Francesca balked at the letter, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash—where she should have put it in the first place. All night, she paced her room, trying to guess what on earth was going on back on Nantucket Island. Benjamin likely had a girlfriend, oneof those blond Nantucket women with tennis skirts, suntans, and bright white teeth. That woman was probably precisely who Charles and Elaine Whitmore wanted their eldest son Benjamin to marry: a good Nantucket girl, the next queen of the White Oak Lodge. She threw herself on her bed and wept till morning.
When she got up for class, she resolved never to write Benjamin Whitmore again. She’d wasted far too much time daydreaming about an impossible future with him. She had to remember what Angelo had said last summer. “You’re so good at everything. Why would you throw that all away to build a family with some random American guy?”
Rosa and Barbara didn’t mention Benjamin Whitmore for the rest of the semester, for which Francesca was grateful. That summer, her father went to Los Angeles to film a new project, her mother remained in Tuscany, and Angelo was sent to a Boy Scouts camp in the Alps. Francesca stayed in Rome to take film school classes and shadow a director who was friendly with her father. Time passed with sticky-hot months in a city built from stone. Slowly, her love for Benjamin evaporated from her heart. Maybe she’d never feel that way again. Perhaps that was something to be grateful for.
Chapter Five
Summer 1971
It had been two years since Francesca’s father had taken his children to Nantucket Island. Francesca was nearly twenty years old and shadowing an up-and-coming director on his film set in futuristic 1990s Rome. To Francesca, it was impossible to imagine a Rome so deep into the future, twenty years from now, when she was in her forties or very nearly. There were flying cars, mind-reading devices, and robots that did everything for you at home. They cooked your pasta, and they washed and styled your hair. Privately, Francesca thought the film was silly, but it was already projected to be the biggest hit of the following summer, and she was grateful to have been given a seat at the table, so to speak. She wanted to learn all she could. And about the director, her father mainly had said kind things, which was saying something.
The up-and-coming director was Arturo Costa, quick to anger and accustomed to being called a genius. Whether he was actually a genius was up for debate among the staff and setworkers—most of whom were men. Only a few of the costume designers and makeup artists were women, and they kept to themselves, seldom saying hello to Francesca. Francesca was conscious that people thought she was only there because of her father. It was probably true, and she knew that, which only made it worse. She’d resolved to put her head down and work, to prove herself beyond the bounds of her famous father.
After three weeks on set, Francesca returned to her apartment to find that Barbara and Rosa were having a little party. Francesca sat for a glass of wine and a chat, surprised at how much fun she was allowing herself to have. It was usually during these times of naive fun that thoughts of Benjamin came out of nowhere, slamming into her chest. When a handsome Italian sculptor at the party asked her to go for a walk with him sometime, she heard herself say yes, even as her heart screamed no. She’d resolved to work hard and not bother with romance for years, if ever.
The day of her walk with the Italian sculptor, Francesca noticed something amiss in the script of the futuristic 1990s film. There was an inconsistency that called the entire story into question. Her heart pounded as she approached the director to alert him of the flaw. In her mind, she felt that if she didn’t tell him about the problem, it would be her fault that the film flopped. She couldn’t have that on her conscience.
Arturo, the director, gave her a dark smile and a raised finger. He was speaking to the cinematographer about the next shot, the very shot that needed to be changed on a script level. Francesca’s hands were clammy. She tried to imagine that Arturo was her father, that she was addressing a problem that he would thank her for later. But when the cinematographer left, Arturo turned his back to her and told everyone to set up for filming. Francesca couldn’t believe he’d ignored her outright.
Feeling overwhelmed, she hurried up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, sounding breathless and very young.
Arturo ripped around and glared at her. Without missing a beat, he hissed, “I know you think you’re special on this set because of who your father is, but I’ll be the first to tell you that you’re only here because of your father. You’ll never make it in this industry. No woman ever has.”
Francesca felt as though she’d been smacked. But a fire roared within her chest, and she slapped the script to the ground. “If you don’t want to know what’s wrong with your awful script, then fine. Maybe everyone’s too scared of you to say it. You’ll never go anywhere with that trash either.”
Francesca spun on her heel and shot out the door, letting it slam behind her. She didn’t look back.
That night, Francesca lay in bed with tears dried on her cheeks. The sculptor who wanted to take her for a walk came by, but Francesca had Rosa and Barbara tell him that she was very ill and unable to come down. Whether or not he believed her, Francesca never knew. She never saw him again.
What Francesca wanted to do more than anything was call her father and tell him what had happened on set, how Arturo had belittled her talents and put her in her place. But her father was immersed in his new film, and she knew he didn’t like to be bothered, not at this stage, not even by his favorite child. She dreaded news of what had happened on set getting back to her father and did not look forward to what he’d say. He’d probably say something to the tune of “you knew better than to interrupt the director when he was working, regardless of what you thought you needed to tell him.” Francesca understood she’d made a grave error.
