Summer in Tuscany (27 page)

It was 1
A.M.
and the piazzas were still thronged. Everyone was out enjoying the beautiful night: babies, children, lovers, grandparents, the young and the old. The city was their living room. In the Piazza Navona, street entertainers performed magic tricks and swallowed branches of fire, the magnificent Bernini fountains splashed, and artists offered to paint our portrait.

We walked the way lovers do, aimlessly, thoughtlessly, just enjoying the moment, past illuminated monuments and into a secret little square we just stumbled on, silent as a ghost scene and yet with the clamor of the city only a minute away. There was a tiny church; its doors were still open, and old women slowly climbed the steps. From within I caught a glimpse of flickering candles.

We sat side by side on the marble steps outside the church, and I slipped off the pointy-toed shoes that by now were killing me. Sighing with relief, I stuck out my legs and wiggled my toes in the air, hoping my circulation would return.

I felt Ben turn to look at me. I looked back at him. Silence hung between us. It was a moment of such aching tenderness, I almost wanted to cry. Because soon there would be no more magical moments like this, sitting on church steps on a hot summer night in Rome, alone but together.

“I have to go back soon,” I said. I didn’t need to tell him that I meant not just to the hotel but to New York. I looked away and we fell silent again.

“Gemma, we have to work this out,” he said after a while. “You know that.”

“I’m not just being perverse, Ben,” I said quietly. “I just can’t live with this burden of guilt, and that’s the truth. And the other truth is that I’ll always love Cash.”

His eyes were filled with a deep understanding. “And I hope you always will,” he said. “Death does not kill love.”

“I get the feeling there’s a
but
in there somewhere.”

“The
but
is that life must go on, Gemma. You know that.”

“But…” I gave a little half laugh, half sob at coming up with my own
but
to combat his. “Cash died
because
of me.
If only
I hadn’t asked him to come and get me,
if only
I had just gone home the way I usually did…”

“You of all people, in your job, must surely realize that accidents are made up of
if-only
s. That’s the very nature of an accident, Gemma. It’s no one’s
fault
. It just
is
. And now you’re floundering under a double burden of guilt.”

I hung my head again, silenced.

“So when you made love with me? When you said you were crashing into love? What about that, Gemma?”

“I meant it. But I still knew it could never be.”

He held out his arms and I fell into them. I pressed myself against his chest, longing for the love he offered, to which I knew I had no right.

“We’re not burying Cash with our love, Gemma,” Ben whispered. “We’re allowing him to live again, to be remembered, to be spoken of. We’re bringing him into our lives, and Livvie’s and Nonna’s and Muffie’s. He’s too good and you loved him too much for him to be shut away forever. Let him live again, Gemma, in your mind and mine. Then maybe you can be free.”

I thought about the times I had met Cash’s actor friends, how I had envied the girls their freedom, and that I had never had that kind of freedom. Well, this was my chance. Did I go for the brass ring? Or didn’t I?

“Tell him,” Ben said, clutching me to his chest, “tell Cash what you feel.”

And right there on the church steps in the silent little piazza in Rome, I threw back my head and yelled in a voice choked with pain,
“I love you, Cash. Goddamn it, I love you.”

And then the tears flowed and I cried into Ben’s shoulder. And though the past would always cast its shadow over my life, I felt the beginnings of
freedom
. That there was hope for a new hope.

Rocco and Nonna

Rocco was perched on the old stone wall that encircled one of his olive groves. He was shaded by a the gnarled branches of a tree that had been planted by his great-great-grandfather, and though it no longer bore fruit, he would never cut it down. That tree was a symbol of his family’s history. The Cesanis had grown olives for centuries and always would.

It was lunchtime, that long two hours in Italy when everything closes down and everybody eats a huge meal. Then they have a little siesta, and perhaps a little loving too. Except Rocco, of course.

He was eating a huge sandwich he’d fixed himself—slabs of garlicky wild boar sausage, a chunk of pecorino cheese, and a thick slice of raw sweet onion stuffed into a heavy rustic bread slathered with mustard. A flask of red wine made from Sangiovese grapes grown in his own small vineyard perched beside him on the wall, and Fido sat hopefully at his feet.

