by Jean Stone
“Enzio!” Stefano called toward the door. “We were just speaking of you. I understand you are planning a trip.”
Enzio’s eyes darted from Gabrielle to Stefano, as if he dared not cross the threshold into the house that was cursed by the American, though she had not lived in America for twenty-seven years. After a moment’s consideration, he stepped inside as if he’d been invited.
“A trip to Firenze, yes. I’ve heard that the Langones have new presses and a new fermenter. I would like to see them.”
“And you would like to taste their wine and maybe visit the festa for a few days?” Stefano asked.
Gabrielle began to make coffee, because this had become Stefano’s conversation, not hers to interlope. She’d long ago learned that attempting talk with Enzio, small or otherwise, was a futile act. She had, however, heard Stefano speak of the Langones. They owned an enormous vineyard on the other side of Florence and managed to produce gallo nero vintages, despite the cool, damp summers. They held two festivals each year—one in spring to bless the growing season, one in autumn after the grapes were harvested. She also knew that among all the Langones, there was not one American.
“Rosa and Cesare might enjoy a trip to see the competition,” Stefano added.
“But, yes!” Enzio said as he sidestepped Gabrielle’s chair and took a seat across from his boss. “Someday they will be the ones in charge of making the finest wine.” He winked at Rosa, who looked at her father and made a face.
“But Papa, I only this year began school!”
Stefano laughed and Enzio laughed and Gabrielle felt like an outsider, as she often did whenever Enzio was in her presence. She scooped dark coffee grounds into the percolator basket and decided that Rosa and Stefano should make the trip without her. It would be a way for Rosa to have fun with Cesare, and a way to encourage the boy to stop picking on her. Besides, Rosa loved Stefano so very much. Perhaps a short time away from the villa—and away from her mother—would be healthy for Rosa. Surely Gabrielle could survive.
She set coffee mugs on the table in front of the two men. “I have an idea,” she said. “Why don’t the two of you take the children by yourselves? I’m sure they’d enjoy a respite from their mothers.”
They went to Firenze, Stefano and Rosa, Enzio and Cesare. And Gabrielle stayed home, as she had become so accustomed. Accustomed to, and loving every minute, each day of her quiet, unassuming life at the villa in the country.
It was odd without Rosa, but she pretended that her daughter was only at school in the daytime, and at night that she was already tucked into her bed.
The morning of the third day that her family had been gone, the sky was the color of blue-lace agate, the smoothly hued gemstone of the ancestral brooch that Stefano had given her, the brooch that she wore at the neck of her high-collared white shirt every Sunday.
But this was not Sunday, and there was work to be done.
Gabrielle hung the bedroom draperies outside to air. She looked up at the house and thought that today, in the sunshine, the place looked as grand as if Stefano’s forefathers and foremothers and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews still blessed its existence, as if prosperity had never left them, up there on the mount.
Prosperous or not, Gabrielle had found home. Since meeting Stefano, since coming to Castello di Bonelli, she no longer itched like a long-sleeved wool sweater, too hot or too cold, never quite right no matter where she was or with whom.
The “where’s” of Gabrielle’s life had been few: America—uptown Manhattan and the Vineyard; Salisbury, England, for school from ages seven to eighteen; London, because Aunt Margaret insisted that was where all young ladies went. At twenty-one Gabrielle moved to Paris, because legally Aunt Margaret could no longer control her or stop her.
Though her trust fund afforded Gabrielle a life of leisure, she preferred to squirrel away her money in Switzerland, safe for her future. Then, no matter what or who entered—or left—her life, she would always be free, with the means to move on. Freedom was important to one who had been betrayed.
Gabrielle had trusted no one. As the years passed, her money grew. Certainly there was enough to restore this old villa. Certainly there was enough to weather many, many years of damp, woeful crops.
But she could not save the villa and she could not save the vineyard, for Gabrielle had never told Stefano of her wealth.
If she told him, she would risk losing her financial security.
If she told him, he would be angry that she’d deceived him into thinking she was a bourgeois girl whom he’d “rescued” from a sorrowful existence.
