Summer in Tuscany (21 page)

It’s no hardship to shop in Capri. You name it, there’s a boutique selling it, from the grand names to the smaller but still exclusive Italian shops, from the local vendors to the ice cream parlors. We inspected baby-soft cashmeres in delicate sugared-almond colors and tucked linen dresses in pretty pastels, snug, strappy little dresses in supple silks, south of France bathing suits, wraps and shawls in pashmina and lace, beaded handmade sandals, beautiful shoes and bags, glittering real jewels, and even bigger and more glittery fake jewels. But let’s face it, I was not the world’s greatest shopper. I had difficulty choosing. Lack of experience, I guess.

Just the act of shopping was exhausting. We were in this chic boutique where an obviously rich old Italian woman, thin, with lacquered blond hair and a rapacious look in her eyes, was trying on the entire shop while the patron danced attendance. I picked out what I thought was a nice top: blue flowers on white, very pretty.

In a flash, the old woman snatched it out of my hand. She said something to the patron, who shrugged helplessly and whispered to me that the woman wanted it. Nonna said scornfully, “Let the old warhorse have it. She needs dressing up,” and we exited to outraged cries.

Next I was trying on this Lycra top. The chiffon scarf the boutique owner had wrapped over my face to protect the garment from my nonexistent makeup blinded me, the plastic ticket dug into my back, the sleeves were somehow twisted—it was a form of torture, and flustered I asked myself one more time,
What am I doing here?

Discouraged, I walked out. And then, across the street, I saw the dress I had tried on in Rome. The silky chiffon one that I had thought looked okay on me in an odd kind of way. Red and sexy and exactly the kind of dress I had nowhere to go in. The one that cost a fortune. I went in and bought it. And to go with it, a pair of shoes with heels that I knew were too high, red with pointy toes that I knew would kill me but made my legs look surprisingly good. They were my own little ruby slippers, ready to take me to the Land of Oz. So there I was, inches taller and somehow curvier in this delicious frock, and suddenly feeling like a woman again.

“Maybe this shopping game isn’t too bad after all,” I said.

“It’s the success that counts,” Nonna said knowledgeably, because hadn’t she become the champion shopper?

Anyhow, I ran back to Malo, the cashmere shop, and handed over my poor AmEx card for an ice-green sweater that was maybe the softest thing on earth, then dashed back down the street and picked up a simple white skirt, except it fit like a glove. I treated myself to some expensive new underwear—I was never going to be caught on the hop in my old cotton undies again, I told myself, but then I quickly reminded myself that I certainly was not. I was the ice maiden, wasn’t I? Yeah, that’s right. So I bought lacy bras and panties, and I picked up a few shirts and some cute shorts and a couple of cotton sundresses, and by then I knew I was broke.

Especially when Livvie just had to have a green dress that was the color of Muffie’s new hair and that was actually
pretty
. It was a real girly dress, cut on the bias with skinny little straps. It clung softly to her young body, somehow making her look older instead of younger, the way I thought it would have. We bought a pair of the handmade beaded sandals to go with her dress, and a smart suit in lavender linen for Nonna. Then we had a quick pistachio ice cream cone. (I had learned from Flavia at the
gelateria
in Bella Piacere that if you’re buying pistachio ice cream in Italy, the thing to remember is that the good stuff, the kind made from real pistachios, is a kind of sludgy green. If it’s that bright shiny green, it’s made from colorants and fake flavors.) This one was
perfect
. And then we were back at the harbor, where our Riva was waiting. As was Tomaso. The real reason we were here.

This time Tomaso was driving. His father sat up front, winding ropes and studying charts and doing other such nautical things, and Tomaso invited Livvie to come sit next to him.

I watched the back of my daughter’s cropped yellow head, trying to fathom what she was thinking. Nonna nudged me, raised her brows, and nodded in their direction.
“Amore,”
she whispered. I sighed. I knew she was right. “Now she can really get into trouble,” Nonna added.

“Not if I have anything to do with it, she won’t,” I whispered back, glaring at Tomaso’s exquisitely muscled back. There’s just something so beautiful about youth, though, about the lean spareness of the body: every rib, every vertebra shining subtly, every effortless muscle delineated under the flesh, the torso tapering like a Greek, or maybe I mean Italian, statue, the beautiful taut muscular butt, the strong legs. I couldn’t blame Livvie; she had never seen anything like this. But, I asked myself, exactly
what
did Tomaso see in my little girl?

