“Where’s our new food processor?” Julia surveys the kitchen but finds nothing else missing.
“What the hell?” Camille asks. “We’ve been robbed. But they’ve left cats! This is insane. Dinner? They had dinner? They knew without doubt that we were gone.”
Then Julia finds the drawers in the dining room dumped out, napkins and place mats scattered, silverware everywhere on the floor, the thieves apparently not interested. The sofa and chair cushions lie scattered in the middle of the floor. As Leo points out, as all is swimming into focus for the women, every mirror, print, and painting has been taken down. All are lined up along the walls, rather carefully. “They were looking for a safe,” Leo says. “They were interested in money.” He called his friend Eugenio, the head of the police, whose six-month-old daughter at the dinner had munched olives.
Camille crosses the room and turns down the hall to her bedroom. She spots a bracelet on the floor at the threshold and, inside, mounds of upturned clothes, the mattress skewed on the bed. This can’t be; she closes her eyes. They took my jewelry. Because the police have not arrived, she doesn’t want to touch anything. The white-gold links on the brick give her hope that she has not lost all the touching mementos Charles had given her throughout their marriage—the gold rope necklace with a sapphire clasp bought in Charleston when he turned fifty and he’d said, Because of our happiness, all the years we’ve shared. The pearls with a strand of amethyst woven in, and the romantic cascade of four-diamond earrings. Twenty-fifth anniversary. She never owned a lot of jewelry, but what she has is good. Really good. She wore one piece every day and thought of the occasion that brought it to her, a moment of meditation on the good luck of her love. Her wedding present, a teardrop emerald with tiny diamonds along the chain. Please don’t let that be gone, she whispers out loud. Before her, the emerald had been Charlie’s darling mother’s gift from his father when they married. No other objects she owns have half the emotional meaning.
Annetta sets to work putting the dining room in order until Susan stops her. “Fingerprints,” she says. “Tampering with a crime scene,” she says, forgetting that Annetta speaks no English. She gestures to her fingertips and Annetta shouts, “Certo, cara!” Certainly, my dear.
Camille loops her hand through Susan’s arm. “I’m afraid all my jewelry is gone. I’m an idiot. I left my drawstring pouches in my bottom drawer.”
“Oh, my friend. I’m afraid.” She and Julia have already looked upstairs where, mysteriously, nothing seems disturbed except the upended mattresses.
“At home, I’m always hiding my stash of jewelry—in plastic bags under the sugar, in the toy chest under Charlie’s drums, in a tampon box. I never slid them between sheets in the linen closet, under my lingerie—the obvious places—nowhere near the mattress, or pillows, or bookcases, or handbags, or fake shaving cream or tomato soup cans. Certainly not hollowed-out books. And now, my god, stupid. I could have left them in the dryer under a pile of T-shirts. I’ve had many ingenious places before. So good that I often forget where I stashed them. Charlie always teases me about my places to hide my treasures. Once, one pouch was lost for six months, then found in Charles’s toolbox in the garage.”
Susan had much experience with clients’ houses robbed while listed for sale. She’d heard of every hiding place imaginable but before this trip to Venice, she’d found the ultimate one for her own jewelry. “I just looked. My stuff is still in its hiding place. I wish I’d mentioned it. You know the brush by the toilet? Standing in that stainless-steel container? I’ve noticed that every Italian bathroom has one—it’s because of poor toilet design. I put the things I wasn’t traveling with in a plastic bag and stored it under the brush in the container.”
Camille manages a laugh.
The carabinieri arrive. Eugenio, the maresciallo, the marshal, sweeps Camille into a huge hug. The three men in their spiffy uniforms look as if they could handle major crime. One speaks excellent English, having lived in New Jersey for several years. They comb the house. One takes photos. No use to look for fingerprints, they assert, the thieves are not dumb; they wear gloves. They ascertain, as we already had from the way the glass scattered, that they entered by the back hall window and exited through the front door. Susan thinks, Sherlock Holmes. When Julia triumphantly points out the footprints, they collectively shrug. Everyone wears athletic shoes like that.
