Walking back on the beach toward Iorgo’s, Emma practiced saying the word guitar, repeating it again and again all the way there. Just like a fugitive in a detective story, who needed to erase any trace of his past before getting caught, it was imperative to get rid of any trace of accent for her transformation to be complete. The visit to the boys’ house, the way she’d felt at ease with their parents, understanding every word of their conversation, had made her extremely proud of herself and excited. She had stepped through a curtain into another realm, a wide, mysterious landscape that she had only begun to explore.
Her father, Luca and Monica were already sitting at their usual table under the string of tiny lightbulbs with Mirella next to her father wearing a blank canvas face and absent smile.
“Papà said we didn’t have to wait for you. We ordered our food already,” Monica said emphatically, as if this were some kind of privilege their father had just bestowed on her and Luca.
“Emma, just go and order your food in the kitchen,” her father said.
“I’m having a cheese omelette,” Emma announced when she came back.
“They don’t make omelettes for dinner,” Monica objected.
“Maria is making me one especially. I’m tired of eating Greek salad and meatballs.” After her tea and Marmite toast experience she felt her food choices should be more idiosyncratic.
“You are such a snob,” Luca said.
“Shut up and mind your own business,” she snapped back.
“Why are you saying that, Luca?” the father asked.
“Emma thinks the Greeks are all peasants.” Luca had acquired a dense cluster of blackheads on his nose. At times Emma felt she could never love her brother again because of them.
“That’s ridiculous, Luca. Don’t make assumptions about what other people think.” The father sounded annoyed.
“She thinks she is so—”
“Stop it, I said.”
The father was beginning to grow impatient with them. It had been more than a whole year now of taking nonstop care of them and of an empty bed at night. He was beginning to think he too had a right to his share of happiness. Although Mirella was not the answer—he wasn’t even attracted to her—he was beginning to appreciate her tenaciousness. Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night, during the hours when dreams and insomnia merge into a spiral of gloom and paranoia, he worried his children might end up growing into indifferent, self-centered adolescents, and he realized he had no idea how to prevent this from happening. The exteriors of their bodies were changing so rapidly—every day another bulge, a new ripeness—and soon he wouldn’t be able to look at his daughters in their underwear. How could he foresee what was to happen underneath the surface? But more than that, who—now that their mother was gone—was going to help him shape or straighten their personalities in the event they veered in the wrong direction? What if the terrible accident had forever frozen them? And what if he ended up disliking them, once they would be set in their ways? What did he need to do or learn to raise emotionally sound children, who would turn into generous, independent and confident adults? In the morning these fears dissolved and his children went back to looking like lovely normal kids. He felt guilty and blamed his angst on difficult digestion, knowing, however, that those thoughts would be waiting for him until he found some answers.
Mirella had been waiting for the tension to dissolve. When she thought it had cleared, she recited the lines she’d been preparing all evening.
“I was thinking we could all go on a little trip tomorrow and visit the ancient amphitheater in Epidaurus.” She looked at the children expectantly. It felt as if this idea was part of a bigger plan that involved doing things all together—as if she were now part of the family.
Monica and Luca exchanged a look and remained silent.
“Would you like to do that, children?” she added, perhaps a bit too loudly.
Monica and Luca turned to Emma, but she kept looking at her plate.
“Mirella has asked you a question,” the father prompted them.
They kept a stubborn silence.
The father raised his voice.
“I said answer the question!”
“It’s all right, leave it … if they don’t feel like—” Mirella reached for his arm but he shook her hand away.
The kids stared at the father, mute. Emma felt his fury, like a heat wave slapping her face. It was the first time he was siding with a stranger, on the opposite side, leaving them alone.
Iorgo appeared at the table with their dinner. There was more silence while each one of them got their plate. Then the father turned to Mirella.
“Then the two of us will go. They can stay behind. I’m happier that way.”
And almost before he had finished that sentence Monica started crying.
“Stop it,” her father snapped.
It was incredible, Emma thought, how she could turn her tears on without warning, just like opening a faucet.
“Monica, you can get up from the table if you are going to behave like this,” he said.
She left the table, sniffing. This was pretty bad; he had never been this angry with them. Luca looked at Emma, searching for her complicity, but she was hating him now and wouldn’t give in. Mirella motioned as if to go after Monica, but the father pinned her wrist down to the table.
“Nobody moves,” he said. “Just eat your dinner.”
So they did, and nobody said another word.
The father and Mirella left early the next morning and the kids took the first solo breakfast of their life. They were euphoric: they drank coffee instead of tea, had cake instead of bread and butter and forgot entirely the previous night’s drama. They couldn’t wait for lunch to come to repeat the experience: playing the capable and independent orphans, traveling and dining out on their own. Emma for a moment thought it was uncanny, this sudden desire she had to see both of their parents dead and out of their lives.
“What should we do now?” Monica asked, eagerly.
“You do whatever you want. I’m going to go swimming in a little while,” Luca said, looking around for a sign of Nadia, although she never emerged before eleven.
“You can read a book on the beach. Get your towel and go over there,” Emma told her, slipping away from the table. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No, you stay here.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You are going to be fine. Just stay here and read until I come back.”
Monica gave her a sullen look, but Emma didn’t relent.
“If you need anything just go into the kitchen and ask Maria, okay?”
When Emma turned around she saw that Luca had left as well and Monica was sitting alone, elbows on the table, holding her round face between her hands. Luca had Nadia, their father had Mirella, and Emma had the English boy as a distraction to cling to. But Monica was still too much of a child to be interested in anybody outside her own family. Emma knew her little sister was probably on the verge of tears again and she felt a pang of guilt for leaving her behind. But she didn’t turn back. She had only a few hours of freedom and knew she needed to take advantage of them.