The fact of Cinque Terre is the sea. Marled swirls of clear turquoise to blue waters. Camille prefers Corniglia over the other Cinque Terre towns. Wedged above the sea, the village looks from a distance like an opened pan of watercolor paints, blotchy rectangles of aqua, copper, pink, rose gold, pomegranate, cream, stacked upside hills of grapevines.
Yesterday, Susan drove Nicolà’s Land Rover, the Fiat way too small with me, Lauro, and all the baby paraphernalia. Hugh stayed at the villa. We dropped the car at the station and hauled all the stuff onto the local train that plies the villages. What a fiasco juggling the portable bed, the stroller, the bags, et cetera, et cetera. And Lauro can wail. Everyone packed lightly, as there is nothing to do at the five lands other than hike, walk, swim, eat. Of course Susan’s here to check on Nicolà and Brian’s future rental, an independent white house with wraparound views. The rest of us tag along. Julia’s birthday, #60, is on Friday, so we’re lugging gifts for her as well. From the train, getting to the house, we had to climb hundreds of steps dragging everything. We were panting at the door. Inside, instant balm. Susan opened all the glass doors, letting in the sea air and views of blue, blue, and more blue. Nicolà’s cleaning woman stocked the fridge with basics. Soon we’re on the terrace with an icy pitcher of a blood orange drink that came in a Tetra Pak but tastes delicious. Susan holds up Lauro for his first view of the sea. Camille breaks into “Eddystone Light,” a camp song everyone knew but me. By the time I went to camp we were singing “Stayin’ Alive.” What provoked “Eddystone” was a verse about the father falling in love with a mermaid. Looking at these limpid waters and gnarly rocks, you believe they slither up to comb their tresses.
Because I’ve been here before (and Lauro gets heavy), I want to forgo hiking and to take this time to write. Although there are level stretches, inevitably you meet steep inclines, stairs, and unfortunately at this time of year, crowds. Too many people. We’re crazy to be here at the end of August. Thank you, Nicolà and Brian—a quiet house away from the fray.
Camille and Susan trek out early. When Camille decides to find a local café and read, Susan heads on toward Vernazza. Rowan’s new project with the poet gave Camille the idea of making paintings inspired by Italian writers. I told her that Eugenio Montale had a house in Monterosso. She wants to spend a couple of hours reading his poems about Cinque Terre. Is she going to find only sea views and flowers? Well, maybe that would be fun to try—spontaneous sketches in red chalk or ink. Meanwhile, she has an almond pastry and cappuccino, the book open, her gaze drawn out to sea.
She thinks of October, when the lease expires on Villa Assunta. She imagines packing her clothes, dismantling her studio and limonaia workroom, saying good-bye around San Rocco, the puzzled looks from Violetta and Stefano, Leo and Annetta throwing a final dinner, a farewell lunch with Matilde. Home to Carolina. Oh, let Charlie stay in the big house. He has workspace there, his uptight wife is happier, and Ingrid has space to breathe when things are tense, which Camille suspects might be often. Ingrid is studying Latin. Camille can take her on tours of Rome in the summers. One of those end units at Cornwallis, with corner views and a porch with a swing, now that we’ve had our fun. Charlie and family coming for the chef’s Sunday brunch. Rowan? He’ll come to see her. They’ll meet in Istanbul or San Francisco or, where? Copenhagen. She has not seen Scandinavia.
She tries to focus on the poems. They’re elusive. Reading them feels like socking a pillow. Who’s in them? There are no people, only nuances of some “you” who begins to seem like the poet himself. Camille sighs and comes up short. Now that we’ve had our fun? She hears herself thinking that. Our fun? I’ve been asked to exhibit by important museums, and I call that my fun? Must I always pull back into some I-don’t-deserve corner? She bites her thumb knuckle. I deserve to give up my house and move to a corner unit on the—what did they laugh about—the luxury cruise down the River Styx? I am stupido!
