Summer in Tuscany (8 page)

The next day was the Fourth of July, the day of the grand party at the villa. Of course, I would have preferred to linger in the shade of the grape arbor with my book, but now I was forced into some semblance of dressing up.

When Livvie and Nonna had returned from Florence late the night before, they had been laden down with smart shopping bags, but they’d refused to show me what they had bought. Wait and see, they’d said mysteriously, though Livvie couldn’t suppress a giggle. So now was to be their “unveiling.”

I put on a pale blue linen dress that was definitely last-yearish or even older, added a dash of lipstick, and ran my fingers hastily through my hair. It stood on end as though I had been zapped by lightning, and I quickly slicked on some hair gel and brushed it into submission. I stared, dismayed, at the result in the mirror. I had put on too much gel and now every strand was clamped to my skull. Disgruntled, I grabbed my sunglasses and headed downstairs. The only reason I was going to this party was to see that darned villa.
Nonna’s
villa. I figured I might as well know the worst.

Nonna and Livvie were waiting for me in the front hall. At least I
thought
it was Nonna.
Was it? Could it be?

She had on an elegant green silk dress with a low neckline and a cinched waist, high heels, and a big upswept hairdo. She looked like Sophia Loren at the Oscars. Even the glasses were gone, dangling on a gold chain around her neck, to be put on only when she needed to “inspect” her villa.

“Omigod,”
I said, using my daughter’s favorite line. “Mom, is it
really you
?”

Sophia Maria Lorenza Corsini—for this was who now stood before me—patted her upswept hair, smoothed her green silk skirt, and smiled at me. “Do you like the lipstick?” she asked. “The girl in the store said it was exactly right with this green.”

I was stunned almost into speechlessness. “The lipstick is fine,” I managed. “
You
are fine…. You look
great
…just like your picture on the sideboard when you were seventeen.”

She smiled as she picked up the big black bag, plopped a black straw hat with a large shady brim on top of the hairdo, checked the pearls in her ears and at her neck, and said, “Let’s go, girls, we’re going to be late.”

Livvie, who thank God still looked like Livvie, only Italian style, all legs and big feet and budding breasts in a clingy tie-dyed T-shirt, a brief little white skirt, and clunky platforms, followed meekly, and so did I. At the door Nonna turned and gave me that same up-and-down Sunday-lunchtime look she always gave me.

“Must you wear that dress, Gemma?” she said. “Blue was never your color, and linen creases so.” And with that, the fashion-plate heiress and chatelaine of the Villa Piacere swept out the door to her silver chariot, and I, her devoted chauffeur, got behind the wheel and drove us to the party.

It was an idyllic day with a sky bluer than my unfortunate dress. Red-tailed hawks hovered motionless as tiny kites, and a hot sun dazzled the backs of my eyes. The long, potholed sandy lane circled up the hill behind the village, past groves of gnarled old olives whose silver leaves rustled like taffeta in the breeze, all the way to a pair of tall ornamental iron gates, one of which hung drunkenly off its hinges and was embellished at the top with the initial
P
in a wreath of iron laurel leaves. We jolted along an overgrown driveway. And then—there it was. The Villa Piacere. And for me, it was love at first sight.

It sat atop the crest of its hill at the end of an allée of cypresses, large and square, flanked by twin towers, and glowing like a ripe golden apricot in the sun. Its tall windows were hung with shutters whose paint had faded from blue to silver. To the left was an arcaded loggia with thin graceful columns supporting a copper roof that had weathered to a grayish-green patina. A separate building to the right was called, I remembered Don Vincenzo had told me, a
limonaia,
and was where they put the delicate lemon trees to protect them from the winter frosts.

In front of the steps leading to the front doors was a massive fountain where bronze fish leaped with lions, and Neptune complete with his fork gazed at Venus arising from her shell, in a dazzle of mixed metaphors from some long-ago sculptor who had gotten carried away with his theme. Water splashed onto the gravel, and moss grew thickly over the stone pond where goldfish fluttered gauzy little fins in the greenish murk.

A double flight of stone stairs led to enormous doors made of weathered wood, flanked by twin lemon trees in huge terra-cotta urns, dripping with yellow fruit. In front was what had once been a formal parterre garden with low clipped box hedges and neat gravel pathways that were now lost under a riot of weeds and grasses, with here and there a tall marble statue sticking up.

