Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  * * *

  —

  Lauro is going. He should, shouldn’t he, be exposed to the intense love of community we all feel on such a night. I hope I never miss the sagra in my lifetime.

  We gather at Villa Assunta for preprandial antipasti. Susan’s late summer garden: the allée of lemon and orange trees laden with fruit, sinuous borders of white begonias interspersed erratically by dwarf dahlias, hedge of hydrangeas mostly blue though a few reverted to white, great swaths of lavender, santolina, and rosemary along paths, and swaying artemesia gone rogue along with bolting phlox. I love her harsh pink gauria softened by purple-haze catmint. We luxuriate here. “I’m working on transition spots”—she points down the spur of land—“where the garden gives over to views.” Already she’s convinced Grazia to plant six cypresses, slender as ten-year-old ballerinas, that step off into the distance, guiding the eye.

  Walking with a cane and a limp, Hugh emerges after his rest and meets everyone. “This garden is Eden after Istanbul, which I adore but it’s seriously chaotic. This place slows my heartbeat just to look at it.” He’s thin as a twig but carries well the privileged academic elegance—loose linen shirt and white pants, gray suede espadrilles (ankle still bruised and swollen), his white hair slicked back like a ’30s movie star. Colin says to Rowan, “Just let me look like that when I’m in my mideighties.”

  Chris arranges a tasting of white wines in the limonaia. He has wrapped each bottle in a dish towel and we’re to guess the grape and the maker.

  “Good luck,” Camille says. “This one tastes like how chalk smells, and, oh, like rosewater. And green—herbal.”

  “Great!” Chris says. “What’s the grape?”

  “Malvasia, made by that vineyard in Friuli, what, Istriana.”

  Chris is astonished. “Raccaro Malvasia Istriana. That’s the hardest one.”

  “I remember it with that berry tart.”

  The next one puzzles everyone but Julia, who guesses right away her house wine, sauvignon from Livio Felluga. “Damn,” Susan says, taking another sip. “We all should have known that down to the moment of bottling. How many bottles have I lugged to recycling bins?”

  Chris’s hopes soar but after that, everyone misses everything but the pinot grigio. He reveals the bottles, then everyone just drinks and strolls around the garden.

  After almost a year of none at all, even white wine tastes strong to me. A few sips. Colin and I agreed it’s time to tell everyone our plans. Julia brings out what we’ve craved all summer, the fried zucchini flowers and onion rings. We gather around the table. Colin begins. “Here’s a toast to welcome Hugh.” Everyone raises their glasses. “And another to thank you all for making this summer incredible for us.”

  That glass sky is about to crack. This one moment will shift the action, set change in motion. I take Colin’s sleeve. “Wait, wait, wait.”

  “Kit, we need to say it.”

  “I know but I don’t want to.”

  “Remember the pavilion. It’s not forever. We want this. They’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Let me.” I notice that Susan is looking at me with a wary expression. “You all! Bombshell to drop! We have news. You know that Colin has a fantastic chance…” I talk about his ethereal design and the timetable for it. “I think it will be seminal for Key West. By now, you already know where I’m headed. We have to go. We’ll be leaving in a few weeks for maybe as long as a year…” From his sling around Colin’s neck, Lauro lets out a piercing scream. Everyone laughs.

  “Lauro, that’s what we all want to do,” Julia cries. “When?”

  “You will miss the olive harvest?” Susan asks.

  “What about your house?” Camille wants to know.

  “What about Fitzy?”

  “Hell, what about us?”

  “Do you have to?”

  “Where will you live?”

  “Will you really come back?”

  We’re answering as fast as we can.

  “We’ll live in my parents’ house.”

  “Colin will fly down to the site. It’s quick.”

  “Fitzy will go, too.”

  I hold up both hands. “Stop, you three! What about you? We’ll be back. Will you still be here?” The three women look at each other, at us, at the sky.

  Irrationally, Camille says, “We have three cats.”

  Hugh puts his arm around Julia. “Have I entered a moment of crisis?”

  “No, we, we need to talk, but not now. We have to get to the dinner. Can you dance with that ankle?”