The waiter smacks down the check. Is she taking the table for too long? She stares up at him angrily, orders another coffee, and stuffs the Montale book in her bag. She remembers sensuous Keats from “Ode to a Nightingale,” oh for a beaker full of the warm south. The longing. A big swallow of time and place and heat. That’s what today feels like, end-of-August sun bearing down on one of the most enchanting places on the globe. Multitudes, many on their phones, oblivious, surging down the streets and paths. No wonder Montale floated above them, she thinks, and focused his attention on cicadas and tamarisk trees and sunflowers.
Flushed and sweaty, Susan doubles back to the café and orders a large beer. “Great place to hike, great! But we’re not the first to think of coming here. The trails are crowded; it’s like a forced march. We have to come back in April or November.” She takes wipes from her fanny pack and swabs off her face and neck. “Let’s get back to the house.”
They’re charged with picking up ingredients for dinner. “Tonight will be fun for Julia,” Camille says, gathering her bags, “with a basket of what’s just caught from the fishmonger. Maybe he’ll have some of those razor clams.”
“Where is Julia?”
“I think she was going to the beach in Monterosso. She’s still reeling, you know.”
“Yes. She’s better. Everything that was suddenly turned upside down and shook out. And it’s real. Did you see the photos Liz just sent of the three gray vases she made?”
“There’s talent. I’d love to have a few for the villa. Ah! Wonder if I could commission a couple. Not gray. A sage green looks pretty with any flower.”
“They should have grocery delivery by drone here.” They’re hoisting two bags each.
“Wouldn’t that just work—the skies as crowded as the streets.”
Julia takes the train to the beach at Monterosso. She finds a spot for her towel. A couple of women who would be in cover-ups at home lounge in their two-piece suits on plastic chairs next to her. One on her phone, the other knitting. Julia sits down and rubs sunblock on her nose. The knitting woman asks where she’s from and they chat for a few minutes. They are two widows from Viterbo. When Julia decides to swim, she asks them to keep an eye on her phone and bag.
From all the bodies sprawled on beach chairs and the sand, she is afraid the sea will be warm, but no. The water feels luxurious and fresh. She swims out beyond children and the ones cooling up to their waists. Only cold salt water can instantly infuse such a great rush of energy. She’s a natural in the water, having grown up with summers on Tybee, a sailboat, and camp swim teams. She remembers the pride of receiving the Junior Life Saving badge from the Red Cross, a medallion her mother sewed on her swimsuit. She flips and surfaces like a seal. To somersault, backstroke, kick, to bind yourself tightly to yourself and roll on top of the water—this is a joy we were born for. Fresh and deep, the water limpid, unlike the turbulent blue-gray Atlantic she loves, with the wild surf and the hard-sucking undertow she was warned against, it seems, on the day she was born. She practices the sidestroke, her mother’s preferred way to swim, remembering summers with her parents, Cleve always up for racing into the waves, letting the cresting foam smack them down over and over, taking off his suit underwater and rinsing out the sand, bouncing her on his shoulders, running up a beach white as flour, Julia wrapped in a big towel, shivering. Treading, Julia sees tall rocks rise abruptly to the left. A boy poised at the top leaps, plunging into the water that must be forty or fifty feet below. She wades into shore and shades her eyes. Another boy stands on top looking down, his two friends urging him to jump. He’s shaking his head, backing up. How high is that cliff? Julia walks over to the path up. A girl of about sixteen in an ounce of fabric scrambles up just ahead of her. “Are you going to jump?” Julia asks.
“Yes. It looks so fun. Are you?”
“No. I’m just going up to see what it’s like.” This would never ever be allowed in the U.S., Julia thinks. But here, people make their own fates.
Julia scrapes her knee on the rocks, looks down. Already dizzying. At the top, four kids are standing around working up their courage. One says, “You have to leap way out.”
From above, the water is dazzlingly blue. If you jump and you’re not lucky, you could bust your head like a watermelon falling off a speeding truck.
