Page 21 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
‘Buon giorno, Mamma.’
She doesn’t turn around, just waves a hand in acknowledgement.
‘How was last night?’ she asks, but is so disinterested I roll my eyes.
Breathing heavily, she shovels dirt to make room for a new basil plant Cinzia gave her. Cinzia, Theo’s mother, is everything mine is not. Quiet, reserved and she rarely smiles, but, when she does, it’s brilliant. Why the two of them are so close, I’ll never understand. They’ve been inseparable since university.
For once, I am glad my mother doesn’t turn around. A bruise has appeared across my right forearm and I’m too tired to come up with an excuse. Instead, I sigh happily as I take in the backyard. My mother is many things, and a genius gardener happens to be one of them.
Our garden is lined with almost every herb imaginable. Gravel walkways separate the rows of produce, creating a maze of rosemary, basil and thyme. Dotted among the leaves are small statues, in true Savoy fashion. Little cherub faces peek out behind a fig tree or a lavender shrub. I’ve been stealing bundles of lavender to make perfume since I accidentally fell into one shrub and realized how good I smelt. But under a veranda in the centre of the garden sits the old wooden table. The table – unpolished and scattered with rings of condensation from wine glasses, flecks of wax dripping off the edges – has witnessed every Savoy and Sinclair birthday until Theo left. Every summer night, sneaky sleepovers underneath its wooden top. Sometimes if it was warm enough in October, Anika and I would tiptoe out to the veranda with thin blankets to sip wine and gossip about boys.
I love this table. I had my first kiss on this table. When our school put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet in grade six. I was cast as Juliet, with a boy named Stefano destined to be my Romeo. He told me he should come over to practise our kiss scene. For the play, he said, we didn’t want to look silly. I mumbled something very stupid, saying, ‘Sure, sure. For the play.’
I remember my heartbeat the most. Worried about how big my nose would look so close up. The throbbing of my heart raced up to my head, banging against the inside of my skull. He sat me down on the corner of the table and put himself between my legs. He’d said, ‘Hold still,’ as if he was going to perform surgery on me.
I said, ‘Okay,’ like I wanted him to kiss me.
With a quick breath out, he dove into my face. Cold and wet. I hated every moment of it; the smell of his breath had suddenly suffocated me. It was unbearable. He tried to open his mouth but I was so scared and disgusted that I kept my lips tightly shut, my body inverting into itself. He stepped back, with a loud and sloppy finish. His hands on his hips as if he was an artist, and I his latest creation. Trying to create as much distance between us, I scooted further back onto the table, and that’s when I saw it. Looking down, I saw the obvious impression of an erection in his trousers. My face drained of blood and a coldness swept over my body, my first realization that boys were so different from me.
That horribly wet and painful kiss gave him a boner. But that’s not why I love the table.
I love the table because it’s where Anika met me after Stefano left, rushing through the gate, tripping over her untied shoelaces and anticipation for my recount of the kiss. She grabbed my face, scanning to see if there was any physical change in me after being touched by a boy. There wasn’t. Just a tremor of disappointment that lingered so long I can still feel it today. I felt cheated by Romeo and Juliet, realizing it was written by a man and now feeling that it must be an inaccurate representation of love. Because no woman would die for a kiss, if all kisses were like Stefano’s. Anika shoved me to the side and sat down next to me, one hand patting my knee.
‘Just wait until one of them fingers you.’
I choked on the air and shoved her back, bursting into a fit of laughter. ‘You’ve been kissed once, Anika. How do you know anything about fingering?’
‘I read books. I do my research.’
‘Jab, jab, jab, jab.’ She motioned her middle and pointer finger in a violent upwards motion. ‘Men really can’t do anything right. Especially Stefano.’ She threw her hands up in mock exaggeration and sighed loudly.
Giggling and proud of having now both become women, we lay down on the table, looking at the intricate pattern of vines that grew across the veranda, trying to find stars in between their weave.
Anika, usually so confident, turned her head to me. ‘It’ll get better, won’t it?’ she asked shyly.
I turned my head to her, our noses almost touching, and squeezed her hand. ‘I hope so,’ I whispered back. ‘But, if not, promise that we’ll marry each other and never have to kiss anyone again.’
She squeezed my hand back and then, after a beat of silence, slapped my stomach. ‘Always, baby girl. I’ll give us until forty.’ She hoisted herself off the table. ‘But for now, unfortunately, boyssss!’
And then she was off, back through the gate and to her house next door, skipping loudly down the gravel path. Her laughter fading through the trees.
‘You should go and see your father today.’ My mother’s voice snaps me from my memory.
I stare at the back of her head; she hasn’t turned around once since I’ve entered the garden, or since I’ve come home. Seemingly unimpressed with the version that showed up in Chivasso this time around.
‘Of course.’ My tone is light. ‘I was on my way now.’
14
THEO
I leave the house before my father wakes up. Too early for disappointment. The bald pig from last night managed to get a few punches in, leaving a slight bruise beneath my right eye and a cut along my nose. Not wanting to think about it, I shrug on a clean white T-shirt and jeans, careful to stay silent among the morning birds, and sneak downstairs. Passing through the kitchen to see slices of half-eaten toast and day-old fried eggs tells me Anika came home last night. I relax, annoyed with how preoccupied I was with Dante that I forgot check up on her. But it wasn’t just Dante that was distracting me, was it?
Anika’s car sits in the driveway where I parked it last night so I get inside, shivering with the morning breeze. Deciding to drive to the museum before it opens, wanting to see what they’ve done to it since I left. The windows are fogged with the morning dew and the sun appears behind the terracotta buildings, creating a glow of amber around the neighbourhood.
The museum has been the centre of my life for as long as I can remember. It was my home before my house ever was. I’d always fought my want of studying Egyptology, not wanting to follow my father’s footsteps so closely. But it was useless. It was first love. My only love.
I’m halfway down the steep hill that our neighbourhood is set at the top of when I see someone walking down, rotating her shoulder and kicking a pebble every so often. Ponytail swinging with each step. Despite me being fifty metres back, I can feel it’s Magdalen. She wears a silk lavender top and a small white skirt, the light colours making her olive skin glow. Even at a distance she’s fucking beautiful.
