One Italian Summer(7)
I remove my hand. He rubs his palm across his face. He exhales. He takes a solid breath then, in and out.
“I have to go,” I say one last time.
He nods. He says nothing.
And just like that, I get in the car. I feel a sensation close to relief, but heavier, thicker.
“LAX,” I say, even though the driver already knows, of course. He has an app, he’s already charting the course.
“Twenty-three minutes,” he tells me. “What a beautiful day, and no traffic!”
He smiles at me in the rearview.
He doesn’t know, I think as we drive away. He doesn’t know that here, in the backseat, there are no beautiful days anymore.
Chapter Three
Positano is not an easy place to get to. First you have to fly into Rome, and then you must make your way from the Rome airport to the Rome train station, at which point you board a train to Naples. From Naples, you need to find a ride down the coast to Positano. I land in Rome thirteen hours after leaving LA surprisingly refreshed. I’m not a good flier, never have been. And this is the longest trip I’ve ever taken, not to mention the only one I’ve ever taken alone. But I’m strangely calm on the flight. I even sleep.
The train station is a quick taxi away, and the ride to Naples is a beautiful hour and a half through the Italian countryside. I’ve always loved a train. When Eric and I lived in New York, we’d sometimes take the train to Boston to see his family. I loved the theater of it—how you could look outside and see what season it was, right there on display. Leaves in red and burnt orange in the fall, snow on the ground in December, ushering in the holidays like a red Sharpie on a printed calendar.
The Italian countryside is just like you’d imagine it: green hills, small homes, the tan of farms mixed with the bright aqua blue of the sky.
By the time I arrive at the Naples train station—and spot a man from the Hotel Poseidon holding a sign marked Katy Silver—I’m smiling.
I am not in Erewhon, picking out the week’s groceries, wanting to call her and say they have a two-for-one on olive oil, and does she want some. I am not at the bottom of Fryman Canyon, staring out at the trail, waiting for her to join me on our weekend hike. I’m not at Pressed Juicery, waiting for her to walk down San Vicente in her wide-brimmed hat and buy us both a Greens 3. I am not in my home; I am not in hers. I am somewhere new, where I have to be nimble, alert, present. It forces me into the moment in a way I haven’t been in a year, maybe even ever. When my mom was sick, it was all about the future—the worry of what was coming, what might happen. Here there is not space for thought, just action.
We chose Hotel Poseidon because it was very close to where my mother had stayed many years ago and also a hotel she remembered fondly. “They had the kindest staff,” she said. “Really good people.” The hotel was old—everything, my mother used to say, is old in Italy. But it was charming and beautiful and warm. It had so much character and life, my mother said. And the terrace was to die for, somehow constantly bathed in sunlight.
I hand my bag over to the chauffeur named Renaldo—the hotel was nice enough to send someone to collect me from the train station—and climb in the back of the sedan. The car is a Mercedes, as plenty of run-of-the-mill taxis are in Europe, but it still feels indulgent. A Honda Civic dropped me off at LAX.
“Buongiorno, Katy,” Renaldo says. He’s a stout man, no more than fifty, with a contained smile and what I imagine is a patient temperament. “Welcome to Naples.”
The drive out of Naples is picturesque—apartment buildings with women hanging clothes on the line, small terra-cotta houses, the wild tangle of greenery—but when we get to the coast, the real delight begins to set in. The Amalfi Coast is not so much splayed out before us as beckoning us closer. Hints of clear blue sea, houses built into the hillside.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” I say.
“Wait,” Renaldo tells me. “You wait.”
When we finally come into Positano, I see what he means. From high up on the winding road, you can see the entirety of the town. Colorful hotels and houses sit chiseled into the rocks as if they were painted there. The entire town is built around the cove of the sea. It looks like an amphitheater, enjoying the performance of the ocean. Blue, sparkling, spectacular water.
“Bellissima, no?” Renaldo says. “Good for photo.”
I grip the side of the car and roll down the window.
The air is hot and thick, and as we wind down—closer and closer to town—I begin to hear the sounds of cicadas. They sing out, the delights of summer in full swing.
We picked June for the trip because it was still a little ahead of tourist season. Once July hits, it’s a madhouse, my mother said. Best to go in June when things were a little less touristy, a little less crowded. She wanted to be able to stroll the streets without being jostled by influencers.
I was sent lists of dinner reservations to make and places to visit from friends. Boats to rent for day trips to Capri, beach clubs along the ocean requiring water taxi service. Restaurants high up in the hills with no menus and endless courses of farm-fresh food. I sent them all to my mother, and she planned the entire thing. In my hands is our itinerary, marked down to the minute. I tuck it into my bag.
As we descend I’m met with the stirrings of small-town summer life. Older women stand on stoops, chatting. There are men and women on Vespas, the sounds of late-afternoon activity. A smattering of tourists along the tiny sidewalk have their phones out, snapping pictures. It’s summer in Italy, and even though it’s nearing five o’clock, it is still bright and sunny. The sun is high in the sky, and the Tyrrhenian Sea sparkles. White boats sit out on the water in rows, like flower beds. It is beauty beyond measure—the sun seeming to touch everything at once. I exhale and exhale and exhale.