Julia creeps up to the edge. How sublime the water looks. Limpid. Clear to the bottom. Fear rises in her like thermometer mercury from a feverish child. The girl who said it would be fun to jump backs off, after looking down. One boy goes, arms flailing. Just to test, Julia steps to the edge. She looks down at the small figures on the beach, out at the horizon. Via, via, one of the boys says. Go. Go. She feels a quick shock of surprise.
She rises on her toes. And jumps.
Camille and Susan find little new potatoes, huge juicy tomatoes, lustrous black eggplants to roast with peppers. Last, they pick up sorbet. Tonight, they get to stay “home.” The wine is a pain to lug back to the house but they manage everything, plus a jug of fresh orange juice and a bag of lemons.
Walking back, Camille says to Susan, “I’ve been sitting on that stupendous terrace imagining going back home in October. What that would be like.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not going anywhere. This is home now. My life is much more interesting than I could have imagined. We have fabulous friends. Look what happened to you here! Italy! Tonight we should talk, really talk.”
Susan has been searching online at comps for her house in Chapel Hill. Her girls agreed when she sold the beach house, but would they want to give up the house where they were raised? They love coming home to pound cake, peanut butter cookies, dinners on the screened porch, their rooms, one blue, one yellow. Even so, if Susan stays, they’ll love coming to Italy probably more: the new replacing nostalgia for the old. They’re in China now. No one yet has responded to the large ad they placed in the newspaper with the earliest photos of themselves, dates, where they were found, and the name of the orphanage, which still exists but will not release further information. Susan doubts they have any, since they did not at the times of the adoptions. Eva was left on a bus, Caroline outside a shrine. Both had their birthdates pinned to their blankets. Susan has always imagined the mothers writing those dates, preparing to leave the house, imagined them at the moments of abandonment. Fleeing the scene, what she must have felt. A crazed relief? If Eva and Caroline find out anything, it will be subject to DNA testing. How amazing if they locate some wide-eyed, tragic parents. Do people who abandon children out of whatever desperation come forth because of an ad? Can they read? Wouldn’t the shame keep them silent? Huge random chance, statistically against the girls. She thinks of their rooms, intact since college, the canopy beds from her grandmother’s house, a southern heritage tacked onto their origins, of their minimalist apartments in California, their devotion to their jobs. And each other. No other relationships seem to arise, a puzzling fact but Susan can’t intrude on their privacy. She stares out to sea. She’s their mother.
Susan could sell her home, buy a small condo for visits. She remembers the man with narcolepsy, the willowy Catherine who planned to leave the North. Why buy anything? Why not cut the cord? If she wants to go back, she can rent a temporary base. Bridges have burned.
Lauro likes it here. Who wouldn’t? The breeze makes you want to say halcyon. He’s peaceful, knocked out after nursing, a milky haze descending as he nods off. I parked him under a purple passion vine, a live mobile, while I worked, moving from one project to the other all day, pausing only for cheese and fruit. Meriggiare, to rest in shade on a hot day.
Nicolà has an enticing rental. At least the basic furniture is colorful. Sparseness suits Cinque Terre, where delivery of heavy items must be a nightmare. Susan plans to rearrange beds to capitalize on the views and to recommend updating the tiny showers and ’70s kitchen. More tumbling vines and pots of herbs. We’re all happy here. Such simplicity gives the feeling of unburdening. Blue is good for the soul. Florida girl, I’m always best when I can see open waters.
Julia returns last. Susan and Camille lugged food up all those steps and decided to read in their rooms. I suspect they are sleeping. Julia opens the fridge and takes out melon and cheese and a leg of the roast chicken we had last night. “I’m famished,” she says, bringing a plate out to the terrace. Her hair hangs in salt-dried clumps, her shoulders the color of plums, painfully blistered. I offer some after-sun lotion. “I’m fine, thanks. I think I fell asleep on the beach for a few minutes. You won’t believe what I did but I’ll tell everyone later.” She falls on the chicken, smiling and licking her fingers. “This is good-good. Want some?” She spears another piece. “What I need is a shower and a nap. Something good happened to me today. I’ll not only tell you, I’ll show you. How is our sweetie over there?”
