Through research resources at work I found a Park Avenue adoption service and interviewed them. In glass offices with Norfolk Island pines in pots and a wall of photos of adoptive parents gazing adoringly at little swaddled bundles in their arms, and no photos of the destroyed, bereft, or liberated birth mothers. I was shown, after an interview, folders of four couples. I lied and said I didn’t know who the father was but that he was a Georgetown student. I regretted a promiscuous period after my parents split up. I figured few adoptions took place without a few protective lies. “Love lies,” my mother called them. Lies you tell to protect someone or yourself from the truth.
I stipulated: well educated, fun, loving, smart, stable. I didn’t have to say not poor because anyone paying their fee had to be well off. All four looked promising. I asked to look at others but in the end went back to the couple on top of the stack. She was a violinist with an open face that looked kind, straight tar-black hair, like Mark’s. Maybe her jawline was oval like mine. She went to Colby, then Juilliard. The man was tall like Mark, with a high arched nose and eyes that looked as if he’d just delivered a witty remark. His profession intrigued me: naval architect. The father of my child. He could be. Pale like me, probably freckled as a child, he looked stalwart and dependable. I was looking for parents who physically could have been biologically connected to the baby. The name on the folder was covered over with white-out tape. Holding it in my lap, I deftly lifted up the tape with my nail while I chatted with the director about terms and conditions. Possibly that was my first move toward being an investigative reporter. I glanced down, smoothing my skirt. Edward and Amanda Knowles. I pressed down the tape and we worked out details. At the end of the meeting, I said, “Would you ask them to consider keeping the name I give the baby?”
“That’s unusual but I will ask.”
“Then, thank you. The baby has a good home.”
Stay calm and proceed. But I was young, alone, and—I pictured a wishbone—something snapped in me. I went forward into an altered world.
* * *
—
To make sense of the info I found in Margaret’s manuscript, I copied sections in my notebook, thinking that the words running through ink onto paper would help me understand her hidden life, and why she left the sheaf of crabbed writing and typing for me to find, or not. Did she somehow know she would not return?
(Problem with no name. Wafer thin. Rights. Judgment. Juicy gossip. Writing path. Portraits in the dining room. Run my hands. Love like crazy. Breeding. Swaddled. Pale like me. Altered world. Hideous to wake up as an insect.) (Ovid also wrote a Metamorphoses.)
* * *
—
My own pregnancy, opposite of hers. Mine made her story leap into life in a way it would not if I’d read this a few months after she abandoned the suitcase, when my pregnancy was beyond any possibility or even interest. Seared into my consciousness: the image of Margaret (I’ve seen early pictures of the young waiflike beauty and the knowing eyes) on a hot night, sitting cross-legged on the fire escape, drinking something cold and feeling large blank spaces around the edge of her mind. A little radio playing dance music inside. Music from a world she had to set aside.
Camille looks around her painting room, noticing abruptly the transformation that has occurred. What began as an art space confined to a corner, with a generous work surface, simple shelves, a reading chair and lamp, has morphed into a humming hive of art books, museum postcards on bulletin boards, prints from museums, another worktable, three easels, tubes, brushes, and stacks of paper that she makes every week with Matilde. On new shelves, she has arranged small jars of tiny pearls, copper BBs, beads of aqua glass and faceted pewter, thin gold tesserae mosaics—how resonating the mosaics at Aquileia have proven—and minute semiprecious stones in jewel colors, a basket of antique ribbons bought at the Arezzo antique market, archival glues, a row of glass-tipped pens and ink bottles—lake blue, violet, burgundy, white. On one wall, where the light falls, hang her paper doors, glowing and vivid like the Book of Kells, the illuminated manuscripts she loves in San Marco in Florence, or even Persian miniatures. She especially likes marginalia, as the monks did. She references in every historical direction, yet the paper doors are unmistakably contemporary. The designs angle and divide; she uses squares of color in patterns that could be from Moorish Spain but for the jarring contrasts and crosshatching.
