“Mexicans, too?”
“Ha.” This was the thing Virginia liked about Casey—she could fire back instantly.
“You should at least visit me. I’m not coming back for a long time. The degree can take two years or more. Fritzy and Jane will come to see me. You know how I hate flying.”
“And phones.”
Virginia sighed. “But I write all the time.”
“Yes. You do.” Casey loved her friend’s letters. It was like receiving the pages of a genius’s diary, and because of her flowery style, the letters read as if from another era. Virginia wrote in her unfiltered prose about her observations and desires, never holding back her failures or doubts. In her writing, she directed her thinking like a woman walking out of a maze, turning the corners of events and ideas. Casey admired Virginia’s mind and hadn’t known just how brilliant her friend was until she’d started to receive her letters. And Virginia didn’t hide anything—this was the thing Casey prized most about her.
If Casey felt wild and angry compared with Tina, she was even-tempered and discreet around Virginia, who thrummed with vitality and curiosity. Even as Virginia got drunk, slept with too many men, and lost her house keys on a regular basis, Casey couldn’t help but admire her friend, who didn’t feel deterred by shame or failure. Virginia was not afraid of criticism—that, Casey thought, was an extraordinary thing.
“You will come visit me. Yes?”
Virginia smiled pleasantly, yet what Casey felt was the pang of being left behind. Their lives had always looked different, but after graduation, a divide had risen between them like a drawbridge sealing up a castle. From the other side of the moat, Casey had to make her own way.
“You’re the one who’s leaving. So why should I visit?” Casey said coldly.
Virginia looked hurt by this, and Casey felt sorry. She was Casey’s closest friend from school—buddies since the second week of freshman year. Virginia was leaving for Italy the next day. It wasn’t as though Casey didn’t know her friend’s sorrows—how she’d searched for her birth mother since she was eleven, all leads going nowhere. This was Virginia, the girl who’d written prizewinning papers at school and was getting a master’s degree in Bologna because her spoken and written Italian was that good. Her French was native quality. The Romance language she couldn’t learn, however, was Spanish—the language her biological mother would have spoken. Every time Virginia had tried to take lessons, she’d ended up dissolving into tears.
Virginia reached across the table to take Casey’s hand. “I will miss you.”
“Oh, stop. You’ll be so busy chasing boys that you’ll hardly have time to pick up a pen.” Casey felt like crying.
“My record disputes such unfair charges.”
Casey could say nothing to this. There were eight or nine ribbon-tied bundles of Virginia’s letters at her parents’ from previous summers.
“Come visit, Casey. There are Italian men in Italy.”
Casey laughed.
“And gelato. Oh, the marron glacé gelato. You can’t believe that ice cream can taste—” Virginia swooned, her face lighting up in rapture; Chuck came by to bring her a beer.
Casey waved at him, letting him cut in. Chuck and Virginia had had a semester-long thing during sophomore year. Virginia said they were good friends—reliable for annual strip poker nights and the occasional movie. Besides, Casey thought, it wasn’t fair to monopolize the guest of honor. Though she had been on the verge of telling Virginia about the fight with her father and how she hadn’t gone to Newport because of her face. But how would that have changed anything? The past couldn’t be corrected by explanations. Virginia yearned for a rationale from her biological mother—Why did you give me up?—and Casey wondered how that would really fix anything. Would it satisfy? The Crafts seemed like perfectly good parents. Casey’s biological parents were a mess. And what good would it do to talk about all of it? It was just as well that Chuck Raines had come by. He had a square head and a thin neck. He still had a crush on Virginia.
“Have you had gelato, Chuck?” Virginia asked him.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Italians make damn good ice cream. You gonna hook me up?”
“Naturellemente.” Virginia closed her eyes and shrugged like her Milanese aunt Patrizia, who’d married her mother’s younger brother, the art dealer.
Casey smiled at their happiness, the mutual recognition of something enjoyed. She’d never tried marron glacé gelato. Marron was French for chestnut? Glacé was glazed? That much she got. How did you say “chestnut” in Italian? The world was so vast, and there was so much she didn’t know.