We enter the bedroom. Gone. Everything. The ladri took the time to untie the jewelry roll, open the blue satin pouch, remove the contents, and leave the holders on the pile of underwear and turned-over drawers. The red pouch holding the emerald, gone. The one piece of costume jewelry, a string of glass beads, was rejected and remains on the floor, but one of the guys accidentally grinds it under his boot. Camille picks up the white-gold bracelet in the doorway. They probably thought it was junk.
More hugs all around from the police, who are especially moved and keep repeating to each other that the pearls came from Camille’s mother, a mother’s jewelry being most resonant to them. Then there erupts a discussion of hiding places. A safe? Absolutely not. They maintain again that thieves are not stupid; they have tools to rip that wall safe right out and buzz into it. Should we have video surveillance? No—you think they don’t wear masks? Julia doubts that they ate her ragù and drank the Chianti reserva in masks and gloves.
The handsome chief advises, “Choose a flowerpot in the garden and dig a hole under it.” Or, there, the tall, muscular one demonstrates, wedged on top of a beam in the kitchen. “They can’t look on top of all the beams in the house,” he reasons, “just as they can’t dig under all the flowerpots.”
“This is getting surreal,” Susan mutters.
Camille didn’t say that every time she wants her earrings, she does not want to unearth them from the garden. Besides, scorpions love living under pots. It’s getting late. Anyway, she now has nothing to hide from any jewel thief.
Susan questions the carabinieri about searching at gold dealers for the jewelry. “Useless.” They put on their coats. “The gold will be melted down by morning.”
“Gypsies,” they conclude. “They’re camped outside Florence and are raiding the country towns. It’s mostly women for these small jobs. If they’re noticed, they claim to be house cleaners. The kittens, though, that’s a new touch.” They depart. Nothing to offer. No lead to follow.
Annetta and Leo make the rounds of hugs, too, and go home. We stare at the three frisky kittens Archie is circling, obviously enamored. Julia starts the washer. No one wants to touch the garments handled by the smart women thieves, who somehow had known their schedule. Too bad they had not ransacked Julia’s room instead of Camille’s. That Susan. Smart. When Julia left Wade, she’d stored every piece of jewelry she owned, except for one gold necklace from her father, good to wear with anything, in a safe-deposit box in Savannah. Of course, Lizzie had long ago sold Julia’s mother’s treasures.
Leo stops by and tells Colin and me. We rush right over, just as Chris arrives by taxi, totally unaware of what happened. Rowan drives up, too, alighting with an armful of lilies.
* * *
—
“You all were great to help us clean up this chaos,” Susan said. She opens a bottle of cold prosecco and raises a toast. “It could have been worse!” A man sent by the police arrives to board up the window and Susan hands him a glass, too.
“Unfortunately not,” Camille has answered multiple times. No, she never had gotten around to insuring her jewelry beyond the household policy. (Beat on head again.) “We’ve been told a million times how safe it is here,” Camille said.
Everyone laments with her, but Susan remarks, “Everyone keeps saying how sad the loss of such sentimental gifts, and yes, that’s true, but I’m also thinking, yeah, and how sad the loss of all that gold at two thousand dollars an ounce.”
“What was that about not looking for the jewelry because it would be melted
down by morning? Emeralds don’t melt. Sapphires don’t melt.” Susan stands behind Camille’s chair, her hands protectively on Camille’s shoulders.
* * *
—
“I am going to cook,” Julia says. “Let’s move into the kitchen and I’ll give everyone a job. Chris, if you’ll put on the pasta water. Susan, salad. Rowan, please set the table. Kit, you and Colin must stay. We need moral support. Would you two open the wine and find the big glasses? Several bottles, I’d say. I make a killer carbonara. Camille, you just stay where you are.”
“I know it’s shallow,” Camille continues, “to be so upset over material things. I know it’s a first, first-world problem.”
“Don’t be silly,” Julia answers. “You’ll never get over this.”
“I’ll buy you a diamond as big as the Ritz,” Rowan jokes. “By the way, what’s that big crate outside? Did the robbers leave you a gift?”