Eighteen and counting. Each as alive to her as a person. She loves the tactile paper and the light use of ornament for a different texture and dimension. The words, lines, designs are all intuitive, though years of teaching intro to art history give her a wellspring of images. The project keeps enlarging and pulling her along, even when she’d like to stop and try to paint a winter landscape or a still life of pomegranates in a glass bowl.
At Christmas, Charlie noticed. “You’re putting your whole life into these,” he said. And she’d made only two then. The visit opened up his own work and added a new, deepening layer to their relationship. Every few days now, one of them sends a photo and a process note. She feels closer to him than she has since he came home from college excited about his first semester of studio art, unrolling his enormous canvases on the floor, his eyes lit with that fire she’d also felt once upon a time.
Camille straightens her space, thinking not of her losses, as she has for many months, but of good fortune. A stab of happiness—to have raised such a boy. A lucky love, sweet home, health. And this—all her synapses firing. Looking around her room, she whispers, not to a god—but maybe to the nun NM, a muse, I’m on my way.
* * *
—
In the kitchen, she finds Julia reading by the fireplace. She’s burnished gold in the firelight, her hair pulled into a topknot and tied with blue ribbon, and the rosy throw over her lap. Hard to imagine from the peace of this scene her starring role in such an ugly domestic drama. Blue early evening light shimmering at the window, yes, someone should paint this scene.
Late, and Susan still works outside, taking advantage of this almost-spring day. Camille watches her from the window. What’s coming up? Susan already has reported that there will be major bulb action. Camille brews tea and brings the pot with biscotti over to the table in front of the fire. “Aren’t you sweet?” Julia says, taking two of her own hazelnut macaroons.
“When Susan comes in, I want to show you both something.” She drew up her feet and began to look at a magazine. “What are you reading?”
“Kit’s poems. They are strange.”
“Yes, I agree. But good strange.”
“Absolutely. Where does this come from? We know her. She’s like us. Younger, yes. But basically kind of normal.”
“Maybe we’re not, none of us!” Camille joked. “Really, the poems—they’re the layer after you’ve peeled back two. Not that I can compare with Kit, but I look at one of my paper doors and what’s there wasn’t anywhere within reach before I began working. What I create comes out of the creating.”
“Listen to this:
The cat goes boneless when she sleeps. But she wakes,
stretches taut. She stares out the window at birds. Her eyes
dart and dart. She has no idea it’s a fallen world.
“ ‘Goes boneless,’ she says, where I’d say ‘relaxes.’ Then something so simple and accurate. Then, whoa, that leap out into the cosmos. It’s like she touches the language with a cattle prod and shocks it into life. Is that what making art feels like to you?”
“Must be what it feels like to her. I just get lost. Kind of a trance, if that doesn’t sound too goofy. I used to love to play with my mother’s tissue paper dress patterns with all the blue lines that looked like constellation maps. I’d trace the dresses and aprons on big sheets of paper, then color them in. Remember when women wanted a sewing room? Remember paper dolls? Did you ever covet the life of Betsy McCall?”
“McCall’s maga
zine! Yes, I cut her little outfits out every month! Betsy Has a Wonderful Thanksgiving. Betsy Goes to the Beach. She and her mom in matching suits. I wanted to be called Betsy, not Julia.”
“Not me. I had a doll that wet—Betsy Wetsy. But the ways my project has evolved have much to do with paper doll Betsy! And all the foreign twins paper dolls I collected. The Polish children with black rickrack, the Dutch with square faces and wooden shoes, the American midwestern blonds in overalls and calico.”
“Stop! Listen to us. Men would be claiming first influence from a mother playing Bach on the cello and an early encounter with Matisse’s cutouts.”
As they talk and Camille pours more tea, Susan stamps in at the kitchen door, slipping off her gloves and out of muddy boots. Archie shakes himself, sending the cats running. “We’ll all be shocked in a few weeks. Bulbs are sprouting everywhere. Hyacinths! I can’t tell what other kinds yet but this garden is going to explode.” Camille brings a cup for Susan. Archie settling in front of the fire throws his legs in the air, and two of the cats leap on him. Ragazzo jumps onto Julia’s lap, ignoring the fray.
