Italian for Beginners (33 page)

“It is?”

“Yes,” she said. “Since I have already contacted a photo gallery in New York about your photos.”

“What?”
My eyes bulged out of my head.

Karina nodded calmly. “Yes. They are too beautiful to be kept to yourself, Cat. And I knew you would realize that someday,
too.”

I wasn’t understanding. “Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, you contacted a gallery?”

“I used the Internet to find a photo gallery in New York that specializes in Italian photographers,” she said with a nonchalant
shrug, like it was no big deal. “The owner is American but spent many years living in Roma, and when I called, I just explained
that I was an agent and that I had discovered a new talent in Roma and would like to send along a few photographs for her
consideration.”

“Wait, you said what?”

“That I am your agent,” Karina said with a smile. “And by the way, I will be taking my ten percent.”

I stared at her. “And you sent pictures to the gallery already?”

“Yes. Three of them.”

“How?”

“I have a key to your apartment, remember? And they are all on your computer.”

“You broke into my apartment to steal pictures?”

“No,” Karina clarified a little sheepishly. “I opened the door to your apartment to
share
your pictures.”

“And you sent three random pictures to some stranger in New York?” I pressed on.

“No, I spent an hour and a half deciding which three pictures captured the heart of Roma the very best,” she said. “And I
sent them to a gallery owner I’d spent an hour telling how wonderful and talented you were.”

I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. “What did the gallery owner say?”

She smiled. “She said that they were three of the most beautiful pictures of Roma she had ever seen. She said they truly captured
the heart of the city she loved. She said they made her feel inspired.”

My jaw dropped.

Karina smiled and continued. “She said she’d like to start off with a collection of ten of your photographs. She’ll blow them
up and frame them, and they’ll hang in her gallery for thirty days. If they sell, you will get paid seventy-five percent;
she takes twenty-five percent as her gallery fee. She said it gets renegotiated down to twenty percent once a photographer
has exhibited there successfully for six months.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I would talk to the photographer and get back to her.” She paused. “She asked for your name, but I didn’t tell her.
I didn’t know if you wanted to use your real name or not.”

I thought about it for a moment. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I knew I should have been upset with Karina for sending
out my photographs without my permission. But I was blown away by her enthusiasm, her wide-eyed belief that of course someone
would want to buy my pictures. And the crazy thing was, someone did. A stranger in New York, someone who had come from Rome,
saw my pictures and felt inspired.

Still, I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to put my own stamp on the photos yet. Although I knew that at nearly thirty-five,
I should be more secure, I was still terrified of failing. But what else could I call myself?

I thought for a moment about what had brought me to this place, what had initially made me decide to hide behind the lens
of a camera, what had made me seek out answers in this city that would never quite be mine.

I suddenly felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I smiled.

“Tell her,” I said slowly, “that the photo credit should read ‘Audrey H. Verdicchio.’ ”

M
arco called the next day. I met him for coffee at Pinocchio, and I filled him in on my big few days, leaving out any mention
of Michael for now. I still hadn’t decided how I felt about him. Or about Marco. But I didn’t think one situation should necessarily
influence the other. Not yet.

“I am so happy for you,” Marco said after I had finished. “And so proud of you, too, for going to see your aunt.”

I nodded. “I felt like it was the right thing to do.”

Marco studied my face for a moment. Then he reached across the table to gently brush the hair out of my face. “You’ve only
been here for a few weeks,” he said. “And it’s like you’ve become a different person.”

I thought about it for a moment. “No,” I said. “I think it’s that I’ve finally become me.”

Marco nodded slowly. “There is nothing better for each of us to be than ourselves, is there?”

I shook my head, thinking of all the time I’d wasted trying to be someone more lovable, more reliable, more organized, and
less easy to leave. And the one big thing that had been missing had been staring me in the face all along. All I had to be
was
me
. Imperfect, hasn’t-got-it-all-figured-out-yet me. Cat Connelly, the daughter of Bruce and Audrey, two people who didn’t quite
have it all figured out, either. Two people who loved their daughters, even if they didn’t always know how to show it. Maybe
being loved didn’t always have to be something I earned, something I fought for. Maybe it could just
be
, when the time was right.

“So, the photo gallery has asked to see a wider variety of Rome photographs before they choose my initial ten,” I concluded.
“Karina sent them a selection of the photos I’ve taken so far. But the gallery owner wants more.” I paused and felt myself
blushing a little. “Karina says that this woman thinks there’s going to be a high demand for these photos once she begins
exhibiting them.”

“When will that happen?” Marco asked.

“In about three weeks,” I said. “She’s about to take down a display from a photographer in Tuscany, a series of sunflower
shots that just aren’t selling very well. She wants to put my exhibit in its place. Apparently, historic urban art is hot
now.”

“This is wonderful, Cat.” Marco beamed at me. He leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. “You must be so happy.”

“I am.” I smiled back. “So. I have eight more days here. And I need to find some shots that capture the soul of Rome. I want
to bowl this gallery owner over, Marco. I want to go in with images like nothing she’s ever seen.”

I felt excited for the first time in a very long time. A nervous, apprehensive, fluttery kind of excited, where I felt like
everything could cave in on me suddenly… or the whole world was about to open up. I just didn’t know which way it would go
yet.

“Let me help,” Marco said.

“What?”

He grinned. “Let me help you. This is my city. I fell in love with it the moment I first came here from Venice, and I’ve spent
so many hours wandering the streets and taking it all in. I can take you to my favorite places in the city. And I can help
you find your own.”

I hesitated. “Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked. “You have to work.”

He shrugged. “Of course I do,” he said. “But I do not have to be here all the time. And I want to help you. I want to see
my city through your eyes. And I want you to see my city through mine.”

