Kissing in Italian (12 page)

“ ‘You don’t feel things like I do’?” Kelly hisses, hauling herself to her feet. “That Kendra’s beyond arrogant. Ow, I’ve got a cramp in my foot.…”

“She’s lucky it’s practically impossible to offend Paige,” I say ironically. “Paige was kind of messing with her there.”

I stand up, wincing, swiveling the ankle that was caught underneath me and now has the worst pins and needles. We both limp across the room, shaking out our feet, and head back down the long terrace. The harpsichord music has been replaced by jazz, and Sunny has got hold of poor Evan again, backing him against the balustrade and swaying in front of him. “I used to be an air hostess,” she’s saying. “Only in first class, though. They put the prettiest girls in first class, did you know that?”

Elisa, meanwhile, has maneuvered Luca onto the dance floor. She has her arms around his neck and is wriggling her narrow hips in time with the music, doing the dancing for both of them.

I take a deep breath, march over to Evan, and say over Sunny’s shoulder: “Hey, I thought we were going to dance again.”

“Oh yeah!” he says with flattering enthusiasm. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he mumbles to Sunny, sliding past her and out toward me. I grin at him as he mouths “Thank you!” and we take each other’s hands, starting to move to the music.

I have no idea how to dance to jazz, and clearly neither does Evan; but what we have in common is that we want to have fun. I honestly don’t know whether the impulse to save Evan is stronger than my jealousy of Luca and Elisa, but right now it doesn’t even matter. I can’t have Luca, that’s clear enough. So I need to move on.

I’m not one of those girls who rush from one boy to another, scared of being alone. I’m not going to suddenly throw myself at Evan, snog him one night and declare that he’s my boyfriend the next day, as I’ve seen girls do. But dancing has always been one of the main ways I’ve distracted myself, and this kind of dancing needs a partner, and Evan needed rescuing, and I can’t chatter away to Kelly while watching Luca and Elisa out of the corner of my eye.…

My head is spinning. Really, all I can think of is the photo that proves Mum and the principe could have met before I was born. It’s almost as if that image is projected on Evan’s wide chest, as if on the pale-blue fabric I can see the
principe, smiling with his arm around that model, Mum in the background. I put a smile on my face and I keep it plastered there as we dance around the terrace. And I’m doing fine, I really am.

Until I get back to Villa Barbiano that evening and find the text from Mum waiting for me.

I must have read Mum’s text a hundred times. I have no idea what it means. But I know what it doesn’t say:
Of course Dad and I are your parents! Why on earth would you think anything different? I’m on the first plane over to give you a big hug and tell you I love you!

I’ve actually gone weirdly calm, as if my brain’s suffused with a drug that’s flowing gently through me. I woke up feeling outside of myself: I’m floating above my body, looking down at the Violet who’s going about her day, observing her
with detachment as she eats breakfast, goes to her Italian lesson, eats lunch, goes to the pool. Fights the desire to ring her mother and beg her to explain what’s going on.

Luigi comes in to teach an art class; that doesn’t faze this strangely detached Violet. She sits there and sketches Evan and doesn’t even blush when Luigi convinces him to take his shirt off. She concentrates on trying to render, as accurately as possible, the cap of muscle on Evan’s shoulder, the one that’s turned toward her. Luigi is making her draw Evan in three-quarter profile, and it’s surprisingly hard to get the proportions right.

Violet has the feeling that if she let herself tune in to the vibrations between Kendra and Luigi, she’d pick up all sorts of things. Nothing even that overt. The briefest of touches, maybe, as Luigi leans over Kendra to make an alteration on her drawing, or as Kendra turns to him to ask him a question. It’s more the way they communicate, the haze in the air around them, a sense that they’re scarcely aware, when they look at each other, that anyone else even exists.

But this Violet, to be honest, couldn’t care less anymore about what’s going on with Luigi and Kendra. It’s not her business if Kendra’s being a stupid idiot, or Luigi an old creep. Violet has more than enough of her own to cope with. Violet feels as if she’s carrying a brimful vase of water, and she has to move very carefully to keep it level. Because if that vase tilts even a little bit, and even a drop spills on her, she’ll start crying and she’ll never stop.

