Seeking Sara Summers (16 page)

“I haven’t yet,” Julia said. “But the most beautiful sight right now is you.”

“I am resisting kissing you right now,” Sara said as they waited on the last section of the parade. “It hardly seems fair that we have to hide our love for each other,” she added. “The world could use more love.”

“We don’t have to hide it,” Julia said.

“Yes we do,” Sara said and warned her with her eyes. Did she fear the world’s judgment or her own?

Julia took Sara’s hand, pulling her across the now clear street and away from her thoughts. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Starving,” Sara replied. Not only for food, she thought, but also for Julia. Who was this person she had become? It wasn’t like her to be insatiable about anything, especially life.

They entered a restaurant down a quiet street. A dark, intimate oasis with only one other couple inside having a late lunch. Sara ordered, using the little bit of Italian she had picked up on her trip and Julia applauded her attempt.

The waiter brought them a small bottle of wine and poured them each a glass. Julia watched Sara, as she had so often on her visit. “What are you thinking about?” Sara said, after the waiter left.

“I was thinking that it’s been an amazing couple of days,” Julia said.

Sara lowered her eyes. “I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming. Do you suppose we’re having some kind of mid-life crisis?”

“Well if we are, I hope it lasts for a long time,” Julia smiled. She reached over and held Sara’s hand and Sara automatically looked around to make sure no one was looking. “Relax, darling. No one cares,” she added.

“I can’t seem to get past the stigma of it,” Sara said.

“Stigma?” Julia asked.

“You’re reducing what we have to a stigma?”

Sara apologized. She knew she was being unreasonable. But wasn’t the world being unreasonable, too?

Later that afternoon they strolled the narrow streets, ducking into an occasional shop. Julia spoke to everyone as if she knew them. They stopped and ate gelato at Julia’s favorite shop, and Sara remembered their days of banana Popsicles and long summer afternoons where their friendship basked in the sun by the Connecticut River. Then they found a shady bench in a park nearby and began to excavate the frozen delicacy from the white scalloped plastic cup.

“How do you tell the tourists from the locals?” Sara asked.

“The athletic shoes always give the Americans away.” Julia gestured toward a rotund man in front of them wearing blue spandex shorts, striped socks, and sneakers the exact shade of blue as his shorts. “That took some planning,” she added.

Sara nudged Julia’s arm and looked down at her sandals, relieved that she might be mistaken for a local. Minutes passed. A juggler began a performance in the distance. A cool breeze blew through the trees. “I could stay here forever,” Sara said, voicing her thought from earlier that day.

“Feel free,” Julia said.

Sara laughed. “A remote possibility, at best.”

“I’m serious,” Julia said.

Pigeons searched for crumbs at their feet. “Let’s not talk about this now,” Sara said. As she stood, the pigeons scattered. She walked in the direction they had come, over stepping stones of sunlight beaming through the trees. She wanted to run but walked briskly instead. The juggler winked at her as she walked past, his rhythm undisturbed. Julia caught up with her.

“Are you angry?” she asked.

“No, it’s just that you say things like that as if it’s easy.”

“Isn’t it?” Julia asked.

“Of course not,” Sara said. “Listen, I don’t want to talk about it right now. Let’s just enjoy our day, okay?”

Sara locked her arm in Julia’s. Their sunny day had a cloud on the horizon. For the first time ever, she was the one to lead Julia home.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Sunday
New York Times
was spread out on the bed in front of them. Sara skimmed the latest stories about their unpopular president who at Grady’s suggestion she had voted for twice. Life in the States had continued on without her. In two days she would be leaving. This felt as tragic as all the stories on the front page combined. Sara sighed and sat up in bed.

“What is it?” Julia asked.

“We need to talk.” Sara sounded as serious as she felt.

“I have a better idea.” Julia kissed Sara’s neck.

“Honey, stop,” Sara said, intent on injecting them with a potent shot of reality. She was too old to fall this completely for someone. She was acting like a teenager again. Or maybe a teenager for the first time. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. This was the first time love had actually ever felt like an act of falling. In this case, a freefall from an airplane without a parachute. She and Grady hadn’t fallen in love. They had fallen in comfort with one another.

