Sarah's Key (31 page)

“I never met her, you know,” Mrs. Rainsferd was saying. “I only met Richard couple of years later. He a sad man. And the boy—”

I raised my head, paying full attention.

“The boy?”

“Yes, William. You know William?”

“Sarah’s son?”

“Yes, Sarah’s boy.”

“My half brother,” said Ornella.

Hope dawned once more.

“No, I don’t know him. Tell me about him.”

“Poor bambino, he only twelve when his mother died, you see. A heartbroken boy. I raised him like he mine. I gave him love of Italy. He married Italian girl, from my home village.”

She beamed with pride.

“Does he live in Roxbury?” I asked.

She smiled, patted my cheek again.

“
Mamma mia,
no, William lives in Italy. He left Roxbury in 1980, when he twenty. Married Francesca in 1985. Has two lovely girls. Comes back to see his father from time to time, and me and Nella, but not very often. He hates it here. Reminds him of his mother’s death.”

I felt much better all of a sudden. It was less hot, less stuffy. I found I could breathe easier.

“Mrs. Rainsferd—,” I began.

“Please,” she said, “call me Mara.”

“Mara,” I complied. “I need to talk to William. I need to meet him. It’s very important. Could you give me his address in Italy?”

T

HE CONNECTION WAS BAD and I could barely hear Joshua’s voice. “You need an advance?” he said. “In the middle of summer?”

“Yes!” I shouted, cringing at the disbelief in his voice.

“How much?”

I told him.

“Hey, what’s going on, Julia? Has that smooth operator of a husband turned stingy, or what?”

I sighed impatiently.

“Can I have it or not, Joshua? It’s important.”

“Of course you can have it,” he snapped. “This is the first time in years you’ve ever asked me for money. Hope you’re not having any problems?”

“No problems. I just need to travel. That’s all. And I have to do it fast.”

“Oh,” he said, and I could feel his curiosity swelling. “And where are you going?”

“I’m taking my daughter to Tuscany. I’ll explain another time.”

My tone was flat and final. He probably felt it was useless trying to glean anything else from me. I could feel his annoyance pulse all the way from Paris. The advance would be in my account later this afternoon, he said curtly. I thanked him and hung up.

Then I put my hands under my chin and thought. If I told Bertrand what I was doing, he’d make a scene. He’d make everything complicated, difficult. I couldn’t face that. I could tell Edouard . . . No, it was too early. Too soon. I had to talk to William Rainsferd first. I had his address now, it would be easy locating him. Talking to him was another matter.

Then there was Zoë. How was she going to feel about her Long Island frolic being interrupted? And not going to Nahant, to her grandparents’ place? That worried me, at first. Yet, I somehow did not think she would mind. She had never been to Italy. And I could let her into the secret. I could tell her the truth, tell her we were going to meet Sarah Starzynski’s son.

And then there were my parents. What could I tell them? Where would I begin? They, too, were expecting me at Nahant after the Long Island stay. What on earth was I going to tell them?

“Yeah,” drawled Charla later on when I explained all this, “yeah, sure, running off to Tuscany with Zoë, finding this guy, and just saying sorry sixty years later?”

I flinched at the irony in her voice.

“Well, why the hell not?” I asked.

She sighed. We were sitting in the large front room she used as an office on the second floor of her house. Her husband was turning up later on that evening. Dinner was waiting in the kitchen, we had made it together earlier. Charla craved bright colors, as did Zoë. This room was a melting pot of pistachio green, ruby red, and luminous orange. The first time I had seen it, my head had started to throb, but I had gotten used to it, and I secretly found it intensely exotic. I always tended to go for neutral, bland colors, like brown, beige, white, or gray, even in my dress code. Charla and Zoë preferred to overdose on anything bright, but they both carried it off, beautifully. I both envied and admired their audacity.

“Stop being the bossy older sister. You’re pregnant, don’t forget. I’m not sure all this traveling is the right thing to do at the moment.”

I said nothing. She had a point. She got up and went to put an old Carly Simon record on. “You’re So Vain,” with Mick Jagger whining in the backup vocals.

Then she turned around and glared at me.

“Do you really have to find this man right now, this very minute? I mean, can’t it wait?”

Again, she had a point.

I looked back at her.

“Charla, it’s not that simple. And no, it can’t wait. No, I can’t explain. It’s too important. It’s the most important thing in my life right now. Apart from the baby.”

She sighed again.

“That Carly Simon song always reminds me of your husband. ‘You’re so vain, I betcha think this song is about you . . .’ ”

I let out an ironic chuckle.

“What are you going to tell Mom and Dad?” she asked. “About not coming to Nahant? And about the baby?”

“God knows.”

“Think it over, then. Think it over carefully.”

“I am. I have.”

She came up behind me and rubbed my shoulders.

“Does that mean you’ve got it all organized? Already?”

“Yup.”

“You fast one.”

Her hands felt good on my shoulders, making me drowsy and warm. I looked around at Charla’s colorful work room, the desk covered with files and books, the light ruby curtains moving in the gentle breeze. The house was quiet without Charla’s kids.

“And where does this guy live?” she asked.

“He has a name. William Rainsferd. He lives in Lucca.”

“Where’s that?”

