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“Women were burning their bras. I was months away from emancipation. Timing is everything,” Mom complained.

“I don’t know about all this feminism stuff,” Aunt Lil said, “but my husband would rather be hanging off that mountain cutting stone than installing marble tubs in those mansions in Ridgewood. Believe me.”

“I’ll take all the danger in the world, if you give me Italy.” Uncle Louie winked at me.

I was eight years old and didn’t understand the adult conversation, or why their jokes were funny, or not, but something happened that Christmas Eve that took root in my subconscious. I was certain that a place called Italy and a man named Louie would conspire to give me my dream, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was or how to make that dream come true. I had no vision, no proof, just a Capodimonte hunch, one I would hold on to through all that lay ahead.

Milano

Milan is statuesque, a Gustav Klimt creation; tall, slender, swathed in beige, and left out in the rain. Spires and spheres, marble bell towers and sculpted gargoyles define Milan from the ground. La Scala opera house, built of cladded stone, is all arched doors, windows, and pediments as ornate as a wealthy patron who wears every priceless jewel she owns in order to turn heads on Via Emmanuelwhen she attends the opera. Heavy gray clouds hang low, turning the pavement wisteria blue. Milan is in a mood, and she has painted herself shades of purple.

Angelo waits for us at the train station. We find him easily in the crowd; his intense eyes cut through the mist when all else recedes into the haze. He pushes through the throng toward us. His mother lets out a sigh of delight and points to him. This is not the Angelo Strazza of Carrara who works in a studio in an apron. He’s Milanese now; his new job is one of commercial design and customer relations. Angelo has acquiredsprezzatura, an effortless elegance. The artist has become a work of art himself. He wears a cashmere topcoat thrown over a brown wool blazer and navy slacks; his brown-and-blue-striped tie is loosened at the collar. He embraces his mother. She reaches up and tightens the knot on his tie before he turns to me and kisses me on both cheeks.

I haven’t seen Angelo since he left Carrara. He recently sent a couple of texts, but they were more about his mother than our friendship.

Angelo takes my backpack and throws it over his shoulder. He takes his mother’s arm with one of his and her luggage with the other. I roll my own suitcase beside them.

“Mamma, I got you tickets to La Scala. Zia Bette is going to take you.”

“But what about you?”

“I’m going to take Giuseppina up the mountain.”

“Bergamo?”

He nods. “Valle di Scalve.”

“You’re not going to take her to see your father’s lunatic friend.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Beppe Novelli is crazy.” She turns to me. “Stay in Milan if you know what’s good for you.”

“I promised Conor I would show you the gilding studio.” Angelo winks at me. “It’s business, Mamma.”

“Another time,” Signora Strazza pleads. “You’ll ruin Christmas.”

“Nothing can ruin Christmas,signora,” I insist.

“Beppe will ruin Christmas. You don’t know. Everything is a joke with that buffoon. And watch his hands. That’s my final word of warning. Nobody listens to me, but you will see.”

Does every Italian mother play guilt like a round of pickleball? Or is it their go-to when they want to control their children? “Signora, when it comes to new friends, the crazier the better,” I tell her.

“I won’t let anything happen to Giuseppina,” Angelo assures her.

“You two are alike,” Signora Strazza says. “Pazzo.”

We’re not crazy. There is a much simpler diagnosis. I know it, and eventually Angelo will understand it too. We were raised by the same mother.

Beppe

Grotto D’Oro is a gilder’s workshop on the mountain in Città Alta, an Elizabethan-style village above the city of Bergamo. The piazza is Italian, but the details are old-world English: wrought iron, curlicued gates, and fussy architectural ornamentation on the buildings. No saltwater taffy colors here, only neutrals, white and beige with a touch of pink that comes from the light. Even the winter birds play along, circling overhead, jet-black slashes in the sky that drop onto the piazza, tuck in their wings, and skitter on the stone tiles searching for crumbs.

“If Bergamo’s Città Alta were a woman, she would be Jane Eyre,”I tell Angelo. “It’s a fortress. It reminds me of Thornfield Hall. It’s set on the mountain, remote, and it feels like it’s got secrets.”

“Is everything you see in the world from a story in a book?” Angelo asks.

Beppe’s workshop is off the piazza, in a single-story stone building, tucked into the mountain with rounded edges, which may be why it’s called a grotto. We enter through a pair of wooden barn doors with brass rings for knobs. Inside, the workshop is one large room with a long farm table cleared for work. Against the walls are piles of marble blocks, stacks of stones, planks of wood, and granite sheets resting against the walls like mirrors. The stools are so old the wood is worn on the seats and slope where Beppe sits, pitched forward to do his work.