Racing the Sun(68)
We walk back down the rest of Mount Solaro, hand in hand, and I don’t know the last time I’ve felt so damn free and so damn happy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When July slides into August, like a hot greasy egg sliding off a frying pan, Capri becomes its most unbearable. No matter where you go, you run into people. People on the Via Tragara, people in the Piazzetta, people on the funicular, on the streets, down the private lanes, on the beaches, on the cliffs, on every square inch of the sea. There are German tourists, Swedish tourists, American tourists, Australian tourists, and yes, a lot of Italian tourists. Everyone comes to the island, if not for a day then for a few until the crowds begin to get to them, too. The color of the water loses its appeal, the dry climate and lavender-scented air become cloying, the food loses flavor and remains overpriced.
And then there’s the heat. Some days, it’s like the sea isn’t working at all, like the air is all jammed up in an invisible dam somewhere out there on the hazy horizon, and you’re breathing through a furnace. It’s dry, people will tell you, as if that makes a difference, but it’s still hot as hell and even the most powerful fans can’t break it up. Even a villa like the Limoni Tristi, in its lavishness, doesn’t have air-conditioning.
For the weeks that Capri becomes a living hell for those who live here, I create a routine. Alfonso and Annabella are out of school now as Italy prepares for August, the month where the whole country seems to go on holiday, so they inevitably become a part of it. Thankfully, the heat makes them agreeable to hanging around the house and not going anywhere, even if they are a bit cranky.
In the mornings, after breakfast and before it gets too hot, I start doing my home improvement projects around the house. Most of the time I can enlist the kids to help if I promise they can go swimming later on. The pool is now filled with chlorinated water, something I begged Derio to do. Then came the fountain at the side of the house, freshly painted bright white, the power-washing of the bricks and tiles, the cleaning of all the outdoor furniture, and the pruning of the trees and plants. I also gathered enough lemons, limes, and pomelos to bake fruit cakes for every day of the year.
Derio helped for a lot of it—I’m not the most graceful with a power-washer hose—but now that I know what he was doing in that library, how it was almost a grieving ritual for him, I encouraged him to go back to editing or whatever else he needed to do.
Today, I’m replanting a few rosemary bushes so they’re in soil with better drainage. Their browning leaves tell me they’re one step away from root rot, thanks to my zealous overwatering when I first arrived here. I’ve picked out the dead weeds and flowers that were in a row bordering the side of the bricks stairs leading from the pool toward the house, and stuck the rosemary bushes in there. It would be a shame to lose them—I’ve been throwing fresh sprigs of rosemary into everything I cook these days.
Which is turning out to be a lot. Derio surprised me one evening by bringing over a chef from one of the finer local hotel’s restaurants to give us private cooking lessons. I guess I should have been insulted but Derio wanted to learn a few things, too, other than the basics that most Italian boys know. The chef, Signora Bagglia, was a plump but pleasant woman with a big smile and sparkling eyes. She coaxed us through roast chicken with olives, puttanesca sauce, fresh linguini, and, yes, the infamous tiramisu. The twins watched the whole thing with big eyes, cracking the eggs whenever the moment called for it.
After that I took to buying cookbooks. I wanted the Italian versions because then I knew I was getting the real deal, and even though I couldn’t read the directions properly at first, I started to get the hang of it and the language came easier to me. Of course, there was that one time I substituted frutti di mare for frutti di bosco. Let’s just say I should have trusted my instincts when I thought it was weird to put shrimp in a fruit pie.
“Buongiorno,” Derio says to me, walking down the steps.
I stand up, wiping the dirt off my shorts. I know I look an absolute mess—no makeup; hair frizzing in all directions for miles; red, sweaty face; hands covered in dirt. But Derio stares at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“Buongiorno,” I greet him. He leans in for a kiss—it’s become second nature now—then stops himself when he notices the twins sitting by the pool with their legs splashing in the water, just dying for me to finish up and give them the go-ahead.
I look over my shoulder at them and shrug. “I think they’re starting to figure it out.”
We’ve been careful about showing our affection for each other around them but not too careful. We’re very physical, especially Derio, who is always touching me every chance he gets, like his skin is addicted to mine, but we haven’t been kissing. We don’t even stay the night in each other’s beds yet.