If she told him, it might open the door to other secrets and lies, and Gabrielle couldn’t bear that. Her life was too perfect, and Stefano was a proud man.
So instead of telling him, it had been easier to have the administrator secretly wire her income into the Swiss account each month and to pretend that her trust fund simply didn’t exist. In return for his silence about her or her whereabouts, Gabrielle had increased Lester Markham’s commission.
“Excuse me,” a voice called from the front lawn.
Gabrielle turned around. A stranger—a woman—stood beside an old taxi that Gabrielle had not heard arrive. She wore an old-fashioned coat and a friendly smile.
“I’m looking for the mistress of the house,” the woman explained as she walked closer, waving her hands toward the villa, as if that would explain what her choppy Italian could not.
Gabrielle immediately identified an American accent. She hesitated, then responded in fluent Italian. “I am the Countess Bonelli.”
“Gabrielle?” the woman asked. “Are you Gabrielle of the Atkinsons? From the United States?”
Clouds seemed to gather on the golden-blue sky. A chill oozed from the air and penetrated Gabrielle’s clothes, her plain cotton shirt and her plain cotton skirt, clothing of a peasant woman, not of a countess. Not clothing of an Atkinson. Gabrielle did not move. “What is it you want?” Her question was in English; she did not know why.
The woman clutched a large purse. From it spilled papers that looked like brochures, tourist folders, perhaps. Her skin had a pallor of someone who did not often see the sunshine, or who’d lost a night’s sleep on a transatlantic flight. Gabrielle said a quick prayer of thanks that Stefano and Rosa were not there.
“My ancestors were Italian,” the woman replied as she continued her approach. “My grandfather was from Torino.”
Gabrielle could not answer. She could only remain standing, frozen in place, hanging onto the curtains that hung on the line.
The woman moved three steps closer, then she stopped. Gabrielle wanted to back up, but her feet suddenly were cemented to the ground.
“My mother always said someday we’d go to Italy,” the woman continued. “And here I am!”
“So it appears.” Gabrielle looked down at a small hand with clear-polished, short fingernails that reached out to her.
“I’m from the Bronx,” the stranger continued, “New York. My name is Carla DiRoma.”
The name was familiar, but distantly vague, like the name of a classmate in the third or fourth form. Gabrielle stared at the hand and wondered what would happen if she refused to shake it, if she turned on her heels and fled into the villa, slamming, then bolting, the large wooden door. Who would know? Perhaps Carla DiRoma was from America, but why should Gabrielle be expected to care?
The woman withdrew her hand before Gabrielle could decide whether or not to shake it.
“I came to find you,” she continued. “I know some of your family.”
Gabrielle blinked a long, slow blink, as if hoping that by the time her eyes reopened, the woman would have gone back to the taxi and departed for wherever she’d come from. But when her vision returned, the image remained. “My family?” Gabrielle asked, because other than Stefano and Rosa, the word seemed remote.
“Your cousins,” Carla said. “Mary Beth and Nicole. They still have the estate on Martha’s
Vineyard. Isn’t that something?”
Letting go of the drapery, Gabrielle slid her hands into the deep pockets of her skirt. She thought of Mary Beth, wearing bright pink lipstick and picking hydrangea in the backyard. She pictured Nikki in cutoffs and sandals, painting a fat white daisy on the hood of her car. She saw them, and she remembered the old ache of wanting to be just like them because they were so grown-up and she was so not. Mary Beth and Nikki. Her family, of sorts. “I haven’t seen them in years.”
“Yes,” the woman replied, “I know.”
And then Gabrielle’s legs were no longer weighted but instead had grown weak. There was, after all, still one thing that linked her to her “family,” a secret she held so close to her heart. “What do you want?” she asked, her voice now as weak as her body.
“Actually …” The woman continued with a grin, “I was wondering if you give out samples of your wonderful wine. Then perhaps we could have a little talk.”
4
SUMMER 1974
This is Mr. Markham,” Aunt Margaret said, her lips stiff and bloodless, her blue eyeballs peering over her half-glasses at him, not at them. “He will manage your trust funds.”
