Prosecco Heart

by Julie Strauss

  A flash of anger crossed Nicoletta’s face, and she jerked her head away so her curls fell wildly around her face again. Tabitha looked past them to Giovanni, who stood helplessly behind them, his hands at his sides.

  Alessia stood stricken and immobilized for the briefest moment before she pulled a towel from the rack and went to greet her mother.

  “You have soap in your hair,” her mother said, making a tsk-ing noise as she took the towel from her hand and wiped the suds out of Alessia’s dark curls. Aurelia hadn’t yet looked up, but even without eye contact, Tabitha knew in her bones that this woman had assessed her already. After kissing the top of Alessia’s head, Aurelia handed the towel back to her and finally turned her full attention to Tabitha. Tabitha could only stare dumbly, as if she were gazing directly into the sun.

  “And you. You are an American, so naturally, you don’t speak Italian.”

  Taken aback, Tabitha nonetheless refused to let herself glance down, make any nervous adjustments to her clothes or hair. Though she desperately wanted to. Before this goddess arrived, she was so comfortable in her lounge clothes—cotton drawstring pajama pants of Giovanni’s and a soft, old t-shirt. She’d pulled the apron on over her head when she started breakfast and hadn’t bothered to smooth out her hair, which she knew must be sticking out in wild pink spikes all over her skull. Neither Giovanni nor the girls had commented on her appearance all morning; it only looked weird now, in front of this woman who was taking up all of the oxygen in the tiny farmhouse kitchen. Every line on Amelia was sharp and polished.

  Giovanni took two steps to Tabitha’s side immediately. “This is my friend Tabitha. She’s a sommelier from America. Staying here with us for now.” Tabitha saw one of Aurelia’s eyebrows rise slightly at the word “friend,” but she kept her face otherwise impassive.

  “You must be why everyone has forgotten I was picking up my daughters this weekend.”

  “It’s my fault,” Giovanni answered before Tabitha could open her mouth. “Her visit was something of a surprise. We’ve been busy, and lost track of a few things during her visit.”

  Aurelia turned her glittering eyes on Giovanni, but before she could answer, he turned to the girls. “Go pack your bags. Andiamo! We will finish this project when you get home.”

  Nicoletta had already shoved her books into her bag and run into their bedroom, but Alessia remained, staring at the adults as if unsure how the conversation might play out. She looked at Tabitha as she folded her kitchen towel and placed it carefully on the counter. “I’m sorry I can’t help you finish the washing,” she said.

  Tabitha’s heart nearly cracked when she looked into her eyes, so sensitive and worried about the feelings of everyone in the room. She plastered a smile on her face and answered brightly, “It’s no problem! I can finish it myself. Thanks for your help.” She nodded at Alessia, who seemed relieved, and then glanced at her mother and seemed confused again.

  Giovanni took her hand. “I’ll help you.” He led her out of the kitchen but turned back and murmured to Aurelia, “Comportati bene.”

  Alone in the kitchen, the women stared at each other. Aurelia’s eyes traveled slowly down Tabitha’s body, taking in the lack of makeup, the rumpled pajamas, the fuzzy socks on her feet. Tabitha could feel the cold from her eyes as it went over her skin. Then she swept back up to look her in the eye.

  The urge to chatter nervously came over Tabitha, an urge so intense that she had to bite her tongue to keep the words from spilling out of her mouth. She wanted to talk, to cover up this spiky silence that threatened to tear off her skin. But she kept still, not flinching, not speaking, not letting her gaze waver from Aurelia’s mineral-flecked eyes.

  Giovanni returned to the room, glancing at the women. Tabitha was nearly trembling with the effort not to speak, but she met his gaze. Aurelia had not moved a muscle. When the girls entered behind their father, she greeted them with a smile. “Finalmente! Siete pronte a stare con la mamma!” She turned back to Tabitha and extended her hand. “It was so lovely to meet you.”

  Aurelia leaned in to peck Giovanni on the cheek; he submitted with an amused look on his face and then embraced both of the girls, kissing the tops of their heads and murmuring into their ears.

  Alessia leaned in for a kiss on both cheeks as if it were a perfectly normal interaction. Nicoletta did the same, but then surprised Tabitha by flinging her arms around her shoulders.

  “You’ll be here? When we come home?” Tabitha glanced up at Giovanni, whose chin moved just a fraction in a nod.

  Tabitha kissed the top of the girl’s head. “I’ll be here, cara. When you come home.”

  “She reminds me of my mother.”

  Giovanni nodded. “She was surprised to find you there today. This is the first time she has seen me with another woman. She is shocked that she no longer has a hold on me.”

  He pushed back a tree branch so that Tabitha could duck under it. They walked a new path every day, sometimes talking, sometimes just holding hands and breathing in the air around them.

  “She’s very beautiful.” The words tasted metallic in Tabitha’s mouth, but she said them anyway. It had to be acknowledged. There was no way to pretend that Aurelia wasn’t extraordinary to look at.

  To his credit, Giovanni didn’t try to deny the obvious fact, or worse, pit the women against each other. “She is.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  He thought for a long time before he answered.

