Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  New Leaf. Maybe Leaf would be a good name for a boy. Worked for Leif Erikson.

  Thinking of my mother’s things in storage reminds me—a wheel of Colin’s roll-on broke, and he went out to the barn to rummage around for another bag. He came across a suitcase belonging to Margaret that she left when she took off for Washington that last time. He opened it and brought in a wild dress. “What else is in there? It’s probably full of mildew.”

  “Looks like musty sweaters.”

  I shook out the dress. I remember her at a New Year’s party in this spangled thing, off-shoulder crimson velvet as liquid as wine pouring. She was smoking a big cigar, which she liked to do for effect. I watched. She didn’t inhale. Line in notebook: get rid of the junk she left. Clean out shed. Someone should wear that dress, but how intimate someone else’s dress. Intimacy—she was off and on. She could wall herself off, too.

  Is it because I’m female that I proceed in my notebook from “clean out shed” to a new poem?

  OFF SPRING

  We lit the so-called fuse,

  drops of semen like glue we use

  to wallpaper the nursery.

  Smudge-pot in the belly, ballooned

  and far-fetched. We were all once encased:

  roly-poly skulls and crossbones, fat

  little pirates not knowing we were holding

  ourselves hostage. The brain plates slowly

  push toward the center, and the whirl of water

  in the funnel has nothing else to do but swirl down.

  What keeps us on this earth sometimes

  but blunder or an off-secret or

  an opposite to stillness or a wandering

  from this past pasture to the next

  present pasture. Birth—an acquired taste,

  a lump sum inheritance, an oxytocic surprise

  visit by someone we weren’t expecting to be

  so funny, so open and unsutured, so brilliantly

  nomadic and ragtag. For this we have all come out

  to see you, lawless, see everything, to witness

  the biggest explosion, finally sprung free.

  This appeared whole cloth from words I listed in the back of my notebook: nimble, anomie (without law), funnel (imbuto), fontanelle, offspring, haruspex, font flow, offspring, ragtag, oxytocic: hastening childbirth, nomad: wandering in search of pasture. Words engender feelings as much as feelings are expressed in words.

  Ever since lightning struck me, I’ve been writing poems nonstop. Where do they come from? Ether, ichor. Or a poet is a haruspex, in Etruscan times the one who divined meaning and future by the markings on the exposed liver of a sacrificed animal.

  * * *

  —

  Violetta brings my second cappuccino over just as Camille comes in the door.

  “I am not going to interrupt—you look enthralled.” She waves from the counter.

  I’ll have to reread the poem later. “Oh, join me. I’m leaving in a few. We’re going to Florence for a couple of days. What are you up to this early?”

  “I think I’m picking up your habit. I just love the town as it starts all over. I see better when there are few people out. I even like that teeny street-sweeper truck that whooshes down the street. And the barista who delivers espresso to offices; he holds up a tray and walks along whistling. He’s straight out of a Balthus painting. Where’s he going anyway?”

  “I think he’s taking the mayor and his staff their wake-up shots. I love the electric street-sweeper, too. The driver is a friend’s son. He sometimes stops and gives me a hug. Where else is that going to happen?”

  Camille talks about her frightening attempts to “become a painter again at this late date,” the Italian tutor she sees, and what she calls her “discovery walks.” “I have eureka moments when I see an embedded column in a wall, or a stone coat-of-arms with carved deer antlers or pears or oak trees. Nothing subtle about those Medici ones—six balls. Or are they oranges? There’s one street with the medieval overhang supported by flimsy-looking timbers. It’s a stage set from Shakespeare, not that he was medieval, but it looks like the Globe Theatre.” She adds, “My husband and I used to love going to London. We always tried to see a Shakespeare production.”

  “Have you come across the two painters’ restoration bottega down vicolo delle Notte?” She has not.

  “You’ll love it. Matilde, she’s the one with the wild copper hair, and her assistant Serena, who is quite serene, are top art restorers. They’ve worked on many fresco cycles in Siena, Montefalco, and Arezzo—all over Tuscany. Their workshop is crammed with paintings that have been gouged or spilled on, or are just obscured by layers of grime. They do what they must to bring them back.”

