Blue Sky with Clouds

Beginning-2

She turned north at the city of Binghamton and then traveled west again on Route 79, which led straight to Ithaca. When she was close, she stopped to call Livia, who directed her to Simeon’s Restaurant, where they would meet before heading to Trumansburg. It was such a dull, gray day and dining downtown would be more fun. Lella got back into her Focus and made the last leg of her trip.

* * *

The restaurant was on The Commons, a continuous fabric of pavement, seating areas, and ecologically sensitive plantings, where pedestrians reigned. Students and locals were unfazed by the drizzle—a fact of life here—as they wandered among stores and buildings that were in various phases of rehabilitation. Livia and Lella emerged from their separate cars on Aurora Street, embraced enthusiastically, and walked arm in arm to the restaurant.

“Is the weather always like this?” Lella asked.

“Often,” said Livia.

They had an American dinner of steak and potatoes, sitting by the window and remarking on the scene outside.

“I’m so tired I don’t feel it anymore,” Lella said.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Livia said.

“How are things going for you? Are you adjusting?” Lella asked.

“I am just doing what I do. I stay out of the politics and gossip. I won’t be here long enough to stake any claims. For the most part, the faculty members are defensive of their territory and suspicious of yours. The ways of the academic jungle.”

They took their time, drinking wine, talking, laughing at Livia’s stories about her colleagues and students; then decided they should head up to Trumansburg after having an espresso.

Lella was impressed by the antique house that Livia had rented. She unpacked her things in a small room with scrubbed wooden floorboards and an eclectic mix of furniture that included a bed, an armoire, a small writing desk, and a chair. Livia crossed her legs on the couch in the living room and waited for Lella to join her.

“Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you on a tour of Main Street–it won’t take long–and we can have breakfast at Felicia’s Atomic Brewhouse and Bakery,” said Livia. “I have to be on campus at eleven o’clock, but you can stay here and rest, or do whatever you like.”

Lella nodded and fell into a trance, lulled by her tiredness, the food, and the rain outside. After dropping off several times during their conversation, she decided she would go to bed.

* * *

The next morning, jet-lagged and up early, she had the espresso made and was foaming the milk when Livia entered the kitchen. They sat at the small, enameled table that looked onto the churchyard that, with its ancient apple trees, was just as Livia had described it.

“I had lunch with a colleague of mine yesterday, and I told him about this orchard. He wants to come and have a look. We think it might be a good project for the students, you know, to restore it,” Livia said.

They put on their jackets and went outside. Lella looked through the windows of the abandoned church, which was a blocky, open space with a raised platform at one end. The walls, dull from age, showed shadowy silhouettes of the pews that had been removed and sold as antiques.

“I suspect they’ll have made more from selling the furniture than from the church itself,” Livia said.

“Really?” Lella asked. “How much for the building?”

“They’re asking sixty thousand dollars.”

“You’re kidding!”

Over breakfast at Felicia’s, they mused on the condition of failing, half-abandoned villages. The scenario was the same in Italy: settlements in forgotten geographies, losing all their young to the urban centers where the work was.

“The Finger Lakes region has many of these ‘Greek Revival’ towns,” Livia said. “They’re named for ancient cities and heroes, and their town halls and libraries are like miniature temples rendered in wood.”

“That’s so lovely,” Lella said. “I still can’t believe the sale price of the church.” She was intrigued by it, felt a connection to it. It was aging, beautiful; its worth was in question.

“The issue is,” answered Livia, “how much to repair it? And what could it become?”

Lella listened to Livia’s words, turning them over in her head. Everything and everyone had to become something. There was no escaping that. Even neglect made things become: less of what they were, at the very least.

Georgina, their server, arrived at their table and refilled their mugs.

“As long as it doesn’t become a coffee shop,” she said, “I’ll be happy.”

Lella turned to Livia and said, “I think I’ll go to campus with you today. I can have a look around. What time will you be done?”

“Technically at three-thirty, but we have a brief faculty meeting afterward. On a Friday!”

They went back into the house, grabbed their things, and drove down into Ithaca and up the opposite hill to Cornell. The roads and the trees were still wet from last night’s rain, but the sun was coming out in that soft, sweet September way. The crowns of the Red Maples were tipped with scarlet. Lella decided to walk to the Botanical Gardens, said goodbye to Livia in the parking lot, and wandered off to explore on foot.

Sibley Hall

At four o’clock, Livia texted Lella to learn where her wanderings had led her.

“I’m in a place called Sibley Hall, at an architecture critique!” Lella said, laughing. “They’re having a reception. Can you join me?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Livia answered, amused. It was typical of Lella to wander into strange places as if she belonged. She ran into John Hanby on her way out and enlisted his company.

“You don’t mind going over to the Arts Quad?” she asked.

“Not at all. I’ll be your champion: science’s triumph over art,” John said.

When they got to the architecture building, they followed voices up the worn wooden stairs, where they found Lella surrounded by several students and a professor. They stood in front of a series of pinned-up drawings.

“You can’t simply take historical details out of context,” Lella was saying.

The professor, in horn-rimmed glasses wearing a buttoned-down oxford shirt, a jacket, and jeans, looked at her, shaking his head.

He began, “If we can build buildings that don’t need rows of columns for support, they still have value as vocabulary, just like words in a poem.”

The students shifted their gaze in unison toward Lella.

Lella said, “I understand your point, and it is a valid compositional exercise. However, I would challenge your students to understand the purpose of a column historically and what, based on current technology, is a ‘column’ today? That’s where they will find a new form. I think that toying with structural details that are no longer functional is superficial and avoids the real problem of what must follow Modernism. This “postmodern” work calls attention to what it isn’t and so is just reactionary."

