The Man from Tuscany

Following her outside, Carly urged her onto the wicker love seat, sat down next to her and pressed two fingers to her grandmother’s inner wrist. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain? Any difficulty breathing?”

“Not at all, darling girl. I’ve decided to go to Italy, that’s all, and I want you to make the travel arrangements.”

“Italy?” Subduing the impulse to blurt out At your age and in your state of health? Carly asked instead, “Why Italy, Gran?”

“There’s someone there I very much want to see.”

Instincts on high alert again, Carly inspected her critically. “Are you talking about a doctor?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Her grandmother indicated a leather-bound scrapbook lying open on the wicker coffee table in front of her. “I want to visit him. ”

Carly scooped the book onto her lap, frowning at the grainy photograph of a man in his twenties. “Who’s he?”

Anna sighed and traced her forefinger over his features. “It would be easy for me to lie and say he’s just an old family friend, but I can’t bring myself to belittle what we’ve always meant to each other, so I’ll tell you the truth. He’s the great love of my life, Carly.”

This time, Carly couldn’t hide her shock. “But he can’t be. He’s not Grandpa!”

“No, precious, he’s not.”

Although she seemed in complete command of her faculties, Carly wondered if her grandmother was losing it. Had the distant and more recent past merged into one gauzy memory in which neither people nor time were clearly defined anymore? “This is an old photograph, Gran,” she pointed out gently. “Do you remember when it was taken?”

“Of course I do. Right before the outbreak of World War Two.”

“Ah! So what you’re really saying is, this man was your first love, but Grandpa was your real love.”

“Your grandfather was my husband and I was devoted to him, but not even he could take Marco’s place in my heart.”

“That name rings a bell. Didn’t he visit you once in England, when Mom was little?”

“Yes. He came all the way from Italy to be with me at a time when I desperately needed him.”

“Italy?”

“Well, yes, dear,” her grandmother said. “Why else do you think I want to go there? Marco lives in Tuscany.”

“Oh, Tuscany!” Carly shrugged disparagingly. “It’s such a cliché. Everyone goes there.”

“Not when I first met him. It hadn’t been discovered then. And we were never a cliché.”

“What were you, then?” She knew she sounded as defiant as a child who’d just learned Santa Claus wasn’t real, but she couldn’t help herself.

“We were…magnificent.”

“Did you sleep with him?” Carly chose the word deliberately, intending it as a belittlement of what her grandmother and this man had shared.

Anna shot her a reproving look. “Yes, I did. And made glorious love with him, too.”

“I thought that sort of behavior was frowned on back then. That girls from good families like yours saved themselves for their husbands. If he was so wonderful, why didn’t he marry you?”

“He would have, if—”

“If he’d loved you as much as you loved him?”

“Oh, he loved me, Carly. He adored me.”

Hating how she felt inside—betrayed somehow, and almost angry with her grandmother for shattering her illusions of one big, happy family—Carly spread her hands helplessly. “Was he already married, then? Was that the problem?”

“No. I was the problem.” Anna’s voice broke. “I didn’t have enough faith in us, and by the time I learned my mistake, it was too late.”

“Oh, Gran! Is he dead? Is it his grave you want to visit?”

Her grandmother shook her head, making her thinning white hair float delicately over her scalp. “No. Not that death changes the things that matter…the eternal things. One day, I’ll be with him forever, and with your grandfather, too. But before that, I want to hold his hand and look in his eyes once more, and tell him again how much I’ve always loved him.”

Carly watched her in silence, then glanced away. “I’ve always sensed there was some deep, dark secret that no one in the family ever talked about,” she said hollowly, “but not in a million years would I have guessed it was something like this.”

“Are you disappointed in me, Carly?”

She shrugged. “In some ways, I guess I am. You and Grandpa always seemed so solid. Mostly, though, I’m confused. Once or twice I’ve thought I was in love, but it didn’t last. But you and this Marco—how many years has it been, Gran?”

“Going on sixty-five.”

“How could you bear to be apart from him?”

“Sometimes I didn’t think I could. But then I’d think of what I’d have to give up in order to be with him—my dear Brian, my daughter and you, my beautiful granddaughter. And I couldn’t bear that, either, because I loved you. You bring me such joy, Carly, and I am so proud to be your grandmother. From the day you were born, we’ve had a special connection, one I treasure beyond price.”

“If he loved you as much as you say, he must have resented me for that.”

“No. Marco understood that, for as long as they needed me, my family had to come first.”

“And he went on loving you anyway?”

“Yes. Neither of us ever had a moment’s doubt about the other.”

“How do you recognize love when it comes along, Gran?”

“When it consumes you,” Anna said.

Intrigued despite herself, Carly took her hand. “Tell me about him, Gran. Make me understand.”

A breeze drifted over the balcony, scented with thyme and oregano from the herb garden. Anna closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. “I met him the summer I turned eighteen….”

“I WISH I WAS COMING with you,” my mother said, layering tissue paper over the clothes in my travel trunk before closing the lid. “But you and Genevieve are such good friends that you won’t miss me too much, and with my sister chaperoning, I know you’ll be in safe hands.”

It was July 6, 1939. My cousin, my aunt and I would take the train to New York the next day, and on the eighth, set sail aboard the Queen Mary for Southampton. Originally my mother had planned to make the trip, as well, but ten days earlier, my father had undergone an emergency appendectomy. So she’d decided to stay home to supervise his recovery.

At first, I’d wanted to beg off traveling, too. Seeing my strong, active father confined to a wheelchair and looking so wan had frightened me. But neither he nor my mother would hear of it.

“Of course you must go,” they said. “It’s expected of girls like you.”