Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  “Tell us!” Rowan implores.

  “Matilde, you read it. I can’t.”

  Matilde stands up. “Friends, Romans, countrymen…” She’s laughing, too, and waves the letter in the air. “Seriously, I’m going to read it!”

  Dear Camille Trowbridge,

  What a pleasure for me to attend your show in San Rocco. I am indebted to my dear friend Matilde for alerting me to your work. We met too briefly at the opening, and in the gallery the following Monday, when I had a chance to have a second look, which confirmed my first impression of the unique vision exhibited in “Paper Doors” and the original use of materials for the expansion of the paintings’ reach.

  Let me congratulate you on a fine and auspicious entry into the public phase of your career. I am writing to invite you to participate in an exhibition…

  Applause and whistles break out around the table—Rowan raises his thumbs yes, and Susan with glass raised leaps around the table in a whooping, bizarre war dance.

  “Okay, okay, listen up!” Matilde continues:

  …an exhibition titled Six New Artists: Vision/Revision at MASS MoCA, where I am a curator. The exhibit will take place next year from 1 June until 1 August, and then will travel to the Walker Art Center and the High Museum in Atlanta. (Details to follow.) We would be delighted to include you in this important exhibit of newly discovered artists. Please let me know via email if you will consent to be a part of an exhibit that promises to contribute significantly to the appreciation of the art of this moment. When I have your decision, I will link you to further information about the exhibit and the participants.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  My very best,

  Steven L. Blassman

  Julia hugs Chris, then Camille. Her shock forgotten, she’s herself again. “This is al di là—beyond the beyond. Not that you don’t totally deserve this, Camille. But that it truly is happening, when it easily could not, if this friend of Matilde’s hadn’t trusted her word and made the journey. Here’s to him. A prince!”

  “Here’s to luck!” Camille toasts. She’s dazed, her mouth open.

  “No, you make your own luck,” Rowan says.

  Hard thunder shakes the table as rain begins. We grab our glasses and dash inside. Everyone’s crazy about the gingerbread. It’s out of context here but a memory-lane treat we all remember. And it goes nicely with tangy lemon sorbet. Really, in my life, I’ve never known a group of more simpatico people. A balm to me, having lost my parents early, having lost my mentor, Margaret. Colin and I, private and obsessed with our work, never have had such a close family of friends. That October afternoon when I saw them tumbling out of Gianni’s van in their bright jackets, I couldn’t have dreamed their lives could enhance ours so abundantly. There’s not a word in English or Italian for those in our lives who are between friends and family.

  * * *

  —

  Clearing up late and quite exhausted, I drop a glass on the floor, water spreading on the bricks. But, wait, there wasn’t that much water in the glass. I grip the sink. Unless I somehow have wet my pants, water is running down my legs. For a long moment, I’m dumbfounded. “Colin,” I shout, “Colin, my water has broken! What time is it? Can we call the doctor this late? Oh, look, it’s midnight.” The base of my spine catches in a tightening vise. “Back labor, I’ve read about it. Is the baby backward?” Am I shrieking?

  He leads me to a chair. “Everything’s fine. Are you sure? Yes, we’re calling the clinic, but do you feel contractions now? Sit, sit. Wait. Everything’s fine.” His hand is shaking like a palsy victim’s.

  * * *

  —

  A calm nurse asks me about pain. I describe my lower backbones that are about to shatter. “Take a warm shower. Walk around slowly, then try to sleep and if you wake up with contractions, monitor them. Since you’ve been on bed rest, we want you here when your pains are twelve minutes apart. We’ll get your room ready. If you don’t have contractions by morning, we’ll want you to come in and see Dr. Caprini.”

  So normal and soothing. This is what happens. It’s not a sign of preeclampsia or anything dire that the water broke before labor started. I follow the instructions and manage to feel comfortable propped on pillows. Colin sits on the side of the bed with his face in his hands. I hope he’s not going to be one of those fathers who faint in the delivery room. Still dressed, he rolls in behind me and says, “I won’t let anything happen. Sleep, sleep.”