Susan laughs. “That’s the start of my new business. More on that later. We’ve had quite a day.”
* * *
—
Not the festive evening they’d planned. But not the worst. Everyone told their stories of losses. A truck backed up to a house in Napa while the owners were away and took everything, even the refrigerator. A stolen car, a bicycle, a friend who had her bag snatched. Camille is not consoled. Julia serves a mound of spaghetti alla carbonara to each and they eat every morsel. Colin keeps his arm around me.
Chris and Rowan insist on sleeping over. They help make up beds in two upstairs bedrooms. The carabinieri guaranteed that the Gypsies would not be back, and also pledged to patrol the road every hour, but everyone feels safer with a full house and they’re able to say buona notte with more calm than they anticipated. Archie falls asleep beside the fireplace with three kittens curled against him, as though he were the mother. “Oh, Madonna serpente,” Susan says. Her first Tuscan curse (overheard in the olive grove) and it’s a big one. Snake Madonna.
* * *
—
In the night, Rowan worries. He stealthily pads barefoot down the stairs and slowly opens Camille’s door. She is still awake, drowsing over a book. “Just checking on you.” He sits down on the side of the bed. “What a blow. I am so sorry. What can I do? Can I just hold you until you fall asleep?” Camille slides down under the covers.
“Yes. Please.” After all the words, plain human warmth comforts her.
Upstairs, Susan sleeps. She was up late, too wired to relax, firing off emails.
Julia crosses the hall to Chris’s room. He is out for the count but sits up immediately, thinking the robbers are back. “Julia! Shit! What a nightmare for you. But, whoa! You are a vision.”
She peels off her nightgown over her head and tosses back the covers. “You’re leaving tomorrow. When will we have a chance to be together again?”
I knew the story of the robbery at Villa Assunta would be all over town by the time Colin and I walked in for coffee. We’re settled at Bar Beato Angelico, with cappuccinos and pastries, but we hardly can take a bite or sip for people coming over to our table to discuss the terrible event.
We are taking a train late this morning to Florence. Colin has made an appointment for us with an obstetrician, someone recommended by one of the architects on his project. I’m nervous, always nervous at the prospect of feet in stirrups and someone saying just relax. I have been avoiding the ordeal.
In San Rocco, when something bad happens, people take it personally. Everyone here is sorry and embarrassed that the nice American women were robbed, and everyone has a theory. A certain disreputable guy who does odd jobs comes in for a lot of blame. Gypsies, yes. Anytime something happens, the Gypsies are blamed. (Not that much happens.) A tourist got all upset because her wallet was lifted, and then it was spotted in the chair next to where she had coffee earlier. Drunk teenagers vandalized a house under construction. A dog ate poisoned meat, but many thought he had it coming after a solid month of all-night moon barking. Of course an older woman has a lot of jewelry. She should have known better than to leave it under clothing. Her hiding place was bad. Because of wide distrust of banks, and a tendency to avoid revealing income that will be taxed, many Italians keep cash at home. Just look under the flowerpots! Most have a foolproof place to conceal valuables, and it’s not behind books or in the toe of a shoe. A pity, the consensus goes, some of the jewelry came from her mother.
I speculate to Colin, “What comes after all this? The thief’s wife may at this moment have hidden inside a sock the handful of pearl earrings, the emerald, and the pearl necklace that couldn’t be melted. Maybe her ugly husband yanked off the gold parts, but maybe he left them intact for her, love of his life, and in a few months she may lift out the creamy pearls and fasten the gold clasp around her neck. She may look in the mirror and try to imagine where they came from. Maybe she will dare to wear the dangling lustrous pearls. On that same day, Camille may be at the market and see a woman lean over to buy apples, her pearls swinging out.”
“Not one of the great losses of the world, not important in the face of the poor struggling to survive, dead-end wars and terrorists, or people not respecting the earth enough to take care of it, on and on,” Colin says.
