April 15th

by Jackie Kenny (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Italy

I am in Tuscany the night that my grandfather dies and Notre Dame burns. While people gather on the banks of the River Seine in Paris, the flames of the collapsing cathedral reflected in their eyes, my grandfather is in Florida, dying eleven stories high in his condo bedroom that overlooks the grey waters of Tampa Bay. And I am eating dinner. Tenuta di Spannocchia—an old Italian estate where I am a wine and agricultural intern—has poor cell phone reception. My own phone is broken and not picking up calls. I know that my grandfather is very sick—he has been fighting esophagus cancer for over two years—and the doctor says he now only has weeks to live. Every morning, I wake in the intern villa thinking—he has died—and every morning, he is still alive. I wait for news of his death while I help plant potatoes in the garden, chop chestnut wood for the furnace, build a new wire fence around the vineyard to keep out the cinghiale, and rack last harvest’s sangiovese blend in the cellar. Because my phone is broken, I give my family the phone number of another Spannocchia intern named Caitlin; they tell me that they will contact her if something happens with my grandfather. On April 15th, we are serving dinner to guests in the hall of the main fattoria. Spannocchia was built in the early 1200s and guests frequently come to visit the gorgeous sprawling grounds, stay a few nights in one of the original stone villas, and eat a farm-to-table dinner. Inside the high-ceilinged dining hall, a fire is lit even though it is spring and the evenings are turning warm. We have just cleared away the bowls of risotto with winter squash and placed platters of baked asparagus and roast beef with arugula down on the long tables. For dessert, the chef has told us that there will be persimmon cake. The hall is loud, chattering; the guests are happy tonight. Our intern group is sitting at a corner table; we are pouring ourselves wine, half-tipsy and laughing, our cheeks flushed, our knives cutting into the rich peppery beef, when Caitlin’s phone buzzes. She glances down at the screen and covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh,” she says, and I think, this is it, this is where she stands up and ask to speak to me alone outside under the cold stars, this is where she hugs me and says, your grandfather is dead. “Notre Dame is on fire,” she says. Our table falls silent, for a jarring, half-second. “You’re JOKING,” another intern says, slamming his fork down, the table shuddering. “Is it the apocalypse?” “It’s real,” Caitlin says, shaking her head. “It’s burning down.” We huddle over her phone—the wine, the dinner, the guests forgotten. We look at the pictures. Blooming clouds of blue-grey smoke, the roof ignited in a fierce clawing orange, the famous spire suddenly frail and cracking as the smoke grows a deeper red. Night darkens and everything—river, streets, crowds of people—turn black, but the cathedral stays hellishly luminescent. “They’ll rebuild it,” a young intern from Texas says, a slab of beef still hanging from his mouth, his eyes wide. “They have to.” The next morning, the sky is golden and still, red poppies blooming underneath my window. Caitlin touches my shoulder as I walk hazily into the kitchen, looking for the egg pan. “Your mom is on the phone,” she says, and it is like we are back at dinner, cutlery clattering, air rusty, a new world dawning at night. I take the phone. “Papa died last night,” my mom says, her voice rough. I look out at Spannocchia’s courtyard. I try to listen. Everyone expects grandparents to die. But no one really expects Notre Dame to burn and all my life, my grandfather and Notre Dame have existed, improbable in their magnificence and age. I know fragments of their history, but nowhere near enough. As my mom speaks, I think of us all as pinpoints on a map—threads tracing from Tuscany, to Paris, to Florida—small constellations flaring brighter in grief.