A Semester Abroad (31 page)

“Michelle,
vieni
.” We heard from the dining room.

“You better go before Lisa gets up.”

“You better hurry and get ready before Duccio does.”

One of my most favorite places in Italy was driving in an Italian’s car. I loved the feeling of being taking somewhere, the idea that my fate lay in the hands of a friend in the know. That day I wished that we would never get there, that I could always be anticipating what was to come.

Duccio smoked and sang along with the radio. “
È bella, no
?” he asked about every song. Michelle rested her hand on his thigh, her other hand was out the window, making waves in the wind.

We drove out into the countryside to where Allesandro, Duccio’s friend, was waiting for us.

“Could he be any hotter?” Michelle said. “You should hook it up, jump on
that
horse, G-dog.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t think about any more Italian men.

Everyone had ridden horses before except me. There was a giant white monster of a horse waiting for me to mount him.

“No way,” I said. I look at Duccio and Allesandro. “
Non posso. Mi dispiace
.”

“He good,” Allesandro said, trying to calm me with broken English. “He no jump.”

“He is too big,” I said in Italian. “And I don’t want to die today.”

Allesandro cocked his head at me. Then he bent to offer me his hand to put my foot on. I didn’t want to go, but Michelle and Duccio were encouraging me with shouts of
dai.
This was my fate. I put my foot on his hand and got on top of the horse in the most ungraceful way possible.

“
Brava
,” shouted Duccio, stubbing out his cigarette and hopping on the horse, like it was his
vespa
.

When everyone was saddled up, Allesandro and Duccio galloped into the trees, racing each other. I looked at Michelle, horrified.

“We’ll just go for like a trail ride, G. It’ll be okay. Just give him a little kick.”

“A little kick? Why? So when he throws me off, he can give me a little kick?”

“C’mon, just a little one,” Michelle gave her horse a kick, and she was beside me immediately. “Hold the reins like this. C’mon. We’ll just walk.”

She moved her horse in front of me on my white monster. Michelle whistled at the white monster and I touched it a little with my foot. Surprisingly, it began to move. I was holding my breath. My hands were tight on the reigns.

“Relax, relax, you’re doing great,” Michelle kept saying. She was glancing back at me and smiling encouragingly. Finally, I started to relax a little. I kept my back as straight as I could; I relaxed my grip on the reigns and followed Michelle. Michelle kept chatting away. She was trying to calm me down, and I appreciated the effort.

“So when are you guys going on your trip?”

“In a few weeks. After the picking of the
contrade
for the Palio.” We were sticking around until the neighborhoods that would run in the race were decided.

“That’s soon.”

“Tell me about it. Did you book your flight home yet,” I asked.

“Um, no.”

“Are you gonna?’

“I’m staying the summer. I’m renting an apartment in Lucy’s building. I’m not ready to go yet.”

“Wow!” I said. I was really envious.

“I know, pretty crazy, huh? I just think it’s something I want to do.”

“It’s something we all want to do.”

“Well, why don’t you stay, too?” she asked.

“I barely have enough money for how long I’m staying.”

“Do you guys want to stay with me for the Palio?”

“Michelle, that would be fucking awesome,” I said, smiling. Staying with Michelle was the perfect plan. I couldn’t wait to tell Olivia. That would mean I might have more money for traveling later.

“That would be cool.”

“I know. I hook you up. C’mon let’s trot.” She gave her horse a kick, and then she and her horse were off. My white beast took off, too. We went through the green trees along the dirt path. I let out a surprised scream. I was scared but somehow laughing. I was high off the ground on an animal, a so-called domesticated animal, but an animal nonetheless. Suddenly, the horse stopped trotting. I didn’t want to kick it again; I wanted to let it be. It walked along the path. I was glad Michelle has gotten far ahead of me. I realized I was smiling, slightly terrified with my body tensed, but smiling. I felt silly bouncing up and down on this horse with a stupid grin on my face.

There were birds chirping and the air smelled clean. It was spring in the air and summer on the way. I had my whole life ahead of me. More specifically, I had a European tour and all the unknowns that would happen on the trip. But now I knew no matter what, I could return to the city for the Palio.

I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I felt completely opposite from the way I did before. Not alone but surrounded by the possibility of the world.

“Gabriella,” Michelle called from somewhere beyond. “
Vieni
.”

“
Arrivo
!” I gave the horse a gentle nudge with my feet, and he complied, taking me off to meet my friends, to where they were waiting for me in a place I could not yet see.

Gaetano’s game just finished when we arrived at the stadium. His team won. He and Duccio kissed each other hello. Gaetano spoke in rapid Italian about his game strategy. He was breathing deeply. He looked at me and winked.

“
Mi segui
?” he asked, wondering if I could follow his speedy descriptions, and I nodded, smiling. “
Brava.
”

Gaetano had to shower, and Duccio went back to the locker room with him, to talk to some of the other guys on the team. Michelle and I plopped down on the grass and waited for them.

“You’re going to have a great summer,” I said. My palms and elbows were on the ground, head back in the breeze, face turned to the sun. “You can feel it already.”

“I know. I can’t wait to move into the new place. I’m going to do it sooner rather than later. As soon as I get my papers and speech done.” She was lying on her side, with her cheek in her hand.

“Have you told Janine yet?”

“No.”

“You gonna?” I pulled my neck up to look at her while she answered.

“Guess I have to.”

“I thought you guys were best friends,” I said after a time.

“It’s funny, I thought I knew her pretty well, but I didn’t. I mean, maybe she thought she knew me, but I changed, you know.”

“I think we all have,” I said.