  “I was alone when I was married to her. Then we divorced, and I learned it was better to be alone without her.”

  They walked for a long time along the ridge that encircled his small town. A path had been worn into the overgrowth, and they alternated between fields and dense forest areas.

  “How many lovers have walked here before us?” she wondered.

  “Thousands. Perhaps millions.”

  “Warriors, too, maybe.” They had reached the ruins of a castle, overgrown by years of neglect.

  “This is not Scotland. Italians don’t fight. We are lovers.”

  Tabitha laughed. “Is that so? You Italians just peacefully build castles and live there happily ever after? The princes and peasants were all just as jolly as could be?”

  “Do you want to walk to the top?” He pointed to an open door at the base of a corner tower.

  “Inside? Are you on drugs?”

  He looked to the tower and then back at her with a quizzical expression.

  “We go up there all the time, ever since I was a child.”

  “But we can’t just go in there. Doesn’t someone own this place?”

  “It is Italian. We all own it.”

  He took her hand and pulled her inside the darkened tower. She could smell the mineral dampness from years of neglect and put her hand on the rough stone to steady herself along the curving staircase.

  “This would never happen in America. There is not even a handrail! One person would fall off this staircase and sue someone else, and then no one would ever be allowed near here again.”

  “Italians don’t fall off stairs,” he said.

  Tabitha’s laugh echoed off the walls and rang in the air. She turned her head up to the light coming from the top of the tower, trusting her feet to fall in place on the stone stairways. Giovanni walked a few steps in front of her, and she had been gripping the waistband of his pants for safety as she walked. But now she let go, letting her hands fall to her side, relying on her own footfalls.

  They reached the top and clambered out on top of the tower, ringed by only a few feet of stone, and surveyed the valley below them. The golden hills below them, the lush woods to the west, the sound of a running creek on the east side of the castle. She circled the tower slowly, examining the land, breathing in the wonder of the beautiful country.

  “You can have the world,” she murmured, “if I can have Italy.”

  Giovanni remained still, watching her drink in the scenery around her, an unreadable expression on his
face.

  “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  His eyes never left her face. “I like watching you see this place.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me?”

  “Do I still need to seduce you?”

  Tabitha met his eyes across the tower and smiled at him. He took steps around the edge toward her, but she continued her circle so they remained on opposite sides of the stairway.

  “No. You don’t need to seduce me anymore. I’m seduced. But you can pretend I’m not and keep trying. I like it.”

  “We used to chase each other around in these hills. All of the kids from my village. The boys played swordfights through this castle. I fell once, and broke my arm”—he pointed to a wall along the north embankment—“off that wall. I thought I was a pirate.”

  They continued their circle, eyeing each other like prey.

  “When I was twelve, a girl kissed me up here.”

  “Oh, of course. Portia. Who now makes cheese, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “She chased you?”

  “I was shy.”

  “What about Aurelia?”

  He looked startled, almost as if he’d forgotten about his ex-wife.

  “I did not meet Aurelia until college. She was from Milano. Not the country.” He never broke his stride as he circled toward Tabitha.

  “How many girls did you kiss up here?”

  “Thousands. All the girls in the village.”

  “Oh, you are a funny guy.” Tabitha rolled her eyes, but could not wipe the grin off her face.

  “The rumor in my village is that you can only have a happy marriage if you propose to your wife on this tower.”

  Tabitha scoffed. “And scores of divorced people throughout Italy don’t disprove that rule?”

  He stopped walking, and Tabitha paused too, watching his face as he seemed to shuffle through his memory.

  “My parents are still married. My uncle and aunt as well. Everyone I know who proposed up here is still married. I did not propose to Aurelia here.”

  “Why not?”

  He moved his shoulders in a sad half-shrug that said nothing but also pointed at everything in his past.

  “She did not like this area. Never liked the village. It was not special enough to stand outdoors in a tower to become engaged.”

  “This must have been before you started making that magical Prosecco. Because we all know that can melt even the coldest of all ice queens.”

  “I was making it then. But I proposed to her with French Champagne.”

  “Hunh. I accepted Royal’s proposal at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Surrounded by tourists. I was mortified, but at the time I thought it was excitement.” He smiled at her then, and they continued strolling slowly. “Why do you think we do that? Try to convince ourselves that we are right for someone, or that they are right for us? And then we work so damn hard to make it right? The signs were always there. We just didn’t bother to look at them.”

  She stopped walking, and Giovanni started to close the gap between them.

  “We want to be loved,” he said. “We convince ourselves the person is right because we don’t know that love is supposed to feel good.”

  She had stopped walking, and he reached her in a few steps. They faced each other, and she looked into his sad brown eyes, the tenderness in them taking her breath away.

  “How many girls did you kiss up here?”

  “The girl when I was twelve. And now you.”

  He took her hand in his, and with his other hand he stroked his long fingers down her cheek and lifted her chin. She leaned in and let her lips touch his; a tender kiss, warm and gentle. Her mouth parted to meet him, and she dropped his hand to put her palms on his arms. She raised them slowly, feeling his arms beneath her hands as his mouth continued to explore hers. Her hands clasped behind his neck.

