The Knotty Bride (3 page)

A
ccording to Francesca,
I fell asleep on my feet. Such a thing could only happen to a single mother of two. Working three to midnight and then waking up early to get the boys ready for school is wearing me down. At least Francesca had the good sense to help me to my bed. She must have pulled back the sheets so I could crawl underneath.

Now, after a good night sleep, a shower and a cappuccino, I feel ebullient as the three of us pile into the car, heading out to meet Beatta Cavale.

“Lily, be a dear and take the keys, will you?” Rupa asks, telling me she doesn’t feel like driving and adding that she feels a bit under the weather.

“Headache, too?” I hazard when she winces at my every word as I pull out onto the highway. She nods, and I try to keep my good-natured banter to a minimum.

We veer left at a fork in the road, and find ourselves on the road to Civita di Bagnoregio. I give a sentimental sigh as we pass by an exit for Orvieto town center. Too bad we don’t have time to visit. It’s such a beautiful town. It’s hilly, with all these little distinct quarters, each one more charming than the first. I particularly love the narrow, twisty streets that seem to shout, “Come check out all my delights.”

Hmm, that sounds seedy. Maybe that’s not exactly what the streets of Orvieto shout, but you get my point. Orvieto is not seedy at all. It’s an incredible city, and I loved every minute of it when I visited it with Enrico on our honeymoon.

In no time at all, we’re past the outskirts of the city and barreling down the road, driving past all the local wineries. There must be one every 100 feet, with their caves tunneling into the side of hills that are made up of volcanic soil. Once again I give a wistful sigh longing to stop for a short visit. I find myself wanting to tell Rupa, “Orvieto wine is so delicious, have you ever had it? It’s all dry and fruity, and like no other wine I have ever tasted. Trust me, it goes down cool and clean and smooth.”

Of course, that would never do, because the last thing Rupa wants right now is more alcohol.

“Take a right here!” she snaps officiously, reading the directions she has printed out from Bing maps. I do as she says, and we find ourselves heading down a small country road. Here the Umbrian countryside is a patchwork of small farms built on fertile soil. This area reminds me of the land surrounding Bettonina, the small Umbrian town where Enrico was born. And remembering the Umbrian town where Enrico is from has the undesired side effect of causing me to think about Enrico himself. These days I’m having so many problems with my ex. In the last few months, the man has stopped parenting altogether. I never see him, and I never hear from him. Federica, the woman for whom he left me, is the one who picks up our children from school so they can spend Saturday nights with their father.

Truth be told, I used to feel much animosity towards Federica. Nowadays, however, I feel nothing but pity because I found out that Enrico is two-timing Federica with Francesca’s nineteen-year-old cousin, Lidia. Being the big chicken that I am, I still haven’t plucked up the courage to tell Federica the truth. Although, lately, I’m beginning to think she suspects something. Last Sunday when she dropped the boys off at my door, she was very grim-faced. I asked her what on Earth was the matter and she said, “Oh, nothing. Just wedding planning and all. It’s going to be soon now. I do hope you and the boys will come.”

She proceeded to go on for a good while about her upcoming nuptials and asked me how I felt about sage-colored wedding dresses, saying, “They are all the rage right now. Very Zulu.”

I really didn’t know how to reply to that. The truth is I’m not really current on what some brides in South Africa are wearing these days. I opened up my mouth to give an encouraging, “I’ve always adored sage,” when I noticed that Federica didn’t look like a happy bride-to-be. In fact, she looked as if she might throw up all over her expensive Ferragamos.

Which just goes to show what a miserable excuse for a human being Enrico is! Thinking about his duplicitous ways is enough to make my blood pressure shoot a mile high.

“How fast are you driving? This is a tiny country lane–not the autostrada,” Rupa shrills as trees, fields, sheep and goats whirl by.

Well, look who’s yelling. And I thought she had a headache. By the way, wasn’t it her idea to have me drive this morning? Yes, it was. She said she was ‘under the weather’ and handed me the keys. And now she’s going to criticize my driving? Does she think that I am going to wreck the Multiplus? I have news for her: the Multiplus is a POS anyway, wreck or not. I mean the car is like ten years old and has carted around a million dogs and cats. Not to mention the fact that, oh yeah, it’s a Multiplus for crying at loud. It rolled off the production line in some Eastern European country and I think they officially stamped POS on the tailgate.

I make an exasperated gesture in the Italian style and ease off the gas. “Happy?”

Her reply is a curt bob of the head before she returns to studying the directions. Five minutes later I maneuver the car around a roundabout in the modern town of Bagnoregio. It’s impossible to drive into the older part of the city, so we park in a huge lot swelling with tourist buses. Then we head up Bagnoregio’s main street to the pedestrian bridge that connects to the old town.

Everyone should visit Civita di Bagnoregio once in their life, but if you can’t visit it in person, google it. It’s a miracle. It rises on the opposite side of the gorge, like something out of an Indiana Jones film. It’s a masterpiece sitting on top of a capstone. A capstone made of volcanic tuff that is slowly sloughing off on the edges into the gorge carved by the river below.

“Would you look at that?” Rupa gasps, and Francesca, who has brought along a very expensive camera with an enormous lens, begins snapping a million pictures.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” A German man with his own expensive camera asks.

“Never,” I gasp. “Never in my life have I seen such an amazing sight.”

The German man points animatedly to his guidebook. “It says here that the entire town is in jeopardy. Every so often another house sloughs off into the abyss below.”

“Gracious me,” Rupa replies.

“Not to worry,” the German man continues in stilted English, “Almost all people are gone now. It is, how do you say, a ghost town.”

