Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  “Me, too. And I hired you for more nefarious reasons, as you well know.”

  A place to hide. The blissful climate imparts a godlike joy. Waking to the scent of orange blossoms and temperature that says, You’re mine, don’t worry, I always will caress you like this—the poems I am writing seem as natural as bougainvillea blossoms blowing into the hallway. The fragrant air alone makes me feel rocked in the cradle. Above me, the blue dome resembles a glazed, inverted china teacup.

  Capri, a maze of paths. Soon I am on not a walk but a plunge, down, down, down, happily, scarily, vertiginously. One of Capri’s primordial appeals—scale. In a lifetime, I could know the island as well as I know Colin’s body. Know each carob, every stone wall with blooming capers, all the outbreaks of yellow broom.

  * * *

  —

  The houses (curved roofs for catching water) offer views of corkscrew paths, a transparent sea layered with emerald, lapis, turquoise water. So clear that your mind seems equally clear. Move into one of the white houses and soon I would be painting the walls blue, setting a pot of basil by the door to keep out the bugs, and napping away the hot hours under an arbor. After six months here, I might emerge, finally, as a disciplined writer. I would develop iron calf muscles. Glamorous Capri, long a bolt-hole for outcasts and those fleeing scandal.

  The surprise: the tourist-clogged island offers solitude. Away from the main scene, you’re faced with paradiso. Lentisk, prickly pear, pine, asphodel, myrtle. Were they planted by the sirens who tried to lure Odysseus with their songs? He was so tempted that his sailors had to lash him to the mast and sail on.

  * * *

  —

  What comprises the essence of this place? Guidebooks don’t tell me. But the waves on the rocks tell me, the fisherman’s blue shirt shouts it out, the delicate shadow of an almond tree on a white wall scrawls three angular black reasons. Capri—combing the island, inhaling the sunbaked scents of wild mint, lemon, and the sea, making love in a mother-of-pearl light, joking with the woman chopping weeds along her fence, memorizing a tumble of pink and apricot bougainvillea intertwining on a rough white wall, picnicking on a pebble beach, and Colin leaning to catch a hot grape I toss toward his open mouth.

  * * *

  —

  We’re as glam as Jackie in the round sunglasses, skinny Frank Sinatra, insouciant Cary Grant. Or so we feel. Colin in his rolled-up white pants, me in a billowing yellow sundress. The island lets you know that you live a charmed life. I see it in Julia, Camille, and Susan, putting their feet down to measure for sandals on Anacapri, then hailing a convertible taxi and letting their hair fly. Meeting them in the piazza where they’ve already ordered crazy drinks involving blood orange juice, bitters, and gin. Camille has put her streaky blond hair up into a twist. (I take a photo and send it to Rowan.) Julia has bought Carthusian monks’ soaps shaped like lemons for Susan, who has found a shop that makes exquisite baby clothes. I suspect she has found something for our little voyager. Those three have the #1 quality of great travelers: curiosity. And they have fun.

  * * *

  —

  We all came down on the fast train from Florence to Naples, then over to the island on the hydrofoil. They’re in a posh house Brian and Nicolà will be featuring on their rental site. Susan already has copious notes on what the Swiss owners need to do to upgrade it into a luxury rental. Get rid of the fake flowers. Better tableware. Who wants cheap white plates and straw mats at this price?

  We are here for four nights in the blessed season before mass tourism descends. This will be my last trip before what they horrendously call “confinement.” (I’m almost seven months now.) Colin was able to get away for this blissful escape. Even if you don’t need a respite, Capri offers one. I’ve been before, only once and in July when the crush of humanoids around is pure hell. (But no one in the designer shops.) By four o’clock ferries tootle away, leaving a manageable crowd. At cocktail hour, you can convince yourself of your sophistication and beauty under any bar’s awning on the piazza.

