Bella Tuscany

by Frances Mayes

  “It was, but the deal fell through. It's not yet back on the market.” Steps curve up to a tile veranda with a large arched door from the dining room opening to it. Three upstairs balconies and a sunroom with eleven windows—the house is speaking my language. I can see Sister moving from one sunny patch to another in this light-flooded house.

  We bought it. Even though we'd not even listed our own flat, we had to act quickly. I started sorting through letters and sweaters. My daughter became engaged. We were getting to know Stuart, her fiancé. Ashley and I began to plan their wedding. Visits to photographers and florists were fitted between trips to the hardware store to find hooks and doorknobs. She was studying for her PhD qualifying exam, then her orals. High panic set in. Several of her classmates had failed the year before. We listed the flat and it sold within three days. We closed on the new house and ripped out miles of thick white carpet, blotched with spills. Underneath, the seventy-five-year-old herringbone hardwood floors were intact. Dirty but intact. We found a brick stairway spattered with paint, which had to be stripped. We began having the floors refinished, new wiring and alarm system installed, the interior painted. We had to have a new tile roof put on. While I was out, the wrong room was painted yellow. Ashley and I looked at wedding dresses—she quickly decided that she wanted the floating-cloud variety—and invitations and bridesmaids' dresses. We met with caterers. Ed went to Italy to prune during his spring break. I was running between the flat and the house, dealing with workmen who spoke no English. The people we hired to work spoke English but when the actual labor began, they sent workers newly arrived from Cambodia, Malaysia, Korea, and all parts of South America. Often, they couldn't even talk to each other. Restoring Bramasole was so much easier! One Honduran painter locked a bedroom door from the inside and closed it as he came out. When I showed him that the door wouldn't open, he looked at me with great brown eyes and sadly uttered his only two American words, “Fook sheet.” I looked at him for a moment before those popular expletives registered.

  Blithely, I'd said I loved to move. It would be fun. When the truck loaded our furniture and boxes for an entire day, I wondered how we ever would unpack. Sister yowled all the way from our flat, which she'd lived in always, to the new house. The bookshelves we bought—and painted three coats—did not begin to accommodate all our books. Sixty boxes were stored in the new basement. In the large living room, our sofa and chairs looked like dollhouse furniture. The men set about unpacking but I didn't know where vases and platters and paintings should go. They were left in stacks and heaps on the gorgeous new floors. We were happy with the house every step of the way. Our bedroom has a fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a balcony, tropical trees, and then, in the distance, the Pacific Ocean. I had the walls painted a color called “Sicily,” a faint shade of peach. Studies for both of us, extensive storage, a little walled garden, and a bougainvillea that must have been planted when the house was new—we were too thrilled to be overwhelmed by our dawn-to-midnight days. Ed came back from two weeks of solid work at Bramasole. Re-entry was rude. A pipe burst and the basement started to flood. He was up to his ankles in water, telephone in one hand, a box of books under the other arm. Two plumbers worked for eleven hours and finally found the leak. I travelled three times to southern California to give talks. Locally, I spoke at several events. We had a new window made for the stair landing, replacing with clear glass a pair of staring, stained-glass owls on a limb. We had a gardener hacking ivy, a reminder of buying Bramasole. The entire garage door had to be replaced. Oh, and I was teaching full time. I had ten MFA theses, classes, and meetings.

  We decided to get married. We told no one. I recalled my primitive instinct that moving is a signal that one is ready for change. I ordered two cakes from Dominique, my favorite pastry maker, we sent invitations for a housewarming to about thirty of our closest friends. Then I told Ashley and two friends. We dashed downtown for the license, which was shockingly easy to obtain. Twelve dollars, sign on the line.

  All the years after my divorce, I had avoided the subject of marriage. Even when it was clear that Ed and I would be permanently together, I'd say, “Why bother?” Or, “I'm not in the important business of raising children anymore. We're adults.” I feared my friend who said, “Marriage is the first step toward divorce.” To myself I'd say, I don't want to put my hand down on the hot burner twice. Also, I never wanted to be financially dependent ever again. My former years of writing poetry while my husband worked, I'd paid for dearly. I knew I'd never marry without stepping into it with full financial freedom. Miraculously, and thanks to my own writing hand, I felt secure.

