It was the second hour of math, and Elisa decided to abandon paying attention. The numbers refused to behave. No matter how much she squinted her eyes or pushed her temples or bit her tongue, understanding danced teasingly out of reach. Her brothers had drilled her on basic math functions until she could do simple calculations. Beyond these, she was in the dark. The teacher wrote an equation with a decimal point on the board, and though Elisa, like all the children, copied down the information dutifully with her blue pen, she allowed her mind to roam, imagining a castle inhabited by birds wearing fanny packs, pecking at decorative towers of birdseed.
The flutter of umbrella pines whispered, pulling her gaze through the window. Chin on her hand, she could practically feel the breeze caress her skin as she imagined dancing with clouds. The fog, sweet and cool, swirled around her, enveloping her, until she felt coddled and safe, insulated from the world. The music was the music of stars, high and clear. The air smelled of ice caps and the underside of stones and the trails of stars, blazing across the sky.
An alley cat leapt onto the window ledge, startling Elisa out of her reverie.
“Oh!” She jumped in her seat, knocking over her papers. A quick survey of the room revealed that her quaderno lacked the large sections copied in red pen that her fellow students had filled in their notes.
Her heart sank into the silence that followed her yelp.
“Elisa!” shouted the teacher.
“Sì, Professore?” answered Elisa, hoping the term of respect would buy her some mercy.
“Come here. Bring your notebook.”
It did not appear to buy her any mercy whatsoever.
Hoping to delay the inevitable, Elisa slowly leaned to pick up her quaderno. The teacher barked, “Now!” and Elisa flinched.
She scooped up the notebook, furtively trying to push the papers back into the leaves. Papers she once again wished she had remembered to organize and glue in last night. Elisa placed the notebook into the teacher’s outstretched hand, and a ruler came down hard, across her wrist. The teacher quickly flipped through the papers, and with an aggrieved sigh and a roll of his eyes, he pointed at the notes on today’s lesson.
“Look at this! Half of your numbers are still facing the wrong way! You are far too old for this babyish habit, Elisa. I’ve been trying to get you to learn this since first grade! Are you an imbecile?”
Elisa seethed. Yes, she used to write her numbers backward. But she had worked at it, and now only the 3’s were backward, and that only when she was in a hurry. Or not paying attention.
“You will stand in the corner, so everyone can see what happens to students who hold up the class with their unwillingness to learn. Move, Elisa. Avanti!”
Elisa’s cheeks flushed as she stumbled. She wanted to ask if her maestro would be calling her mother. She needed to prepare, to get her mother out of the house again. Her teacher shoved the notebook back at her.
“You think I want this garbage? Take your ‘notebook’.”
Elisa reached for her quaderno, but failed to make contact with it before the teacher released it to the floor in a flurry of papers. Elisa could hardly see as her eyes swam with tears. Suddenly she noticed another set of hands brushing the papers into a neat pile. Elisa looked up and saw the new girl, the one from Morocco—Alina? Salina?—on her knees carefully collecting the loose sheets. The girl looked into Elisa’s eyes and gave a sympathetic smile. Papers gathered, she handed the notebook back to Elisa. Who took it.
Hundreds of rolling hills away, in what Romans would tell you is the unassailable birthplace of the civilized world, fourteen men and one woman rose in unison from the long, gleaming table to stretch and organize lunch plans. Massimo flicked his wrist forward and back to expose his watch’s face and calculated. If he called now, would he wake Margherita from her afternoon repose? Imagining her petulant expression when wrested from sleep, he decided not to risk it. He’d see her when he got home. Turning toward the door, he almost stumbled into the lone woman, slowly arranging papers in her folio.
“Did everyone leave?” he asked. Isotta, he suddenly remembered her name.
She looked up, surprised at being addressed. “Yes. I think they all went to Leo’s. If you want to catch up with them.”
