“To Kit and Colin, our marvelous hosts,” Camille adds. Waves of conversation ensue. More politics. “At least we Italians recognize fascists when we see one,” says Stefano.
“Ah, now you do,” Susan laughs. Sally mentions the coming exhibit at the Strozzi gallery; Brian is talking about immigrants washing up on the southern islands, so many, he claims, that the islands are about to sink.
“They want the same things we want,” Debra insists.
“They should have stayed home and fought for their country,” Karl counters. Gilda announces that she will start a meat carving course at her school. Students will each have a whole pig, learn knife skills, and how to use every part except the squeal. This makes my stomach flip. I raise my water glass to Leo and mouth Grazie! The roasted pork—sublime. I crunch into the crisp and crackling skin.
Riccardo quotes an ode by Horace. (Yet another reason to love the life here.) The whole world is where we live, not a narrow place. When I moved here I felt as if those blinders that keep horses oriented in one direction were removed. Stefano’s men clear the plates and present the wild salad with local goat cheese and yellow beets.
* * *
—
Before dessert, Brendan reaches behind him for his guitar and starts in with “Per Te,” a favorite from the Italian singer Jovanotti over in Cortona. From down the table Colin toasts me. Does anyone notice my glass of blood orange juice? (Maybe only Wally, a teetotaler who had issues long ago.)
Rowan rises and says thanks to the Italians at the table for welcoming yet another stranger. He looks handsome in his craggy, bohemian way. Gilda raises her glass in praise of Julia and her cooking talents. “She is more adept than we are. We are jealous of her abilities!” Julia shakes her head no, and leans over to give Gilda and Luca a hug. Dessert. I must say, a hush falls as Annetta and I bring out the magnificent roulade. At the same time, Colin scrapes back his chair and it turns over with a loud crack.
“Dearly beloved,” he begins. The English speakers laugh and the Italians look at each other with shrugs. “To Kit! You know her as a committed writer. Someone who came here to give her work a new focus, which she did. Someone who did not want to follow an expected path. She didn’t count on falling in love with someone still flailing around in his career.” He pauses, looking at me. “She has been my lodestar. We love living among you. We love all of you. As you know, I’m forty. Kit is forty-four. Our future is laid out, right? We’re free to travel, to work like demons. Free. Well, raise your glasses, please, because we want to toast the interrupted future.” The waiters fill everyone’s glasses with fine Champagne. “We want to tell you of our unexpected fortune. We’re expecting a baby. In June, we will be parents.”
Brendan starts a drum roll on the guitar as everyone stands, draining glasses, calling Hear, hear, all astonished except that I see the knowing smiles of the three women. Everyone rushes to embrace us. The Italians begin singing the victory song of the soccer teams. Amalia crying, the three women nodding We knew, we knew, Riccardo (maybe appalled) retreating to the corner to light a cigar, Nicolà starting to dance near the fire, joined by Belinda in her ridiculous kilt skirt. Wally and Debra grab the bottles and keep everyone topped off. In the midst of all, no one forgets the hazelnut roulade. Julia seems astonished. Out come the limoncello, grappa, and Averna bottles, a cheese board and walnuts to crack.
A bowl of clementines. We linger long. No need to go. We have the rest of our lives. A magnificent evening for us at Fonte delle Foglie. I am a mountain tiger.
Ciao, Kit—Stupendous party! Stupendous news! Of course we knew, ever since the dinner in Cormòns. Just a quick thank-you from here in the Dolomites, where the word cozy must have been invented, but contemporary, not cuckoo-clock cozy. Our lodge is all soft, sleek bleached timber, steaming hot tubs, velvety robes, and views into the far yonder. But—no snow! My girls are skiing down a piste made from snow guns. I hope neither breaks a leg. On either side of the run the hillsides are stubby and brown. No crowds or queues for the lifts. I use them for sightseeing. We can hike through pastures up to a rifugio. Oh! Potato and apple soup, venison with truffles. Julia would be blissful! I am sitting out on the broad terrace in the pale sun. We ordered fondue for breakfast! The air feels intoxicating, as though we’ve lost cabin pressure and a mask blowing oxygen has descended on us. The apples—amazing. Ruddy and sweet/sour. We’ve munched the whole basket left in our room. Ciao from San Cassiano. Hope you’re enjoying Florida. A presto, Susan
PS I’m cc’ing this to J and C, as I am almost out of battery.