It was a day like any other: nothing different, nothing unusual, you might say. Except what was going on inside his head. Normally he would have been content listening to the chatter of the birds, identifying each one by its cry, hearing the rustle of wild creatures in the hedgerow—creatures that Fido never rushed to try to annihilate as most dogs would. Rocco would never admit this to anyone, but despite the fact that Fido was a bull terrier, a breed with an awesome reputation as fighting dogs, Fido was a coward. He avoided confrontations, slinking away with his tail between his legs. If it were not for the apparent evidence against it, Rocco might have wondered if Fido were a bitch. But no, Fido’s equipment was all there.

Not that this mattered, because Fido, with his long pink nose, had a speciality that made him king of all dogs in this region. “Rocco Cesani’s Great Truffle Hound” everybody called him, and for Rocco that was like winning Best in Show at Madison Square Garden.

He flung the dog a slab of sausage, grinning as Fido snapped it out of the air, swallowed it in one great gulp, then sat back again waiting for more. Rocco always shared his lunch with his dog.

But today his mind was not on his lunch, or on Fido. He was watching the road that led around the valley and up the hill to Bella Piacere. Sophia Maria had telephoned him last night from Positano to say that she was returning home.

It was the word
home
that had sent an arrow through his heart. Sophia Maria had called Bella Piacere “home.” Could that mean, despite the fact that she was a rich American widow, as well as an heiress, that she might be thinking of living here in Bella Piacere again? But what if she were not the heiress? What if she did not own the villa? Would she still contemplate staying here, back in her old home?
With him?

He caught the glitter of sunlight glancing off a windshield. It was the silver Lancia. His heart sank again as he thought about how rich she must be to drive such a smart car. She could not possibly care about an ordinary man like him, who had rarely even left his home village. And besides, he wasn’t even sure that she and Fido liked each other. Still, he knew where
his
heart belonged.

He threw the rest of the sandwich to Fido, took a long gulp from the wine flask, brushed the crumbs off his shirt, and tugged his hat more firmly over his brow. There was work to be done.

Maggie was driving the Lancia with Nonna beside her and the two “daughters” giggling and talking girl-stuff in the back. Mostly about Tomaso, Maggie suspected. The two of them had certainly led the poor boy a dance, showing up for a date, then not showing up for a date, plus wherever Livvie went, she had insisted Muffie go too.

Sophia Maria had said Muffie was the best chaperone Livvie could ever have, and there was no chance of her getting into trouble, so apart from insisting they be back at the hotel by eleven each night, Nonna and Maggie had left them to their own devices. Until Tomaso had given up on his romantic quest for summer love and Livvie had reverted to being a kid again, who enjoyed floating on her raft for hours at a time with Muffie next to her, every now and then pausing to eat that terrific pizza that Maggie was sure had put more than a few pounds on her own ample thighs.

As they wound slowly up the white road that curved around the hillside, Maggie thought about Gemma and Ben, and what she had told Gemma she had seen in the tarot cards. The truth was, she was no expert at tarot, and maybe she had fudged it a little to get the result she desired. But then, she had always been an interfering woman. How else would she have gotten where she was today without a little manipulation of “fate”?

“I wonder if Ben has asked Gemma to marry him,” she said to Sophia Maria.

The two girls lounging in the back sat up quickly, ears tuned.

“She’ll turn him down,” Sophia Maria said. “She’s too dedicated to her work to marry again.”

“She won’t marry him,” Livvie said. “Not after Cash.”

“Who’s Cash?” Muffie asked, and Livvie said she would tell her later.

As they drove into the village, Sophia Maria spotted Rocco’s white pickup parked outside the Bar Galileo. She smiled. She had missed Rocco: missed their plotting, missed the challenge of the wild convolutions of Rocco’s mind that it took a fellow Tuscan to understand, missed his down-to-earthness, though she had not missed his dog.

She saw Rocco coming toward her. He looked the way he always did, unless he was in his party and funeral suit: in baggy shorts and his camouflage rain hat. She thought he was a very modest man, although he was surely very rich with all those olive groves and his own
frantoio
.

