Under a Sardinian Sky

by Sara Alexander

  I could have called first. I could have taken a moment before I jumped on that train heading north. Too late now. Number 52 Main Street stands before me. It’s a modest Cape Cod painted cornflower blue. The hanging baskets below the white-shuttered windows are picture perfect. Everything is in its place. This is a home of a person who thrives on military precision in all things. I would have expected nothing less.

  I have been trawling the Internet and asking favors for years, and all that time Kavanagh had literally disappeared. On return to his homeland, Cruickshank took his place. Why had I never thought to search for different names? My stupidity irritates me. Of course nothing surfaced on him. Of course every line of inquiry came to an abrupt halt. Of course it wasn’t as simple as tracking Franco. And what would I have gained from a visit anyway? Someone who changes his name doesn’t want to be found. And someone who doesn’t want to be found has something to hide.

  He may have been one of the last people to see my aunt. Perhaps he’s the only person on the planet that can shed any truth on her mysterious disappearance. I’m standing before the door of the man who can help my family put this story to bed. I press the doorbell. Twice. Nothing.

  I look around, figuring it will get dark soon and I ought to be thinking about where I’m staying. Yet I can’t tear myself away. I stub out my cigarette on the ground and flick the end into a drain by the curb. After the fifth failed attempt, I sigh in frustration. I’m overheard. I turn away from the door to catch the friendly neighbor beaming at me. Her blusher has been reapplied too many times, each more orange than the first. Her hairspray is so thick, in preparation, I assume, for any oncoming storms the area is known for.

  “Well, hello there, miss.” She smiles.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m Betty. Are you a friend of Mr. Kavanagh’s, honey?”

  I let her question hang for a moment, taking in her big, smiling eyes and the flutter of her blue mascara eyelashes.

  “I’m—a fan of his paintings. He was a friend of the family.”

  “Isn’t it awful?”

  I feel my eyebrows squeeze into a small frown.

  “We knew he was sick, but he never let on quite how bad. But that was Joe through and through.”

  “Is he . . . ?”

  “Yes, honey. A week ago today, in fact. His wife was by his side. Thank the Lord for small mercies.”

  “His wife?”

  “Beautiful woman. Never knew she was over eighty! God bless her heart. How she found the strength to take the trip I’ll never know!” I watch her yank her crisp, pink shirt down over her ample girth.

  “A trip?”

  “Aha—you do have the most charming voice, you know that? Why don’t you come on in for some iced tea ’stead of sweating in this god-awful heat?”

  “That would be nice, thank you.”

  I follow her into her house, tiptoeing through the assault of dolls lining what must have at one time been clear, open space. Each figure looks in the near distance with the demonic gaze I always associate with these vulgar ceramic creations.

  She mistakes my glare for admiration. “Do you like my lifetime’s collection? Joe’s wife made quite a number of their outfits, you know. The women around here do a lot of crafts. The winter is brutal.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She leads me to a wicker table at the back of her kitchen, then places a cold glass of tea before me. I wait for her to sit down.

  “Would you tell me about the trip? I’d like to send my condolences.”

  “I feel like I’ve been there myself—they’d talk about this special place all the time, you know. Wanted his ashes sprinkled in his favorite sea, I guess. She’s a good woman to do that, at her age and all.”

  “Where is this island?”

  “In Italy someplace.”

  “Sardinia?”

  “Yes! That’s right—I’ve got an old woman’s memory!”

  “Do you know where in Sardinia?”

  “I don’t know the name or anything, but he gave me this painting of it.” She reaches over for a miniature upon her sideboard. “He took it up after retiring. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I can’t be sure I said a polite good-bye or closed the door behind me. I cannot remember the blur of travel to Logan International Airport, or taking off, or the twinkling lights of the city below me.

  Tavolara—two days later

  The nose of the boat lifts and dips into the water, cutting through the deep teal. Half an hour from the shore behind me, the rock looms up into the sky, warding us off and daring us to approach. Suddenly a warning blasts out of a hidden speaker: “WARNING! Alter your course immediately! You are approaching military waters!” My driver swerves to the left, away from the mountainous island, home to a not-so-secret NATO base. We’re back on a straight course for the shore of Tavolara.

  I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours, yet every sense has returned to its heightened feral state. My body is on high alert. The taste of the salty spray on my face is sharper than I can ever remember, the beating sun harsher. The driver drops anchor. I hold my flip-flops in one hand, jump into the water, and wade up to the glare of white sand on the shore. I turn back to the driver. “Please wait here until I return.” He gives me a sun-cracked nod, which makes me wonder whether I might not be marooned here tonight after all.

  I stomp up the sandy walkway lined with a driftwood fence, past the small groups of day tourists reddened by the vacation sun. Inside the singular bed-and-breakfast on the island, I hold my ground by the deserted reception. A reluctant receptionist shuffles to something close to attention.

  “I’m here for the American guest. Mrs. Cruickshank. She’s expecting me.”

  I don’t care that I’m blurting and using brusque, informal Italian.

  “Sorry? We have no Americans here,” she replies with a disappointed shrug.

