So I’m not the only one who talks to the dead. She carefully pours a glass of the orange-colored liquid and sniffs.

“The aroma is perfect,” she says with obvious appreciation, and takes a tiny sip. I watch her closely as she swirls the liqueur in her mouth.

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

My mother takes a second sip and smiles. “You can say that again. Giuseppa and I created the recipe together.”

“You did?” Something clicks in my mind and I shiver. Does fate actually exist? “Does that mean you know how to make this liqueur?”

My mother looks up. “Of course I do.”

Dear Lucia,

I am so sorry that I’m only contacting you now, and in this way. I really wanted to hug you one more time and thank you for making my time at Tre Camini a very special experience. You were the one who made me feel not only at home but also like part of your family. For that I can’t thank you enough. You are a wonderful person, and getting to know you meant more to me than you can imagine. I miss all of you very much—yes, even Rosa-Maria and her barking orders. It is very quiet in my small apartment in Berlin. I do hope you forgive me and I beg you to believe me when I say that leaving was the only thing I could do, and that my hasty departure had nothing at all to do with you.

You’ll be happy to hear that I had a long conversation with my mother today. Obviously past wounds can’t be cured in one evening, but I think that now we’ll cook with each other often. I’ll call you one of these days and tell you an amazing story. Here is just the gist of it: apparently there was a connection between your Nonna and my mother, Isabella Colei. And this leads me to ask you a very important favor—the main reason I send this letter via courier.

Enclosed is a sealed envelope addressed to Fabrizio. Something very valuable is inside. I know that it will mean a lot to him. Could you please give the envelope to him without telling anyone about it, not even Marco? It’s really important.

Considerer yourself hugged and kissed.

Your friend,

Hanna

Fabrizio

While I stare for at least ten minutes at the piece of paper, Lucia focuses on my forehead as if she wants to burn a hole into it. The energetic handwriting, slanted to the right, flows across a piece of paper that—ironically—is apricot colored. My eyes return to the heading again and again:
Il liquore di albicocche della Nonna. Ricetta originale.

“So? What does it say?” Lucia asks, biting her nails. That’s when I regret having told her she could stay while I opened Hanna’s envelope.

“Stop biting your nails. It makes your hands ugly.” I put the note facedown on the desk. Strangely, I have only one thought, and that thought has nothing to do with the incredible content of the letter. I’m annoyed that there’s not one personal remark. And it annoys me that I am annoyed.

“Can I look at the letter Hanna wrote you again?” I ask. Lucia purses her lips, thinks, and then shakes her head.

“Only if you tell me what your letter says.” She reaches out quickly, but I’m faster.

“Ouch! Really, Fabrizio.” Lucia grimaces and rubs her wrist. Then she reluctantly pushes Hanna’s letter across the desk.

I read it again, and then again.

So Isabella Colei is her mother. Now I remember where I heard the name before—she was the unfriendly woman on the phone, the one Nonna had wanted to meet in Berlin. But what does this Isabella have to do with . . . I lower the piece of paper and study my sister-in-law, who sulks in the visitor’s chair. Sighing, I nod and Lucia picks up the letter. Her eyes grow bigger—big as espresso cups—as she reads. “But this is . . . it’s Nonna’s liqueur recipe!”

“Possibly.”

“What do you mean, ‘possibly’? Of course it is.”

“So what?”

“So what?” Lucia jumps up and her chair scratches across the wooden floor.

“Watch the floor,” I say coldly. Lucia throws the paper at me, and it flutters to land next to me on the floor.

“Is that all you have to say?” she hisses.

“The parquet was expensive.”

Arms akimbo, she shakes her head. I pick up the paper, hold it for a while, and then put it in the lowest desk drawer, the one for items marked “Done,” for filing later. Some things lose their meaning when circumstances change. That was one of Nonna’s sayings, too. Lucia raises a brow.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting the past where it belongs.”

Lucia collapses like a pricked balloon. “Did Hanna hurt you that much?”

Without planning to, I pound my fist on the table. “Hanna has nothing to do with this.”

Lucia jumps so high that I regret my outburst immediately. I try a mellower approach. “In case you forgot, I made an agreement with your husband. Even if this is Nonna’s original recipe, which I doubt, what are we going to do with it? There’s no guarantee that the liqueur would be a success. Even under the best of circumstances, it would take years to be able to live off it, and until then we’d have to invest in the fields and the distillery with money we don’t have.” It hurts to see how the sparkle goes out of Lucia’s eyes. But I take a deep breath and point to the file cabinet. “That piece of paper cannot change the fact that we’d lose the estate. And so it’ll stay in the drawer.”

“Now you’re talking exactly like Marco.” Lucia’s voice trembles. “The Fabrizio I once knew would have done everything to make his dream a reality, because he believed in it—because he believed in Tre Camini and in himself. Because of that, it would have worked.” She carefully folds Hanna’s letter three times. Then she gets up and looks at me with a mixture of contempt and compassion. “To be honest, I liked that Fabrizio more.”