Page 49 of I Think Olive You
Yeah, but I’d hoped for later. Much later. So much later I’d be gone and I wouldn’t have to face Giuliana and my lies.
I pull on a pair of loose shorts and a t-shirt, my bare feet cool against the stone floors. They slap as I jog down the stairs, eager to get into this conversation.
The countertop is littered with flour, olive oil, tomatoes and fresh herbs, among other ingredients. On the stove something else bubbles away. Isabella glances up from what she’s doing and we both look over at the stack of papers. The plans wait and hidden between yellowing sheets—the photograph.
“You know. You know who I am.”
Her lips thin into a line, her face pulling down into unhappy wrinkles.
“It wasn’t difficult to recognize you. You walk around with his name and his face. No measure of time is enough to erase him from this land and its memory.”
“What happened? I… I came here?—”
Isabella huffs a sigh, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She looks tired, weary in a way I haven’t noticed. Is the stress of the harvest getting to her too? Where has Giuliana been and has Isabella had to pick up the slack in her absence?
“I know why you came. You lied. You are not the volunteer Giuliana was expecting.”
She lets the words hang there for a second and when I don’t deny it, she quirks a brow and carries on.
“I kept waiting for you to tell the truth, to open yourself up to us but it seems you never planned to. My granddaughter is working her hands to the bone and trying to run from her heart, and you stand here and lie to me. Be honest, Lorenzo is dead and now you came to take.” She spits the last word like a curse and I lift my hand to stop her, to calm her like I would a wild animal.
“No.”
She scoffs, sucking her teeth at me with a dismissive gesture thrown in for good measure.
“Maybe at first. But not now. I didn’t know what I was going to find. I didn’t even know it was an olive grove. My father’s lawyer told me it was some kind of farm and I needed to come here and?—”
“And take,” she reiterates, and I nod.
“But I met her in Gravina and I didn’t know who she was—only that she knocked me right off my feet and onto my ass.”
My statement is met with a dry chuckle and Isabella sprinkles flour on the counter as I talk.
“I’m giving it to her. All of it. It’s not mine and it’s never been mine. The land belongs to her. It’s in her blood.”
Isabella sighs. Another pot beside her boils, steam swirling and her exhalation interrupts the cloud of heat. “Even if you tried to take it, she won’t let you. I would leave, and go back to Gravina and my shop if we lost the grove. But Giuliana… testarda. Stubborn.” She emphasizes it with a flick of her wrist.
“I’m not taking it. That might have been the plan at first but I know her.” I care about her. “I can’t hurt her like that.”
“So, you hurt her with lies instead?”
“It’s too late for that. It was never going to end happily for me. She doesn’t need to know. I’ll leave after the harvest and the grove will belong to her. I’ll be nothing more than a summer distraction.”
“Idiota.”
“Yeah, what else is new? But I also came here for answers.” I head over to the table and rummage through the sheets of paper to grab the photograph again. It shakes in my grasp as I walk it over to Isabella, to show her what I’ve found.
She wipes her hands on the apron tied around her waist, flour sticking to the fabric in stripes. Taking the photo from me her face changes incrementally, softening, fingertips caressing Lorenzo’s face. She does the same thing I did, turning it over to read the inscription on the back.
“I know nothing of my father’s life before he came to New York. He all but erased himself. Changed his name. It was as if Tommaso de Palma was a demon he had to exorcize. Why? Why did he leave? He looks so happy in that picture.”
It takes her a second to turn her focus from the photograph of her deceased son to my questions.
“They did everything together. High school friends. Your father grew up in a lonely home in Gravina. Your nonno was often away on business and Tommaso had no siblings. Lorenzo struggled at school, better with his hands than with the books. They balanced each other. Tommaso helped Lorenzo with studying and Lorenzo brought him to my shop after school. During holidays he came here to the grove.”
I imagine my father, or more accurately myself at that age, trying to figure life out on my own. Isabella turns the heat off of one of the pots on the stove, the roiling water stilling after a minute or so.
“When my husband died a few years after they graduated, Lorenzo had to take over. He struggled. Tommaso stepped in, offered him a loan but Lorenzo refused. Tommaso called it an investment instead. They lived at the old farmhouse. They worked the land. It took a long time for the yield to come but they were so happy when it did.”