“You came all the way here to say that to me? That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever done. I love you too. I was probably a pest when I was a kid. I always thought you were so cool and so smart and I wanted to be just like you, but you’re way smarter than I am, so I got married and had babies instead. I could never do what you do. And maybe Mom just thinks my father was a saint because he’s dead,” she said, and wiped her eyes.
“I’m going to see Theo when I leave here. But I wanted to visit you first, before the twins come and all hell breaks loose. You’ll be so busy.” She nodded as Gregorio walked through the room and was visibly surprised to see them there, and smiled at his wife in the superior way he had.
“You’re not cooking dinner tonight?” Xela didn’t see why she should have to, but she held her tongue.
“Your mother sent over a pesto lasagna,” Oona answered him with a loving smile. “So I’m off the hook.”
“You are a very, very spoiled young woman,” he said, smiling at her. “That was very nice of my mother,” he said and Oona agreed with him. Xela thought she was a saint. She chased her children around all day, waited on her husband hand and foot, cooked three meals a day for them, and he expected her to make dinner two weeks before she gave birth to twins, and was “spoiled” if she got a night off from cooking dinner. It made Xela angry for her.
“The men in this family are treated like princes all their lives,” Oona whispered when he left the room again.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for marriage, in this country anyway,” Xela said, smiling.
“I love our family life, though. Families here stick together. We’re so spread out, it must be kind of sad to be in New York as the only one now. And I’m sure it’s lonely for Mom. In Italy, families stay together forever, maybe a little too much so, but I like it. There’s a mother and a father, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts and cousins. I missed that growing up.”
“I don’t think I did,” Xela said. “It would drive me crazy to have all those people around.”
“Well, sometimes it does me too.” Oona smiled. “But I’m used to it now. And Italian men are all like Gregorio. He’s no worse than his brothers. They’re all spoiled.”
They chatted for a while, and Xela followed Oona into the kitchen and helped her set the table, and a little while later, the boys came in with the babysitter, and Gregorio appeared, and offered Xela some wine from their vineyards. They sat down together, and his mother’s lasagna was delicious. They had salad and cheese with it, vegetables from their gardens, and fruit salad for dessert. It was a perfect evening meal. And afterward, Oona put the boys to bed, and Xela went to her room to unpack.
Oona came to visit her when the boys were asleep and thanked her for what she had said earlier. She felt like she had a new sister. The cancer had definitely changed her, and had shaken Xela severely and woken her up. And as long as it didn’t get worse, it almost seemed like a good thing.
They all went to bed early, and the next morning, Oona looked more tired than she had the day before. She got the two older boys off to school after she cooked breakfast, went out to the dairy to ask about some of their cheeses, checked on something in the barn, got the meal started for when Gregorio and the boys came home for lunch. She was constantly in motion, and Xela was exhausted just watching her.
“Don’t you ever stop?”
“Not till I go to bed at night,” she said happily. “And we go to parties in Florence and Siena sometimes when I’m not this pregnant. It’s a little late now.”
She cooked dinner herself that night, a leg of lamb from a French cookbook, and Gregorio didn’t like it, so she made him something else. He expected pasta at every meal, although it didn’t show. He was very trim and athletic. After dinner, he went to visit one of his brothers. Oona sank down on the couch in the living room then stood up to get something, and as she did, she suddenly found herself standing in the middle of a lake with a startled expression.
“What is that?” Xela said quickly, looking around for what had spilled or sprung a leak. It was her sister.
“My water just broke. We’d better call Gregorio. He wants me to have the twins in Florence, and all the others came very fast.” Xela looked panicked, and Oona called her husband and he came home twenty minutes later. Oona’s bag was packed, and she was ready to go. “Will you come with me?” she asked Xela, who nodded, not sure what else to say. She was much more nervous than her baby sister about the birth, having never seen one, and Oona had been through it three times, though never with twins.
Oona told the nanny they were leaving, and they followed Gregorio out to his car, a four-door Maserati. Xela got into the back seat, and Oona next to her husband. Gregorio hit the gas like he was in a Grand Prix race.
“Is the baby going to come that fast?” Xela asked, hanging on for dear life in the back.
“No, he always drives like this,” Oona said with a grin. “This is slower than usual for him.” Gregorio ignored them, kept his foot on the accelerator, and took every curve at full speed, while Xela tried not to scream.
By the time they reached Florence just over an hour later, Oona had started having contractions. She could hardly walk when they pulled up in front of the hospital. Gregorio looked relaxed and smiled at them both. He had enjoyed the drive. They walked into the hospital together, and Gregorio said he was going to get a cup of coffee while they checked her in. A nurse offered Oona a wheelchair, and Xela followed them to an exam room while Oona undressed between contractions. They were getting significantly worse. She spoke to the nurse in Italian, and Xela could figure out that the nurse responded that the doctor would be there soon.
“I think the twins are in a hurry,” Oona said to her sister as they waited alone in the room. “They’re pushing really hard.” But they had gotten quiet, and weren’t battling with each other at least. Oona looked pale then, hobbled to the bathroom, and threw up.