A companion, I thought wistfully. Someone to joke with, to flirt with, to pass long, hot, sunlit summer days with. But not the nights. No,
definitely not
the nights.

“Mom,” Livvie said when we arrived back at the San Pietro, “can I go out with Tomaso tonight? He knows this perfect little club; he says it’s just great.”

She looked hopefully at me. I was on the verge of saying no, but she was suddenly so all sort of shiny and expectant. “You can’t go out with him alone. It has to be in a group. And he has to have you home by eleven,” I said sternly.

“Oh, Mom.” She was breathless with excitement, smiling. “Midnight.”

“Eleven-thirty. And no later.”

“Thanks, Mom.” She grinned and threw her arms around me in a giant hug. “I’ll wear my new dress.”

Livvie was in the sea-foam-green dress, with a touch of bronze eye shadow and a pale lipstick. I looked at her and thought, amazed,
My daughter, the young mermaid, is going out on a date with her merman
. Her first
real
date. I gulped back the panic, told her to remember her manners and who she was and that Nonna would kill her if she didn’t behave and that I would cry, and she said, “
Omigod,
Mom, I’m only going to a club.” And then she grinned and said, “I’m gonna dance my feet off—and I’ll be with the best-looking guy in town.”

And when Tomaso came to pick her up, in the smallest car I ever saw, about the size of a golf cart, red with rusty-looking blotches on it, I knew she was right. Dressed, he looked almost better than half naked, in a white short-sleeved shirt and snug-fitting white pants. Forget Fabio, this guy could have walked down any runway in Milan or Paris.

“If she has to go out on a date,” Nonna muttered, “it might as well be with a guy who looks like that.”

Tomaso’s friends, a young man and a very pretty girl, struggled out of the backseat and came to shake our hands. Then Tomaso helped Livvie into the car. He made sure she was comfortable and closed the door as though he were locking up some precious jewel—which he was.
My kid
.

I crossed my fingers and hoped Nonna was right. This was worse than my own first date.

Nonna and I dined alone on the terrace. I stared at the lights of Positano twinkling around the curve of the bay, wondering what Livvie was up to.

“No use worrying,” Nonna said crisply. “You raised her properly, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but so did you, and look what happened to me.”

Nonna pursed her lips, assessing me. She called over the waiter and ordered two vodka martinis. “With Grey Goose Vodka,” she added, causing me to shake my head with wonder and ask how she knew about vodkas.

“I read a lot,” she said. “Anyhow, I thought we both could do with a drink. You’ve been through a lot lately, Gemma.”

“Yes.” My voice sounded small as I suddenly choked up. I took a sip of my martini.

“You want to tell me about it?” Nonna was suddenly my mom again, with the same anxiety in her eyes that I had when I thought about Livvie. Moms were still moms, however old you were. And I was the same tongue-tied, embarrassed daughter, confessing her sins to her mother.

“I think I’m in love with Ben,” I said. “I don’t want to be, but I’m afraid I am.”

“Afraid? That’s a very dramatic word, Gemma.”

I looked despairingly at her. “But that’s just what I am. Afraid.”

“Because of Cash?”

Oh God, just his name could jolt my heart. I took another sip of the martini and nodded. “Mostly.”

“Mostly? So what’s the rest? The other reasons?”

“Well, for instance, I hardly know him. And somehow I always make a fool of myself when I see him, and—” I stopped. There was no way I could tell
my mom
about that night in bed with Ben, and how I had felt. “And anyhow he has another girlfriend. I saw them together, at the villa. Plus he hates me because he believes I’m sabotaging him. He thinks
I
had his electricity cut off, and his phone, and his water, and God knows what else.”

“He thinks
that
?” Nonna sounded astonished.

“It’s war between us, y’know.” I finished the martini with one moody swirl down the throat. A thought occurred to me. I glanced suspiciously at her. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Very little,” she said airily, summoning the waiter and ordering a bottle of the local rosé, well chilled.

“But you do know
something
.”

“Perhaps Rocco knows. This is, after all, a local matter.”

