Adriana Trigiani - Brava, Valentine

“I don’t believe you want me.”

“Oh, come on. I never said I was perfect, Gianluca. You made me that way in your letters. I’d fall in love with me the way you described me! But I’m more than a rendering of your imagination. I’m a mess.”

“I see you as a woman who has everything. Why would I pretend otherwise when I wrote to you?”

“Because I don’t have everything. Not even close! I know I can be horrible and selfish and single-minded and judgmental. I’m just hacking my way through this forest trying to get to daylight. I don’t know everything-but I was learning a lot from you. And if you do decide to leave me, you should know that.”

“I do know that,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know why I didn’t jump in the cab and come back here when I couldn’t reach you. And I don’t know why I didn’t bring you to the factory. And I don’t know why I didn’t check my phone! I’m so used to separating my work and my love life-because I’ve always had to. And maybe I saw, when I was a kid, that my grandparents’ marriage suffered because they worked together, and then they went up the stairs every night and lived together-it was just too much.”

“Or maybe they were happy.”

“Maybe they were.” I throw up my hands. That possibility is not one I ever contemplate.

“You cannot love me in the shadow of what you come from. You have to love me in cold, hard light. You have to trust me,” he says insistently.

“You have to meet me in the middle. You have to look at how different we are, or this will never work. You feel a great longing for a time that’s passed. But I’m not from another time. I am right now . I’m of the moment, and I have to stay in the moment. And it’s not just about being hip, or young-it’s survival. It’s the big stuff, and then the little things too. Like…it matters if I pick purple or green for the color of the fall collection in 2011. I have to invent what comes next, or my company will fold. I will fold. I can’t live in 1812 in my love life or my work life. I know I’m asking you for a lot. I know I am a conflicting combination of the traditional and the modern-but do not mistake my honor of tradition as an excuse for me to look to a man to take care of me. I can take care of myself.”

“Then what is my role in your life?”

I put my hands on my face to think. I haven’t thought about this. I simply try to take Gianluca a day at a time and hope that our time together is building toward something. I’ve looked forward to seeing him each night when I return home. But I don’t know what his role is. I haven’t defined it, in a relationship where it is a requirement of his to know where he fits in the big picture. And I don’t know yet. But I can’t say that to him; he will think it’s just another excuse for me to avoid falling in love and committing myself to him. So I say what I’m feeling.

“I love you,” I tell him. And then I think for a moment before I say, “And you love me. Equal. Reciprocal. Back and forth. Give and take. Not one of us idolizes the other, and then the other fails to live up to some standard that doesn’t even exist. I’m made of sturdy stuff. I promise you.”

My eyes sting with tears. I have never knowingly hurt anyone in my life, but I know I’ve hurt Gianluca. I have been hiding him away-I don’t talk about him to my sisters, I didn’t even tell my mother he was here. But I find the time to call her, don’t I? If Gram brings Gianluca up on the phone, I’m the ultimate in casual disregard. I share very little about him with Gabriel. It’s almost as if I’m planning the breakup before I commit to the relationship.

Dear God, I’d go into therapy and figure this out if only I had the time!

But I have to sort this out with him , because he’s right, and I know he’s right. I don’t believe he’ll stay when he sees who I really am. I will invent some way to undermine it. I’ll blame my work, I’ll blame my family, I’ll even blame the weather. I pretend to want love because I don’t want to end up old and bitter like Aunt Feen. But that’s the path I’ve been on all along-in refusing to grow up and own my life. I know exactly what will happen to me if I stay on course, if I choose to never trust anyone. I’ll wind up all alone in assisted living wearing a muumuu and bunion pads, nursing a highball with nothing but my bitter thoughts to keep me company.

Real love requires surrender-and I’ve been faking it.

Gianluca puts down his suitcase. He puts his arms around me and gives me a warm hug, one you would give your mechanic when he fixes your transmission for free. I step back and look at him. I almost can’t believe it. It’s a final embrace.

“I’m going home,” he says. “Take care of yourself.” He picks up his suitcase and goes.

I stand in the spot where he held me for a very long time. I think of the words he wrote in the first letter he sent to me: Love builds in a series of small realizations . Well, he was right about that. And now, I have one for Gianluca. Love also ends in a series of small realizations.

The full moon over La Recoleta shimmers like a pale pink sequin. I close the robe tightly around me and pull the sash. I love a balcony. I like to be high above the ground, up and away from people, from noise, from clutter. I can think so much more clearly with an endless sky overhead. And I’ve done a lot of thinking tonight. And a lot of weeping.

I’ve cried on and off for hours. Ending a love affair in a foreign country is worse than breaking up at home. A woman needs familiar things around her when her heart has been broken. This hotel room is beautiful, but there’s no comfort for me in the opulent bed and the bath. I see Gianluca everywhere, and when I do, I just feel worse. Only Gabriel made me laugh; when I called him, he said that his mother always warned her children “to never get involved with anyone from the other side.” I guess there’s a history of Italian Americans dropped by Italians from across the ocean. Well, tonight, add me to the list.

The colors of Buenos Aires are saturated like hand-dyed silk, especially after midnight, when the candy colors fall into shadow and striae of ink tones emerge, deepest violets, berry blues, ruby reds, and burnished gold. The green foliage seems to be cut from velvet, framing the autumnal buds that sparkle like beads in tiny bursts of indelible color.

My particular lover’s dream has ended badly in one of the most beautiful places in all the world. And while I’m tempted to stay another day, another week, or another month in hopes that this sadness will fade amid such beauty, that’s just a fantasy. It’s time for me to go home too. Whatever I will become will be decided under a different night sky, somewhere else in the world. I imagine anything is possible, except a future with Gianluca Vechiarelli, and even if that was a possibility, I know I would need the stars and so much more to find my way back to him.

I’m organized in my seat on the plane back to New York when I call Roberta one last time before I leave Buenos Aires. “I just want to thank you for everything. And Lupe, too. Please give her my love.”

“I will. I am so happy we met. Your brother and I are talking. I find him charming.”

“Good for you.”

She laughs. “He’s family.”

“Right, right,” I agree. I can’t believe how far Roberta and I have come on this trip. I feel as though I am just getting to know her, but the future is promising. That’s all that matters. “Before I let you go, Roberta, there’s just one thing I failed to ask you. Why did your great-grandfather name the company Caminito? Why didn’t he name it after himself?”