In Italy for Love

Chapter 36

36

Reverse culture shock was real.

Back in the glaring sunshine the day after she landed, under the shade cloth and the spreading jacarandas clinging to the last of their purple blooms, Jules was dreaming of stone pines in the mist and persimmons and the silver leaves of squat, gnarled olive trees.

The city was sweltering and full of people, but just as lazy in the summer heat as she remembered. Brisbane was a different planet from the foggy Friulian plain and Jules was an alien – one of those extraterrestrials who could make themselves look exactly like a human to blend in.

The way her family treated her, she was one hundred per cent Julia Volpe on the outside, the exact woman who’d left Australia for an extended backpacking trip and was now home again, her thighs sticking to a plastic chair placed on the tough buffalo grass of her brother’s lawn. It was another plane of existence and she felt out of focus inside.

The little sting that assailed her every time a photo from Friuli arrived on her phone didn’t help her attempts to adjust. Alex had even managed to engineer a photo of both Arco and Attila, although Attila was only in the top corner, peering superciliously at the dog from the windowsill outside Alex’s bedroom.

She’d have Arco back in a few months and that would help, although it still wouldn’t be the pack back together.

Feeling the twinge again, she picked up her phone to text Alex:

I still feel guilty for making you bond with Arco for six months.

Seeing her father Tony approaching, beer in hand, she quickly stuffed her phone back into her pocket as he collapsed into the chair next to her.

‘Back from the old country, ay?’

‘Yep.’ Her phone vibrated, adding to her distraction.

‘But without the bloke.’

Jules wished she had her own beer in hand – or anything to distract her from the ache of absence. Her dad hadn’t meant to upset her. In fact, she hadn’t realised he knew about Alex.

‘Yep,’ she repeated, trying to muster a fake smile.

‘Mum said the dog will come over later.’

Another twist in her stomach. Missing Arco was almost physical, like quitting caffeine. She missed him in her hands – like she missed Alex in her skin.

‘Aw, Jube,’ Tony said, slinging an arm over her shoulders. While she appreciated the gesture and settled her head on his shoulder for a moment, the hug was in sad contrast to the cosy fireside touches she wished for. ‘If he wouldn’t come after you, then he doesn’t deserve you – and he doesn’t know what he’s missing out on.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she mumbled, even as she disagreed vehemently inside. Alex deserved everything and she’d never have asked or expected him to leave his carefully constructed support network, not after everything he’d been through.

‘You don’t believe me? You never know. Maybe he’ll turn up at our doorstep one day begging for you to take him back.’

‘Tony!’ her mother called from where she was emerging through the screen door from the kitchen with a bowl of salad. ‘Even if he did, Jules would tell him where he could put his apology. Right, honey? After everything he put you through, he’s not welcome here.’

‘But it wasn’t Alex’s fault—’ She cut herself off when both parents gave her an identical frown.

‘Who’s Alex?’

Goosebumps rushing to her hairline, Jules stared at her sandals to cover her faux pas. ‘Oh, a… friend.’

‘I know you’ll think I’m speaking with hindsight, but I never liked Luca. He wasn’t the type to bend, you know? Life’s full of disruptions and you don’t want someone who can’t deal with them.’

Jules stood and gave her mum a squeeze around her middle. ‘You’re right, Mum,’ she said softly. ‘Life is about learning to bend and not break.’

The words reminded her of grumpy Alex, who’d taken her in despite his reservations. He’d thought he was broken, but he’d bent for her and she treasured that. Luca hadn’t even tolerated the inconvenience of the dog, while Alex had bonded with Arco, despite the fact that it would bruise him again when he said goodbye.

Unable to resist any longer, she glanced at her phone to see Alex’s reply:

Maybe bonding isn’t as bad as I thought it was.

She stared at the screen, trying to convince herself he didn’t secretly mean bonding with her . His profile photo on the messaging app was him wearing his rumpled felt Alpino hat with the top of his black accordion in the corner and a wry smile on his face. Then her gaze snagged on the time and she frowned.

You’re not asleep?

I wouldn’t be texting you if I were asleep.

His little joke was all it took to transport her right back to Cividale, to the familiar courtyard with the persimmon tree and Alex’s bedroom.

Your insomnia is kind of practical for this time difference.

She wished she could judge his reaction to her joke, but she’d mostly stopped walking on eggshells around his grief.

But Arco is asleep. I suppose I could take a dark video of him snoring for you.

It wasn’t only Arco she wanted to see.

How’s your family? I bet they’re happy to have you home.

With a sigh, she looked out at her brother’s big yard with its chain link fence. Her two nieces jumped on the trampoline while her little nephew raced around squealing. It was precious being back with all three generations of her family, but she stubbornly thought it wasn’t everyone .

She didn’t know how long she would feel that Alex was missing. But their families were separated by oceans and continents and cultures and if she could be rational, she’d tell herself they hadn’t known each other long enough to get so attached. She wrote back:

I hope it’ll feel like home again soon. Send me a picture in the morning.

As Jules recovered from her jet lag and reluctantly adjusted to the high temperatures, it was easier than she would have liked to settle into her life from before she’d left for Europe. She arranged to start back at her old office job temporarily after Christmas. Her parents were taking an extended holiday after schools went back and she was doing them a favour by living at home for a while longer.

Her family treated her as though she’d never left and if they occasionally asked why she was staring out the window with her brow drawn tight, she told them she was wondering about the sale of the B&B.

She texted Alex every day, still keeping to the pretext of missing the dog, but living for the glimpses of his hands on Arco’s furry back or holding the lead. Then one day he sent her a selfie, poking his head into the shot while he crouched next to Arco at the top of a hill, the Friulian plain and the dark silhouette of the mountains behind him. The way her heart banged against her ribs was almost painful.