  “You know, I’m excited. Scared of the labor. But this baby is embarking!”

  “The first of many voyages. This may be our last night of just us.”

  “Oh, please don’t get any ideas!”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t even see how that would be possible unless we were contortionists.”

  * * *

  —

  I want to lie awake in the dark. Colin’s breathing slows and he seems to sink into the covers as he always does, no matter what. He has a talent for sleeping that I don’t. Girl or boy? I’m glad we don’t know; we’ve loved imagining each. Annetta says it’s a boy because I’ve carried it high. Violetta says it’s a girl because I’ve carried it high. I’m missing my parents. Margaret, too. They never envisioned this, especially my dad, who left us abruptly when the semi, brakes gone, driver drunk, rammed him from behind. The car sailing into the water. I’ve always wondered what that long flight must have felt like to my daddy, what image he saw, what thought he had, as he crashed into the waves. I’ve hoped he saw us as he had when he drove off, Mother and me on the front porch, sipping our usual blackberry lemonade and innocently waving good-bye.

  Hours seeping by, a few fleeting stabs of pain; is it mainly exhaustion from all the work of throwing a dinner for only eight?

  My carry-on stands by the bedroom door, ready to go. Finally, I bought baby clothes and friends have brought over many little outfits and onesies—solids, dots, stripes, all white, yellow, red. No gender-identifying pink or blue. When I was born, my mother stayed in the hospital for a week. She always maintained that the days gave her energy for the tough days ahead when she had an infant and no help at all. I’ll be home before Colin even can get the kitchen back in order. (That is if I don’t have preeclampsia, C-section, or if…Stop that.) The clinic is forty minutes away. In an emergency, I could go to San Rocco’s, where happy babies are born underwater in a warm pool. Because of my age, I chose the specialist route but I’m game for the water birth.

  * * *

  —

  Morning. I walk around the house, send my neighbors news that I’m going in today. Susan walks over immediately and starts cleaning up. I’m useless. Just drinking tea. She’s had strange news. Her daughters had DNA tests in anticipation of looking for their birth parents. The results show that they are sisters.

  “We adopted them from the same orphanage, two years apart. They told us nothing. Maybe they didn’t know. They must have! After two years, they contacted us. Another girl was up for adoption. At the time, we flattered ourselves that we’d seemed like outstanding parents.”

  “Well, you were. It’s good news for them, but I guess it kind of points to the parents as making a habit of this.” Susan takes a tray out to the pergola and brings in greasy plates of bones. I try to imagine handing over a baby to an orphanage, the desperation of that. Margaret losing her brand-new Colin. Or Camille lying down to erase that new beginning. “Sit down, have some tea with me. You don’t need to do that. How lucky your two girls were, to have you and Aaron.”

  “Don’t worry,” Susan said, opening the already full dishwasher. “I’ve got excess energy this morning. I wish they were here to talk about it. Face to face is not at all the same as FaceTime. Yes, I suppose they were lucky but not as lucky as we were. What joys they were, and still are. Sisters! Yes, amazing. I wonder if I should go with them to China.”

  “U
p to you, of course, but I’d think that might make the search more awkward for them because their loyalty to you would keep coming up.”

  “Kit, you’re right, and I was thinking I’d make it easier. And, frankly, the trips there were nightmares. I’m not raring to go back. Now how are you feeling?”

  “Some intermittent cramping, not any hard pain.”

  “Call if there’s anything. Anything at all.” Susan gives me a hug just as Colin walks in half awake. Fortunately, he’s heard voices and stepped into running shorts.

  He stands behind me with his hands spread on my grand belly. “Come out, come out, whoever you are,” he chants. Susan takes off into her day.

  At the clinic, Dr. Caprini listened and looked and questioned. “You are dilated but only about three centimeters. Why don’t you go have a light lunch somewhere and come back around two? Or sooner, if necessary. Leave your things in your room because you’re definitely staying here tonight.” My room is small but airy, with gauzy saffron curtains billowing at the open window. Most thoughtfully, a daybed for Colin, not a recliner. Fashion magazines on the coffee table must remind the new mother to get back quickly to la bella figura. I wanted to crawl in immediately, but Dr. Caprini insisted that it’s good to keep moving.

