If she was a poetic type of person she might see a metaphor for people in this dough, certainly for herself and her own healing. She could push that dough around and stretch it to its limits, yet it always came back into itself—a whole, gathered ball of potential, which could be turned into any number of things.
She smiled softly to herself, working the dough more vigorously, building heat in her body and in the dough itself. ‘How do you know when it is ready?’ she asked.
‘When it feels the same as your earlobe,’ Gilberta said, and laughed once more.
Together they kneaded the dough and tested their earlobes to come to an agreement on when they should stop.
‘Now, we let it rest,’ Gilberta said.
‘For how long?’
‘Ten minutes. In between, we drink wine.’
Gilberta’s Italian ten minutes ballooned out to an hour while she told Lara all about the 1966 flood in Florence when the river Arno rose four metres.
A knock at the front door interrupted her story. They heard the door open and a voice shout out to them.
‘Matteo!’ Gilberta called, rising from the small stool. Lara did the same. Gilberta got to him first, wrapping him in a bear hug and muttering all sorts of Italian endearments, by the sound of it.
Matteo—in working clothes and with a big goofy grin—winked at Lara over Gilberta’s head, then kissed the woman on each cheek. When Gilberta released him, she wiped at her eyes. ‘I advise you, I am easy tears, huh. We hope none go into the pasta.’
Lara’s grin was so wide it hurt her cheeks. They’d been apart two nights and she’d missed him terribly. She was even more thrilled when he reached for her, kissing her full on the mouth and each cheek, embracing her as though he hadn’t seen her for weeks, rather than just a couple of days.
‘Oh, lovebirds!’ Gilberta clapped, then squeezed her strong dough-pounding arms around them both and wept some more.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lara asked Matteo when finally all the crying and cheek-pinching and hugging had subsided.
‘It’s riposo time,’ Matteo said, moving easily in Gilberta’s kitchen. He helped himself to some wine and leaned over the dough, nodding in approval. ‘Everyone on the farm is resting. But I choose to come see my favourite girls.’
‘You are perfect time,’ Gilberta said, draining the last of her wine and rinsing her hands. ‘We are about to roll out the pasta.’ Lara admired the way the woman moved, as though she was about to break into dance at any moment.
Matteo came to Lara’s side and put his arm around her, pulling her close. She leaned into him.
Gilberta brought over the squat little pasta machine and clamped it onto the edge of the bench. ‘Now, we need many space to roll out the pasta and have it to dry. They can’t be all like sardines top of each other or will stick.’
She beckoned Lara to the bench and handed her a knife. ‘Cut off a slice of the dough, squeeze in fingers to the right depth.’ Thickness, Lara mentally corrected, and pressed the dough flat. ‘It needs two people,’ Gilberta said, pulling Matteo to the bench. ‘Now, Lara feeds the little machine and Matteo catches the ribbons at the other end. Like catch baby,’ she teased.
Lara fed the warm dough into the machine and cranked the handle. The pasta came out the other side in perfectly flat, if not perfectly straight, golden lengths, much like the shape of bandages as they unrolled.
First aid food.
Matteo held out his hands and the pasta fell gently across them.
‘There!’ Gilberta whispered, watching the pasta come to life.
They kept rolling, the volume of the final product far exceeding what Lara would have expected. They floured the sheets between the layers so they didn’t stick. When the dough got tacky between the rollers, Gilberta sprinkled more flour. Broken pieces were simply put back together and rolled again. Mostly, they worked together in silence, the methodical turn of the wheel and the slow emergence of the ribbons creating a meditative space. Finally, they had used all the dough. Lara’s arms burned from all that turning of the wheel.
‘Now we let them dry,’ Gilberta said. ‘Later, we tear into pieces. This is maltagliati. No fancy pasta!’
‘It means something like rustic, homemade or badly made,’ Matteo explained. ‘It’s as authentic as you get.’
Lara checked the time and realised it had run away on her, the whole pasta-making experience taking much longer than she had thought.
‘You need to get going?’ Matteo asked, coming to her side.
