She tugged at a suitcase on the top shelf. “I looked up La Pentola in the atlas,” she said, her voice straining. “And—it’ll be cold, right?” The suitcase fell on the floor and she staggered back to keep her toes from being battered. “Right?” She turned her face to me and it was flushed.
I was still reeling from the odd emotion her clothes and purses had provoked. I nodded without saying anything.
“So—ah, here!” She unlocked the suitcase and snapped the lid off a brown hatbox. She pulled her fur coat from the box, shaking it so a cast of dust rose and thickened the pane of sunlight. “Take it,” she said, smiling.
I rubbed the oil-rich fur, relishing its musty smell. I loved that coat with a delirious jealousy. It had been Great-Aunt Mary’s, given to Rhona when she died because Granny said I was too young for fur.
“You’re always so cold,” I said. “You’ll need it when it gets brisk.” I folded it over my arm and tried to hand it back to her.
Rhona laughed, a sharp, almost cruel laugh. “I don’t go outside, Bridget. When would I need it?”
I kissed her papery cheek. “Thank you,” I said. “It’ll be perfect. I’ll take good care of it.”
Rhona clambered onto the bed and put one hand on her novel. I knew it was a sign I should leave, but I lingered.
“Don’t get sick again,” I said, all in one breath.
Rhona gave me a tight smile. “I’ll try.”
I rubbed my hand over the fur, watching the shine on its skein. “I don’t want to be an only child,” I said. I had meant it as a joke. But as I spoke them, the words felt truer than anything I’d said since I’d left for Italy. Rhona’s room, empty. Her magazines in boxes in the basement. Her clothes, her necklaces, left behind—just a horrible shadow of her life. My Rhony. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, crossing my fingers under the fur. What would Rhona think if she knew I’d practically disowned her? The tears rose in my eyes and I blinked to keep them away.
“You’d turn into an awful brat,” she said, covering for me. “Granny would have to buy you a pony.”
I laughed with the relieved, wet crack of someone who is half crying.
“You’d have to get a special lecture at school about sharing, like Helen Malone,” she continued as I wiped the corners of my eyes.
“My birthday parties would be fabulous, though,” I said.
“You could have lobster delivered from Maine.”
We continued like this for five more minutes, each pulling on the joke until it was thin like taffy. The more terrible the joke became, the more it stretched away from the truth at its core.
IV
Italy
18.
November
When I left the train at La Pentola, I dragged my case uphill so quickly it juddered over the gravel and shook the joint in my shoulder. And although the day was cool, I was sweating and red-faced by the time I arrived at the academy.
Donna Maria rushed out before I rang the bell and gripped me in a tight hug. She was babbling in Italian and I barely caught her words. She seized my case and with alarming strength hoisted it up the remaining steps and into the lobby. I could have cried, it was all so familiar, down to the ugly clock and the battered chairs.
I followed her upstairs, the weak light throwing late-afternoon shadows into the courtyard. As my suitcase clattered along the corridor, Sylvia stuck her head out of the bathroom.
“Bridget!” she yelled. “Hey, Bridget’s back!” Bunny and Barbie came out of their bedroom.
“What’s the yelling about?”
“Oh, Bridge!”
And a pile of girls fell upon me in the corridor, hugging and pinching and squealing as if we’d just won a football game. My eyes smarted and I was exhausted and deliriously happy all at the same time. I hugged each of the girls in turn, feeling perilously close to tears. Nancy approached from the common room with a pencil stuck behind her ear. When everyone else had picked themselves off me, she came forward and gave me a stiff, formal embrace, as if she’d been forced to greet the ambassador of a hostile foreign nation.
“Is everything OK?” said Nancy, pulling the pencil from behind her ear and chewing on it. “At home?”
“It’s fine, thanks.”
Nancy’s face relaxed. “Good. I was worried. Izzy said she didn’t know what was going on.”
“She didn’t tell you anything at all?” I crossed my fingers under my elbows.
Nancy shook her head. “She said she was totally in the dark. But then Sally insisted you had some fancy ball to go to.”
As I unlocked my room, the girls hung back and I opened the door to see paper streamers hung with BENTORNATA written on the bunting. Milk bottles filled with physalis stems decorated the bedside table and windowsill.
“Oh, girls,” I said, turning back to the small crowd. Their faces were identically pink and smiling. “I’m so touched,” I said. They had gone through all this trouble, just for me! As I entered the room I didn’t know how to demonstrate my gratitude. I went around putting my hands on the physalis and the bunting, nodding and grinning.
“Do you like it?” said Greta.
“You’re A-plus.” I hugged her and she nestled her head in the crook of my neck.
I sat on the mattress and it creaked in such a familiar way I couldn’t help but grin. I sighed and bounced and looked around my room. It smelled like vinegar and beeswax and I knew one of the sisters must have been in to mop the floor while I was gone. It seemed so odd, not that I was back, but that I had ever been away in the first place.
“And you’re OK?” Greta said, watching my face.
I nodded. “Yes, a bit of fuss over nothing.”
She glanced nervously at Patricia. “We figured it must have been serious if they sent you an airplane ticket.”
I looked away from her. “Oh, my grandmom had a turn, but she’s fine now.”
Sylvia tucked her hair behind her ears. “Tell us about the plane! What were the air hostesses like? Did you see the pilot?”
I laughed. “Yes, they’re terribly glamorous. I got to shake the pilot’s hand.”
Sylvia sighed. “How dreamy. I’ve been begging Mom to let me take a plane trip, but she says maybe for my twenty-first birthday.”
Everyone crowded onto the other bed. They squeezed in, arms over each other’s shoulders, knees crossed over legs, eyes expectant. There was a fierce clench of joy in my stomach and I felt myself drifting backward, up, until the moment was granted the soft, oval framing of a greeting card. The girls were laughing, gum chewing, hair twirling, brimming with gossip and compliments. It was like being lowered into a warm bubble bath. This was what real people must feel like all the time. Talking over each other, they filled me in. Betty got homesick and returned to Texas a week after I left. Bunny’s grandfather had died, but her family didn’t want her to go all the way for the funeral, so the girls sat and cried with her and Father Gavanto said a special Mass. Katherine and Mary Leonard had fallen out and everyone had been forced to take sides until they called a truce. Two boys from La Pentola had followed Sylvia up the hill and Donna Maria had gone out with a broom to chase them away.