  A carload of flowers, a big board of cheeses, strawberries, the cakes, gelato, champagne—no wedding ever was easier. Our friends arrived bearing soaps, plants, bowls, and books to warm the house. Our close friend Josephine, a licensed minister, called everyone together in the living room for a blessing of the house. We stood beside her in front of the fireplace. Ashley and Stuart stood with us. And then Josephine said, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered . . .” Our friends gasped and clapped. She talked about happiness. Ed and I read poems to each other. That was it.

  The next day we were back into unpacking boxes and changing locks and arranging insurance. But we were breaking into big smiles at the mailman, and now and then dancing in the hallway.

  Most of the arrangements for Ashley's August wedding were finished. She did well on both exams and had a paper accepted for a conference. Stuart broke away from his company and started a new business. They moved his office and hired people. He talked on the phone as we drove to restaurants. Who could cook? We were all so far beyond the beyond that we seemed calm. They brought us a grill and one night we managed to burn both steak and vegetables. Changes, changes, changes. The house looked spare but settled. We lived there two weeks. I never knew where the forks were or how the new washer worked. We'd compressed a half-year of house restoration into six weeks, thanks to our Italian training. Sister looked at us accusingly and wouldn't budge from the top of Ed's suitcase. We were searching for tax papers, having filed extensions during all the confusion. We filled in final grade sheets and cleared up our school offices. It was June. The house sitter arrived. Time to move to Italy.

  On Italian time I wake up by the sun, not by my alarm clock. In shock from the chaotic spring, I look blankly out the window. Ed has risen in the dark, only to fall asleep on the sofa. We have come back to Bramasole for summer. I wonder if we could stare into the trees without speaking to anyone for at least a week. I would like a nurse in the hallway, a silent white-uniformed presence who would bring in crescents of melon on thin plates, her pale hand soothing my forehead. The first week of June—odd, the garden is at prime bloom. Even the yellow lilies are open. The linden trees Ed and Beppe pruned in March have spread umbrellas of fresh leaves. Some roses already are waning from their first flush of flowers.

  Beppe arrives and Ed steps out barefooted and shirtless to say hello. Beppe hands him a sack. “Un coniglio per la signora, genuino.” In its seventy days on earth, the rabbit has eaten nothing but greens, salad, and bread. I look in the bag and see the head. “Put the head in sauce,” he tells me. “The meat of the face is . . .” He makes the corkscrew gesture of rotating his forefinger against his cheek, signaling a fine taste. Beppe says rain fell every day in spring and all the plants are two weeks early. The air feels heavy with moisture and it seems that I'm looking through a green lens at the wet light over the valley. He tells us he has planted the orto because Anselmo is sick again. When we call Anselmo later, he sounds weak but says he'll be well in a couple of weeks. Ed makes coffee and we lower ourselves into chairs outside in the sun, ready to let the rays restore us. We're discussing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and whether we have them.

  Primo Bianchi drives up in his battered blue Ape. As we walk down to meet him, we see him limping badly. He's dressed in pressed gray pants and loafers, not in his usual work clothes. Immediately he
sits on the wall and slips off his shoes. Even through his socks, his ankles look swollen. He grimaces every time his foot touches the ground or moves. “Gout, perhaps gout. I have not been able to work for a month. And the pills they give me are bad for my liver.”

  We are poised to finish the bathroom project we started last summer, which had to be aborted when the Sicilian tile ended up in the sea. We also plan to build a stone terrace and grill in front of the limonaia and to make a pergola of grapes, a continuation of our garden master plan. He tells us he spent the entire rainy spring reconstructing a stairwell in a palazzo. On his knees on damp brick, pouring cement and hauling—no wonder his feet rebelled. Maybe we should find someone else, he suggests. “No, no, we'll wait until you are ready,” Ed tells him. “We like your work and your men.” We're crazy about him, too. He knows how to do anything. He looks at a problem, moving his head from side to side, pondering. Then he looks at us with a smile and explains what we will do. When he works he sings tuneless songs like those I've heard on a tape of traditional Tuscan and Umbrian farm music. The songs don't seem to venture far from three or four notes endlessly repeated in a humming drone. His blue eyes have a far sadness in them which totally contrasts with his immediate smile. He hoists himself up and promises to call when he can begin.

