Bella Tuscany (26 page)

Ritmo: Rhythm

IN THE MIDST OF THE TORRENTIAL EL NI
ñ
O
winter in San Francisco, we decided to move. I was reading the paper one Sunday and saw a small drawing of a Spanish/Mediterranean house with two balconies and what looked like a tall palm in front. “Look at this house—doesn't it remind you of Bramasole?”

Ed stared. “I like it. Where is it?”

“It doesn't say. Isn't the balcony nice? You could line it with those yellow orchids that seem to grow everywhere in San Francisco.” Ed called the listing agent and found out the house was sold.

Living at Bramasole makes us want to import into our American lives as many Italian elements as we can. More urgently, the death of Ed's mother in January heightened our sense of
carpe diem
. Our flat, which I bought as my former marriage slowly dissolved, is the third floor of a large Victorian house. I loved the coved ceilings and moulding and all the light flooding through skylights and thirty windows. The dining room looks out into trees and then onto a city view, with a slice of the bay in the distance. After years there, every room reflected the way we live. The kitchen I'd remodeled the year we bought Bramasole. Black and white tile, mirror between the glass-fronted cabinets and counters, and a six-burner restaurant stove with an oven where I easily could roast two geese and a turkey. What we began to miss was living outdoors. Stepping outside as though it were inside, stepping inside as though it were outside. Suddenly, I needed herbs in the ground and a table under a tree. Besides, it's good to move. I throw away all the accumulated junk—jars, papers, shoes in the back of the closet, black-splotched cookie sheets, tired towels. Remembering every move, I see that a new period of my life began with each change of house. Is the irrational instinct to move now (the flat is large and pretty and in a great location) also a pre-knowledge of change, or a readiness for the new?

We began to circle ads for houses in the paper, to drive around on Sunday afternoons to open houses, to look at neighborhoods we hardly knew, since our own Pacific Heights neighborhood was not remotely affordable, given what we wanted. The real estate market was wild: Asking price turned out to be a base in what quickly became an auction. Houses were selling for up to a hundred thousand dollars over the list price. Confusing. John, our agent, agreed. And we weren't finding anything we especially liked. I wanted the
this is it
feeling I experienced when I first saw Bramasole.

We'd give up for a couple of weeks, then John would call and say we might drive by a certain address, we might like this ranch house with a large garden with redwoods and a greenhouse. As we were driving toward the peninsula one day to see a Carmel-type cottage, we followed an open house sign and turned into a wooded area of San Francisco originally landscaped by the Olmstead firm, designers of Central Park. The houses live among trees and lawns. The Tudor house for sale was in “original” condition, meaning every plank and pane needed attention. We started talking to the agent, and told him we were about to give up for a year or so, until things calmed down. “I have a house I think you might like. Meet me at four and I'll show you.” We drove on to see the overly charming cottage, where multiple offers were being made during the first hour.

When we pulled up at the address the agent had given us, I recognized the house I'd seen in the paper, the one that had set me dreaming about moving. “We saw this house advertised and called about it. We thought it was sold.”

“It was, but the deal fell through. It's not yet back on the market.” Steps curve up to a tile veranda with a large arched door from the dining room opening to it. Three upstairs balconies and a sunroom with eleven windows—the house is speaking my language. I can see Sister moving from one sunny patch to another in this light-flooded house.

We bought it. Even though we'd not even listed our own flat, we had to act quickly. I started sorting through letters and sweaters. My daughter became engaged. We were getting to know Stuart, her fiancé. Ashley and I began to plan their wedding. Visits to photographers and florists were fitted between trips to the hardware store to find hooks and doorknobs. She was studying for her PhD qualifying exam, then her orals. High panic set in. Several of her classmates had failed the year before. We listed the flat and it sold within three days. We closed on the new house and ripped out miles of thick white carpet, blotched with spills. Underneath, the seventy-five-year-old herringbone hardwood floors were intact. Dirty but intact. We found a brick stairway spattered with paint, which had to be stripped. We began having the floors refinished, new wiring and alarm system installed, the interior painted. We had to have a new tile roof put on. While I was out, the wrong room was painted yellow. Ashley and I looked at wedding dresses—she quickly decided that she wanted the floating-cloud variety—and invitations and bridesmaids' dresses. We met with caterers. Ed went to Italy to prune during his spring break. I was running between the flat and the house, dealing with workmen who spoke no English. The people we hired to work spoke English but when the actual labor began, they sent workers newly arrived from Cambodia, Malaysia, Korea, and all parts of South America. Often, they couldn't even talk to each other. Restoring Bramasole was so much easier! One Honduran painter locked a bedroom door from the inside and closed it as he came out. When I showed him that the door wouldn't open, he looked at me with great brown eyes and sadly uttered his only two American words, “Fook sheet.” I looked at him for a moment before those popular expletives registered.

