Dolci di Love (7 page)

T
he widows were not a happy bunch when Violetta hobbled down to meet them in the basement.

‘You are wrong,' one group was shouting at another.

‘No, you are wrong,' the other group was shouting back.

‘You're both wrong,' a third splinter was joining in the fray.

Thinking they were arguing about Lily and Alessandro, Violetta bit her lip and scuttled over to her sister, who was standing beneath the ginger supper knocking back a glass of
vin santo
.

‘What's going on?' Violetta whispered.

‘Fiorella brought a
torta della nonna
,' explained Luciana, pointing to the table where there was nothing but a few crumbs left on a crumpled paper plate.

‘She did what?'

‘She brought a
torta della nonna
and it was extremely delicious, but it's started something of a debate,' Luciana said.

‘You use whole eggs in the pastry,' an angry voice cried.

‘No, you just use the yolks!'

‘You use orange zest.'

‘No, vanilla.'

‘No, a tablespoon of olive oil.'

‘It's not the pastry that makes a good
torta della nonna
anyway, it's the filling!'

‘Ricotta,' went up one chorus.

‘
No
ricotta,' went up another.

Violetta walked into the middle of this heated battle and silenced the lot of them with just one look, which ended on Fiorella sitting happily on a chair with pastry crumbs cascading down her cleavage.

‘We do not have
torta della nonna
at meetings of the Secret League of Widowed Darners,' Violetta said coldly. ‘We have
cantucci
.'

‘Oh, really,' Fiorella scoffed. ‘Says who?'

‘Says me,' Violetta answered.

The widow Mazzetti held the rule book up and shook it, although it had nearly killed her not to have a slice or two of such a good-looking
torta
.

‘Says the rules,' Violetta confirmed.

Fiorella was not a woman used to female company, or company of any kind for that matter, and was getting the distinct impression that she wasn't very good at it. ‘Right. Fine. Whatever you say.' She shrugged. ‘It's only
dolci
. I just thought some of us could do with a bit of sweetening up.'

‘Never mind that, are we really going to help out that stuck-up American ice princess?' the widow Ercolani asked, cutting to the chase. She was suffering from indigestion so hadn't had any
torta
, although she definitely could have done with some sweetening. ‘We're asking for trouble involving an “outsider,” if you ask me,' she added. ‘And who's to say she won't whisk Alessandro away once we've done our bit.'

The widow Benedicti hadn't thought of this and turned, panicked, to Violetta for assurance.

The League was officially a democracy, so decisions were meant to be made based on a majority rule, but really, Violetta was the
leader and always had been; it was a divine situation, a bit like the Dalai Lama, only in black.

And the truth was that Violetta had always felt she possessed a sixth sense when it came to matters of the heart, and was helped in this regard by Luciana, who possessed five-and-a-half.

Usually, she knew exactly what to do and who to do it to, but today no bells were ringing, no signs were flashing, her mind was as clear as minestrone. Was Alessandro really their
calzino rotto
? And could Lily truly be the woman to soothe his broken heart?

Where before she felt nothing but certainty, today she felt like the
cornetto
she'd had for breakfast was lodged in her chest and would never move. That was all.

‘What about Roberto, the bus driver, from Cremona,' Luciana suggested, stepping helpfully into the breach. ‘Remember we set him up with Angelica from the language school? Bit of a bumpy start as I recall but they've got children now, and grandchildren.'

‘Cremona isn't a foreign country,' the widow Ercolani pointed out.

‘Put your hand up if you have ever been to Cremona,' Violetta commanded, retrieving her wits and seizing the opportunity.

Not a single hand rose.

‘And put your hand up if you have ever been to America.'

Again, not a single hand rose.

‘Therefore I think we can safely say that America is no more foreign than Cremona.'

This seemed to satisfy the group at large but Fiorella felt moved to voice her own skepticism. ‘So, let me get this straight, this blonde
turista
is seen talking to old droopy drawers out in the valley and on those grounds you decide this is the love match?'

‘This blonde
turista
is seen talking to old droopy drawers on one of Violetta's special days,' the widow Benedicti stressed. ‘That's the key. And by the way, he does not have droopy drawers.' That
Alessandro fitted his drawers quite well had already been discussed on a number of occasions.

