After an hour of wandering, I could tell he was beginning to get bored just ogling old buildings, although he did his best to hide it, which I appreciated. I recognized that he preferred action to introspection, but right now I needed to let my mind rest on the centuries’ old mysteries I saw all around me. I found it soothing and I couldn’t help wondering if my father had ever visited Pisa. There was no particular reason why he should have, but still, he might. I liked to imagine that he wandered around here as a young man before deciding to try his luck in the New World. After all, in the sixties, he’d have heard the siren call of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Woodstock. By comparison, Italy would have seemed dull and dreary, dragged down by postwar depression.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said Sebastian, quietly interrupting my musings.
“I was just thinking about Papa: wondering if he ever came here.”
Sebastian’s eyes lit up and he smiled.
“I really loved your dad, Caro. I was kinda jealous of you when I was a kid – I wanted so badly to have a dad like him, not the sack of shit I was saddled with.”
He scowled at the memory.
“Do you… keep up with your parents at all?”
He shook his head.
“Last time I saw the old bastard was at my graduation from boot camp.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised, “that was… nice of him.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? He only did it because he knew it would piss me off to have to salute him.”
“Oh, right. What about Estelle?”
He shrugged. “She’s still in San Diego. Ches sees her around now and again. He banned her from the country club – drinking.”
He raised his eyebrows as he looked at me. I didn’t say anything, but I hoped he was aware of the parallels in their behavior. Of course, being in the military didn’t make for many teetotalers.
“They got divorced a few years back. Dad shacked up with some tart. I don’t really know. What about your mom? Do you see her?”
I shook my head. “No, we’re not in touch. I know she’s living in a retirement home in Florida, but that’s all.”
“Why aren’t you in touch? She couldn’t have been as bad as my mom.”
“Don’t be too sure about that.”
He hesitated, but I could tell he was curious. “What did she do?”
“She didn’t do anything, Sebastian. That’s the point. When I… when I left David, she told me I’d ‘made my bed so now I could lie in it’. She didn’t want anything to do with me. Wouldn’t lend me a red cent to help out when I went to New York. She wouldn’t even send me any photographs of Papa. I only have a couple of old pictures of him.”
Sebastian tried to pull me in for a hug, but I resisted him without even being aware of it. He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Do you see anything of him… David?”
“No. We had to correspond over the divorce papers, but that’s all. I believe he stayed in the Navy. You said you tried to see him… when was that?”
Sebastian frowned and stared off into the distance.
“About four months after you’d left. It was killing me not knowing how you were, or where you were, or how to get in touch with you. Dad had already trashed my computer and deleted all my email accounts before I went to live with Mitch and Shirley. I didn’t even think the bastard knew how to do that stuff. Took my cell off me and smashed that, too. Anyway, I was getting pretty desperate, so I went to your old house – but it was a waste of time. The asshole yelled at me that I’d ruined his marriage; I told him he didn’t deserve you and was a bastard for the way he’d treated you. He threatened to call the police. That was it.”
I sighed.
“You don’t feel sorry for him do you, Caro?” said Sebastian, angrily.
“A little. He just married the wrong woman, but he wasn’t a bad man.”
I could tell from Sebastian’s expression that he disagreed strongly.
“But you didn’t ruin my marriage: David and I managed to do that all by ourselves. You… freed me.”
His angry expression dissolved, and his eyes gazed at me with wonder.
“Please let me hold you, Caro. It’s driving me crazy that you won’t let me touch you.”
He reached out, but I stepped away from him.
“Just… just give me some time, Sebastian. I don’t deal with rejection well.”
“Is that how you see it? That I rejected you.”
I stared at him. “Of course. There’s no other way to see it.”
He ran his hands over his hair in frustration.
“Fuck, Caro! Last night was about my shit, not about you. Don’t you see that?”
“No, I don’t. Not really. But I don’t want to go over that again. I’m trying to put it behind us… I just need time.”