‘I have to get to the village shops.’
He nodded but frowned, then took her hand and led her out the door and into the yard, where a biting wind raced up Lara’s clothes and made her wrap her arms around her body.
Matteo pulled her against the stone wall of the villa, positioning her out of the wind. ‘I wanted to talk to you, but we got caught up in the pasta and now you have to go and so I am rushed,’ he said, scratching behind his ear.
‘What is it?’
He leaned his shoulder into the wall. She did the same.
‘Will you stay on here in Italy, with me?’ he blurted, his dark eyes even darker under his serious brow. ‘I don’t know when you thought you might move on, but I want more time with you.’ His voice was strong but his eyes betrayed his nerves. ‘In my head there was more of a lead-up than that.’
Lara reached out her hand and laid it on his cheek, taking in the scattering of tiny freckles under his eyes, feeling the roughness of his beard in her palm. He covered her hand with his.
‘I want to see where we can go, here together. I don’t want you to leave. You have a lot waiting for you back in Australia, I know that, but I think I have something to offer you here, too.’ He took a quick, sharp breath. ‘Our time away together…’ He lost his words then, clearly unable to express everything he wanted.
But he’d said enough, more than he’d ever risked all at once while they’d been away together. He’d learned to hold his words back, but now they’d just tumbled out for her.
The stiff cold she’d been feeling vanished.
It would have been so easy to feel overwhelmed at this moment. Because while she may have felt that it was so right that he had asked her to stay, and it may have felt so right to agree that she would, they both knew it simply wasn’t that easy.
But when had it ever been simple?
What she did have now, for the first time, was confidence in herself. It allowed her to envision something new, something she hadn’t even known she wanted. Above all else, she had resounding faith in her sister and their shared ability to channel their love for the kids into something great. With no more word from Dave, she felt more confident every day that the future was bright for them all. She didn’t know how she and Matteo could make it work; she just knew that it was entirely possible.
‘Yes!’ she said, grinning like a fool. ‘I want to stay here with you too.’
‘Lara, mio amore, I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ she said, loudly this time, so there was no way he could miss it.
He picked her up and twirled her around and she squealed with joy.
From the doorway, Gilberta clapped and cheered. ‘Bravo, bravo!’ Lara felt her cheeks flame.
Matteo took her hand and led her back to the doorway and inside. Gilberta grabbed them both and hugged them tightly, kissing first Matteo’s cheeks and then Lara’s.
‘We are in love!’ Matteo announced to the room, sweeping his arm wide. Lara thought her chest might actually crack open with the emotion swirling inside.
‘We must celebrate,’ Gilberta said, looking around for something fitting, then stopping at the kitchen table. ‘But look at all this pasta!’ she said, her arms wide. ‘We cannot eat it alone!’
‘We’ll take it to Samuel,’ Matteo said, turning to Lara. ‘Your feast that you wanted, it’s here. We can take it over and I’ll pick up cheeses and Gilberta will come, and Henrik is already there.’
‘
We will find Mario too,’ Gilberta said, catching on. But then the woman’s face fell.
‘What is it?’ Matteo asked, placing his hand on her shoulder.
A shudder went through Gilberta’s chest and her breath caught. ‘Samuel,’ she whispered. Matteo nodded and pulled her into his arms for a moment while she sniffed. ‘I listened to your mamma,’ Gilberta said. ‘But…’
‘I know,’ Matteo said ‘My mother is a difficult woman.’
Gilberta widened her eyes in implicit agreement.
‘I too have been guilty of listening to her when she thought she knew best and I thought that maybe she was right.’ Matteo shot Lara an apologetic look. ‘But it’s in the past. What’s done is done. Let us bring Samuel a feast today.’
57
Just outside Samuel’s villa, on the lawn, there was a rectangle of mature trees—olives, a leopard tree, a pine tree, and something that looked like it belonged in the Australian bush. There was a long table beneath their shady branches, for lengthy dinners outdoors during the hot summer.