“Time to take note, you all. Look at this kitchen.” Camille points around the room. “Think of when we arrived. Now the windowsills are full of herbs and white gloxinias, there’s a row of cookbooks on the mantel, Julia’s jug of blue spatulas on the counter, a bowl of lemons, ceramic platters on the wall. Three cats, for Christ’s sake, that rosy mohair throw, logs stacked, wine rack full. What do you think?”
Susan is quick to answer. “We’ve made it home. You’re right, the kitchen was gorgeous before but now it’s ours. Best kitchen I’ve ever cooked in. Did you know there’s no Italian word for home? Only house, casa. I find that weird in a culture where home is everything.”
Camille continued, “They don’t have pet either, just something about animals you feed at the door. But wait, I want to bring up something. I was looking at my studio. I had not put the two images—now and then—together. I was struck—in less than five months we’ve changed everything from when we arrived. Springing forward to now—the time changes tonight, by the way—look what we’ve done here. Are you as astonished as I am?”
Julia takes a dozen eggs out of the fridge. “Okay if we have omelets and salad tonight? The cupboard is bare; we need to shop tomorrow. Yes, it’s totally true. The kitchen surely smells different! From scuzzy drain and mouse to flowers and herbs, garlic and melon. You’re right, Camille. I’m thinking of my room, too, all my scarves over the coverlet rack, Susan’s olive tree photographs I enlarged, my desk stacked up with recipes and guidebooks. What we’ve all learned! Finding the faded silk draperies at the market was a stroke of luck. Eau-de-Nil, didn’t you say, Camille?”
“Yes, love that color, water of the Nile. They’re decadent. You make Savannah proud. And learning Italian! That’s the most drastic change. Not that we’re fluent by any means. I’ll never get that subjunctive.”
They walk through the downstairs rooms, exclaiming over the changes. Into the previously blank entrance hall, Susan has dragged a round table where she keeps a grand arrangement of flowers. Here’s where they leave mail and notes to each other. The top of the piano in the living room became another place for Susan’s flowers. This is a morning room; early sun floods through the windows, lighting the brick floor with blocks of light. She’s kept southern-style ferns growing on the broad stone sills all winter. In the storage room upstairs, she found a tapestry showing four dainty women prancing on horses with silky manes. Somewhat tatty by now, it still looks regal over the fireplace.
“Who would have thought?” Camille asks. “I guess I expected we’d just move in, unpack, and live here as it was. A widening of the aperture, yes, but the whole panorama is a wild gift.”
They’ve done little to the dining room, where the nun’s fresco so dominates that nothing else is needed except food on the table. “Let’s eat in here tonight.” Julia opens the madia and takes out place mats and napkins. “This is my favorite room. Already many memories of our feasts. Remember when Rowan gestured at the fresco and his wineglass flew across the table?”
“Well, yes, since it landed in my lap. He recovered quickly with some wine quote from Catullus. I need to study the villa’s garden scene, com’era,” Susan says. As it was. She loves era, the big imperfect past of was, where everything remains in motion even when finished. C’era una volta…the fairy tales begin, there was a time…“Remember when a bird flew in and lighted on the table, looking at each of us then flew back out?”
“That was a visitation from our painter nun.” Camille isn’t given to flights into mysticism but half believes this.
* * *
—
Julia sighs and begins to grate the parmigiano, as Camille and Susan fall to their usual roles, feeding the animals, setting the table, and opening the wine. “Home. We are at home! We didn’t know we could, would accomplish that. Do you have an instinct yet—will you want to stay? Can you imagine leaving this place? Or could you go home tomorrow?”
“We haven’t been to Sicily yet. I’m just getting started.” Camille thinks of the stack of handmade paper on her shelf. She misses Charlie—not Lara—and Ingrid, who sweetly took to Italy over Christmas and asks when she can come back. Isn’t this better, she wonders. Introducing them to this country? Better than the Sunday brunch with a bought quiche at home in North Carolina, even the annual week at Bald Head Island? “The deeper level, though, is that we remain American. Can’t help that! And southern. We’ve all stood in a cotton field at night, lightning flashing all over the sky, with electrical pylons thrumming like some music from the galaxy.”