  * * *

  —

  The first body-shocking pain struck as we drove back to the hospital after lunch. In the parking lot, another hit hard. Really? Like this? I bent over at the door of the clinic and heard a growl come out of my mouth. What happened to the gradually increasing contractions I was expecting? Colin called out and someone with a wheelchair pushed it under me and rushed down the corridor. Contractions five minutes apart. “You’re not wasting time, Signora,” the nurse said, simultaneously helping me into a gown and hoisting me onto the bed.

  * * *

  —

  Five hours of this and I wanted to die. Some prehistoric beast was mauling my body. This cannot happen to a human, this thing that is ordinary and happens and happens. Then, I’m infuriated—the pain clenched, contractions hammering constantly. Thunderous avalanche, skis akimbo. Speedboat smacking down hard in high waves. Worse.

  An old story, the oldest story (Eve yanked out). I will skip to the hours-later ending, when I am wheeled into the whitest room, where silence reverberated and masked people peered down at me, the one whose body is riven. They urged me on. (Wrung-out washcloth over the sink. Wrung and wrung.) Colin kneeling at my side, white as the doctor’s coat but steady. Holding my arm, whispering—what? I couldn’t tell for the din of pain.

  The noise level increased. Everyone bustling. Dr. Caprini smiling over me like a lurid clown in a convex mirror. “Crowning,” I heard, and thought of a tiara I wore with my pink tutu and ballet shoes, my mother clapping in the front row. “You were wonderful,” she says at the moment the baby pushed out like a pea from a shooter, was lifted, bloody cord dangling, a little face, fists, a parabola of light blazing in my face, I was crying, laughing, Colin stony, shocked, Dr. Caprini saying, You have a lovely boy as he wailed (I will hear that first cry my whole life) and she placed him on my chest and I’m to push again and, as something else slid out, I hallucinated a jellyfish, I looked into the deep-space eyes of my son.

  In my room, I got to see him, clean and swaddled and, miracle, looking around at the new digs. I think he focused on Susan’s red and purple anemones by the bed. We undressed him to see his fierce small body, took turns holding him, analyzing his scrunched face, downy black hair, and pursed mouth. Lips, defined lips and ears, all the whorls. What I recognized and I recognized clearly was that he has my father’s upside-down V eyebrows, the shape children draw of birds in the sky over the iconic square house with the sun shining overhead.

  “He’s our boy,” Colin says. He put his finger on the eensy hand and the baby squeezed as though saying, I’m with you. At that instant, I think Colin’s face underwent a permanent transformation.

  * * *

  —

  On June 20, that’s how life swung from its trajectory and headed toward a different star. We could not have been happier. (They say the pain fades but I goddamn know it won’t. I was cleaved, an ax in a melon.) The next day, as we drove home, I was hyperaware of the menace of cars and I began to understand my mother always saying, If you have a child you are a hostage to fate. My new worry, my glorious new worry. Colin keeps grinning. He is such a Mozart lover that we almost decided on Amadeus. I flirted with Fulvio. We named him Lauro Raine Davidson.

  Susan steps out of the shower and opens the window to let out steam. Even the bathroom has a view of a medieval tower placed to anchor your gaze across the valley. Farther in the distance, a shining green dome, and a scattering of farmhouses that look as though they’ve been there for all eternity. In full-on summer, Susan expected to miss her family beach house on Figure Eight. This time last year, she spent weekends at Sand Castle with Julia and Camille at the start of their friendship. She remembers poignantly the weekend Julia told her story of Lizzie and Wade. Opposite of that, she remembers happily the dinners, the walks on the beach, buying shoes and ice cream in downtown Wilmington, Camille’s watercolor of water and sky. In memory, Aaron in his debilitated state fades more and more, leaving in the forefront the confident, sexy hunk she lived beside for decades. She has missed nothing this summer, except her daughters, and she’s used to missing them. The days roll out one after another full, hot, crowded with joys large and small. She’s out early. Coffee in one hand, she wanders around the garden, deadheading roses, pulling up stray weeds, pausing to admire the astrolabe. She scoops leaves out of the amphora she has fitted with a burble of running water spilling onto a pebble surround. She stoops to pick a handful of gauria and white sage for her bedside. Archie follows her. The three cats piled on a chair look on with regal indifference.

