The Willing

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

I LOOKED AT THE clock on the nightstand and it was 2:00 a.m. The small studio apartment was finally cooling down and a light breeze coming through the open bedroom window felt good on my naked body. It was my first night in Florence, Italy. It was June 29th and it was hot and humid. I was nervous about my first day of school tomorrow and could not sleep. I kept running through my mind all the events of the past four years that led me here. I am now sixty-five years old and in good health. I have been athletic all my life. I still go to the gym three times a week and can bench press my body weight. I have been married three times, the last time for thirty years. I have five grown children and six grandchildren. I should be content being at home taking the grandchildren to the zoo. But it is not my nature. Deep intimate connections with people have always eluded me. I have always felt alone and an outsider even with all my children.

Five years ago for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, my wife and I went to Milan, Italy. As part of the trip, we hired a driver to see if we could find the village of Varni, the village of my grandfather’s birth. The driver did not know the village or where it might be. I said, “Let’s go to Castellamonte—I was told it is near there. We can ask around the area and, hopefully, we will get lucky.”

Near Castellamonte, there was a small sign at a crossroads with an arrow which read “Varni 3 KM.” Up into the foothills we went until we reached Varni. Varni is very small, with a population of 400. The ancient buildings with their red tile roofs are beautiful. The cobblestone streets are small and clean. Nestled into the hillside of a small forested valley, I thought we were leaving reality and driving into a postcard. We stopped at a small restaurant and entered.

The restaurant was small and very clean, and in a strange way, casual and elegant at the same time. There was a small counter to the right as we walked in and to the left was a dining room with about eight round tables, six feet in diameter, set with white linen and glassware with a view all the way to the Po Valley. Standing behind the counter was a gentleman of about fifty years of age, trim and athletic, with a look of deep suspicion on his face.

“Good afternoon. My name is Warren Steelgrave,” I said. “I am looking for the village of Cesare Sategna, my grandfather. Would you know if this is it and if any descendants of the family Sategna are still living in the area?”

The look of suspicion only deepened. He said to me, “Have a seat and I will call for someone to come and talk with you.”

I was admiring the view when I heard, “Excuse me, are these your grandparents?” I turned to see a woman of about sixty holding two framed pictures of my grandparents.

“Yes they are,” I said with a tremor in my voice.

As I stood to greet her, she set the pictures down on the table, stepped forward, put her arms around me and said, “Welcome home. We all have been waiting a long time for you. I live in your great-grandfather’s house, the house in which your grandfather was born.”

For the first time in my life, I felt a deep connection to something and someplace—I felt like I belonged here. My wife and I had been drifting apart for several years prior to our going to Italy, and on our return home the gulf between us only widened. I could not get Italy out of my mind. I had built up a very successful business, had a family and wife I loved, and roots in the community. Still, Italy beckoned like a young mistress. I started studying the language and culture and researching my Italian family tree. With f*******: and letters, I started making friends and developing relationships in Italy—more and more, my wife and I were living in separate worlds. My wife had her friends at work whom I had never met. They would have coffee together, and lunch, and talk about the problems and challenges at work. I had enrolled in college courses, studying Italian language, culture, and art. I would have coffee and lunch with young people from class and discus Dante and Bimbo and the Renaissance.

Many of my longtime friends, who had retired, spent the day reading or playing golf. They lived in the past and talked about past achievements and how things used to be. It looked and felt to me like they were just passing time waiting to die. I can remember the exact moment it happened. About six months after returning home from that first trip to Italy, I was sitting on the back deck of my house and it occurred to me that I was starting the last chapter of my life. I decided, while I still had my health and energy and enjoyed making love all night with a woman, I was going to write the last chapter myself and not coast to the end. I was already starting to become like my friends, a perfect specimen, already dead with low blood pressure. I sold my business for more money than I could ever spend in this life, retired, and started spending more time in Italy.

Thirty years is a long time to be married. You dig deep roots and if you are lucky you still have a deep respect and friendship. But I think after such a long time you may love each other but not be in love anymore. I had a very wise and good friend tell me you are only in love with someone as long as you can take something from them. I later read, think of a marriage as a box. Both people have to keep putting something in so there is something for the other to take out. My wife and I quit putting something in years ago. I never felt missed, nor did I miss her when I would take extended trips to Italy. I would come home almost hoping to find a note that she had fallen in love with someone and had left. My heart would love to know she was in love and happy with someone. She hadn’t been with me for a long time.

I had just gotten home from school and started to make a sandwich when I got the call. “Hello, Mr. Steelgrave?”

“Yes, this is Mr. Steelgrave.”

“This is the California Highway Patrol. Your wife has been in a serious car accident and has been taken to Saint Catherine’s Hospital emergency room.”

Without saying goodbye, I hung up the phone and left for the hospital. I arrived at Saint Catherine’s around 3:30. I walked into the emergency waiting room. It was very crowded and the level of pain and discomfort was everywhere. I walked up to the counter and announced to the admissions nurse, “My name is Warren Steelgrave. I was told my wife Kathy Steelgrave was in a car accident and brought here.”

“Let me check. Someone will be right out to get you.”

It was the longest five minutes of my life before a doctor in scrubs came out and took me back to a small private waiting room and asked me to sit down. “Mr. Steelgrave, I am terribly sorry. We did all we could but the injuries were just too great.”

“May I see her?” I asked.

“Yes. Someone will be out shortly and take you back.”

I was numb as I waited. Thirty years of memories flooded through my mind: the birth of the children, the craziness and fun of the early years, the hard work it took to build a life together.

“Mr. Steelgrave, would you like to come and see her now?”

I stood in a small room holding her hand and remembering how beautiful and full of life she was. I would never hear her laugh again or see the joy the grandchildren brought her.

I said, “Kathy, “I am so sorry I did not put more in the box for you and that I was not a better husband.”

After the funeral, I started removing her possessions out of the house we lived in for twenty-six years. It was as if I were giving away a little piece of her. It was awful. Up on a top shelf of her closet in a shoebox I found some love letters she kept from a man she had worked with some years before. They were too personal for me to read but what should I do with them? I was shocked to find out she had an affair or deep connection with someone and I hadn’t noticed, which says more about me than her. I came to the conclusion that because she kept them she would want them with her. I decided to burn them and distribute the ashes on her grave.

Of all her items to get rid of, her shoes were the hardest. I put off dealing with them until the very end. I do not know why they were so emotional for me to deal with and cannot explain it. Every time I would see them in the closet, it was the saddest thing for me.

Then, I heard from the children more than during the last ten years. I felt like I was in a fish bowl. One would call every day to see how I was. When I told them I was fine, I would be lectured on how it was okay to cry and I should not hold my feelings in, etc. I raised them in the hopes they would go off and live their own lives and not hang around here out of some misplaced guilt. Finally, I’d had enough and I enrolled in a school in Florence, Italy.