  At their luxurious villa (grazie, Nicolà!) with a long terrace looking over the Faraglione rocks and a sweep of the sea, Julia is shelling new peas. She has found a local woman to work with her, and who will serve us at a table with a view so stupendous that I don’t want to eat. Just stare out at the lights twinkling toward Naples. I walk over to the wall overlooking the waters, pulling my shawl around me, relishing the taut roundness of my body. To be pregnant with the person you love. What can compare? To stand over this grand sweep of water, to know that you love, you can love, you can live with your love. Colin rubs his face against my neck. “Are you okay?” Then he steps up to the evening, helping serve Julia’s baked olives with capers, her mozzarella skewers layered with sun-dried tomatoes and basil, and after drinks, pasta shells stuffed with shrimp, peas, and three cheeses.

  Camille comes out of the kitchen with two more bottles of the local, thin wine. “Colin, and you three gorgeous graces! We’ve come this far, as far as a pergola with bunches of dangling grapes. Grappola, a bunch. The tactile word makes you want to reach up and grab one.” I see Julia reach for her pad and jot down the word, an entry for her Learning Italian.

  “Yes, yes,” Colin says. “Still, Kit and I have a long way to go. I’m thinking of the next two months. But tonight will be divine.” Colin sets up his speaker out on the patio and plays all the versions of “Nessun Dorma” that we love. He’s made a pitcher of lemonade with mint, and gamely drinks with me. I don’t miss wine at this point; imagining Miss Priss getting high keeps me mindful.

  We dance as the constellations perform their arrangements. The Seven Sisters, my favorite. The Big Dipper pouring blessings over this island. Colin must hold me almost at arm’s length like nineteenth-century waltzers. My beach ball. Our churner in his own Blue Grotto. I love Capri. For good reasons we aesthetes and day-trippers migrate here for a whiff of the air gods breathe.

  * * *

  —

  Back at our B&B long after midnight, I’m still awake. No moon, but the sky radiates a filmy white afterglow. Nightingales are calling from the shrubbery. From poems, I always imagined a piercing repetitive sweetness. What I’m hearing sounds like the station keeps getting switched. Someone must have counted the number of sound patterns and at what intervals they reoccur. One chatters like a squirrel, one sounds like hammering tacks, others do have that sweetness I expected. What a double-dealer. I think I’m laughing as I fall asleep.

  * * *

  —

  Mornings I write and Colin sketches ideas for a pavilion, café, and museum on the water in Key West, polar opposite of Capri. On our warm afternoons, Colin walks the steep paths and I lounge on our patio reading South Wind by Norman Douglas, a pederast who preyed on local boys. Creepy he was, but can he ever write an evocative description of the island. I skip around finding words and phrases to admire. Otherwise, easy to fall into a lovely siesta with the sun on my feet and bougainvillea blurring orange to pink to magenta in front of the distant Tyrrhenian Sea. The faraway slosh of waves repeats, repeats Tyrrhenian, Tyrrhenian.

  * * *

  —

  On the ferry back to Naples, my back starts to ache in a strange way, as though I am being pushed. I’m only carrying a light bag; Colin juggles the two carry-ons. I’m hot, and no one else is. I found a seat and let the strong breeze blow on my face.

  We board the fast train to Florence. In the bathroom, I feel weak. A streak of pale blood stains my underwear. When I return to my seat, Colin is deep into his files, but he jumps up. “What’s wrong, babes? You look sick. Are you okay?”

  “When we get to Florence, we need to go to my doctor ASAP. Could you call her?” I tell him about the blood. I’m by the window and can hide my face. I don’t want to move. I cup my arms under my baby. Stay. Stay.

  Colin keeps his arm around me and with his free hand starts looking up symptoms on his phone. �
��Are you sure your water didn’t break?” I can see in his eyes the horrifying prospect of delivering the baby on the train.

  “No,” I say, trying to be calm. “A little smear of blood. And my sides ache.” Just then lightning bolts of pain shoot down my diaphragm into my legs. He leaves a message for the nurse. Emergency. Will arrive around 14:30.

  Glancing over at Colin’s screen I see placenta previa and normal start to labor. The attendant offers drinks, and I order a Coke, thinking it might calm my insides. My mother’s remedy. Shortly, I’m throwing up in the bathroom. Julia saw me pass down the aisle and followed.