  Could I leave this? she wonders. Would I want to? Would Grazia extend our lease? She scans the hedge of blue hydrangeas along the shaded wall, and the sunny splotches of color falling away from the house and down the slope. She wonders, now that we have improved the villa and the garden drastically, will Grazia try to turn that to her advantage? The recession, when properties lingered for three years on the market, is over. Nicolà describes San Rocco as “hot.” What are Julia and Camille thinking? Our situations are different, since they have Chris and Rowan in their lives. Those are newish relationships—would they commit to extending our time at the villa? We’ve had glorious times but how long can this go on? We get along well. Because we’re different but, luckily, complement each other. Would Julia pack up and go to California? Live a two-country life with Chris and the tours? Sounds fun. Their trips can expand in endless directions. I’m almost sure Camille would not go live in Berkeley. Not even sure Rowan wants to stay there after his mother passes on. Camille is thriving here and is more of an inner person than Julia. Just as I can see Julia in a California vineyard, I can imagine Camille happily alone. But now Julia possibly has Lizzie returning to the nest in Savannah. Would she be pulled back, living in her parents’ house with Lizzie? Wade across town crowing in a new barnyard. That’s mean. He’s lost Julia, and however he justifies, at midnight he’s got to know that’s the mistake of his life. Summer is rushing on. We need to make decisions soon. Flessibile. Flexible, that’s what we’ve learned. How better it is to be flessibile.

  Everyone’s back from their jaunts. Susan adores her investigative trips, this last one on the Argentario coast. Nicolà and Brian came and also invited Riccardo and the Irish expats Brendan and Sally. Sun and seafood, card games, and sweet nights on the terrace just getting to know each other. Hot days, swimming off the rocks in cold pellucid water, returning to the airy house for drawn-out lunches of caprese, cheeses, tomato tart from the village, prosciutto and melon, white wine. Naps and books. They rearranged the furniture, bought table linens, spruced up the desolate pots on the terrace, and threw out stacks of damp magazines. The place looked revived when they l
eft. She discovered that Riccardo likes to dance. She loved his Italian playlists. Was it too much vino or did he nuzzle her neck when they slow-danced to Prince?

  Next week, Nicolà has arranged another free four-day midweek trip to Cinque Terre for all. After that, Susan wants time at home to work more on the downslope area of the garden and on her blog that is starting to get great feedback from landscape designers she admires. Her links to Artful Dodge Antiques work, too.

  Cinque Terre will be Kit’s first trip with Lauro, though she’s out and about in San Rocco. She bemoans her doughy belly, but she looks completely like herself again. The last month of her pregnancy she ballooned alarmingly. We thought she would float into the heavens if we cut a tether.

  “We’re ready,” Julia calls. “Kit’s at the top of the road.” We all walk into town together in the mornings and as soon as we enter the gate, people come running out of their shops to admire the baby, no matter they’ve done the same routine yesterday. We’ve taken to forming a phalanx around the stroller so he won’t be frightened by faces zooming in at him. But this is also what we relish about Italy, yes? The compliments flow; he’s adored; his attributes are lauded. Everyone loves the name Lauro, laurel, though it’s an old name not often chosen anymore. Alessandro, Matteo, and Lorenzo currently reign in town, with an occasional Luca and Marco, and one recent Ettore (Hector).

  We are loving the early mornings in the sunlit piazza. Lauro faces us. We pull up the hood to keep him from staring into the sun. Violetta brings us tall glasses of fresh orange juice, a tray of pastries, and long coffees. Sometimes Chris and Rowan join us. Colin, never. After two weeks of little sleep, he’s had to return to London for four days a week. His firm greenlighted his Key West project. Susan heard disturbing talk from Kit of them leaving for several months.