This evening it was cold but still Lara had brushed down the metal table and chairs, rusted paintwork flicking off under the bristles. Then she laid a dark green tablecloth over the table. Lit lanterns hung from the branches. Sometime during the heyday of feasts, rows of blue, red and yellow bulbs had been strung through the leaves, and these too glowed happily.
The trees stood like thin clusters of curtains, defining the space but still allowing sweeping views over the valley and mountains surrounding them, the colours of the landscape changing as the light fell, muting into swathes of delicious Monet-style blues and greens, layer over layer, punctuated here and there by rusty red rooftops and white-walled villas. It was breathtaking.
Mario arrived, carrying hurricane lamps. He placed them down the centre of the table, while quietly singing something operatic. Gilberta was in the kitchen, boiling a pot of water for the maltagliati. Matteo would be here soon, bearing platters of antipasti—cheeses, cured meats, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and zucchini from the farm, white-bean dip and flatbreads, as well as ingredients for Gilberta to make sage-wrapped deep-fried anchovies, and baked preserved lemon ricotta bites. Or so his text had said. Lara had replied with effusive gratitude and added that maybe he could invite his mother too. Not good chance, but I will try, he’d replied. Just for you.
The pasta they’d made with Gilberta today would be the principale. The homemade wines would be plentiful. And for dolci—given they didn’t have much time to get it organised—they were serving bunches of frozen grapes on boards with hunks of chocolate and shot glasses of grappa on the side.
Of course, the food was the easy bit. It was Samuel who posed the biggest challenge.
Lara went to check on her employer. He’d been hiding in his room since she’d come home from Gilberta’s and announced the surprise. Okay, this feast wasn’t going to be the really big occasion she’d first hoped—with Matteo’s brothers and their families, or even, as she’d once naively believed possible, with Carlo and a big reconciliation. And maybe that was a good thing, given Samuel’s response.
‘Cancel it. Now.’ His words had been sharp.
‘I can’t,’ she’d said, holding her ground. ‘Everyone is on their way.’
‘You have no right,’ he’d said, standing as straight as his hunched back would let him, eyeing her with outrage.
‘That’s probably true,’ she responded, carefully. ‘But try to be open to this. People are on their way to celebrate…’ Here she paused. It was Matteo and Lara’s love that had sparked the idea for this feast tonight. But Lara’s original intent had been to celebrate Samuel, and Gilberta had quickly realised that and jumped on the idea.
‘…life,’ she finished. ‘They’re coming to celebrate life, just like you used to in the old days when Assunta was here.’
At the name, Samuel blanched.
‘You can do this,’ Lara said firmly, motherly. ‘Don’t waste golden opportunities when they fall into your lap.’
He’d left the living room then and shuffled to his bedroom, closing the door with excruciating quietness—far worse than if he’d slammed it.
Now here she was, standing outside Samuel’s door.
She knocked twice, hard. He didn’t answer, but she went in anyway.
Samuel was sitting on the edge of his bed, his back to her, the bedsheets pulled up as neatly as they were every morning. Even with his broken arm he’d managed to wrangle them into smoothness each day. It had never been her job to straighten his room; he wanted it to himself.
The hunch in his back looked more pronounced in the shadowy light. She hesitated then, almost losing her nerve.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Can I come in?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, well, I already have, so…’ She was walking across the room. She needed to face him. But then Samuel started to speak, catching her off guard.
‘When you said you’d organised a feast, I panicked,’ he said, his voice raspy. His right hand fluttered to the walking stick leaning against the bed and touched it briefly, as if to check it was still there. ‘I don’t really speak to people anymore. Gilberta and Mario—they were part of the old crowd.’
Lara stood in front of him now and reached behind her for the edge of a wooden chair and eased down onto it. ‘It brings back memories,’ she said.
He nodded, his eyes catching the light of an outdoor lamp whose muted rays glowed through the curtains. ‘Assunta.’ He whispered the name, then looked at Lara sharply. ‘Does everyone know now? About what you told Carlo? About…’
‘I’m not sure. Matteo does, obviously.’
Samuel sniffed, bitter. ‘He will have told them.’