He was a tall man with soft, blond hair, like Robert Redford, and a suntanned face. He wore a navy blue suit, white shirt, and tie, none of which were wrinkled despite the August Vineyard heat. Aunt Margaret, of course, would not have allowed otherwise.
Mary Beth looked over at Nikki, who sat on the leather sofa paying attention to her mother, Margaret. Margaret was the middle daughter of Grandma Atkinson—whom Mary Beth barely remembered—and Grandfather, who was dead now, too. They’d buried him yesterday, so Aunt Margaret truly was the self-appointed daughter “in charge” because Mary Beth’s mother, Dorothy, the eldest, was too flighty and often too tipsy, and because Aunt Rose was too young. So Aunt Margaret ran everything, from the house to the business to all of them, too. Thank God Nikki neither looked nor acted like the stern matriarch who still teased her hair and sprayed it as stiff as an old crinoline slip.
Mary Beth’s glance moved to Gabrielle, who played with her Barbie in front of the French doors that led from the library out to the back lawn. The child seemed oblivious to the news that Grandfather had left his money to them, the three granddaughters, the only offspring of his own three daughters.
“Mr. Markham is an important consultant to the business,” Aunt Margaret continued, and Mary Beth understood the importance of that comment, because she knew that without Atkinson Enterprises the three granddaughters might not have been raised uptown but in dreadful Brooklyn or Queens, and summers might have meant not ten weeks on Martha’s Vineyard, but a day trip to Coney Island. “Now he’s going to work for you.”
Mary Beth shuddered and sat up straight in her chair. She might be only fifteen, but she knew when to listen.
“In addition to the trust funds, there is the property. Mary Beth, though Nicole is the eldest granddaughter …”—Only by one year, Mary Beth wanted to protest, until she noticed Aunt Margaret’s lips grow even more rigid— “… you are the only child of your grandfather’s eldest daughter. He has therefore left this Vineyard estate and everything on it and in it to you.” Her arm swept the room, indicating the leather-bound books, the heavy old furniture, and the paintings on the walls that must be worth something because they were removed to the vault every fall. “There is, however, one stipulation,” Aunt Margaret continued. “You must allow lenient ‘visitation’ to your cousins. And to Rose and Dorothy and me, too, as long as we’re alive.”
Lester Markham chuckled and Aunt Margaret did, too. Mary Beth supposed she should smile. It wasn’t often that Aunt Margaret tried to make a joke.
“The brownstone in Manhattan will remain mine until my death,” the woman continued, “at which time it will be turned over to the New-York Historical Society.”
That was no surprise. John Jacob Astor had built the place, but it was where Nikki and Aunt Margaret and Aunt Rose, Uncle Mack, and Gabrielle all had lived with Grandfather even before Grandma had died from that awful word cancer.
Patting her bouffant to be sure it was still in place, Aunt Margaret continued. “As for Atkinson Enterprises, I shall run the corporation until a suitable buyer can be found. The money from your shares of the sale will be added to your trust funds at that time.”
Lester Markham nodded as if he needed to know that, as if his future were the one on the line. His, not theirs. Not three kids about as unalike as Pat Boone, the Beatles, and, well, Barbie.
Mary Beth was pleased that she’d thought of that—Pat Boone, the Beatles, and Barbie. Her English teacher would have been proud, and might no longer accuse her of being more interested in socializing than in similes, if that were a simile, which, on second thought, she did not think it was.
Then she smiled as she realized she now could tell her English teacher to go straight to hell, because she could buy and sell the whole stuffy, damn school, if she wanted.
Aunt Margaret stood up. Lester Markham quickly rose and helped her with her chair.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Aunt Margaret said, “I have condolence thank-you’s to write.”
She dismissed the girls as if she were dismissing Parliament.
Once she’d left and they were alone, Nikki snarled at Mary Beth. “Great,” she said, “we’re filthy rich. Just what I fucking needed.”
