The House in Amalfi (7 page)

“Sort of, but I preferred the porcini risotto; I just loved that wild smoky mushroom flavor. I was a real sophisticated kid.”

“To tell you the truth, I’ll be glad to see you eat almost anything.” Jammy looked me critically up and down. “Though I have to admit you do look pretty good tonight.” She grinned and lifted her glass. “To you, sweetheart,” she said, “and to your return to the living.”

My spirits rose as we clinked glasses and I took a deep draught of the smooth, berry-tasting wine. Glancing up, I caught the eye of a man a couple of tables away. Older, experienced looking, broad shouldered, immaculately dressed. And handsome. He smiled and lifted his glass to me, bowing his head briefly.

I half-smiled back, then turned away, embarrassed. I’d forgotten that Italian talent for flirting. I told myself that of course it wasn’t just me; Italians would flirt with almost anyone except their mothers.

“Did I just see what I saw?” Jammy grinned at me. “Did that guy really make a pass at you?”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “Of course he didn’t; he just . . . smiled.”

“Hmmm.” Jammy did not believe me. She looked him over again. He was with a group of people and they were immersed in conversation. He’d already forgotten me.

“He looks pretty good,” Jammy said, diving enthusiastically into a plate of fettuccine coated in butter and fresh Parmesan. “Oh God,” she groaned, then took a deep, pleasurable breath, “this is the closest I’ll ever get to Mom’s mac-and-cheese.” I laughed and told her she should be ashamed of herself, because this pasta had nothing at all to do with Kraft.

“And
this
is heaven,” I added, tasting my porcini risotto and with it a basketful of memories, thanking God that at least some things had stayed the way I remembered.

We followed the pasta and risotto with grilled sea bream, the sweetest fish you’ve ever tasted, then a simple green salad and, after, even simpler ice cream, pistachio for me and chocolate, of course, for my all-American friend.

Dinner over, we sat lazily content, sipping grappa from tiny glasses. I leaned indolently back in my chair, wrinkling my nose as the liquor took my breath away. Crossing my legs, I gazed up at the night sky, heaving a sigh of something I thought might be happiness.

Take happiness where you can find it, I told myself. At this sweet restaurant with its view of the Pantheon and the moon shining down on it. In the soft night air, with the Romans milling past on their nightly
passeggiata,
children clasped in one hand,
gelato
in the other. In the violin music coming from somewhere close by, the lamplight, the flowers, the red wine, and the company of a good friend.

My eyes half-closed, I dangled a high-heeled red mule from the tips of my toes.

“Mi scusi, signora. . . .”

I looked up, straight into the eyes of the handsome man
who’d raised his glass in a toast to me. I stared blankly at him. Somewhere along the way I had lost that childhood capacity to flirt even when presented with an opportunity like this. I had no idea what to say to him.

He nodded politely to the interested Jammy and excused himself again for interrupting.

“Signora,” he said, bending closer and speaking low so that only I could hear. “I couldn’t help but notice how you swung your foot, the curve of your instep as you balanced the pretty red mule on your toes. It was one of the most charming things I have ever seen. I am by way of being a connoisseur of beauty and I must tell you,
bella signora,
that you have the most delicious foot in all of Rome.”

“
Grazie, signore,
thank you,” I managed to say as he smiled into my stunned eyes. Then he straightened up, bowed over my hand, said,
“Buona notte,”
and was gone.

Jammy stared suspiciously after him. “What did he say to you?”

I grinned modestly. “He said he thought I had beautiful feet.”

“He said
what
!” Her face was pink with indignation. “What is he, some kind of
pervert
?”

“Uh-uh. He’s a connoisseur of beauty. He liked my instep.” I grinned at her, suddenly feeling good. I looked down at my long pale legs and my narrow feet with their coral-tipped nails in the expensive high-heeled red mules. I understood that all the Italian had wanted was to make me aware that I had innocently given him a moment of sensual pleasure. And in return, he’d made me feel feminine and sexy. Like a woman again, I thought, smiling.

The waiter came hurrying to our table.
“Signore,”
he said, “that was the great Italian couturier, the designer Giorgio
Vivari.” He beamed at us, expecting us to know who he meant. And how could we not? It was a name that ranked up there with Valentino and Armani.

I was still smiling when Jammy and I left the restaurant. I would never see him again, but a well-known handsome man, a true connoisseur of beautiful women, had paid me a sexy compliment.

I was laughing as I took Jammy’s arm. Italy was the place I needed to be after all.

The very next day we flew to Naples. We rented a car, a small Fiat, then headed out along the famous Amalfi Drive, the nerve-racking two-lane road that runs in a series of tight hairpin bends along the coast. We drove past hillsides dotted with sweet-looking creamy-colored cows, the
bufala
from whose milk the best mozzarella was made fresh each morning. We skimmed over gorges and ravines, past silvery groves of olives and leafy vineyards clinging to the rocky slopes on one side of the road while on the other tiny villages and hotels clung even more precariously to tumbling cliffs overlooking the rocks and the sea hundreds of feet below.

My heart in my mouth, I kept a stern eye on the road, trying to ignore Jammy’s gasps of horror as a blast signaled yet another oncoming sixteen-wheeler.

She covered her eyes with her hands and moaned with terror. I grinned at her without taking my own eyes off the road.

“Oh, shut up,” I said, “and keep a lookout for those round mirrors pinned to the rocks that tell us when something’s coming.”