Hey, Susan, hey, Camille,
You all were sweet to Daddy. He loved you both! Wasn’t Kit and Colin’s party fabulous? We found many new friends. We’d better watch out—we may ensconce ourselves in San Rocco so thoroughly that we’ll never leave. Christmas was strange but peaceful. We had an afternoon stroll around the Spanish Steps area, prosecco sitting outside, then dinner, excellent, in our hotel. Afterward we watched Three Coins in a Fountain, earlier female explorers of Italy. Younger—and more romantic. Silly, but I cried. Neither of us mentioned Lizzie or Wade. I’m becoming a master of living in the moment. After grand days in Rome—warm—we came to Naples on the fast train yesterday. A different world. I’ll be a long time absorbing the dizzying differences in Italian towns—Atlanta and Charlotte and Raleigh are not profoundly different, right? Well, the quick trip from Rome to Naples lands you in a warp. Racist, I guess, but I’ve heard that Italians say “After Rome begins Africa.” Well, it does seem stupefyingly different. Just from the taxi to the hotel, Daddy and I were gripping each other’s hands, and I cried out a couple of times but the driver just laughed. Finally, I relaxed when I realized that other drivers expected ours to cut and swerve and careen, and that they even expected to drive behind a Vespa with three on it carrying a bicycle horizontally. One smoked, one pulled in the front wheel when necessary, and another manipulated the back wheel, all laughing and calling to friends. No one seemed perturbed but us. Susan, you’d fit in just fine! Today we wandered along Spaccanapoli, the straight street (the Roman decumanus) that splits Naples, up little lanes where it looked like murder could occur, and off it on a cramped little lane where they sell all the paraphernalia—much of it battery operated so the figures move—for the presepio setups we saw all over San Rocco. These are incredibly elaborated. Wonder why that craft became quintessential to Naples. Kitschy as hell, of course, but I found myself leaning down and exclaiming over the tiny woman ironing, the man shoving bread into a forno, the vegetable seller, the manger animals shaking their heads, plaster angels (I bought a few), on and on. Daddy thought a little bit went a long way. We proceeded to one of the celebrated pizza places for lunch and I know it’s heretical but I thought the pizza wasn’t that great—chewy, bready dough and thin tomato and cheese—though the mozzarella is the buffalo milk type. I like the thin Tuscan crust much more! Back at the hotel before we venture out for the afternoon—a handsome palazzo with a dignified courtyard. Below my window, someone is going through the trash with a stick. Actually, the contrasts get to me in an exciting way. A place where you don’t know what to expect. Haven’t we become up for that? Let me know how your trips are going. Miss you! Julia
Dear dear friends,
San Rocco seems even more intimate at Christmas. Charlie and Ingrid are falling hard for the place. Ingrid, almost fifteen and just out of braces, asked her parents to move here. She’s enamored, hearing of a high school called a liceo, where she would study Latin and Greek. (She hasn’t excelled at Spanish, however!) She’s loving the pudding-thick hot chocolate and the melt-in-mouth cream-filled meringues. Most of all, she loves the villa. I think it conjures The Secret Garden. Charlie and Lara, too, are stunned by every room and also by the way of life. Even Lara, who always finds fault, as my mother would say, is silenced. She walks from room to room kind of nodding her head and smiling. This is good. Of course, she does take exception to the ca
ts, and keeps shooing them off the furniture. “What were you thinking, keeping three cats?” she asked incredulously.
“We weren’t thinking,” I answered sweetly.