Julia turned serious and sat up and stacked her pillows behind her. “Okay, let’s talk,” she said.

Sara forced herself not to look at Julia or she might lose her courage. She cleared her throat, as if the seriousness of what she was about to say required the utmost of vocal clarity. “I’ve fallen in love with you,” Sara announced. Her confession sounded stiff and unconvincing, even to her.

“I’ve fallen in love with you, too.” Julia’s expression matched Sara’s seriousness. Was she anticipating what was coming next?

“But you’re my best friend,” Sara said.

“Don’t we all fall in love with our best friends?” Julia asked. “Maybe just a little?”

“But I have to leave day after tomorrow,” Sara said. “We can’t go on acting like this thing we have is going to last forever.”

Julia gathered the newspapers and placed them in a pile on the floor, as if this act was needed to give her the time to think. “Well, I, for one, don’t want this ‘thing,’ as you call it, to end.”

“I don’t want it to end, either, but it has to.” Sara twisted the wedding ring on her finger. It was loose now that she had lost weight from the chemo. They had been in college when Grady bought it, a silver band with four small diamond chips imbedded in the band, bought from a local jeweler that his dad had sold insurance to. He had paid for it in installments.

“Sweetie, what are you thinking about? You seem a thousand miles away.”

“I was thinking about Grady, actually.”

“Wonderful,” Julia said sarcastically. She left the bed and Sara pulled the covers close to make up for the loss of her warmth.

“Where are you going?” Sara asked.

Julia put on her red kimono and crossed the room. Her apartment was cold that morning, in contrast to the warm, inviting bed.

“I have something I want to show you,” Julia said. She went into her studio and returned with a large canvas. She leaned it with its subject matter toward the wall. “I debated whether to show this to you or not,” she added.

“What is it?” Sara asked.

Julia angled the canvas toward Sara, her breasts barely covered by the red robe. Julia paused and took a deep breath, as if an actor about to go onstage. It was strange to witness Julia even remotely nervous, stranger still to think that Sara was the one who was perfectly calm.

“I did a painting of you after I heard from you that first time,” she said. “I wanted to capture what I remembered of you.”

Sara’s resolve was weakening. She readjusted Roberto and several pillows to prepare for the private showing.

“When I first saw you again, I wondered if the painting actually looked like you,” Julia began again. “But more and more I think it does. Especially these last few days. I think I’ve captured the new you.” Julia hesitated briefly, and then turned the canvas toward Sara. “Keep in mind, it isn’t finished.”

An image of a vibrant woman looked out over the streets of Florence. The fountain from Max and Melanie’s courtyard filled the background, the statue peaking over Sara’s shoulder. The woman in the painting looked too alive and beautiful to be her, even an imagined version. She held a boldness Sara had never felt she possessed. But what if this was a part of her?

“This is the kindest, most beautiful and profound thing anyone has ever done for me,” Sara said softly.

Julia leaned the portrait against the wall. “Then why do you look so miserable?” Julia asked.

“I’m not miserable, I’m happy,” Sara said, with a short laugh.

Julia sat next to Sara on the bed.

“What have we done?” Sara whispered.

“We did the best thing we could have done,” Julia said.

“I’m not convinced that it was the best thing. Or the right thing,” Sara said.

Julia paused, as though carefully forming her words. “Listen, I thought I was too old for something like this to happen,” Julia said. “But I’m grateful that it did. I can’t tell you how many unsatisfying relationships I’ve had over the years. I know this development has surprised you, Sara. But you’re not the only one who’s surprised.”

“But I can’t stay here forever,” Sara said. “I have to go back home. I have to go back to Grady.”

Julia looked as though Sara’s words had slapped her in the face. “As naïve as this sounds, darling, I haven’t given a thought to your leaving.” 

“I don’t have the luxury of being naïve.” Sara sounded colder than she intended.

They didn’t speak for several seconds. Roberto’s raspy purr accompanied their silence. Julia turned away, facing the portrait Sara was convinced she could never live up to.

