Page 8 of The Summer You Were Mine
Graziella was a goddess—the same kind of radiant as always.
She stood in the garden at the entrance to Simone’s house, in the middle of the pygmy palms, nopal cacti, roses, and lemon trees.
Her thin, tanned arms were outstretched in a greeting from under her white-and-orange cotton tunic, and the Riviera sun shone down on her shoulder-length silver hair.
She smiled from under an enormous pair of sunglasses—still wearing her trademark diamond solitaire necklace, espadrille wedges, and pearly white nail polish.
If Ellie looked that good in another forty-something years, it would be a miracle.
With her current anxiety level, she’d have the beginnings of three more crow’s feet by dinnertime.
Being around her parents on any normal occasion usually required every ounce of patience she could muster. The twelve-hour, two-layover siege she’d just been through with two sixty-something-year-old teenagers on the verge of divorce was enough to flambé an adrenal gland.
Her parents flew from LAX into Newark, and she met them in the international terminal for their flight to Toronto, whereupon her mother started crying almost immediately, because of course.
“I’m fine! These are happy tears!” Peggy had always been a terrible liar.
Ellie’s father started out the next leg of their journey from Toronto to Paris by trying to listen to an audiobook but hadn’t realized that his Bluetooth headphones were not connected.
The entire cabin got an earful of the first four lines of The Splendid and the Vile before Ellie could grab for his phone and turn the volume down.
“ Cosa fai? ” He looked bewildered, asking her what she was doing as though it was she who was disrupting the entire Economy Plus cabin of a transatlantic 747.
Meanwhile, her mother embarked on a stress-crochet marathon all the way to Charles de Gaulle.
She only paused once to eat a buttered roll and subject a miniature fruit cup to a skeptical once-over.
Peggy did accept a small glass of Chardonnay but claimed it was too sweet and promptly offered it to Gio, who drank it all in one gulp.
Old habits apparently resisted cabin pressure changes.
Ellie kept her noise-canceling headphones and sleep mask on for most of the eight-hour flight but only slept for two.
She had no memory of the flight from Paris to Genoa except for the part where she refused a cheese danish and face-planted into the window. She was wrecked.
“Ecco la mia bellissima famiglia!”
Ellie entered the garden first, eager both to hug her grandmother and to put some distance between herself and her parents.
Even the taxi from the airport was like being in a mobile escape room.
She kept wishing she could stick her head up and out of the sunroof to stop hearing them debate where they were when the Morandi Bridge collapsed in Genoa years earlier.
Peggy was convinced that they were at home in California in August that year and Gio said it was impossible because it fell in July the year before.
Even the headphones didn’t help when she discovered she was remarkably good at reading lips full of insults.
“ Ciao, Nonna! ” Ellie hugged her tiny grandmother tight and got a gorgeous whiff of Shalimar.
The scent anchored her immediately. Some things were absolutely not falling apart around her.
In fact, Graziella proved that as soon as she laid out the itinerary for the day.
Graziella and Simone were going back to the club to have lunch because it was almost 12:30 and, come what may, there would be bowls of pasta and salad on the terrace at the Delfino and a card game starting right after, so help them God, forever and always, amen.
Ellie was directed to the guest bedroom to try on the bridesmaid dress that Graziella had selected for her and to meet them later, which meant that Peggy and Gio were left to shuffle off to the apartment they’d owned since the nineties, a few doors down.
She wanted to hug her grandmother again for offering ten minutes of parent-free peace as she watched Gio wrestle Peg’s suitcase away from her when she struggled with it.
He hauled both rolling bags behind him as her mother rattled on, pointing out as she always did that the city cut too much off the tops of the flowering trees on Corso Buenos Aires as they encroached on the power lines.
“I hope you like the color of the dress,” said Graziella, giving Ellie a squeeze on the arm. “I think it will be so beautiful on you, gioia . Go on up to the boys’ old room and see what you think. We’ll see you later for lunch, okay?”
Ellie swung open the heavy wooden door to the villa that had been in Simone’s family for generations.