‘Right. Good system,' drawled Fiorella, rolling her eyes, something she did with enormous skill.

On any other occasion Violetta might have shut her up with a vicious stare or got the widow Mazzetti to refer again to the rule book for statutes regarding ethnicity, but the events of the day had unsettled her too badly and still there was that sharp pain in her chest, poking at her from the inside like an evil finger.

In the past she had found that a sticky issue could sometimes be resolved by pulling a bit of darning-related wisdom out of her pocket, and given the circumstances, she decided to try this again.

‘Might I remind you,' she told the assembled widows, ‘that our job is not to judge the sock by its colour or even the quality of its wool, but to simply fix the hole, be it in the toe or the heel.'

Her pronouncement was met with silence at first, then a couple of heads nodded, and a couple more, and eventually the whole room was full of nodding heads.

And just one pair of rolling eyes.

T
he early morning light threw a friendly shaft across Lily's face and for a few sleepy moments she thought she was at home in the Seventy-second Street apartment.

She opened her eyes, stretched out her arms, and took a few bleary beats to remember she was not lying next to Daniel on the Hästens mattress she'd bought herself, even though it cost the same as a car, for her fortieth birthday. Daniel was missing, the sheets were a shade of apricot she would never let into her building, let alone her home, and the electricity in her arm hair told her they were also polyester.

She rolled onto her side, looking at the vast expanse of empty bed beside her.

She rolled onto her back again. Blew out a sigh. Let the despair of her miserable situation fully descend.

Once it had settled near rock bottom, she realised she'd been there before. Mornings, if she was honest with herself, had been miserable for a long time.

This was why at home she organised herself a jam-packed schedule, which started the moment her eyes flew open and which she faced, undaunted, with determined enthusiasm. She liked it that way. She organised it that way. The devil finds work for idle
hands, the nuns had always said, and Lily found it to also be true of the mind. The devil finds work for an idle mind.

She sat up in her synthetic bed, the static electricity snatching at her silk pyjamas. She needed to get out and work up a sweat, but as she stood to seek out her running shoes she caught a glimpse of the view waiting quietly out the picture-postcard window.

Tuscany, a place she had never been the slightest bit anxious to see despite the many opportunities, a place she'd not even thought to imagine and which on first impression had sadly underwhelmed her. Yet here it was and here she was and again it took her breath away.

She moved closer to the window and gazed out at the rolling patchwork sea of greens; so many different shades and each one deeper or brighter or more dazzling than the one right next to it. She realised that if she had imagined Tuscany, she would have seen it as burnt orange and golden; vibrant colours but harsh and arid compared to the moist and thriving sprawl of grasses, grapes, olives, forests, and fields that stretched below her.

It was so beautiful it was impossible to concentrate on what had brought her there.

Instead, she leaned against the window frame and watched daylight crawl across the landscape, the offensive shade of apricot on the electric sheets and her wretched heart forgotten as she just let the world's natural shades unfurl in front of her.

She kept thinking she should go, do something, get on with it—whatever it was—but watching the sun creep higher in the sky, spreading its fingers slowly across the rolling hills and valleys, was completely mesmerising.

It wasn't till she heard the sound of something being dropped with a clatter below her that she registered how ravenous she was. She couldn't think what time it would be in New York or how many meals she must have missed. She'd had nothing since the flight the day before. She was starving.

She crossed the room and looked out the other window up and down the Corso. The Hotel Adesso looked remarkably unscathed by its plumbing disaster of the day before; it looked to be sleeping, just like the rest of the street, shuttered and silent. The sun was yet to wake the town with its golden touch the way it had woken Lily and the valley.

She wondered if Daniel was asleep somewhere nearby, his face relaxed, his blond hair sticking up on one side like it did before he washed it in the morning, the dark, dangerous woman tossing restlessly beside him.

Another pang knocked at her insides, and it wasn't hunger. It was Daniel. She turned away from the beautiful view.

She should be angry, she thought as she washed her hair in the tiny shower. She should not be marvelling at the ridiculous view or calmly wondering about her cheating husband's hair, she should be enraged. But she wasn't. She knew rage only too well, thanks to her mother. Rage involved spankings and slaps; shouting and screaming; sharp objects thrown at small heads; terrifying threats; foul language; utter, uncontrollable, high-decibel fury.