The professor just stared at her, his mouth slightly open. He was not accustomed to anyone questioning him.

Lella saw Livia and said, “Oh, here is my friend, Professor Torricelli. Livia, this is professor Rowe and these are his students.”

Professor Rowe leaned toward Livia and said, “Emmett Rowe. We have been enjoying Signora Rossi’s visit immensely.”

“And this is my colleague, Professor Hanby,” Livia said.

“John,” said John, noticing Emmett Rowe’s supercilious appraisal of him. He detested these tweedy profs, with their pseudo-European demeanor and unkempt appearance.

“How on earth did you end up here?” Livia asked.

Lella took Livia’s arm and turned outside the circle.

“Well, I had a lovely walk in the arboretum, then I eventually found myself by a lake and followed it until I arrived here. I wandered inside to look for a ladies’ room and discovered a cavernous café called the Dragon, so I ordered a cup of tea. Professor Rowe heard my accent, and we started talking about Italy, and Italian architecture, and his students’ presentation, and then he invited me to the studio.”

Emmett approached them with a glass of wine in each hand.

“Signore,” he said, “Happy Friday.”

He steered the two of them around the room with John, trying to look interested, following behind.

“It’s surprising,” Emmett said, “to see such evolved opinions about architecture by someone outside of the profession.”

Livia and Lella looked at one another and laughed.

“We’re Italian,” Lella said. “We practically invented architecture.”

“What about the Greeks?” John said, then scratched the back of his head.

Emmett changed the subject. “I am having a little get-together tomorrow evening at my place, and I would love for you to come. You, too, of course, Professor Hanby,” he conceded.

Lella smiled and thanked Emmett, then gestured to Livia that they should leave.

Once they got outside, the three looked at each other and laughed.

A group of students was winding down with a game of Ultimate Frisbee, so they skirted the quad on the way to the parking lot. A young woman came up behind them.

“Excuse me,” she said.

They stopped, waiting.

“Um, I just wanted to thank you for being at the critique,” the student added, looking at Lella with admiration. “Our professors can be so rigid when it comes to style. They’re always promoting some agenda.”

“And you are?” Lella asked.

“I apologize, my name is Ming Lee.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Ms. Lee,” Lella answered.

Ming Lee had a long crop of straight black hair. Her face was smooth and showed no evidence of its underlying bony structure. Her eyebrows looked airbrushed, they were so precise and translucent. She wore an oversized white sweatshirt that fell off one shoulder, a pair of skinny black jeans, and black Converse All-Stars.

Livia stared. There was something other-worldly about this girl. Ming Lee smiled, embarrassed.

“Well, I don’t want to hold you up, I hope to see you again sometime.”

Lella held out her hand. “That would be lovely,” she said.

* * *

Before they got into their cars, John suggested they have a drink down in the Flats. Livia was driving a red 1972 Ford flatbed truck that had been bequeathed to the Cornell Orchards and loaned to her for the semester. She parked it in the driveway of John’s house, which was on one of the streets at the bottom of the hill, and followed Lella into John’s Jeep.

John drove to The Haunt, where he ordered beer and popcorn. Then they stepped outside and walked along the Lake inlet. John showed them the waterfront trail, populated by cyclists and pedestrians, that led to the Farmers’ Market. Daylight was waning, so they headed back to John’s house to get the truck. He offered to make some of his awesome chili for dinner. They excused themselves with Lella’s jet lag but agreed to come over the next evening before the party. John would then chauffeur them to Cayuga Heights, to Emmett Rowe’s house.

Saturday

The next morning Lella again awoke early and had breakfast ready by the time Livia hobbled, half asleep, into the kitchen. They went to Felicia’s Atomic Brewhouse and Bakery for their second coffee because they both liked the ritual. Georgina was easygoing and friendly.

They took the truck to go to the Farmers’ Market in Ithaca. Livia went the way that passed the Taughannock Falls overlook so that Lella could see the tall, narrow veil of water, the creek’s most dramatic drop through walls of rock on its way to Cayuga Lake. The creek, Livia explained, was a tributary of the original river of ice that formed the lake, whose level had lowered considerably after the glacier retreated to the north, leaving the stream valleys hanging far above.

“And that, my dear Lella,” said Livia, “is why there are so many waterfalls and gorges around.”

A bus of tourists arrived, so they continued onward to the market.

Walking among the stands, Lella was transported out of time. Gray-haired Baby Boomers had descended from their farms on the surrounding hills to sell their organic vegetables, packed in brown paper bags. There were tomatoes in every conceivable color; zucchini, chard, lettuces, potatoes, turnips, carrots and cabbages; apples and pears and Concord grapes. There were hats and scarves and accessories so natural and vegetal in their materials that they were nearly edible.

Mennonite vendors sold hand-crafted wares in wood, while their wives and daughters leaned over their loaves of bread and fruit tarts in delicate bonnets and long aproned dresses, avoiding the curious gaze of the “English.”

The hipsters had made their way into the scene with their craft brews and hard cider, though looking more bespoke and barber-trimmed than their stylistic predecessors.

The day was lit with the glow of autumn, the air infused with smoky decay and freshly sliced apples. Though cool at night, the daytime temperature was still comfortable. The yellowing leaves of trees framed patches of blue sky.

“Fall is like middle age,” Lella proclaimed. “It would be the very best season if it wasn’t for what follows.”