Julia frowns. “What?”
“You know what I mean. In Italy, we have to live as if. As if we belong.”
Susan hands around the wine. “I’m fine with as if. Stay forever? I could. I miss home less than I thought, but I feel pangs for my front porch and garden every single day. It’s not as though I get to see my daughters that often anyway. And I know I was repeating the years, with slight variations. That’s okay, nothing wrong with that. I just love waking up with a what’s up today feeling, not an already know what’s in store.” She shows them the wild and earliest flower she found today. Annetta called it bellavedova. She gathered only a dozen, though they’re all over the hills, mysterious small stalky irises of chartreuse and burgundy. “Here’s the first gift of spring—the ‘beautiful widow.’ ” She picks up Archie and twirls him around. “Our time here is not half up. Let’s push this discussion of the future back for later.”
Julia says, “I’ll always want to have this in my life, some way or other. I love every minute here.” She turns away and stares at the window running with steam. Tears. Always just out of sight, her shadow girl, now more missing than before. Whirlpool, snake pit.
She shakes back her hair. “Can you believe how orange these yolks are?” She whips the eggs into lemon-colored froth. How to answer Chris? She hasn’t called back since he tracked down Lizzie’s last residence. She stirs in the cheese, and a handful of thyme and parsley. A Jacques Pépin video taught her how to make the perfect omelet. “You all ready?” She maneuvers the flip and turns out the first fluffy, half-moon omelet onto a plate.
After dinner, Susan brings her laptop to the table. Camille and Julia moan, then laugh. When Susan does this, she’s planned something. She types fast for a couple of minutes, then looks up. “Want to go to Florence?” Photos of a frescoed apartment appear on her screen. “I found a fabulous last-minute deal. It’s still available. Look at this.” They see the Arno, with ochre, sienna, and russet palazzi reflecting in the water. “That’s the view from the living room. And I have more news. Nicolà and Brian asked me to evaluate a possible rental they’re considering for their portfolio. We can all go to Capri at the beginning of April.”
“I’m afraid something awful is going to happen. We keep spinning out into wider and wider ci
rcles.” Julia imagines awful: Lizzie shaking pills into the palm of her hand, gulping them down, the weeks after she left for the last time—the gut-anguish that felt like drowning.
“What’s the Italian saying? ‘First roots, then wings.’ ” Camille, too, feels unentitled to such pleasures. She thinks of shopping, always buying her nicest clothes on sale or from catalogues. Charles liked the Lands’ End sweaters and shorts. She reached more toward silky prints at Off Fifth and Neiman Marcus cashmere on sale.
“Nonsense. Just think of all the fat cats buying up regal property in London and letting them sit empty. You think any of them worries about being smote because of a weekend in someone’s luxury rental in Capri? It’s a woman thing. What do we deserve? This is our easy year. We’re old. We deserve some levity. Get over it.”
Julia and Camille love Susan for this.
Spring, near. Tufts of balmy air and the swollen river Arno running fast, toffee-colored. Few tourists, glamorous shop windows that cause you to vow to clear your closet, enchanting palazzi with massive doors you long to open: Firenze.
Julia pauses on the bridge, naming colors she sees. Cinnamon, curry, turmeric, sage. Sipping cappuccino, she lingers, smelling the turgid river, letting the morning breeze play with her hair.
Looking for signs of spring, Susan spends the morning wandering in the Boboli Gardens, which she finds grand and oddly depressing, parts so bleak and underplanted that she rests on a bench sketching her own version of how the park could look. Those megalomaniacal Medicis wouldn’t have had such a stripped-down palette. She photographs the famous statue of the fat dwarf peeing, Neptune with a trident that looks like a big cocktail fork, and a wonderful horse rising from water, Perseus on his back urging him on. Walking quietly around the garden; what should be relaxing instead turns her brain into a swarm of possibilities.
Women in Sunlight Page 27