  Although we are worried about his feet, we are ecstatic over the delay. Now a few weeks of dolce far niente, the sweet to do nothing, which we love most. It seems accidental that we keep falling into enormous projects. The sweetness of the early summer is intense. The double-time, triple-time rhythm of the past few months suddenly starts to fade and the long, long Tuscan days present themselves like gifts. Even the Mad Spring was motivated by our desire to bring a piece of our lives here to San Francisco, although at this moment that seems like bomb-the-village-to-save-the-village thinking.

  Reliving the spring, we ask each other what we could have done differently. And what can we take back to our lives in the new house? What accounts for the dramatic shift in our minds and bodies when we live here? And, in California, aren't we frequently out of control? When over-commitment kicks in, I feel my concentration start to flit. After a few days here, my scattered consciousness gradually melds, mends. Even that seems a level of happiness: the absence of anxiety. Clearly, factor one is not working at our jobs in summer. But we like teaching and must continue, so, given that, what else?

  Here, almost all media are subtracted from daily life. I notice the enormous difference immediately. The habit I have, of turning on the radio news as I drive to work, comes to mind as a destroyer of the natural rhythm of the day. Subtle, because flicking on the radio seems almost an automatic gesture, a neutral gesture. But in the half hour from my flat to the parking lot at school, drug lords are shot, children are abused by those who are supposed to protect them, car bombs go off, houses are carried off by floods, and my waking psyche has absorbed a load of the world's hurt. The bombardment of frightening, disturbing images assaults any well-being that might have accrued from a lovely night's sleep. TV probably would be worse; I rarely watch TV news except for reports of earthquakes and dire events. At school, I get out of the car already tense and not knowing why. The constant overload of recurrent horror on the news and in the papers we assume is normal until we live without it. Has any study focused on the correlation of anxiety and level of exposure to news? I read the paper here two or three times a week, enough to more than keep up with crucial events. “I'll start the day without that negative drone,” I tell Ed. “On my own terms.”

  “I do like the traffic report, though. All the words rush together; it sounds like a Dylan Thomas poem. Instead of the news, try the Bach cello suites.” He is normally not as pushed as I am because the teaching load at my university is double that at his. “Taking buckets of time back is the main thing.”

  “In the new house let's get up early and walk, the way I do here. Another way of starting out on our own terms. We could walk to the ocean.”

  “If only we could take back the siesta—free hours in the middle of the day.”

  “Wouldn't you like to call one friend and say ‘How are you?' and not hear the answer, ‘I'm so busy'?”

  “Well, ‘I'm busy' means several things—partly it means ‘I'm important.' But maybe living life is so important that we shouldn't be busy. At least not busy, busy, with that buzz-buzz sound.” Ed tells his students to figure out how many weekends they have left, given the good fortune of normal life expectancy. Even to the young it's a shock to see that there are only 2800 more. That's it. Done for. Carpe diem, sì, sì, grab the days.

  We decide on hedonism. After two days of stocking the house with essentials, planting the last annuals we can grab before the nurseries are emptied, and just breathing in the life we know so well here, we start taking long walks. The wildflowers must be at the peak of the century. All that spring rain coaxed every latent seed, and from the fire roads around the hills we see meadows knee-deep in bloom and hillsides golden with ginestre, the broom sending its scent down the breezes in rivulets. We gather strawberries the size of two-carat rubies and sit in long grass eating them. We drive around in Umbria, looking at antiques, hoping to find a desk. One shop owner tells us, “I can find anything you want; just tell me what you want.” I flash on the grandiose promises of my father when I was a child. “You can have anything in this world. Just tell me what you want.” I could never think of anything except a swimming pool, to which he'd say, “You don't want that; you just think you want that.” We travel to San Casciano dei Bagni, where the Romans bathed, and eat pigeon ravioli at the restaurant on the main street, then on to Sarteano and Cetona, with meandering drives around the blissful countryside.