Blithely, I'd said I loved to move. It would be fun. When the truck loaded our furniture and boxes for an entire day, I wondered how we ever would unpack. Sister yowled all the way from our flat, which she'd lived in always, to the new house. The bookshelves we bought—and painted three coats—did not begin to accommodate all our books. Sixty boxes were stored in the new basement. In the large living room, our sofa and chairs looked like dollhouse furniture. The men set about unpacking but I didn't know where vases and platters and paintings should go. They were left in stacks and heaps on the gorgeous new floors. We were happy with the house every step of the way. Our bedroom has a fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a balcony, tropical trees, and then, in the distance, the Pacific Ocean. I had the walls painted a color called “Sicily,” a faint shade of peach. Studies for both of us, extensive storage, a little walled garden, and a bougainvillea that must have been planted when the house was new—we were too thrilled to be overwhelmed by our dawn-to-midnight days. Ed came back from two weeks of solid work at Bramasole. Re-entry was rude. A pipe burst and the basement started to flood. He was up to his ankles in water, telephone in one hand, a box of books under the other arm. Two plumbers worked for eleven hours and finally found the leak. I travelled three times to southern California to give talks. Locally, I spoke at several events. We had a new window made for the stair landing, replacing with clear glass a pair of staring, stained-glass owls on a limb. We had a gardener hacking ivy, a reminder of buying Bramasole. The entire garage door had to be replaced. Oh, and I was teaching full time. I had ten MFA theses, classes, and meetings.

We decided to get married. We told no one. I recalled my primitive instinct that moving is a signal that one is ready for change. I ordered two cakes from Dominique, my favorite pastry maker, we sent invitations for a housewarming to about thirty of our closest friends. Then I told Ashley and two friends. We dashed downtown for the license, which was shockingly easy to obtain. Twelve dollars, sign on the line.

All the years after my divorce, I had avoided the subject of marriage. Even when it was clear that Ed and I would be permanently together, I'd say, “Why bother?” Or, “I'm not in the important business of raising children anymore. We're adults.” I feared my friend who said, “Marriage is the first step toward divorce.” To myself I'd say,
I don't want to put my hand down on the hot burner twice
. Also, I never wanted to be financially dependent ever again. My former years of writing poetry while my husband worked, I'd paid for dearly. I knew I'd never marry without stepping into it with full financial freedom. Miraculously, and thanks to my own writing hand, I felt secure.

A carload of flowers, a big board of cheeses, strawberries, the cakes,
gelato,
champagne—no wedding ever was easier. Our friends arrived bearing soaps, plants, bowls, and books to warm the house. Our close friend Josephine, a licensed minister, called everyone together in the living room for a blessing of the house. We stood beside her in front of the fireplace. Ashley and Stuart stood with us. And then Josephine said, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered . . .” Our friends gasped and clapped. She talked about happiness. Ed and I read poems to each other. That was it.

The next day we were back into unpacking boxes and changing locks and arranging insurance. But we were breaking into big smiles at the mailman, and now and then dancing in the hallway.

Most of the arrangements for Ashley's August wedding were finished. She did well on both exams and had a paper accepted for a conference. Stuart broke away from his company and started a new business. They moved his office and hired people. He talked on the phone as we drove to restaurants. Who could cook? We were all so far beyond the beyond that we seemed calm. They brought us a grill and one night we managed to burn both steak and vegetables. Changes, changes, changes. The house looked spare but settled. We lived there two weeks. I never knew where the forks were or how the new washer worked. We'd compressed a half-year of house restoration into six weeks, thanks to our Italian training. Sister looked at us accusingly and wouldn't budge from the top of Ed's suitcase. We were searching for tax papers, having filed extensions during all the confusion. We filled in final grade sheets and cleared up our school offices. It was June. The house sitter arrived. Time to move to Italy.