  Rowan says, “Another toast? Here’s to Kit and Colin. We’re coming down to Key West to cut the ribbon and watch that sun go down. Till then, we’ll miss you. Good luck!” Rowan has made a decision, too. He’s rented his apartment for six months, though he’ll have to go back to California for November to care for his mother while his sister is away. He and Camille are happy with the current status. No more sex on the creaky sofa; they’ve graduated to a matrimoniale, queen size.

  * * *

  —

  Why is it that Italian men can dance? None of that reluctance and slow stepping regardless of the music. Since they know what they’re doing, you follow easily. Chris and Rowan seem indecisive, moving their feet around whereas the Italian men dance from the waist up. Their shoulders move, the hand sits firm on the partner’s back, guiding. The band from the valley plays the traditional music from wheat threshings, weddings, and baptisms. Strings of lights crisscrossing the piazza flicker, then stay on as summer dusk falls and surrounding shops glow, each one candlelit, as are the windows in the palazzi. Down the table from us, I wave to the expat group and Guido, Amalia, Luca, Gilda.

  Eugenio, carabinieri chief, holds out his hand to me. He dances, greatest of ease, as though he’s spent his life in ballroom class. Colin is happy to wait with Lauro and watch me twirling around the piazza with Riccardo, Leo, Gianni, Stefano. I’m who I used to be, a girl who partied hard. Julia, Camille, Susan, too. All dancing. Camille, those red shoes, held by Leo. Susan in an orange fitted sundress and Julia wearing something pink and drifty. The man with Down’s balters about with his mother. Chris, arms waving over his head, raves on. Riccardo is good! He’s sweeping Susan all over the piazza and they’re laughing. Hugh, at our space at the table, seems to be holding forth to three Italian women. Is he speaking to them in Latin? What an intriguing man. Julia says he wants to stay. I wonder if he’d like to live at our house? It’s always good to have someone at home to keep Gypsies from invading and leaving you three cats.

  Everyone serves themselves antipasti and pasta. What you brought, you put on the tables. After that, volunteer women serve the goose and potatoes because who wants to get up twice or three times? The menu is the same every year. I always love the stuffed necks but best of all, the potatoes crisp-roasted from goose fat. Even during dinner, the dancing continues, as it will until three in the morning. Blissed-out Lauro snoozes away in his stroller at the end of the table.

  Hugh waves a big goose leg. “This is incredibly good!” He passes around the roasted onions and peppers Julia enlivened with pinches of Aleppo pepper and slivers of Leo’s hot pepper from his garden. “Darling, these are a stroke of genius with the goose.”

  When the band pauses to eat, Lucio Dalla blares from a loudspeaker, making anyone with a shred of romance in their souls want to get up and dance under the moon, making anyone who has lips want to press them close to the ear of someone they love. Many around the table join in singing along, especially “Caruso” and “Tu non mi basti mai,” and at the end of every song all the older local guys stand up and raise their glasses, shouting Grande Lucio. He hits the emotional notes, operatic at times, but you can hear the peasant harvest music in his voice, the music your mother played on the radio while she rolled out pasta, and the beach music from your youth. When “Caruso” starts a second time, it’s
a duet with Pavarotti. Chaos erupts; everyone standing and swaying and singing. I see tears in Chris’s eyes. Big romancer! Rowan pulls Camille into the piazza and proves he can dance if motivated.

  The music, yes, the songs many heard when they first fell in love, yes, but the long table crossing the piazza means more. Here’s where we come together, putting aside trouble, gossip, and difference, to this grand living room for all of us who live in this small place that could fit in the cupped hand of the Madonna who on this day did or did not ascend into the sky. Fireworks begin, to honor her big whoosh up into the heavens—armfuls of lights cascading down, dandelion puffs of gold, Venetian chandeliers purple and green, silver rockets spewing, pops and bangs over the valley, children running with sparklers. With or without words, we all feel every past sagra, and we also feel a future when we are no longer here, a century hence, two centuries, knowing some track of falling light tonight recorded that we were together, you and I were here in this place under this sky.