  When the exhaustion we brought over finally disappears, we go up to Florence and spend the night. I must find a dress to wear to Ashley's wedding in August. Already the browns, plums, and grays of fall are on view. Ed slips easily into a fall mood and finds two soft-style sport coats. When we have shopped in Florence before, I never bought anything except shoes and handbags. Especially when Jess (Ashley's former boyfriend and now our friend) visits, Ed loves a day in the men's stores. He and Jess incite each other and I'm the spectator. Now Ed visits shop after shop with me. I'm getting used to the Italian mode of shopping. You say what you are looking for and they show you. It's a mistake just to browse through what's out, since many shops only have one size on display. The salespeople are there to be of service. The self-service we are used to is still unusual here. As soon as I say I want a dress for my daughter's wedding, everything in the shop comes forth. They understand totally that the occasion is molto importante. Most brides' mothers, I think, do not want a mother-of-the-bride dress. All the lavender lace and beige crêpe dresses designed with that in mind must go unsold. The suit I finally choose at a small shop, which makes everything especially for the customer, is orange. I never have had an orange dress in my life. It's a frosty silk orange, which requires two fittings. My sister will loan me her coral and pearl necklace. I find beautiful dull gold shoes with high heels that could kill. The wedding will be wonderful. The hitch being that I will see my former husband for the first time in years.

  Vittorio calls to invite us to a dinner on a boat. The Lago Trasimeno wine consortium has arranged for a ferry to take a group on what we used to call a “progressive dinner,” a different course in four places around the lake. We meet at Castiglione del Lago on Sunday at noon. When we arrive, glasses of prosecco and plates of bruschette with tomatoes and basil are being passed. We're given a wine glass and a pouch to wear around our necks where we can store the glass when we're not drinking. The crowd is larger than we expected. We find Vittorio and Celia, their children, and several friends of theirs. Maybe two hundred people are piling onto the ferry, with a bar set up at the entrance. People are drinking more prosecco as we pull away from the dock. I love boats and islands and the sky shifting as we ride the rises and falls of the water. We disembark on Isola Maggiore, and the hotel staff serves
us pasta with the roe of carp and baskets of excellent bread. The workers of the wine consortium of the lake area generously pour all their whites. After the pasta, there's time for a hot walk along the beach. Back on the ferry, we move farther into the lake toward Isola Polvese.

  The red wines are open. Various crostini are passed. The lake silvers under the flaring white sun. The children start to tire but a band begins to play and some people are dancing. I'm ready to go home but there is no exit. We've been gone four hours. An empty island for birds and small wildlife, Polvese has grassy beaches full of people over for the Sunday afternoon in the sun. One man spread out on a towel has turned so red he looks like an écorché, a body without skin. We troop across the island to long outdoor tables. We're served carp cooked in the style of porchetta, grilled and stuffed with herbs and salt, and also wrapped in pancetta. It's rich, meaty.

  On the boat again, I realize that the Italians have had long training for this kind of day. All the first communions, baptisms, weddings, and other feste totally prepare them for the long celebrations. We've had steady wine poured into our glasses all afternoon. Faces are glazed with sweat. The bar is popping cork after cork. The band cranks up its speakers and the singer in a slinky dress starts in on “Hey, Jude,” then speeds up to Italian rock. Suddenly everyone is dancing. The boat is swaying. Could we tip? A retarded man is dancing with his mother, grannies are swinging their hips, a man twirls his three-year-old daughter. The drummer announces a soccer score into the microphone and everyone jumps up and shouts so loud I think the boat will sink. We disembark again at Passignano for dessert. Children turn cranky. But back on board the wine keeps pouring, spinach and cheese crêpes are passed around, and we enter our eighth straight hour of eating and drinking.