“Should I ring for a nurse?” Xela asked, panicked and feeling useless.
“No, I’m okay,” she said, and Xela helped her back to bed, wondering when Gregorio would return. It was a lot more dramatic than Xela was used to, but Oona was a practiced hand at this. The only thing that frightened her was delivering twins.
Xela watched her as the contractions continued to get worse at a rapid rate, and she was visibly in agony when the nurse came in to check her and Oona asked for the doctor again. The nurse told her that he was at dinner but would be back shortly. And Oona gave a little scream when the nurse checked her.
“She doesn’t believe me, but I swear I’m having them now,” she said to Xela through clenched teeth.
“Please don’t,” Xela begged her. “Wait for the doctor. I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never even had puppies.” Oona laughed despite the pain and then grimaced. And with that Gregorio walked in, looking like the cover of a men’s fashion magazine. Xela always forgot how handsome he was. He made a face as he looked around.
“My God, what an ugly room. Couldn’t they give us a better one? Where’s the doctor?”
“At dinner,” Xela told him, and he went to the nursing desk and made a scene and within minutes there were nurses scurrying everywhere. A young doctor came in to see Oona, who said the twins were pushing down hard. He looked, and they could see he was panicked. Oona was right.
“If this were a hotel, they’d be out of business,” Gregorio said grandly. But it wasn’t, Xela wanted to point out, and her sister was about to give birth. “I’m sure the food is terrible too,” he added, as Oona started to cry. Gregorio finally came to his senses, and the doctor walked in, and told her not to push, and she said she had to, as Gregorio looked wild-eyed and Oona grabbed his arm.
“Don’t leave me. I need you,” she said, and for once Xela knew just how he felt, terrified, and she didn’t blame him. Everything was moving quickly. And a moment later, t
hey were pushing Oona down the hall at full speed on a gurney with Xela and Gregorio running along beside her, and he looked deathly pale.
Xela glanced over at him. “Are you okay?” He nodded and Oona looked angrily at her sister.
“Why are you asking him if he’s okay? I’m having the babies,” she corrected her, but Xela thought he was going to faint, and she wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t. Oona was a lot braver than either of them.
A nurse gave them both chairs next to Oona’s head as they settled her on the delivery table, in stirrups, and the doctor tried to maneuver the babies into a better position for them to follow each other, as Oona screamed at the manipulations and clutched Gregorio’s arm and begged him to stop them, as all three of them cried. It was awful and much worse than Xela had expected, and she hadn’t planned to be there. Oona never stopped screaming as the first baby moved slowly down and the doctor had her push through the never-ending contractions. It seemed like hours, but was only about forty-five minutes of intolerable agony for Oona, and a little face appeared as they heard a cry. The doctor held the baby up, tapped him gently on the back, and it was easy to see it was a boy as Gregorio swelled with pride, and bent to kiss his wife.
“You are fantastic and I love you,” he said through tears of pride and joy, but she only had a moment’s respite as the contractions continued. She had to push again, and the second twin had shifted into a sideways position and wouldn’t move. Gregorio was distracted by his newest son, and Oona screamed as they tried to edge the baby into a better position and couldn’t for a long time, until the doctor finally declared victory. Gregorio was holding the first twin, and Oona was clutching Xela’s hands.
“I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…” she kept saying as Xela tried to get her to focus.
“Yes, you can. I know you can,” they all shouted and told her to push, as the second baby, bigger than the first, finally emerged with a last scream from Oona, and tears ran down Xela’s cheeks as the doctor said “It’s a girl!” and both sisters grinned. There was silence from Gregorio for a moment as he looked as though someone had said the baby was Chinese.
“A girl? Are you sure?” The doctor laughed at the question.
“Quite sure.” They cleaned her up, put her in a pink blanket, and handed her to her mother. Each parent was holding one of the twins, a boy and a girl. They had arrived at the hospital two hours earlier, and labor had barely started when they left Castellina in Chianti. Xela felt as though they had been there for a month. It was the hardest thing she’d ever seen, and it didn’t make her long for a baby, but filled her with respect for her sister for going through so much pain, for the fourth time in five years, and this time with twins. And it hadn’t been an easy delivery, even though it was fast. The nurse who had weighed them announced that they were each just over eight pounds. Oona had been carrying sixteen pounds of baby. Most twins weighed half that.
“My wife is born to have children,” Gregorio said proudly and bent to kiss her again. Xela thought he owed her far more than that for what she had just gone through, but Oona looked ecstatic holding her new daughter, and gazed adoringly at her husband holding their son. Xela only hoped she didn’t go through it too many more times. She couldn’t imagine how she did it.
He handed the baby boy to one of the nurses a few minutes later and told Oona he was going to call his mother, which she knew meant that all his brothers and sisters and his mother would be in her room within the hour. She was familiar with all of it and didn’t mind.
“You’re my hero,” Xela said when he left the room, and Oona looked at her, exhausted but victorious.
“I’m happy, Xellie,” she reassured her. “I love him.”
“You’re a hero for that too,” Xela said and Oona laughed.