  “Okay. That sounds beyond fascinating. I’ll find them.”

  “You have Archie with you!” As she opens the door, I see him, his leash looped around an outdoor table leg.

  “Oh, yes. Archie wants to become like the white terrier that’s everywhere—a town dog. Full citizen rights to sleep in the middle of the street!”

  I like Camille. Of the three, she’s further back in herself. Friendly and quick, yes, but some quality of, um, of waiting? Is that it? She’s attractive now and must have been a raving beauty once. If she had flowing silver hair instead of blond, she would look like an oracle. A Roman second-century sculptor would have rendered that face as goddess of the hunt. We’d look at her now in the Borghese museum. I like thinking of marble Camille pulling back the string of her bow. Actually, she’s paused in front of the ceramics shop, eyeing a pretty platter. I’m sure she’s finding that when you start to cook in Italy, you need more platters than you ever considered. Then she walks on, talking to Archie, smiling at passersby. No idea at all that within the hour, her life will begin to change in a way she never considered.

  Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient, so said Aristotle.

  Now I have to hustle home and hope Colin is ready. We need to catch the ten o’clock train.

  Camille especially loves the town’s vicoli, the streets that climb or descend off the main street. Two donkeys barely could pass each other. Vicolo delle Notte falls sharply off the via Gramsci, then twists behind buildings to face the valley. The bottega, which she’s never passed before, is flooded with morning light. In the window, Matilde of the blazing curls and Serena, stark as a Quaker, stand before a commanding Madonna in blue holding out her skirts where a miniature town nestles under her protection. Serena aims a hair dryer at the side of the Madonna’s head, as though she’s drying her hair. How clever, apply quick heat to a repaired patch, and then they can proceed.

  Camille, peering in the window, gets a smile and wave from Matilde, who turns and shouts to another woman in the back. Camille hears a clatter, and then a young girl comes to the door. “Buon giorno. Can we help you with something?” she asks in English. Camille explains that she’s new in town, trying to paint, and that Kit sent her. The assistant invites her in. She’s Katie, an art student from Boston, spending an independent semester studying with Matilde and Serena.

  Matilde leans over her box of tints and paints, brushes and powders, selecting a brush with two or three stiff hairs, and begins to retouch the earlobe of the Madonna. She speaks in Italian, forming a circle the size of an orange with her hands. Katie translates: “I don’t know how this was damaged. Hard to say, but a section this big was at some time scraped by something. I’m perpetually astounded by how much survives plague and war and everything else, but just as astounded by the odd damages that occur. How? Who would do this?”

  “Those paints, the hair dryer—looks like a Hollywood makeup artist’s wares,” Camille says. The women laugh. Katie shows her some works in progress—a large crucifixion punctured right in the middle, a faded landscape not so old, a lunette of a serious man’s face, and a table filled with la
rge broken fresco pieces like a child’s jigsaw puzzle.

  The women are gracious, but Camille sees that she’s interrupting important work. “Katie, please tell them how I am in awe of what they do. Sorry my Italian isn’t up to much.”

  “I will—they understand a lot of English from all the students they’ve had. Thanks for stopping by. And there are some workshops if you’re interested. We’re doing a papermaking one this weekend. The bottega specializes also in illuminated manuscript repair.” She gestures to a glass cabinet stacked with thick, creamy paper. “Come. It’s really fun and you go home with a beautiful packet of gorgeous pastel papers.” She hands Camille a flyer.

  “Let me check. My friends are planning a trip to Venice but I’m not sure when we’ll leave. I would love to do this.” Camille unties Archie and heads back up to the piazza, where she spends an hour at Beato Angelico furiously studying Italian pronouns. She wants to speak to Matilde and Serena. If I’m doomed to be only a Sunday painter, she thinks, maybe I could work in a different way. The waiter brings out a biscotto for Archie, a perfect distraction since it’s as hard as a bone.

