His father may not have passed on a love of winemaking—but grandmother Graziella certainly had.
“Just enough sun and rain, and if the Lord God is feeling especially kind then he will bless you with a woman who knows the vines, whose love will make them grow stronger than any of your modern breeding techniques. A woman’s love can make even the tenderest green shoots flourish. Nothing is stronger than that, my child.”
A woman’s love . . .
Franco felt a fist clench around his heart.
If you lost a woman’s love, then whatever life was within you died away.
And all at once he was far away, lost in the distant past.
It had been many years ago. Franco was in his early twenties and had just finished his degree in economics in Rome when she had crossed his path—quite literally. He was leaving the university administration offices where he had just completed the final formalities for his degree when he had bumped straight into Serena Val’Dobbio. She was one of the first women ever admitted to study in the university’s hallowed halls, and she was on her way to register for courses. After only a few minutes in Serena’s company, Franco was hopelessly smitten, and he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. She seemed to like him too, and they met whenever her seminars would allow it. He told her of his plans to plant a new kind of grape in the vineyards when he was done with his studies, and about his attempts at hybridization. She listened closely and confessed that she knew nothing about wine but that she was in charge of the vegetable garden at home. She told him that the villagers said her tomatoes grew as well as they did because she always had a song on her lips when she worked in the garden. Franco’s heart leapt. He could see wonderful pictures in his mind’s eye, promises of happiness . . . himself and Serena, hand in hand among the vineyards. “A woman’s love can make even the tenderest green shoots flourish.”
And then it was time for him to go back to Genoa. They swore a thousand oaths of loyalty as they parted, promising to meet again when Serena was on vacation from the university.
Their letters sped from Genoa to Rome and back. They numbered every letter they wrote, worried that the Italian postal service might lose one. By day Franco was the hard-driving businessman his father had always wanted, shelving his plans to plant new vines because there was a longshoremen’s strike to deal with, and in the evenings he sat in his room in his parents’ palazzo, writing poems to Serena. He wrote to her about love—all-consuming and painful—and of his plans to make their family land at Lucca into the best wine estate of all time, with her help.
But the count had not approved of his son’s infatuation with a complete stranger. A woman who was not of their class. The daughter of a master baker from Palermo. He had acted as he had seen fit.
And Franco had been young and obedient . . .
Try as he might to recall Serena’s face to his mind’s eye, it had faded. It no longer hurt to remember her.
No other woman had managed to conquer his heart since then. He had had affairs, but these were only to satisfy his physical needs.
Franco felt a flash of bitterness. Whatever had become of the young man who had tried to capture the moonlight over Genoa and put it down in words? The man who had spent hours poring over volumes of botany to find out how to cross the old-established vines with other varieties to bear more fruit, to add depth of flavor to the white Cinque Terre and Colli di Luni wines his family had made since time immemorial?
Was he even living his own life anymore?
Or was he just an extension of his father’s will?
6
Marie felt she had been caught up in a whirlwind and no longer knew which way was up. Over the last few days, she and Ruth had been constantly on the go, barely ever stopping for a rest.
“You didn’t come here to sit around our parlor. If I know you, you want to go back to Lauscha with a whole suitcase full of sketches and ideas to use in your glassblowing. And then next year, with any luck, we’ll be able to look forward to the New York Collection!”
Marie had almost forgotten what it felt like to hold a gas tap in her hand. All the same she nodded, embarrassed.
“Let’s hope you’re right,” she said halfheartedly. So far nothing had inspired her.
She only rarely saw her niece.
Once Wanda had wanted to go shopping with them, but Ruth had refused to take her daughter unless she hid her short hair under a hat, while Wanda had refused just as firmly to “spoil” her new hairstyle, so nothing came of it. Marie didn’t know whether she really felt sorry about that.
A few days later, however, the three of them did go shopping. Ruth seemed to have made peace with the idea of Wanda walking around without a hat. But the truce proved short-lived as soon as the time came to decide which shops to visit; whatever Ruth thought was chic, Wanda declared as hopelessly old-fashioned. Once inside, the squabbling continued, since there was hardly an article of clothing that mother and daughter could agree on. Marie kept out of these arguments entirely—not that she was asked for her opinion. When she said that she wanted to go into the menswear department—she couldn’t wear the same old pair of Father’s pants forever—they looked at her in horror.