Seeking Sara Summers (11 page)

“You’re different somehow, from when you first arrived,” Julia said.

“Because I’m baptizing myself in fountains?”

“No, I mean you seem more relaxed. You have a vitality I haven’t seen before.”

My oncologist would be happy to hear that, Sara thought, but didn’t speak it. For the first time since she had been in Italy she actually wanted to tell Julia the truth. But she didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Water trickled a steady stream out of the stone wall. “Life just keeps going, doesn’t it? With or without us,” Sara said. “These statues will still be standing long after we’re gone.”

“Well that’s philosophical of you,” Julia said.

“I’ve been thinking lately about my mother,” Sara said. “I know it’s silly, but I still miss her and it’s been decades.”

“You always were very sensitive, Sara. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

“There’s more than one?” Sara laughed. “To be honest, I always wondered why you were my friend.”

Julia leaned back on the bench, a slight look of surprise on her face. “Oh, Sara,” she sighed. “You haven’t really changed much at all, have you? You don’t get who you really are.”

“Who am I?” Sara asked, as if she had been waiting her whole life to hear.

Julia leaned closer. “You are a beautiful, sensitive, caring, self-effacing, funny soul,” Julia said.

“Truthfully?”

Julia nodded. “And I don’t know what I would have done without you when we were growing up,” Julia continued. “I was so lonely, you know? I was an only child with two intellectual parents. You were like a sister to me or a soul mate. We could talk about anything. We laughed constantly. Not to mention that you put up with me, for God’s sake. I must have been the bossiest little girl on the planet.”

Julia paused as a bird took a bath on the edge of the fountain. Sara and Julia smiled at each other as they watched.

“Thanks for saying all that,” Sara said. “It means a lot to me.” Actually, it meant more than Julia would probably ever know, Sara thought.

“I can’t believe you never knew how I felt about you,” Julia said. “So much goes on underneath that calm exterior of yours. What else are you not telling me?”

“Can we take a walk?” Sara asked. She stood.

“Now I
know
there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Not now,” Sara said softly.

“Okay, I’ll drop it,” Julia said. “But I’m here whenever you get ready.”

Sara nodded.

They walked through the courtyard gate and up a dirt path toward a hill. This place was as different from New England as Sara could imagine. But ‘different’ had been exactly what she needed.

“It feels good to move,” Sara said. “If we’d stayed at the fountain any longer I may have become stone myself.” Sara felt closer to Julia since their talk. Was she really all those things that Julia said? She hoped so.

Julia led them through an acre of olive trees, followed by a large field planted with sunflowers, their green stalks just beginning to break through the ground. In a matter of weeks their blossoms would be like praying hands reaching toward the sun. The beauty of the Italian countryside elicited a lightness in Sara’s chest. She briefly touched her scar and turned her face toward the sun, soaking in its rays like the new shoots of the flowers.

At the top of the hill they looked out over a large slice of Tuscany. A man on a tractor plowed a field on a square of earth in the distant valley below. Another figure rode a motor bike, releasing a ribbon of dust down the long driveway beyond the field. Green, yellow, and brown squares formed a patchwork quilt of earth in front of them.

“What do you think?” Julia asked.

“Heavenly,” Sara said.

Julia spontaneously hugged her. The genuineness of Julia’s gesture caught Sara off guard. She hesitated before returning the embrace. And then didn’t want to admit how much she had wanted it.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed you,” Julia whispered in her ear.

At that moment the beauty of everything around her, including Julia, expanded Sara’s chest and threatened to burst open the scar. Italy was bringing Sara back to life. But maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

Sara suddenly felt confused. Mixed with the confusion were feelings she had never experienced before, except with Grady after they had first been married. It was as if all the lines she had drawn until now were blurring. Was she falling for Julia?

Sara turned toward the path, wanting to run away. She wanted to be home. Home with Grady; Luke, the dog; her uninspired students; and everything predictable and familiar. Things were too foreign here, including the new emotions waking up in her.