The girls piled out of the car, hauling their bags after them, and Maggie asked if Nonna would mind if she took the car back to her villa and returned it later. They waved good-bye, and then the girls went into the
albergo
in search of Amalia and Laura and some lunch, while Sophia Maria, for that was how she thought of herself now, walked across the piazza to meet Rocco.

She could see his beaming smile from fifty paces, the one that showed all his teeth and that also, when he really meant it, lit up his eyes.

Rocco smoothed his mustache. He took a step toward her, shaking his head with wonder at how lovely she looked with her clear skin and her shiny hair and her suntanned legs.

“Sophia Maria,” he said.

“Rocco.”

She held out her hand, and he took it. Then they went and sat on the old iron bench under the umbrella pines that shaded the dusty bocce court. Fido sat beside Rocco, head down for once.

“What’s the matter with the dog?” Sophia Maria asked.

“Maybe he missed you.”

She glanced sideways at Rocco. He wasn’t joking or smiling now, and she interpreted that to mean that Rocco had also missed her.

“I missed Fido too,” she said.

Rocco smoothed his mustache. “Maybe Fido thinks he shouldn’t be here, sitting next to such a rich American lady. Maybe he thinks he is not good enough to be in such company.”

“Or maybe Fido thinks he is too rich to associate with a modest widow,” Sophia Maria countered, “who may or may not inherit a villa and who anyhow has decided to spend whatever money she has left and enjoy life. While she can.”

Rocco thought about what she had just said.

“The excellent truffle dog of a modest producer of olive oil, owner of several olive groves—but excellent groves, mind you, and his own
frantoio
—and also owner of a small farmstead with a vineyard and one splendid cow that provides the best milk and
panna
in Tuscany, might think himself lucky to be in the company of a modest widow from America who is spending all her money in order to enjoy it. While she can.”

Sophia Maria sat with her ankles crossed, her hands folded in her lap. It was her turn. “Fido might also have to think about being in the company of a woman who is
forced
to enjoy life.
While she can
.”

Rocco swung around, startled. “Sophia Maria, what do you mean?” So she told him about her heart and what the doctor had said.

“And your own daughter, the doctor?” Rocco demanded. “What did
she
say?”

“She said nothing because I did not tell her. Nor am I going to. You, Rocco, are the only one who knows about this besides me. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

Rocco slid his hand along the bench toward her. She reached out and took it. “Of course, I told the doctor I was going to live forever and that he was full of medical nonsense, as all doctors are. And he said, ‘Perhaps you will, Mrs. Jericho, perhaps you will.’ And you know what, Rocco? I believe I will.”

“Bene.”
He squeezed her hand, and Fido gave a low growl. Rocco stared at his dog. The coward of the area was growling, actually
growling
because he was holding Sophia Maria’s hand. Fido’s lip lifted in a snarl, and he gave that low, threatening growl again, staring hard at Rocco.

“Poor Fido,” Sophia Maria said in a soothing voice, “I think he’s jealous.”

Fido stopped snarling. He turned and looked at her. He put his head on one side, his pink nose twitched, his pink-rimmed eyes beseeched. Then he took a running jump at her.

Sophia Maria held open her arms and caught him, and then Fido was licking her face, whining, and wriggling his tail with happiness. “Rocco,” she said, “I think the dog wants me to stay.”

“I believe he does, Sophia Maria,” Rocco said, scratching his bristly head.

They looked at each other for a long time, searching each other’s familiar faces grown older for an answer. Rocco did not even have to ask the question.

“I will, Rocco,” Nonna said firmly. And then she gave a great sigh of relief and said, “Now I’ve really come home.”

Gemma

We were back home once again. Ben swung the Land Rover into the long driveway leading to the villa. The old car shimmied over the ruts, and I hung on tightly, trying not to bounce against the roof. “You need to get either a new car or a new driveway,” I complained.

“I love this car.”

“
Love
it?” I gave him my skeptical look.

“It’s a guy thing. We love our cars, the older the better.”

“Okay, then how about a new driveway?”

“What if the villa ends up being yours? Then you’ll be the one paying for a new driveway.”

“I can’t afford it,” I said, and he laughed.

In the cloud of dust just ahead of us I made out Rocco Cesani’s white truck with Fido in the back. As we circled the Neptune fountain, I saw that Nonna was sitting next to Rocco. I thought for a second about how close the two of them seemed, and how nice it was for her to have reunited with her old friend.