Massimo considered. Another hour discussing bank business sounded deadly dull. He studied Isotta, realizing his gaze had slid over the one person in the room not wearing shoulder pads. Now, he narrowed his eyes, as she took her time placing pens in the correct slot of her briefcase and zipping her folio. His breath caught. Her features lack conventional beauty, perhaps, but had a certain quality. A shadow briefly clouded his vision before he impulsively said, “Leo’s will be crowded. I’d like to unwind a bit before diving back into it. I’ll find someplace quieter, if you’d care to join me?”
Isotta’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. She fought the urge to peer over her shoulder at the person Massimo must be addressing. It seemed impossible that he meant that slow smile for her. On a good day she might be the recipient of a man’s jocular bump on the shoulder, but no more than that, and certainly by no one like Massimo. She bit her lip and wondered if he was joking. As he waited patiently for a response, she decided that he must simply be friendly. Her heart beat too fervently for caution. “Sure,” she said, shrugging on her coat.
“Great,” Massimo said, straightening her coat collar before nestling his hand at the small of her back to steer her past the chairs left in disarray around the table. “Bankers,” he joked. “So careful in every way except the state of a room when they leave it.”
Massimo’s sense of humor was not as polished as his appearance. Then again, we don’t exactly expect Dolce & Gabbana models to send a room into spasms of laughter. Massimo’s good neighbors never mentioned it; perhaps that’s the wisest course of action.
Isotta laughed nervously, trying not to focus on the way her skin seemed to melt under Massimo’s touch. She hoped that he wouldn’t feel the sudden heat through her polyester knit dress and her light wool coat.
They walked toward the elevator, and Massimo’s hand slipped off her back. Did Isotta imagine that he brushed against her hip a little longer than necessary before letting his arm swing in time to his walk? He gestured her into the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor before asking, “Any place you like in the neighborhood?”
“No, actually this is my first time in Rome.”
Massimo paused as he exited the elevator, “It is? How can that be?”
Isotta smiled. “Strange, I know. But I grew up in Florence, and Florentines never think there is an adequate reason to leave the region. And my promotion is recent, so I’m only now invited to these meetings.”
“But you must have gone for a school gita. A trip to see the Colosseo? I can’t believe you’ve never been here.”
“There was a school trip, that’s true. I think, two? But I didn’t go.”
“Why not?”
Isotta knew it was a nosy question, but it was impossible to be affronted when she looked up into Massimo’s face and saw his eyes crinkled in concern. She focused on not stumbling down the steps to the sidewalk to give herself time to answer. “Well, my parents lost the permission form.”
“They lost the form? More than once?”
“That probably makes them sound like bad people. They aren’t. I’m the youngest of five, and my sisters kept my mother busy, and anyway she never really recovered from the last miscarriage.” Isotta stopped herself. “I’m sorry, that’s probably far more than you wanted to know.” Her face flushed. Talking about miscarriages in front of this man with movie star good looks. Her foolishness knew no bounds.
Massimo reached for her hand to stop her from walking. When Isotta rallied her courage to look up at him, he gazed at her and used one finger to move a stray tendril of blond hair from her cheek to behind her ear. “I asked,” he said,
simply. Isotta nodded and smoothed her dress over her hips. She tried to force out a nonchalant laugh, as she’d seen girls do on the street, but it came out as more of a gasp. Coughing to cover the strange set of noises emanating distressingly from her throat, Isotta started walking. Far too aware that Massimo still held her hand.
“Well, my novice traveler,” Massimo said with a grin, “It is my duty to make sure this first trip to Rome is a good one.”
“Are you here a lot?”
“Just for meetings. I discovered this excellent trattoria on the next block a few years ago. It’s not elegant, but it is a comfortable place to eat, and the chef makes a worthwhile plate of gnocchi on Thursdays.”
“That sounds perfect.”