  “Yes, you do. She came a few days ago.”

  “No—I know Americans when I hear them. And I would remember a crazy name like that.”

  “Well, memories play tricks on us, no? Do me a favor and have a look along the list of guests for me?”

  “Honestly,” she replies, trailing a lazy finger down some scrawl, “there’s no one here by that name.”

  I feel like I’m about to burst into tears. The tiredness and adrenaline is getting the better of me, and it’s not a battle I want to lose in front of this woman.

  “Thanks,” I mutter, storming out onto the terrace for some hot air.

  I lean against the wooden railings. I’m not sure what I would be crying about anyway should I surrender to the feeling. For following a ridiculous hunch? For hoping that some stranger could enlighten me about her late husband and his passion for an island he once loved—oh and, by the way, do you know what really happened to his fleeting sometime lover?

  I’m so disappointed by my wild-goose chase. There are worse places to feel the bitter regret of stupidity, I suppose. I’ll take refuge at Grandmother’s house back in Simius for a while, maybe travel back with my mother, who has stayed on after Piera’s burial. I walk away from the terrace toward the shore, hoping the open space and expanse of Mediterranean will somehow lull me back to calm. I know this view well. The rosemary and wild thyme air is so familiar, the smell of sun-toasted wild fennel so comforting. I’m a child in an instant. I taste that sense of utter freedom and limitless possibility.

  I think I’ve centered myself, when a wave of tears shudders through me. Tiredness is brutal. Then it occurs to me that I have been trying to stay so very strong for my mother. These are the tears I could have shed at Zia Piera’s funeral perhaps, or her memorial. I find a spot where I’m alone and protected from the nosy stares of day visitors.

  I’ve not done too good of a job, because I feel a kind hand on my shoulder. I turn. A small, old woman is handing a tissue to me. Her hair is white but for a few streaks of stubborn black, clinging to another age. Her huge, dark glasses cover most of her face. She has few l
ines that I can see and the familiar, warm glow of a local’s skin.

  “Grazie,” I say, mopping up my tears and embarrassment.

  “My pleasure,” she answers in Italian but with an unfamiliar lilt. My Sardinian accent is closer to English, and I always recognize foreign origins in others’ Italian too.

  “Signora is not from here—like me?” I ask.

  “I live abroad now.”

  That’s when I hear the unmistakable twang. I’ve come all this way in a crazed dash—no sense tiptoeing around etiquette. “I’d guess the States?”

  She sighs a faint laugh. “You’re a very good listener!”

  “I’m nosy—for a living. Journalist.”

  “Do you have a name, journalist?” she asks, in English this time.

  “Mina.”

  “A beautiful name. I had thought about that name for one of my children.”

  “What did you choose instead?”

  “Anna. She never lived to learn it.”

  A shiver scissors through me. I’m sure Mrs. Cruickshank had not planned on a stranger wading through her grief.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “She found peace. Isn’t that what we all want?”

  I watch her turn her head toward the sea. I take in her proud profile, wide jaw. It’s her posture that captures me the most. She is small, and thanks to Betty I know her approximate age, but I hadn’t imagined someone with such a straight, strong back. She has the élan of someone who might just spring into a sprint should the need arise, coupled with the poise of a dancer—elegant, open, beautiful. I tear my eyes away from her so she doesn’t feel my stare.

  “It’s good to cry, Mina.”

  I feel my own hand involuntary stroke the tears off my cheek.

  “That’s what they say.” I shrug.

  “Even when you think you’ve shed more tears than you can bear, there will be more. And it’s okay. Good, even.”

  “My aunt died recently. I’ve not been myself. She was my second mother.”

  “She was lucky to have had you.”

  “More like the other way around.”

  “Is that why you’re here? I know a Sardinian when I see one—whatever accent they have.”

  A chuckle escapes before I realize. I’ve never felt quite so at ease with a stranger before. She is leading the conversation. I had a list of questions for this woman about her husband, but they seem unimportant all of a sudden.

  “My mother is from that town back on the shore. This is the home I carry with me. Especially when the London rain is slashing down.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to London.”

  “Betty, your neighbor in Ogunquit, said you were a fearless traveler.”

  Her head jerks toward me. She stiffens.

  “She told me you had come here,” I continue, regretting my heavy-handed introduction, “with your husband’s ashes. I think he may have known my aunt. I was trying to find him to ask more about her.”

  I notice her back lengthen. She freezes with the stillness of a cat, alert, poised, waiting. “Who is your aunt?” she asks, her voice close to a whisper now.

  “Her name was Carmela. She worked for him for a little while.”

  I notice her swallow. I ought to stop. This is an elderly woman grieving. What right have I to do this? But I can’t stop now. I may never see this woman again.

  “All I have are snippets of stories,” I continue, as gentle as I can, “tattered fables of what she might have been like. My mother, Vittoria, was so young when she disappeared. Everyone is deeply Sardinian about the whole thing. I ask questions and everyone I know slams shut. She is a taboo subject. All families have them, don’t they? Only I’ve been obsessed with her for as long as I can remember. I have a feeling she and I were similar in a lot of ways.”