Dorothy Atkinson-McNight told her daughter that the least she could do was bring flowers to Grandfather’s grave and say a prayer of thanks that he had made her financially set for life. Mary Beth clipped hydrangea blossoms from a backyard bush and knew she no longer could get yelled at for doing so. It was, after all, part of the estate, her estate, the “whole kit and caboodle,” her mother had called it when Mary Beth had related the news handed down in the library.
She supposed Grandfather had left it to her because he’d felt bad about her father, Glenn McNight, who had turned out to be a drinker, but Dorothy had made her bed and had then had to lie in it. Luck and irony had intervened, however, when Mary Beth was twelve. Surprisingly sober and on his way to the club, Glenn McNight had ironically been killed by a drunk driver, a senior citizen, no less. What would he think if he could see her now, the one who’d inherited the largest chunk because he’d been such a disappointment?
From the second story above her, Mary Beth heard the slow rise of voices.
“Stop it, Mother.”
The voice belonged to Nikki, the reluctant, filthy rich heiress.
“Don’t smart-mouth me, young lady,” Mary Beth heard Aunt Margaret cackle.
Gripping the pruning shears more tightly, Mary Beth almost felt as if she were with them in the tense, airless room.
“This house and the property should have been divided equally, not given solely to Mary Beth.”
A small grin curled the edges of Mary Beth’s mouth. Though she always hated it when Nikki and Aunt Margaret quarreled, it was somehow satisfying that they were fighting about her; that, for once, the one who was not as old or as smart as her cousin Nikki had actually come out on top.
“I don’t want the house, Mother,” Nikki shouted back. “I don’t even want the trust fund.”
“That’s the trouble with you. You have no ambition, Nicole. No sense of … class.”
Though Mary Beth would never tell Nikki, she really quite agreed. Nikki might be smarter and older than Mary Beth, but the girl did not know how to dress or comb her hair or walk or talk, not in the proper way.
“I do have ambition, Mother. I’m going to be a great artist.”
“Ha! And just how would you expect to support yourself if it weren’t for your trust fund? Cry all you want about money, Nicole, but it is the most important thing in life.”
For a moment there was delicious silence. Mary Beth clipped another blossom.
“You’re an asshole,” Nikki said.
Mary Beth gulped a gulp she feared might be heard up there on the second floor. She held he
r breath and listened. Then came the penetrating sound of a loud smack against flesh. Mary Beth jumped as if it were her face that had been slapped.
“Mary Beth? Can I help you pick flowers?”
She spun around and saw Gabrielle. “What are you doing?” she whispered, her heart racing, her cheeks flush. “Where’s your mother?” It wasn’t that she thought Aunt Rose should or would be with Gabrielle. She asked because the bad thing about eavesdropping was the embarrassment of getting caught. Then she remembered that Aunt Rose was “deep in mourning,” Mary Beth’s mother had said, and that the “poor thing” had barely left her rooms since Grandfather’s funeral.
Gabrielle shrugged. “I don’t know where she is. Can I stay here and play with you?”
Quickly, Mary Beth grabbed the child’s hand and led her from the window. As much as she would have loved to stay, she did not want to risk Aunt Margaret finding her and screaming at her, too. Later, if Mary Beth was lucky, Nikki might relate the rest of the story.
The sting on her jaw had been worth it. Nikki stood at her upstairs window looking down on the estate, over the sand dunes, past the abandoned lighthouse, down to Katama Bay, grateful that her mother had stormed from the room with the presumed, misconceived notion that she’d won the battle, that she’d made her point.
But Nikki didn’t care what Margaret Atkinson said or thought or did. Money was the god her mother worshipped, and that did not make her a nice person. Her mother could slap her as many times as she needed, but the fact remained Nikki was now the recipient of a sizeable trust fund and that must infuriate the bitch, who would no longer have complete control over her smart-mouthed daughter.
Nikki sighed and pulled back the white-ruffled curtain for a better look out to sea.
Was it any wonder that her father had left when she was only four? Or that he’d taken little but his clothes, and left no forwarding address? A few years after his departure, word had been received: He’d dropped dead of a heart attack at age forty-four, somewhere in Tibet, where he’d journeyed to find peace. She’d hoped that, without her mother, he, at last, had found it.