JOAN OF ITALIA
(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)
(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that takes place in the year after the JOAN OF ARCADIA TV show ended. A listing of the other stories is on my profile. The main events that have happened since May 2005 are
(1) Joan has let Grace, Luke, and Adam into her secret
(2) Joan and Adam have just gotten married.
(3) Joan, Adam, and Grace have graduated from high school. Luke was jumped a year and allowed to graduate with them.
(4) Grace and Luke have spent two nights together. Grace has accepted a job with a famine-relief organization abroad and Luke is tempted to follow her.
This story starts in June, 2006)
Chapter 1 The Bequest
Now bless thyself, for thou met'st with things dying, I with things new-born. --- Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
(Author's Note: I don't remember Aunt Olive's last name ever being given, so I invented one. If any reader remembers a name and tells me, I'll substitute it in)
RRRRRING!
"Hello?" asked Helen.
"This is Sven Parker, of Parker, Bacon, and Hamm." The names meant nothing to Helen. "Does Luke or Joan Girardi live there?
"Luke's at work. Joan is on her honeymoon."
"Oh, dear," murmured Mr. Parker. "Such odd timing--"
"May I ask what this is about?" pursued Helen.
"Yes," said Parker, sounding businesslike once more. "We are a law firm, and we represent Olive Lebenkurtz. I regret to inform you that Mrs. Lebenkurtz passed away on May 31, after a short illness."
"Oh!" Her Aunt Olive, dead! And Helen hadn't even known she was ill. But given Olive's incessant travel, perhaps it was expected that news would travel slow.
"A notaire in France sent us her last will. It mostly concerns Joan and Luke, so they were the ones I was trying to locate. Do you think you could convene the family for the reading of the will once your daughter returns?"
"Certainly."
In the next few days Helen made inquiries about her aunt. Apparently Olive, though recovered from her stroke, had taken ill while travelling through France, and decided to settle down in a French village. In mid-May, apparently foreseeing her death and still clear in mind, she had dictated a new will to a French notaire. He knew English well and Olive had signed his rendering of it, so there was no question about the validity of the will. Two weeks later Olive died, having made no attempt to ask her relatives for help. She had remained Olive to the end.
Helen finally managed to reach the nurse who had attended Olive in her last days. The nurse was reticent about discussing her patient, but did admit that Madame Lebenkurtz had often demanded periods alone, to talk with "le Bon Dieu". To Helen that sounded like a last-minute religious conversion, natural in one who foresaw her death approaching, but the nurse observed that Madame never summoned a priest, not even for Last Rites. Joan seemed fascinated at this news when she heard it.
And so the extended Girardi family was convened in their living room on June 24, 2006. Aside from the parents and three children, Kevin had brought his wife Lily and Joan, who now styled herself Joan Girardi-Rove, brought her husband Adam. She was clearly doting on her hubby, and nobody dared mention the near-botched wedding. The two were living in Adam's studio, which was cramped but quite OK with Joan.
Jean Cavallo, who like Helen had been a niece of Olive's, was there representing her branch of the family; her husband and son could not be spared from the farm in North Carolina. She expressed surprise that Grace wasn't there, and Helen had replied somewhat tartly "it's just family". Grace was trying to persuade Luke to turn down a prestigious acceptance from Harvard and work in the Third World with her, and Helen wasn't at all pleased about that.
"I'll handle the minor bequests first the order that she wrote them," said Mr. Parker. 'To Jean and Jonathan Cavallo, my pony Cherie.'."
Jean sighed. "I hope it's some use as a horse, and not just a pampered pet. But little Adam can ride it as he gets older."
"'To Helen Girardi, my poodle Fifi, in recognition of Helen's flair with metaphor'."
"My flair with --? Oh!" said Helen, turning red. She remembered how she had once called the overbearing aunt an "ungrateful bitch". Olive had remembered, and willed her a real bitch, a female dog. Haha.
"'To Kevin Girardi, the herbs that helped me regain my locomotion after my stroke. To Joan Girardi, all my dresses. To Luke Girardi, my rare edition of the Prophecies of Nostradamus'."
"The herbs won't help," Kevin said. "It's a different form of paralysis."
"Even so, they're more scientific than an old fortune-teller," grumbled Luke.
"And I can imagine what sort of dresses Aunt Olive would consider cool," said Joan in horror.
All three said simultaneously: "Oh well, it's the thought that counts."
"Now to the larger bequests," said Parker. "To the Jean and Jonathan Cavallo, $10,000 free of encumbrance."
"Wow," said Joan.
"That certainly makes up for the pony," commented Mrs. Cavalo.
"'In gratitude to the Girardi family for the hospitality during my illness, I bequeath the remainder of my worldly goods to Kevin, Joan, and Luke Girardi in equal shares, on one condition--"
"Condition?" asked Helen worriedly. It would be just like Olive to ask them to eat a plateful of locusts or something.
"-- that the first use of the money will be to fund a trip abroad for Joan and Luke, that they may see the world before settling down to the daily grind'."
"Whew," said Helen in relief.
"We can satisfy the condition by crossing the border to Canada and back," mused Luke, with his logical mind.
"That's crap," said Lily, the ex-nun. "Take it in the spirit it was granted. If I had a chance to see Rome--"
"Or all of Italy, our ancestral home," said Will.
"What about my husband?" Joan asked the lawyer.
"The will doesn't say. But as long as you satisfy the conditions by going yourself, you can use the rest of the bequest to pay for his passage."
"How much money are we talking about?" asked Kevin.
"The accounts value the estate at roughly $ 250,000. With the Cavallos receiving $10,000, that leaves $ 80,000 for each of you."
The Girardis stared at each other. None of them had realized just how wealthy Aunt Olive had been, though the cost of travelling for years with no visible means of support implied that her husband must have left her quite a fortune.
Only Adam seemed undazed by the windfall.
"All that, yet no home and no companionship," he murmured. "The poor lady."
TBC