Chapter 3
Chapter Three
On the train journey from Tuscany to Rome, Francesca was seated not far from what sounded like an American couple on their honeymoon.
The twentysomethings spoke slow and sultry American English with a vague Southern twang, held hands between the seats, and often kissed with their eyes closed, as though nobody else in the carriage existed at all.
Francesca had forgotten her headphones and couldn’t blot out the sound of other people’s happiness, a joy that reminded her far too much of her own past, her own loves.
Now, she was a cancer-ridden seventy-something.
Her future was unknown and probably brief.
When the train lurched to a stop at the central station, Francesca wheeled her suitcase onto the platform.
At once, she spotted her daughter, Allegra, and her granddaughter Tatiana, standing near a little coffee kiosk.
Tenderness flushed through Francesca’s chest. When Tatiana spotted her, she hurried over, a sweep of black hair out behind her, and kissed her grandmother on both cheeks before taking her suitcase.
“Nonna,” she called, “it’s so good to see you again. ”
Francesca allowed her granddaughter and daughter to guide her to a waiting taxi, which took them to the glorious villa that Allegra shared with her husband.
Now that Tatiana and Teresa were both going to university, they lived outside the home but came and went as they pleased, always eager to eat their mother’s cooking and hang out with their father, a brilliant intellectual man named Martino.
The fact that two of Francesca’s daughters had gone on to embrace Italian culture and even marry Italian men pleased Francesca.
Sometimes she wondered why she had never fallen in love with an Italian.
Her best guess was that Benjamin had infected her at an early age and had taught her the mysteries and beauty of dating American men.
Jefferson Albright’s Englishness had also intrigued her.
Maybe Italian men had seemed too simple to her, too understandable.
A few minutes after their arrival, Allegra fielded an angry phone call from one of her clients, an American actress who’d sought Allegra’s talents in the field of fashion and demanded a perfect dress for the closing party of a film festival in Milan.
For the first time in years, Francesca heard Allegra’s American accent, still nearly perfect despite her years away.
Francesca was frozen in the living room, listening and watching Allegra, feeling as though she’d been transported through time.
She remembered Allegra in the kitchen of their home at the White Oak Lodge, twisting her finger around the phone cord and talking to boys (until Francesca had insisted she get off the phone and tend to her tasks at the Lodge, of course).
When Allegra got off the phone, she winced and told her mother and Tatiana that she had a fashion emergency and needed to meet this American actress pronto. “I’ll meet you at dinner later,” she promised, “but I don’t think I’ll make it out before then.”
Tatiana suggested that she and Francesca enjoy the sunny afternoon in a nearby square.
Francesca hesitated, thinking it might be better to rest, think, and plan her next steps, but quickly remembered that she was very sick and needed to take every opportunity she could to be with family.
She put on a bright shade of lipstick and followed the gorgeous twenty-one-year-old Tatiana to the piazza, where they ordered midafternoon Aperol Spritzes and flirted with the handsome server, who doted on them and gave them free snacks.
Francesca marveled at Tatiana’s intelligence and wit and wondered if she’d ever seemed like that to her own grandparents.
She wished she could fully remember what she’d been like when she’d first met Benjamin at seventeen—four years younger than Tatiana was now!
Over drinks, Tatiana met Francesca’s gaze and gave her a stern smile. “My mother mentioned something,” she said. “Something about my grandfather? You’re going to see him?”
Francesca’s stomach tied itself into knots. “How much of your mother’s American story do you know, darling?”
“Mom never talks about the United States. Dad says that he had to fight to get her to speak English to us as kids. She wanted to abandon her past altogether.” Tatiana sipped her drink. “Is that what you wanted?”
“I suppose it was for a long time,” Francesca said.
She didn’t want to burst the perfectly cultivated bubble Allegra had formed for her daughters.
She didn’t want to be the first to mention the fire, or her Uncle Jack’s supposed death, or what had happened with Benjamin and Angelo.
“There are many unresolved stories in Nantucket. I haven’t seen your grandfather since I was in my forties, which feels like a lifetime ago.
Benjamin and I made many mistakes, and I didn’t always know how to forgive him.
Our marriage nearly ended a few times before he disappeared. ”
Tatiana’s eyes glinted. Francesca grew weary, realizing she’d already said too much.
But wasn’t it the job of the elder to impart wisdom from the past to the younger generations?
She saw the way Tatiana flirted with the server.
She saw how handsome passersby regarded her.
Tatiana needed to know how to protect herself.
She needed to know that no matter which direction she leaped, she’d probably take a tumble and get her heart broken. Such was life.
Later, Tatiana and Francesca walked five blocks to the restaurant that Lorelei and her husband, Roberto, had opened ten years earlier.
