As I sat on the plane to Europe, staring out into the Atlantic night and reliving conflicts past, it struck me that I missed everything about Aunt Rose, not just the good bits. How happy I would have been to spend another hour with her, even if she were to spend that hour ranting. Now that she was gone, it was hard to believe she could ever have made me slam doors and stomp upstairs, and hard to accept that I had wasted so many precious hours in stubborn silence, locked in my room.
I angrily wiped a tear rolling down my cheek with the flimsy airline napkin and told myself that regrets were a waste of time. Yes, I should have written more letters to her, and yes, I should have called more often and told her I loved her, but that was all too late now; I could not undo the sins of the past.
On top of my grief there was also another sensation gnawing at my spine. Was it foreboding? Not necessarily. Foreboding implies that something bad will happen; my problem was that I didn’t know if anything would happen at all. It was entirely possible that the whole trip would end in disappointment. But I also knew that there was only one person I could rightfully blame for the squeeze I was in, and that person was me.
I had grown up believing I would inherit half of Aunt Rose’s fortune, and therefore had not even tried to make one of my own. While other girls my age had climbed up the slippery career pole with carefully manicured nails, I had only worked jobs I liked—such as teaching at Shakespeare camps—knowing that sooner or later, my inheritance from Aunt Rose would take care of my growing credit-card debt. As a result, I had little to fall back on now but an elusive heirloom left behind in a faraway land by a mother I could barely remember.
Ever since dropping out of grad school I had lived nowhere in particular, couch-surfing with friends from the antiwar movement, and moving out whenever I got a Shakespeare teaching gig. For some reason, the Bard’s plays were all that had ever stuck in my head, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get tired of Romeo and Juliet.
I occasionally taught adults, but much preferred kids—maybe because I was fairly sure they liked me. My first clue was that they would always refer to the grown-ups as if I weren’t one of them. It made me happy that they accepted me as one of their own, although I knew it was not actually a compliment. It simply meant that they suspected I had never really grown up either, and that, even at twenty-five, I still came across as an awkward tween struggling to articulate—or, more often, conceal—the poetry raging in my soul.
It didn’t help my career path that I was at a complete loss to envision my future. When people asked me what I would like to do with my life, I had no idea what to say, and when I tried to visualize myself five years down the road, all I saw was a big, black pothole. In gloomy moments I interpreted this impending darkness as a sign that I would die young, and concluded that the reason I could not envision my future was that I had none. My mother had died young, and so had my grandmother—Aunt Rose’s younger sister. For some reason, fate was on our case, and whenever I found myself contemplating a long-term commitment, whether it was work or housing, I always bowed out at the last minute, haunted by the idea that I would not be around to see it to completion.
Every time I came home for Christmas or a summer holiday, Aunt Rose would discreetly beg me to stay with her rather than continue my aimless existence. “You know, Julie,” she would say, while picking dead leaves off a houseplant or decorating the Christmas tree one angel at a time, “you could always come back here for a while, and think about what you would like to do with yourself.”
But even if I was tempted, I knew I couldn’t do that. Janice was out there on her own, making money on matchmaking and renting a two-bedroom apartment with a view over a fake lake; for me to move back home would be to acknowledge that she had won.
Now, of course, everything had changed. Moving back in with Aunt Rose was no longer an option. The world as I knew it belonged to Janice, and I was left with nothing more than the contents of a manila envelope. As I sat there on the plane, rereading Aunt Rose’s letter over a plastic cup of sour wine, it suddenly occurred to me how thoroughly alone I was now, with her gone and only Umberto left in the world.
Growing up, I had never been good at making friends. In contrast, Janice would have had a hard time squeezing her closest and dearest into a double-decker bus. Whenever she would go out with her giggling throng at night, Aunt Rose would circle around me nervously for a while, pretending to look for the magnifying glass or her dedicated crossword pencil. Eventually, she would sit down next to me on the sofa, seemingly interested in the book I was reading. But I knew she wasn’t.