  “Are you all right?” She knocks.

  I say fine, yes, fine, no, not fine, and unlock the door. “Something’s weird. We’ve called the doctor.” I tell her about the blood and the ache. I’m remembering the narrow-pathed climb to their aerie on Capri, hauling myself up steps and leaning on the rail, the fleeting thought that maybe I shouldn’t, then descending late as we walked back to our place, a kind of extending that my knees and back seemed to rebel against. Later I was okay.

  “You are going to be fine. These things happen all the time. I know it’s scary.”

  “They don’t happen all the time in the last three months.”

  “Uh, well, sometimes. And sex can cause bleeding.”

  “Let’s don’t go there.”

  “We’ll come with you.”

  “No, Colin will. But how can you get to San Rocco?” Colin has left his car at the train station parking garage.

  “I’ll call Gianni right now. Not to worry. You’ll let us know?”

  * * *

  —

  The doctor’s exam showed the baby’s rapid heartbeat. The bleeding stopped, then started up again with clots. I was hooked to an IV. (Will spare you my nightmares.) She kept me overnight at the hospital. Colin blamed himself, but I assured him that we are allowed to make love (though privately, something about that begins to seem a bit eldritch to me). When I woke up this morning I felt light cramps, like when you’re about to get your period.

  When Dr. Caprini calls around, she says I can leave late today if there’s no more bleeding but that she wants me to stay in bed at home now. I can prop up in a chair, take showers, but, she warns: no activity. We have to see if this baby wants out now. Stay, I will. Stay, bitty she/he. In place.

  * * *

  —

  “Look on the bright side,” Colin begins.

  I cut him off. “No, the bright side is not that I get to concentrate on writing. If this hadn’t happened I could do that anyway. And you’ll have to cook! We’re going to be having a lot of grilled cheese.” I’ll willingly stay prone if it helps the baby come to normal term. I can read. Camille says she’ll give me drawing lessons. I can work on my friend’s project and on Margaret. I can watch Spanish telenovas, which is what I flat-out want to do. I’m shaken to the core. As Colin is whistling while he cooks, I’m weeping into my pillow.

  * * *

  —

  Colin’s chicken isn’t bad, but it isn’t good. “Julia will come through for us. She’s already brought over six jars of her frozen ragù. When you have ragù, you have dinner. Said she’ll be back later with minestrone.

  “Immigrant energy!”

  * * *

  —

  I feel okay but tentative. A day spent ordering my desk is a good day. No lifting, even dictionaries. In the stack of mail, I find a letter with a Richmond return address. Confident, blocky print. Real ink. Calhoun Green. Not sure I can take Margaret-drama today. I prop it on the windowsill and look out at my row of roses just coming into leaf along the tall stone wall. Albertine, my good coral pink climber; Queen Elizabeth, who can’t decide if she’s a climber or just unruly; decadent Eden, aka Pierre de Ronsard; and Albéric Barbier, the scrappy one that presents tight yellow buds only to open to the color of vanilla gelato. I must give Susan cuttings of all these. When they’re in full bloom, will I be walking my baby along the wall, little bundle in a blanket breathing in first-ever rose scents? Another life.

  Meanwhile, I send out new poems to magazines, organize my Margaret files, and answer emails. Here’s a tempting invitation to read in Nashville in October. Babe will be four months. Hard to commit when I have no idea what our lives will look like by then. London? Miami? Here? I pull my silky throw around me, stack two pillows, and turn on Grand Hotel. Fitzy usually practices Olympian disdain but now jumps onto the bed and stretches his silky white body along mine. Animal instinct. May his purr lull my restless bambino.

  A letter dropped into a slot. A reply.

  Dear Ms. Raine,

  Thank you for sending the letter you found among Margaret’s papers. You cannot imagine the impact. You must have struggled with whether to send such news to me, news withheld for many years. I could have never known of the existence of Colin. His birth, his life, his death, these have landed upon me with devastating sadness. Only a brief time has passed. How this all will settle, I don’t know.

