Читать книгу Amy's Story - Anna Lawton - Страница 3

New York, September 2001

“Mulberry and Canal, please.”

The cabbie looks at her in the rearview mirror while the car pulls off into the Broadway traffic.

“Are you a tourist?”

“No, I’m a New Yorker.”

“But you were not born in New York?”

This puts her off. This really puts her off. Thirty plus years in this country and they still pick up traces of her Italian accent. Traces, mind you. It’s practically all gone.

“Were you?” she asks, staring at the prayer beads dangling from the mirror. There is a note of irritation in her voice. The mirror sends back to her the liquid gaze of two dark eyes, now slightly sweetened with the hint of a smile.

“None of my business, miss. Just trying to make conversation.”

Okay, he wants to be friendly. Let’s be friendly.

“So, where are you from?”

“Afghanistan.”

Image association. Amy sees flashes of Soviet tanks roaming the country, ambushes on mountain passes, destroyed cities and villages—the footage she used to see in the news twenty years ago. Then, she recalls recent humanitarian appeals for women executed in sport fields, their burkas looking like the hoods of witches burnt at the stake in medieval times.

“How long’ve you been here?” she asks.

“Since 1981. I was a kid. My family was among the lucky ones who made it. We loved our country, it was very beautiful. But then the Russians came, you know, they upset everything. And now a pack of mad dogs took power.”

“Yeah, the Talibans. Is this what they’re called? They’re the ones who blew up those ancient Buddha sculptures, right?”

“I told you, miss, they’re mad dogs. They say they rule according to sharia law. But this is not the Islam I know.”

The cell rings. He picks up and starts an animated conversation. The cab fills up with harsh guttural sounds. He turns to her.

“Sorry, it’s my wife. She wants me to take the kid to school today.”

The conversation turns into an argument that does not seem to be going to end any time soon. Amy closes her eyes and dozes off, lulled by the traffic that rushes the car along like water in a stream.

It’s a bright September morning. A quarter to eight, according to her watch. Amy hates going out that early, but this is the only time when she can have a quiet conversation with Rosa. At any other time, Rosa would be too busy with work at the pizzeria, all day long till late at night.

Rosa... Amy has known her for ages, since way back in Italy when she was a child and Rosa was a maid at Villa Flora, her grandmother’s country estate. Here in New York they don’t see each other often, only occasionally, when Amy feels like being pampered with a home-cooked meal and an outpouring of affection. But today she has to talk to Rosa about a matter related to work. She needs to verify a detail from the old times. It’s for this manuscript she’s getting ready for publication. A very special manuscript. The work of a childhood friend.

As the president of L&N Publishers, Amy does not do a lot of editing herself, not anymore. She has a dozen editors working for her. But this manuscript is really special. She would not entrust anyone with the job. It has to be her, because she’s been so close to the author. They grew up together, they played together, they went to school together, and they spent the summer months together at Villa Flora. Amy and Stella, two inseparable friends. They even looked alike, although they had different personalities. Later, they went to the same parties, fought over the same boys, made peace, graduated in the same class, and moved to the States at the same time. Amy does not remember exactly when they first met. Stella has been there from the beginning.

Amy’s family was not a regular family. She had an American father, and no kid with an American father was considered a ‘regular’ kid in Italy. Everybody looked at this circumstance as something exotic and very chic. When he came to visit, Amy would parade him in front of her schoolmates as a creature from another planet.

It was the end of the fifties, and Amy was ten years old. The planet ‘America’ was basking in all its glory. Images of smiling GIs entering Italian cities devastated by a brutal war were still on the minds of many, those indelible images from news reels that some fifteen years earlier had filled the movie screens and the pages of illustrated magazines. In those days, they had stirred deep emotions and feelings of gratitude among the people. And not only that, people shared a sense of awe for those guys who looked so strong and healthy and smart and outgoing compared to the gaunt faces and desolate looks of the local folks, an army of demigods with good white teeth, bestowing a cornucopia of chocolates, nylons, and ballpoint pens upon a destitute population.

But for the kids of the industrial boom, who saw those war pictures as historical documents of a remote past, the planet ‘America’ consisted of the mythical Far West, cowboys and Indians movies, Mickey Mouse and the Disney menagerie, chewing gum, baseball caps, Coca-Cola, and the latest musical craze—rock and roll. It was cool to look American, a popular song told them. It went like this:

Tu vuò fà l’americano, mericano, mericano,

ma sei nato in Italy...

Sient’a me, nun ce sta nient’a fà.

Okay, napulità.

(You want to look American, merican, merican,

But you were born in Italy...

Listen to me, nothing to be done.

Okay, Neapolitàn.)