Maggie was waving at us from the top of the steps, and the two girls came running barefoot over the lawn. Rocco helped Nonna out of the truck, like the true gentleman he was, but of course I had my own door open and was out of the Land Rover before Ben could even get to me. I guess I was just out of practice in the having doors opened for me way of life.

In moments we all had hugged and kissed and said how much we had missed each other. They asked about Rome and Donati. Ben drew a finger across his throat and shook his head, and everyone’s faces fell.

“Not to worry,” Maggie said cheerfully. “I think tomorrow we shall have better news.”

She did not amplify that statement, and to tell you the truth, I almost didn’t want to know. I figured she was about to send us to some village in the back of beyond where there would be no espresso bar and we would end up sleeping in a barn with the cows. Actually, maybe that would be fun…tumbling in the soft sweet hay, with Ben.

Enough of those carnal thoughts, I told myself. But you know what, every time I looked at that man I got carnal thoughts. I wondered if this was normal.

We were all sitting on the terrace, refreshed with iced tea and Fiametta’s fresh-baked cookies, which Nonna had to admit were almost as good as her own. Fountains tinkled soothingly, hummingbirds hovered near the bougainvillea, and to my surprise, Fido came to lie down next to Nonna. He rested his head on her feet and heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction.

“Mom, I think that dog has fallen for you,” I joked. She lifted her chin and gave me a long look that I might almost have said was smug.

“Of course he has,” she said. “Fido has decided that we should get married.”

“You’re going to marry
Fido
?” Livvie said.

“Of course not, Olivia,” Nonna said. “Fido has given his approval for Rocco and me to be married.”

“Wow,”
Livvie and I said together. A very
stunned
kind of wow.

“A wedding!” Maggie’s shriek of delight split the silence that followed. “How wonderful! Congratulations! Now I’ll have Sophia Maria for a neighbor. Oh, I can’t wait. Will the wedding be soon?”

Rocco gave us his toothy smile. “We thought maybe next month,” he said, looking modestly down at his wellies.

Livvie threw her arms around her grandmother. “I’m so happy for you and Rocco,” she said. Then she glanced hopefully at me. “Does that mean we get to stay longer?”

“Congratulations,” I said, still weak from the shock. “But remember, we’re going home next week. Nonna, what about your house, your life there?”

Nonna ignored me. She said to Livvie, “Of course you will stay for the wedding. Your mother will telephone her hospital and tell them she is taking extra vacation time. She’ll tell them it’s an emergency,” she added, laughing.

I heard the happiness in her laugh, and with a pang I realized how rarely I’d heard it back home. I thought about how narrow her life was there, how devoid of companionship, how lonely she must have been, just waiting for Sundays to come around when she would see us again. I thought of how tired she had looked and, sometimes, how sad.

“I’ll call them,” I said, getting up and giving her a big hug and a kiss. Fido gave me a warning growl, but I told him he’d better get used to it. After all, I knew her first.

Rocco took my hands in his rough ones, and I looked into his kind, humorous face. “I will take care of her,
dottoressa,
” he said quietly. And I knew he would.

That night we celebrated Sophia Maria’s and Rocco’s engagement at a
trattoria
opposite the beautiful San Biagio Church in Montepulciano. Rocco presented her with a fine gold ring, worn thin with age, with a tiny ruby at the center.

“It was my great-grandmother’s,” he told us. “I thought I would never find anyone worthy of such a ring, but Sophia Maria is more than worthy. She deserves more than I could ever give her.”

Nonna blushed, and I decided blushing was definitely a family thing. We admired the pretty ring, and Nonna said she would never remove Jack Jericho’s wedding band and that she would just wear all the rings together.

We toasted that sentiment in a Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, rich, dark red, and tasting to me of sun-warmed grapes and vanilla and oak, and we feasted on light-as-air ravioli and lamb roasted over branches of rosemary.

Ben tried to hold my hand under the table, pretending not to notice the girls’ knowing smirks, and after a couple of glasses of the Nobile, I let him. Truth was, I wanted to do more than just hold his hand, but decorum and the presence of my mother and daughter thankfully held me back.