“But, yes, the world is private, too, and when your home is invaded and a lifetime’s collection of intensely personal belongings is ripped away, a lingering sadness starts up. Camille felt stripped. Mentally assaulted. Really angry. Thing is, losing jewelry isn’t at all like losing money. It’s romance, heritage, an inner concept of beauty. That’s why those fragile earrings found in Etruscan tombs move us with their sense of the ancient wearer. She’s touching her earlobes twenty-six hundred years ago and you feel it. I love my mother’s ring”—her bluest of eyes, her generosity—“and my mean aunt’s ring”—did she love, ever?—“sparkles on my little finger. I’d much rather lose the money they’re worth.”
“Right. You’re always right. If you compare importance to world events, your own life always will seem frivolous. You start where I leave off, my love.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. By the way, I rolled up a lot of cash and shoved it into an empty wine bottle. It’s corked and standing with my vinegars.”
“The bills unfurl. How will we get it out of a bottle?”
“Easy. Break the bottle.” Now, off to the game-changing appointment.
* * *
—
By my calculations I am ten weeks along and overdue for this exam. I did start prenatal vitamins as soon as I knew for sure. The embryo soon turns into a fetus (etymology: off-spring). The creature right now weighs only ¼ ounce but has lungs, heart, all the vital organs, already working. This makes my knees want to buckle. Something three centimeters long already has a stomach and fingernails. As Sylvia Plath put it, I’ve “boarded the train there’s no getting off.” As you already know, I am perpetually surprised at life’s basic functions. How a spider knows how to construct an intricate web, how stars wheel across the sky, how the heart keeps on thudding. I’m naturally going to be struck with wonder over the creation of another human for the planet.
As the story circulated around town, everyone told the three women a story of their own losses or the losses of friends and family. Like labor sagas for the pregnant woman, these stories don’t help; they inspire further fear. But cumulatively, Camille had to see that she was not unique, at least, and for those who had lost life savings they’d jammed in a milk carton in the fridge, she was among the lucky who’d lost only jewelry. (She rejected that.)
Over lunch at Stefano’s, she confessed to Rowan that some primordial part of her deep in the medulla wondered if making love with him incited the gods to take away Charles’s gifts to her. He laughed her out of that one. But something primitive in her feared retribution. Rowan countered, “This is a different take: you just came home from Venice fired up over your own life, this project you haven’t told me much about.
You’ve come home with supplies and art books, pigments and poetry and architecture. Laden with riches. Odd, that the mementos, all clasps and chains when you think about it, of your former life disappear at the same moment these new stimuli appear. Do you possibly agree?”
Stefano sets down a platter of crostini. “What is so serious?” he asked. “Everything’s better with these and a glass of vino.”
Camille is silent. Rowan’s is a mysterious interpretation, something to contemplate. But then she says, “No, I can’t leap to that mystical level. I don’t like the eye-for-an-eye idea—so mean. Look at all the people who are horrendously rich and nothing is taken away from them in order for them to move forward with purchasing a helicopter for their yacht. Why should I—part-time art teacher with a frugal husband—have to lose to gain?”
Rowan laughs. “Touché. But I’m still struck with this timing. If you take it as a symbol, it might help.” After lunch they go to his place for the afternoon. She wakes late in the day, languorous and sated but with a twinge of sadness. She thinks of how many times in her life she’s turned to sex instead of what she might have otherwise pursued. Why hasn’t she begun the work she now knows she wants to do?
* * *
—
The gifts begin to arrive. Leo brings over wooden salt and pepper grinders he made out of fruit woods. He even leaves packets of coarse salt and whole peppercorns to grind. The owner of the linen shop where they’ve bought tablecloths invites Susan in and gives her three hand-woven cotton dish towels, almost too nice to use. Stefano discounts their lunch by half. In the wine store, Giampaolo gives them a bottle of grappa. Four lovely notes are left stuck in the gate. Patrizia, the woman gathering greens whom Julia met on the road, appears at the door with a pan of lasagne. All these spontaneous gifts leave the women with nights to ponder their meaning—the loving spirit of what is given, the grand subtraction of what is taken away.
Women in Sunlight Page 20