“Oh, of course, and nothing at all to do with
you
.”

“Well. Maybe. Just a little.”

I leaned my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. “
M-o-m!
What have you done now?”

“Only tried to get my villa back,” she said spiritedly. “The locals decided to help me, that’s all. After all, I am family from Bella Piacere.”

“Yeah, and Ben is the
americano,
the foreign interloper, who was doing very nicely, thanks, until you came along.”

She leaned across the table and looked into my angry face. “Are you forgetting that I am the heiress? That Ben is living in what, by rights, is
my
villa?”

“No, Mom, I’m not. But
sabotage
?”

“Okay.” She gave in suddenly. “For your sake, I’ll tell Rocco to call it off.”

“Rocco! I might have known he had something to do with it.”

“But remember, I’m doing this for you. Because you have been through bad times, and I think maybe now you are finally ready for the good times again. I would rather give up my villa and have you happy again, Gemma.” She clutched my hand across the table, worry in her eyes. “And that’s the truth.”

I took Nonna’s hand and kissed it, and she gave me that radiant smile, the kind I knew she must have flashed at my father when she first met him, the same one she was using now on Rocco Cesani. Plus the one I had rediscovered that I myself possessed. “Don’t worry, Gemma, I’ll take care of things,” she said. “And now let’s order. How about wild mushrooms sautéed in a little olive oil to start, with a slice of pecorino cheese? Then the gnocci, light as a feather and with just a little tomato sauce. Then maybe a nice fish, or how about veal?”

I let her go ahead and order, sipping the chilled wine that was more red than rosé, but light and sparkly on my tongue. When the food came, I just picked at it. Of course it was wonderful, but my taste buds had quit, along with my appetite. I knew I had to snap out of this, but not tonight. I just didn’t have the energy.

After dinner, Nonna went to her room, and I took my book and sat on one of the comfortable white sofas in the lounge. Waiting for Livvie. It was ten o’clock, and I was already counting the minutes.

Nonna

Nonna called Rocco on the phone. It rang and rang, and she was just about to give up when he answered.

“Pronto,”
he said gruffly.

“Rocco Cesani, were you sleeping?” she said accusingly.

“Sophia Maria, I was thinking about sleeping. It’s ten-fifteen, and I have to be up early.”

“You work too hard, Rocco. It’s time you let your workers do more. All you should be doing is taking care of business.”

Rocco pushed away his bowl of soup. Sophia Maria was still under the impression that he was a big success, an olive oil entrepreneur. He supposed, her being a rich woman, she didn’t understand how the other half lived, and that he actually had to work in his
frantoio
.

“I have news for you,” Rocco said. “The
americano
’s building permits for the new hotel…somehow they have disappeared! And tomorrow the road to the villa will be dug up by order of the local council. Maintenance work, they will say.”

For a moment, Nonna was tempted. But she said, “Rocco, listen to me.
E’ importante. Urgente
. Cancel the roadwork, refind the lost permits. We can no longer go on with our plan.”

“What are you saying? What about your villa?”

“Forget about my villa. This is something I have to do for my daughter. She is in love with the
americano,
but he believes she is sabotaging him. You see what I mean, Rocco. She tells me he hates her because of that.”

“E’ amore.”
Rocco sighed resignedly. Fido leaped onto his lap and licked his face, then jumped onto the kitchen table and lapped up the rest of Rocco’s garlicky soup. That dog loved garlic. Rocco smiled fondly at him. He knew all about love. Anything that dog wanted, he could have.

“Si, è amore,”
Sophia Maria said now over the phone, and he smiled.

“Then there is nothing more to be said.”

But Nonna had quite a lot more to say. “Tomorrow first thing,” she instructed him, “you will go to the villa. You must speak with
signor
Ben personally. Tell him that Gemma was not responsible for the sabotage, that it was you and I, and the others in the village. Apologize, Rocco. Tell him it was all a mistake, it’s over.”

Rocco frowned: apologizing was not in his nature. Still, he rubbed his nose with his finger in that familiar gesture. “It will be done,” he promised.

“And also,” Nonna said, “make sure you tell him where Gemma is.”

“Okay.”

“Good. And then I will return home very soon.”

“I will be waiting for you, Sophia Maria,” Rocco said, smiling.