The interior of the enormous house was dark and cool despite the heat outside.
The legend was that the house was originally constructed for a famous dignitary who thought Genoa was too grim a location to build a home and had chosen Chiavari instead, but no one knew for sure.
It was a classic villa d’epoca with frescoed ceilings, chestnut wood molding, and marble tiles running up the grand staircase.
Ellie would have been intimidated if she wasn’t used to seeing water balloons being launched from the second-floor landing.
With the front and rear doors open, salt-tinged air whoosh ed through the foyer, stirring the many orchids, camellias, and ferns that Graziella had placed everywhere in efforts to make it more her own.
Ellie smiled, knowing that her grandmother’s touch was now all over the house.
The couple had chosen to sell Graziella’s smaller apartment up the hill because they wanted to be closer to the beach, and she had brought life back into the old home that had been “ un po’ triste ” in the years since Simone had been on his own.
Ellie made her way up the stairs and paused outside of the bedroom before going in.
She’d spent many a rainy afternoon holed up reading comic books in “the boys’ room.
” Ale Jr. and Leo would end up indoors at the town pool to continue playing water polo with no weather restrictions and everyone’s moms would head to the carruggi , the covered porticoes that linked the shops in town together.
Ellie, Ben, and sometimes Greta would come over with armfuls of old issues of the comic Tex , whose author was actually from Chiavari, or some of the anime stuff they brought over from the States.
They would trade issues until everyone had gotten a turn, pointing out their favorite parts to one another and imitating the characters’ voices.
Inevitably, Cris would sneak out to go swim a few laps with his dad.
It never seemed like he was upset about going, but he had this way of giving Ellie a look of apology as he said goodbye for the afternoon.
The bunk beds had been replaced with one single bed, covered with a coral-colored cotton blanket and heaps of ocean-themed pillows.
Also gone were the posters from Iron Man with Tony Stark suited up for battle and the one featuring Britney Spears in a black leather jacket in front of a motorcycle.
In their place, a giant mirror framed in capiz shells and starfish reflected the afternoon light from the window.
It was probably safe to bet that Cris’s stash of Goleador and Kinder Bueno under a loose tile in the floor was also gone.
Her eyes dropped down to the exact spot, but it was now covered by a fringed area rug.
A white garment bag hung from a new-looking coatrack in the corner of the room.
Ellie unzipped the thick vinyl bag with a gold logo that said SPOSA DI LIGURIA and found—a skirt?
Her face scrunched up as she ran her hands over the soft fabric, trying to figure out if her grandmother had made a mistake or if she missed a crucial message and was supposed to have brought some kind of top along.
The color was beautiful, a light grayish purple, but it appeared to be a weird maxi-skirt with two wide panels hanging down from the waist. She searched for some kind of label to at least understand which side was the front.
A long cream-colored tag was fastened to a lace ribbon emblazoned with the words ABITO TRASFORMABILE .
It was one of those fits-every-body dresses that she’d seen cluttering up her Pinterest feed.
The two wide panels could be wrapped and twisted into an endless configuration of styles that were purportedly meant to flatter each bridesmaid’s individual figure.
Every woman in those photos looked like at least one of her boobs was about to pop out at any given moment.
The first thought that came into Ellie’s head was duct tape .
She sighed. It was an understandable choice.
What else could you do when your bridesmaids ranged in age from thirty-two to eighty-five?
Still, she wished she had been prepared for this.
She could have been researching configurations for the last two months.
Now she had about twelve minutes to make a dress out of what was basically a silky ACE bandage before she would miss lunch completely.
Of course, it could wait until later or even tomorrow, but she wanted to figure it out now.
What if she needed a taller heel? Or a pulley system?
There was no way she could leave this for the last minute.
The fog of jet lag began to creep in as Ellie picked up her phone and opened YouTube.
The third tutorial option appeared to have step-by-step instructions from a woman who had a similar body shape to hers, but the video was in Polish.
No problem. How hard could it be to follow along?