CHAPTER TEN

 

Sara wiped the water from her face and then wiped her hands on her pants. “Grady would think I’ve gone nuts,” she said, wondering why she would choose to bring up Grady at that moment, except that the thought of him was guaranteed to sober her.

“Grady always was a little too predictable for me,” Julia said. “Sorry,” she added, as though she realized she was talking about Sara’s husband.

“No, it’s true,” Sara said. “He’s still like that. But what’s sad is that I’ve been that predictable too, Jules.”

“I haven’t heard that name in thirty years.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, I love it. It’s the only nickname I’ve ever had.”

A bird flew in and sat on one of the open arms of the statue. Sara thought again of the sparrows in the home improvement store. She was one of them and she had gotten away.

“I wonder if she finds us humorous,” Julia said, looking up at the Madonna. “We worry about such trivial things.”

“Like noses,” Sara said, running a finger along the slight crook. “I hate to think of how much time I’ve wasted hating my nose.”

“You have a great nose,” Julia said.

“You’ve always said that. But best friends lie, don’t they?”

“Not about the important things.” They laughed with the lightness of girls.  

“You’re different somehow, from when you first arrived,” Julia said.

“Because I’m baptizing myself in fountains?”

“No, I mean you seem more relaxed. You have a vitality I haven’t seen before.”

My oncologist would be happy to hear that, Sara thought, but didn’t speak it. For the first time since she had been in Italy she actually wanted to tell Julia the truth. But she didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Water trickled a steady stream out of the stone wall. “Life just keeps going, doesn’t it? With or without us,” Sara said. “These statues will still be standing long after we’re gone.”

“Well that’s philosophical of you,” Julia said.

“I’ve been thinking lately about my mother,” Sara said. “I know it’s silly, but I still miss her and it’s been decades.”

“You always were very sensitive, Sara. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

“There’s more than one?” Sara laughed. “To be honest, I always wondered why you were my friend.”

Julia leaned back on the bench, a slight look of surprise on her face. “Oh, Sara,” she sighed. “You haven’t really changed much at all, have you? You don’t get who you really are.”

“Who am I?” Sara asked, as if she had been waiting her whole life to hear.

Julia leaned closer. “You are a beautiful, sensitive, caring, self-effacing, funny soul,” Julia said.

“Truthfully?”

Julia nodded. “And I don’t know what I would have done without you when we were growing up,” Julia continued. “I was so lonely, you know? I was an only child with two intellectual parents. You were like a sister to me or a soul mate. We could talk about anything. We laughed constantly. Not to mention that you put up with me, for God’s sake. I must have been the bossiest little girl on the planet.”

Julia paused as a bird took a bath on the edge of the fountain. Sara and Julia smiled at each other as they watched.

“Thanks for saying all that,” Sara said. “It means a lot to me.” Actually, it meant more than Julia would probably ever know, Sara thought.

“I can’t believe you never knew how I felt about you,” Julia said. “So much goes on underneath that calm exterior of yours. What else are you not telling me?”

“Can we take a walk?” Sara asked. She stood.

“Now I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Not now,” Sara said softly.

“Okay, I’ll drop it,” Julia said. “But I’m here whenever you get ready.”

Sara nodded.

They walked through the courtyard gate and up a dirt path toward a hill. This place was as different from New England as Sara could imagine. But ‘different’ had been exactly what she needed.

“It feels good to move,” Sara said. “If we’d stayed at the fountain any longer I may have become stone myself.” Sara felt closer to Julia since their talk. Was she really all those things that Julia said? She hoped so.

Julia led them through an acre of olive trees, followed by a large field planted with sunflowers, their green stalks just beginning to break through the ground. In a matter of weeks their blossoms would be like praying hands reaching toward the sun. The beauty of the Italian countryside elicited a lightness in Sara’s chest. She briefly touched her scar and turned her face toward the sun, soaking in its rays like the new shoots of the flowers.

At the top of the hill they looked out over a large slice of Tuscany. A man on a tractor plowed a field on a square of earth in the distant valley below. Another figure rode a motor bike, releasing a ribbon of dust down the long driveway beyond the field. Green, yellow, and brown squares formed a patchwork quilt of earth in front of them.

“What do you think?” Julia asked.

“Heavenly,” Sara said.

Julia spontaneously hugged her. The genuineness of Julia’s gesture caught Sara off guard. She hesitated before returning the embrace. And then didn’t want to admit how much she had wanted it.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed you,” Julia whispered in her ear.

At that moment the beauty of everything around her, including Julia, expanded Sara’s chest and threatened to burst open the scar. Italy was bringing Sara back to life. But maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

Sara suddenly felt confused. Mixed with the confusion were feelings she had never experienced before, except with Grady after they had first been married. It was as if all the lines she had drawn until now were blurring. Was she falling for Julia?