  Seduced.

  27

  The night she had arrived at Giovanni’s house, she had dropped her phone to the bottom of her suitcase and forgotten all about it during the two weeks she’d been here. She didn’t intend to pick it up again—perhaps ever, if she could get away with it—but she needed lip balm and turned her suitcase over to try to find it one morning. When her phone fell out, she looked at it as one might examine a strange artifact from the past. What might it have been used for? Why did that old culture value such a strange object so much?

  She was hit by a small touch of guilt—she had parents and a sister who probably wanted to know if she was alive. It was nice to be off the grid, but she did need to at least acknowledge that there were other people in the world.

  The phone was completely dead, so she had to fish through the pockets of her suitcase to find the charger. Then she had to search through the drawer she’d adopted in the guest room to find an adaptor. Once she plugged it in, she sat on the bed and waited for the screen to light up.

  She felt a strange mixture of nostalgia and dread as she waited. She ached to hear some news from her sister and Micah, and suddenly wanted to hear their voices, to tell them about Italy, to teach them some of the phrases she’d learned in such a short time here. She wanted her sister to see Alessia and Nicoletta; she knew that Gabrielle would take one look at them and see them the way Tabitha saw them: as funhouse reflections of them, almost a glimpse into their own past. She could already feel the tenderness Gabrielle would have for them, and the expectation of this shared adoration made her heart swell in anticipation for all of them. She wished the girls could know Micah; they delighted in the neighborhood children, and Tabitha knew they would dote on Micah and his head full of curls.

  The red dots alerted her to all she’d missed. Most of it she scrolled through without reading—some sommelier consulting opportunities. She could ignore those; she had an auto-respond set so people knew she was on vacation. Some check-ins from friends, also which she could ignore from now.

  One from Mark. She let her thumb hover over it for a moment but didn’t select it. Whatever it was, it could wait.

  She went to the chain of messages from her sister. Most of them were pictures of Micah. She and Gabrielle normally texted several times a day, funny memes or jokes, comments about people or places or their work. Other than the Micah updates, Gabrielle hadn’t texted much. Her sister knew, more than anyone else, when Tabitha needed silence. And she knew not to attempt to push her out of it.

  But the past days had brought a string of texts from Gabrielle that grew more and more intense. The first was a link to the follow-up Wine Life article about Royal that Mark had written. Tabitha glanced at the headline—Corruption at El Zopilote del Mar—but clicked away.

  So, he’d published it. Without her input, just as he said he would. She wondered who talked, how accurate it was, or if her name was mentioned.

  She couldn’t read it now. She couldn’t bear wading into a muddy pit when she finally got her shoes clean. She didn’t want the stink or the stain from that life back on her yet. Not yet.

  The next few texts from her sister grew more intense.

  You need to call him.

  Have you read the article? You really need to call him.

  Tabitha, it’s going down. You need to get home.

  This most recent text was accompanied by another Wine Life link: Major Shakeup at El Zopilote Winery. Head Winemaker Royal Hamilton Said to be Furious with Staff.

  Tabitha wondered if Mark had waited until he knew she was gone to publish. She remembered the look on his face after they’d left the brewery, his utter disappointment that someone would not reveal an injustice.

  But there was more to it, and she knew it. Mark was a friend; he cared about her well-being as well. She knew that he knew the worst of Royal Hamilton, and he’d told her many times how glad he was that she’d left him. He probably wouldn’t admit it, but it was entirely possible that he’d waited until she was out of the country before he published.

  It wasn’t just possible, it was likely. That was how a moral co
de worked, Tabitha realized. She’d been swimming with the sharks for so long that she’d forgotten how the other fish treated each other.

  She scrolled back up to the string of messages from Mark. The first was a link to the initial article, the same one Gabrielle had linked. He did not ask her opinion, just sent it without comment.

  The second was another link, this to an article that had only published yesterday. Royal Hamilton and El Zopilote del Mar winery sue Wine Life Magazine, Wine Geek International Publishing Company, and writer Mark McClintock for Libel and Damages.

  “Where are your thoughts tonight?”

  The girls had gone to bed an hour ago, and Tabitha and Giovanni sat on opposite sides of the couch, their legs intertwined in the middle, sipping wine in front of the fire.

  Giovanni had a book on his lap, but she realized now that she hadn’t heard him flip pages in a long time. He’d been watching her, and she’d been brooding. Arms crossed, eyebrows pulled into a knot, chewing her thumbnail to the hilt. She looked up at him, straightened up immediately, and tried to smile.

  “It’s nothing. I’m okay.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He knew. She was living in an idyllic, unconnected paradise, pretending the world outside of this Italian village did not exist. But it did, and Giovanni was still part of it. He subscribed to Wine Life; she’d seen past issues of it lying around his house.

  “I don’t know what there is to talk about.”

  “Is Mark lying?” he asked, but Tabitha knew that Giovanni already knew the answer. The men had gotten to know each other in Napa, and the honesty on Mark’s face was as obvious as the duplicity on Royal’s.

  Everyone could see it, except Tabitha. Until it was too late.