“Something is always coming,” she snapped. “And right now I’m wondering exactly why
I
did.”

“ ’Cause you’re my friend.” There was a happy lilt to my voice and she heard it.

“Well, okay, but can we please stop soon?” she begged.

“In five minutes we’ll be there.” I felt her accusing eyes on me.

“You mean you actually
know
where we’re going?”

“Of course I do.” I spotted the sign for the Hotel Santa Caterina, drove through a flowery orchard, and stopped in front of a low white building set like a jewel on a verdant hillside with a panoramic view of the coast.

Jammy gasped. I could tell she was pleased.

She said, “Oh!” when she stepped inside the charming flower-filled lobby.

The young man behind the desk greeted us with a smile. “We were expecting you,” he said, and he proceeded to show us around the small, elegant hotel with its country-tiled floors and Belle Époque furnishings, its lovely gardens and extensive orchards. There was a swimming pool with a thatched-roofed café, and our pretty room had a view through the trees to the sea. I sighed happily. I had that comforting feeling of “coming home.”

“I’m in love,” Jammy said, standing in the middle of our large, sweet room, her arms outstretched, taking in the pretty decor, the big white bathroom with its huge tub, and the balcony with the perfect view. The scent of flowers drifted in on the breeze that felt soft as silk on the skin. “When do we eat?” she added more practically.

So, later, after a swim and a long soothing soak in the tub for each of us, we dressed in our new Roman best, sexy red mules and all, and went down to dinner.

But first there was a message from my Chicago real estate agent. She had an offer on my apartment close to the asking price. Would I accept it?

Yes, I would, and gladly, good riddance to the past, and we toasted our safe arrival with Prosecco, the Italian sparkling
wine that doesn’t even pretend to be champagne; it just is what it is: nice, fizzy, and fun. Then I ate the best potato gnocchi with fresh tomato sauce I’d ever tasted, while Jammy tucked into fettuccine again. A fish, a salad, cheeses. . . . We couldn’t even make dessert.

Tired, well-fed, comforted, cosseted, I lay in bed, listening to Jammy’s snores and the sound of the sea, thinking about my father. About that fateful night and the terrible storm, the capsized boat and the body that was never recovered.

For years after it happened I was terrorized by nightmares of Jon-Boy sinking beneath great black waves. In my dream his eyes were wide open, they stared beseechingly into mine, he held out his hands and I reached out to him. . . . But before I could catch him, he sank into the blackness.

I’d awake, sweating and trembling and praying never to have that dream again. I’d
willed
myself not to think about Jon-Boy’s death, not to dream of it anymore. I never talked to anyone about it, except Jammy of course, and even then I didn’t tell her about the dream. Somehow I managed to block the accident from my mind, allowing only the good memories to stay. But now I was here, at the place where it happened, and I began to question my father’s death.

Jon-Boy was afraid of water. He’d always told me, “Keep your feet on terra firma, honey; it’s the only solid thing in this life.” He hated the sea. He was a bad swimmer. He had never sailed a boat in his entire life.

Then
why
had he been out alone in a sailboat, at night, with a storm brewing?

And why had I never asked myself these questions before? The reason was simple. I was afraid of the answer. But now I felt closer to him than I had in years. And tomorrow I was
going to the house he’d bought in Amalfi, the house he’d left that night and to which he had never returned.

An image of Jon-Boy sharp as a photograph came into my mind: tall and thin, attractive, with a shock of dark hair falling over his brown eyes, a smile that charmed, and a long loping stride I’d always had trouble keeping up with. In my memory he was the young American writer in Rome—
il Dottore,
they called him, and it gave him a rakish kind of glamour—smiling tenderly at me. He was always tender with women, young or old. In fact, I never heard a harsh word from Jon-Boy, not ever. He was a friendly, open man, easy with his companions at the bar.

Behind my closed lids I saw him smile at me again, his hand raised in jaunty greeting. And I knew in that moment that though I could not bring him back, one of the reasons I was here was to find out exactly what had happened. How Jon-Boy Harrington had really died.

That night, my mind made up, I slept away those thousand nightmares. It was the best sleep I’d had in years. Early the next morning, I told Jammy I needed to be alone when I returned for the first time to the house in Amalfi.

I left her contentedly breakfasting on the shady terrace with the view through the trees to the sea. “Need we ever leave here?” she called after me as I closed the door. The magic had gotten to her, too.

Even after twenty years, I remembered every inch of the way, driving the narrow, twisting cliff-side road with the Pirata hill on one side and the lush green slope of the cliff and the sea glittering on the other.

I parked where Jon-Boy always used to, next to the wayside shrine, a small stone grotto with a plaster saint. His hands were outstretched in a benediction and I remembered this was Saint Andrew, whose bones lay in the crypt of the Duomo, the patron saint of Amalfi and the protector of sailors. A vase with fresh flowers had been placed in front of the shrine, and I wondered, surprised, who had bothered to put flowers in this forgotten little spot.

Up on the hill, the Castello Pirata stood proudly, as it had for centuries, its battlemented tower flying its strange flag with the bold skull-and-crossbones insignia of the Pirata
family. Behind the saint’s grotto, a sandy clearing led to the cliff and the
scalatinella,
the steps carved into the rock that zigzagged gently down through tangled green shrubs. Fifty feet below, the pale turquoise sea fluttered at the rocks, sending lazy flights of foam into the clear morning air.