They walked in silence, still hand in hand, until Massimo gestured to the restaurant and broke contact to open the door for her. As she passed him, she imagined she felt his gaze on her back. As a realist, Isotta knew that plain might be the best word to describe her, but she’d worked at her figure and dressed to highlight her assets. Her cropped coat, for instance, flared at the waist. She flushed at the possibility that Massimo might like what he saw. That self-conscious glow suffused her features, and as she sat down she had no idea how ethereal she looked—blond hair floating around her shoulders, large blue eyes that were usually hooded now open and bright, drawing attention toward her burnished complexion and away from the nose that she knew was a bit too large and the chin that she knew was a bit too small. As Massimo sat down across from her, he thought that she looked like a Renaissance angel.
Isotta beamed at him and their gaze held. The waiter noted the quiet intensity of the moment and moved away with their menus, resolving to drop them on their table when the spell broke. All thought fled from Isotta’s skittering brain. She was lost, drowning in the blissful sea created by this potent, intangible contact. Finally, Massimo reached for Isotta’s hand, and she slipped her fingers between his. When he pressed his other hand over hers, she felt an explosion of warmth low in her belly.
Finally Massimo arched one eyebrow and suggestively whispered, “Do gnocchi sound good?”
Isotta laughed, not nervously this time, but full-throated. Yes, gnocchi sounded very good indeed.
Magda grumbled as she hefted her bags from the macelleria counter. Yes, Giuseppe the butcher had saved her the capon as he’d promised, but he had failed to implement even one of the suggestions she’d made to increase tourist traffic. Seething, she’d once again pointed out that making a sign that advertised his famous porchetta, sandwiches stuffed with rolled and roasted pork, thick with herbs, would draw in new visitors. Who would undoubtedly also purchase the vacuum-packed salami and glass containers of special, locally made grape jam or tartufata sauce of olives, mushrooms, and truffles. Yes, especially the tartufata. Tourists went bananas for anything with truffles in it, even the old and woody stuff, or the infinitesimal pinch of truffles added to rancid olive oil and touted as “truffle oil.” Add a sign for the dumbos who couldn’t connect tartufata to truffle, and he could be raking in euros.
Giuseppe laughed off her advice, as usual, and tried to change the subject. As usual. Magda had noticed a chill descend over the patrons waiting for him to grind beef or slice prosciutto.
How infuriating, she thought, as she looked up into the sky now gaining clarity, the fog evaporating.
Why work so hard to bring in tourist dollars if the whole town fought her at every turn?
They were all stuck in the old ways. As an outsider, she could see the potential for this storybook village. But she would never keep her rental apartments as full as they should be, and therefore she would never make the money she deserved, if TripAdvisor only showed a handful of establishments and attractions.
That castle. If only she could persuade the town council to restore it. The Duke’s family owned it on paper, but in reality it belonged to the townspeople who sneaked into its ghost-lined walls for a spot of adventure or as a destination for furtive lovemaking away from prying eyes. Yes, she’d seen evidence of that when she sneaked in herself and poked around. She had also noticed the pile of dirty brocade in a corner of the room with the cavernous fireplace still littered with ashes. She’d run her hands along the long dining table and wondered why it had never been stolen. She’d roamed from room to room, examining the brackets for candles and the tumbled pile of what looked like charred remains of a canopy bed. No amount of reading had revealed to her the secrets tucked deep within the walls of the dilapidated castle. Yes, she had learned the publicly sanctioned stories about the Duke and his wars. But she wanted to know when it all went wrong, when the family legacy twisted back on itself. She had heard a smattering of gossip about how and why the castle was abandoned, but the stories didn’t make sense. She was sure there’d be more information about the last in the ducal line if he’d really left Santa Lucia in order to pursue his career as an Olympic fencer.
The castle could be a real draw into this backwater town. More than once she had seen tourists picnicking on the grounds. They must assume it to be public property. Indeed, Lorenzo, the town gardener, did keep the grass short and the bushes pruned on his own time. And she’d seen Ava, the florist’s daughter, planting yellow flowers around its crumbling walls. She wondered if Ava was responsible for keeping the wisteria tidy. It must be somebody, or else the vine would have taken over the whole building by now. As it was, a well-formed cascade of grape-smelling flowers covered the west wall, as well as the arbor that lined the walkway between the main building and the kitchens.