We sat in the car as though zapped by a stun gun, mute with awe. Then Livvie said,
“Omigod,”
and Nonna gave a huge sigh.

My heart sank as I looked at the undulating roofline that I knew spelled trouble, at the unkempt grounds, at the peeling stucco, at the sheer
size
of the place. I ran my hands worriedly through my hair. There was nothing written in concrete that said you had to
accept
an inheritance, was there?

Cars were parked on the overgrown front lawn, and another of those Italian urchins with skinny legs and huge eyes, in a baseball cap and Reeboks, directed us to a spot. Nonna pressed a sheaf of lire notes into his hand, just like the rich lady of the manor, and then we climbed the dozen stone steps to the house.

When I first stepped inside the Villa Piacere it seemed mysterious, filled with history and old furniture and the remnants of people’s lives. Suddenly I could barely remember the emergency room with its sounds, its smells, the stress. It was another lifetime away.

The entrance hall ran the entire width of the house, with sets of French windows at the far end leading onto a terrace where dozens of people milled around, glasses in hand. Local girls in black dresses and frilled organdy aprons offered silver trays of hors d’oeuvres, a man in a white dinner jacket played cocktail piano in the hall, a string quartet mumbled over Mozart on the terrace, and in a gazebo on the back lawn, the local youth gyrated to disco music.

An enormous hot-air balloon, starred and striped in red, white, and blue, was tethered to the grass, and a long line waited to take a short trip over the hills. A huge barbecue was fired up, ready for an endless supply of hot dogs, burgers, and chicken, and long trestle tables sporting both Italian and American flags were arranged on the grass.

The party was in full swing, and soon Nonna was surrounded by old acquaintances exclaiming at how beautiful she still was. She took it all in her stride. The Queen Mum had nothing on her. Then Livvie disappeared to “explore the scenery,” namely boys, and I was on my own.

I stood for a moment, savoring the fact that this place belonged to us, to the Jerichos. I thought of my Italian grandfather, whom I remembered vaguely as the bearded old man in that sepia photograph on the sideboard, and of how he had jumped into a raging winter torrent to save the life of a boy. And of how that same boy, when he too became an old man, had given all he had left in life to his savior’s family.

I wandered through the French doors and out onto the cool colonnaded terrace that gave onto the gardens and an endless view of those vine-covered hills, soft and round as breasts, in an artist’s palette of burnished gold, umber and burnt sienna, olive and viridian. I stopped and looked.
Really
looked the way I never had before, really
seeing
it. This
place. This paradise
.

All of a sudden my heart did a double flip. All thoughts of expense and new roofs and property taxes disappeared. This was beautiful. It was Tuscany. It was
ours
.

After a while, I pulled myself out of my dream, went back inside, and began what I had come here to do: an inspection of our property.

The black-and-white-tiled entry hall soared into a musty rotunda; a marble staircase swept up to a sun-filled mezzanine; the parquet floors were scuffed, the apple-green Lucca-silk walls in the
gran salone
were faded and the oriental rugs worn. There was a tattered air of neglect about the Villa Piacere that tugged at my heartstrings; it was an aging beauty in need of tender loving care. Yet someone had cared enough to fill it with flowers, to touch up the dusty gilt Cupids that punctuated the cornices in the
gran salone,
to whisk the dust from the antique spindly-legged tables, and to place floppy old silk cushions carefully over the torn patches in the faded gilt-wood sofas.

Somebody cared, and I wondered who.

I came upon a large octagonal room that instantly charmed me. The walls were painted with a trompe l’oeil frieze of what I guessed must have been the Piacere family’s pets through the centuries. A trio of King Charles spaniels frolicked in a translucent green stream; a tiny golden Pekingese chased a red ball; a Great Dane snuggled on a too-small sofa, huge paws dangling and one soulful eye checking the unknown artist; and Siamese cats crouched on the backs of red brocade chairs, using them as scratching posts, staring out at me with intelligent blue eyes. Those same chairs were still in this room, the red brocade shredded by the cats’ claws: a living memory.

In a central alcove was pictured a gaudy parrot, electric blue and green and scarlet, sitting atop a jeweled golden cage. Its expression was haughty, its legs ringed with rubies, emeralds, and pearls.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of movement, of color, and then I realized that I was looking at the original of this painting. That same parrot was sitting by the window in his golden cage, ancient head bowed, feathers molting, his legs still beringed with jewels.

