To Valentina
I’m sorry for this morning, for the fact that I was still in bed when we heard from you, your voice was tinny and small and fearful and we were still asleep. The car crash. 4 am. You driving home on the long road from Urbisaglia to pick up your luggage, to meet us in Macerata. We still had the drive to Rome ahead of us and then a flight to New York City and then, finally, Indianapolis. Then came that phone call. Your father sent us photos of the two cars entangled, the mess of metal and plastic. The lights still on, blinking. For some reason I knew that this trip would be different. I’d heard little signs along the way and chosen not to listen. The earthquake on Monday, a broken key chain last Friday, someone asking me in all seriousness if I was superstitious. I laughed at it and answered that I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. I was just reading the sky and the falling leaves and the way the earth writes us messages, drops us notes to catch if we can, to hold onto. At least that’s what I can tell you now. Now that we’ve left you behind.
When you called from the hospital we came to get you. You in the hospital hallway, dimly lit. I reached out and held your hand and you said finally, a face! Finally you. Your hollow voice, breathless and low. The way your fingers squeezed my own. You said I’m sorry zia, I’m sorry Aunt Jackie, as if this was your fault which it wasn’t and you wanted to come anyway but your foot and your back and the police who still needed to talk to you, to see what went wrong, and your crown of curly hair puffed against my shoulder, deep breaths, quiet and still. And Antonello came and hugged you and we all stood there, unsure about what lay ahead, in the grime of dirty hospital lights that glowed like church windows, like amber halos, like maybe the moment was sacred all at once.
I’m sorry that we left you there. You cried when we left. I cried too. I’m sorry for the way the sky looked splendid when we drove away from the hospital, when we took Via Roma to the surrounding towns, all of that pink, that tangerine, speckled as if the clouds that filled the whole sky were the Adriatic Sea, foam and curls of dimpled waves and we were upside down and the patches of light were the shore, some shore, some distant shore — a shore we will not see together today, no matter what. I’m sorry that the whole drive is foggy, through blankets of it, shrouded with towers peeking out — castles and hill towns that sit fairytale-like in the mist of Thursday morning, valleys of Umbria and Lazio until we get to Rome. Impenetrable, these wild fields, so that all you see is cloud and fog and haze and the cars ahead. This could be the Midwest already, corn and soybeans and braids of crops, not the Tiber Valley and ancient Roman countryside. I’m sorry that even this you are not here for. Even this morning drive.
I will write these words in Italian one day, a letter from an airplane, from a car, from the customs desk in New York City in the middle of JFK, or maybe we’ll write it together when this trip across the Atlantic really happens, the two of us like we’d planned, from Rome to New York to Indianapolis so you can see where I grew up — so I can share it with you. When we scrunch up and sleep in tight spaces, with the blue glow of the long airplane aisles that curve above us like whale ribs, like we are swallowed up inside. Even when we fly over the long grid of America at night and back to my childhood home, I will miss it with you. Like the way we miss it with the people we love who aren’t here, who cannot be here anymore, but who might see us, from a distance, like something floating further up, above us. Like it feels no matter what, from this seat in 53D, the pit of your stomach, the softness in your voice, whenever you are a continent away.
And when Antonello and I fly out of JFK later without you, when we leave, fly into the night, the moon will be low on the other side of the world. Fingernail shaped. Red as a chili pepper. Maybe you will see it too from your window, in Italy. From up here the boats will skim the water like stars. Every rounded window on our small jet will hold Manhattan in its blinking eye, pressed against it, just so. It is what I wanted to show you, Valentina. This and so much more. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can say it enough.
Jacqueline Goyette is a writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in both print and online journals, including JMWW, Heimat Review, The Citron Review, Eunoia Review, and Cutbow Quarterly. She currently lives in Macerata, Italy with her husband Antonello and her cat Cardamom.