Evan can tell something’s up with Violet, but he’s too nice and tactful to push at her. He asked her this morning if
she was okay, and she said yes, but she knows she sounded so aloof and disconnected that it was a total snub. And after that, he’s been polite but respectful, keeping his distance.

Which would make it strange, seeing him with his shirt off, if Violet were really in her body. Since she isn’t, however, she can just take him for granted as the life-drawing model, whose squarish features are particularly hard to draw in three-quarter profile, and focus entirely on the work of conveying what she sees in front of her to the sketchpad. She is constantly aware of the phone in her skirt pocket, resting on her thigh, starting if she hears even the slightest sound that might be an incoming call, feels something that might be the vibrating buzz of a message. And a text does come in, but it’s from Milly back in London, and Violet doesn’t answer it because she feels so disconnected from almost her entire life that she wouldn’t know what to say.

After art class, Violet showers and then goes to dinner: spaghetti with mild green peppers called
frigitelli
, sautéed in olive oil, and then cold sliced veal dressed with tuna mayonnaise and capers, which sounds bizarre but is actually tasty. She has a glass of red wine with the food, and coffee afterward. And then Paige suggests that they all watch a movie or two in the rec room, and Violet says that she’ll probably go back to the art studio and keep working on her sketches, and Paige exchanges a glance with Kendra that clearly tells Kendra to keep an eye out for Violet in the studio when she sneaks out to see Luigi, and Violet really wants to say that as far as she’s concerned, Kendra and Luigi could be lying on the main lawn snogging each other’s faces off and
she, Violet, would just step over them and keep going, because she couldn’t care less about the mess that anyone else is making of their lives right now.

As the rest of them debate what film they want to watch, Violet goes back to the studio, which is the only place where she’s sure of keeping the vase of water steady and balanced. She looks at her sketches of Evan and decides that she can’t cope with the demands of another human being. So she puts them aside and starts instead to draw a still life of a jar of brushes and some tubes of paint. She’s so absorbed in that task that she almost completely forgets about anything else until, a couple of hours later, outside the studio, she hears someone screeching their head off, and she drops the pastel she’s using and sprints for the door, because frankly, it sounds as if someone’s being murdered—

And what she sees outside jerks her back into her body instantly. Me. Jerks
me
instantly back into my body with a fizzing electric shock.

All the outside lamps are on. The front of the villa is lit up as brightly as a stage, the green of the lawn shining iridescently in the artificial light. From the lower level of the formal garden I might be a spectator looking up at a stage on which a melodrama’s raging away. Catia, standing in the middle of the lawn and screaming in a mix of English and Italian, is definitely the leading actress; she’s dominating the scene. She’s yelling at Kendra, who’s emerging from the gap in the hedge. Kendra has changed from the simple dress she wore at dinner and is in a sexy slip that might actually be a nightie, which is pretty gross, considering the circumstances.

“E tu! E tu, Luigi! Fatto vedere! Tanto so che ci sei!”
Catia is yelling. She’s telling Luigi to come out and show himself.

If they were meeting in that stone alcove again
, I think,
there really isn’t any way out from there apart from the steps to the lawn. Could he jump down? Is it too far?
I picture the area, and think there’s quite a big drop—but Luigi looks strong, he might be able to climb down the wall, or jump for it.…

He hasn’t. He’s here. Coming out behind Kendra. I can’t read his expression, but his body language looks distinctly hangdog.
Busted
, as Paige would say.

On the terrace above, Paige, Leonardo, Evan, and Kelly are spilling out from the rec room, looking down at the scene below. Paige squeals as Catia strides across to Luigi and slaps him so hard across the face that we all wince at the sound.

“Ma sei scemo!”
she yells.
“Cretino, idiota, scemo! Cosa cazzo avevi in mente?”

Swinging around, she confronts Kendra.

“And you!” she shrieks. “Stupid little girl! What the hell were you thinking, sneaking out at night to see a married man?”

I gasp. So does almost everyone else: I hear Paige squeal again in surprise. I nip up the steps and onto the terrace to join the rest of the group; you want company in these moments, someone to turn to when you need to share the shock.

“Married!”
Kendra exclaims, such misery and disappointment in her voice that we all wince again in sadness for her. Luigi cringes as she turns to him.

