One Italian Summer(30)

Once I do, I see rickety seats, torn-up leather. There are no more than seven or eight people. And toward the back, lifting out of her seat, waving, is Carol.

Relief floods my veins.

“Katy, here!”

I make my way back to her. “Hi,” I say. “I didn’t see you at the hotel, and…”

She gets up and launches herself at me, her arms around my neck. I breathe her in. The smell of the ocean and just, her.

“Oh my god, hi. I’m so happy you’re here. There was a whole thing with the pickup, I was late and they made a stop by me, so I got on, and then he wouldn’t let me off the bus!” She pulls back and holds me at an arm’s length. “Italians!” she says, and releases me. “See, Francesco, this is my friend!” She gestures to the man from the door, clearly the driver, and then rolls her eyes.

Francesco gives her a curt nod.

I think about my mother’s color-coded calendar. Pink for errands, blue for my father, green for me, and gold for social obligations. I look at the bursting, bubbling mess of a woman before me. It’s almost impossible that this is the same person.

She’s so cool, I think as we take our seats. Your mother is so fucking cool.

She has on ripped jeans and a white lace top. Her hair is tucked behind her ears, and she has just a glint of lip gloss on.

“You look great,” I say.

“Thanks!” she says, not a hint of modesty. “So do you.”

The bus starts to move, and I lean back against the sticky leather seat.

“This place is amazing. I can’t wait for you to see,” she says. “What have I told you about it?”

“Just that it’s high up,” I say. I point outside. To where the town keeps ascending, even though, currently, we’re headed downhill. There is only one road in Positano, and that road is a one-way street. One must go down before one goes up.

“La Tagliata,” she says. “It’s run by Don Luigi and his wife, Mama. All their food is from their own farm. They don’t have a menu, so you just drink the chilled white wine and wait for whatever they’re serving up tonight.” Carol turns her head to me. “I really hope you’re hungry.”

I think about my marathon breakfast, and wine with Adam, which feels like days ago now. Hunger rolls through me. There’s always room here.

“Definitely.”

The bus makes a hard left by the Hotel Eden Roc, and we start climbing upward.

“How did you find this place?” I ask her.

“Remo took me a few nights into my trip,” she says. Some hair sticks to her face, and she brushes it away. “He tells me it’s hardly changed in twenty years. How many places can you say that about?”

“Definitely not anywhere in LA,” I say. The Coffee Bean a few blocks over used to be a Walgreens.

“That’s true.”

“Where is Remo tonight?” I say.

“Working,” she says. “But this place Bella Bar has a dance party at night. He’ll meet us there after dinner. You must come. Honestly, I’m not giving you a choice!”

I think about my mother, dancing the night away in a club in Positano. She always loved music, loved to dance. But the only songs I can remember her moving to are Frank Sinatra at a wedding or Katy Perry at a cousin’s bar mitzvah. This is something else entirely. “That sounds great,” I say.

The trip up to the restaurant is a winding, fairly nauseating forty-five minutes. It gets so bad at one point that I have to stop talking.

“Just look to the front,” Carol says. “The horizon—that’ll help.” She puts a cool palm on my mid-back and holds it there.

We pull up to the restaurant what feels like hours later. I walk out wobbly. By the side of the road there is a round sign that has Fattoria La Tagliata painted on it. We walk through an archway and then down a flight of stairs. We’re surrounded by gardens, flowers, the sweet smell of the arriving summer.

The restaurant is no more than a tree house. But this tree house, like so much of Positano, has a sweeping view of the sea. Because we are so high up, you can see all the way to Capri, even. And it’s early—the sun is still hours from setting.

“Wow,” I say.

Carol smiles. “Right? Pretty special.”

We’re greeted by a boisterous man at the door. “Buonasera!” He kisses Carol first, then me, once on either cheek. “Welcome, welcome! You will dine with us! Let’s go!”

We are shown to a table while he continues to greet the guests from our bus as they come down the path. There are maybe four diners, no more, already seated in the small room.

I learn from Carol that there are two dinner sittings—5 p.m. and 8 p.m. There are no menus, as she said, and the wine flows freely.

“This doesn’t seem real,” I say. “I’ve truly never seen anything like this.”

Our table is situated in the corner of the room, right by what would be the window, but instead of a window, it’s just open air, punctuated by a wooden guardrail that I can rest my elbow on from our chairs. White linen curtains sit pooled by two wood poles on either side of the room. Everything is light and open. Like we’re having dinner in the sky—we are.

I look at her, my mother. She’s thin, she always was, but there’s a roundness to her, a fullness, that she lost in later years. That, or I’m incapable, now, of seeing her without illness. I close my eyes and open them again.