  May I say clearly: letting Margaret walk out of my life was the mistake I will regret forever. In my hard head I knew she was more than I could manage. Mine was a destined life; I thought at the time, a clear and regulated life, one handed down like monogrammed silver. At twenty, I wanted that. I loved the place I came from and my family’s values. She was born to rove, to think big, to risk. She was a rip-roaring girl, iconoclastic, challenging. She scared me then.

  Now, this. I see how much stronger she was. That the feisty independence was much more than I understood. How brave she was. What a dolt I was. This is hard to write, hard to admit, but some part of me always wondered if she had gone through with the abortion. That word was revolting to me. Yet my own shallow self-protection kept me from doing the right thing. Doubling the shame, I was in love with her. Looking back, my head must have been in a vise; I don’t understand the boy who could let her go off on her own like that. I tried two months later to reach her. When her father came to the door, he had no idea who I was. She hadn’t told him the name of the bastard who let her down. He said she was indefinitely away traveling, that he didn’t have contact information at the time. I didn’t leave a note or number to pass on. I went on to law school, married a lovely local girl. We have no children.

  Maybe you care about these details, since your note says you are writing about Margaret. I followed her books. She was as remarkable as I expected. Since I have behaved abominably, I never wrote even to say what a marvelous writer she was. Once, when she gave a reading at the National Geographic in D.C., I attended. My seat was in the back and she never knew I was there. Not to say I pined all my life; I didn’t. Water under the bridge, and all that.

  I obsess over the last line of her letter: “Now you can have—and I don’t mean this ironically—the honor, too.” You’re a writer, so possibly if this had happened to you, you could express what I can’t. I know my limits. I did take another course of action. I hope it addresses the word “honor,” which Margaret obviously chose with care.

  A week after I received the letter, I called Edward Knowles in New York. He and his wife, Amanda, agreed to see me. I flew up the next day. They knew the birth mother’s name, even had followed her career sporadically. Weeks before his death they had told Colin about her in brief outline. He planned to get in touch with her. He wanted, they said, to know why she gave him up.

  I saw photos, a portrait, baby book. Handsome boy. I read the school narratives on his performance. Brilliant in everything but French. I saw his room, still intact, with a closet full of climbing gear, rackets, snorkel and scuba equipment. Photo of a girlfriend who looked eerily like Margaret. In short, I was introduced to my son and believe me I was knocked over. The parents and their girl, also adopted, adored Colin. He deserved all the lavish love they gave.

  Ms. Raine, I will be humbled and saddened by this for the rest of my life, and yet I am happy that I
know of this boy who graced the earth for sixteen years.

  Respectfully, Calhoun Green

  Colin and I read it over and over. We’re old to be new parents. Yes, Calhoun was weak, but he was twenty, unformed. Margaret was twenty and had to form herself. From all I know, this is the defining event that shaped her life. The courage she had at that time resulted in the bravado of her adult life. The jilt, the betrayal gave her a twisted sense of trust. The loss gave her eyes their old-soul depth. That the worst had happened gave her an insouciance toward the future.

  I dig out what she wrote about her marriages. Two more underlines in the betrayal column! It’s rather flip. Can’t catch me.

  She wrote:

  I met Jamie Sonnenfeld the first night I got back from Europe. My father was entertaining clients and asked me to go. Jamie was the renegade lawyer in a Chicago firm. He took on the diciest cases and according to Dad was known to be tough and flamboyant in the courtroom. My kind of guy, I thought. I acquired a tough intestinal infection, along with acquiring Jamie over the summer. We married at his parents’ mansion at Christmas. I was depressed over the faux Louis furniture and his mother’s high trilling laugh. She walked like a swan on land. The father looked like someone with his eyes open underwater. He said to me quietly, “Jamie has bitten off more than he can chew.” Jamie, center of attention. At the table, it was assumed he’d hold forth and we’d second the motion. He was witty and smart but we couldn’t be. He turned out to be a narcissist who thought my writing was a temporary affliction like the persistent infection.

  Why recount the saga? Are unhappy marriages always alike? Eighteen months, curtains come down. Valete ac plaudite, as the Romans said. Farewell and applaud. Exit Margaret without a bow.