As a result of the Marshall Plan, Italy was catapulted out of a dormant economy still anchored in the nineteenth century, into the world of mass consumption. Where centuries of wars and occupations had failed, American culture won. It encroached upon tradition and marked the beginning of a huge transformation. The transformation was not just economic, but also social and psychological, as is often the case.

Because of her American father, Amy was considered privileged among the kids. But in a nice way. It was sort of an admiration devoid of envy. In fact, you can only envy someone who is like you, just luckier. Not someone who belongs in another sphere. They felt she was different, that’s all. And, although they looked up to her and sought her company, they never felt totally at ease. And so, she had no friends. Only Stella.

One summer at Villa Flora, Amy and Stella were lying in the meadow outside the gardens, in the thick grass that would soon be cut to make hay. The hilly landscape of the Piedmont countryside south of Turin, renowned for its fine wines, was displayed before their eyes, like in the frescoes adorning the walls of the villa. The meadow was on a slope, rolling down gently to the bottom of the hill. Wild flowers provided splashes of color on the green field, hundreds of nuances of purple, blue, yellow and white. Beyond the meadow were the vineyards, on smaller hills, one after another in an undulating succession, like the waves of the ocean. The sun was at its zenith. The heat energized the earth and made every color more vivid, every smell more intense, every buzz more vibrant.

“Are you really leaving next week?” Stella asked.

“Of course.”

“But do you really want to go?”

“I can’t wait. Dad said he’ll take me all over the States and show me those places he sent me postcards of. I’m so excited. Why don’t you come along?”

“I can’t go.”

“Why?”

Stella rolled over and lay flat on her back, then opened her arms to cover as much ground as possible. She took in a deep breath of air, dense with the fragrance of grass and the rich smell of earth.

“I feel like little shoots are growing out of my body and making their way down into the earth. Right here. It’s the sun that makes them sprout. And I’m tied down and becoming grass and flowers myself.”

“Come on! Cut it out. I know you’re good in composition at school, but... the fact is you’re just scared. Scared of going so far away from home. I bet the minute you get there you’d start crying because you miss mommy.”

“Amy...!”

That was Rosa calling from the alley that led up to the villa. “Amy...! Lunch is ready. Hurry up, don’t make signora Amelia wait.”

Signora Amelia was Amy’s grandmother. Amy was supposed to be named after her, but at the last minute mother decided that Amelia was not good enough, and named her America. Yes, America. Was it a way to influence her destiny? She didn’t know. But she liked it. She really did.

“Coming!” Amy shouted back, as she and Stella sprinted to race each other uphill.

“I can’t go,” Stella repeated. Meaning to America, not to lunch.

Well, Amy did go and had a great time. She had graduated from fifth grade that year and there had been some discussion in the family on whether she should enroll in an American school for a year abroad. But mother thought that she was too young and that a summer vacation would be more than enough for her first American experience. As it turned out, Amy never had her year abroad. She had other vacations, though, and eventually moved over there to enroll in graduate school. But that first summer in New York was memorable, and nothing in all the ensuing years could ever compare to it. Upon her return, Amy recorded that experience in her diary, a cute little notebook daddy gave her to develop her love for writing.

To be around dad was a lot of fun. He called me names I had never heard before and that made me laugh—sweetie, sweetie pie, sweetheart. I thought he made them up. But most of the time he just called me, girl. I loved that. Simple, direct, without sugar. It implied a rapport of camaraderie. Especially when he said it with a wink, as in: Alright, girl? Wink.

I thought he was very handsome, with longish blond hair and a mischievous smirk. And he had a way with women they found irresistible. In fact, it was almost impossible to have a private moment with him. There was always one girlfriend or other around, at home and at the office.

Home for him was a large penthouse on two levels on the Upper East Side with a view on the park. He lived on the top level which had huge rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and even a swimming pool on the deck. On the lower level were the offices of L&N Publishers. Dad was the boss. Actually, he was the founder and sole owner. Why L&N then, I asked, what does it stand for? He said that L stood for Lawrence/ Larry, which was his name, and N, for None in Particular. It just sounded good. Dad was like that, he liked to tease. But I thought that, perhaps, he needed someone to stand by him.

A private elevator opened straight into the reception room arriving from the lobby fifty floors below, in fifty seconds. To me, that elevator was sort of a fair ride. And I would go up and down up and down, just for the fun of it. The office suite was very busy, with its team of tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking editors—the intellectual type—engulfed in loud discussion with each other, and a large staff of pretty women. After work, colleagues would show up in the living quarters for drinks and conversation. The one that came upstairs most often was Molly, the only woman editor. She had a great athletic body—she had been a swimming champion in college—and on weekends she spent hours in the pool doing laps. When she was done, she would give me lessons. At the end of the summer, I was an expert swimmer. I liked her a lot, and so did dad.

