Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  Susan, always up front, interrupts. “What about Chris? He’s quite cool. And he seems completely at home in the world. Are you liking him a lot?”

  Julia laughs. “A faint tingling in the long-dead extremities? I think so. What an odd sensation. Sitting in the bar with him, I had an image of us walking down a street together in some Italian city. Just walking, shoulder to shoulder. And it seemed right.

  “Would I have an affair at this point? Why not? But probably we’ll be friends.” She found herself hoping instead for the affair. A romantic villa hotel with fine linens, a view over a stubbly winter vineyard, and…She tried to envision Chris in a hotel terry robe running a bath in a big marble tub, but she laughs instead. “I lived with this grinding pain, like a dentist’s drill constantly in my head. You can’t think of anything else with a drill running. That’s gone. The relief is hard to describe. The noise has stopped, for now anyway. Today, I even felt a slight forgiving toward Wade. Still a there stands Jackson like a stone wall toward Lizzie, though.” She ripped her life and ours, Julia thinks. No words can get at the pity and betrayal and violence. And if my head is a handful of shards, hers must be ground to dust.

  “You’re moving forward now. It’s all good.” Susan clears the table.

  Camille pauses with the last of her wine, and Julia looks at their reflections shimmering in the window. “Yes, all good. Thanks to you two.”

  * * *

  —

  Susan brought home from town three new garden books. Camille builds a fire in the living room. After Susan brews a pot of orange-scented tea, the three of them settle for the evening with their books. Camille is reading Elena Ferrante in English, with the original Italian version beside her. Every now and then she reads a few sentences in Italian, her lips forming the difficult sentence constructions. Julia goes upstairs to give herself a manicure, though olive picking surely will stain her coral nails again tomorrow. Chris will bring his group for a couple of hours. He offered to provide good prosecco. Soon, new oil will anoint everything.

  Julia thinks, The years, the years of not looking forward. Now, what luck.

  Susan tosses another log on the fire and passes a book to Camille. “Look at this garden—La Foce. Let’s go there. They’re open on Wednesdays.”

  Camille thumbs through the pages. “That’s the home of Iris Origo. She wrote a strong memoir, War in the Val d’Orcia. I’m ready.”

  Colin is up early, at his desk, facing a thousand items to verify on the hotel project in Florence. From the design vantage, he’s finished, but he must check on the builder’s progress tomorrow. We’ll go together and I’ll walk around town and visit the Strozzi museum while he works, and then we’ll have a free evening for a dinner along the Arno and our favorite hotel. Time for the big reveal. I feel that I have two heads and no one notices. How can he not know? Well, I didn’t know either.

  Strange that Camille noticed something. Yesterday, we walked over to Villa Assunta to see how the olive harvest was going. We have only fifty trees so we were done, thank god, the olives already taken to the mill by Fabio, who helps us. Tomorrow we’ll pick up our fifty liters, more or less, and be set for the year.

  Julia’s new friends were imbibing and toasting. Chris seemed smitten with Julia, following her movements with doglike attention. She spread her glory around all of us but I did notice her hand linger on his sleeve when she handed him a glass. She’s a bright light and obviously he’s into her. I wonder if she is surprised.

  Colin met everyone for the first time. I’m not sure he knew which women were at the villa and which were with Chris. Camille was next to me at the table and as everyone toasted she leaned close and said, “You all right? Would you like some prosecco?”

  “Yes, I’m great. I’m fine with water.”

  “You look pale. I don’t know you well, of course, but you look, um, not yourself.”

  “I’m absolutely fine, maybe a bit bushed from the olive picking. Thank you for the concern, though.” I wanted to grab her arm and say, What the hell should I do? Or lean into her shoulder and weep. But she doesn’t know me or Colin. Instead, I told everyone about what happens at the mill and how healthy the new oil is when it’s fresh.

  A whole murmuration of women, enthusiastic about Italy. Overflowing with a zeal I recognize and still feel in quick flares, although not for the olive harvest. It’s fun to dabble for a couple of mornings and to enjoy the camaraderie, but if you’re responsible, it’s damned hard work hour after hour with your arms up, your face sometimes whipped by wind. Even with our quick raccolta, my fingers are stiff. I was very careful on the ladder. (Baby on board.)

