Kissing in Italian (2 page)

A sharp clap interrupts my thoughts. We all turn as one, conditioned now by the sound that Catia Cerboni, our
guide, uses to summon our attention. You don’t mess with Catia, especially when it comes to the cultural side of things, the art visits and the language lessons that are the essential part of our summer courses. She takes those responsibilities seriously, though in other areas she’s considerably more lax.

“Girls! We will move on now,” she announces. Thin as a rake, her linen shift dress miraculously uncreased even on this hot and sweaty day, wafting Chanel Cristalle perfume, Catia is the epitome of Italian chic. Which, under the circumstances, is pretty ironic.

“We have seen the best of Sienese icon paintings, and now we go to the Duomo,” Catia announces. “The cathedral. It is in the Italian Gothic style, one of the most perfect examples of medieval architecture.”

Paige complains. “We’re walking
so
much today! Is it far? Can we get a cab?”

“Honestly, Paige,” Kendra says impatiently. “Everything here’s really close. Siena is tiny.”

“It’s so hot … and my feet hurt …,” Paige whines, but she perks up as we leave the museum and emerge again into crowded and utterly fascinating Siena. It looks as if there hasn’t been anything new built here since the Middle Ages. Its sun-warmed gray stone buildings are packed closely together, and because it’s on a steep hill, the narrow streets are almost all sloped. No sidewalks, and when one of the orange city buses swings around a corner, perilously near, we all follow the lead of the locals and squish back against the wall of the closest shop. The bus turns within a foot of us, the driver calculating the angle perfectly.

We gasp at how close the bus comes. Our reaction would
be enough to identify us as tourists even disregarding the obvious physical evidence that we aren’t Italian. Well,
I
look Italian: olive skin tone, dark curling hair and dark eyes. Because of this, no boys give me a passing glance; their attention is for the exotic threesome I’m with.

I wonder if I fell for Luca because he was the only boy who noticed me. That’s all, no other reason. I wish I could believe that
.

“Shoes!” Paige is sighing, her face lit up with the same kind of ecstasy Kelly showed when she was looking at the Madonna and Child. “
Look
at those stunners in that shop! Can we—”

“
After
the Duomo,
perhaps
we visit some shops,” Catia says, whisking us up the street, past so many enticing places to spend more money: leather goods, stationery boutiques, lace makers.

We find ourselves in a little piazza with a church looming in front of us, and on the left, a steep flight of marble stairs leading high up the hill. Catia climbs briskly, calling, with the voice of a woman who has led many groups of excited teenage girls up these very dramatic steps, that we can take photos later. And at the top of the stairs, we go through a high arch and reach our destination, right at the top of Siena: the Duomo.

It does take your breath away.

“It’s like a wedding cake!” Paige breathes, and actually, I know what she means. It’s the layers. The cathedral, looming above us, is built of white and greenish-black marble, layered in stripes, and as we reach its façade, our heads tilt back almost as far as they can go to take in the icing on the cake, ornate carvings and sculptures and gargoyles, red
marble added into the mix. Catia’s voice flows over us with an impressive array of information she’s clearly trotted out many times before. It’s impossible to separate her descriptions of which bits are Gothic, which classical, and which are Tuscan Romanesque, and I doubt any of us are even trying.

As we walk inside, we gasp in unison at the sheer scale of the cathedral. The breathtakingly tall marble pillars, striped in black and white—Siena’s civic colors, Catia is telling us—the dome above, the ceiling painted in rich blue with golden stars. In the center of the opulently gilded and carved dome, a golden lantern lets in the bright light, like the sun itself. Jewel colors dazzle as the sun pours through the round stained-glass windows. I swivel around, feasting my eyes, as silent as the rest.

We wander down the nave, into the chapel, into the library, following the sound of Catia’s voice. Our heads go back to look at exquisitely painted ceilings, tilt down again to stare at elaborately inlaid marble floors. Oxblood-red, sapphire, emerald, and white marble glow like mother-of-pearl in the mosaic work, which Catia informs us is called intarsia. Finally, we take in the bright frescos wrapping around the walls. We are completely quiet, overwhelmed by this much lavishness, by the incredible amount of work that has gone into creating this place of worship.