Afterward we zigzagged lazily down the hill through the little town. Nonna was in front, her arm linked in Rocco’s, and I was just thinking about how different her life would be, and how I would miss her, and how terribly she would miss Livvie, when I saw her stumble. Rocco grabbed her, then he half led, half carried her to a chair on a café terrace.

“Momma, what’s wrong?” My fingers were already on her pulse. It was rapid, and she had that gray, waxen look I’d noticed before.

“It’s nothing, I’m just tired.” But she put a hand to her heart as though she felt pain there, and my own heart leaped in response. “I’m fine, Gemma,” she murmured, “I just need to rest awhile. And I’ve been forgetting to take the beta-blockers.”

“Beta-blockers!”

“Dottoressa.”
I felt Rocco’s hand on my bare arm. He looked as panicked as I felt. “She is ill,” he said quietly. “She told me about it. Her doctor told her it was a congenital heart condition.”

Dear God,
I thought,
my own mother has a congenital heart condition and I didn’t know about it? What kind of doctor am I?
And then I thrust away the panic and became that fine-honed speed machine I told you about.

Within minutes the paramedics were loading Nonna into the ambulance, and I was climbing in next to her. I glimpsed Livvie’s terrified face and called out to her not to worry.

The Ospedale della Croce Rossa was white-tiled and immaculately clean. Nurses in rubber-soled shoes sped silently past, taking care of business, and a burly, bearded Italian doctor who reminded me of Pavarotti was already waiting for us with his team. Within minutes Nonna was lying on the table under a glare of white lights. People were clustered around her hooking her up to monitors, checking her heartbeat, her pulse rate, her brain activity.

The others were here by now, standing silently in the big empty waiting room, freezing in the air-conditioning. Rocco stood in the corner shifting nervously from foot to foot. Livvie clung to Maggie, sobbing, and Muffie huddled frightened next to Ben. I went out to tell them that Nonna was doing all right.

“Will she be okay, Mommie?” Livvie whispered.

I kissed her tenderly and said, “I hope so, sweetheart. I’m right there with her.”

“Then I
know
she’ll be okay,” she said, so trustingly I felt myself wince at the memory of that other time.

“Dio mio.”
Rocco paced the floor, lost without Fido at his heels. The dog wasn’t allowed in the hospital, and he’d had to stay in the truck. I thought Rocco looked lonely without him; a simple, tough, wiry Italian man who, after her long widowhood, had brought my mother happiness again. I put my hand on his shoulder, let it linger there. He gave me that same beseeching look Livvie had. “She’ll be all right,” he said, trustingly.

Then I was out in the white-tiled corridor, and Ben was at my side. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I just can’t allow myself to think this is happening to my mother. I have to keep my mind on that doctor track, just
concentrate
.” I leaned wearily against him; his arm was strong under mine.

“I’m here for you,” he said gently.

An hour later I was standing next to my mother’s bed in the Coronary Care Unit. She was hooked up to machines, and there was a drip in her arm. The color had returned to her face, and thank God she did not look like a gray ghost anymore. In fact, she had that familiar combative look in her eye.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, seething with relief and indignation. “I’m your daughter. I’m
a doctor
, for God’s sake.”

“Just because you’re my daughter, I don’t have to tell you everything.” She adjusted the blue hospital nightshirt.

“You told Rocco.”

“I’m going to
marry
Rocco.”

“Momma, how can you even
think
of getting married, of staying
here
—?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gemma. Of course I shall stay. I’m happy here. Besides, this was just a little blip in my heartbeat, nothing to fuss about.”

The Pavarotti doctor came in just then.
“Bene,”
he said genially. “You feel better.”

Nonna inspected him, decided she liked him, and said yes she did feel better. No thanks to him, of course. She would have gotten better perfectly well on her own. All she had needed was a cup of coffee.

He held out his hands helplessly, palms up, and said to me, “My own mother is the same.” Then he added, more seriously, “
Signora
Jerico, there is nothing more we can do. Life must be lived day to day. And of course,” he added with a jolly smile, “a woman like you, it will probably take years to kill you.”

“Ha!” Nonna said tartly and with all her old spirit. “With a woman like me, it will take decades.”

I thought she was probably right.