Roberto was a top chef who’d trained in London, New York, and Paris before returning to Rome, where he’d met Lorelei and gone on to have three children: Pino, Aurora, and Nadia.
Tatiana’s sister, Teresa, was waiting for them, wearing a sleek black dress and high heels. Her dark hair was glossy, like satin.
Lorelei breezed out of the back office, removed her reading glasses, and kissed Francesca on her cheeks to say hello.
“What a marvelous surprise,” she said, although her eyes were uncertain and watchful.
Allegra had obviously told Lorelei about their father’s return and their mother’s “crazy” idea to go see him.
Just then, Allegra burst through the door, poured herself a glass of wine, and grumbled, “That American actress drives me insane.”
Francesca scoffed. “Darling, we’re Americans. All three of us,” she reminded her daughters, remembering the citizenship test she’d taken, the pledge she’d given in front of the American authorities, the pride she’d had when she’d received her first American passport.
Allegra and Lorelei exchanged worried glances. Allegra sipped her wine and said, “You were so eager to get us out of there, Mama. You hated America. Don’t you remember?”
But what Francesca remembered was all-encompassing pain.
She remembered mountains of black smoke, billowing over the White Oak Lodge.
She remembered regret. She remembered little Nina, proof of her failure as a wife, evidence of her husband’s infidelity.
She remembered her awful desire to get Nina out of her sight, if only so she could live with herself and move on.
But had Francesca ever truly moved on from what had happened?
And if she hadn’t moved on, how would her children?
She knew Allegra and Lorelei were faking it.
They sat at a long table with wine and appetizers and waited for their pasta dishes, prepared with love by Lorelei’s husband.
Tatiana and Teresa were having their own conversation, one that seemed to be about a boy with whom Teresa had a complicated relationship.
Francesca dared to wonder how her Italian grandchildren would get along with her American grandchildren.
She wondered—if she didn’t survive surgery and chemotherapy—where they would hold her funeral and if Benjamin would attend.
Would he dare make a speech about why he left her, or what she did to his heart, or what he, in turn, did to hers?
“I am going, my darlings,” Francesca said to her daughters, interrupting their conversation about the American actress. “I’m going to Nantucket. I’m going to face what happened.”
Lorelei let her fork drop a few inches. She looked miffed.
“How often do you think about it?” Francesca asked Lorelei and Allegra under her breath. “How often do you have nightmares about that night?”
Allegra pressed her lips together. Quiet churned over the table until Lorelei admitted, “All the time.”
“All the time!” Francesca snapped her fingers.
“And isn’t this something we should address?
Now that your father has come back to the Lodge, now that he wants to talk about what really happened that night, don’t we owe it to ourselves to learn?
Maybe the nightmares will stop. Maybe we’ll start to heal as a family.
” She pressed her palm against the white tablecloth.
Her fingers had gotten thinner with illness. She felt like a collection of bones.
“Mama,” Allegra said tentatively, “I wanted to tell you that I found a really wonderful therapist. He’s excellent.
I’ve been going for a couple of years now and have had great success.
I didn’t know how to bring it up. But don’t you think that after everything that happened with Jefferson, after everything that happened in America, you owe it to yourself to look into your mental health? ”
Lorelei furrowed her brow. “I know it isn’t something people in your generation usually go for.”
Francesca smarted, realizing that her daughters had discussed her mental health and decided on a solution that had nothing to do with a plane ride across the Atlantic. “Is a therapist going to tell me why my husband faked his own death and disappeared for almost thirty years?”
Allegra sighed. “I don’t think even Dad is going to be able to tell you that.”
Lorelei was quiet for a moment, swirling her pasta around her fork. “Do you think Dad knows where Jack is?”
Francesca’s ears rang. Jack, my darling baby, Jack.
She could still picture his smile, clear as day, always mischievous as he cut through the kitchen and stole a piece of cheese or a bit of meat from the countertop.
Her emotional life had been ravaged after what she’d been told was Jack’s death.
But who had told her that Jack died? Who set that up?
Francesca’s thoughts whirred. It was clear people were operating deep within the system, people who’d been manipulated to tell her lies that chased her out of the country.
Was that you, Angelo? She wondered about her brother, a man whose face she hadn’t seen since that fateful July 4th, 1998.
Francesca would not go to her grave without understanding more of her story.
Her tongue itched to tell her daughters she was not well, that she needed their help to put the final pieces together.
But she couldn’t bear the idea that they’d break down into tears and ask her questions and demand that she stay in Italy for immediate surgery.
No, she had to take matters into her own hands.
She took a massive bite of pasta, indulging in the cream and the parmesan cheese, and closed her eyes.
She was still the young, vivacious Francesca who’d first gone to America.
The only difference now was that she still had her American citizenship.
She could do with that identity what she liked.