The following morning, Francesca tried to go back to her set as though nothing had happened. But one of the assistantproducers blocked her at the door and asked her if she was crazy. “You’re barred from set.” He smirked. Francesca realized that everyone relished the failure of the famous director’s daughter.
Over the next few weeks, Francesca applied for film internships, script workshops, and even for staging events at local theaters. Either nobody was hiring this late in the season or she’d already been blacklisted. Her heart thudded with apprehension. She was about to turn twenty, and it seemed her career was already over before it had begun. She wouldn’t dare ask her father for another favor. Rosa and Barbara were kind and gentle with her, but Francesca guessed this was only because they knew how badly she’d messed up.
When the time came to sign up for the next semester of classes at film school, Francesca stayed in bed all day, reading novels and wondering what would happen next. Maybe nothing in her life would change. Perhaps she’d spend the remainder of it here in this bed, watching as Rosa and Barbara met men and married them and had children with them. Maybe women weren’t allowed to have careers. Perhaps Arturo was right about that. But Francesca felt she lacked the will to do anything with her life.
Sometimes she returned to the letters Benjamin Whitmore had sent her during the autumn of 1969. Stitched into his every word was tremendous love and tenderness. It was bizarre to realize that her real life lacked that love, that perhaps it always would.
In mid-October of 1971, Francesca was working at a little café down the street from her apartment and continuing her aggressive affair with reading novels. They were her only escape. For hours every morning and early afternoon, she served coffee and cornetti, cleaned tables, and avoided the flirtatious gazes of her customers. She tried to give off the air of a much older and colder woman. Rosa and Barbara had both gotten steadyboyfriends, and Rosa had even gotten engaged in September and was planning her wedding next summer. Barbara was waiting for her proposal and was sure it was coming any day.
As far as Francesca knew, her parents still hadn’t learned that she’d dropped out of film school. During a brief visit home at the tail-end of summer, she’d mentioned it to her brother, Angelo, and he’d shrugged and said movies were a waste of time anyway. It hadn’t helped Francesca’s mood in the slightest. She’d made him promise that he wouldn’t share the news with her parents before she figured out what to do, what next steps to take, and he’d shrugged again and said he forgot everything anyway. She was pretty sure her mother didn’t pay much attention to him, that their father genuinely no longer liked him, and that he was hanging around a seedy crowd in Florence. She’d told him to visit her in Rome, but she figured he was too lazy. That, or he’d forgotten already.
Midafternoon on October 17th, Francesca knelt to collect the shards of a broken espresso cup. Sunlight played across the sharp angles of the pieces. She took extra care not to cut herself, as she had another couple of hours of work left and didn’t want to take the time to clean herself up. The man who’d let his mug drop to the floor had already left. He hadn’t given her a tip.
Suddenly, a shadow spilled over her, darkening the shards on the ground. She finished cleaning them, then glanced up to see shiny black shoes beneath a pair of jeans. A feeling of anticipation shimmered down her spine. Jeans weren’t entirely customary in Italy, not in 1971. Only foreigners wore them. Specifically, Americans wore them.
The shoes weren’t moving. She felt an earnest gaze upon her face, but she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to raise her eyes to meet it.
“Excuse me?” a voice said, so tender, so deep. “Can I help you?”
Francesca flinched and nearly dropped the shards of the mug. A part of her wondered if she was dreaming. Was she fantasizing again? Had all the novels she’d read gone to her head? Slowly, she rose to face him: a startlingly handsome twentysomething American man with blue eyes and wavy dark-blond hair. He looked older, tanner, and sadder than he had two years ago. But there was no mistaking that this was the man behind all those letters. He was the man who’d stopped writing to her out of the blue and broken her heart.
Francesca told herself she wasn’t a fool. She wouldn’t fall for his tricks again, wouldn’t let herself get swept up in his advances just to be hurt again. She bowed her head and said what she’d said to every other customer today. “Have a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment.” But this she said in English—a language she hadn’t used since she’d last seen him. It felt jumbled in her mouth.
Francesca disappeared into the back kitchen, put her hands on the counter, and gasped for breath. She needed to knock some sense into herself. But before she’d found a way through her frantic thoughts, her boss slammed into the kitchen and demanded to know what she was messing around for. “You have customers waiting for you.” And when she didn’t respond immediately, he smashed his right fist into his left palm and told her, “You’re not special to me. I can hire any other girl like you off the street, any day of the week.”
With that, Francesca felt her rage roar within her again. She ripped off her apron, told her boss she quit, and stormed out of the kitchen, out of the café, and past Benjamin Whitmore, who was waiting dutifully for her at a circular table. When she felt she was going to explode with it, she turned to yell at him, again in English, “You think you can come over here and win me back? You think I’m going to forget what you did?” And then she spun around, continued through the piazza, and was out of sight.