“You know, Julie,” she would say, picking specks of lint from my pajama bottoms, “I can easily entertain myself. If you want to go out with your friends—”
The suggestion would hang in the air for a while, until I had concocted a suitable reply. The truth was that I did not stay at home because I felt sorry for Aunt Rose, but because I had no interest in going out. Whenever I let people drag me along to some bar I always ended up surrounded by meatheads and pencil necks, who all seemed to think we were acting out a fairy tale in which—before the night was over—I would have to choose one of them.
The memory of Aunt Rose sitting next to me and in her own sweet way telling me to get a life sent another pang through my heart. Staring glumly through the greasy little airplane window into the void outside, I found myself wondering if perhaps this whole trip was meant as some kind of punishment for how I had treated her. Perhaps God was going to make the plane crash, just to show me. Or perhaps he would allow me to actually get to Siena, and then let me discover that someone else had already snagged the family treasure.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I began to suspect that the real reason Aunt Rose had never broached the issue while she was still alive was that it was all baloney. Perhaps she had simply lost it in the end, in which case the alleged treasure might well turn out to be nothing but wishful thinking. And even if, against all odds, there really had been something of value still kicking around in Siena after we left some twenty-plus years ago, what were the chances it was still there? Considering the population density of Europe, and the ingenuity of mankind in general, I would be very surprised if there was any cheese left in the center of the maze once—and if—I ever got there.
The only thought that was to cheer me through the long sleepless flight was that every miniature drink handed out by the smiling flight attendants took me farther away from Janice. There she was, dancing around in a house that was all hers, laughing at my misfortune. She had no idea I was going to Italy, no idea that poor old Aunt Rose had sent me on a golden-goose chase, and at least I could be glad about that. For if my trip failed to result in the recovery of something meaningful, I would rather she was not around to crow.
WE LANDED IN FRANKFURT in something resembling sunshine, and I shuffled off the plane in my flip-flops, puffy-eyed and with a chunk of apple strudel still stuck in my throat. My connecting flight to Florence was more than two hours away, and as soon as I arrived at the gate, I stretched out across three chairs and closed my eyes, head on my macramé handbag, too tired to care if anyone ran away with the rest.
Somewhere between asleep and awake I felt a hand stroking my arm.
“Ahi, ahi—” said a voice that was a blend of coffee and smoke, “mi scusi!”
I opened my eyes to see the woman sitting next to me frantically brushing crumbs off my sleeve. While I had been napping, the gate had filled up around me, and people were glancing at me the way you glance at a homeless person—with a mix of disdain and sympathy.
“Don’t worry,” I said, sitting up, “I’m a mess anyway.”
“Here!” She offered me half her croissant, perhaps as some kind of compensation, “You must be hungry.”
I looked at her, surprised at her kindness. “Thanks.”
Calling the woman elegant would be a gross understatement. Everything about her was perfectly matched; not just the color of her lipstick and
nail polish, but also the golden beetles perched on her shoes, her handbag, and on the perky little hat sitting atop her immaculately dyed hair. I highly suspected—and her teasing smile more than confirmed—that this woman had every reason to be content with herself. Probably worth a fortune—or at least married to one—she looked as if she did not have a care in the world save to mask her seasoned soul with a carefully preserved body.
“You are going to Florence?” she inquired, in a strong, utterly charming accent. “To see all the so-called artworks?”
“Siena, actually,” I said, my mouth full. “I was born there. But I’ve never been back since.”
“How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “But how strange! Why not?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell me. You must tell me all about it.” When she saw me hesitating, she held out her hand. “I am sorry. I am very nosy. I am Eva Maria Salimbeni.”
“Julie—Giulietta Tolomei.”
She nearly fell off her chair. “Tolomei? Your name is Tolomei? No, I don’t believe it! It is impossible! Wait … what seat are you in? Yes, on the flight. Let me see—” She took one look at my boarding pass, then plucked it right out of my hand. “One moment! Stay here!”