Catia is so pleased by our subdued demeanor that she lets us stop for photos on the marble steps, plus visit the shoe shop Paige spotted on the way up here. Paige is actually the only one who goes, and she can’t focus enough to buy anything. In the gelato shop next door, we don’t agonize loudly
over our choices, either: we’re quiet, still under the spell of the Duomo. We look down at the amazing shell-shaped Piazza del Campo as we pass, walking back up the Banchi di Sopra, our heads full of beauty, quite ready to drive home.

But then, crossing Piazza Matteotti, the day takes a totally unexpected turn. There’s a staircase on the far left with an iron balustrade, leading up to a church. It’s Kelly who spots them, nudging me excitedly, as the boys vault over the railing, whooping, and land lightly on the warm stone of the piazza. Two lean, handsome Italian boys, slim in their pale shirts and tight jeans, their hair falling forward over their foreheads, and just behind them, an American, much more casual in a T-shirt and loose jeans, his hair cropped close to his head, his blue eyes bright in his deeply tanned skin.

“Andrea!” Kelly exclaims. If we didn’t know already that she has a huge crush on him, she’d have completely given herself away with the squeal of excitement with which she calls his name. “Leonardo,” she adds swiftly, “and Evan! What’re you doing here?”

Leonardo is Catia’s son, and Andrea is his best friend; they’re party boys, out for a good time, nothing more, in my opinion. They’re fun but shallow. I’m always a little wary of boys who know exactly how good-looking they are. Evan, one of Paige’s many brothers, just arrived two days ago. He’s been backpacking around Europe with friends on his summer holidays, and came to crash at the villa while the friends go to a folk-music festival in Umbria that he didn’t fancy.

There’s an Italian word I’ve learned,
“solare.”
It means “sunny” and it’s used to describe people. That’s Evan. He’s sunny. He has a lovely big smile that crinkles his eyes and
lights up his whole blunt-featured face; like his sister, he reminds me of a golden Labrador: friendly, good-natured, easygoing. But he’s also clearly more mature than Paige, and not just because he’s three years older. Paige is wild, uninhibited, gets drunk and falls over; I can’t imagine Evan behaving like that. He seems sensible, sober, reliable. I haven’t had much chance to get to know him, but already I like him a lot.

“Ragazze!”
Leo calls. He’s always the leader. And he’s relishing the envious stares from the other boys in Piazza Matteotti as he lopes toward our group, takes our hands, kisses us on each cheek, throws his arm around Paige’s shoulder, and announces:

“We have come to kidnap you! We take you away to have pizza and go dancing all night!”

Moments ago we were hot, wilted, limp, like string beans left too long before picking. But these words have a miraculous ability to refresh us. We perk up as one, turning to Catia, our expressions pleading.

“Mamma, possono venire?”
Leonardo asks, tilting his head to one side, flashing his most practiced, charming smile.
“Dai, perchè no?”

Catia looks tired too, her eyes sunken into hollows rimmed by dark liner, her red lipstick dried into faint lines around her mouth. Catia is a mystery to me. She comes across as totally Italian, and yet her daughter, Elisa, told me that Catia’s actually American, pretending to be Italian, married to an Italian man, never breathing a word about her real nationality. It’s totally weird.

“Perchè no?”
she echoes. “Why not?” She’s probably happy
to be rid of us, to be able to drive home in peace and quiet and put her feet up instead of having to supervise dinner, ready to pounce on every error we make in table manners.
“Non fare troppo tardi,”
she adds. “Don’t be too late.”

We all break into smiles; we know these are just words. Catia may be in loco parentis to us, but she’s a pretty slack chaperone. We had to lug Paige home a fortnight ago, drunk as a skunk, and Catia barely batted an eyelid. All she did was trot out a speech about learning to hold your drink, and then she let us go out with the boys again practically the next evening.

“Fantastico!”
Leo claps his hands.
“Andiamo tutti!”

He kisses his mother enthusiastically, turns, and dashes off toward the
fortezza
, gesturing that we should all follow him. I hesitate, wondering if we should follow his lead and kiss Catia goodbye, but she’s already heading toward La Lizza, where she parked the jeep, one ringed hand held up in farewell to us.

No adults! We’re on our own, out for the evening, ready to party. And now that Evan’s here, we won’t have a repeat of Paige drinking too much. Nothing like a looming big brother to keep his wild younger sister in line.

