Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  * Vagitus, the first cry of the newborn. I heard it and Colin heard it, too. For us Lauro made the sound of the earth whirring around the sun. Lauro, only glimpsed so far. I’m fitting him into the last pages: a delectable bundle of complicated energy with a what’s-happening look in his mystery-blue eyes. Unlike us palefaces, his skin has a dusky cast—Colin’s Nicaraguan grandmother sending her love from León, where she rocked in a courtyard surrounded by tropical plants into her ninety-fifth year. Lauro’s feet, a small wine-stain birthmark on the back of his left heel, as though a wing might have been clipped. Flour from my sack. Who will he be? We don’t know yet. I am his mother. They say soldiers dying horribly or tortured prisoners call out for their mothers. (I might, too.) Forever, I am someone’s mother. He’s as fated as I.

  * The process of writing a novel: the stone house becomes a transparent house and I can write on the glass.

  * Coming up for them: Sicily for all. Chris and Julia’s research trip extending around the island. They’ll end in my favorite Sicilian town, Siracusa. Susan’s daughters arriving later for travel in Puglia. They found no parents in China, texting merrily to Susan, Couple of leads dead ends. Guess we’re stuck with you! Friends from home will visit and visit. The oldest agricultural cycles pull toward the olive harvest, the chestnut and mushroom season, the dark of the year, everyone going pazzo over two inches of snow in the piazza.

  Hugh plans to house-sit for us until the new year. He’s invited everyone for American Thanksgiving. Camille and Rowan will go to Venice. Camille! How she vaulted over her own expectations! Now she’s casting for a new project. I’ve seen her wonderful rendering of the famous leap into blue water. Julia will travel to see Cleve, then both go to California to visit Lizzie (briefly—a year is not long enough to have cleared out two decades of drugs from the brain), then to meet Chris’s son and see the vineyard. They begin the life I know and Margaret knew: va & torna. Go and return. All good. For now, the gods allow them to play in the freedom of their later years.

  * Coming up for us. Unpacking in my other home. A grand chance for Colin. (His pavilion on the ocean, he hopes, will look inevitable and defining, not like some architectural hybrids that smash onto the landscape like meteors.) In south Florida, there will be no green nest in the garden for making love. If we tried such folly, we would be sucked dry by mosquitoes, crawled over by lizards, and might disturb the epochal snooze of an alligator. The screened porch with a daybed is hidden by banana trees and elephant ears. By the grace of overhead fans and the scent of ginger lilies, love will happen. (Birth control, a new issue.) Because I have few friends left in Coral Gables, and Colin will travel to Key West a couple of days a week, I’ll teach a writing class at the University of Miami in the spring. Priority: finish Margaret’s tribute. Lauro will sit, crawl, walk. Until we return, I will miss my friends in Villa Assunta every day.

  More to say but the ink is drying, like a culaccino: the circle left by a wet glass on the table. The end belongs to them.

  My words slide off the page and float over the desk, rearranging into what I meant to say.

  Where else will the bank have ceiling frescoes of Bacchus in grapevine headdress? He looks lewd, about to tip his glass of wine onto customers standing in line, waiting to deal with the intricacies of withdrawing money. Susan knows she’s in for red tape, as her, Julia’s, and Camille’s money for the house has been wired into her account.

  Two hours later, every centesimo has been transferred to Grazia. Yesterday they sat at the notary office and listened to the endless contract read aloud, a remnant from days when many couldn’t read. As of this moment, free and clear, Villa Assunta belongs to Julia, Camille, and Susan. Grazia cried, even though she wanted to sell. (Should we always cry when we get what we want?) They all went out for celebratory prosecco after everything was signed and she cheered, even got a little drunk, then cried again. She’ll be coming by later today to pick up the few items she wants. From the big storeroom upstairs, she chose nothing. Susan looks forward to delving into the packed boxes, surely filled not just with musty curtains but with treasures. The room gives them a new space to invent, but it’s destined to become another bedroom for guests and family. Three owners will be juggling the visitor issue for years.

  When Susan worked at Ware Properties, she had a tradition of sending three dozen roses to new owners when they moved in. She ordered red ones for Grazia, and has long-stemmed yellow ones for Villa Assunta. From the garden, she already has vases of her late roses around the house, even in the bathrooms. Julia has dinner under way. Later in the week, a party with Chris, Rowan, all their Italian friends, and the expats to say good-bye to Kit and Colin and to christen the house as theirs. But tonight, just the three of them.

