Page 52 of On Fire Island

His face dropped as he glanced at the table I was referring to.

“Two? I’m not even so sure about one anymore,” he quickly joked.

My face did more than drop. I imagine it distorted on impact. I didn’t find it funny.

Of course, being married for a while then, we’d had the general conversation about wanting at least one child, but as far as the timing of it went, we were a little lax. It always felt like a discussion for another day, and then another day, and another still. Until right then and there, when I realized that the discussion was not based onwhenbut onif. Joking or not, his comment really landed with a punch, as Ben would say.

I didn’t even have to explain myself. The look on my face turned out to be enough. He backpedaled.

“But if you still want one, of course, I’m still willing.”

I knew Ben would do anything for me. But was that how I wanted this to go down? Either way, this was not the place to discuss it. The fancy people on the restaurant’s terrace were barely even speaking to one another, let alone having heated heart-to-hearts about the single most important decision in life.

“Now is not the time,” I said.

“I agree!” he concurred with marked relief. “Our life is so perfect right now, why would we complicate it with a baby?”

“I meant now is not the time to discuss it.”

This time, it was his face that epically distorted.

After breakfast, we checked out and hit the road for our nextdestination, Siracusa. I thought about bringing parenthood up again in the car, but if you have ever driven in Sicily, you know that full attention is necessary. The roads are curvy, the speed limit lax, and the other drivers showed a tendency to be casual about the traffic rules. Besides, it really wasn’t fair to broach such a serious discussion when he was in the thinking phase of his novel. I decided to wait.

We arrived in Siracusa by lunchtime, threw down our bags in the less than superior hotel and left in search of pressed prosciutto and mozzarella sandwiches. We found the perfect iteration at the far end of the famous Mercato di Ortigia. We sat by the water and ate it while watching Sicilian teenagers and tourists sunbathe on the rocks and jump from the cliffs to the sea. Don’t tell Little Les, but it was the best sandwich I’d ever eaten.

The food in Siracusa was generally a little briny for my taste, but, if I steered clear of anchovies, sublime. I had never even liked olives before arriving there; suddenly I couldn’t get enough of them. But even they weren’t reason enough to stay. Besides, Delia Ephron had already covered Siracusa beautifully in her novel of the same name.

We slept that night on top of the covers in a too-hot room, checked out early, and headed toward Licata, the town where young Jack Koslowsky had landed in the allied invasion of 1943. There, Ben spent a lot of time sitting at the water’s edge, taking it all in.

A few towns later, after stopping in Modena for chocolate and Noto for risotto, we arrived at the Villa Athena in Agrigento before dusk. We sat on our terrace, sipping prosecco while the sun set on the Valley of the Temples, causing the fifth- and sixth-century Greek ruins to glow in shades of red and orange and pink. As the sky turned dark, the two temples were lit like a Hollywood movie set. It was hard to choose which was better, act one or act two.

The next day, for act three, we went to see the ruins up close. We learned that besides creating these architectural masterpieces, the Greeks were also responsible for introducing a population of Girgenti goats to the area. So called after the former name of the city of Agrigento, the goats could be traced back to sometime around 700 BC. Famous for their long beards and twisty horns, there were tons of them in the forties, when Jack would have lived in the valley—though now they’re protected from extinction by a handful of local farmers.

After writing down every bit of info he heard on the subject, Ben asked me, “Would you be OK staying in Agrigento for a while?”

“Sure, it’s beautiful.”

“Good, because the farmer lost his only son in the war and taught Jack Koslowsky all he knew about raising Girgenti goats.”

We rented an Airbnb right off the Piazza Perron, Agrigento’s charming town square, right between the requisite church and theater. The streets were lined with Brazilian pepper trees and olive trees with actual olives dangling from their branches. If you could stand the slightly bitter taste, you could actually walk and snack.

I spent my mornings lounging around at home or at the adjacent Avenue Cafe, while Ben spent his with his new friend, the goat farmer. Most afternoons, we would sit in the piazza enjoying a late lunch as the town came alive. The energy was fantastic: Children racing each other home from school. Men hugging hello like long-lost brothers, thinking nothing of resting their arms around each other’s shoulders.

The women were cooler and harder to figure out. They wore tight jeans, sexy blouses, and black high-heeled boots. They kissed each other’s cheeks—“Ciao!”—“Ciao!”—and told entire stories with their hands and their eyes.

The week we were set to return home Ben turned in his proposal.

Sicily

By Benjamin Morse

A story of two brothers named Jack, neither of whom knew the other existed.

When Jack Koslowsky shipped off in the summer of ’42, he had no idea that his fiancée was pregnant with his child. A casualty of the invasion of Sicily, he was left for dead in the battlefield. Jack had no other family and named his fiancée next of kin. She was notified, and their child was born without a father. She named him Jack Koslowsky, in his honor. After days of lying abandoned on the ground where he had been shot, Jack was discovered by an old goat farmer. He carried him to his wagon, covered him with straw, and took him home to his farm, where he was also harboring a young Jewish refugee, Fanca Sigal. Together, they nursed Jack back to health. The farmer’s only son died in the war, and Jack stepped in to help him on the land. Eventually, Jack and Fanca fell in love. Fanca, too, became pregnant, and the two married after the war and raised their son, Jack Jr., on the farm in Sicily.

Fifty years later, Jack’s American son comes to Sicily in an attempt to heal his ailing marriage and to see where the father he never knew had lost his life. The unhappy couple got stuck in Agrigento due to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland that grounded all air travel. There they hear of another man named Jack Koslowsky, a second-generation goatfarmer with similar looks to the American. When one son meets the other, the past is unveiled and new and old connections are ignited.

I loved it. Elizabeth and our team loved it too. Which was a good thing, because truth was Ben was so into the story that he had it half written already.

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