I watched her as she strode up to the counter, wondering whether this was an ordinary day in Eva Maria Salimbeni’s life. I figured she was trying to change the seating so we could sit together during the flight, and judging by her smile when she returned, she was successful. “E voilà!” She handed me a new boarding pass, and as soon as I looked at it, I had to suppress a giggle of delight. Of course, for us to continue our conversation, I would have to be upgraded to first class.
Once we were airborne, it did not take Eva Maria long to extract my story. The only elements I left out were my double identity and my mother’s maybe-treasure.
“So,” she finally said, head to one side, “you are going to Siena to … see the Palio?”
“The what?”
My question made her gasp. “The Palio! The horse race. Siena is famous for the Palio horse race. Did your aunt’s housekeeper—this clever Alberto—never tell you about it?”
“Umberto,” I corrected her. “Yes, I guess he did. But I didn’t realize it’s still taking place. Whenever he talked about it, it sounded like a medieval thing, with knights in shining armor and all that.”
“The history of the Palio,” nodded Eva Maria, “reaches into the very”—she had to search for the right English word—“obscurity of the Middle Ages. Nowadays the race takes place in the Campo in front of City Hall, and the riders are professional jockeys. But in the earliest times, it is believed that the riders were noblemen on their battle horses, and that they would ride all the way from the countryside and into the city to end up in front of the Siena Cathedral.”
“Sounds dramatic,” I said, still puzzled by her effusive kindness. But maybe she just saw it as her duty to educate strangers about Siena.
“Oh!” Eva Maria rolled her eyes. “It is the greatest drama of our lives. For months and months, the people of Siena can talk of nothing but horses and rivals and deals with this and that jockey.” She shook her head lovingly. “It’s what we call a dolce pazzia … a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave.”
“Umberto always says that you can’t explain Siena,” I said, suddenly wishing he was with me, listening to this fascinating woman. “You have to be there and hear the drums to understand.”
Eva Maria smiled graciously, like a queen receiving a compliment. “He is right. You have to feel it”—she reached out and touched a hand to my chest—“in here.” Coming from anyone else, the gesture would have seemed wildly inappropriate, but Eva Maria was the kind of person who could pull it off.
While the flight attendant poured us both another glass of champagne, my new friend told me more about Siena, “so you don’t get yourself into trouble,” she winked. “Tourists always get themselves into trouble. They don’t realize that Siena is not just Siena, but seventeen different neighborhoods—or, contrade—within the city that all have their own territory, their own magistrates, and their own coat of arms.” Eva Maria touched her glass to mine, conspiratorially. “If you are in doubt, you can always look up at the corners of the houses. The little porcelain signs will tell you what contrada you are in. Now, your own family, the Tolomeis, belong in the contrada of the Owl and your allies are the Eagle and the Porcupine and … I forget the others. To the people of Siena, these contrade, these neighborhoods, are what life is all about; they are your friends, your community, your allies, and also your rivals. Every day of the year.”
“So, my contrada is the Owl,” I said, amused because Umberto had occasionally called me a scowly owl when I was being moody. “What is your own contrada?”
For the first time since we had begun our long conversation, Eva Maria looked away, distressed by my question. “I do not have one,” she said, dismissively. “My family was banished from Siena many hundred years ago.”
…
LONG BEFORE WE LANDED in Florence, Eva Maria began insisting on giving me a ride to Siena. It was right on the way to her home in Val d’Orcia, she explained, and really no trouble at all. I told her that I did not mind taking the bus, but she was clearly not someone who believed in public transportation. “Dio santo!” she exclaimed, when I kept declining her kind offer, “why do you want to wait for a bus that never shows up, when you can come with me and have a very comfortable ride in my godson’s new car?” Seeing that she almost had me, she smiled charmingly and leaned in for the clincher. “Giulietta, I will be so disappointed if we cannot continue our lovely conversation a bit longer.”
