The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  It was a warm night. Tired though he was, he didn’t feel the need to go to bed yet. Instead he lit a cigarette and went out onto the balcony. Although he was almost at the top of an eighteen-story block, with only one apartment above him, there was nothing special about the view; to the right was a strip of the harbor and to the left the back wall of a print works whose chimney belched out stinking smoke day and night. Franco supposed it had to belong to one of the daily papers, though not one of the important ones.

  He stared at the glowing tip of his cigarette.

  Back home in Genoa the crickets would have begun their nightly symphony at this hour, the chirring call carried along on warm winds from the sea that reached into every last corner of the palazzo. The green marble floor of the courtyard would be shining silver in the light of the sickle moon.

  The cigarette smoke had turned stale. Franco tasted a flat, musty flavor on his tongue like that of a rotten lemon.

  Nobody had ever criticized his family’s wine before, not on any of his previous trips to New York. He would never have believed that anyone would dare.

  He tossed his cigarette from the balcony and watched it arc away into the darkness. Something had to be done. He could not allow centuries of tradition—or his family’s good name—to be harmed.

  He could well imagine what his father would say in this situation:

  You have to be tougher. You have to shut up loudmouths like that before they can even say Mamma mia! If all our ancestors had been good-natured chumps like my son is, our family would never have lasted four hundred years. Do you want to be the first Count de Lucca to drag our name through the mud?

  And so on and so forth.

  Franco laughed bitterly at the thought. His father would never consider the possibility that one way to secure the family’s good name might be to make good wine. No, the old count had his own methods. Franco hated to admit it but he had to concede that—in their own way—they worked. Liguria was not by nature a fine wine region like Lombardy, for instance, or the Veneto, but there wasn’t a family in Italy who exported more wine to America. This was because the count bought up all the grape juice he could find on the market—and he didn’t care about the quality as long as the price was right.

  All of a sudden Franco could hear his grandmother Graziella’s voice in his ear. “Wine only comes out right if the Lord God blesses it with just enough sun and rain.” He smiled at the memory of the elegant old lady. She had always taken him along with her to the vineyards when he was a little boy. He had held her hand, and in the last years of her life, when she was no longer so steady on her feet, she had held his. She clasped hold of his arm with her right hand and held the walking stick in her left, its silvered handle shaped like a bunch of grapes.

  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.

  Though Wanda was reserved toward her aunt and cheeky to her mother, she was charming and gracious with strangers. The salesgirls fought for the privilege of serving her, bringing dozens of garments, box after box of shoes, and all sorts of other wares for her approval. It seemed to Marie that Wanda wanted to prove something to Ruth and her: Just look how nice I can be when it suits me. She had the feeling that there was more to Wanda’s stubbornness than the younger generation’s typical love of making things difficult for their elders. But Ruth had packed their days so full that Marie had not yet found an opportunity to get Wanda alone and find out why her niece thought she always had to strike the first blow.

  When they were not out shopping—which Marie found very hard work—Ruth showed Marie the town. She learned soon enough that in New York, the two activities went hand in hand: there were hundreds of shops all along Fifth Avenue; the theaters on Times Square stood one next to the other, each with their brightly lit billboards; and just a little to the south was the world’s largest department store, Macy’s. A couple of miles north was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They had gone past the impressive building a few times, and Ruth assured Marie that there would be plenty of time to visit it later.

  While her sister always marched into the shops at top speed, Marie could have spent the whole day standing outside and gazing up at the skyscrapers that soared above.

  “You know,” she confessed to Ruth one day, “I actually thought it was rather odd how you kept going on about the skyscrapers in the first few letters you wrote to us. I wondered what could be so special about a building, no matter how tall. But I understand now! These things are really incredible.” She waved her hand at the whole street. “Just imagine: there haven’t been buildings like this since the great age of the Gothic cathedral eight hundred years ago!”

  As Marie gazed up into the heights, her eyes gleaming, Ruth told her that each skyscraper hid a whole town behind its soaring façade, with its own post office, lawyers, shops, shoemakers, and everything else one might need in life.

  Of course they went into a Woolworth’s store as well—after all, the chain had been the first customer to bring Marie’s baubles to America. Marie wouldn’t rest until she had sat down at one of the famous lunch counters and eaten an ice-cream sundae while shoppers thronged all around her. Ruth, however, turned up her nose at this sort of entertainment—it was all much too low-class for her. Marie teasingly reminded her that she had only met her husband Steven through Woolworth himself, so there was nothing low-class about the man. Ruth agreed, laughing.

  “Who knows—perhaps we’ll find another Steven here, for you!” she said, her eyes twinkling. Marie just waved the idea away. She had come all this way partly to be free of Magnus for a few weeks—she wasn’t going to let her sister start choosing men for her!

  Ruth told her that at Christmas there were tables full of Lauscha glass all around the ground floor of the shop. Globes, angels, and Santa Claus figures were all set out neatly on red velvet, just waiting for customers to pick them up and take them home.

  “Just imagine: they tell me that last year fistfights almost broke out at the tables over your silver angels! There were even reports in the newspapers. With photographs!” Ruth said, laughing at the memory. “They just didn’t have enough angels for everyone. Johanna had even made a point of telling Mr. Woolworth he needed to order more. Well, sometimes even a business genius like him can get his numbers wrong.”

  Despite Ruth’s detailed descriptions, Marie had trouble imagining her Christmas baubles here; she couldn’t draw the connection between her daily work at the bench back home and the hustle and bustle around her.

