The Man from Tuscany

“Yes, Dad,” she said, seeing her grandmother coming toward them, and fully aware that where this proposed trip was concerned, three would definitely be a crowd. “Gran might not want me along for the ride.”

“Now that is something I’ll talk her into. In fact, I’ll insist on it,” Grace announced. She barely waited until her mother was seated before wading in. “This whole idea of traipsing halfway around the world all by yourself simply isn’t feasible, Mother. Travel is confusing at the best of times, especially for someone your age.”

“Well, I’m not dead yet, dear,” Anna replied. “I’m able to ask for help, if I need it.”

“What Grace is saying,” Taylor explained, “is that she— we— would feel a lot more comfortable if you didn’t go alone. So we’re wondering how you’d feel about Carly joining you.”

“Carly?” Her face lit up with pleasure. “I’d be delighted to have her as my traveling companion, provided she doesn’t mind being saddled with me.”

“I don’t mind, if you don’t,” Carly said, sliding her a conspiratorial glance. “I’ve never been to Italy.”

“That settles it, then.” Taylor lifted his water glass in a toast. “Here’s to a safe, successful trip!”

They all seconded that, Carly’s mother with markedly less enthusiasm than the rest of them.

“Cheer up, dear,” Anna urged. “Think of it as an adventure, one last glorious fling before I reconcile myself to terminal old age and day trips to Newport.”

She would’ve been wiser to keep quiet, because Grace rounded on her fretfully. “Day trips I can understand. But Italy, Mother? And why now, for heaven’s sake?”

Carly the nurse understood why, whether or not Carly the granddaughter wanted to acknowledge it. Her grandmother rightly sensed her time was running out but realized that to say so would’ve been as cruel as revealing the part Marco had played in her life.

“Because I’d like to go to Florence and see the Duomo and Michelangelo’s David one more time. And because I’d love to be the one to introduce them to my granddaughter,” she said instead.

“But where will you stay?” Grace asked. “You’ve never liked big hotels, Mother.”

“With the son of an old friend who lives not far from the city. He has plenty of room and I have a standing invitation to visit anytime. Carly, I know, will be welcome, too.”

Defeated, Grace sighed. “And when is this visit to take place?”

“As soon as possible, dear,” Anna said.

C ARLY SECURED reservations for the following Tuesday, flying via Boston to Washington, and from there to England, where they’d spend the night before embarking on the last leg of the journey to Florence. In the five days before their departure, she took care of all the details, and worried that her grandmother had taken on more than she’d bargained for.

“Even with a night in London, you’re going to find the journey tiring,” she warned, as they boarded the Boeing 777 for the transatlantic flight. “This part alone lasts nearly seven and a half hours.”

But nothing could diminish Anna’s enthusiasm. Adding a thick folder to the items to be included in her carry-on bag, she said blithely, “The good news is, I can spend it telling you the rest of my story.”

Which would have been fine, Carly reflected morosely—except she was no longer sure she wanted to hear it.

CHAPTER THREE

F INALLY , we’re on our way. The seat belt sign is off, the aircraft is headed east, and it’s time for me to pick up my story from where I left it last week. I only have until tomorrow to convince Carly that I’m not some foolish old woman pinning all her hopes on yesterday, and Marco wasn’t a home-wrecker who came between me and her beloved grandpa.

“I phoned Marco again on Sunday, to tell him you’re coming with me,” I begin. “He’s a little concerned that you might not understand the part he’s played in my life.”

“I’m not sure I do, Gran,” she says.

“I know, darling.” I pat her hand. “But you will by the time we get to Florence.”

“And how does he feel about having me underfoot all summer?”

“He can’t wait for us to arrive.” In fact, his last words before we hung up were, Please hurry. I don’t want to be apart from you a day longer than necessary.

“I wonder if he remembers saying almost the exact same words to me, the first time we said goodbye,” I murmur. “Probably not. Men don’t usually recall such things, and so much has happened since then. But I remember the moment so vividly that I’m breaking out in goose bumps.”

“Well, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Gran,” Carly says.

“But I do,” I tell her. “How else can I make you understand?”

