It’s called Castelli di Chianti, Chianti Castles. We’re looking at a beautiful, glossy photograph of the Castello di Vesperi high on a hill, with its vineyards and olive groves below, and the cypress-lined drive curving up to it.
“Grazie,” I say to Sandra, beaming as we turn the pages and realize that there’s tons of history about the castello here. Exactly what I’m after.
And then I gasp, and nudge Kelly so hard she tips on her plastic chair.
“Look!” I hiss.
In a black-and-white thumbnail photograph, in a cluster of other reproduced family portraits, is a head-and-shoulders picture of the girl I saw in the painting in London. She’s very like the other members of the di Vesperi family: as the principessa said when she saw me, the family features are distinctive.
I know it’s the same girl. I pull out my phone, call up the photo I took in London of the portrait, and hold it against the picture in the book. The hair is subtly different, and so is the neckline of her dress; it’s not the same portrait. But it’s definitely the same person.
Kelly points wordlessly to the footnotes at the bottom of the page, which give details of all the pictures. Fiammetta di Vesperi, we read. Nata 1732, morta 1754, della febbre tifoide.
“The typhoid fever,” I say sadly, puzzling out the words. “She was so young!”
I can’t even imagine having only a few more years to live. It feels like my life has barely begun; I’ve got so much I want to do, so many places I want to go. To have that all closed down so fast, to feel an end coming so soon, is unimaginable.
Did Fiammetta have any idea of her impending death when this portrait was painted? I stare down at the picture of Fiammetta di Vesperi, who was, more than likely, a distant ancestor of mine. Her dark eyes look back at me, their gaze steady and determined; her forehead is smooth, unworried, and her lips are set together firmly.
I take courage from that look of hers. She’s a girl on a mission, like me. I sense that even in her short life, she knew what she wanted and pushed to get it, made every moment count.
I resolve to do the same.
It’s Definitely a Boy
Darling Mum,
There’s something I have to ask you, and I really, really need you to get back to me right away. Please believe that I wouldn’t be bringing this up if it weren’t incredibly important to me. You’re the best mum in the world, okay? And you always will be. I know how much you and Dad love me—up to the sky and back again, remember saying that when I was little?
But something really odd happened here a few days ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it.…
I sketch in a summary of the events at the Castello di Vesperi. I don’t just describe the principessa being struck by the resemblance between me and her husband’s family, but also my likeness to so many portraits in the gallery, how many times my face appeared there, in different historical periods, different dresses, different hair arrangements—yet still my face. The di Vesperi female face.
I say that I’ve always known I didn’t look like my tall, skinny Scottish father and Scandinavian mother, with their long freckled pale limbs and their blond (Mum) or sandy (Dad) hair, their pale blue eyes; that it never bothered me (which is a lie), but that I suddenly started thinking about it after the visit to the castello (another lie). That I love her, will always love her just the same whatever she tells me (the truth, the absolute truth), but that I want to know if there’s any remote reason she could possibly think of to explain this weird resemblance.…
I wish she weren’t alone. My parents divorced years ago, and my dad lives in Hong Kong now with the horrible girlfriend he left my mum for, a Danish woman called Sif who hates me, resents how much Dad loves me, and tries out of jealousy to pretend I don’t exist. (I console myself with the reflection that her name sounds almost exactly like a brand of loo cleaner.) But although he doesn’t notice awful Sif doing her best to snub me when I visit them, he’s still, thank goodness, an amazing dad.
He isn’t with Mum anymore, and I’ve accepted that. Mum isn’t seeing anyone, though. She’s on her own. I brighten up, remembering that her sister, my aunt Lissie, was going to come to London and visit her while I was away; Aunt Lissie used to model too, like my mum, and she’s a stylist now, traveling all over the world for magazines. Hopefully Aunt Lissie’s there now, when this email arrives.
Mum usually talks everything over with me. This, I realize, will be the first time she can’t.