  * * *

  —

  By late morning, Susan and Julia make their rounds in town: wine store, fruit and vegetable stand, butcher. Julia stops at the bookstore for a Venice guidebook. Susan will say everything’s online, no need for a book to lug, but Julia doesn’t cozy up to electronics and prefers style and sense of place over facts. She picks up a map, too, and a copy of Jan Morris’s Venice.

  They all meet for lunch at Stefano’s, which is becoming home base, and map out a plan to travel north the following week. Chris is due back from an excursion with his group to the Maremma wine district near the coast. He will see his guests off at the Florence airport on Wednesday and Julia says he’ll join them for the Friuli excursion. She already has put in hours of research.

  “Let’s take the fast train up and spend a couple of nights in Venice first,” Susan suggests. “I’ve located a hotel right on the Grand Canal.”

  Good. Camille can take Matilde’s papermaking workshop. She steps outside for a signal and shoots off a message to the bottega before Stefano brings the crème brûlée. “This is just a suggestion. I wonder if Kit would like to go with us. She speaks perfect Italian and I think she’d be up for adventures. Oh, this is so smooth. What’s the flavor I’m tasting?”

  “I think it’s lavender. I’d love to have her. I think next week Colin is scheduled for London. Would she travel with us novices?” Julia has a fleeting thought of Chris but, she reminds herself, this is research. Business. Lucky he’s used to traveling with women.

  “After Venice, we’ll rent a big car at the airport. Let’s plan the Friuli part now…” Susan flips open her laptop.

  “Are you going to eat the last bites?” Julia leans over with her spoon poised.

  Colin and I spent an ideal day in Florence. We dropped our overnight bags at the hotel where we always stay. We like the old-world feeling—massive leather guest books on the trestle tables in the hall, baronial chairs, blue watered-silk draperies, views of domes. There are many new hotels where you could be anywhere; here, you only could be in Italy.

  Running late, we took the eleven o’clock train and had lunch at a new place on the Oltrarno, the other side of the river. When we travel in Italy, afternoon is always a time for love. Gino gave us our favorite room that overlooks Piazza Tornabuoni and a slice of the Arno. Late in the day, Colin stopped by his project. As I walked in the San Lorenzo neighborhood to my favorite paper store, I rehearsed what I will say to him at dinner tonight. I can’t just blurt out that our lives are forever changed. The best I come up with is to present a hypothetical: How at this point in our lives would you feel if we had a baby? That way we have a chance to start a conversation.

  Maybe I should first ask if he wants to get married. Oh, we’ve discussed and discussed it, and I don’t know why I hold off. If we were in America, I probably would have by now, but living here and not being married just seems part of cutting ties that bind. I like the idea of being able to walk without legal consequences, even though I love Colin unconditionally. But now, if I am to have a child, I would like to want her on my own as equally as I want her with Colin. Her, little Della. Ha! Big strapping lout of a boy. Leaf. Jamie, my father’s name. Lionel, Colin’s father’s name. No way.

  * * *

  —

  Before dinner we go up to the hotel’s small bar where Gino always remembers our favorite drinks. “Not the Campari Soda—the Campari only with a twist,” he offers me.

  “Gino, grazie, for me a ginger ale.”

  Colin orders Campari.

  Then, bang. I sit there as Colin leans forward and puts his hand over my knee. “Kit, sweetheart. I have to say something and forgive me if I’m stark crazy. You’ve just been a little weird. Could you be pregnant?”

  I snuffle a mouthful of ginger ale and it comes spewing out my nose. Sputtering, openmouthed, shocked, I nod. Then I begin to cry. Gino rushes over and I wave him back, trying to smile but turning over the ginger ale in my lap.

  Colin slides his chair closer and puts his arm around me. “Kit, Kit, how long have you known? Angel brains, why didn’t you tell me? This is…” He trails off, kissing my hair, starting to laugh. I’m hiccupping now. The two tables of other guests fix on us.