“I got caught up in her excitement about this trip. And I’ll never regret that. If I wasn’t here I wouldn’t know Duccio. I wouldn’t know you or Gaetano. You know I wouldn’t be able to speak a whole other language. But I feel like she is so different from who I thought she was.”

“Yeah, she’s lost her glow or something. I think I’d have liked her better if I didn’t have to live with her. If I didn’t have to see all the cracks.”

“There are a lot of cracks.” She laughed and waited a minute before adding, “We all got these microscopic views of each other.”

“Yeah, and some of us have been improved by it and some of us haven’t.” I took a breath. There was something I wanted to know. It was now or never. “Were you the food thief?”

Michelle shook her head and held up her hand, like a witness on the stand. “I swear I only binged on my own foods.”

I laughed a bit uncomfortably. I wasn’t going to ask her about it, but if she wanted to tell me I would listen. She laid her arm flat on the grass and put her face on it. “It’s okay. I know it’s a problem. I thought I had it under control. I’m trying. I’m trying to find a different way.”

“Aren’t we all?” I asked

“What’s your different way, G-dog?”

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “I guess there are a lot of ways to torment yourself.”

Michelle laughed. “Sometimes I think you think too much. There’s something you don’t say that keeps you down.”

“I think you’re right. I should be more sensuous.” I slid the word
sensuous
around my mouth in an Italian accent that made Michelle hoot with laughter. Maybe I had deflected talking about my shit and her shit once again, but it felt good to not be so heavy for once.

Later, we met a bunch of Gaetano’s teammates at a bar nearby. We all sat at a big table outside. Gaetano’s teammates teased that they wanted to sit between Michelle and me, but I wound up between Michelle and Gaetano. Gaetano ordered a
birroza
, a giant beer. I never heard that word before, but I liked it. I was still learning, only just getting the hang of it.

At the table, I got lost in the conversations and realized I hadn’t been paying attention to Gaetano. He was talking to his friend across the table. I overheard the friend’s question.

“Is that your girl?”

“Yeah.” He glanced at me. I met his eyes, and he didn’t look away.

“What did he say?” I asked when the friend wasn’t paying attention. He shrugged, and we smiled at each other.

I was still wasn’t sure about anything, but that day it didn’t feel like I had to be.

Michelle and I pulled another all-nighter to work on our papers. These were the papers that were about the subjects we were supposed to be taking classes for. Luckily, one of the classes was Italian culture and that was a broad topic. We had no real guidelines for these papers. I thought that Arturo was just testing us to see what we could come up with.

We were both using English books about Italy and paraphrasing shamelessly. Michelle was doing her paper on the Palio and was doing elaborate drawings of all of the neighborhood flags. Duccio was trying to convince her to make the flag of his
contrade
, the biggest. She did take extra care over that one.

“So are you and Gaetano hitting it yet?” Michelle asked out of the blue on the way back from the bakery at 4
A
.
M
.

“You’re getting punchy, missy.”

“It just seems like you guys are a little bit different lately.”

“Remember, I’m trying not to think so much. Honestly, I don’t know. We kind of kissed last week at the party.” I hadn’t admitted that to anyone.

“Oh, really.” Michelle said, cocking her eyebrow.

“Yeah, it’s weird. Well actually it
was
weird and now it hasn’t been weird. I thought he would be, like, all over me. I thought I totally fucked up the friendship I was working toward, but you know, he hasn’t tried anything. He’s been the same. It’s like he’s giving me time to figure it out.”

“He’s awesome. He’s so in love with you.”

“I know. I mean, I feel like he really cares for me. He gives me space, though. It’s so nice.”

“Nice, Gabriella. Because he’s pretty effing hot.”

“Yeah, I don’t know where it’s going. I’m just going to let it go.”

“Nice, Gabriella,” Michelle said and held out the bag for me to rip off another piece of bread.

The next night, Gaetano came over after a soccer game. This time I was working on my speech, so I didn’t really look at him when I let him in. I was planning to read it to him one more time. He stopped in the middle of the dining room.

“Gabi,” he said. I finally looked at him. His lip was completely swollen.

“Oh, shit,” I said in English. “What happened?”

He told me a long and detailed story of the other team’s unsportsmanlike conduct and how it warranted several members of his team getting rough on the field. He got an elbow to the lip in all the confusion.

“I can’t believe this,” I said. I sat him on the arm of the chair in the dining room, the chair he slept in. Of course we didn’t have an icemaker because it seemed that no one in Italy used ice, but I found a bottle of white wine in the fridge, which I held against his face. “You are crazy.”

“Do you know what the worst part is?” he asked.

“What?”

“When I saw that it was bleeding I thought, If Gabriella decides to kiss me again, I won’t be able to.”

I pulled the bottle of wine away from his face and looked at him. “If?”

“It’s whatever you want,
bella
, however you want. I’m not asking for anything. But you know that I love you.”

I walked over to the dining room door and locked it. I started to kiss him, being careful not to press too hard against his mouth. His hands move around on me, finding the places I wanted him to find. Second base at last. He wasn’t as persistent as the last time. I had the feeling that I was in control. He began to speak as I unbuttoned his shirt, teaching me again. This time I learned words I didn’t know.

“
Si, si,”
he said
. “Spolgia mi.”

And we were on the floor, on his black jacket. My legs were bare against the silken inside of it, the smell of leather mixing with his strong cologne. He used his hands where he couldn’t use his mouth.

But before things really progressed, we heard something. It was Michelle trying to get in. We saw her through the frosty glass of the dining room door.

“Hey,” she said, surprised, not getting it at first, but then when she heard my voice, she said, “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” I said, arranging my clothes and checking to see that Gaetano was okay before I opened the door. “We shouldn’t be doing this here, anyway.”