I read the name on the plaque attached to the golden cage.
Luchay
. What, I wondered, was Luchay’s story? And who had so adored him that they showered him with jewels? It was a mystery I would have to solve. I wondered if we had inherited him, along with the villa.

“My dear,” an English voice said loudly in my ear, “isn’t this just the most divine party?”

I almost jumped out of my skin. A woman was standing so close to me I was drowning in her heavy perfume. I took a step back, then I took another look. It was
quite
a sight.

“Hello,” she said, smiling. “I’m the Contessa Marcessi. Maggie to my friends, and you, my dear, may call me Maggie.”

Her nearsighted face was in mine, and I backed away again.

“Of course I’m Margaret really,” she said. “Maggie Lynch that was—before I met the old count and came up in the world. I’m the original showgirl made good, darling, straight from the Follies to mistress not only of the count, though of course he married me and made it all legal later, but mistress of my own domain. The Marcessi estate. You know it, I’m sure? It’s over on the next hill—and the next, and the next. More hills than you can possibly count, my dear. Though now, of course, I’ve sold off bits of them with those dinky little farms and old shepherds’ huts the English have converted into ‘desirable residences.’

“Lord knows why. I think they just don’t understand how cold it is here in winter when the
tramontana
blows and Jack Frost nips at your nose. Now isn’t that a song? I seem to remember warbling it at Christmastime, while covered in the appropriate places with bits of white ermine and wearing a white fox hat that was twice the size of my head.

“Jack Frost nipping at your nose,” she sang suddenly in a faltering soprano. “I remember it now. Not too appropriate, though, is it, my dear, for a Fourth of July bash?”

My new best friend stopped talking for a second. She stared nearsightedly into my face, then took out a gold lorgnette, held it to her eyes, and peered even closer. I shuffled my feet, feeling like a specimen under a microscope.

“And who are
you,
my dear?” she asked, looking so surprised to see me, I wondered if she had thought I was someone else.

“I’m Gemma Jericho,” I said, taking her in. She was eighty if she was a day, taller than I in her towering gold heels, and hefty with it. Her plump thighs were squeezed into skintight Pucci silk capris and her breasts squashed into a sparkly sequinned stars-and-stripes tank top that even Livvie would have turned down. Her hair was redder than a fire engine and back-combed into a stiff beehive adorned with what looked to be diamond brooches, and she wore what I could swear was a rope of real emeralds around her plump neck, plus an assortment of massive diamond and ruby rings. She was obviously of the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” school of thinking, but her long horse face was kind and her faded blue eyes gentle.

She caught me checking her out and gave me a friendly little shove with the hand holding the lorgnette. “Bet you’ve never seen anything quite like me, Gemma Jericho,” she said. “Come on now, tell me. Have you?”

“No, ma’am…er, Countess, I certainly have not.”

“And I’ve never seen anything like you. My dear, didn’t anyone tell you this was a party? Girls are supposed to dress up, you know. That’s how they catch a man.”

I laughed out loud. “Is that right, Countess?”

“Trust me.” She nodded. “I caught four of ’em, each one richer than the last. You want to know my secret? Just be yourself, my dear. The hell with their titles and their money, you just stick out your tits,” she winked at me, “and tell ’em what you think. Straight out, just like that. Trust me, they’ll fall down at your feet and worship you. And that’s a very good position to have a man in—at your feet, I mean.” She gave me another wicked nudge. “Can’t have too much of that, y’know—and you can quote me on that, Gemma Jericho.

“I knew the old Count Piacere well, of course,” she said suddenly. “We were neighbors for almost thirty years, and he was even older than I am, though I’m too vain, of course, to admit my age. I always thought forty-nine was a nice number to be, so forty-nine I’ve remained, and I celebrate the same birthday every year. It’s next week, my dear. You must come. I’ll send you an invitation.”

“Thank you, Countess, I’d be honored,” I said, meaning it. This old woman was more alive than many thirty-year-olds I knew. “Tell me,” I said, “what was he like, the count?”

“What did he look like? Oh, he was a little man, kind of scrawny, y’know, no meat on his bones. He’d had a thatch of white hair ever since I knew him. Looked like a dotty old professor, and in truth he was a bit dotty.
Scatty
is probably the right word. He never could remember my name, called me Eleonora for years, when of course it’s really Margaret. Did I tell you already that everybody calls me Maggie? Oh, right.