  The younger band starts up, sending the young out to dance without touching, to gyrate and nod and send up hand signals. We gather at the watermelon table and the gelato shop that makes only for tonight a special olive oil ice cream. Everyone to greet! Grazia embraces us. Looks like she has a date, bald guy with hooded eyes and Halloween wax lips. She looks happy, flashing her fluorescent smile. Kids kick soccer balls against the wall of the church. Candles extinguish in the windows, and some have closed the shutters as the bells strike midnight. Chris reverts to Fresno disco dances with Violetta and Annetta. I overhear snatches of Julia and Hugh deep in conversation about Turkish food. Eugenio’s wife, pregnant again, sits stonily as he wows everyone he dances with. For some, the night is young. For us, time to go home.

  Let us come back, I say to the billowing skirts of the Madonna as she disappears into the sky.

  The fact of Cinque Terre is the sea. Marled swirls of clear turquoise to blue waters. Camille prefers Corniglia over the other Cinque Terre towns. Wedged above the sea, the village looks from a distance like an opened pan of watercolor paints, blotchy rectangles of aqua, copper, pink, rose gold, pomegranate, cream, stacked upside hills of grapevines.

  Yesterday, Susan drove Nicolà’s Land Rover, the Fiat way too small with me, Lauro, and all the baby paraphernalia. Hugh stayed at the villa. We dropped the car at the station and hauled all the stuff onto the local train that plies the villages. What a fiasco juggling the portable bed, the stroller, the bags, et cetera, et cetera. And Lauro can wail. Everyone packed lightly, as there is nothing to do at the five lands other than hike, walk, swim, eat. Of course Susan’s here to check on Nicolà and Brian’s future rental, an independent white house with wraparound views. The rest of us tag along. Julia’s birthday, #60, is on Friday, so we’re lugging gifts for her as well. From the train, getting to the house, we had to climb hundreds of steps dragging everything. We were panting at the door. Inside, instant balm. Susan opened all the glass doors, letting in the sea air and views of blue, blue, and more blue. Nicolà’s cleaning woman stocked the fridge with basics. Soon we’re on the terrace with an icy pitcher of a blood orange drink that came in a Tetra Pak but tastes delicious. Susan holds up Lauro for his first view of the sea. Camille breaks into “Eddystone Light,” a camp song everyone knew but me. By the time I went to camp we were singing “Stayin’ Alive.” What provoked “Eddystone” was a verse about the father falling in love with a mermaid. Looking at these limpid waters and gnarly rocks, you believe they slither up to comb their tresses.

  * * *

  —

  Because I’ve been here before (and Lauro gets heavy), I want to forgo hiking and to take this time to write. Although there are level stretches, inevitably you meet steep inclines, stairs, and unfortunately at this time of year, crowds. Too many people. We’re crazy to be here at the end of August. Thank you, Nicolà and Brian—a quiet house away from the fray.

  * * *

  —

  Camille and Susan trek out early. When Camille decides to find a local café and read, Susan heads on toward Vernazza. Rowan’s new project with the poet gave Camille the idea of making paintings inspired by Italian writers. I told her that Eugenio Montale had a house in Monterosso. She wants to spend a couple of hours reading his poems about Cinque Terre. Is she going to find only sea views and flowers? Well, maybe that would be fun to try—spontaneous sketches in red chalk or ink. Meanwhile, she has an almond pastry and cappuccino, the book open, her gaze drawn out to sea.

  She thinks of October, when the lease expires on Villa Assunta. She imagines packing her clothes, dismantling her studio and limonaia workroom, saying good-bye around San Rocco, the puzzled looks from Violetta and Stefano, Leo and Annetta throwing a final dinner, a farewell lunch with Matilde. Home to Carolina. Oh, let Charlie stay in the big house. He has workspace there, his uptight wife is happier, and Ingrid has space to breathe when things are tense, which Camille suspects might be often. Ingrid is studying Latin. Camille can take her on tours of Rome in the summers. One of those end units at Cornwallis, with corner views and a porch with a swing, now that we’ve had our fun. Charlie and family coming for the chef’s Sunday brunch. Rowan? He’ll come to see her. They’ll meet in Istanbul or San Francisco or, where? Copenhagen. She has not seen Scandinavia.