It really was a treasure, that castle. If only she could capitalize on its antique charm.
Magda sighed and continued down the shaded alley to her apartment.
Chiara returned from wiping down the tables on the terrazza.
“The wind’s picking up. Autumn is around the corner.”
Edoardo looked up from rearranging the pastries in the case to make the display appear fuller. “Already? Didn’t the students just return to school?”
“Sì, but nonetheless, there is a cool edge to the breeze. Summer is over.”
“Well, it’s about time, the heat destroys my hair.” Edoardo waggled his eyebrows at Chiara, who grinned.
“Edo, there is so much product in your hair, I’m pretty sure a land mine wouldn’t budge it.”
Edoardo snorted a quiet laugh. Chiara patted him affectionately on the shoulder. “Caro, why don’t you take a break. Go for a passeggiata.”
“I’m okay. I don’t need a break.”
Chiara studied the boy. Was the fight this morning so painful? Why didn’t he want to go? “Sure you do. What young man wants to be cooped up all day with his spinster aunt. Now go!”
“You’re not exactly a spinster.”
“Oh, two different words for the same pasta. Now vai!” Chiara spun her drying towel into a whip and snapped it at her nephew. When Edo still hesitated, Chiara lowered her voice and added, seriousness tinging the apparent lightness of her words, “I need to call your father. I’m more likely to bungle it if I have an audience.”
Edoardo chewed his lower lip. He nodded and took off his apron slowly. “Okay if I take a few euros for a gelato?”
“At the wages I pay you? I’m lucky you aren’t robbing me blind.”
“Grazie, Chiara.” Edoardo opened the register and took out a few coins. Dropping the money into his pocket, he moved to press his stubbled cheek against Chiara’s, then strode purposely toward the door. For a brief instant, he stood silhouetted against the light. Tall and lean, hands on his hips, his head turned in profile, he gazed down the street. Chiara watched her nephew stand in thought. As a baby, he had lacked the snub nose and baby roundness of her other nieces and nephews. In fact, she’d wondered if he would ever grow into his deep set eyes, long nose, and full lips. He certainly had. Backlit, his features appeared almost carved. He was a beautiful boy.
A s
urge in sunshine left Chiara momentarily blinded. She pressed her hands against her eyelids. When she looked up, the doorway stood empty.
She sighed and took the phone out from under the counter. Rolling her head from shoulder to shoulder, she took in a shuddering breath, and dialed. “Filippo? It’s me.”
“Chiara? What’s going on? Did something happen to Edo?”
“No, no. Edo is out for a walk.” She paused. “He told me about the fight.”
“What exactly did he tell you?”
“Not much. Just that.”
“Oh.”
“And that you asked him to leave.”
Silence.
“Filippo?”
“I’m here. I don’t know what to do. I know I shouldn’t have threatened him, but his mother is beside herself, and it got out of control.”
Chiara nodded, forgetting Filippo couldn’t see her. He went on, “Besides, what business is this of yours?”
“We’re family.”
“So? That doesn’t give you the right to pry like nonna used to. That bar isn’t a license to insert your opinion.”
“I didn’t give you an opinion.”
“Oh. What do you want then?”
Chiara took a breath, her eyes flitting to the door. Ava hesitated outside, and then seemed to change her mind, probably when she realized Edo wasn’t in. Not for the first time, Chiara wished Edo would notice how sweet Ava was on him. She watched Ava walk away, head tipped back to catch the sunshine. “I want Edo to live with me.”
“Live with you? What do you know about being a mother?”
A pause. “Uncalled for, Filippo.”
Another pause. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not pretending to be his mother. There’s no part of me that wants to be his mother. But I am his aunt, and your sister. You all need some space from each other, and I have all this room.”
Book One of the Santa Lucia Series Page 3