The Neapolitan at Hogwarts picks me up at the airport

I SMELLED THE RINDS of a clementine cupped in my hand. It was the first thing I grabbed. I always loved the scent of its remains, sharp and sweet like a quiet day down the shore long ago. Here we go, I thought.

The glass doors opened to a blue sky, the color of my mother’s eyes, a bite in the air. I came into the light with a bright smile, my mother’s: Joyce. “You’d never think that I came from a story like that,” people told me, though I never knew what to do with it since they clearly knew no one who did.

I didn’t know I came from “a story like that,” you see, did I? It was the personality that came along with it; spritely, I guess, out of the box, and happy to be alive, genuinely, and that was an obstacle. My genuine joy, my mother’s name, was an inheritance, and it was either impossible or too “touching,” I think, which is what…Carmine, the man of the hour, I call him, making his approach, called me.

“This is your primary quality.” Was it? I didn’t know.

I hadn’t wanted to be seen in the hugest Mongolian fur coat you have ever seen with a mop of curls on top, big bird, my former friend had picked it out. I had tucked myself away behind a trash can beside the glass box of the airpor with a cappuccino. I smelled the rinds, like I always did. I didn’t want to stand there waving like an idiot, “remember me?”

I always felt some real root here, even if it was small. That tart freshness, Naples. A chilly December day. A shot of color in black stone. Contrast, high contrast, and I guess that’s me. I really didn’t know, as the world always appeared a vast place to me. In most people’s eyes, my story appeared to be like arriving in a foreign country, but they didn’t necessarily understand that I had told the story before. It wasn’t my first time as the tour guide.

Gliding through the lot with hair like black silky sails, my cousins sent Carmine to pick me up. He could understand me when no one else could. I remembered that, right. He wasn’t my cousin, he was my partner. We were a duo. We had a magical ability to communicate, which, evidently, they remembered, despite no real words having been exchanged. Peculiar.

It struck me. He was no longer a boy. His cheeks were my favorite feature back then along with his signature owl eyes behind his round glasses that eliminated any possibility of discerning what he was thinking. They weren’t round anymore and neither was he. Had a beat in his head. That is why I called him “the Neapolitan at Hogwarts” because that’s who he truly is.

The Neapolitans exist in the Harry Potter universe, it’s an enchanted group of people who still believe in enchantment, mystics, mystery. They trace their origins to the siren that attempted to lure Odysseus, which, uh, we were fine, she was our siren. He’s that boy with owl eyes and his cute round glasses and cheeks who would “channel the siren” to bring “V” to his knees. “Harry.” In an Italian accent. He would be the special foreign student. And the funny bit? His whole family would agree, especially hot Rosa.

A friend of mine from Genoa remarked that the Neapolitans were “the actors of Italy,” if you can simply take that in. She snickered at my accent in Italian because it was Neapolitan. So Neapolitans in Italy are considered to be their own entity. I have regular Italian cousins, so I can tell you that they truly are. Cool, matter-of-fact yet poetic, he’s going to become an opera for you with owl eyes as Neapolitans are “the actors of Italy.” He mastered the “not acting” technique, which is a real approach to the craft, and he’s worthy of awards, in my opinion.

Subtly stunned to recognize me in stride, fist over his mouth, how to cross fifteen years? He did it because it wasn’t a dense material to him, and I couldn’t move. I also had luggage. I moved my hands like the storm, the storms! He had no idea what I was saying. The years flew with his steps, ages flickered across his face. I searched for the words. He hugged me. A direct hit. I wasn’t expecting that, that fifteen years could be so easily crossed. He pulled me in front of him with a firm grip as if to feel the reality of me.

“Merí, your hair…”

“Merí!”

My coat was “totally enormous.”

I forgot that they called me by that name — Merí. I masked that with a bright smile. “Yes,” he nodded. “This is you, Merí.” I took this as an opportunity to practice the letters of the alphabet. “Not…” He nodded. “Mary,” I cut it short. “Baa baa,” I made the sounds for lamb; he found my coat “bello, is it vintage?” But Italian lambs do not make the same sounds as English ones. “Mangiar.” I patted my hands, moved around “l’animale…” with hair that you shave to weave. He thought I looked “bella.” I got uncomfortable, he noticed, which made me respond strangely. “You! You look.” He reached for my giant suitcase, I felt bad, so we did a pas de deux over who would take it. “No, no,” I didn’t want him to take it. I packed for a month. He dismissed me politely. He wasn’t going to let me…I liked taking my own bag. I was strong, brightly, too! I meant it. I did not…He stopped.

He adjusted his glasses, a stone pine behind him. What was my fidgety insistence about? He spoke with a blunt tone. Just like his mother. No inflection. Nasal. Though his mother is cartoon worthy, and that’s a compliment. I did a readjustment dance, he got it. “Work…” as in “job…”

“Ah,” he was sincere, “agnello.” And with two claws going into the subject, “this,” I said. He patted down my nervous fumes. I didn’t remember the word for “lamb.” Everything was okay. That was first. Taking in my hair, my coat, my giant beat-up suitcase, my pristine ostrich carry-on….