“It’ll be good for him to have a girl. She’ll wrap him around her little finger.”
“I hope so,” Xela said and sat down, feeling weak. She had been through her own trials recently, which were a lot less joyous than twins. They called their mother on Xela’s cellphone then, to tell her she had a new grandson and finally a granddaughter. It was six P.M. in New York, and Isabelle had been reading. Jack had just left. She was delighted at the news and happy to know that Xela was with her. She said it had been hard but Oona had been incredibly brave, and Isabelle couldn’t believe how big the babies were.
She was up and dressed when Jack came to work the next morning and she told him the news.
“Congratulations. How was Xela?” he asked her after inquiring about Oona and the twins.
“Shocked, I think. Watching twins delivered can’t be easy. But I’m glad for Oona that she was there. It’s nice knowing the girls are together. I’ll go over in a few weeks, when Oona is back on her feet and it’s less chaotic. She has enough to deal with, with his family.” Isabelle went back upstairs to work then, and Jack joined her a little while later. He had seen the appointment on her calendar. She was going to the eye doctor that day, since Xela was away and she had time.
“Am I coming with you?” he asked her pointedly and she hesitated.
“Do you really want to?”
“Yes. I don’t see why you should go alone. I want to be there.”
“That’s above and beyond the call of duty,” she reminded him.
“So are most things in life,” he said and she smiled at him.
They left the house together in time for her appointment, and he came into the exam room with her and held her hand. It was painful, as it had been before, but seemed less so with Jack to talk to and provide some distraction. And she thanked him when they left the doctor’s office.
“I feel guilty dragging you through that,” she said, feeling embarrassed.
“I volunteered. Believe me, I’ve seen worse.” She smiled at him and they took a cab uptown. And for the rest of the afternoon they went through catalogues together. She pointed out why she liked certain paintings for their clients and not others. He found it fascinating, and he was always impressed by how knowledgeable she was. She was a remarkable woman, and in her opinion, he was an exceptional friend.
Chapter Seventeen
In Xela’s opinion, her visit to Oona in time to see the babies born had been a great success. She was there for a week. Oona stayed at the hospital in Florence for five days, while dozens of visitors, mostly Gregorio’s relatives, came to see her every day. And Xela left the day she went home. She had told her what she wanted to say, and they enjoyed some loving close moments while she was there. Xela was still in awe of what she’d seen during the birth of the twins. Gregorio had been pouring champagne and handing out cigars ever since, and he gave Oona a pair of Bulgari diamond bangle bracelets to thank her for their two beautiful new children, Paola and Nicola. It still stunned Xela that her sister was the mother of five children and had only recently turned twenty-seven. She promised to visit them again soon. And Gregorio thanked her for being at the birth. It even created a slightly warmer bond with him, although she recognized now that he would always be what he was. He was part of a culture which fostered both his machismo and his narcissism, and no one could stem the tides of that. Oona loved and accepted him without reserve, so Xela had to do the same, for her sake. It wouldn’t be fair to make waves for her. Gregorio embraced Xela warmly when she left, which was a first.
She flew from Florence to New Delhi, and from there drove for six hours with a car and driver to Chandpur in the Bijnor District in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Theo was establishing the small hospital she had dedicated herself to. Xela was impressed when she saw it and how at ease her sister was in primitive conditions with few comforts and no luxuries. It was a sacrifice she was happy to make for the common good, and the people she served. There was a commissary tent where they served free meals to the locals, who were indigent, and in desperate need of medicine and food. She had warned Theo that she was coming, and Theo was startled
that she was coming so soon after her surgery. She was afraid that it meant Xela was sicker than their mother admitted or even knew. She was terrified she had come to say goodbye. They didn’t get along, but they were still sisters, and Theo didn’t want to lose her.
“What really brought you all the way here?” Theo questioned her with a look of concern the day after she arrived, and she said the same to her that she had to Oona, except that she owed Theo more of an apology and told her why.
“I’ve been cruel and unkind to you all my life, consumed with jealousy of who you are and what you have.” Theo was as shocked as Oona had been, but also deeply touched by Xela’s humble admission.
“Now I’m even more worried about you,” Theo said seriously. “Mom said you had stage one breast cancer. She didn’t tell me it had gone to your brain,” she teased her with a wry expression. “Who are you, and what did you do with my sister?”
“Oh, shut up,” Xela said to her and they jostled each other as they had as children and then laughed. They hadn’t enjoyed each other in years, if ever.
Xela stayed with her for a week, and they had a wonderful time together. Theo showed her everything she was doing there, and introduced her to a team of doctors who had come from London to help them, and were staying for several months.
Xela teased her about it later, having noticed that the head of the team had a marked interest in her older sister, and she asked Theo about it before she left. His name was Geoffrey Bates. His father was a member of the House of Lords and Geoffrey was very upper crust, but he liked the rigors of their barren outpost as much as she did, and had just come from a similar setup in Zambia, which Theo was planning to visit with him to see how it worked.
“I see Dr. Bates has a definite weakness for my big sister,” Xela said with a quizzical look.
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