I knew that Mum and I were maybe a bit too close. That coming away to Italy might not be the worst thing for either of us. But this is truly bringing it home to me.
I swallow as I read through the email again.
I love you so much, and I always will. Whatever you might have to tell me could never change that, I promise. I know how much you and Dad love me! But please, if there is anything to tell, please do it now! You could email or ring me, whatever you want. But please, please, Mum, let me know.
All my love,
Violet x x x x x
Before I can think it over, I hit Send. It’s gone. I watch the blue line at the bottom of the screen grow, stretching from left to right as the message is in transit, a heartbeat in which, conceivably, I could—shut the laptop? Jam my finger on the off button? Throw it against the wall?
I don’t know if any of that would work: whether, as soon as you send an email, it shoots up into the cloud like a puff of air. And anyway, it happens so fast; it’s gone in a split second. Before I could even try to stop it, the possibility has vanished.
This had to happen, I tell myself. You didn’t have a choice. You had to ask her. And it was better to email her, to give her time to think this over and decide how to handle it, not to put her on the spot in person by ringing her, or waiting till you see her again.
I could never have been brave enough to ask her to her face if I was adopted—or if Dad wasn’t my real father.…
I jump up, slam the laptop shut, and dash out of the bedroom I share with Kelly as if I were being chased by a pack of wild dogs. I can’t think about this any longer. I tear down the stairs, my bare feet slapping on the stone, through the hallway, out the front door, and around the house to the swimming pool. Pulling off my cover-up, chucking it on the stone flags, I dive in, the shock of the cool water on my overheated skin exactly what I need to stop me thinking. I do a length underwater as fast as I can, and when I come up, gasping and shaking my head, I realize that everyone’s staring at me.
“Wow,” Evan says, looking over his guitar, which is propped on his lap as he sits cross-legged on a towel. “You in a race with the Invisible Man?”
I giggle at this image.
“Violet,” he sings, strumming a chord. “Running a race with a serious face—so did you win? Or was it him? Don’t forget, Vio-let—Dive in!”
He ends on a high falsetto note, grinning at me.
“That doesn’t make much sense,” he adds. “But hey, at least I rhymed your name.”
“Violet’s pretty easy,” I say, propping my arms on the edge of the pool and smiling back at him. “Regret, forget, net, jet, yet, set, bet—”
“Try Evan,” he suggests. “Apart from numbers and heaven, which gets old very quickly, there’s practically nothing.”
“Numbers? Oh! Eleven … seven …” I furrow my brow.
“Devon,” Kelly calls over. “That’s a county in England.”
“Leaven,” I add. “You do it to bread.”
Evan’s expression is comical, his blue eyes stretched as wide as they’ll go as he plucks a string and, in a singsong nursery-rhyme voice, intones:
“From the age of seven to eleven
Before he tragically went to heaven
Evan leavened bread in Devon.”
He throws his hands wide. “See? Not much to work with.”
“At least you don’t have rude stuff that rhymes with you,” Kelly says gloomily. “They called me Smelly Jelly Belly at school for years.”
“And Ken
dra isn’t that great either. It sort of sounds like bend-ya,” Kendra adds.
I can’t help smiling that Kendra and Kelly are competitive in everything, even down to whose name rhymes with worse stuff.
“Kendra,” Evan sings, playing a chord, “I would never bend ya,
or lend ya
or send ya …
Oh, the words I can engender
thinking about Kendra …”
“ ‘Engender’!” Kelly exclaims. “That’s really good!”
I pull myself out of the pool and walk over to a lounger, picking up a towel and wrapping it around myself; I sit on one side of Evan, Kelly on the other. Even cool-as-a-cucumber Kendra has sat up to watch Evan playing his guitar.
“What about Paige?” I ask, looking over at his sister, the only one uninterested in her brother’s talent. She’s got a moisturizing pack on her hair—her head is wrapped in the special leopard-skin towel she uses when she’s doing a hair treatment—pink headphones on her ears, and a magazine in her hands as she reclines on her lounger.