  She tries to focus on the poems. They’re elusive. Reading them feels like socking a pillow. Who’s in them? There are no people, only nuances of some “you” who begins to seem like the poet himself. Camille sighs and comes up short. Now that we’ve had our fun? She hears herself thinking that. Our fun? I’ve been asked to exhibit by important museums, and I call that my fun? Must I always pull back into some I-don’t-deserve corner? She bites her thumb knuckle. I deserve to give up my house and move to a corner unit on the—what did they laugh about—the luxury cruise down the River Styx? I am stupido!

  The waiter smacks down the check. Is she taking the table for too long? She stares up at him angrily, orders another coffee, and stuffs the Montale book in her bag. She remembers sensuous Keats from “Ode to a Nightingale,” oh for a beaker full of the warm south. The longing. A big swallow of time and place and heat. That’s what today feels like, end-of-August sun bearing down on one of the most enchanting places on the globe. Multitudes, many on their phones, oblivious, surging down the streets and paths. No wonder Montale floated above them, she thinks, and focused his attention on cicadas and tamarisk trees and sunflowers.

  * * *

  —

  Flushed and sweaty, Susan doubles back to the café and orders a large beer. “Great place to hike, great! But we’re not the first to think of coming here. The trails are crowded; it’s like a forced march. We have to come back in April or November.” She takes wipes from her fanny pack and swabs off her face and neck. “Let’s get back to the house.”

  They’re charged with picking up ingredients for dinner. “Tonight will be fun for Julia,” Camille says, gathering her bags, “with a basket of what’s just caught from the fishmonger. Maybe he’ll have some of those razor clams.”

  “Where is Julia?”

  “I think she was going to the beach in Monterosso. She’s still reeling, you know.”

  “Yes. She’s better. Everything that was suddenly turned upside down and shook out. And it’s real. Did you see the photos Liz just sent of the three gray vases she made?”

  “There’s talent. I’d love to have a few for the villa. Ah! Wonder if I could commission a couple. Not gray. A sage green looks pretty with any flower.”

  “They should have grocery delivery by drone here.” They’re hoisting two bags each.

  “Wouldn’t that just work—the skies as crowded as the streets.”

  * * *

  —

  Julia takes the train to the beach at Monterosso. She finds a spot for her towel. A couple of women who would be in cover-ups at home lounge in their two-piece suits on plastic chairs next to her. One on her phone,
the other knitting. Julia sits down and rubs sunblock on her nose. The knitting woman asks where she’s from and they chat for a few minutes. They are two widows from Viterbo. When Julia decides to swim, she asks them to keep an eye on her phone and bag.

  From all the bodies sprawled on beach chairs and the sand, she is afraid the sea will be warm, but no. The water feels luxurious and fresh. She swims out beyond children and the ones cooling up to their waists. Only cold salt water can instantly infuse such a great rush of energy. She’s a natural in the water, having grown up with summers on Tybee, a sailboat, and camp swim teams. She remembers the pride of receiving the Junior Life Saving badge from the Red Cross, a medallion her mother sewed on her swimsuit. She flips and surfaces like a seal. To somersault, backstroke, kick, to bind yourself tightly to yourself and roll on top of the water—this is a joy we were born for. Fresh and deep, the water limpid, unlike the turbulent blue-gray Atlantic she loves, with the wild surf and the hard-sucking undertow she was warned against, it seems, on the day she was born. She practices the sidestroke, her mother’s preferred way to swim, remembering summers with her parents, Cleve always up for racing into the waves, letting the cresting foam smack them down over and over, taking off his suit underwater and rinsing out the sand, bouncing her on his shoulders, running up a beach white as flour, Julia wrapped in a big towel, shivering. Treading, Julia sees tall rocks rise abruptly to the left. A boy poised at the top leaps, plunging into the water that must be forty or fifty feet below. She wades into shore and shades her eyes. Another boy stands on top looking down, his two friends urging him to jump. He’s shaking his head, backing up. How high is that cliff? Julia walks over to the path up. A girl of about sixteen in an ounce of fabric scrambles up just ahead of her. “Are you going to jump?” Julia asks.

  “Yes. It looks so fun. Are you?”