But at times, dad felt that he needed a break from Molly, the pretty staff, the office, the authors, the critics, the book launching parties, and the many demands on his private and public life. At those times, he would look at me and say: Now we’re going to disappear. Just the two of us. Alright, girl? Wink.

Once we disappeared for two weeks. Dad kept his word and took me to all the places I had seen on postcards, “from sea to shining sea.” He sang for me while driving his Corvette convertible toward the Rocky Mountains and beyond. We went as far as California where he grew up and where he still had the Santa Barbara mansion he inherited from his parents.

All this was dazzling for a kid her age. But even in her enchantment she would, at times, think of mother back home and feel a sting of nostalgia. Amy wondered why she categorically refused to come and live here. Anna, that was her name, said her life was in Italy, especially her life as an artist, because she could not grow and express herself outside of her own environment. She had achieved some recognition as a young artist, and now her works were internationally known. At the beginning of her career, she had a show in New York. It was on that occasion that Anna and Larry met.

The gallery owner had commissioned the catalogue from L&N Publishers, and at the opening he introduced Larry to the artist. Larry was a big hit with women. Anna was very beautiful. Tall and slender, she moved with the grace of a reed wafted by a light breeze, and her classic features possessed an inner radiance. Larry was smitten. So, that night the two of them ended up in the penthouse. Anna did not leave the next day, as she was scheduled to, or the next week, or even the next month. She stayed in New York much longer than she had planned. When she finally left, Larry followed her and spent several months in Italy. He went back after Amy was born, when he became convinced that Anna would never agree to marry him.

When Amy returned from that first summer vacation, she was bombarded with questions—Tell me about America. It must be fabulous over there. What did you see?—And she must have repeated her story a hundred times, about the swimming pool on the deck, the fifty-floor elevator, the tropical greenhouse in the lobby with its parrots and streams, surfing in the Pacific Ocean, and other marvels. Stella, in particular, wanted to go over the details time and again. They practiced English together, spending long hours on their favorite bench in the rose garden at Villa Flora, reading a wide range of novels from Jane Austen to Mark Twain. Amy was pretty fluent by then. She made a lot of progress during her summer months in New York, and, of course, it helped that she had an English nanny as a child. On the other hand, this contributed to her strange accent, an odd combination of native Italian, stylish British, and ordinary New Yorkese.

“Here we are, miss. Where should I drop you off?” The cabbie wakes her up from her reverie.

“Can you pull up by the pizza place, over there? D’you see the sign, Santa Lucia?”

“Lucheeah...is this how you say it in Italy?! It sounds pretty. Isn’t it misspelled on the sign?”

Jeez, something’s lost in translation, Amy thinks, and I don’t have the time for a language lesson.

“Here, keep the change. And go take your kid to school.” “Thank you, miss. It’s nice of you...”

...and something else she can’t hear. She’s already running, always on the run.

She catches a glimpse of her image in a shop window. She likes what she sees. Slender figure, good legs, bumpy curls, a focused gaze, a smart designer outfit... Overall, a youngish, sexy woman. She’ll turn fifty-four in a month and she looks even better than the glamorous boomers on the cover of AARP Magazine. I’m gonna have a big party, she promises herself.

The door to the pizzeria is locked. She has to go in from the parking lot in the back. Rosa is surprised to see her.

“Hi, beauty!” She actually says: Ciao, bellezza, because she prefers to speak Italian to her. They hug and kiss. “What happened? Did you fall off the bed?”

“Sort of. Way too early for me. Last night I worked until 2 a.m.”

“You need a good cup of coffee. Real Italian espresso.”

Rosa goes behind the counter on which a massive Illy coffee maker towers in all its glory of shiny chrome, black levers, bending tubes, hissing spouts, and steam puffs. As a result of her skillful operation, the machine releases a precious drop of concentrated coffee in each of two tiny cups. Rosa brings them to the table and they sit down.

The dining room is large and bright, with tasteful Mediterranean decor—white walls, terracotta floor, dark wood furniture, and ceramic panels with landscapes of the Amalfi coast imported from the region. On one side, French doors lead to a patio lined with potted lemon and orange trees. On the other side, a wood-burning oven is in full view.

“I had not seen it after the renovation,” Amy says, looking around. “It’s really nice. Simple and elegant.”

“You should tell Chris. He’s the one who designed it and supervised the work.” Chris is Rosa’s son, a successful architect and the owner of a hip design studio, the first in the family to graduate from college. Rosa continues, “It took him a long time to convince his father that the place needed a facelift. Joe didn’t want to hear of it. He liked it the way his parents set it up fifty years ago, with Formica table tops and an electric oven tucked away in the back of the kitchen. But now, he too is happy with the results. Business has been terrific.”