Summer in Tuscany (7 page)

Amalia was taking us to meet her mother, and Nonna had dressed for the occasion in a new black silk outfit, purchased at a Macy’s sale just a few weeks ago for what she had then considered an outrageous eighty-five dollars. It had a high round neck, a row of shiny jet buttons, a narrow belt, and a box-pleated skirt that sat nicely a few inches above her ankles. It seemed to have Plain but Good, Suitable for a Sixty-Year-Old Grandmother stamped all over it. Her shoes were plain black pumps with low heels, and she carried the expensive new Roman handbag, large, black, smooth, and shiny. She had scrunched her hair into its usual bun, and to top it all off she wore the large dark Hollywood sunglasses. She looked like the widow at a Mafia funeral.

Livvie and I walked on either side of her, arms linked in hers, like the mourners. Livvie was in her usual miniskirt, black this time, with a clinging white T-shirt and sneakers, and for some reason Nonna had insisted I wear my “best black” too, only now it was even more creased from being flung into my duffel bag at the last minute.

We were surely an odd trio, following Amalia up the steps by the church that led from the piazza to the ’Scuro, as Nonna called it, by which she meant Vicolo Oscuro, or Shady Alley, a narrow, cobbled little street that wound its way tortuously up the hillside in a series of steps.

The tiny iron Juliet balconies of the stone houses were crammed with pots of geraniums and jasmine, and lines of laundry fluttered unashamedly overhead. The long lunchtime siesta was over and life had started up again. Women were emerging from their houses with mesh shopping bags over their arms, small children scurried underfoot yelling at each other, and an old man sat in a doorway weaving a basket from some rushes.

“I remember this,” I heard Nonna mutter to herself. “Oh, yes,
I remember
.” The hill was steep, and she was breathing heavily. I suggested we stop for a while, but she insisted on keeping up with Amalia, who was leaping ahead of us like a plump deer.

Finally the narrow cobbled street leveled out into a sort of wide ledge immediately above the church, and we were looking down over the little copper verdigris dome with its big cross, at the Albergo d’Olivia opposite, at the fountain in the piazza, and at people like stick figures in a naive painting, strolling and shopping at the general store, the bakery, the butcher, and at the
salumeria
with the big plastic boar’s head stuck outside just so you would know they also sold wild boar salami. It was a microcosm of life, perfect and self-contained, a little world of its own.

On this little cul-de-sac overlooking the village was a row of six small stone houses, each with two windows downstairs and three up. A single scrubbed stone step led inside, while in front a mismatched collection of garden chairs and patio tables was set among a conglomeration of pots, wooden tubs, and old olive oil cans filled with bougainvillea and jasmine, begonias, lobelia, and geraniums. It was picture-postcard-Tuscan-village time again.

Amalia looked back to see where we were, waiting for Nonna to catch her breath.

Nonna’s face was pale, but then she smiled, a smile so joyous and contagious, I suddenly saw where I had gotten that bubbly, happy personality, the one I’d had when I was young, the one that seemed to have gotten worn down with time. The one that had finally disappeared forever when Cash Drummond disappeared from my life.

“Ecco, bambini,”
Nonna said, throwing her arms so wide, Livvie and I had to dodge to keep from being whacked in the head. “
Now
I am home.” And she walked right up to the very last house, pulled aside the bead curtain, and called out, “Is anyone there?”

Amalia thrust us out of the way and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Giuseppe, Maria, come meet Sophia Maria Lorenza Corsini Jericho, here all the way from New York to visit her old home before she dies. She used to live in this very house. She’s a friend of my mamma’s.”

Giuseppe—about twenty-five years old, in blue jeans, with black hair curling out of his white tank top and a wide white smile—appeared in the doorway carrying a
bambina
wearing only a diaper and a red bow in her hair. And behind him was Maria, young, dark-haired, and olive-skinned, her pretty face showing surprise and pleasure as she welcomed my mother into her home, embracing her as though she had known her all her life.

Nonna stood silently, looking around at her old home. Everything had changed. Where there used to be a hard dirt floor and an open fireplace for cooking and simple wooden chairs to sit on, now there were ceramic tile and a stove and upholstered furniture. But somehow it was still the same: the same feeling, the same memories.