  Sometimes they met Steven for lunch in restaurants with melodious names—Delmonico’s and Mamma Leone’s. Marie had to get used to the idea of going out to eat in a restaurant even though they were just a few steps from home. And she had to get used to the food as well: crabs, lobster, poached chicken breast, and all sorts of strange fare that didn’t fill her up. She would much rather have stayed home and eaten a few eggs or a plate of potatoes with Ruth at the kitchen table—simple home cooking, the kind of thing that Lou-Ann made for herself and the two maids. They could have talked about old times as they ate. And about the new times too. But they only ever got to do that in the evenings when they returned to the apartment with all their packages and bags. Even then they didn’t sit down in the kitchen, where Ruth rarely went, but in the drawing room just as they had the first evening, drinking tea and nibbling at biscuits.

  Most of the time Ruth asked questions and Marie answered at length. Ruth was mostly interested in Johanna and Peter and the twins, of course.

  “Anna looks terribly solemn in all the photographs Johanna sends me—is she really like that?” Ruth wanted to know.

  “Solemn? I don’t know . . .” Marie shrugged. “I don’t think I would call her solemn. Obstinate perhaps. In fact Anna’s even more obstinate than I was as a girl—if that’s possible. Sometimes I’ll come into the workshop in the morning and find her sitting there after she’s worked all night on one of her designs!”

  Ruth looked rather taken aback; she had never really understood anyone who poured herself into her work like that. Then she asked after Magnus. Did he still follow Marie around like a faithful dog? Ruth had never had a very high opinion of the man in Marie’s life. She also wanted to know who did which jobs in the workshop, how they all approached their work, whether the new warehouse in Sonneberg was really such a great step forward, and so on and so forth. “Do you remember our first commission for Woolworth? The whole house was full of boxes stacked up to the ceiling! We could hardly move.” She laughed.

  Marie answered all the questions as well as she could, but she sometimes had to admit that she simply didn’t know—whether the question was about actual business matters or just village gossip.

  “You’re still my little sister Marie. Nothing in your head but glassblowing,” Ruth said, smiling sadly at her sister. Then she reached out and stroked Marie’s hair in a gesture of rare tenderness. “Which makes me even happier that you’ve come to visit. I had expected that Johanna might come someday. But you . . .”

  “I haven’t been feeling myself lately,” Marie murmured. “I needed a change of scenery, as they say.”

  She could see the question in Ruth’s eyes but said nothing more about it. What could she have said? That she felt dried up, like a fruit that had withered on the vine? That she was scared even to think of her workbench back home? Her sister was one of her greatest admirers, but they had never been able to talk about glassblowing and artistic matters.

  Instead she said, “By the way, your ex-father-in-law isn’t doing too well. They say he’s on his deathbed.”

  Ruth’s face clouded over for a moment.

  “Are you even a little bit interested in how Thomas and his family are?” Marie asked after a while, when the silence had stretched out too long.

  “If you really must know, no I’m not,” Ruth said, standing up suddenly. “To tell you the truth I would rather that you never mention them again. As far as I’m concerned the whole pack of them could up and die tomorrow—I couldn’t care less!”

  Marie looked up in confusion. “But Ruth—they’re a part of your life as well! And Thomas is Wanda’s father.”

  Ruth grabbed her wrist hard. “Even if that’s true a thousand times over, you will never say that again, do you hear me? Especially not when Wanda is anywhere near. Steven is the only father Wanda has.”

  “All right, all right . . .” Marie waved a hand. “I’ll make sure I never mention the past again,” she said, stung.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Ruth pleaded. “It’s only the Heimers I don’t want to hear about. It may have been a long time ago, but I can’t forget the pain they caused me. You do understand that, don’t you?”
r />   Marie didn’t want to make it too easy for her sister. “Well, all right—but I have to say I find it odd that you never told Wanda who her father really is. She has a right to know where she comes from, doesn’t she? It’s not as though she would love Steven any less because of it.”

  If she were in Wanda’s shoes, she would want to know that she was the daughter of one of the best glassblowers in all of Lauscha!

  “Or are you still ashamed of the divorce? Getting divorced is really not that uncommon these days. Even the Baroness of Thuringia . . .”

  Ruth shook her head vehemently. “It’s not about that. If Wanda knew that Steven wasn’t her biological father that would just make everything more complicated than it already is, believe me. Never you mind having a right to know—that would all be grist to Wanda’s mill!” She heaved a deep sigh. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with her. My daughter insists fiercely on what she sees as her rights, but woe betide me if I ever ask her to recognize that she has duties as well! She won’t even hear of it! She’s a great deal like her father in that respect, if nothing else.”

  “Aha—now you’re the one mentioning Thomas!” Marie said triumphantly.

  “And I’d rather cut my tongue out than ever mention him again!” Ruth replied, grinning. “As for Wanda, perhaps she’ll become a little easier to deal with once she and Harold are married.” She bit her lip. “If only they already were . . . I’m sure the two of them have hardly done more than kiss—not that I want Wanda to do more than that, don’t misunderstand me—but I am a little surprised that they are so much like brother and sister. When I remember how I felt back then with . . . Thomas . . . I could hardly wait to lie in his arms. And then once Wanda was on the way we couldn’t get married fast enough . . .” She smiled at the thought.

  “Perhaps Harold just isn’t the man of her dreams,” Marie said, thinking of Magnus. She had never been swept away by emotion when he took her in his arms, and when they made love it was more for his sake than for her pleasure. “Perhaps some women simply don’t have as great an erotic appetite as others.”