“Well, he lived on here after the rest of the family died off one by one, and you know a big house like this with no children around is a lonely place. Never did understand why he didn’t marry. I mean, he wasn’t, y’know,” she bent a finger, “like that. Oh, no, straight as a die, he was. So I think somewhere along the way he was unrequited in love. Now that’s an old-fashioned phrase, isn’t it? You don’t hear that too much anymore…unrequited love.” She stopped and gave me that piercing look again.

“Have you ever been in love, my dear?” She caught the flicker of surprise in my eyes and nodded sagely. “Well, of course you have. You have that look about you. Not ‘a woman scorned,’ no, no, not that. But a
sadness
that has something to do with a man. I’ve been there, my dear, and I know that look, so don’t try to deny it. Tell you what, Gemma Jericho, I’m a whiz at the tarot cards. Why don’t you just come over to my place tomorrow, the Villa Marcessi, everybody knows where it is, and I’ll do you a reading? We’ll find out what the future really holds.”

“Thank you,
Contessa
—”

“Oh, call me Maggie, please.”

“Thank you, Maggie,” I said, “but I’m not sure I really want to know what the future holds. I have enough trouble just coping with the present.”

“Mmmm, well, we shall see. I think before too long you will find you’ll change your mind. Trust me,” she added, her faded blue eyes boring suddenly into mine. “I know.”

She glanced around as though suddenly noticing where she was. “Oh my,” she said briskly, “I daresay I should find my host and say hello. Have you met him yet? No? Well, few people really know him. He keeps to himself pretty much, y’know. But artists are like that, are they not, my dear?”

And with that she patted my arm, said, “Nice to meet you, Gemma Jericho,” and tottered off on her stilettos to where the action was.

I watched her go right to the head of the line for the hot-air balloon, and the next minute she was climbing into the basket and soaring over the Tuscan hills. Her flame-colored hair and gold lorgnette sparkled in the sun. I could swear I heard her laughing, and I thought, There goes a women who has found the secret of life. I only wished I might be so lucky. And then I realized I had forgotten to ask her about Luchay.

Alone again, I wandered the winding paths around the house. Each bend in the weed-strewn gravel pathway was marked by yet another statue of a god or goddesses, angels or Cupids, as well as a wicked-looking Pan, though his pipes were broken. I came across a tiled grotto built into the side of the hill, where icy water trickled into an ancient stone cistern; then a battered greenhouse with a long silent pool lined with espaliered peach and apricot trees, and empty racks where, in the old days, exotic plants, orchids and passion fruit must have been grown for the house.

I found yet another old stone building and pushed open the squeaky door. It was dark in there, and I felt along the wall for a light switch, praying I wouldn’t encounter any spiders. Finally I found it and saw that I was in a
cantina
. The dusty shelves were lined with racks of wines, all neatly stacked, plus jars labeled Olive Oil, with the date of the pressing. Someone certainly cared enough to take care of this part of the estate properly.

I wandered on and found myself in what were obviously the old stables, but the stalls were empty, and the old wooden doors hung open. The sweet scent of hay and horses still lingered in the air along with the perfume of the little pink Tuscan roses, but instead of horses there were a concrete mixer and a backhoe, heavy machinery and bags of cement. I stared at the equipment, puzzled, wondering what was going on.

I stood there breathing in the clean, scented air, listening to the silence. And I said to myself, Y’know, a girl could be happy right here on this very spot and never ask for another thing. But I sighed as I said it because I knew it was never to be.

Back on the cool terrace, I leaned against the stone balustrade. I ran a finger over its lichen-covered surface, gazing out over the gardens at an arched pergola smothered under a waterfall of purple wisteria, at white hydrangeas in full bloom and a hedge of lavender abuzz with squadrons of bees. The lavender scent drifted toward me, along with that of tuberoses, as heady as any French perfume. The trauma room seemed as far away as another planet.

I closed my eyes to shut out the view, but it was no good. I knew this feeling from old. There was no doubt about it.
I was in love
. I was in a shimmering, perfumed world, a place of the senses and of the heart, a tiny part of paradise right here on earth, and I never wanted to leave. Sternly I reminded myself I could not afford paradise. And that there was nothing else for it. Villa Piacere must be sold.