Lily felt something, and it was big—she was there in Montevedova after all—but it wasn't loud and explosive in her mother's vein. It was more complicated than that, like the sort of itch that could drive a person mad, or an ache so deep its source was unfathomable.

She searched her face in the mirror for any outward signs of crisis but found no fury there either, a little tightness around the eyes, perhaps, a slightly haunted expression.

Once upon a time she'd seen herself as maybe not beautiful—who admitted to that—but as agreeable. She still conceded to the positive overall package: the blonde hair, the good cheekbones, the clear skin for someone of her vintage, the slender body that she worked so hard to maintain.

She stopped drying herself and looked at that body: the gap between the top of her firm thighs, her sharp hips, her ribs, her small but manageably pert breasts, her collarbone, square shoulders.

It was slender, her body. She had made it slender. She kept it slender. The size of her body Lily could control and did, with a dedication matched only by professional athletes and actresses.

This had become more and more important to her as time went by because with every babyless year that passed, Lily was reminded that this wretched collection of flesh and bone had a mind of its own when it came to the thing she, the heart and soul of Lily, most wanted.

No specialist could tell her exactly why she could not carry a baby to full term.

She'd been to all the conventional experts, obviously, even a psychiatrist in case there was some secret emotional issue sabotaging her plans for motherhood, but no, in the circumstances, she'd passed that test with flying colours. She'd been to naturopaths, homeopaths, acupuncturists, herbal gurus, reflexologists, reiki practitioners, iridologists; she'd even had her hair tested—by a strange-smelling man with a beard down to his navel—to see if it perhaps held some hideous secret. It didn't.

She'd done everything she possibly could to prepare her body for the treasured role of motherhood. She gave up alcohol, coffee, soda, seafood, and cheese. She upped her fatty acids, her omega-3s, her dietary fibre, and took folic acid, selenium, and zinc supplements. But her body had let her down, so now, to pay it back, she punished it by keeping it at a size two. All that dedication and she'd ended up a clothes hanger.

Still, she had good clothes, she had to admit, as she pulled on white Capri pants and a soft pink boatneck top, then made her way downstairs, contemplating the foolishness of renting an apartment that required her to walk through someone else's to get outside.
There would no doubt be many an awkward encounter with Violetta and her funny little doppelganger.

Indeed, she heard the two sisters chirruping to each other as she came down the stairs, although they hushed up upon seeing her in the kitchen—but only briefly.

‘
Mia sorella
, Luciana,' Violetta said, thrusting her sister out toward their guest. ‘Luciana. Luciana. Luciana.'

‘Luciana? Oh, good morning,' Lily said. ‘And good morning to you, Violetta.'

The refectory table and much of the kitchen floor was covered in flour. In fact, if Lily hadn't known what a beautiful day it was outside she might have thought it had been snowing. Inside. Violetta had so much flour on her face she looked like a wisened old geisha and Luciana's black smock was now almost completely white.

At first, Lily tried to sidestep them both and scoot out of their way, but it soon became obvious that they had other plans. Before she knew what was happening, she had been herded to one end of the floury refectory table and pushed into a chair while one old woman thrust some sort of a croissant into one hand and the other old woman forced a strong cup of coffee into the other.

‘Actually, I thought I would go out for breakfast,' Lily said, starting to get up, but Violetta—or was it Luciana, she had trouble telling one from the other—forced her back down into her seat.

‘I couldn't,' Lily protested, looking at the croissant, pushing it away. ‘Honestly, pastry doesn't…I don't…I thought they were French…I'm more of a…'

The two sisters stared at her, blinking uncomprehendingly. They were really quite intimidating for little old ladies.

‘Well, just a little bite perhaps,' Lily said, to be polite, and took a nibble. It tasted pretty good, actually, although she could feel the buttery fat settle on the roof of her mouth. It was not a feeling
she was used to. She gulped the coffee and, by way of diverting attention from the pastry, pointed out the old ladies' side window that looked out on to a bland building opposite.

‘A lovely day, I see,' she said, nonetheless. ‘I thought I would try a little sightseeing or a walk in the countryside.'

One of the sisters then shuffled over to the curtained shelves and emerged with a large enamel container of flour, while the other reached in for a similar container of sugar.