Lauro makes little sounds as though he’s talking back to the mourning doves that coo in the pergola next door. The woman there sunbathes nude. Through the grapevines, I can’t help but glimpse her impressive breasts like two rounds of pizza dough rising.
A bit surreal. I just hope she doesn’t burn into the color of a sweet potato. Her husband (clothed) reads the newspaper, then lets it drop over his face when he falls into a snoring sleep. Part of the panorama! Julia and I giggle. Why is snoring always funny? Is he lying at the opening of the cave, scaring away bears? Below us, a woman hangs out wash, flowered sheets fluttering. This village is a hive, each house a honeyed cell.
Julia keeps it simple. She’s the maestro, directing Susan to sauté the potatoes, me to set the terrace table. (Let’s hope our neighbor doesn’t dine nude.) Camille is one of those who peels tomatoes. In Liguria, the Genovese basil grows huge and pungent, with curly leaves. Susan found fresh burrata in Vernazza on her hike. Little clams over pasta shells to start, then the fish baked with thyme, olive oil, and lemon.
The wine is light and easy. Out on the terrace while the fish bakes, Julia empties a bottle into a glass carafe she sets in ice. “Quaffable, don’t you love that word? Chris never says quaffable.” Everyone’s showered, wet hair, fresh shorts, and barefoot; Lauro sleeps, snug in his small bed. Julia takes out her phone and searches for a photo. Camille pours and passes the glasses around.
“Here’s my news.” Julia holds up a photo of a woman falling straight as an arrow from a cliff into water. She’s midway down, toes pointed, arms tight by her sides. They pass it around.
“Scary,” Susan says. “That’s, who is it? That’s not you, Julia?” She hands the phone to Camille, who looks closely.
“That’s your bathing suit or at least it’s blue like yours.”
I’m leaning into Camille to see. “Julia. I know that cliff. Did you jump? You wild thing.”
“I did. I can’t explain it. I just found myself climbing up, looking down. I did it. Maybe I wanted to do something to shake me out of the state I’ve been in since waltzing into town and finding my whole past sitting there in the piazza. It was all unconscious, but…” She pauses and sips some wine. “Oh, it felt good. Going down I thought I might fall forever, plunge to the bottom and surface on the other side of the world. It must have been only a moment but it felt long, falling. Then to hit the water like a pane of glass. I went way under but somehow had remembered to take a breath at the last instant. Coming up, up through the water, I had my eyes open. The water was so transparent that I felt I could breathe it like air. The biggest shock—shooting up, breaking the surface, taking a big gulp of air, then swimming to shore. The two women who sat beside my towel applauded. One of them had watched me. She took the picture. I’m glad to have it!”
“Send it to Lizzie!”
“Hell, paste it on your résumé.”
“No big deal, you all. Those kids were doing it without thinking.”
“Yes, but you were thinking!”
“I came up feeling washed clean. Well, I’ll just say it—spiritually. The fear was intense but the leap was renewing. I felt buoyant—oxygenated. When I walked out of the water, I shed a skin there.”
“Is it the southern thing, immersion? Like baptism in the river?” Susan pauses at the kitchen door, the oven timer buzzing.
“Honey, it means time to move on,” Camille says.
“Again? We just did that.” Julia leans against the wall, facing her friends.
“Julia, Miss Icarus, this looks delicious. I’m starving. Are you all?”
The caprese may be the paradigm example of caprese for all time. The pasta with clams tastes like a milder version of the sea. Julia closes her eyes and savors the briny succulence, wishing briefly that she could give a bite to Chris.
