Things I'm Seeing Without You Page 17

  I followed him past more of the colourful two-storeys. And as we got closer to the water, I could hear waves crashing against a sea wall. A dusty van advertising BOAT TRIPS TO SEA CAVE! drove by with a small dog in the passenger seat. When we left the narrow road, there were thick palm trees growing crooked along a waterfront walkway. I watched as Other Jonah climbed a set of stairs up to a long lookout over the ocean. I went up the stairs about twenty feet behind him.

  Nobody was at the top of the stone platform except for a few tourists spooning icy slushes in the sun. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was there. I watched him without speaking, and he didn’t turn around. We looked out at the same seascape: a foamy swathe of sky-blue water engulfing the rocks of a rugged beach. The waves lapped against a faded pink embankment.

  But it was the ground that caught my attention.

  LUCA + MARA, I saw directly beneath my feet. The names were written in red spray paint on the light stone, followed by TI AMO. I took a step to the side and saw another piece of graffiti. GIO LOVES GIULIA. There were rows of hearts drawn on the border wall of the lookout along with the occasional smiley face. A nearby bench read: SARA MI AMORE in two-foot tall letters.

  The closer I looked, the more layers of graffiti I saw. Some faded messages had been left alone; others had been painted over with a more recent set of lovers. CEASERE + TIZI had overtaken GIORGIO + PINA. I kept expecting to find lewd messages, or the obligatory penis drawing that always seemed to show up in the States, but there was nothing like that. This was a sacred place.

  Other Jonah didn’t seem to care about the messages. He just walked along the seawall, looking out over the water. Then I saw him pull something from his pocket. It was a cell phone, and he looked down at the screen and smiled. He typed something into it. Then he just waited. Ten minutes later, a woman showed up and greeted him with a kiss. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail and she had a camera around her neck.

  She looked nothing like me.

  I suppose that was inevitable. Why would Other Jonah be with Other Me? Of course, he’d be with my opposite. Still, I felt a pang of disappointment as I watched them pull out a map and point to something in the upper right-hand corner. And when he held her hand and they left the platform, I felt no urge to follow them. I just waved a hello, or maybe a goodbye, and watched them disappear.

  Then I was alone on the platform. The other tourists had left, too. Off to take their rest like the locals maybe. I looked again at all the painted proclamations. Then I reached into my bag and dug around, hoping I had what I needed. Down at the bottom, among the cracker crumbs and old lipstick, I clasped a small marker. And when I pulled it out and tested it on the palm of my hand, it bled a dark purple.

  I bent down and began writing my name. The wind from the sea sent the excess mist entwining with the salty air, and it felt good against my face. Gradually I made the plus sign along with Jonah’s name after it. But I didn’t stop there. I added one more word to the message. It was one I had seen on many of the others. The word: SEMPRE. I remembered enough of my high school Spanish to take a guess at the meaning. Like siempre, I thought, it must mean ‘always’.

  My walk back to the beautiful piazza was slow. I wandered the backstreets. I passed a small church called Chiesa San Leonardo. It sat behind a small rectangular piazza that had been paved in a striking diamond pattern, and the top of the building pinched slightly at the top like a pope’s hat. I kept going until I reached the Piazza Archimede. There was a fountain there made up of men riding sea creatures surrounding Diana, goddess of the hunt. The water cascaded in thin streams around her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said a voice from behind me.

  I didn’t turn around. I just looked more closely at the fountain. There was some kind of a nymph escaping the outstretched arms of a man behind her. Diana stood between them, protecting the young woman.

  ‘Listen. I didn’t mean all of that about your dad. I guess all of this is catching up to me. We’re actually here and I just want to do something great.’

  I admired Diana’s bow and the stoic, badass expression on her face. Finally, I turned around and looked at Daniel. He was pink from the sun, and his eyes looked red. It was possible he’d been crying.

  ‘Let’s find a hotel,’ I said.

  He nodded. I reached out my hand and he took it.

  We walked back towards the temple and found a place nearby. We slipped inside a lobby, which had the same style columns as the temple. I let Daniel make the arrangements. And when he got the room key, we walked up the stairs to our room and closed the door.

  Then I pulled Daniel’s shirt over his head and brought him close to me. He seemed tentative at first, but eventually he got the idea. He took off my tank top and unhooked my bra. And then we kissed and dropped on to the cool bed beside us. It was a nice kiss, a little hesitant, but his lips were warm and I felt the urgency building when I rolled on top of him.

  ‘We can call this off,’ he said. ‘We can just go home if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Do you have a condom?’ I asked.

  He held still.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said in a sheepish voice.

  He took his wallet out and removed one. It looked new.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I unbuckled his belt and I unzipped my pants, and while I wish I could say we proceeded to have the most mind-blowing sex ever, that wasn’t really the case. But we got over the initial awkwardness and it felt good after a while. I held tight to him and watched his shoulders tense. His face relaxed. And when we lay cooling on the bed afterwards, an Italian game show played on the TV.