“Is something wrong?” Julia asked.

“I’m ready to go back,” Sara said. She hated how cowardly she felt.

“What is it?” Julia asked.

“Nothing,” Sara said. She wasn’t about to admit to Julia something she couldn’t even admit to herself.

They returned to the house through another field of sunflowers surrounded by a patch of gnarled olive trees. A painter’s paradise, Sara decided. Actually, anyone’s paradise.  For the rest of the walk she kept her eyes focused on the path in front of her, fielding the thoughts and feelings she couldn’t put words to yet. Julia, who seemed to know instinctively that Sara needed space, didn’t speak on their return. When they entered the courtyard through the gate, Sara averted her eyes from the woman in stone, imagining she could read her mind, as well as her heart.

“There they are,” Melanie said when they entered the kitchen. “We’d almost given up on you.”

“We took a walk,” Julia said. “Up to the summit.”

“How lovely,” Melanie said.

A large earthenware bowl of pasta sat next to a mixed green salad on a large antique wooden table in the dining room. Bread and wine balanced out the feast. For the first time Sara noticed the ice pick that stood erect in the center of the table next to a vase full of flowers. It appeared to have a permanent mooring there, next to an assortment of signatures carved into the wood.

“Former owners of the table and their family members,” Max said, answering Sara’s unasked question. “We’ve continued the tradition. All our family and friends sign it. Before you leave, I hope you’ll do us the honor.” 

Somehow leaving her mark on an old table in Italy touched her deeply. Tears threatened to wash over every name, the flow as unending as the fountain outside. Sara took a sip of water to prevent the outpour. One of the newest carvings was Julia’s. Sara instantly wanted to add her name next to Julia’s and encircle it with a primitive heart:
S.S. + J.D.
She shook the thought away.

Sara offered a sentence or two through the rest of the meal but didn’t feel like talking. After all those years of holding herself together she was finally losing it. Exhilaration and terror mingled with the bread and wine. The ground was dissolving underneath her. She was between worlds. Instead of a near-death experience, she was having a near-life one. At that moment death seemed easier. Life was too messy and unpredictable.

Sara faked a headache and returned to the safety of her room. The door locked, she curled up on the bed, gripping her knees, wanting to cut off the oxygen to the emotion.
You’re losing it,
the critical voice in her head reminded her.

Shut up!
Sara thought, and for once the voice seemed to listen.

Pull yourself together,
she coached herself.
A week from now you’ll be home. Back to normal life. For now, just go with it.

Sara breathed deeply, taking her own advice. After a few minutes she got up in search of something normal to do. Post cards, she thought. She had bought dozens of postcards and not sent a single one. She sat at the small antique desk next to the window to write, hoping this ordinary, mundane action would center her in her ordinary, mundane life.

The late afternoon sun peaked through the lace curtains billowing softly in the wind. She wrote a post card to each of her children and to her friend Maggie at school. Multiple renditions of:
The Tuscan countryside is beautiful. Wish you were here.
The characteristically trite message was nothing compared to the reality of the experience. She debated whether to send one to Grady and decided against it. She didn’t wish he was here in the least.

Julia entered the room next to Sara’s. Every creak in the floors of the old farmhouse revealed her presence. The windows opened. Then the faint squeak of her bed told Sara she was resting. Funny, she had never thought of Julia as needing rest. Her vitality was steady, unquestionable, and as unending as the fountain outside. Yet she had to expand the version of Julia she had kept locked in her memory all these years. Desire had never been part of it.

Sara stacked the post cards neatly on the corner of the desk and returned to the bed to rest. The box springs responded to her every movement. Was Julia listening to her, too? As girls, they would have jumped on a bed like this. Sara would have been cautious, as always. Unlike Julia, who would not have stopped until she had propelled herself upward and touched the ceiling or a grownup showed up at the door.