She shrugs, and I know she won’t easily forgive what she sees as a betrayal of her family. Steeling myself, I begin….

O N MY LAST NIGHT in Florence, he was waiting for me at our usual place, near the main door to Santa Maria Novella. A high summer moon glimmered over the black-and-white marble facade of the old church, and laid patterns of light on the deserted flagstones of the piazza.

Hearing my footsteps, he stepped out of the shadows and without a word took me in his arms. I sank against him, imprinting in my mind the solid feel of his body, the scent of his skin, the taste of his mouth on mine, because they were all I’d have to sustain me during the months we’d be apart.

In the morning, my aunt, cousin and I would board the train for Paris, on the first part of the long trip to Southampton, where the Queen Mary was scheduled to cross the Atlantic on August 30. “And not a moment too soon,” my aunt had fussed as she supervised the packing of our travel trunks. “The sooner we’re away from this benighted continent and all its troubles, the better.”

“How do I let you go, amore mio? ” Marco murmured, burying his face in my hair.

The tears I’d sworn I wouldn’t let fall clogged my voice. “It’s only for a little while.” For as long as it takes me to overcome my parents’ objections, I added silently, knowing they’d resist any idea of my marrying a foreigner, let alone one I’d known so briefly, but resolved that nothing would dissuade me from returning to Florence before year’s end. “I’ll write to you every day.”

“And I to you,” he promised. “Not an hour will pass that I won’t be thinking of you and preparing for our life together.”

After that, we wasted no more time talking. Clasping hands, we hurried along the darkened streets to our special place, the room he’d taken above a bookshop not far from the Ponte Vecchio. Although I’d done my best to brighten it with fresh flowers and candles, I suppose, to anyone else’s eyes, it didn’t have much to recommend it. But to us, living as we did for the hours when we could close the door on the rest of the world, it had the only things that really mattered—privacy and a bed intended for one, but shared by two.

I was not so naive that I hadn’t learned how babies were made and what children were called if their parents weren’t married. I knew the stigma such children bore throughout their lives. Yet even armed with all this information, I had given myself to Marco within a week of meeting him, so certain was I that our lives would be forever intertwined. Abandonment, deceit, acts of God or nature or mankind, lay so far outside our realm of possibility that they had no bearing on us.

As I explain that, Carly shakes her head incredulously. “And you never doubted him? It never occurred to you that once you’d left, he’d find someone else?”

“Never.”

We were touched with a special magic that lifted us above the rest. Convinced that ours was a love so powerful that nothing could destroy it, I had ventured so far beyond the boundaries of propriety that, had I been discovered, I’d have been ruined. A social outcast, ostracized by “nice” girls and their families.

That’s what we were in those days, I tell her. “Girls,” paraded before suitable young men and taken by the highest bidder. And our chastity, along with our bloodlines, determined how much we were worth. Not until we sent out engraved cards announcing that Mrs. Charles So-and-So is at home, followed by the date and a prestigious address, were we entitled to call ourselves “women.”

No pedestrian Mrs. for me, though. I would be Signora Marco Paretti, wife of the well-known, well-respected architect. I would live in Fiesole, the hilltop town north of Florence, in a house my husband had designed especially for us and our children.

All this and more comprised my future. For now, though, we had just this one night together in our secret hideaway, and then we’d have to say goodbye.

As soon as I stepped into the room, I saw that Marco had been there earlier. Freesias were arranged in the vase which, previously, had held daisies. Rose petals lay scattered over the bed. A bottle of Chianti and two glasses stood on the small table under the window.

“Tonight we make memories which will carry us through the coming weeks,” Marco whispered, content for the moment to hold my hands and look into my eyes.

I started to cry, the beauty of the moment, of his love for me, colliding horribly with the desolation filling my soul. He pulled me close. I realized then that he was crying, too. Great, silent, helpless shudders racked his body.

We clung to each other blindly, and the heat of desire fed on our emotions and burned away everything but the need to fuse our bodies, our hearts, our minds, to give to each other everything we were, everything we had.

We held back nothing. We simply loved each other, deeply, intimately. I heard myself moan and beg in ways that, before, would have left me too embarrassed ever to face him again.