“Tell me it’s not true!” she says, and I can hear tears in her voice.

“Not just married—he has a little daughter and another baby on the way!” Catia announces.

“È vero,”
Leonardo says to us. “It’s true,” he translates. “His wife is—uh,
in dolce attesa
,” he adds, clearly not knowing how to say “pregnant” in English.

Kelly’s ears prick up at learning something new.

“ ‘In sweet waiting’?” she asks, translating it literally. “That’s actually a nice way to say pregnant—”

“It’s not true!” Kendra screams, not having heard Leonardo’s confirmation. She throws herself at Luigi, grabbing hold of the collar of his shirt with both hands, trying to shake him, but Luigi is stocky and muscular, and he doesn’t move under her assault. This failure makes Kendra collapse onto his chest, still holding his shirt.

“Tell me she’s lying,” she wails against his neck.

“You seemed like the clever girl!” Catia says furiously to her. “The one who wouldn’t be stupid enough to be caught out by some man!”

“Uh,
thanks
,” Kelly mutters. Paige snorts.

“And
you
, Luigi!” Catia continues, even more viciously. “You swore up and down to me two years ago that you’d learned your lesson! I was an idiot to give you a second chance! I should never have allowed you to come back to teach in my summer school! I should have been on the lookout as soon as I heard that Annalisa was pregnant again!”

“Oh my
God
,” Paige says as the full horror of the situation sinks in.

We exchange stares of pity for poor Kendra. It’s not only that Luigi’s done this before, that she isn’t unique in having a fling, or whatever she’s doing, with him: this isn’t some big
love affair, some grand passion. Kendra was just a distraction for him while his wife was pregnant. As, presumably, the first girl was too.

“È vero,”
Luigi says to Kendra, so quietly that we can hardly hear him.
“È tutto vero. Mi dispiace, Kendra.”

It’s true. It’s all true. I’m sorry, Kendra.

Kendra bursts into heartrending sobs. And Paige shows her true worth. She bounds down the steps to the lawn, tumbles across it, and grabs hold of Kendra, pulling her away from Luigi with one arm; with the other, she hauls off at him.
She
doesn’t slap Luigi, though. For the rest of my life I’ll remember the sight of Paige landing a punch square on Luigi’s jaw. I honestly don’t think any man could have done a better job. Kendra’s shaking couldn’t budge Luigi, but Paige’s roundhouse punch sends him reeling back, grabbing his jaw as if she just broke it.

“You stay away from her from now on, you hear?” Paige yells. “If I see you anywhere near her, if you try to call her, I’ll track you down like a dog and beat the hell out of you in front of your wife!”

Wrapping both arms around Kendra, she helps her friend stumble across the lawn and back up the steps. Kelly runs down and together, one on either side of Kendra, they guide her up and into the house. I follow them upstairs to Paige and Kendra’s bedroom. Poor Kendra’s making awful, stifled, whimpering sounds, like a puppy that’s been kicked.

There’s nothing we can say, nothing at all that will make this situation better, or give her any consolation. Heartbreak’s bad enough, but these circumstances are so terrible that we can’t even meet one another’s eyes. That scene was
so embarrassing I want to pretend it never happened, and I sense that Paige and Kelly feel the same.

They sit Kendra down on her bed, and she promptly collapses like a floppy toy, unable to even sit up. I make myself useful by unbuckling the ankle straps of her pretty sandals and taking them off. There’s an unspoken consensus that we can’t undress her, and she clearly isn’t going to do it herself. We’re all just sleeping with a sheet to cover us, the nights are so warm, and as Paige and Kelly smooth down her silky slip-dress, I pull up the sheet and fold it at Kendra’s armpits. She’s lying completely still, those awful little moans still coming from her lips, and Paige sits down on the bed next to her and takes her hand, stroking it.

He’s a lying horrible cheat
, we could say.
Plenty more fish in the sea. No boy’s worth getting this upset
. But we’ve all heard those same phrases in attempts to console us over some boy who’s messed us around, and we all know that they don’t help. They can make it worse, actually: they can make you sob more, insist that he’s the only one you’ll ever love, the only one you’ll ever want, that he
is
worth it. And the more you struggle against the truth, the worse you feel. The more stupid you feel.