The four of us grilled one of those giant local steaks and cooked potatoes in the fireplace. We had a big salad of wild greens that Patrizia dropped off. Annetta brought a blackberry crostata. Julia, we did well! Tomorrow night, we’re invited by Gilda and Luca to a feast at the hotel. My family will be awed and thrilled. I am having great fun seeing our town through their eyes. Charlie, dreamboat boy, is attuned to everything he’s seeing. Lara wants to rest, as she travels all the time. But she is making an effort.
Susan, thanks again for finding us the apartment in Venice. I can’t wait to see their faces when we arrive! Charlie researched all the art—he may swoop to heaven in a cloud like the Virgin. He’s reserved a table for us for New Year’s Eve. Right on the Grand Canal. Hoping for snow. Want me to visit your antique shop, Susan? Can’t wait to be there. I have a soul connection to that mirage on the waters. After they fly out of Venice, I’m giving myself a day alone. It will be sad to see them go but as you know, that city speaks to me. And—I am looking forward to taking up where we left off at Villa Assunta. Travel well. Have many epiphanies before Epiphany when we again raise our glasses together. Xxxooo, Camille.
Ride by, look at the neighborhood. Chris wouldn’t recognize Lizzie if he saw her naked in the street. He needed to drive down to San Francisco to have the design of his vineyard labels adjusted. Now that his son, Carter, is finishing his master’s at Davis, Chris wants to add his name on Magnitude Vineyards’ back label. Carter will be an astute winemaker; his palate is discerning, especially during periodic barrel sampling, when you have to know, while the wine is evolving, what the wine will be. A fourth-generation winemaker, Carter is wed to the sere California hills and can’t wait to come home and start updating—he says it nicely, “innovating around what already works.” Chris gets the message. Move over, Dad. Fine with him. The girlfriend, also graduating in enology, will come, too. Waka, delicate, slender as a soda straw, Japanese American. Her grandparents, born in Sacramento, were rounded up and put in a camp to wait out World War II. Her hair hangs straight down to her waist and she’s always fiddling with it, tossing her head, swooping it up in her hands and letting it fall, often while delivering a confident opinion. Could be useful. Could be irritating. Carter wants her there and Chris has a philosophy about allowing his boy what he wants whenever it seems reasonable. He’s sure that’s why Carter grew into a generous man.
In late February, the green Marin hills glow. As Chris speeds down 101 slightly faster than the flow, traffic moves smoothly. Emerging from the tunnel, he bursts onto the full view of the white city floating on choppy cobalt waters, the bridges like glimmering Erector sets, and pristine triangles of sails cutting toward Alcatraz. Chris fell hard when he first moved here and even now, he feels a billowing excitement. What’s happening on the West Coast now sends out ripples that the rest of the country feels a decade later. He knows that.
He turns in to the Marina neighborhood, imagining living in one of the Spanish Colonial houses from the thirties, a small courtyard where Julia is setting the table for friends. He finds himself humming, then stops. Do I always have to think city by the bay, Tony Bennett crooning at the Fairmont? A bit embarrassing, his throat tightening with emotion anytime I left my heart starts up. Oh, Dad, cornball! Carter would say.
September, the pretty girl—Lauren?—leaning on her elbows at the bar, high on a hill, first job, the end of his summers in the unlovely, dusty fields of his parents’ farm in Modesto—crops and heartbreak and a prevailing feeling of exile—the shock of arrival in the chilly city halfway to the stars. He swerves right as a motorcyclist almost clips his front fender. San Francisco, like no other, even Rome. Even now, rife with techies. At least they buy wine when they’re not drinking livid green juices. Or sourcing those leafy greens.