To Lily's great surprise, Violetta (she thought) emptied most of the flour on to the table in front of her with a clumsy flourish. It billowed up like an atom-bomb cloud, explaining the snowy sensation in the room.

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' Lily said, pushing her chair back, assuming it was a mistake.

But Luciana then moved in and proceeded to dump a pile of sugar on top of the flour.

The two old women looked at her and made twin twiddling gestures in front of their faces. Their hands were like the knotted branch ends of twisted old trees.

With matching smiles, they plunged those gnarled digits into the pile of flour and sugar on the table and started to mix it.

It flew everywhere, up in the air, on to the floor, all over them. The dry ingredients danced like a well-stoked fire.

‘You know, I'm pretty sure there has been an amazing invention that might help you with this,' Lily said. ‘It's called a bowl. Maybe I could get you one?'

The sisters chirruped between each other again, then one of them pushed the half-eaten pastry closer to Lily. She picked it up and took another nibble.

They watched her curiously for a moment, then Violetta shuffled to the refrigerator and came back with a dozen eggs, some of which she proceeded to break into the mixture right there on the
table while Luciana, with her arthritic fingers, attempted to mix this now-much-wetter combination.

‘And spoons,' Lily said, unable to drag her eyes away from the strange sight. ‘You should try using mixing spoons. I'm sure it would make all the difference.'

Luciana winced and stood back from the table. Violetta moved in and took over.

‘I should help you, I can see that,' Lily said, ‘but it's just that I'm not really a kitchen person.'

Luciana then brought a small saucepan of melted butter to the table and poured it onto the mixture, which had turned into a lumpy yellow dough. Violetta stepped away and straightened her back as much as she could, which wasn't much, and Luciana took over.

It was clear to Lily now why their cookies were crooked. These little old ladies were past their use-by date when it came to making them and it was painful to watch them try. But it was also slightly wonderful: like modern ballet. They were doing it anyway, no matter how pleasing the results.

And the smell, now that the warm butter had hit the sugar, was making her dizzy. It was just so…well, she didn't know what it was but it brought an unexpected lump to her throat.

‘There are also machines for this these days, you know,' she said, a catch in her voice. ‘There are mixers and food processors and wands and all sorts of things.'

Violetta and Luciana kept swapping places, lifting buttery, floury, curled, clawlike hands in the air as they stepped back and forth, perfectly in tune with each other.

Lily felt an inexplicable tear roll down her cheek as one of them hobbled away to get a bowl of hazelnuts, which were then worked clumsily into the dough before Violetta clawed it into two large chunks. Luciana halved the chunks again and rolled them into four uneven logs on a baking pan, which Violetta put in the oven.

‘I keep cashmere sweaters in my oven,' Lily told the sisters, wiping her eyes as they dumped more flour and sugar on the messy table and started all over again. How on earth did those misshapen logs ever turn into biscotti?

‘Although I have a sister too—Rose,' she continued. ‘And she cooked a Thanksgiving turkey in it once. In my oven, that is.'

Out came the eggs, splat, into the mixture.

‘It was after the second miscarriage, I think,' Lily continued. ‘I didn't think I had a thing in the world to give thanks for, but Rose would not be put off coming. She just arrived with her baby and a bottle of champagne. And Al, of course, carrying a hamper heaving with a huge turkey, his mother's secret stuffing recipe and pecan pie, which, by the way, I can't bear.'

Violetta added more melted butter to the second
cantucci
mixture.

Lily could remember emptying more than one bottle of champagne that Thanksgiving.

Actually, she thought it might have been after the third miscarriage. And she'd thought there was nothing to give thanks for then! Little had she known that five precious incomplete angels in all would be snatched away from her before she ever got to know them.

‘And then there was Grace,' she said, so dreamily it was almost a whisper. ‘Baby Grace.'

Also snatched away, but not before Lily got to know her.

‘She, I actually got to hold in my arms for six whole days. I swear, I must have kissed that little head a thousand times.' If she closed her eyes she could still feel the silky touch of Grace's downy golden hair on her lips, her cheek: a sensation like no other.

‘Sometimes I catch a whiff of talcum powder on someone else's baby and it's like I'm back in Tennessee with her in my arms and everything I ever wanted in the whole wide world nestled right there in one tiny bundle.'