But it’s not a ghost town. Beatta Cavale lives here. For some reason the idea that “every so often another house sloughs off into the abyss below” gives this mission a new urgency, and we hurry along the narrow pedestrian bridge that crosses the gorge. When we finally reach the other side of the bridge, we walk through the arched entryway and make our way to the city center; it’s a tiny square with stone houses and a blissfully plain church. We pause long enough to admire the medievalness of it all. Then we follow Rupa’s directions to the worst possible outcome: a house that sits on the very edge of town. I ring a very rusty doorbell, and a cheerful older woman in a dreary housecoat greets us with a warm, “Buon giorno.”

“Permesso?” we say, which is the Italian way to ask if you can enter someone’s house– sort of like sailors who ask “Permission to come aboard.” Beatta smiles and ushers us into the cool of her hallway which is devoid of decoration except for a cross.

“Voi siete Signora Brunetti e Signora Bilbury?” she asks.

“That’s right, I’m Lily and this is Rupa, and this our friend Francesca di Campo.”

“Pleasure,” says the woman, motioning us into a small living room with a threadbare sofa and a few wooden chairs. An antediluvian TV stands on a pea-green ceramic plant stand. The only other object in the room is a picture of the Madonna that hangs on the wall behind the sofa.

Despite her meager trappings, Beatta Cavale smiles graciously and asks us how we take our tea. We protest that she needn’t bother. Ever the Italian hostess, she insists and disappears via a swinging door to the kitchen. Rupa, who has taken up a place on the couch, takes advantage of our Beatta’s absence and whispers, “I hope she is the heir. She needs the money desperately. Her house is about to slip into the gorge.”

“Nonsense,” I say, trying to arrange myself comfortably onto a wooden chair with missing rungs. “I’m sure the government wouldn’t allow Signora Cavale to live here if she were in real danger.”

Rupa makes a face. I suppose she has a point. The Italian government is as screwed up as the American one. Still, when it comes to things like houses falling into gorges, I’m sure they have that covered. Because if you ask me, Italians take care of each other. They don’t begrudge the poor. They don’t shoot each other. They love their children and respect their elderly. And in my mind, if you respect your elderly, you don’t allow them to live in houses that are about to slip over the side of a precipice.

“Eccoci qua.” Beatta returns with a tray full of chipped cups. She serves the tea with a genuine smile. It is impossible not to like this woman. She has a big round face surrounded by greying Titian curls, and a pleasant, grandmotherly countenance. I stare at her hard, searching her face for similarities to Carlo Buschi. I must have passed his oil portrait in the upstairs hallway at Villa Buschi a thousand times. All of a sudden I give a little gasp, because I swear, as I live and breathe, this woman has old man Buschi’s same round nose.

After handing us each a teacup, Beatta sits down next to Rupa and says, “Now what can I do for the three of you?”

Rupa shoots me a look and I clear my throat. The phrase “who’s your daddy?” is on the tip of my tongue.

“Well,” I hem and haw, trying to find the right words, “as Rupa probably told you, I worked for a year at Villa Buschi.”

“YES,” screams Francesca, causing everyone to jump. “I WORKED THERE, TOO!”

There is a pregnant pause as we all turn our heads and look at her. Does she have something more to add?

“BUT LILY AND I GOT FIRED A FEW MONTHS AGO!”

“Francesca, dear, be a lamb and let Lily ask the questions,” Rupa encourages.

Francesca nods and makes a horrible face as she takes a sip of her tea. She decides to rest her cup on the windowsill, and never bothers to pick it up again. I quickly learn why when I take my first sip. The tea goes down thick and slippery like a rubber snake.

“Yes,” Beatta says in reply to Francesca’s screaming. “Signora Brunetti explained that to me over the phone. She said that the two of you worked at Villa Buschi. And I also know that you have come to ask me about my cousin Carlo. I know you mentioned something about searching for his heir.”

“Cousin? Carlo Buschi was your cousin?” I gasp incredulously.

“Well, he was my mother’s cousin. They grew up together on the Buschi estate in Switzerland.”

Beatta’s mother was Carlo’s cousin? I’m in shock. Obviously her poor mother didn’t inherit any of the Buschi banking fortune. Looking around at the sparse furnishings, I would say Beatta is completely destitute.

“Beh,” I begin slowly in Italian, “I don’t want to waste your time, Signora, but we were wondering if you knew much about Carlo Buschi’s personal life?”

Is it just me or does Beatta shift uncomfortably when I ask this?

“HE’S DEAD, ISN'T HE?” Francesca interrupts, her volume control all busted as she leans way back in her chair and for some unknown reason begins to roll her neck slowly from side to side. I should be worried about the slow neck rolling, but I don’t have time for Francesca’s numerous problems. When she screamed, “He’s dead, isn’t he?” I know I saw Beatta shift uncomfortably; this time I’m certain.

“Well, of course he’s dead,” says an ancient, pruney-looking woman who pushes a walker as she comes through the door from the kitchen. “Died several years back. We weren’t able to go to his funeral though. Costs a small fortune to go up north.”

This woman must be Beatta’s mother, the one that grew up with Carlo in Switzerland. If I had to guess I would say she’s pushing ninety. She has short gray hair and not a tooth in sight. Unlike Beatta, who is goodly-sized, this woman is skinny to the point of being emaciated.

“Ladies, may I introduce my mother, Carmelina,” Beatta says with a strange, worried look on her face, as if she is afraid of what her mother might say.

Carmelina ignores her daughter and makes her way across the room.

“What is it that you want?” she snaps, eyeing us all sharply.

“WE’RE SEARCHING FOR CARLO BUSCHI’S DAUGHTER!” roars Francesca. I glance over at Rupa, raising my eyebrows at Francesca’s lack of tact.