Love & Gelato

That night, Lina cannot sleep. She needs to know the circumstances of her birth. She opens her mother’s journal. Inside the front cover, her mother has written in thick black marker, “I made the wrong choice” (92).

The first entries relate to her mother’s arrival in Florence and how she walked away from a nursing scholarship to study photography at the Fine Arts Academy in Florence. She is scared, but she knows in her heart this is what she wants. When she arrives in Florence, she meets her roommate Francesca, who is studying fashion photography. Hadley visits the Duomo and is transfixed by the cathedral’s intricate Gothic designs.

Lina realizes how, by reading the journal, she will experience Florence along with her mother.

Ren calls to remind Lina about the party that night. Howard knows Odette and is happy that Lina has met some kids her age. Lina calls Addie, and her friend cautions her that she tends to shut people out, encouraging her to be open to new people. Addie predicts that “[t]onight [Lina] will fall in love with the hottest boy in Italy” (107).

Ren arrives on a shiny red scooter, and they head to the party. As they motor along, Ren asks why Lina calls her father “Howard.” She tells him that she is just getting to know him. They arrive at the party, held in a sumptuous villa once owned by the Medici family.

The villa impresses Lina with its grand staircases, arched ceilings, and Medieval tapestries. She meets several kids from the international school. They greet Lina warmly. She meets Mimi, Ren’s girlfriend, who is tall and slim, with big blue eyes and blonde, nearly white hair. Mimi ignores Lina. Lina also meets Thomas Heath, a wealthy British kid, who is tall and thin, with a strong jaw and lips that “pretty much ruined any chance [Lina] had of forming words” (124). Lina is immediately intrigued by Thomas, her “bones roughly the consistency of strawberry jelly” (125). He is, as Addie says when Lina later sends her a picture, “Underwear Model good looking” (134). Before Lina and Ren depart the party, Ren’s friends tell Lina that she must undergo the initiation of all new kids at the school: She must jump into the pool with her clothes on. Surprising herself, she spontaneously jumps, executing “the world’s most perfect cannonball” (130).

After checking in with Howard, Lina goes to her room and video chats with Addie. She tells her about both Ren and Thomas. After the call, she returns to her mother’s journal.

Her mother records meeting the other students at the academy, among them Howard, a history adjunct professor and a “perfect Southern gentleman” (137). Later, she falls under the spell of a handsome, intelligent, charming professor she refers to only as X. She writes, “We must keep things completely secret because he teaches at the academy” (140). Lina assumes she is talking about Howard. Hadley notices X in classes and immediately feels “this weird chemistry” between them (142). They would meet for dinner in quiet cafes and visit out-of-the-way pastry shops, always late in the evening so no one from the academy would see them.

Lina realizes that her “mom had been smitten” with X (146). She struggles to connect the romantic and mysterious figure her mother describes with Howard.

Ren surprises Lina the next morning, joining her for her morning run. Ren admits that he is intimidated by Howard. Lina assures him Howard is a “pretty nice guy” (152). Lina admires Ren’s steady stride as they run.

That night, Ren surprises Lina by taking her for ice cream. He decides to show her the Ponte Vecchio, an ancient bridge over the Arno River that Lina’s mother mentions in her journal. The bridge stuns Lina: “It looked like it had been built by fairies [...] the whole thing was lit golden in the darkness, its reflection sparkling back up from the river” (159). Playfully, Ren jumps over the side of the bridge, and Lina reluctantly follows. They crouch together on a table-sized ledge. They share a magical view of the bridge and river. Lina thinks, “It gave me a solemn, awestruck kind of feeling. Like going to church” (160).

Lina, moved by the moment, shows Ren her mother’s journal, which she had brought in her purse. She tells him that her mother had met Howard at art school; how, after they started dating, she referred to him only as X to keep their affair secret; and how, Lina presumes, she had gotten pregnant and returned to the States to raise Lina on her own. Ren then shares his story, growing up in Texas before moving to Italy. Lina asks about a club called Space Electronic that her mother wrote about. Ren knows it. He then asks whether Lina might like to stop for gelato. Lina has no idea what gelato is.