“Si, si,” he said flatly, “you were always like this.”

I had to laugh at his tone. “What?”

My hands were always “imaginative.”

“What?”

“Si si,” no change in tone, my hands were always creative, even a little fantastico…

“Vero? True?”

I asked him with a bright face…I arched my thumb into the past.

“You, you, know, this? Me?”

Carmine said, “si, si. You were always like this.”

Uh, laughing…really? I cast my gaze toward the ground. It was a compliment, he lifted me up since I appeared lost. His owl eyes shifted. He didn’t make fun of me, Carmine, that’s first. “This is a quality…“

“You,” I gestured, “you think this, you know this, you,” I made an arch backward with my thumb. “Si, si,” he looked away. He rubbed his palm when he was thinking though his face rarely changed. I interrupted him in feeling. I understood what he was going to say. Shrugging, it was obvious. He looked side to side as if it say — isn’t it? And then, with a small shrug, if not a stare, it would be strange…I got it before he had to say it. He didn’t care. We shrugged back and forth. It’s just a little song and dance. Everyone has one here, it’s just my way. I was so excited! Suddenly. He was unmoved. Napoli! I froze. Too fast. I got self-conscious. He rang to signal my attention. “Meri — ”

“We must hurry, it is time to eat…”

I froze in fear. His brows rose, his eyes owl. “I cannot eat…”

He didn’t know how to take that with my cracking up at his straight face and blunt tone, a little nasal. “What do you mean you cannot eat? You are not hungry, or you cannot eat because you feel sick or tired or something? Are you okay?” Uh, no, yes. I didn’t have the words. Looking at me as if I were strange without moving his face, he broke into a slight smile. I laughed. He rolled on with my bag.

“Mama, lunch-time, let’s go…”

Slowing down my steps to delay his, he whistled like he knew. If there was one thing I couldn’t forget, it was how much they ate.

He wagged his finger as if he remembered me more and more with every step he took. I caught up with him, the wind through his jacket, his fair. His chest affrontedthe seas once more. Carmine was sensitive to the shift in my feeling, but he didn’t know what it was, I could tell, but then, who knew what he knew and what he didn’t? I was nervous, for sure, though I wouldn’t say that I was totally aware of that. My bag was a little awkward. I lunged for it apologetically. Like a sharp conductor, he paused in suspension, his eyes large and innocent. “Be careful.” I didn’t want anyone to do anything for me! It was my responsibility, sincerely, Carmine shifted his eyes from side to side, to take the large bag. I packed enough for a month. Yes, yes, I did well. “Why are you apologizing?” I acted like a dumbbell so this moment would pass and threw my hands around my mop of curls. I was “tired,” yeah. Claws for hands…um… he rolled on. I inserted my hands where words should have been. “I loved!” With a fist. All this! Speaking like this, with fists, not knowing the language, cracking up. “Ti!” My steps quickened, emotional. I caught his nails — they were longer — he played guitar! I beamed and pointed. “Muschi!” I stumbled over a curb in my black suede boots.

“Musician” was not an easy word for me to pronounce. “MUSCHI.”

Carmine threw his hands at a silver car, attempting to go around the parking kiosk by accelerating up and onto a grassy median we were crossing. “HO!” He kept moving as if there was nothing abnormal about it, me, because there wasn’t. Stopping at a white 90s Peugeot, opening up the trunk, I pointed to it. Plumping onto the pavement, the silver car booked it.

“Hey! Franco!”

“Si si,” Carmine was smooth with his keys. It was his father’s old car, “si.”

“We were children in the…”

I saw little Carmine in the backseat swinging his sandal in the summers, just the cutest, with slick hair, too. We were always together, a duo, more so than cousins. We began turning our fingers towards the point we would never arrive at like the “wheels.” His eyes owl. But, that’s the thing, we always did to the amazement of our family. “Maria’s talking about Zeus,” he’d say. He saw the swan; that’s the funny thing about Carmine. I tried to describe the swan Zeus became, and he got a picture of it in his head. “Ugly when baby?”

“Yes.”

“Also ballet?”

“Yes.”

“Si si,” he had the cutest lisp when he was a kid, subtle. His cheeks. His eyes. He was a baby owl. “Who becomes beautiful Meri?”

Yes, Carmine nodded with a furrowed brow on the driver’s side of the car. A handsome man, now, good-looking. His eyes went side to side — si. No, he got the picture. I wanted him to see the past in the car. He did.

“We did questo!” Remembering our turning, mine, I guess, fingers.

He turned my wheels towards the present — the passenger seat I needed to get into, putting invisible food in his mouth. I laughed. He made sounds as if the deal had been made. I proved his point. He got into the car.

Naples, just a place I longed to return to, yeah. On guitar strings, we took off down the autoroute.