  Her gaze returns to the rippling water. We stand in silence for a little while. I hear the gentle memory of waves lap up onto the wet sand.

  “What did you want to ask me about her?”

  “Anything you might have heard him say about her or his time here.”

  “I know some things. She loved Joe dearly. And he, her.” She pauses for a moment. I am a callous intruder. The pain streaks across what little of her face I can see around the glasses. She smooths the hair off her face, stands tall once again, regal almost. There’s a fearless quality to her gait. One that comes for some with age, but I suspect the woman before me is made of a particular strain of courage that can only be inherited, not learned. “I heard she was a brave woman. But one with many regrets.”

  “Thank you—I know this must be very difficult for you. I’m touched Captain Kavanagh—sorry, Cruickshank—shared this with you.”

  “We had no secrets.”

  “That’s beautiful. And rare.”

  I feel her hand slip into mine, and I stop myself from flinching. British habits die hard. Her hand is strong. For a moment our breaths synchronize. The past forty-eight hours have left me floating a little beside my body, like a blurred photo in the hands of an unskilled photographer. She lifts my hand and studies it. I notice I don’t feel strange. I’m trying to guess who is doing the comforting.

  “When he died,” she begins, “I thought there would be nothing. Now you’ve found me. I know that your aunt took many risks. I know that Joe found her lying by the Roman bridge minutes from death. She had fallen on a boulder, running away from her fiancé, who had his hands around her throat. I know the last thing she remembers is the stone racing up to her face. Then blackness. When she awoke, the first face she saw was Joe’s and she knew right then and there that she could never go back home. Not ever. That night she chose to disappear. There was no other choice. Joe took her to a hospital in Rome, where they nursed her back to health. They married soon after. She fell pregnant three times, but each of those babies were born sleeping. Sometimes they’d think that was their punishment for leaving the people she had loved most in the world.”

  Her head tips down. She is crying. The tears trail down her cheeks and drip onto her blouse. My hand squeezes hers.

  “It’s okay,” she says, breathy. “I want you to know all of this. I need you to know all of this.”

  I search her eyes but see only my skewed reflection in her shades.

  “Many years passed till she could return home again. Now it seems like a dream she dare not wake up from.”

  There’s a galloping in my chest.

  She lifts her glasses.

  I would know that face anywhere. It’s the face etched into my imagination from a singular photo. It’s the black eyes full of expression described to me by anyone who had ever known her.

  “Zia Carmela?”

  There are no words. Only her shuddered cries in my ears, against my chest. Only the tightness of our winding arms. All space between has gone. Her hands are around my face now. Her eyes are boring deep into me, familiar and new, searching and yearning. She is full of longing and fear and courage and joy. Still no words. The summer breeze whips up around us, playing with the strands of our tear-streaked hair. She presses her wet cheek against mine. We hold the space for a moment into the quiet center of our tears. The sun begins its gentle descent. Her skin turns golden in the setting rays of rose.

  “Please, Mina,” she whispers, pulling away a matt of my curls from my ear, folding the hair gently behind it, “would you take me home?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Firstly my thanks go to the wonderful Sardinian clan from which I sprung, who all spun their tales with pride and passion. Huge amount of gratitude for the tireless guidance and encouragement of my agent, Jeff Ourvan, at Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency, without which this story would have stayed rattling around my imagination for another decade. Deepest thanks to John Scognamiglio at Kensington Books for his positivity and incisive suggestions, and to his team, who have brought this story into being. It has taken a small army of people to help me weave this tale, headed by the energetic boys I live with, one adult and two small, who
never complained when I edited these chapters at the foot of their beds as they fell asleep, and always reminded me to never give up.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  UNDER A

  SARDINIAN SKY

  Sara Alexander

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions are included to enhance

  your group’s reading of Sara Alexander’s

  UNDER A SARDINIAN SKY.

  Discussion Questions

  1.Do you think Carmela had any choice in the way the relationship progressed with Kavanagh? Could the tragedy have been averted? How? Why? Would Carmela’s dilemma be so very different today?

  2.How realistic is the theme of thwarted love explored in the story? What are the differences/similarities between Antonio’s hidden sexuality and Carmela’s journey? Rosa’s infidelity and Carmela’s?

  3.How do you feel about Carmela’s decision to stay away all those years? Why did she decide to inflict that pain on herself and her family? Is it forgivable? Where will they all go from here?

  4.Were there other ways that Carmela might have dealt with the pressures she put on herself/received from her family and social norms?

  5.Is Carmela’s decision to relinquish everything about her life to be with Kavanagh courageous or selfish? Ultimately does the decision liberate or imprison her?

  6.Which aspects of the Sardinian world affected you the most, or struck you as very different from what you know of other cultures in the same period?

  7.How would the Simius people have reacted if they had known the truth about Antonio’s homosexuality? Would it have been received in the same/different way as a woman committing adultery, and why? Are there parallels? How well do you think Antonio dealt with the burden of living a secret life?

  8.Does the Sardinian culture offer a rich background for a story that is, in essence, about secrets? Does the culture add/reflect to the theme or juxtapose it?