 

On Italian time I wake up by the sun, not by my alarm clock. In shock from the chaotic spring, I look blankly out the window. Ed has risen in the dark, only to fall asleep on the sofa. We have come back to Bramasole for summer. I wonder if we could stare into the trees without speaking to anyone for at least a week. I would like a nurse in the hallway, a silent white-uniformed presence who would bring in crescents of melon on thin plates, her pale hand soothing my forehead. The first week of June—odd, the garden is at prime bloom. Even the yellow lilies are open. The linden trees Ed and Beppe pruned in March have spread umbrellas of fresh leaves. Some roses already are waning from their first flush of flowers.

Beppe arrives and Ed steps out barefooted and shirtless to say hello. Beppe hands him a sack.
“Un coniglio
per la signora, genuino.”
In its seventy days on earth, the rabbit has eaten nothing but greens, salad, and bread. I look in the bag and see the head. “Put the head in sauce,” he tells me. “The meat of the face is . . .” He makes the corkscrew gesture of rotating his forefinger against his cheek, signaling a fine taste. Beppe says rain fell every day in spring and all the plants are two weeks early. The air feels heavy with moisture and it seems that I'm looking through a green lens at the wet light over the valley. He tells us he has planted the
orto
because Anselmo is sick again. When we call Anselmo later, he sounds weak but says he'll be well in a couple of weeks. Ed makes coffee and we lower ourselves into chairs outside in the sun, ready to let the rays restore us. We're discussing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and whether we have them.

Primo Bianchi drives up in his battered blue Ape. As we walk down to meet him, we see him limping badly. He's dressed in pressed gray pants and loafers, not in his usual work clothes. Immediately he sits on the wall and slips off his shoes. Even through his socks, his ankles look swollen. He grimaces every time his foot touches the ground or moves. “Gout, perhaps gout. I have not been able to work for a month. And the pills they give me are bad for my liver.”

We are poised to finish the bathroom project we started last summer, which had to be aborted when the Sicilian tile ended up in the sea. We also plan to build a stone terrace and grill in front of the
limonaia
and to make a pergola of grapes, a continuation of our garden master plan. He tells us he spent the entire rainy spring reconstructing a stairwell in a
palazzo
. On his knees on damp brick, pouring cement and hauling—no wonder his feet rebelled. Maybe we should find someone else, he suggests. “No, no, we'll wait until you are ready,” Ed tells him. “We like your work and your men.” We're crazy about him, too. He knows how to do anything. He looks at a problem, moving his head from side to side, pondering. Then he looks at us with a smile and explains what we will do. When he works he sings tuneless songs like those I've heard on a tape of traditional Tuscan and Umbrian farm music. The songs don't seem to venture far from three or four notes endlessly repeated in a humming drone. His blue eyes have a far sadness in them which totally contrasts with his immediate smile. He hoists himself up and promises to call when he can begin.

Although we are worried about his feet, we are ecstatic over the delay. Now a few weeks of
dolce far niente,
the sweet to do nothing, which we love most. It seems accidental that we keep falling into enormous projects. The sweetness of the early summer is intense. The double-time, triple-time rhythm of the past few months suddenly starts to fade and the long, long Tuscan days present themselves like gifts. Even the Mad Spring was motivated by our desire to bring a piece of our lives here to San Francisco, although at this moment that seems like bomb-the-village-to-save-the-village thinking.

Reliving the spring, we ask each other what we could have done differently. And what
can
we take back to our lives in the new house? What accounts for the dramatic shift in our minds and bodies when we live here? And, in California, aren't we frequently out of control? When over-commitment kicks in, I feel my concentration start to flit. After a few days here, my scattered consciousness gradually melds, mends. Even that seems a level of happiness: the absence of anxiety. Clearly, factor one is not working at our jobs in summer. But we like teaching and must continue, so, given that, what else?