I smiled. “You’re pretty great, you know that?” I paused and tried to remember a line from
Roman Holiday
. “You’ve helped give me faith in relations between people,” I paraphrased a line from the movie’s final scene.

Marco got it immediately. He grinned and put on his best Joe Bradley accent. “ ‘May I say, speaking from my own press service,
we believe that your highness’s faith will not be unjustified.’ ”

I laughed. “See, it’s more fun when we can both play.”

Marco reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Then he leaned across to kiss me, gently and tenderly, on the lips.

For the next week, Marco met me each morning and took me to a different spot in Rome—the Arco di Constantino, a beautiful
arch covered in ancient battle scenes, one day, and the Terme di Caracalla, the towering ruins of public baths used until
the sixth century, another day. I’d discovered that Rome was at its most beautiful in the morning, before the sun rose too
high in the sky, and I enjoyed shooting the ancient monuments, the beautiful domes, and the Roman people going about their
daily routines when the pale light softened the edges of everything, giving the city a magic, ethereal glow.

Marco helped me carry my heavy camera bag, laughed at my jokes, told me about his family, and kept me amused with funny stories
of growing up in Venice, in the world of gondoliers, tourists, and a slowly sinking city steeped in legend and mystery. I
told him about life in New York, and for the first time in years, I also found myself sharing stories about my mother that
I had locked away long ago in the back corners of my mind. As we walked from photo shoot to photo shoot, I found that my mother’s
memory was becoming clearer and clearer in my mind and I laughed about silly things she had done, smiled at memories of birthday
parties she’d thrown for us, and recalled vividly what it was like to snuggle into the crook of her arm while she read me
fairy tales, in Italian, from a big, illustrated book that had belonged to her when she was a little girl.

The more I let the memories of my mother back in, the more I felt. It was like a tidal wave of emotion sneaking up on me.
But each night when I went to bed, powerful waves of happiness and sadness washed over me. Sometimes I woke up with a smile
on my face; sometimes I woke up with tears I hadn’t remembered crying. The more my life came together, the more I seemed to
be becoming an emotional wreck. But I knew that this was exactly what I needed to be doing, as strange as it seemed. Perhaps
it was the result of twenty-plus years of emotions being squashed deep down inside. There was nowhere else for them to go
as they bubbled toward the surface.

The more time I spent with Marco that week, the more confident I grew that if I stayed here, if I allowed myself to, I could
fall in love with him. He was a good man, and I knew he cared about me. I also knew that he cared enough to respect whatever
it was I was going through. I knew he had sensed me backing off, and although he probably didn’t understand why, he didn’t
push me. He simply spent time with me, tried to make me laugh, comforted me when he saw the shadows on my face. We spent hours
kissing—in front of beautiful fountains, atop hills overlooking the city, in front of churches that had been there for centuries
upon centuries. But it didn’t go any further than that again. I had never known a man like him, and if the timing had been
different, things might have gone a different way.

Yet as the days ticked by and my heart continued to open up, I knew with increasing certainty that I just wasn’t ready. It
didn’t have anything to do with Michael. I wasn’t ready for him, either. It was just that the more I became
me
, the more I realized how much time I’d need to get to know this version of myself that I’d spent so long locking away.

While Marco worked dinner shifts at his restaurant, I spent several evenings with Karina. Nico often joined us, too, before
Karina put him to bed. Over incredible meals such as spinach ricotta pasta, sage butter ravioli, and rosemary pork, which
Karina seemed to whip up effortlessly, she chattered happily about conversations she’d had with Gillian, the gallery owner
in New York, while Nico went on and on excitedly about how he was sure my photographs would make me into a celebrity, and
he would be able to tell all his friends that he knew a top photographer. I couldn’t help but laugh.

One evening, I went to the park with Karina, Nico, and Karina’s mother. As Nico kicked a soccer ball around with a few other
little boys whose parents had brought them out to play, I sat on a bench with Karina and her mother and realized that I really
felt like part of a family over here. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like that, even with my father and my sister
at home. It was as though we’d all retreated into our separate corners when my mother died, and we hadn’t quite known how
to reconnect since then, although I knew we all loved each other. I promised myself that once I got my own life back on track,
I’d work on mending my family, too. I bet it was what my mother would have wanted.

I snapped photos of Nico and his friends as the sun dipped below the tree line and the light began to fade. It was still forty-five
minutes before sunset, but it was that time of day in Rome where the shadows began to creep in and the evening snuck toward
the city.

“Maybe Gillian will choose one of the photos of Nico for her gallery!” Karina said excitedly as she watched me shoot.

I smiled. “That would be perfect,” I said.

Twenty minutes later, as Karina helped Nico gather his things and they started back toward home, I told her I wanted to take
a walk by myself for a little while. There were two more shots I wanted to get before I felt like my work was done.

First, as the sun began to sink into the horizon, setting the western sky on fire with a palette of oranges, pinks, and deep
blue, I squatted on the sidewalk of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, just in front of the Forum, and took several snapshots of
the little brick wall where Marco had first found me. I must have looked insane to passersby as I got down almost level with
it so that I could get a wide-angle shot. But I wanted to photograph it, along with the crumbling ruins of the Forum behind
it, backlit by the fiery sky of sunset. Just as I was getting ready to shoot, two pigeons fluttered over and landed on the
edge of the wall, right beside each other. I watched them, transfixed for a moment. And then I began shooting, watching through
the lens as the birds hopped around, faced each other, stood beak to beak. As I sat up a few minutes later and brushed the
dust off my clothes, I checked out the images on my camera’s screen. I smiled. They were perfect. Exactly what I’d been going
for.