I decide to broach the subject. “I am going to miss you all. If you travel back, come down to Coral Gables. I think you’d love my mother’s kitchen, Julia. My dad cooked. My mom sat at the counter with a Mojito and they talked. We listened to José Feliciano, ‘Light My Fire,’ over and over. Mexican tile floors, dated maybe by now, but really open to the outdoors and a screened porch—the only way you can eat outside without mosquitoes lifting you out of your chair and depositing you in an alligator pond. We could grill some great seafood—as good as Italy!”
“It will be strange without you—even just walking into town in the mornings.”
“My table at the bar is your table.” (As it was Margaret’s.) I venture, “Isn’t your lease up soon? Will you try to extend?”
Susan speaks unequivocally. “I want to stay. I love it here. The adventures we’ve had! The villa is out of a dream. I’ve made a garden that…that defines me, who I am. Or, who I want to be. Everything’s unexpected! I’ve never had a better experience.”
“Camille, you’re modest, and most spectacularly successful. You earned it! Now are we going to acknowledge the dead cat on the table? What do you want to happen?”
“I’ve thought about it all day. I know we’ve been skirting the subject for a while. I think we were waiting for you to settle into yourself again, Julia. You all know I have a terrible lack of confidence, but the sheer fact of being chosen for the American museum exhibits keeps knocking down my throwback once-rejected-by-arts-council responses. It’s clear to me—I’m involved with Rowan—but, really, we’re going to forge ahead with a relationship that suits us. He has ties in California, business and family. I’d like to visit now and then. What we three decide about the villa isn’t going to be an influence or deal-breaker. One pleasure of being old, I realize, is that you’re free. Beyond caring what the neighbors might think.”
“I’m the same with Chris,” Julia says. “He’s dear. Fun. And thoughtful, like no man I’ve known except my dad. But ‘I do’ and all that—no. I was squashed like a frog in the road when I left Wade. I never ever expected I could love being independent. Love it! I think a mature love can be different. Kit, you must feel that being with Colin is a freedom, not a binding.”
I nod. I do. He’s my lux mundi, light of my world.
“Getting off topic.” Susan serves the fish and passes around the carafe. “Take a vote, talk more? I say we buy the villa. It’s not that drastic—speaking as a real estate broker!”
“Seems drastic to me,” Camille laughs, “but many things seem drastic to me.”
“We can always sell if we decide to move on to Thailand! Ask Nicolà. They’re not making these villas anymore. They’re one-offs. They’ll always be valuable. Not to talk you into it—the decision is really, really personal.”
“My divorce settlement will soon be sitting in the bank. I could do it. My dad’s keeping the house for Lizzie if she moves back to Savannah. I have my savings, too.”
“Nicolà and Brian said they’ll negotiate with Grazia for us. I don’t think my Italian is up to it.” Susan already has investigated all costs and procedures. She’s surprised at how straightforward the process is when there are no required inspections or lawyers involved.
“Invite Grazia and her aunt to dinner,” I advise. “Most San Rocco transactions occur with a handshake.”
“Wait, don’t race ahead. I don’t want a handshake yet! I’m nervous about this. I should think about it, talk to Charlie.”
“Take your time, sweetie. Ha! Take a week. Then we have to decide.”
“I have a toast, if I can remember it. Get some vino. It’s a couple of stanzas from a poem by W. H. Auden.
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
Julia blinks back hot tears, her eyes already red from salt water. “I did leap.” She smiles. “I can leap.”
That “leap” grabs attention in the last stanza, but what strikes me is the profound realization: the lovers lie on ten thousand fathoms of solitude. Yes, we do. Love and friendship are the mitigators.
Camille puts her arm around Julia’s shoulders. “Hey, we can do what we want.”
Charles rises viscerally through her body, his solid presence. Always the first image to surface: her mouth against his shoulder in bed, the immense security of his body. The image hurts and she knows why. She is leaving him behind, a colossus in memory. A resin urn of ashes that she must scatter in Spit Creek and among his wild cyclamen.
“Sleep on it, you three,” I say. “Gloria Steinem said dreaming is a form of planning. What’s the plan? Let’s have some of that lemon sorbetto. And Julia, you have gifts to open.”