  * * *

  —

  Julia’s preparing meringues to serve with a berry coulis. Camille organizes the wines and glasses, and sets the table with one of Luisa’s (now their own) linen tablecloths. She has gift sacks of lemon soaps and bath gel for each place. “This silver! Can you believe it? All ours now. If we ever sell, we should offer it again to Grazia. She might change her mind.”

  “Let’s don’t talk about selling on the day we bought!” Susan arranges her massive bouquet of yellow roses.

  “We’ve crossed the divide.” Julia whips the whites with fervor. “Forever after, we’ll be saying ‘before we bought,’ ‘after we bought…’ ” The aromas of baking zucchini tarts and roasting ducks with pears fill the kitchen.

  “Feels drastic, exciting, I’m still nervous,” Camille admits. She’s looking at her playlist but doesn’t select that favorite Yo-Yo Ma playing Ennio Morricone, for fear of breaking down into a torrent of tears. The Mission gets to her on a calm day but on this one of rocketing emotions, no. Best not. She chooses opera instead. The Three Tenors blast forth. “This house was meant for listening to great arias. Oh, I am totally speechless; this is major. Are we geniuses?”

  “Imagine, we’ve done this. I wish I believed that Aaron is looking down from a cloud admiring us.”

  “Charles would be quite astonished.”

  “Can we listen to ‘Georgia’? I kind of have to hear it tonight. Who knows what Wade will think and who cares?” The syrup-thick lyrics take them back, especially Julia. Susan switches links and here comes Louis Armstrong. Bright blessed day and dark sacred night…

  “Let’s get ready and celebrate.” Susan dashes upstairs.

  In their rooms, they dress for dinner. Julia in a metallic gray silk top, Camille in navy linen pants and blouse for the last gasp of summer; Susan already moving into fall in a copper shirt and taupe skirt. They take turns photographing each other on the threshold of the house, remembering when they opened the heavy, creaking door almost a year ago and saw clear through to the back window where the linden tree’s last leaves blazed yellow in the late evening light. In the photos, each holds up in turn the iron key. “Paper door!” Camille says. “Wasn’t it a paper door!”

  In the dining room, under the auspices of yellow roses reflected in a round mirror, and the nun’s felicitous fresco, and the great gold-leaf mirror above the fireplace, they pull up their chairs to the table. As they touch glasses, the mirrors catch sparks of light from the clear wine, the clasp in Julia’s hair, flickers of candles, the old silverware.

  Where this story stops, they look into a mirror reflecting a mirror where the story begins and reflects a mirror where the story continues.

  My warmest thanks and gratitude to my agent, Peter Ginsberg, at Curtis Brown Ltd., and to the fine Crown/Hogarth staff: my editor, Hilary Teeman, publisher Molly Stern, and editorial director Lindsay Sagnette. Special thanks also to Jillian Buckley, Elena Giavaldi, Cindy Berman, Rachel Rokicki, Rebecca Wellbourn, and designer Elina Nudelman.

  I’m lucky to be represented for speaking engagements by the Steven Barclay Agency. Such a great group!

  Robin Heyeck of The Heyeck Press taught me a
bout letterpress printing and papermaking. My enduring thanks to her for that and for publishing my first books of poetry so beautifully.

  For grand times at Figure Eight, I’m grateful to Emily Ragsdale, Franca Dotti, and Frances Gravely.

  To Lee Smith, who read a draft, mille grazie.

  Edward Mayes, my husband, gave me one of his poems for my character Kit, and made the writing of this book even more of a pleasure. I’m buoyed, too, by my family—Ashley, Peter, and William. Will always solves any computer problem with a few quick strokes. My nephew, Cleveland Raine Willcoxon III, now deceased, was on my mind throughout the seasons of this book. His name made its way into the text. Cin cin, Robert Draper, for introducing me to Cormòns in Friuli.

  The character Margaret is a tribute to Ann Cornelisen and Claire Sterling (both deceased), two gutsy writers I met when I first lived in Tuscany. Although Margaret is fictional, she was inspired by their brilliance and independence.

  Women in Sunlight comes from one of the major joys of my life—my friends. On every page, my love goes out to them.

  In addition to her worldwide bestselling Tuscany memoirs Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany, and Every Day in Tuscany, FRANCES MAYES is the author of the travel memoir A Year in the World, illustrated books In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home (with Edward Mayes), The Tuscan Sun Cookbook (also with Edward Mayes), and her most recent memoir, Under Magnolia. She has published a novel, Swan, set in the South; The Discovery of Poetry: A Guide for Readers and Writers; and five books of poetry. Her books have been translated into more than fifty languages. She divides her time between Tuscany and North Carolina. Visit her at www.francesmayesbooks.com.

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