  Unlike most visitors, Susan has fallen hard for this late October ritual. She stayed out all day and will go with the men to the mill to watch the whole process. Grazia has given her a giant plastic container for a supply of house oil, and Julia bought glass bottles to transfer the oil into as soon as they have it. Camille wonders if she possibly can capture that particular green on paper. “It’s limpid. Not really the color of anything else. Not celery, kale, not asparagus. It’s not like a green light or a Coca-Cola bottle or moss. Oh, maybe close to a dollar bill?”

  Because I know that everyone loves poetry, even if they don’t think so, I raised a toast with my cup of water and misquoted a bit of García Lorca, who knew something about the virescent color:

  Green, how I want you green.

  Green wind, green branches.

  Big hoarfrost stars

  come with the fish of shadow

  that opens the road of dawn.

  The olive tree rubs its wind

  with the sandpaper of its branches,

  My friend, where is she—tell me

  where is your bitter girl?

  Who will come? And from where?

  Green, how I want you green…

  Colin looked at me with a frown; he knows the poem I’ve mangled. Lorca didn’t even write “olive tree.” His tree was fig. He smiled, shaking his head. “That’s my girl. Now we know what green is.” Everyone clapped and the prosecco went around again.

  * * *

  —

  As we walked uphill, Colin threw his arm around me and nuzzled my neck. What solace, his natural-born tropical scent. “What’s up, poetry girl? Something bothering you? You seemed emotional when you were holding forth with the green poem.”

  “There’s something to talk about, yes.”

  How did he pick up some trouble ion from my quote? “I should know your sharp radar by now. Later, we’ll talk, okay?”

  “Whatever you want to say, I’m always listening.”

  I couldn’t say, Oh, nothing to stress about, since I don’t know that. He may totally freak. I’m worried, but then I always am. Don’t be a worrywart, my mother used to admonish me. How can you not? Many awful things happen. Will he be stony and accepting? I know him perfectly, down to his curved-in little toe that looks like a tiny shrimp. (Worry: from the Old English wyrgan, strangle. It’s not that serious, is it?)

  Whatever he says, whatever he wants, whatever he doesn’t say, he always will remember this breaking news. In Florence, leaning on the Santa Trìnita bridge watching the jagged palazzo reflections in the Arno at dawn? Over dessert at our favorite trattoria where we ordered fried calamari the first night we met? Knee-to-knee on the train with the autumn countryside speeding by?

  “We have a year. More if we want! Are you just flabbergasted, as I am, that we get to do this?” Susan speeds into the dips and curves toward La Foce, overtaking tractors on the narrow road with a friendly wave of her hand. They have an appointment at eleven, confirmed by the daughter of Iris Origo, to see the writer’s garden. Susan, if they get there, will lap up every square inch of the elegant plan. Italian gardens, based on pots and geometry and pergolas and water features, are a new concept for her, totally upending her English-oriented ideas
of garden rooms and high-maintenance perennial borders—so casual in appearance but beastly to maintain. They’re driving into the barren Val d’Orcia, a vast expanse of undulating hills relieved by cypress-lined roads, strips of feathery poplar windbreaks, fields of plowed brown earth patchworked with other fields of crushed brown sunflower stalks and cover crops of clover—a landscape of subtraction, but still inviting. She swerves off the road. “Let’s get out. Camille, you should have an easel. Look at this!”

  “I’m not up to painting a landscape this grand; I should stick with my still lifes. Maybe I could manage that white road down there, the one bordered by cypresses.”

  “Tuscany is beginning to seem like one big garden,” Julia says.

  * * *

  —

  Susan is enchanted with the bones of the autumn garden. Formal boxwood hedges and borders are planted extensively, but the garden is not rigid. The young English guide points out what’s not here right now—the peonies, allium, roses, and, of course, the wisteria the garden is famous for. “What I like best in gardens,” Susan says, “is all over this place—the element of surprise! Step through the opening in the hedge and there’s a fountain or a statue. Look, campanula creeping into the cracks of a stone wall and little sedums popping up on porous stone steps. Low stone basins tucked in the beds hold tiny water lilies—homes for frogs.”