Word had already spread, and familiar faces, grown older, were crowding in the doorway. Everyone remembered the Corsini family; everyone wanted to meet Sophia’s daughter and her granddaughter and hear about her life in New York. Checkered cloths were already being flung over the tables outside, more chairs dragged up, and wine bottles opened. Olives and bread were brought out and cheeses and tomatoes and
biscotti
and more wine. Livvie was holding the
bambina,
and tinny music blasted from a radio. All of a sudden there was a party going on.

We were all sitting around watching the sun set over Bella Piacere, and Nonna, who had discarded the Mafia widow look along with the sunglasses, was holding her old friend Renata Posoli’s hand and catching up on about fifty years’ worth of news.

I caught a tender smile lurking in Livvie’s eyes as she watched her grandmother, and I knew, despite my previous doubts, that coming to Bella Piacere had been absolutely the right thing to do. Sophia Maria Lorenza Corsini Jericho was home again.

It was late when we returned to the
albergo
. Lights were on in the square and in the church, and in the grocery store window, illuminating the dusty bottles of wine and crates of melons and shiny red peppers. The
MOTTO
sign over the single-pump garage with the dark little workshop in the back glowed neon green. Next to it, the smoky Bar Galileo, with faded ads for grappas and beers stuck all over its window, was doing good business. From inside came the crackle of the TV with a soccer game turned up loud and the roars of the patrons as Juventus scored again. The
gelateria
opposite attracted evening strollers and small children with its sign saying
granita fatta a casa,
homemade ices, and gnarled old men played bocce on the dusty court overhung with umbrella pines, urged loudly on to victory by the idlers outside the bar.

The lone figure of a priest in a black robe and wide-brimmed hat waited on one of the little metal chairs outside the
albergo
. He was plump, with a pink face, round wire glasses, and an anxious expression. He stood as we approached.

“
Signora
Jericho?” He offered his hand. “I heard you had arrived. I am Don Vincenzo Arrici.”

Don Vincenzo was authentic all right, right down to the holy ring on his finger, the old black soutane, and the scuffed black shoes of a rural parish priest.

Uh-oh,
I thought, as we arranged ourselves around the small table and ordered grappa and San Pellegrino water and generally took each other in.
This is moment-of-truth time. Now we get to hear about the worthless little field with two olive trees and a couple of clucking old hens.

Don Vincenzo spoke practically no English, so Nonna had to translate for us.

“I will get to the matter of importance right away,
signore,
” he said, taking a sip of his grappa and beaming at us over his little round glasses. “It happened this way. One winter, many years ago,
signora
Jericho, your father risked his own life to save the youngest son of the count of Piacere from drowning in the rain-swollen river. That son never forgot his fear of death, nor did he forget his savior. The years passed, and the Piacere family dwindled, until finally this son was the only one left. He never married, he had no heirs, and so, when the time came to meet his maker, he left the Villa Piacere and all its land to the family of the man who had saved him.”

“La mia famiglia?”
Nonna clasped that hand to her heart again, as though to still its astonished beating.

“
Sil, signora, la Sua famiglia
. The Villa Piacere and all its contents now belong to you.”

“Dio mio,”
she said, stunned.

I suddenly realized this was no hoax; it was for real. I took a gulp of my grappa, choking as it hit my throat like fire. I wondered why anybody drank the stuff, although it was surely strong enough to cure the common cold. But it didn’t help the shock.

Livvie was staring, bug-eyed, at me. “Does that mean we have to live here?” she whispered, horrified.

I shook my head. “Of course not, baby. It’s just some old neglected villa nobody wants.” But then I thought, What if Nonna really did want to live here? What would I do?

“You must meet with the attorney,
signor
Donati,” Don Vincenzo was telling Nonna. “He has the details of all the little…complications.”

We stared at him, too stunned to even take in that ominous word…
complications.

“It will be necessary to speak to this attorney in order to make an appointment to inspect your villa,” he continued. “But at the moment,
signor
Donati is…out of town.”