I’ve been feeling so confused, so messed up recently. Now that there’s the prospect of some release for my stress, I’m so happy I could scream. I dash along the pavement and trip on a cobblestone in my haste. Evan grabs my elbow, catching me. It feels as if he could lift me off the ground as easily as if I were a little girl. I look up and smile at him in thanks.

“You’re in a hurry!” he says, and I laugh and agree.

“I really love to dance,” I say, beaming at him. “I can’t wait.”

“I really love pizza!” he says, letting me go. “
I
can’t wait!”

We’re on a total high, all seven of us, as we pile into two cars and sweep out of Siena in convoy, driving around the walls of the old fortress and onto a narrow highway that Leo says is the road to the sea. The evening sun is a golden haze, and since we’re heading west, it’s blazing into our eyes, wrapping us in warmth, as if we’re driving into the heart of a fire. We have all the windows down, the wind whipping our hair.

“It’s like being in a film,” Kelly sighs to me, her hazel eyes glowing.

“It
is
,” I agree.
But what kind?
I find myself wondering.
A romantic comedy or a gritty family drama?

The car crosses a little bridge and then starts to slow down, and Kelly oohs at the sight of our destination, a sound I echo. It’s a big sprawling stone building set back from the road, behind a large gravel parking lot bordered by trees strung with brightly colored paper lanterns. As we pull in, I see that the bridge we just crossed spans a little river, which flows by the side of the dining area, below a wall lined with long terra-cotta planters of flame-red and fuchsia geraniums.

My heart lifts. I jump out as soon as the car comes to a halt, taking in the sight. The air is rich with the perfume of wisteria and jasmine, which are trained over a big trellis behind the patio. Now that the noise of the car engine has died away, I can hear the running water of the river, and music drifting out from the restaurant.

Everyone piles out, the other girls exclaiming in delight as we walk across the gravel to the entrance. We go through a high wooden arch wreathed in more wisteria, and after we’re led to a table and given menus we exclaim all over again at the sheer number of pizzas they have—fifty choices. We order, and moments later the pizzas arrive. They’re huge, the size of cartwheels, but so thin and light they’re not too filling, easy to eat, and we finish every last scrap, even Kendra, who’s always watching her weight. They’re the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Evan, halfway through his, calls the waitress over and orders another one; we all roar with laughter, but he’s quite unembarrassed, saying he has a big appetite, and the waitress, flirtatiously, agrees with him, squeezing his broad shoulders, commenting on his size, offering to bring him a third if he wants.

Paige squeals with amusement. And when Evan’s pizza comes, the waitress leaning over him sexily as she takes his old plate and slides the new one in front of him, he turns to wink at me, saying:

“Hey, I told you I really loved pizza! I wasn’t kidding!”

After the pizzas, we have sorbet, served in the shells of the fruit: lemon and orange, tangy and sharp, and coconut, smooth and creamy. Then coffee, then little chilled glasses of limoncello and arancello, lemon and orange liqueurs, the glasses frosted from the freezer, the liqueur sweet and heady and sugary. The American girls still can’t believe that no one asks for proof of drinking age.

Night has fallen. The candles are all lit and flickering above our heads, their wax melting gently into the iron setting. The lanterns are illuminated and glow red and yellow
and green and blue. The music’s grown louder, no longer soft jazz; now it’s booming pop, the bass cranked up, echoing gently off the paving stones, summoning us inside to dance.

And we do. We dance our feet off. We shed all embarrassment about the tackiness of the music. It’s all Top 40 and, yes, the
Grease
medley that drove me off the dance floor in Florence a few weeks ago. But now I have a group to be silly with, and we sing all the words, or, to be honest, howl them, our heads back, our mouths wide open, sharing the pure, silly, dizzy fun, making the Italian boys sing “Ooh ooh ooh, honey!” after every “You’re the one that I want.”

Suddenly, it’s midnight. When Leo drags us off the dance floor, all of us sweaty and shiny, and announces what time it is, Paige actually wails like a banshee in disappointment, thinking that he’s announcing a curfew, that we’re Cinderellas who have to leave the ball.

“No!” Leo gestures out of the open doorway at the side of the dance floor, which leads outside; we’ve been nipping out there to cool down. “Now we go swim! In the river!”