  “That’s the way you dress,” Camille observed, “very cropped or angular but with unusual patterns or accessories, like right now.” They paused to notice Susan’s long mustard sweater over tan tights, a red, gold, and green scarf knotted just so, and her slouchy red shoulder bag. “I’d never think of that acid yellow with red, and it looks fabulous.” At first, Camille had feared Susan might be too aggressive for her. She’s come to see that quality instead as verve. And Susan always pushes them into the new.

  Susan gives Camille a quick hug. “You’re a darling.” She takes out her new notebook, scrawling The Unexpected Garden on the cover. “I’m glad I brought my good camera.”

  A hundred photos later, before they leave, she asks the young guide, Nella, to take a picture of the three of them under a pomegranate tree. They pose with the ancient fruit of Persephone dangling around them, ruddy orange globes, mythic and luscious. A shaft of sunlight through the tree turns Susan’s spiky hair into an iridescent halo. In the photo, she will look electrified, if not holy. Julia is caught about to speak, her mouth half open. Camille’s face is shadowed but she smiles widely and her eyes catch the light. “Are you sisters?” Nella asks.

  “Almost,” Camille answers.

  “What’s the Italian word for pomegranate?” Julia asks.

  “Melograna. A word I love,” Nella says. “Pick a couple to take with you. If you open them underwater, you can get the seeds out easily. They look pretty scattered over desserts.”

  Julia nods yes. “You must be a cook. Where should we eat?” Nella mentions several nearby favorites.

  “We’ll be back in the spring. I can’t wait.” She’s already thinking of Chris. He should add this detour to his days in the brunello vineyards.

  They find Nella’s favorite restaurant in a stand of oak trees. Just inside, a woman is making gnocchi. Julia asks if it’s okay to take a video. The woman then exaggerates all her gestures as she forms thin ropes of dough. Italians are born actors. She arranges the small knuckles of pasta on a sheet pan, wipes her hands on her apron, and gestures to the finished pasta. “Ecco!” Here it is! Julia shows them the video at lunch. “Food Network, come crying!” she says. As she reviews Susan’s still photos, she realizes that all those real estate years gave Susan a lot of experience. “Your pictures are better than mine,” she exclaims. “I have a great idea! Would you work with me on styling and photographing the food for my book?”

  “That would be wonderful! I’d love that.” In a few minutes they are eating the lightest gnocchi ever made. It can be like rubber bands, but this is paradigm, served with a savory tomato sauce. Simple, yes, as is the salad of small greens with only a drizzle of new oil. “Ever get the feeling that we overcomplicate our lives?” Susan asks.

  * * *

  —

  Camille offers to drive home, insists really. Susan sits in the backseat, looking at her photos and writing down ideas. A path along the terrace behind the house, a path so narrow that your legs will brush through catmint, lavender, run-wild spearmint, and cosmos. Where the terrace turns, a bench. We need secret places in the garden. Plans fly faster than her pen. Camille is humming and Julia has fallen asleep, her head cranked hard to the right. She’s going to feel that later.

  New Leaf, indeed. When I printed those words on the frontispiece of my notebook, what did I know? I’m in town early because, well—can I sleep? I look through the pages, searching for inspiration for the coming-up day. Violetta brings over a ciambella, a doughnut, with my cappuccino. A sugar rush might be just the thing.

  Colin snoozes away through anything, otherwise he would have been kept awake all night by my churning. Scared and shocked am I. In the night I was thinking of my mother—those four years I stayed home to take care of her. Her decline, her long death, seasons and years slipping by. I was lovingly caught, wanting to help, but wanting my life. And Ger—Gerald Hopkinson—standing by always. He was dear to me, the family friend who stepped forward after her diagnosis, when I came home from Boulder to stay. Our parents were close and he was my first date, first kiss. We were on and off during high school and college. Now we were both in our late twenties, neither having forged relationships. He was, still is, in banking. I never knew exactly what he did—money markets, stock analysis, investments, often calming people on the phone. I lived in limbo.