In her room late at night, she searched job listings in Italy, not even willing to admit to herself what she was doing. She missed Berengario and Maddalena and all the others as well. But the kind of job she’d walked into here, she had no hope of obtaining in Friuli with her limited Italian. Alex had already encouraged her to go home. Holding on made no sense, but she struggled to stop.

What if one day she heard about Alex and a new girlfriend, the way she’d discovered Luca’s relationship with Claudia the estate agent?

No, the only option was to get over him. The problem was, she didn’t want to. She wanted to hang on to the past the way he did. As much as it hurt, there was something good in the way she felt.

Berengario sent her the occasional wonky picture of the sunrise or a plate of frico, which made her laugh. She searched for Friulian restaurants in Brisbane but drew a blank, and her parents’ well-meaning attempt to cheer her up with dinner at an Italian restaurant backfired when it turned out to be a Sardinian fish restaurant. The food was delicious, but it wasn’t the comforting fare she’d hoped to find – although she carefully kept her disappointment off her face and allowed her parents their indulgent smiles.

She hadn’t told them much about Friuli, beyond that picking olives had been fun – and even that had felt like a half-truth because when she thought about picking olives, she thought about Alex’s tall frame up a ladder.

At the beginning of December, Berengario sent her a text that made her wonder if he could read minds. There was no explanation, just the website for the Fogolar Furlan – the Friulian Club – in Brisbane. When she clicked on the link and scrolled through the photos of past events, the sudden nostalgia was powerful.

Children in folk costumes with black vests and little ties posed for photos with older men in bright blue T-shirts with the alpine eagle and the word ‘Fri?l’ in yellow lettering. There were felt Alpino hats and posts remembering the earthquake of 1976 and greetings in English, Italian and Furlan.

But it wasn’t only the memories of Friuli that struck her. All of the events took place in the bright Queensland sunshine. The war memorial stood in front of an enormous eucalypt and the members of the association smiled and ate their barbecue lunch off paper plates and drank Kirk’s soft drinks straight from an Australian supermarket.

The combination made her throat thick.

When she found a poster for the upcoming picnic and AGM in the middle of December, the temptation was too strong. It was downright weird to get such a zing of excitement about the annual general meeting of a little association she wasn’t part of. She imagined driving out to the property at the edge of the city and turning up with an awkward smile and just the prospect was mortifying.

But none of that stopped her.

On the Saturday morning of the AGM, she mumbled an excuse about going shopping and jumped into her mum’s car before anyone could question her. Crossing the city took time and patience and by the time she arrived at the iron gates, the leafy property surrounded by bushland was already full of people.

A banner reading ‘Benvignus Fogolar Furlan Brisbane’ hung limply on the fence in the still sunshine and a grin spread on Jules’s face as she parked the car and crossed the street.

She wouldn’t find Alex here, but maybe she could keep some of her new-found roots and it wouldn’t hurt so much to be separated. As the thrum of an accordion reached her ears, the sound expanded in her chest like the bellows.

Wow, the feelings hadn’t faded in the weeks since she’d left Italy. If anything, she was realising just how much Alex had meant to her – how many emotions she’d refused to acknowledge.

Taking a deep breath, she snapped a photo and sent it to Berengario along with a smiley-face emoji. He’d sent her a picture of Arco eyeing Maddalena’s goat earlier that morning – yesterday in Italian time – which had only made her picture Alex out at Due Pini.

It was the middle of the night in Italy, but a reply from Berengario dropped in almost immediately.

I’m glad you’re there! Mandi dal Fri?l – say hello to Alice from me.

Alice? Was this another weird Friulian situation where everyone knew everyone – even the ones who’d emigrated years ago? With a perplexed frown, Jules stowed her phone and crossed through the gate to join the picnic.

Although there were no chickens and no goats eating the tablecloths, and none of the old men were wielding chainsaws, the trepidation in her steps reminded her of walking up the drive to the farmhouse at Due Pini. She would never have guessed that she was meeting dear friends that first day and her skin prickled at the thought that she was back at the beginning.

A woman in a smart patterned dress carrying a bowl of radicchio salad slowed her steps to study Jules.

‘Uh, mandi,’ Jules mumbled, hitching her bag higher up her shoulder.

A smile broke out on the woman’s face as though the Friulian greeting were a magic word. Jules hated to think what would have happened if she’d said ‘Ciao’ instead.

‘Mandi,’ the woman said warmly, juggling her salad to hold a hand out. ‘Are you… joining the picnic?’

‘Is that okay? I’m not a member. But I just got back from a few years in Italy. I was in Cividale…’ That made it sound as though she’d spent longer in Cividale, but she had no desire to change the misconception. ‘And I have Italian heritage. My surname is Volpe. I’m Julia – Jules. Spelled the English way. And I’m supposed to pass on greetings to Alice.’

‘Ahh, Alice,’ the woman said, correcting Jules’s pronunciation to the Italian A-li-chey . ‘Come with me.’ Jules followed her to the tables set up under a large open patio and beckoned to an energetic woman in her forties.

After Jules repeated her spiel, the other woman drew back and gave her a calculating smile. ‘A Furlan Volpe?’

Jules snapped her gaze up in surprise. ‘Unofficially.’

‘It’s good you’re here,’ she said. When she clapped her hands for attention and the buzz of conversation quietened, alarm sizzled down Jules’s spine.

Alice grasped her arm gently and began in the three languages of the association. ‘Allora, ducj cuancj! Tutti quanti! Everyone!’

She paused for long enough for Jules to hear the blood rushing in her ears. A hundred smiling faces stared up at her from their folding-chairs and plates of sausages and polenta.

‘This is Jules. She’s just arrived back from Friuli.’ What she said next nearly made Jules’s knees give out. ‘She’s Alex’s girlfriend!’