And so we walked through customs arm in arm; while the officer barely looked at my passport, he did look twice at Eva Maria’s cleavage. Later, when I was filling out a sheaf of candy-colored forms to report my luggage missing, Eva Maria stood next to me, tapping the floor with her Gucci pump until the baggage clerk had sworn an oath that he would personally recover my two suitcases from wherever they had gone in the world, and—regardless of the hour—drive directly to Siena to deliver them at Hotel Chiusarelli, the address of which Eva Maria all but wrote out in lipstick and tucked into his pocket.
“You see, Giulietta,” she explained as we walked out of the airport together, bringing with us nothing but her minuscule carry-on, “it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see. Ah—!” She waved excitedly at a black sedan idling in the fire lane. “There he is! Nice car, no?” She elbowed me with a wink. “It is the new model.”
“Oh, really?” I said politely. Cars had never been a passion of mine, primarily because they usually came with a guy attached. Undoubtedly, Janice could have told me the exact name and model of the vehicle in question, and that it was on her to-do list to make love to the owner of one while parked on a scenic spot along the Amalfi Coast. Needless to say, her to-do list was radically different from mine.
Not too offended by my lack of enthusiasm, Eva Maria pulled me even closer to whisper into my ear, “Don’t say anything, I want this to be a surprise! Oh, look … isn’t he handsome?” She giggled delightedly and steered us both towards the man getting out of the car. “Ciao, Sandro!”
The man came around the car to greet us. “Ciao, Madrina!” He kissed his godmother on both cheeks and did not seem to mind her running an admiring claw through his dark hair. “Bentornata.”
Eva Maria was right. Not only was her godson sinfully easy on the eyes, he was also dressed to kill, and although I was hardly an authority on female behavior, I suspected he never lacked willing victims.
“Alessandro, I want you to meet someone.” Eva Maria had a hard time curbing her excitement. “This is my new friend. We met on the plane. Her name is Giulietta Tolomei. Can you believe it?”
Alessandro turned to look at me with eyes the color of dried rosemary, eyes that would have made Janice rumba through the house in her underwear, crooning into a hairbrus
h microphone.
“Ciao!” I said, wondering if he was going to kiss me, too.
But he wasn’t. Alessandro looked at my braids, my baggy shorts, and my flip-flops, before he finally wrung out a smile and said something in Italian that I didn’t understand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t—”
As soon as he realized that, on top of my frumpy appearance I did not even speak Italian, Eva Maria’s godson lost all interest in me. Rather than translating what he had said, he merely asked, “No luggage?”
“Tons. But apparently, it all went to Verona.”
Moments later I was sitting in the backseat of his car next to Eva Maria, fast-forwarding through the splendors of Florence. As soon as I had convinced myself that Alessandro’s brooding silence was nothing but a consequence of poor English skills—but why should I even care?—I felt a new kind of excitement bubble up inside me. Here I was, back in the country that had spat me out twice, successfully infiltrating the happening class. I couldn’t wait to call Umberto and tell him all about it.
“So, Giulietta,” said Eva Maria, at last leaning back in comfort, “I would be careful and not tell … too many people who you are.”
“Me?” I nearly laughed. “But I am nobody!”
“Nobody? You are a Tolomei!”
“You just told me that the Tolomeis lived a long time ago.”
Eva Maria touched an index finger to my nose. “Don’t underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man. I advise you, as someone from the New World: Listen more, and speak less. This is where your soul was born. Believe me, Giulietta, there will be people here to whom you are someone.”
I glanced at the rearview mirror to find Alessandro looking at me with narrow eyes. English skills or no, he clearly did not share his godmother’s fascination with my person, but was too disciplined to voice his own thoughts. And so he tolerated my presence in his car for as long as I did not step outside the proper boundaries of humility and gratitude.