  ‘Is this what being an adult is like?’ I asked.

  ‘Which part?’ he said.

  ‘Fighting and having sex and having no idea what you’re doing?’

  ‘I don’t think adults have sex,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Tell that to my dad,’ I said.

  On the TV there was an older couple playing some kind of newly-wed game. The man’s face was turning bright red.

  ‘Speaking of your dad . . .’ said Daniel.

  I looked away from the TV.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s kind of been leaving me a lot of voicemails.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I said. ‘Restaurant recommendations?’

  Daniel didn’t smile.

  ‘The last one came an hour ago. He said he doesn’t have a passport, but he’s sending someone here to bring us home.’

  I woke up hours later in the dark of the hotel room, sweaty and unsure of where I was. I stumbled into the bathroom on wobbly legs and sat down on what I thought was the toilet. I didn’t realize it was the bidet until I leant back on the faucet and sent a powerful jet of ice-cold water straight up my back. I leapt up and smacked my hip on the sink. My hand searched out the light switch near the mirror, and finally the fluorescent bathroom flashed around me.

  The bidet was still going off like a geyser behind me. I was shaking and dizzy and I wanted very badly to laugh, but I couldn’t. So I just stood there for a moment, wholly aware of how confused and vulnerable I felt. I was in a bathroom in Sicily. I had just had sex with my dead boyfriend’s roommate. And I had no idea what I was going to do next.

  I turned off the cascading bidet and walked into the hotel bedroom. Daniel was still sleeping. He stirred a little beneath the rumpled sheets and then fell back asleep. I didn’t regret what we had done. But I didn’t quite know how to feel about it. I grabbed my phone and saw that there was a new message that wasn’t from my father. I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew who it was right away. It read:

  I’m here, Tess.

  Where are you staying?

  I immediately wrote:

  Meet me at the Ponte Umbertino.

  Then I pulled some fresh clothes from my bag and got dressed. I grabbed my room key and took the elevator down to the lobby where there was no desk clerk on duty. I continued out the door
and into the streets of late-night Siracusa.

  The town was ghostly and I wondered if walking through it was the best thing to be doing right now. But once I got used to the quiet, and the feel of the stones beneath my feet, I felt my heart rate begin to drop.

  I walked past the Chiesa San Leonardo, the lonely church that I had passed earlier. At night, it looked even smaller: just one door and a window, the entrance to its tiny courtyard chained off. I wondered if there were people buried beneath it. A few priests of local renown. Maybe a saint.

  When I reached the Ponte Umbertino, I spied some drunken tourists, tottering home in the amber lights. On the other side of the water was a small wine bar. An enoteca Daniel had called it. Outside of it, a boy of about ten played the accordion and waited patiently for the occasional tip.

  I took out my phone and turned on the camera. I pointed it at the scene in front of me and watched the world pulse in and out of focus. I hadn’t taken a single picture since I’d arrived in Sicily. Now I had the sudden urge to capture all of it at once.

  I went to press the digital shutter, but I heard footsteps behind me. And when I turned, I found a woman walking towards me from the other side of the bridge, and I knew it was her.

  Grace the Rower.

  She had come by land this time.

  I expected to get a lecture right off the bat. Some tough love, or just toughness without the love. What I found was a woman in no shape to lecture anyone. Her lids were heavy, and her hair was spilling out of a loose tie. When she got closer, I noticed she was carrying a bottle of wine.

  ‘It’s table wine,’ said Grace. ‘I know because I took it from a table.’

  She sat down and set the bottle next to her. She closed her eyes and leant against the side of the bridge.

  ‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Are you OK?’

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. She just took a few deep breaths. Then she opened her eyes and pointed off towards the distance.

  ‘Do you see that church out there? That giant cement teardrop? It’s supposed to be the site of a miracle. Did you know that? There was a statue of the Virgin that wept actual tears for three days in the nineteen-fifties. Now people go there to see the origin of the miracle and pray for more.’

  I looked out over the city and found the church. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. It was the oddest-looking building I had ever seen. A grey conical structure coming to a point at the top.

  ‘It looks like an upside-down ice-cream cone,’ I said.

  Grace smiled, but only for an instant.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Seriously. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m here to bring you home,’ she said, and took a drink of wine.

  I grabbed the bottle out of her hand.

  ‘I understand that,’ I said. ‘But why are you drunk?’

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘Today’s the anniversary,’ she said.

  ‘Of what?’ I asked.

  ‘Of my daughter’s death.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s been three years.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Why did you even come here? I’m fine. You must have known that.’

  She reached for the wine bottle. I held it away.

  ‘Your father was so worried,’ she said. ‘He was a mess. And I thought it might help me to get away.’

  She paused.

  ‘Also . . . I think I’m falling in love with your father.’

  I was too stunned by her remark to guard the bottle, and she quickly snatched it back.

  ‘I hope that doesn’t make you too uncomfortable,’ she said. ‘It probably does. But I was going to have to tell you sometime, so why not now in another country?’

