Page 80 of The Moon & His Tides
18
SEBASTIAN
Being home in Naples was both incredible and oddly dissatisfying. There was no denying I adored my mother, and I wasn’t afraid to make it known. When she braved traffic to pick me up in Naples with Elena, I’d lifted her and spun her around like we hadn’t seen each other in years instead of only a handful of months. The scent of semolina and rosemary that always perfumed her hair was the first sign I washome. She’d laughed in delight and patted my cheek before planting two smacking kisses on either one.
“Ragazzo mio,” she spoke around her gorgeous smile. “You’re home.”
When I’d turned to Elena, she was watching us with bright eyes she immediately averted so I wouldn’t catch her being sappy. My eldest sister prided herself on being above emotion, too intellectually minded to give into the dramatics of the rest of our family.
But what were little brothers for if not to embarrass their sisters?
I tackle-hugged her, gripping her around the middle and hauling her into the air. She slapped at my head as she protested, but there was a smile in her tone, and when I placed her on her feet, her gaze was reluctantly fond.
“Patatino,” she said, referring to me by my childhood nickname of “little potato” because I’d been born with a misshapen head. “It’s good to see you.”
I rolled my eyes at her formality and kissed her temple, wrapping each arm around both of my girls as we walked out of the airport, my duffel slung over my back. The cacophony of Italian voices raised to call out to each other throughout the terminal settled something in my chest I hadn’t even realized was restless. It was good to hear the language of my home and its people. England made me realize how many little cultural differences there were, especially now that I lived with the Meyerses. I loved learning about new customs, but it felt decidedly good not to be a foreigner for a little while.
I listened happily to Elena tell me about finishing her online undergraduate program and applications to law schools in the United States, to Mama moan about working under Eduardo in the restaurant she’d been sous chef at since we were young, and watched the landscape swirl by outside the window.
Our little house, old and too small for a family of five but too spacious somehow with only Mama and Elena living there, was exactly the same as I’d left it. The ancient piano Elena played more beautifully than anyone had the right to do on such an instrument. The bedroom I’d shared with my twin sister complete with our meager collection of books, mostly castoff textbooks from Seamus’s university courses and my prized poster ofLa Baia I Napolisigned by Sofia Loren herself, and the painting Giselle had done ofla Gialabeach we frequented almost every day of the summer as kids. My few friends in town had nothing new to report except a change in girlfriends.Everything else was the same, besides the absence of Giselle and Cosima.
I missed them.
Elena had never been the warmest or kindest of my sisters, her desire formoresometimes making her angry and bitter, but I spent as much time with her as she would allow.
“I’m not Cosima,” she snapped at me when we were having espresso in the kitchen one morning and I put my arm around her for a sideways hug. “I don’t need you suffocating me.”
I arched an eyebrow at her, unconsciously channelling Adam.
She scowled at me and then into her coffee.
“What’s up, Lady?” I asked patiently because she only lashed out when she was hurting.
The nickname was one I’d conjured years ago because Elena always acted like a lady, upper-class and haughty even when she was a child. It occurred to me that the two most aristocratic women I knew, Savannah and my eldest sister, had come from nothing.
I watched as she bit her lip, then jutted her chin out stubbornly before lifting flashing eyes at me. “You can’t just come home and act like nothing has changed. You and Cosima just…leftme here.”
Anger curled like smoke in my gut. “You told Seamus and Cosima that deal to model in Milan was too good to pass up, even when Cosi said she didn’t want to leave the family! We left you to make money to get you––all of you––out of here.”
She scoffed. “You left to pursue your dreams of stardom. Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“I don’t have to,” I argued, dropping my espresso cup onto the saucer with a clatter. “Do you think Cosi and I wanted to be separated? Do you think I feel good knowing I’ve left my mother and sister in this hellhole with fucking mafiosos circling alwaysjust waiting for an in? Do you think I don’t lie awake at night worrying if you’re okay? Mama and Gigi and Cosima, too?”
She tossed her dark red hair over her shoulder and glared at the middle distance over my shoulder. For someone in her early twenties, my sister looked years older. Worn and tragic like an old oil painting left too long neglected in a dusty attic. “Don’t act like living in London and getting a paycheck is such a bad thing.”
“Elena,” I snapped, furious with her for being so brittle and with myself for letting her get a rise out of me. Cosima was the one who always mediated our disputes and the one who reminded me that our eldest sister only ever lashed out when she struggled with her emotions. “I have a new job with better hours and better pay, but until recently, I worked seven days a week as a driver on top of starring in a production at Finborough. I shared a one-bedroom flat with five different blokes. If you think that’s paradise, you’re mistaken.”
I hadn’t planned to tell her about Savannah and Adam, anyway, but sitting across from her at that moment, I ached to have the kind of relationship where I could confide in her. But it felt impossible to imagine her doing anything other than judging me for being a live-in lover. She’d call me a sellout, aputtano, a morally corrupt stain on our family.
I’d heard her say similar things to Giselle, and our sister had only had the misfortune of being pretty enough to attract unwanted lascivious attention in town.
Elena crossed her arms defensively. “If you were working that hard, we’d be living in the United States already.”
“Why are you being so ungrateful?” I asked her, frustration and disappointment curdling the affection I had for her in my gut. “I’m not saying you owe me anything, but I don’t understand this hostility, Lena. I’m your brother,porca miseria. I’m trying to do what’s best for all of us.”
Her laugh was hollow as she pushed out of her chair with a loud scraping screech and stalked out of the room, throwing over her shoulder, “If that was true, I wouldn’t still be here.”
Later, when I’d asked Mama about it, she’d just sighed loudly and shrugged. “Elena is a complicated woman. It is not possible to know her when she refuses to know herself.”