“Paige goes into a rage when you tell her she’s not yet legal drinking age—” Evan sings immediately, and Paige, who must have been listening after all, promptly throws her magazine at his head. He ducks easily, and it flies past and lands on the tiles.
“You haven’t done me yet!” Kelly says wistfully, twisting her hair over one shoulder, playing with the ends. She’s got some sun since she’s been here, taking it slowly and carefully after a couple of days where she went bright pink; now her fair skin looks sun-kissed, her freckles standing out prettily across her nose, and she’s been squeezing lemon juice over her red hair to lighten it, which has worked a little. She looks very pretty staring at Evan imploringly. He grins, strums a series of soft chords, and starts to croon:
“Oh, Kelly,
you make my legs weak like jelly.
Oh, Kelly …
I get butterflies in my belly.
Oh, Kelly,
uh, your perfume is so sweet and smelly, Kelly …”
She’s giggling now.
“Sorry,” Evan says, plucking a final chord. “Turns out even I can’t make smelly into a compliment.”
“Two out of three isn’t bad,” I point out, very impressed with Evan’s skills. He can sketch out a tune really fast, and switch between styles; one moment he’s doing a blues song, then pop, and the one he made up for me was like something from a musical.
As if he’s reading my mind, he echoes, turning to look at me, drawing out the syllables:
“Don’t forget, Vio-let—Dive in!”
This time he ends the line low and gentle, and it isn’t a musical number anymore. It’s almost a love song.
“You mind if I work on that?” he asks, leaning on the guitar, looking at me. “That’s kinda nice. I could do something with that.”
“Oh!” I don’t quite know what to say. “Sure,” I add.
“Ooh! Evan’s writing Violet a love song!” Paige whoops, coming over and retrieving her magazine. “Evan and Violet sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
I expect Evan to look embarrassed, or to tell Paige to shut up, but he just grins again, bending over his guitar, starting to strum it again, quite unaffected by his sister.
“Paige,” he sings to me,
“needs to act her age.…
Such a shame
She’s such a pain
It’s a terrible strain.…”
I laugh and settle back on the lounger, watching him play, his hands moving with surprising lightness and dexterity on the strings. Kelly is watching him too, and so’s Kendra, who has slipped into the pool and is propped up on the side, her dark limbs gleaming with the water, sunglasses on her nose; we’re circled around him, enchanted by someone who can make music this easily.
Well, I admit, a boy who can make music this easily. Let’s be honest, if it were one of us, we wouldn’t all be gathering around like worshippers at a shrine. And if it were a girl playing, would a bunch of boys be sitting around her? Or would they be trying to grab the guitar from her so they could show off themselves?
That’s not fair, though. Evan isn’t showing off; he’s genuinely enjoying himself. His head ducked over the guitar, his lips moving as he tries out lyrics under his breath, he’s completely unaffected, I can tell; like his sister, he’s very open and outgoing, but unlike Paige, he doesn’t crave attention.
He’s so nice, I think. Why can’t I like Evan? Why can’t I feel as excited when I see Evan as I do when I see Luca? It would make my life so much easier!
As if sensing my thoughts, Evan raises his head and looks directly at me, his blue eyes clear and candid. The blond eyelashes glint in the sunshine, tiny gold threads, and his tanned skin creases into fans of equally tiny white lines as he smiles at me.
I like Evan a lot, I realize. And as he bends his head once more, his thick fair hair close to his scalp, I wonder what it would feel like to run my hand over it, whether it would be bristly under my palm, or unexpectedly soft and silky.…
I feel a shiver running down my back, as if someone trickled a few slow, icy drops of water down the beads of my spine, running between my shoulder blades. I wriggle a little; the sensation’s unexpectedly pleasant. I’m still staring at Evan’s bent head, and suddenly I connect the two things.
Oh. Maybe I could like Evan that way after all.