The priest twirled his grappa glass between his fingers, avoiding our eyes. “There’s one other little matter,” he added. “The Villa Piacere is rented out for the summer to a tenant who has been coming here for several years. This means you will not be able to take possession for some time, even when all the complications are straightened out.”

“But,” he added, smiling now, “every year the
signore
at the villa throws a big Fourth of July party. He invites all the locals, the villagers as well as the grandees. Everyone is invited. The party is this weekend. It will give you an opportunity to visit your property.”

Nonna ordered more grappa to celebrate, and I slumped back in my uncomfortable little metal café chair, staring at the bocce players and the greenish copper cross on the honey-colored church and the chipped cherubs in the mossy fountain. The villa would have to be sold, that was all there was to it. But how many buyers could there be for a no doubt run-down old Tuscan villa that I’d bet needed an expensive new roof and probably new plumbing, to say nothing of the wiring? I groaned inwardly. I was looking at a bottomless pit.

And anyway,
who
was renting the place? And for
how much
? I perked up a bit at the thought of income, but then reality returned. Any money coming in would go out just as quickly to maintain the place. The Villa Piacere, I thought gloomily, was a white elephant.

But Nonna obviously didn’t think so. She was aglow with the news, already chatelaine of a three-hundred-year-old villa. Long Island and the blue house with the porch had disappeared into the past, I just knew it. And I also knew that dissuading her meant my work was cut out for me.

The next afternoon I was sitting under a shady grape arbor in an old wicker chair in the overgrown garden in back of the inn. There was a book on my lap and a glass of fresh lemonade on the table next to me. Tiny hard green grapes the size of raisins dangled over my head, the yellow-flowered zucchini conquered the plot of lettuces, and I could smell the sweetness of those rosy tomatoes radiating from the hot stone wall. In the distance, up on the hill and through the trees, I caught a glimpse of the coral roofs of the Villa Piacere glittering like a mirage in the slanting late-afternoon sunlight.

I closed my eyes and sighed. As if life were not complicated enough, now we were stuck with a big old crumbling house. We would be liable for the taxes, and heaven only knew what taxes were in Italy. Not that we could afford them, unless the summer rental brought in enough, which somehow I doubted it would.

A few days ago, in Rome, I had been wishing I’d never come here, but despite all the new problems, I felt suddenly at peace with the world. At least for this afternoon I did.

I could not remember the last time I had spent an entire day doing absolutely nothing. This morning I had slept late. I had showered, then breakfasted on bread still warm from the baker’s oven and fresh-roasted coffee with hot frothy milk. I had waved good-bye to Nonna and Livvie, who had driven off to Florence, with Nonna confidently at the wheel, to shop for new dresses for the Fourth of July party. I’d refused to go with them. Instead I had resolved to contact
Signor
Donati, the attorney, and sort out the “complications” that came with the villa.

I had already tried to call him, but the number Don Vincenzo had given me did not answer. Now I tried again. Still no answer. I walked over to the church, where I caught the father in mid-prayer while at the same time dusting the brass altar candles with his handkerchief.

“
Signor
Donati is probably in Lucca,” he told me cheerily. “He does much business there. Try him
domani,
why don’t you?”

Why don’t I indeed? I thought, getting into the lazy Italian mood. Tomorrow will probably be just as good.

I wandered around the square, stopped every now and then by new friends, met just yesterday, who wanted to clasp my hand and inquire as to my health. I beamed back, struggling to say in Italian, “I am fine. We are all fine. Thank you for your hospitality.” I groaned with the effort. How was it I knew how to diagnose a brain aneurysm and yet had gone my whole life without learning to speak my mother’s native tongue? Resolve number two that day: learn Italian.

I peeked into the bar. A tiny black-and-white TV with a rabbit-ears antenna blasted a soccer game, even though the place was empty. I backed quickly out, crossed the square, and bought a delicious pistachio ice cream cone at the
gelateria
. Licking my ice cream, I inspected rows of mortadellas and salamis and the fragrant Parma hams and cheeses in the
salumeria
and came back in a slow circle to the
albergo,
where I took up residence again in my wicker garden chair. I had thought I would try to figure out a few of my problems. Instead I promptly fell asleep.

It was maybe the most restful day of my life. And for once I did not even think of Cash Drummond.