Promise Me (29 page)

“
Amore
,” he said. “
Mi dispiace
, the fisherman was a friend of mine and he offered to take Charlotte through the Blue Grotto.”

“While I just sit here alone wondering where you are?”

He leaned over and whispered to Charlotte and she ran off to her bedroom. Then he just looked at me, carefully reading me. “I'm sorry. I didn't think you would care.”

“You didn't think I would care or you just didn't care.” I stormed out of the room to my bedroom, slammed the door and threw myself on the bed.

A minute later he knocked on the door even though it had no lock. “Beth, can we talk?”

“
Vai!
” I shouted.

He didn't speak for a moment, then he said gently, “May I please come in?”

I was crying hard. He opened the door, then walked to the side of the bed and knelt down next to me.

I said, “Why don't you want to be with me? Why are you spending so much time with her?”

He was quiet for a moment, then replied. “Beth, I'm not just saying goodbye to you.” He took my hand. “When I go back, there is no time left with her. This is the last time I will have with my wife.”

I had been so selfishly caught up in my loss and in my time that I had not even considered what he was going back to. I was filled with enormous shame. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“You don't need to be forgiven,” he said. “I would never hold your love for me against you.”

He lay down on the bed next to me and put his arm across my back. When I could speak, I said, “It's time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I didn't want to look at him. “I'm so afraid.”

He put both of his arms around me. He held me while I cried. When I had finally calmed, he said, “We'll leave Monday.” He kissed me on the cheek, then got up and left the room.

As soon as the door shut, I began again to cry. I could already feel him slipping away. He wasn't mine and I was terrified to lose him.

I have wondered if those who say “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” have ever lost their loved.

Beth Cardall's Diary

An hour later Matthew returned. He lay down next to me and put his arms around me and held me through the night. Usually, when my heart is wracked with pain, I seek sleep to escape, but not this time. Pain or bliss, I didn't want to miss any of his touch. I just lay in his arms feeling his body against mine, absorbing his warmth as if I could somehow store it. I don't know when I fell asleep, but when I woke the next morning, the sun had already climbed above the Sorrentine mountains. Matthew rolled over and kissed me. “I'd like to take you out to dinner tonight. Just the two of us.”

“I'd like that.”

“I'll be in Capri most of the day making arrangements. I'll ask Nonna Sonia to tend Charlotte tonight. Okay?”

“Grandma” Sonia was our cleaning lady, though she seemed more like family than housemaid.

“Okay,” I said.

I spent most of the day with Charlotte. I needed to tell her that we were leaving. In the early afternoon we took the
chairlift to the top of Mt. Solaro. From the mountain vista we could see 360° around the island clear to Naples and south to the Amalfi coast. I bought her an orange Fanta and we sat down on a bench.

“We're very high up,” I told Charlotte. “This is the highest place on Capri.”

“Is it the highest place in the world?”

I shook my head. “No. Only our world.” I pulled her in close to me. “It's time to go home, sweetheart.” I realized that she might not be sure where that was anymore. “Home to Utah.”

She looked down but said nothing.

“Did you like living here?”

“I want to always live here,” she said. “With Matthew.”

I looked down at her. “Don't ever forget that. Your wish may come true.”

That night I wore a hand-sewn white linen dress that Matthew had bought for me from a tailor in Anacapri. We went to a small restaurant about twenty minutes from the piazza, away from the tourists and their haunts.

It was hard finding words adequate for the moment, so we ate. I asked Matthew to order for me and we had ravioli in sage butter and tender steak cutlets with parmesan and rucola. We had finished our meals and were drinking prosecco from beautiful crystal glasses when Matthew said, “I have
something for you.” He reached under the table and brought out a small, cedarwood box.

I looked at the box then up into his eyes. “I want you to open it for me.”

He held the box in front of me and pulled back its lid. Inside the velvet-lined box was a ghostly blue cameo pendant attached to a gold rope.

I put my hand over my mouth.

“I bought it in Positano. I was just waiting for the right moment.”

I just stared at it. It was beautiful. The cameo had the profile of a woman carved in an abalone shell, set in a gold bezel.

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, Matthew.”

He lifted the necklace from the box. “Let's see how it looks on you.” He reached around my neck and connected the clasp. I suppose that the simplest of things, when facing extinction, become of utmost worth. The touch of his hands on my neck filled me with exquisite pleasure. He sat back and I looked down at the cameo, touching it against my breast. “Thank you.”

“It's something for you to remember me by.”

He said this as if it were possible that I could forget him. “I don't need anything to remember you by or this time we've had together. I could never forget.” I looked into his eyes. “Do you know what I fear most?”

He shook his head. “No,
amore
.”

“That you won't remember me.”

The next morning we packed our necessities. A little after noon, a truck arrived outside the villa, and Matthew's two friends, Nonna Sonia's grandsons, Salvatore and Dario, helped us with our baggage and drove us down the mountain to the port of Capri. Several large boats had docked in the marina that hour and the city was crowded with tourists.

Using handcarts, our friends lugged our baggage through the crowd along the long, wooden pier to a ferry on the far end of the Capri dock.

We kissed them both goodbye, then climbed aboard the boat minutes before it pulled away from the dock. I never looked back at my beloved Capri. I couldn't.

In Sorrento, Matthew got us a cab and we went to the train station, where we boarded the train to Rome.

It was late, nearly eleven o'clock, when we disembarked at the Rome Termini and checked into the Ambasciatori Palace Hotel on the Via Veneto near the U.S. Embassy and the Church of the Cappuccini with its four thousand sleeping residents.

We slept for much of the next morning, Matthew transacted more business downstairs, and it was afternoon when we went out as a family into the city for our last night in Italy.

At twilight we ate dinner in the Piazza Navona with its three Bernini statues. It was a sullen time and only Charlotte
had much to say, as she ran excitedly between the fountains, artists, merchants and mimes on the cobblestone surface.

Matthew and I finished our cappuccinos, then, taking Charlotte's hand, walked the crowded sidewalks about a half-mile to the Trevi Fountain, the final outlet of the ancient Roman aqueducts.

You can hear the Trevi waters before you reach the fountain, which is always crowded after dusk. At night the blue, illuminated waters shimmer seductively beneath the statuary, casting golden webs across its marble facade. The central figure of the Trevi is a trident-wielding Neptune, the Greek god of water, flanked by two Tritons, one trying to rein in a wild seahorse, the other leading a docile one, symbolic of the contrasting moods of the sea.

Holding tightly to Charlotte's hands, we walked down the crowded stairway to the marble retaining wall of the pool. The churning waters dulled the sounds of the crowds and I looked over at Matthew, who was staring at the fountain, lost in thought. Then I saw him reach into his pocket and bring out coins. He leaned close to me to speak.

“The legend says that if you throw one coin into the fountain, you will return to Rome. If you throw two, you will find love.” He held out the coins.