Sara closed her eyes and took inventory of her body, an action guaranteed to distract her. Besides a mild headache that had just started, her calves and thighs ached slightly from all the walking they had been doing. Before Sara’s diagnosis, she didn’t always notice the aches. But now she noticed everything. Every twinge could be an announcement of the cancer taking reign over a major organ or a lymph node.

Her composure began to unravel again as her thoughts returned to when she and Julia were at the summit. She tried to remain reasonable and understand what had happened. Somehow the beauty there, coupled with her desire to experience life fully, had led to feelings for Julia. Had Julia realized what was happening? She buried her face in her pillow to smother her embarrassment and shame.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next day Julia had to return unexpectedly to Florence on business. Another dealer was there for the day and wanted to see her work. Sara had insisted it was no problem. And in fact, it wasn’t. She welcomed a day to have to herself so she could recover from the intense feelings from the day before. Sara borrowed Max and Melanie’s car to drop Julia at the train station and then planned to spend the day in Siena on her own.

Sara roamed through a few shops enjoying her independence. She was proud of herself for exploring this beautiful city on her own. She wandered into another dress shop and was drawn to a display of scarves. She picked up a red silk one and caressed her face. At first she considered buying the scarf for Julia. But then she wondered if she might buy it for herself.

A young woman about Jess’ age walked over and showed Sara how to arrange the scarf to accentuate her neck. When Sara looked in the full-length mirror she hardly recognized herself. The scarf brought out the color in her cheeks and made her face look alive. She paid for the scarf, oscillating between pleasure and guilt for the purchase, and wore it out of the store. She felt conspicuous at first, as if she had a red target around her neck. But then she began to relax into this new look. A few men smiled at her and she realized she was smiling back. 

On the next corner she went inside a small café and chose a table near the window. She decided to rest awhile and people-watch. She placed her purse in the chair next to her and an attractive young waiter walked toward her.

“Good afternoon, Madam. Can I get you something?” he said in broken English.

Two things concerned her immediately. First, how did he know she was American? And second, was a woman in her 40s already a madam? The word sounded matronly. Grady’s mother was a madam. Not Sara. Then she entertained the gruesome thought that he was about the same age as her sons.

“I’ll have a cappuccino,” she said. Sara looked briefly into his dark, Mediterranean eyes and was reminded of the statue of David by Michelangelo that she had seen in Florence. His features were smooth, classic, and other-worldly. A spark of attraction erased some of her confusion from the day before. She smiled her relief.

He bowed slightly, as if the smile was for him, and left to get her order. Behind the counter the clatter of cups and saucers competed with the assertion of the espresso machine. Minutes later, the young waiter returned carrying a cappuccino and two shortbread cookies on a small saucer. She started to tell him he had made a mistake with the cookies but he stopped her and said, “A gift, Madam.”

Sara thanked him and smiled. The young man returned a brief smile before lowering his eyes and leaving again. Was he flirting with her? She found this hard to believe. No one had flirted with her since her first child was born.

An older gentleman sat at an adjacent table and tipped his hat to her before placing it on the table. It was odd to get this much attention. Maybe this is what it’s like to be Julia, she thought. Everyone turned to look at Julia. As much now as they had in high school. Despite Julia’s assertions, that kind of beauty had never been one of Sara’s assets. In high school she was thought of as “cute.”

Sara glanced across the café. Across the room the young waiter served a couple with their new baby. As soon as he finished with them he came over to fill her water glass.

“Is everything satisfactory, Madam?”

“Perfect,” Sara said. She smiled, feeling oddly romantic. Was she really fantasizing over a waiter half her age? She reveled in the thought that she was normal after all. She could now dismiss the feelings for Julia as too much Tuscan sun.

Sara smiled her relief and took in the experience of Siena. Flowers were everywhere—in parks, in front of buildings, adorning window boxes. The café smelled of fresh bread, pastries and espresso. If the waiter wasn’t enough to make her salivate, the aromas coming from the kitchen were. The town’s buildings were actually the color of sienna, with green shutters on every building. Colorful flags representing the different neighborhoods adorned every street.