One Italian Summer: A Novel

Chapter One Chapter One
I've never smoked, but it's the last day of my mother's shiva, so here we are. I have the cigarette between my teeth, standing on the back patio, looking at what was, just two months ago, a pristine white sectional, now weatherworn. My mother kept everything clean. She kept everything.

Carol's rules to live by:
Never throw away a good pair of jeans. Always have fresh lemons on hand. Bread keeps for a week in the fridge and two months in the freezer. OxiClean will take out any stain. Be careful of bleach. Linen is better than cotton in the summer. Plant herbs, not flowers. Don't be afraid of paint. A bold color can transform a room. Always arrive on time to a restaurant and five minutes late to a house. Never smoke.
I should say, I haven't actually lit it.

Carol Almea Silver was a pillar of the community, beloved by everyone she encountered. In the past week, we have opened our doors to sales associates and manicurists, the women from her temple, waiters from Craig's, nurses from Cedars-Sinai. Two bank tellers from the City National branch on Roxbury. "She used to bring us baked goods," they said. "She was always ready with a phone number." There are couples from the Brentwood Country Club. Irene Newton, who had a standing lunch with my mother at Il Pastaio every Thursday. Even the bartender from the Hotel Bel-Air, where Carol used to go for an ice-cold martini. Everyone has a story.

My mother was the first person you called for a recipe (a cup of onions, garlic, don't forget the pinch of sugar) and the last one you called at night when you just couldn't sleep (a cup of hot water with lemon, lavender oil, magnesium pills). She knew the exact ratio of olive oil to garlic in any recipe, and she could whip up dinner from three pantry items, easy. She had all the answers. I, on the other hand, have none of them, and now I no longer have her.

"Hi," I hear Eric say from inside. "Where is everyone?"

Eric is my husband, and he is our last guest here today. He shouldn't be. He should have been with us the entire time, in the hard, low chairs, stuck between noodle casseroles and the ringing phone and the endless lipstick kisses of neighbors and women who call themselves aunties, but instead he is here in the entryway to what is now my father's house, waiting to be received.

I close my eyes. Maybe if I cannot see him, he will stop looking for me. Maybe I will fold into this ostentatious May day, the sun shining like a woman talking loudly on a cell phone at lunch. Who invited you here?

I tuck the cigarette into the pocket of my jeans.

I cannot yet conceive of a world without her, what that will look like, who I am in her absence. I am incapable of understanding that she will not pick me up for lunch on Tuesdays, parking without a permit on the curb by my house and running inside with a bag full of something-groceries, skin-care products, a new sweater she bought at Off 5th. I cannot comprehend that if I call her phone, it will just ring and ring-that there is no longer anyone on the other end who will say, "Katy, honey. Just a second. My hands are wet." I do not imagine ever coming to terms with the loss of her body-her warm, welcoming body. The place I always felt at home. My mother, you see, is the great love of my life. She is the great love of my life, and I have lost her.

"Eric, come on in. You were standing out there?"

I hear my father's voice from inside, welcoming Eric in. Eric, my husband who lives in our house, twelve and a half minutes away, in Culver City. Who has taken a leave of absence from Disney, where he is a film executive, to be with me during this trying time. Whom I've dated since I was twenty-two, eight years ago. Who takes out the garbage and knows how to boil pasta and never leaves the toilet seat up. Whose favorite show is Modern Family and who cried during every episode of Parenthood. Whom just last night, I told in our kitchen-the kitchen my mother helped me design-that I did not know if I could be married to him anymore.

If your mother is the love of your life, what does that make your husband?

"Hey," Eric says when he sees me. He steps outside, squints. He half waves. I turn around. On the glass patio table, there is a spread of slowly curling cheese. I am wearing dark jeans and a wool sweater, even though it is warm outside, because inside the house it is fre...