  We stagger out into the cold Florentine night, a swollen moon wobbling in the river. I don’t know how he feels—maybe he doesn’t either. Until I calm down, we lean against the bridge wall. I urp only a little. “Madre di Dio,” Colin says. Then we walk on silently to the trattoria we always favor, tonight displaying in the window a tangled brown octopus that sickens me again.

  We’re settled at a table looking out at Piazza del Carmine. I’m weirdly hungry and order a plate of fried funghi porcini to start. Colin considers the wine list. For sure, he can use a glass or two. He leans across the table and cups my hands in his. He twirls the sapphire set up on tiny cat’s teeth that my mother left me, then takes my ring finger and rubs it. “I know a gold worker here. I would love to design something for us.”

  Reflexively I say, “We don’t have to…”

  “Look, you, hey, we’re in this together. I know when it happened, yes? Six weeks? Seven? We’ve made love since, but not like that Sunday, that memorable time together, well, two times, right? But why then? We’ve had endless times like that before. Or maybe not, maybe I went”—he lowers his voice—“deeper, maybe you arched in a new way. Gesù, why then?”

  I don’t want to think salmon-thrusting-upstream. Instead, I imagine someone pouring new green olive oil into a slim amphora, but what my body remembers is the gold rush of passion we felt together.

  “Okay, my Kitty”—he knows I hate that—“not to worry. Seriously, all will be well because we will make it so.”

  Back in our silk-draped bed, tender is the night.

  Camille and the other students follow Matilde up a cramped staircase at the back of the bottega and into a beamed mansard room. Rows of snowy paper clipped on strings hang to dry. The windows in the sloping room end at thigh height and you must lean down for a view of San Rocco’s roofs and bell towers. Camille looks around at the assembly of vats, wooden screw presses, neat stacks of felt in different sizes, frames, bins of cotton and linen, and long tables. All texture, monochrome, light and grain, the workroom looks like a woodcut from another century, except for the motorized pulp-grinding vat. Camille’s scalp tingles; excitement shoots through her. She felt the same in her own classes when the slides of work by Matisse, Sargent, and the Expressionists flashed by.

  Matilde begins, “The workshop was founded in 1710, not that long ago in Italian terms.” The faintly stirring papers seem to have active life in them; Camille wants to reach up and feel the surfaces. “Like the olive harvest,” she later will tell Susan and Julia, “you’re entering rituals longer than you can imagine.
It’s hard to say, but you’re—well, stepping into a dance long in progress, and later you’ll step to the sidelines and someone takes your place.” A dance seems the right metaphor, as she sees the rhythm of the work, the precise steps, and where you can go too far, not far enough.

  As a southerner, Camille thinks she should have known about cotton linter, the tiny silky fibers that cling to the seeds in a cotton boll after the ginning process removes large fibers. Mountains of the seeds are processed a second time to harvest these delicate filaments, which then are formed into blocks. Matilde purchases them from a specialist in Arezzo. Serena stirs some linter into a stockpot of water, then pours this into the vat that pulverizes everything into a sloshy mess.

  Matilde explains the goals of fine papermaking and Katie, the intern, interprets for the group: Camille, an American fine press printer, an English art historian on her sabbatical, and two young Italian men who impatiently wait when the process keeps slowing for the foreigners’ questions. Katie does not translate when she hears one say, “Why must they ask too many questions? Let’s just get on with it.”

  Camille knew of deckle-edge paper but had no idea that the term comes from the frame that determines the size of the finished sheet. She wants to ask where the word deckle comes from but since the boys look annoyed, she’s trying not to interrupt; she’ll read up on the history of papermaking back at the house. Vellum, she knows: thin calf skin. Parchment: isn’t that more generic—skin of goats and sheep and maybe others? Papyrus, she knows, and who doesn’t from the elementary school Egypt unit? While the linter churns, Serena shows the types of paper they make and explains how to fashion a watermark from fine wires sewn onto the paper mold. They get to see repairs made on a treasured illuminated manuscript page and on a letter from Cosimo de’ Medici to his son.