The House in Amalfi by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page A

back my hair.
“Domani,
Angelo,” I called, already edging through the crowd, though even then I knew I would not come back again.
    “Wait. . . .”
    I turned to look at him.
    “You forgot your
cornetto
.”
    I took it, smiling my thanks, already pushing through the customers crowding the doorway.
    Back on the via del Corso, I hailed a taxi. I slumped in the seat and took a bite of the
cornetto,
tasting the familiar sugary pastry.
    I had made a big mistake. Rome,
my
Rome, had changed. Jon-Boy was gone and so was my “family”: the grandmothers, the neighbors . . . my friends.
    I thought sadly that the old saying was true after all. You cannot “go home” again.

EIGHT

Lamour
    Jammy insisted I go shopping with her on the via Condotti, Rome’s finest shopping street, conveniently situated almost outside our front door.
    “You can count it under the heading of self-improvement,” she said, eyeing my black T-shirt, black pants, and sensible flat shoes critically. In fact, looking at myself I realized I wasn’t too far removed from the way my old Italian “grandmothers” used to look. Checking out the chic, sexy Roman women who all seemed to be wearing the very latest in designer clothes, I was torn again by doubt.
    Since I’d found out about Alex, I had lost any feelings of self-worth as a woman. All I was, was what I did, and I was thankful that at least I did that well.
    I stared despairingly into Gucci’s windows. “There has to be more to me, the
real
me, than just some fancy new clothes.”
    “Of course there is,” Jammy said, loyal as always.
    But facing my somber reflection in that plate glass window I thought it was no wonder Alex had wanted to leave me for another woman. “Do you think she was sexy?” I asked.
    Jammy had no need to ask who. “I guess so, but no more than you and me on a good day.” She gave me an encouraging nudge. “So how about we give ourselves a ‘good day’? See what trouble we can stir up amongst the Roman malepopulation,” she added with a mischievous grin that was meant to encourage me. Linking arms, we headed down the via Condotti.
    That night I took Jammy to Da Fortunato, the
trattoria
on the via del Pantheon where Jon-Boy had taken me to celebrate my eighth birthday. Jon-Boy never seemed to have much money then, he also never really thought about things like clothes, so I didn’t have many. I’d been forced to wear a pink sweater that had fit me on my seventh birthday with an old plaid skirt—my
only
skirt—and brand-new sneakers. I’d shot up like a sapling tree in spring, the sweater sleeves were halfway down my arms, and the skirt was daringly short. Only the new sneakers fit. And they were blindingly white.
    It was winter and chilly, and we had taken a table indoors amid the good aromas of sauces and spices and a fabulous display of antipasti. But now it was a soft early-summer night and Jammy and I were at a terrace table looking out to the beautiful dome of the Pantheon, and I was a long way from that shabby little eight-year-old birthday girl. I was wearing a new silky dress in a coral color, sleeveless, with a deep V-neck that showed a fragment of a horribly expensive La Perla lace bra that Jammy and a persuasive saleswoman had informed me I simply had to have since it did wonders for my small breasts. “Besides,” the saleswoman had said with that Roman-woman knowingness, “it is very seductive, no?” Her smile had clinched the deal. And seductive I hoped I now looked, with a peek of red lace at my breast and ruinously expensive high heeled red-suede mules on my long, narrow feet.
    For once my dark curly hair was behaving itself, thanks to a pricey new cut, and it floated around my shoulders in a way I’d never experienced before. Remembering Adriana, I’dpinned a flower in it. I was beginning to feel a
little bit
Roman, but while looking good helped, inside I was still the wounded, insecure me.
    Jammy looked delicious in blue that matched