  Ger lined up the care while I commuted and finished the semester, and then I was home from Boulder (my first full-time job teaching writing) for the duration. For relief, I taught one class a semester at the University of Miami. Mother came back from the melanoma surgery, but with a partially frozen left leg and her MS to boot, the struggle with her care was real and constant. Steroids puffed her body until she looked blown up and moony. The sheer labor became harder. I remember her anger flashing out, her swollen leg and the small white feet, delicate as a porcelain doll’s.

  I wanted her at home, not in some facility. She quite desperately wanted me with Ger and she didn’t hold back on saying that she wanted a grandchild. I never told her I was fated to be “barren,” as she would have called it. Ger and I just fell into each other again and it seemed we were on track to marry and live forever in Coral Gables. Why, I wonder now, why I didn’t get pregnant—prime fertility time—during that mini-marriage. As Mother failed, I began to have attacks of claustrophobia when I was at Ger’s bungalow. Even sitting on the front porch with a lemonade after tennis, I’d feel a rising panic. Not my life. Not that I couldn’t have practiced my art with him. He encouraged me, he just didn’t meet me in my zone. And I couldn’t cozy up to banking. But our circles overlapped, and in that gray zone of commonality we had a shared history: powerful juju. He liked to travel and cook and all that—but who doesn’t? I was not going back to Boulder. Though I loved the town, it was not my place in the universe. Ger’s slobbering boxer turned around and around before he flopped into a comfortable spot. That’s what I did, too.

  When my mother died (the melanoma came raging back), I applied for a residency at a writers’ retreat on the Tuscan coast. I got in. Ger knew without my telling him that I’d drawn a line, but I told him anyway. I was sorry and said so. Ever the gentleman, but he was ticked and made it clear that he wouldn’t wait again.

  In Italy, weeks of healing and solitude and blissful writing. Most of the poems that got me the awards were conceived (there’s that word) in a spare room overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. When I read them now, they seem dark blue with the mourning I carried. My mother’s death brought back my father’s (slammed from behind by a semi on the Miami expressway, his vintage TR3
flew into the shallow bay, a trajectory I have rewound a million times). I was thirty-one. Both parents lost. I’d expected at the least another twenty years with them.

  With a couple of other writers at the retreat, I traveled on weekends. San Rocco is off the tourist loop. We happened upon it. The grace, the dignity, the encompassed time—I walked around town and imagined a long recuperation here, a big project, something entirely mine.

  After the writers’ residency ended, I went home and packed up the house, leaving bare furnishings, putting too many plastic bins in a storage unit. What to do with thousands of family photos, my parents’ college yearbooks, my grandmother’s Spode. Things. More things. A woman named Stacy Jackson and her two daughters rented the house and within six months she and Ger were a couple. How could he have moved in and taken over the rent checks? Creepy, I think.

  With my parents’ money, I bought my house, Fonte delle Foglie, my heart’s needle, outside San Rocco. Now I must thank Ger for inadvertently spurring me into a larger mental space. What I sensed was dead right. He and I lacked that mysterious quality I wanted and without which a relationship is in peril. The poet Rilke’s definition of intimacy—that two solitudes protect and greet and touch each other—never sounded right to me. Too bleak and otherworldly. Spooky stuff. I had a better guide. From Robert Dessaix’s Corfu, I copied this quote: “Intimacy is more, though, than just a burst of loving recognition between two people. But what is it? It is, perhaps, the experience we have sometimes—rarely, but we do have it—of growing transparent, softly penetrated to every corner by another’s knowing gaze? And of his or her being pierced and known in turn by our inner eye.” Guided by that and a million other things, I wrote furiously for a year.

  My mother, would she be pleased, if she had lived? Probably she’d have worn out her hope by now. My mother was Idella Parkman Raine. If I have a girl, if I have a baby at all, maybe I’ll name her Della Raine. Colin’s last name: Davidson. Not bad. Della Raine-Davidson. Della is lovely. Idella, no.