Photo: SC Martinez

https://www.dulcetlitmag.com/issues

Published in Dulcet Literary Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 2, on February 18, 2025

A few weeks after she buried her mother, an envelope arrived in the mail with the payout from her mother’s insurance policy. Julie stared at the check propped against the toaster while she drank a cup of coffee and ate breakfast. She then booked a round-trip flight to Florence, Italy, and then spent the rest of the week in the house sorting her mother’s possessions. When her mother died, Julie cried for days. She cried for the mother she’d nursed for twenty-one years. Then she cried for the time lost that could never be replaced, for the husband and children she might’ve had, for the many friendships abandoned, and for everything else she couldn’t name. Then she stopped. 

Three months later, Julie set off from her hotel on her first morning in Florence along the Via della Vigna Nuova. The sun sliced through the narrow street, blinding her despite her new Gucci sunglasses. She avoided being hit by a Vespa by hugging a building. Sidewalks in Florence were medieval afterthoughts that lost the battle for space to vehicles a hundred years earlier.

Julie’s people were quiet Midwesterners transplanted to New Jersey who mowed their own lawns and didn’t buy on credit. A trip to Europe was inconceivable – a week at the Jersey shore, maybe. Julie had had a happy childhood with Barbie dolls, swimming lessons, and friends. The youngest of three, her two older brothers had both left home for college by the time she was twelve. She was good at art and enjoyed it, so she went to art school but lacked the passion to pursue a career as an artist. Julie married briefly in her mid-twenties.

She walked to the Strozzi Palace to see the Picasso show, but she was early, and it wouldn’t open until later. The unfiltered sunlight made her eyes water as she proceeded east toward The Bargello, her next stop. As she passed through the Piazza Della Repubblica, she noticed an empty table in the shade at an outdoor café. Julie craved something she couldn’t quite determine, but maybe some biscotti and coffee would be good.

When her father’s war injuries triggered his early retirement, and her mother suffered the first in a series of strokes, Julie agreed to become their temporary caregiver. It seemed practical. Her brothers each had families by then and lived hundreds of miles away. Her dad died five years later, but her mom lingered and became increasingly irascible and critical of Julie, her only daughter. Julie had been in a half-life, a hibernation, until her mother died, and now she was awake and hungry for sustenance but untethered on her own.