I’m so absorbed in my thoughts that I haven’t seen the flash of sunlight on metal that means a car is coming up the winding drive, working its way around the switchback bends. I don’t notice the other girls stir, sit up, because a car approaching at this time of day is very likely to contain precious cargo: i.e., at least one boy.
Up this steep hill, without our own transport, and a long, sweaty walk to the village, we’ve quickly got attuned to the rhythms of Villa Barbiano, the times that people come and go. The post lady drops off the mail between twelve and one—we’ve learned not to get excited at the sight of her white Panda chugging up the hill. Catia goes down to the village early, to do the marketing, but after that her jeep stays in its ivy-covered shelter and doesn’t go out unless she’s taking us on an excursion or, occasionally, leaving us in the evening for dinner with a friend. So, in the afternoon, a car might be Elisa, Catia’s unpleasant, skinny daughter, which would be a definite negative.
Or it might be Leonardo. And Leonardo almost always means Andrea, too; they’re like a two-for-one offer.
I only hear the car when the wheels spin loudly, whisking up the gravel of the parking area, set on a terrace below the pool. That means it’s definitely a boy: only boys drive like that, announcing their arrival with a whirl of loose stone on rubber. And the swift, imperative series of honks that follow confirm it. Catia would be furious if Elisa disturbed the afternoon peace by pounding the car horn like that, but her son gets away with much more. Catia may be American, but she’s fully adapted to the Italian way of parenting, where boys seem to be pampered to an almost limitless extent.
Like Luca with his mother, the principessa, I reflect. She fawns on him as if he were already the prince he’ll be when he inherits from his father.
Then, because I’m not thinking about Luca, I determinedly push that idea away and look up to the terrace of the villa, where a distraction is being offered in the shape of Elisa. She’s leaning over the stone balcony like a modern Juliet, all streaked hair and dangling gold earrings, a huge pair of sunglasses obscuring most of the upper part of her face, her lips pouting as she blows a theatrical kiss to the parking lot, then raises one thin arm to wave, gold bracelets clinking so loudly we can hear them over the soft strumming of Evan’s guitar and the chattering of the crickets.
So it’s not Leonardo or Andrea, I realize. Elisa wouldn’t bother to put on a full charm offensive for her brother or his friend. I turn to glance down at the parking lot just as Elisa yodels:
“O! Ciao, bello! Arrivo!”
“I’m coming,” she’s saying. I realize who she’s calling to
just a flash of a second too late; I’ve already turned my head, am gazing at the car that’s pulled up at an angle across the center of the lot, not parked, but waiting to pick up a passenger. The driver’s door is open, and Luca’s leaning on it, elbows propped on the top, in a white linen shirt, his black hair raked back from his brow, sunglasses dangling from his long fingers.
As soon as I catch sight of him, he lifts his head, as if he’s sensing me. Our eyes meet.
Oh no. I can’t do this.
I get a flash of sapphire, and it’s awful, it’s too intense. How can just a momentary glance do this to me? It’s ridiculous, beyond stupid, and when Luca promptly lifts his sunglasses, slides them onto his nose, and raises his head further, chin tilted up, clearly avoiding my gaze, I’m grateful. I really am. I tell myself so, very firmly.
But then I see him looking at Elisa, raising his hand to wave back to her as she positively dashes along the terrace on her high stacked heels, pale layers of chiffon wafting around her top half, her lower half almost completely visible in her taupe cuffed shorts. She has really good legs, and she knows it: long, slim, bronzed, enviable. Elisa flits across my eyeline and then, mercifully, disappears as she heads down the steps at the end of the terrace. Going to meet Luca.
The other girls are all glancing at me to see how I’m dealing with this. I reach up to my hair, lifting it, squeezing water out of it down my back, and I know that the movement summons Luca’s attention back to me. I can feel his eyes on me now as I move closer to Evan on the lounger, looking at his hands moving on the strings, the typical girl admiring a boy playing a guitar. Evan flashes me a smile and keeps strumming away, quite unaware of the little drama being enacted around him.
Kissing in Italian Page 5