“We’d work it out just like your divorces, Mom,” Francesca had answered, annoyed by the suggestion, as she was by most of what her mother said. “With good lawyers, and as much love for each other as we can muster at that point, if that happens, and good manners and respect.”
All of her mother’s divorces had been on decent terms, and she was friendly with all her former husbands, and they still adored her. Thalia Hamish Anders Thayer Johnson di San Giovane was beautiful, chic, spoiled, self-centered, larger than life, glamorous, and a little crazy by most people’s standards. Francesca referred to her as “colorful” when she was trying to be nice about her. But in fact, her mother had been an agonizing humiliation for her all her life. She had married three Americans and two Europeans. Both of her European husbands, one British and one Italian, had titles. She had been divorced four times, and widowed the last time. Her husbands had been a very successful writer, Francesca’s father, the artist, the scion of a famous British banking family, a Texas land developer who left her comfortable with a big settlement and two shopping malls, which in turn had allowed her to marry a penniless but extremely charming Italian count, who died eight months later in a terrible car accident in Rome in his Ferrari.
As far as Francesca was concerned, her mother came from another planet. The two women had nothing in common. And now of course she would say “I told you so” when Francesca told her that the relationship was over, which Francesca hadn’t had the guts to do yet. She didn’t want to hear what she would have to say about it.