I open my eyes and quickly close them again because I’m right, she’s here, and this feels so good, being in her arms, I don’t want to lose a single second of it. She smells like her and sounds like her, and I want to live here, in this moment, forever.
But I can’t, because in an instant she’s gently shaking me, and I force my eyes open again.
“Hey, are you okay? You just fainted,” she says. She peers at me. I have a flash of her ten years from now—bent over me with a thermometer during a particularly bad bout of the flu.
The man from the desk is crouched next to us, too. “Is hot, is hot,” he says. He fans himself as if demonstrating, then me.
“Water,” my mother commands, and he scurries off. “We’ll get you something to drink, just a second.”
She studies me, and I study her back.
Her skin is smooth, young, and tan—subjected to a sun that has not done its damage yet. She looks exactly as she did in the old photos, the ones dotting the shelves of my parents’ television room. Her hair is down—long and straight, nothing like my curly mane. Her eyes are liquid green.
“You’re here,” I say.
Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re going to be all right,” she says. “I think Joseph is right—you just had some heatstroke.” She looks over her shoulder, toward the direction he disappeared in. “Do you know your name? Where you are?”
I laugh, because it’s absurd. My mother asking me for my name. It’s me, I want to say. It’s me, your daughter. But I can tell from the way she’s looking at me that she’s never seen me before in her life. Of course she hasn’t.
“Katy,” I say.
She smiles; it’s almost sympathetic. “That’s a very nice name. I’m Carol.”
I scramble to my feet, and she stands up, too. “Easy, now,” she says as Joseph appears with the water.
“Thank you.” She takes the bottle from Joseph and twists the top off before handing it to me. She looks on encouragingly. “Go on,” she says. “You’re probably dehydrated.”
I drink. I take four large gulps and then replace the cap.
She looks satisfied. “There you go. Do you feel better now?”
How can I possibly answer that? My dead mother is standing in front of me at a seaside hotel on the coast of Italy. Do I feel better? I feel insane. I feel ecstatic. I feel like something might be seriously wrong with me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her.
She laughs. “Right place, right time, I suppose,” she says. “Joseph was helping me with a package. I rent a little pensione not far up the road. It’s just a room, really.”
I feel a smile spread over my face, too, mirroring her own. It’s so simple and wonderful and obvious. A room of her own. I rented this little pensione up the street from Hotel Poseidon. We slept until noon and drank rosé on the water.
I’ve found my mother in her summer of freedom. I’ve found her in the time before me or my father. I’ve found her in the summer of Chez Black, days on the beach and long nights spent talking under the stars. Here she is. Here she actually is. Young and unencumbered and so very much alive.
I got her back, I think. Come to me.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes,” I say. And then, empowered by her, here, in front of me now, I plow forward: “I’m sorry, you’re right, it must be the heat. I just got in and I’m not used to it. Probably dehydrated from the trip yesterday, too.”
“You just arrived!” she says. “How wonderful. From where? There aren’t many Americans now, seeing as it’s still early in the season. I’ve been here for a few weeks, and I feel like I already live here. It’s a small town.”
She talks with her hands, just like always. Animated and energetic.
“It’s perfect,” I say, watching her.
She’s beautiful, I realize suddenly. Not that I didn’t always know my mother was pretty; I did. She had impeccable style, and her hair was always in place, and her features were sharp and striking. But here, now, she glows. Her face is radiant, not a stitch of makeup, the light shining through her sun-kissed skin. Her legs are strong and lean, wearing just the slightest dusting of a bronzed tan.
“California,” I tell her. “Los Angeles.”
Her eyes get wide. “Me too!” She throws her hands up and then lets them settle on top of her head. “What are the odds?”