Lara opened her mouth to defend Matteo, then closed it. She was sure he was too sensitive than to run off and spread the story like salacious gossip. His loyalty to his family was strong, but even if he had told his mother, Lara knew he would have done so with great tact. And more to the point, there was no shame in the story. Assunta had had a medical condition. She’d never got the help that she needed. Her death was tragic, but it shouldn’t have been covered up.
‘For what it’s worth, I think people would be more receptive to the truth now than they might have been at the time she passed,’ she said.
‘You have no idea of the things people say about those who take their own life. Weak. Selfish. Insane. Evil. Lost to God. Gone to hell. Stuck in purgatory. Doomed on Judgement Day. That they don’t deserve to be mourned. That they shouldn’t be buried in a Catholic church.’
Anger flared within Lara on Assunta’s behalf. How close she herself had come to doing the same. Some of those pills had even made it to her mouth before she spat them out.
She was angry for Samuel too. The world had come a long way in understanding mental illnesses and differences, but maybe not as far as she’d like to believe.
‘The way Carlo reacted was just the beginning,’ Samuel said.
‘Are you wishing you hadn’t told him?’
Samuel straightened himself a little, stretching his back. ‘Maybe.’
Lara nodded. ‘I understand.’ They sat in silence a moment, listening to Matteo’s truck pulling up slowly over the gravel drive, a sweep of headlights crossing the bedroom window, momentarily casting Samuel’s face into deep shadows.
‘I know the power of second chances,’ she said quietly. ‘I was once a heartbeat away from where Assunta was when she was on that rooftop. I can’t tell you why I’m here and she’s not. But it wasn’t an easy road back from that place to where I am now.’
The silence between them filled with understanding.
‘This is why I think you should go out there and hold your head high tonight, because your second chance—no matter how hard it is to face it—is right here waiting for you. Don’t let it go.’
He almost looked convinced, then raised his face in defiance. ‘But it’s hardly anyone, just Gilberta and Mario—’<
br />
‘Precisely the reason you should go,’ she countered. ‘You’ve nothing to fear.’
‘—none of the people who really matter.’
She tilted her head. ‘I’d like to think that the people who really matter are here for you right now, hungry, thirsty and waiting for you to come out and declare that this feast has started.’
‘Alright, alright,’ he grumped.
Lara smothered a smile of victory and stood up, helping him to his feet, her hand wrapped around his twiggy bicep.
‘You know, the day I first met you, you were at the Trevi Fountain—the fountainhead for an ancient aqueduct, the water travelling more than twenty kilometres to its terminus.’
‘I know the history.’
They were out of his shadowy room now, squinting in the bright lights of the hall.
‘I’ve thought a lot about the fountain since that day, particularly since reading about its history. I like to imagine where the little trickles of water come from—a spring, or down from the melted mountain snows. Just drops, joining with more drops, forming tiny rivulets, which join to form a stream, gathering force until it bursts out of the fountain, a mighty, unstoppable, never-ceasing flow of life.’
‘Your point?’
They were at the front door now, about to step out into the courtyard. They could hear joyful chatter out on the grass, the pop of a wine cork, a cheer, the scrape of metal on metal as chairs were moved about.
‘Maybe not everyone who is really important is here right now. But this is a start. The first trickle. Momentum is gathering. And who knows where it might lead? The Trevi Fountain led me to you, and for that I will be forever grateful. Maybe tonight is the start of something wonderful too, the first of many feasts that will grow into the one you really want, with everyone here—Carlo, your children, your grandchildren—all of them breaking bread and dancing into the night.’
Samuel’s eyes were bright pools of blue. Then he looked down at his trackpants and ran his hand nervously along the bottom of his t-shirt. ‘I should change.’
Lara kissed him on the cheek. ‘No you shouldn’t; you’re perfect as you are.’ But she did lift his heavy woollen cardigan down from the coat hook by the door and wrap it tightly around him, covering his chest well. Then she stuck out her elbow like a wing for him to hold. ‘Let’s go.’
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