Page 67 of I Think Olive You

“I do too. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to go.” Soft, devastating.

Letting go of my bag, I drop down so I’m closer to her level, and stare her straight in the eye.

“I know. I don’t want to go either but I have to. Take care of your sister, okay? I’m trusting you to do that.”

She nods, solemn, and throws her arms around my neck. I squeeze her for a second, this little sister I never really got the chance to have.

“Stammi bene, Chiara.”

Dropping her hold on me, Chiara’s face is so full of sadness I can’t stand it anymore. It’s time to go.

Somehow, I keep it together. I strap the bag to the back of the Vespa and tear down the dirt road. My phone gives me directions through my headphones and Puglia blurs past me as I drive, no thoughts, no feelings. Nothing for hours.

I leave the Vespa outside the airport, free for whoever wants to take it, and I don’t even spare a moment for the memory of Giuliana and that bike. With a flight booked I sit in the airport lounge with a drink I know will only be the first of many. Time ticks by. My phone vibrates in my pocket until I turn it off.

They call my gate and I make it to my seat. First class this time. For what may very well be the last. I order another drink and am barely aware of the burn of it down my gullet. Hours fade away between little bottles of liquor and the flickering screen of a movie I don’t even watch.

It’s not until the wheels touch down in New York, my body lurching with the rough landing, that I realize why I’m so calm. It’s not because I’m drunk off my ass. I’ve been there plenty and still struggled. Now, my chest and mind are empty, no space for guilt or self-hatred or love. Just a disgusting apathy like the beige walls of the waiting room of a doctor’s office. It’s a vacuum of space, years-old magazines on the corner table and a water cooler that’s near-empty with no cups to go along with it.

I’m not in my body. It’s not mine anymore. My heart beats, my lungs stretch with breaths in and out. I step between a crush of people and turn my phone back on, pressing the only number I can think of and it rings twice before a voice answers.

“Hey mom, can you come pick me up? I’m at JFK, international arrivals, terminal 4.”

“Of course. I’ll send my driver right away. Just hold on.” Her voice is pitched at the edges, like she’s worried. Did I say it wrong? Or was it just the fact that I never pick up let alone call. Hearing from me at all constitutes an emergency. She hangs up soon after and I wait again, the passage of time something I’ve come to accept as inevitable but barely feel at all. This will be my life from now on. Every tick of a watch.

I don’t care anymore. Not when it means I’ll never see her again, not when all they are is one click closer to being done with it.

There’s no panic, no anxiety, no tears. My body holds no anger.

I slide into the backseat of the town car my mom sent for me and watch again as New York moves by me in stops and starts. Blaring horns and police sirens. The shadows of buildings defying gravity block out the sun and I rest my head against the back of the seat, shutting my eyes.

It’s all gone and there's no room for anything else. Not with the giant maw of darkness that’s opened up inside of me. It swallows me whole, deafens me, and silences all my worries and thoughts. Loss. There’s no point in any other emotion when loss this profound has taken residence in my body and I know now why that voice inside has stilled.

I have a new companion—one I’ve evaded for a year and finally caught up with. A new “friend.”

Grief.

“You have to talk to me at some point. Alan keeps calling.” Staring out at the city and seeing none of it, my mother’s voice breaks through the near-meditative trance I’ve been sitting in. “He knows you’re back and he’s insisting you come to the office.”

Nothing new. Alan’s always insisting on something. I remember our bargain and the promise I made to come hand it all over to him, but I can’t get my body to move. It’s so heavy. The fog of being back here the last few days feels like cinder blocks dragging me down feet first.

“Matt… talk to me. I’ve never seen you like this. What happened in Italy?”

She sits beside me on the couch and rests her hand on my knee, long, manicured nails against the simple fabric of my pants. Genevieve Palmer has always been so elegant. I look at her then, taking in the fine lines beside her mouth and eyes, the start of age that she’s fought so hard to combat. Her blue eyes were ones I’d wished for as a kid.

My brown hair and eyes always seemed so dull, especially with a mother like her. Blazing blue, like a flame so hot it’s cold. Her hair gleams chestnut, thick and straight, not a gray in sight with volume that landed her plenty of hair commercials. I know a lot of it comes from salons but still, I’ve never looked much like my mother. Thomas Palmer put his stamp on me and there was little leeway for anyone else’s genes.

Floor to ceiling windows stretch throughout her living room, the corner delineating two opposing views. Central Park is on one side, the impossible reach of Manhattan’s skyscrapers on the other. Halfway between the ground and the clouds, we sit suspended. Am I the only one that doesn’t like being this high up? Everyone around me seems to relish being part of the sky and all I want is to sink my hands into the earth again.

“It’s been days. If you won’t talk to me then at least…” She takes a deep breath, handing me a business card.

“I made an appointment for you to see someone. I’ll keep Alan off your back for as long as I can but, Matt... it can’t go on like this.”

My mother rises from her perch on the sofa, the warmth of her hand gone.

“Your appointment is in an hour. The driver knows and will be waiting for you downstairs. Please go.”

---