  I just stood there like an idiot. Grace started talking again.

  ‘If someone had told me there was a place giving out miracles in Sicily or anywhere else when Avery got sick, I would have come. I would have done anything. Collected tears from a weeping statue. Even after she died, I would have been here.’

  An older couple spilt out of the enoteca and walked across the bridge, holding each other up for support. I watched them pass.

  ‘This was where Jonah wanted to go,’ I said. ‘Part of me thought I might even find him here. I thought I saw him in the piazza, but there wasn’t that spark.’

  Grace set her wine bottle on the ground. I picked it up and took a drink. It was sweet.

  ‘I was in Italy after college,’ she said. ‘Somehow I forgot that everything around here is death-related. I was reading the guidebook on the plane. Just north-west of here is this place with five thousand tombs cut directly into the limestone. It’s a huge seaside of cave graves. When your dad asked me to come here, I thought I might get away from death for a while. But I’m surrounded.’

  I sat down beside her. The bridge was empty now.

  ‘Why do you love him?’ I asked.

  Grace looked at me.

  ‘My dad,’ I mumbled.

  ‘God. I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He tries so hard.’

  ‘That’s what you say about a puppy,’ I said.

  ‘I admire it,’ she said. ‘He’s really going for it. This wild idea of his. He believes.’

  She laughed.

  ‘And he loves you, Tess. Getting to know you again, even like this. I think it’s been the best thing for him. You should have seen his face when he found out where you were. He was minutes away from chartering a private plane.’

  I could hear the river lapping against the side of the bridge. I wondered if Jonah had seen this exact place where I was sitting on TV. If this was one of the places he imagined himself walking.

  ‘Where is he, by the way?’ asked Grace.

  For a moment, I didn’t know who she meant. Then it came to me.

  ‘Back at the hotel, sleeping. I don’t think he knows I’m gone.’

  ‘Does he know that you’re still in love with his friend?’

  The wine had left a sour aftertaste in my mouth. I tried to ignore it.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  She nodded and took a drink.

  ‘How do you know when you’re over someone? Someone who’s gone?’ I asked.

  I took another drink of wine just to get the aftertaste out of my mouth.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll let you know if it ever happens.’

  Grace sat up straight against the bridge. Then suddenly she stood.

  ‘Tess,’ she said, ‘if you just want to go home without doing anything here, that’s fine. Just because you came here doesn’t mean you have to go through with something if you’re not feeling up to it any more. It was brave enough just to do this.’

  She looked me in the eye.

  ‘But if you want my help, I’m happy to work with you. Your dad told me you weren’t too excited about us being together. That it felt like a betrayal. But you were my concern from the beginning. Ever since that day at the lake. And if there’s anything I can do to help you through this, I want you to let me know.’

  She stood up and swayed on the spot. For a second, I thought she was going to tip over the railings and fall into the water below. I reached out and steadied her with a hand. Grace tried to take another pull from the wine bottle, but I held her arm.

  ‘I need you to stop drinking,’ I said.

  ‘And why would I do that?’ she said.

  ‘So you can tell me more about those caves by the ocean.’

  Daniel was awake when I found him in the hotel room. He was sitting on the double bed in a grey T-shirt and boxers. The curtains were pulled shut and the television was playing an Italian soap opera with no sound. His small duffel bag was packed and sitting on the luggage stand.

  I stepped into the room, unsure of his mood, and sat down on the bed. The light of morning was just starting to peek around the curtains and Daniel’s face was softened by it. Still, his dark eyes were fastened on me.

  ‘It’s all over,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’
r />   He licked his dry lips.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not. Grace is here. We have an idea.’

  Daniel said nothing for a moment. He shifted in the bed, smoothing down the sleeves of his T-shirt.

  ‘I meant us,’ he said.

  He spoke the words quietly, just loud enough for me to hear.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I honestly can’t answer that right now. There’s a new plan, and we have to see it through.’

  His hands would not stop smoothing down his sleeves. When I touched his arm, he flinched.

  ‘I thought you were gone,’ he said.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Daniel started again.

  ‘I thought you went back to the States and left me here. I dragged us to this place, and I thought maybe you resented that. I had it all figured out. I was sure that’s what happened.’

  ‘But it didn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘You’re here,’ he said.

  I looked him in the eyes.

  ‘I don’t resent you. I had sex with you. Remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t have sex with people I resent.’

  He blinked.

  ‘In fact,’ I said, ‘I don’t really have sex with people. You should consider yourself lucky.’

  His eyes moved to the TV. There was a couple fighting. A handsome man with jet-black hair threw a lamp across the room.

  ‘I’ll tell you before I disappear,’ I said. ‘OK?’

  I touched his leg.

  ‘Or I’ll send you a message on Post-Life.’

  He smiled slightly.

  ‘Do you have any real pants?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said.

  ‘Real pants,’ I said. ‘You know. Pants pants?’

  ‘I think so . . .’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘I need you to put them on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re going to a funeral.’

  The ride out of the city was hot and windy.