“It doesn’t matter,” Julia said, matching Sara’s coldness. She stood and walked into the bathroom.

Sara followed her, spewing apologies.

Julia turned to face her. “Why are you apologizing?” she asked. “You’re allowed to say what you need to say. I’m just surprised that you returned to reality before I did.”

Sara leaned into the doorframe as Julia washed her face in the sink and dried it with a towel. The thought occurred to her that she could watch Julia do this simple task every day for the rest of her life. But thoughts like these were too painful to pursue. How did she get herself in this mess? She saw now her naiveté in wanting more out of life.

“I just can’t bear getting any closer to you,” Sara said. “It already feels like I’ll have to rip my heart out in order to leave.”

“May I remind you that your heart isn’t the only heart affected,” Julia said somberly.

“I can’t believe how quickly I’ve managed to screw things up,” Sara said.

“Spare me the martyr act,” Julia said.

Their reflections in the bathroom mirror revealed a non-traditional picture of what she had always thought love to be. Her world had flipped upside down. What used to make sense now made no sense at all. What she had thought was love all along, was some sort of misguided form of comfort. Real love, she had discovered only recently, wasn’t comfortable at all. It was riddled with exposure and risks. Things Sara had expertly avoided most of her life.

Julia rubbed lotion onto her face and hands as regret filled Sara. We could be making love right now, she thought, muffling their screams so that the Biraldi’s wouldn’t hear. But did Julia really think that she would leave Grady?

Sara followed Julia into the bedroom. The portrait sat against the wall like a witness to her ineptness. That woman was a stranger, an image impossible to live up to. She would never be that confident, that beautiful.

“How can I fix this?” Sara asked.

From her ornate wooden wardrobe, Julia chose a gray blouse and blue jeans and tossed them onto the bed.

“Nothing broken. Nothing to fix,” she said curtly.

Sara’s mind scrambled for the right things to say, but came up empty. Julia tossed her robe onto the bed, putting on a black bra and panties.

“Do you have any idea how good you look naked?” Sara said, breaking her own need to be serious.

Julia shot her a look. “Don’t do that to me,” she said, as she finished dressing. “I need to go to the market. Francesco and Georgio are coming over for dinner tonight, remember?”

Francesca was Julia’s friend who owned a dress shop in Florence. Georgio was her boyfriend from the university. “I look forward to it,” Sara said, which wasn’t really true. She didn’t look forward to anything at that moment. Looking forward had been one of the reasons she had created this mess. She had wanted to make the most of whatever time she had left but she hadn’t realized what that might entail. Life, she had come to realize yet again, was incredibly messy when you jumped right into it with both feet. 

Julia returned the canvas to her studio. Sara instantly missed the woman she might have become if she weren’t such a coward. But at the same time she felt relieved that she didn’t have to live up to her anymore. She followed Julia into the kitchen.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” Sara said.

“I’m not angry. I’m just very disappointed. And I don’t want to talk any more right now.” Julia ground up fresh coffee beans in the grinder, their aroma filling the room. She brought the glass coffee pot from the cabinet. 

“Can we talk more later?” Sara asked.

“Well, if we wait long enough, you’ll already be gone.”

“Ouch,” Sara said. “I guess I deserved that.”

In the last week, Sara had had glimpses of Julia as a powerful attorney, her career for most of the time they had been apart. She had seen the cold toughness that would be required of her in that job. It was still in her. A part of her. Of course.

“I seem to have a knack for saying things people don’t want to hear,” Sara said.

“Let’s just put this behind us,” Julia said. She paused a beat. “So what do you want to do today?”

“If I’m the master at apologizing, you’re the master at changing the subject.”

“Well, let me do what I’m good at, okay?” Her hazel eyes had darkened.

Sara stopped herself from apologizing again.

“I’ll go do the shopping. You can hang out here if you want,” Julia said.

Any other day Julia would have invited Sara to go shopping with her. But she could understand her need to be alone. “Actually, I think I’ll explore a little of Florence on my own.”

“Fine by me,” she said, no emotion in her voice.