A few weeks in San Fran, and he’d known that his desire to escape all through his teens was right. He grew up an exile—from this sharp air and the undulating hills with heart-stopping views, where everyone is young and rapacious for what’s to come. The last edge, razor edge of the country. He loves it, loves the grandest ocean, the cold, cold waves along Point Reyes’s sweeping beaches, invigorating foggy walks. California is overpopulated, but the land itself remains primitive and lonely. Opposite of his more intimate love, Italy, with its humanly shaped landscapes and towns. What luck, to have both places, like Julia and friends, falling hard for a way of life so diverse from their southern heritage. Julia, what if they’d met twenty years ago? The children they could have had, the trips, the building of Magnitude Vineyards, her publishing books, the bi-country life. But instead he has Carter. He can only be happy for that.
Speeding toward the city, he’s elated. Not here, that’s over. A plane must soar over the pole and land in an ancient, mellow place bordered by a bluer sea.
* * *
—
Below Lower Pacific Heights the ambiance gets pretty low although now it’s dotted with spiffy cafés. He’s looking for the last known address of one Lizzie Hadley. No, she’d probably have the husband’s last name. The jerk. Tyler, Wade Tyler it is.
He tries to think of what Julia said about Lizzie, other than the chronicle of her downward spiral, her crash and burn. Does not suffer fools gladly. Used to have a pet turtle named George. Collected shells. No clue what she looks like. Wait, Julia mentioned her small teeth when they saw a barista smile in Friuli. Lizzie has teeth like that, little pearls. Not much to go on. Doubt if she smiles much. Especially if she has a meth smile.
A row of dingy Victorians, three of them fixed up by optimistic remodelers. A few spindly trees surrounded by dog shit. Other houses at least painted, with pots of agave or grasses on the porch and Roman shades on the windows. Down and out in San Francisco is not quite as down and out as in other cities. Real estate is too valuable for landlords to let property go too far into shambles. He can tell at a glance; this neighborhood is gentrifying. Crackheads soon to amble on to the last fringes. He slows at her intersection. Second house in, worst house on the block, purple and peeling, looks like a possible drug habitat. Julia mentioned purple, and not all the way derelict. A lank-haired woman smokes on the steps and a skinny guy leans against the railing, checking his phone. Chris parks farther down the street and walks back to the corner store cattycornered from the house. Another lavender Queen Anne Victorian looks possible, but an ancient black woman exits and begins sweeping her porch. Next door to her, painters in hazmat under tarps are scraping off decades of lead paint. Another house about to flip.
He buys a bag of chips, mints, and a bottle of water. The Pakistani owner hardly looks away from his computer as he rings up the purchase.
“You know of any houses for rent around here, or any for sale?” Chris asks.
“Everything for sale,” is the clipped reply. He squints at his screen. He’s wearing a limp T-shirt printed with a skeleton image.
“Good for investment, I’m sure.”
“You know what these suckers sell for now? Fix it up, triple your money.”
“What about that purple three-story?”
“Nah. That’s sort of a halfway place. Halfway to what, I’d like to know.”
Bingo. “They’re recovering?”
“Seems like some of them are.”
“Not for sale or rent then?”
“Owned by the city. They all get paid. Nice work.”
“I guess I’ve heard about that.” He gestured to the woman smoking on the steps. “They come in here to shop, I guess.”
“That one does. The guy lifts himself a free beer now and then. I just let it go. Poor sucker. He can’t even talk. Just stutters.” He blows through his lips and flips them with his finger, blubbering.
“The house next door—someone’s gussied i
t up all right.” He didn’t want to appear too inquiring.
“Paid three hundred thousand. Put that much into it, now it’s worth over a million.”
“All that and you get to live next to a halfway house.”
“You got it. And you get your car window smashed.”
“How many live there?”
“There were eight. I haven’t see two of them in months. A guy tattooed, even around his eyes. And a southern girl, all hoity-toity but when I got mugged last year she heard the glass breaking, came running over and got me an ambulance and stayed with the shop until my brother-in-law got here.”
“Oh, man. Mugged?”
He turns his profile, showing his bent nose and a rippled scar running up his cheek and back into his hair. “Baseball bat. They got a whopping seventy-two bucks. Me, I got a month of hell.”
Women in Sunlight Page 25