“You’ve made your mind up about that.”
“I have my daughter. What would be the purpose of getting married again?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Love, maybe?”
“Love is not what makes a marriage,” he says. “Love starts one, perhaps, but something else finishes it.”
“Really.” I put down my swatches and lean forward. “Please. Explain.”
“Marriage in Italy used to be about two families coming together,” he begins.
“Yes, and merging their assets,” I say, nodding. “A business of a sort.”
“Correct. And their beliefs, too, about how to live and how to build a life together. But sometimes, families don’t mesh. My wife, I believe, loved me, but she thought I would achieve great things. And when I didn’t, she left.”
“What was she expecting?”
He waves his hand in the air. “A city life.”
“You know, Gianluca, a city life is not so bad.”
“I don’t want it.”
“How could you not? It’s the best. Gram and I live in Greenwich Village in New York City. And we have a roof garden where we grow tomatoes, and sometimes, at night, it’s so quiet you’d think you were by the lake you showed me this morning. Really.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe it’s because there are so many buildings, and we live so closely together, but we appreciate nature more. Every tree is fascinating. Flowers are treasured. City people love flowers so much they’re sold in bunches on street corners year-round.”
“I prefer a field of flowers.”
“Well, you can have that, too, if you take a train ride up to the botanical gardens in the Bronx. You notice the sky more, too. Of course, I don’t think you can beat the colors of the Italian sky, but what we have is also very beautiful. The pollution makes for some gorgeous purple sunsets over New Jersey.”
He laughs. “Just don’t breathe it.”
“Best of all, our building looks out over the Hudson River. The river is wide and deep and flows out past Staten Island to the Atlantic Ocean in a grand sweep. When winter comes, the river freezes and creates a great expanse of silver ice. It never freezes all the way across, like a lake-where you could skate on it-instead it breaks into big gray puzzle pieces of ice that bob in the water until the sun melts them. But for days, when it’s freezing, you can see these gray blocks of ice bumping up against each other where they used to fit together. And at night, if you walk by the river’s edge, the only sound you’ll hear is the soft tapping of the pieces of ice as they float on the surface as water rushes underneath.”
“That quiet?”
“Almost silent. During the winter, the parks and the walkway are empty. I take walks over there, and it’s all mine. I wonder, how can this view be free? But it is.”
“It belongs to you.”
“I pretend it does. I was walking alone on a pier one morning last winter. The river was frozen, but something new caught my eye. It was a flash of ruby red bobbing on a slab of ice. So I walked out to the end of the pier. Three seagulls had caught a fish, a big one. They had gored it and were eating. The red I saw at a distance was the blood of the fish. I turned away at first. But then I had to look back. There was something so compelling about the palette of the black river, the silver ice, and the maroon blood of the fish. It was horrible, and yet beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”
Gianluca listens intently to every word I say.
I continue, “I learned something about myself that morning.”
“What did you learn?” Gianluca leans toward me, waiting for my answer.
“I can find art in the worst moments. I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.”
As Gianluca drives us back to Arezzo, I flip through the swatches of the fabrics we selected at the silk mill. My favorite is a double-sided silk with a repeating pattern of hand-painted calla lilies. I imagine using the fabric to make an elegant slip-on mule with black velvet piping. There are just a few of our old standard choices among the swatches. I hope Gram approves. I took a big step and went ahead and placed the orders. I had a moment of complete exhilaration as I signed my name for the first time on the line on the order form marked DESIGNER.
The sun doesn’t so much set here as plunge behind the hills. Twilight seems to last for a few moments, and then the moon appears in the purple sky like a rosette of whipped cream. It’s a romantic moon, and it’s no wonder my grandmother is under its spell. “You know, your father and my grandmother-”
Gianluca takes his eyes off the road and looks at me.
I make the international hand signal for sex.
He laughs. “For many years. Since your grandfather died.”
“That long?” How do you like that? I thought I knew all the family secrets.
“They were good friends. Now, there’s something more.”
“A lot more.”
“My father was good friends with your grandfather also. Very intelligent. Big personality. Like you,” Gianluca says as he takes a turn off the autostrada onto a small side road.
“Another lake?” I ask.
“No. Dinner.” He smiles.
Gianluca takes another quick turn onto another side road. In the clearing ahead, there’s a charming stone farmhouse lit with torches at the entrance. A few cars are parked outside.
“This is Montemurlo,” he says. “We’re halfway home.”
After we park, he places his hand on the small of my back to guide me into the restaurant. I find myself quickening my step, but he just takes longer strides to keep up with me. Once we reach the door, Gianluca motions for me to go through the empty dining room and outside to the back.
A dozen tables are set up on the veranda, hemmed in by a low wall of stacked fieldstone. Votive candles light the crisp white linens on the tables. A line of blazing torches beyond the wall throw streams of light onto a field. I hear the sound of rushing water.
In the middle distance, there’s a magnificent waterfall pouring down the mountainside and into a small lake. The moonlight on the water looks like ruffles of white lace on black taffeta. “If the food is anything like the view, we’ve got a winner,” I tell him.
Gianluca pulls my chair from the table. He seats me facing the waterfall. Then he turns his chair toward me, sits, and crosses his long legs. The last time I saw a man sit in this fashion, it was Roman, at Gram’s counter after he made me dinner.
The waiter comes over and they converse in rapid Italian and in a Tuscan dialect that is beginning to sound familiar to me. The waiter opens a bottle of wine and places it on the table. He is balding, wears glasses, and looks me up and down, like he’s buying stew meat, before he returns to the kitchen.
I close the menu. “You know what? Order for me.”
“What do you like?” he asks.
“Everything.”
He laughs. “Everything?”
“Sad but true. I’m in that lonely category of woman called Actual Eater. I have no aversions, allergies, or dislikes.”
“You’re the only woman in the world like this.”
“Oh, I’m one of a kind, Gianluca.”
The waiter brings a plate of crisp Italian toast topped with thin slices of Italian prosciutto drizzled with blackberry honey. I taste it.
“You like it?”
“Love it. Told you. I love all food. Get me a jar of that honey.”
As the meal is prepared, we talk about our day at the mill, and the fine art of embossing leather. Eventually, the waiter brings a large serving bowl of pasta, drizzled in olive oil. Then from his vest pocket, the waiter takes a small jar. He opens the lid and removes a truffle (which looks like a lumpy beige turnip) from a small, white cotton cloth. Then, with a sleek silver knife, he makes long, smooth strokes on the truffle, which falls onto the pasta in filmy slices, until the hot pasta is covered.