“Small town between Florence and Pisa.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“I looked him up on the Internet, but his stepmother told me anyway. He’s a food critic. His wife is a sculptor. They have two kids.”

“And how old is William Rainsferd?”

“You sound like a cop. Born in 1959.”

“And you’re just going to waltz into his life and set all hell loose.”

I pushed her hands away, exasperated.

“Of course not! I just want him to know our side of the story. I want to make sure he knows nobody has forgotten what happened.”

A wry grin.

“He probably hasn’t either. His mom carried that with her all her life. Maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded.”

A door banged downstairs.

“Anyone home? The beautiful lady and her sister from Paree?”

The thud of steps coming up the stairs.

Barry, my brother-in-law. Charla’s face lit up. So much in love, I thought. I felt happy for her. After a painful, trying divorce, she was truly happy again.

As I watched them kiss, I thought of Bertrand. What was going to happen to my marriage? Which way would it turn? Would it ever work out? I pushed it all away from my mind as I followed Charla and Barry downstairs.

Later on, in bed, Charla’s words about William Rainsferd came back to me.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded.”
I tossed and turned most of the night. The following morning, I said to myself that I’d soon find out if William Rainsferd had a problem talking about his mother and her past. I was going to see him, after all. I was going to talk to him. In two days, Zoë and I were flying to Paris from JFK, then on to Florence.

William Rainsferd always spent his summer vacation in Lucca. Mara had told me that when she had given me his address. And Mara had phoned him to say I’d be looking him up.

William Rainsferd was aware that a Julia Jarmond was going to call him. That’s all he knew.

T

USCAN HEAT HAD NOTHING to do with New England heat. It was overly dry, devoid of any humidity whatsoever. As I walked out of the Florence Peretola airport with Zoë in tow, the heat was so devastating, I thought I was going to shrivel up on the spot, dehydrated. I kept putting things down to my pregnancy, comforting myself, telling myself I didn’t usually feel this drained, this parched. Jet lag didn’t help, either. The sun seemed to bite into me, to eat into my skin and eyes despite a straw hat and dark glasses.

I had rented a car, a modest-looking Fiat, which was waiting for us in the middle of a sun-drenched parking lot. The air conditioner was more than meek. As I backed out, I wondered suddenly if I was going to make the forty-minute drive to Lucca. I craved a cool, shady room, drifting to sleep in soft, light sheets. Zoë’s stamina kept me going. She never stopped talking, pointed out the color of the sky—a deep, cloudless blue—the cypress trees lining the highway, the olive trees planted in little rows, the crumbling old houses glimpsed in the distance, perched on hilltops. “Now that’s Montecatini,” she chirped knowingly, pointing and reading out from a guide book, “famous for its luxury spa and its wine.”

As I drove, Zoë read aloud about Lucca. It was one of the rare Tuscan towns to have kept its famous medieval walls circling an unspoiled center where few cars were allowed. There was a lot to be seen, Zoë continued, the cathedral, the church of San Michele, the Guinigui tower, the Puccini museum, the Palazzo Mansi. . . . I smiled at her, amused by her high spirits. She glanced back at me.

“I guess we don’t have much time for sightseeing.” She grinned. “We’ve got work to do, don’t we, Mom?”

“We sure do,” I agreed.

Zoë had already found William Rainsferd’s address on her site map of Lucca. It wasn’t far from the via Fillungo, the main artery of the town, a large pedestrian street where I had booked rooms in a small guesthouse, Casa Giovanna.

As we approached Lucca and its confusing maze of ring roads, I found I had to concentrate on the erratic driving methods of the cars surrounding me, which kept pulling out, stopping, or turning without any warning whatsoever. Definitely worse than Parisians, I decided, beginning to feel flustered and irritated. There was also a slow tug in the pit of my stomach that I did not like, that felt oddly like an oncoming period. Something I ate on the plane and that didn’t agree with me? Or something worse? I felt apprehension flicker through me.

Charla was right. It was crazy coming here in my condition, not even three months pregnant. It could have waited. William Rainsferd could have waited another six months for my visit.

But then I looked at Zoë’s face. It was beautiful, incandescent with joy and excitement. She knew nothing yet about Bertrand and me separating. She was preserved still, innocent of all our plans. This would be a summer she would never forget.

And as I drove the Fiat to one of the free parking lots near the city walls, I knew I wanted to make this part as wonderful as possible for her.

I

TOLD ZOË I NEEDED to put my feet up for a while. While she chatted away in the lobby with the amiable Giovanna, a buxom lady with a sultry voice, I had a cool shower and lay down on the bed. The ache in my lower abdomen slowly ebbed away.

Our adjoining rooms were small, high up in the towering, ancient building, but perfectly comfortable. I kept thinking of my mother’s voice when I had called her from Charla’s to say I wasn’t coming to Nahant, that I was taking Zoë back to Europe. I could tell, from her brief pauses and the way she cleared her throat, that she was worried. She finally asked me if everything was all right. I replied cheerfully that everything was fine, I had an opportunity to visit Florence with Zoë, I would come back to the States later to see her and Dad. “But you’ve barely arrived! And why leave when you’ve only been with Charla for a couple of days?” she protested. “And why interrupt Zoë’s vacation here? I simply don’t understand. And you were saying how much you missed the States. This is all so rushed.”