Chapter 23 Michael
Michael
Lying in a bed, in pain, naked, with a bag of diced frozen vegetables on my crotch, I stare at the canopy, wondering what I’ve done to deserve this.
I’d love to be Googling the possible consequences of this incident on my genitals, but with no Wi-Fi, I can’t even self-diagnose any terminal complications.
Two knocks on the door snap me out of my catastrophizing. “Come in,” I say, pulling the sheet up to my waist.
“May I?” Elisa peeks through the crack. “I’ve come in peace.”
She enters the room holding a pan covered with a tea towel. “Have you by any chance hidden a knife so you can finish me off down there?” I ask.
“No.” She lifts a corner of the white linen towel and a sublime aroma fills the air. “We had a pizza date pending, if I remember correctly: ham, mushroom, and artichoke. Is it still your favorite?”
Just the smell of it opens up a chasm of memories: Here at Le Giuggiole, pizza Mondays were sacred.
Mariana baked an industrial quantity of pizzas in the large wood-fired oven in the kitchen, and we rascals polished them off while holed up in a tent pitched in the garden.
We’d camp out, eight of us in a four-person tent, and stay up until morning playing Uno.
“As long as I have teeth to eat it,” I reply. I move over to my left and motion for her to sit on the free half of the bed.
“Since you can’t go to the pizzeria in your state, I brought the pizzeria to you.”
“Ah, did you hear . . . ?” I ask her sheepishly.
“Yes. No detail spared.”
Damn. “So are we good now?” I ask her.
“No. Not now, for now. It’s different,” she objects. “We’re in a temporary truce.”
“Ah, yes, one month to reevaluate the estate and tie up Bingley to stop him from selling it.”
“If it can happen to me, there’s a good chance it can happen too to you,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember? I wanted to go to Milan, get a master’s degree in publishing, work with a large publishing house, travel . . . Then Linda was born, and I had to give it all up. I haven’t always loved this place, you know? In fact, I even hated it for a while.”
“From the way you talk about it now, you wouldn’t think so.”
“When my daughter was born, I didn’t know how to be a mother.
I wanted her, I kept her, I felt sorry for her while she was hospitalized, and then, after they discharged us, I was overcome by this wave of negativity.
What was I thinking? How could I love a daughter who was the obstacle to all my dreams?
And this village with all its gossip had become so suffocating.
I knew what a mess I’d gotten myself into, and I felt doubly shitty because not only was I a failure, but I’d also implicated this little girl who hadn’t asked to be born.
I did nothing but walk around the estate in the grip of my demons, so much so that in two months, I lost all the weight I’d gained during pregnancy. ”
“What changed your mind, then?”
“It was my babbo. One evening he took me by the hand and asked if he could walk with me. And I just started sobbing, because I felt like I’d hit a dead end.
What else could I do with my life, besides be a mother?
” Elisa sighs, and I can see in her eyes how much she misses her dad.
“He was a simple man, a farmer, and I mean that in the best way possible. He was grounded in the earth, he spoke the same language as nature, so he started talking to me about the vineyard. ‘Do you know that a vine takes seven years to produce its first grapes after it’s planted? Seven. Like a child going to school. Before that, nothing or very little. But over those seven years, it must be cared for every day. A winemaker isn’t born a winemaker, and a vineyard doesn’t immediately bear fruit.
Patience is learned, Elisa, and love grows along with it. ’”
“Your dad was a man of few words, but I think he was wise enough to speak only when he knew the right thing to say,” I observe.
“That’s how he was. Then he broke a leaf off a vine and put it in my hand.
He said it was a plant that represents devotion, protection, and strength because it’s robust and resists everything, like life.
Then he said, ‘As of tomorrow, you’ll come to the vineyard with me.
You’re not made to stay at home and stare at the wall.
’ Babbo was right: I learned patience, and day after day, seeing the bunches ripen, I fell in love with it too. ”
“You’ve always been tenacious,” I reply after polishing off my second slice of pizza. “I had other plans too, but my brother’s death scuppered everything.”
“You two never ended up getting along, did you?” Elisa knows that from the time we were kids, there was no love between George and me. We were like strangers forced to share space and time against our will.
“It got even worse as we grew up. He was always a shrewd and calculating opportunist, eager to take advantage of anyone he associated with. He had those blond curls and blue eyes, that angelic face with so much charisma. He knew how to sell himself. The Bingleys had a way of keeping his bluster in check when they were our guardians. But once George turned eighteen and got his inheritance, he started traveling all around Europe, squandering his capital down to the last penny on luxury cars, yachts, casinos, ‘expensive’ women, and then, finally, drugs. It started as a way of fitting into his social circles, then it became a habit, and it ended with addiction.”
“Drugs? I . . . I had no idea,” Elisa gasps.
“He ended up broke, came back to London, and when I inherited my share, he asked me for money. Being the eighteen-year-old idiot I was, I gave him a property in Dorset. He sold it and was penniless again within six months. He begged me for more cash, and after I said no, we basically stopped speaking. We agreed that I’d manage the D’Arcy properties, while he would head up the financial consulting firm.
It could have been incredibly profitable had he not squandered it all on gambling, coke, and whores.
In the last year, I never saw him sober; he was doing a hit every hour because he couldn’t handle the comedown.
One night he thought it was a good idea to join a drag race and slammed into a wall at two hundred miles an hour with his McLaren P1.
To protect Saxton the explanation might be embarrassing. “Why . . . ?”
“Do I have pizza on my face?”
Thanks for the assist. “Yes, you have a bit of tomato right there,” I say, pointing to an imaginary stain on her cheek. “I’ll take care of it,” I find myself saying. I reach my right index finger toward her face and slide it across her skin.
There it is again, the same feeling as before. “Got it,” I announce, to lend credibility to my colossal lie.
“Thank you.”
A strange silence hangs in the room, not the empty, awkward kind, but as if something were about to happen, only neither of us know what.
“So, when do I get a tour of the estate? A serious tour, I mean, from entrepreneur to investor,” I say to break the tension.
“Michael, we’ll go on horseback. Do you feel up to it . . . in . . . your condition?”
“Absolutely, yes! Give me a few days, and I’ll be ready for the Palio di Siena,” I exclaim boldly. I can’t be sure, but if I’m wrong, I’ll suffer in silence.
“Okay. I’ll have Mamma pack us a lunch—nothing over the top, just a quick bite to eat. And dress comfortably and coolly. We’ll be out all day. Think you can handle it even if it’s not a Michelin-starred tour?”
“It sounds perfect.” I’m serious.
“Okay, then, I’m off,” she says, taking the pan and throwing the napkins onto it. “Wait a minute . . . what is this?” she asks, bringing something up to her eyes.
“This, what?”
“Is it a . . . piece of zucchini? What the hell is it doing in your sheets?”
This is definitely going to be a hard one to explain.