One Italian Summer(12)

He piles some juicy, bright pink slices on my plate.

“Now the cheese. Skip the soft ones, but a small slice of Parmesan in the morning is a delicacy. Trust me.”

He uses silver tongs and slips a grainy piece onto my plate. Then puts another.

“For good measure,” he says.

“Next we skip the eggs and head to secure a cornetto. If we come at eight-thirty, these are gone.”

By the window there is a tray of Italian croissants. He lifts two onto my plate.

“Trust me,” he says when I begin to object. “They put a hint of lemon in them. You will want another.”

“I am beginning to see what you mean with the ten pounds,” I say.

“It’s Italy,” he tells me. “Pleasure is the cornerstone of the program.”

He holds his arm out in front of him, and I lead the way onto the balcony.

When we get back, we each stop in front of our respective tables, but neither one of us sits.

“This seems silly,” he says. “Would you like to join me?”

“Is someone else coming down?” I look up toward the stairwell, a ceremonious gesture.

“Nope,” he says. He sits, rotating his plate in front of him. “It’s just me. I’m here for work.”

“Not a bad gig.”

He looks up at me, and I notice how symmetrical his face is. One eyebrow doesn’t even lift higher than the other. Everything in equal and perfect order.

I sit.

“How about you?” he asks. He pours me coffee from the pot. “What brings you to Positano?”

When we first decided we wanted to go, for real, it was almost three years ago, nine months before she got sick. My mother wasn’t someone who put things off, but even though she spoke often about Italy, about wanting to return, the idea was not made manifest until then.

There was always a reason not to. It was far, true. She didn’t want to leave my father for that long. The cost was prohibitive to do it the way she’d want to. But I could also always tell how she felt about this place. The reverence with which she spoke about it.

It was Eric who told me I should buy the plane tickets and surprise her for her sixtieth birthday.

“Just do it,” he said. “She’ll love it, and she won’t say no.”

I printed out the receipt and slipped it onto the table the next Friday night at my parents’ house.

“What is this?” my mother said, picking it up.

“Read it,” Eric said. He was grinning. He took my hand under the table.

She looked from the paper back up to me. “Katy. I don’t understand.”

“We’re going,” I told her. “You and me. For your sixtieth. We’re going to Italy.”

Her eyes got wide, and then she did something I rarely saw my mother do. I can count on one hand the number of times, in all thirty years I spent with her, that I remember seeing my mother cry. But that night at the kitchen table she looked over the paper, and she wept.

Eric looked alarmed, but my eyes welled with tears, too. I knew this meant something to her—to go, to show me who she was before I came along—and I felt a fierce pull of love for her, for all the women she had been before me, all the women I never got to know.

“Are you happy?” I asked, even though I knew.

“Darling,” she said. She looked up. Her eyes were wet and open. She touched her fingertips to my face. “I couldn’t have dreamed it better.”

The man across the table stares at me. His question hangs between us: What brings you to Positano?

“A small vacation,” I say. “I was supposed to come with a friend, but she couldn’t make it.”

I realize, when I say this, that I do not have my wedding and engagement rings on. I took them off yesterday when I arrived—my fingers swollen from the travel and humidity. They are in the safe with the rest of my jewelry and cell phone. I have not opened it since.

“Her loss,” he says. “My gain.”

It is not flirtatious, at least not entirely. It’s more just a statement of fact. He uses a knife to cut a watermelon slice diagonally and then spears it with a fork. Some sticky juice runs down the side of his plate and pools in the center.

“So good,” he says, mouth full. “You need to get in on this.”

I do the same. He’s right: it’s perfect. Cold and crisp and sweet.

“What job requires you to eat breakfast on a balcony in Positano?” I ask him. “Travel writer?”

“I work for a hotel chain,” he says.

“Ah,” I say. “Which one?”

He doesn’t immediately answer.

“Do you want me to guess?” I ask.

He squints. “I would love that, actually. But you’ll never get it.”

“Hyatt.”

He shakes his head.

“St. Regis.”

“Nope.”

“Hilton.”

“Well, now I’m just offended.”

“I give up,” I say.

“The Dorchester,” he says. “I’m on the team in charge of new acquisitions.”

I spring forward, surprising us both. “The Bel-Air, right? It’s one of my favorite places in Los Angeles.” I smile, a little embarrassed. “That’s where I live.”