Sara turned toward the path, wanting to run away. She wanted to be home. Home with Grady; Luke, the dog; her uninspired students; and everything predictable and familiar. Things were too foreign here, including the new emotions waking up in her.

“Is something wrong?” Julia asked.

“I’m ready to go back,” Sara said. She hated how cowardly she felt.

“What is it?” Julia asked.

“Nothing,” Sara said. She wasn’t about to admit to Julia something she couldn’t even admit to herself.

They returned to the house through another field of sunflowers surrounded by a patch of gnarled olive trees. A painter’s paradise, Sara decided. Actually, anyone’s paradise.  For the rest of the walk she kept her eyes focused on the path in front of her, fielding the thoughts and feelings she couldn’t put words to yet. Julia, who seemed to know instinctively that Sara needed space, didn’t speak on their return. When they entered the courtyard through the gate, Sara averted her eyes from the woman in stone, imagining she could read her mind, as well as her heart.

“There they are,” Melanie said when they entered the kitchen. “We’d almost given up on you.”

“We took a walk,” Julia said. “Up to the summit.”

“How lovely,” Melanie said.

A large earthenware bowl of pasta sat next to a mixed green salad on a large antique wooden table in the dining room. Bread and wine balanced out the feast. For the first time Sara noticed the ice pick that stood erect in the center of the table next to a vase full of flowers. It appeared to have a permanent mooring there, next to an assortment of signatures carved into the wood.

“Former owners of the table and their family members,” Max said, answering Sara’s unasked question. “We’ve continued the tradition. All our family and friends sign it. Before you leave, I hope you’ll do us the honor.” 

Somehow leaving her mark on an old table in Italy touched her deeply. Tears threatened to wash over every name, the flow as unending as the fountain outside. Sara took a sip of water to prevent the outpour. One of the newest carvings was Julia’s. Sara instantly wanted to add her name next to Julia’s and encircle it with a primitive heart: S.S. + J.D. She shook the thought away.

Sara offered a sentence or two through the rest of the meal but didn’t feel like talking. After all those years of holding herself together she was finally losing it. Exhilaration and terror mingled with the bread and wine. The ground was dissolving underneath her. She was between worlds. Instead of a near-death experience, she was having a near-life one. At that moment death seemed easier. Life was too messy and unpredictable.

Sara faked a headache and returned to the safety of her room. The door locked, she curled up on the bed, gripping her knees, wanting to cut off the oxygen to the emotion. You’re losing it, the critical voice in her head reminded her.

Shut up! Sara thought, and for once the voice seemed to listen.

Pull yourself together, she coached herself. A week from now you’ll be home. Back to normal life. For now, just go with it.

Sara breathed deeply, taking her own advice. After a few minutes she got up in search of something normal to do. Post cards, she thought. She had bought dozens of postcards and not sent a single one. She sat at the small antique desk next to the window to write, hoping this ordinary, mundane action would center her in her ordinary, mundane life.

The late afternoon sun peaked through the lace curtains billowing softly in the wind. She wrote a post card to each of her children and to her friend Maggie at school. Multiple renditions of: The Tuscan countryside is beautiful. Wish you were here. The characteristically trite message was nothing compared to the reality of the experience. She debated whether to send one to Grady and decided against it. She didn’t wish he was here in the least.

Julia entered the room next to Sara’s. Every creak in the floors of the old farmhouse revealed her presence. The windows opened. Then the faint squeak of her bed told Sara she was resting. Funny, she had never thought of Julia as needing rest. Her vitality was steady, unquestionable, and as unending as the fountain outside. Yet she had to expand the version of Julia she had kept locked in her memory all these years. Desire had never been part of it.

Sara stacked the post cards neatly on the corner of the desk and returned to the bed to rest. The box springs responded to her every movement. Was Julia listening to her, too? As girls, they would have jumped on a bed like this. Sara would have been cautious, as always. Unlike Julia, who would not have stopped until she had propelled herself upward and touched the ceiling or a grownup showed up at the door.

Sara closed her eyes and took inventory of her body, an action guaranteed to distract her. Besides a mild headache that had just started, her calves and thighs ached slightly from all the walking they had been doing. Before Sara’s diagnosis, she didn’t always notice the aches. But now she noticed everything. Every twinge could be an announcement of the cancer taking reign over a major organ or a lymph node.

Her composure began to unravel again as her thoughts returned to when she and Julia were at the summit. She tried to remain reasonable and understand what had happened. Somehow the beauty there, coupled with her desire to experience life fully, had led to feelings for Julia. Had Julia realized what was happening? She buried her face in her pillow to smother her embarrassment and shame.