The Way Life Should Be (24 page)

“Perhaps it’s time to set limits,” Rebecca says ruefully.

Flynn nods. “Absolutely. Just not tonight.”

We get to work on dinner. Over the past few weeks, we’ve figured out how to maneuver around each other in the kitchen; we’re getting to be old pros. White Bolognese, one of my favorite comfort foods, seems the right choice. Nonna learned it from the priest in Matera when she was working as her aunt’s assistant, and has made it ever since. She often makes a pot on cold winter nights; even my stepmother admits to craving it (despite the red meat and dash of cream). Most Bolognese sauces contain tomatoes—this one does not. It is richer, its flavors more complex. Perfect for December.

As with many Italian dishes, I tell the group, you begin with the
soffrrito
—onions sautéed in olive oil with garlic, cooked until soft and golden—and the
insaporire
—parsley, carrots, celery. I sometimes add wild mushrooms, chopped fine. Then comes the ground meat. You may use ground beef, but it is much better with pork sausage. Add white wine and beef stock, and simmer, tossing in salt and pepper to taste. When the sauce reduces,
after ten or fifteen minutes, you pour in a stream of milk until the color is golden brown. The priest Nonna worked for preferred the dish with nutmeg, but we usually leave it out.

Rigatoni, wide-ridged, tube-shaped noodles, makes a good complement. The ridges allow the pasta to hold more sauce; the wide holes capture pieces of meat and vegetables. After cooking the rigatoni al dente, or firm to the bite, drain it, reserving a small amount of the starchy water. Then ladle the sauce onto the pasta, stirring to blend it through. Ladle the Bolognese in scoops until the rigatoni is coated.

The fennel salad is simple. I slice the bulbs into thin sheets and add a generous amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano shaved in slivers. Lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil whisked into a vinaigrette, along with freshly ground pepper, complete the dish.

Steaming bowls of rigatoni Bolognese in hand, we move to the table, along with the remaining hunk of Parmigiano and the fennel salad. Conversation is easy and relaxed—recent shared experiences, island gossip. When there’s a lull, we talk about the food.

In time, Tom and I clear the emptied plates. He is in charge of the gelato, so I get out small bowls while he inspects the stainless-steel interior of Rebecca’s ice-cream maker. We haven’t spoken alone since our trip to Blue Hill last week. Clearly he’s been avoiding me: He hasn’t come into the shop, didn’t call me to go to the farmers’ market. I went alone in my old Honda.

I had allowed myself to think that maybe there was something between us. But of course there isn’t; he has a girlfriend. Some men are just that way—solicitous, attentive, with an intimacy that borders, perhaps, on the inappropriate. Tom’s small flirtations probably seem harmless to him, and come across as more than he intends. Or maybe he knows what he’s doing.
Maybe he likes having the power to charm and entice, even if he can’t or won’t admit it.

Whatever it is, I won’t put myself in that position again. All evening I’ve sensed Tom’s gaze, but I refuse to look him in the eye.

I smile brightly. “Is it ready?”

“I think so.” He dips a spoon into the creamy custard, holds it out for me to taste.

Pointedly, I take the spoon. “Thanks.” And take a bite. A bite I barely taste. “Good.”

“Glad you like it.”

We return to the table with the gelato and bowls. Tom serves while I pass.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Eileen says softly—so softly that I’m the only one, standing next to her, who can hear.

“Yes?” I say.

“About that game. The one Flynn started. I have—something to share.”

Conversation around the table subsides. We all turn in her direction. Eileen is twisting her napkin, and looks ill at ease. “I don’t want to shock you,” she says.

“Nothing can shock me after finding out that Lance is a stripper,” Flynn says.

“
Was
a stripper,” Lance says.

“Whatever.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Eileen gives us a tense smile and looks down. “Almost no one knows about this, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind keeping it quiet.” She takes a deep breath. “The reason I showed up on this island a year ago is that I’d just gotten out of prison, and I needed a place where nobody knew who I was.”

Moments pass while this news sinks in. The mild-mannered,
gray-braided, bespectacled librarian sitting here in a purple floral dress, a convict? I try to visualize Eileen in orange regulation prison gear, and I can’t see it.

“What—?” Rebecca begins, then stops abruptly, the question hanging in the air.

“You want to know what I did.” Eileen swallows hard and blinks behind her glasses. “I killed my husband. It was manslaughter. He used to beat me. He came at me one time too many, and the last time I had a knife.”

Stunned silence hangs in the air.

“Holy dooley,” Flynn breathes.

“How long were you in prison?” Tom asks.

“My sentence was twenty years, but I got out in seven. Good behavior, and also new laws about spousal abuse. Some persistent law students were on my case.”

“Do you have children?” Rebecca asks.

Eileen nods. “Two. They were teenagers at the time. My son, Jesse, refuses to speak to me. Sue will talk to me, but she’s still embarrassed, so I have to meet her at fast-food places on the highway where we don’t know anyone.”

Rebecca reaches across the table and clasps Eileen’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “That must be terrible.”

“Well, it is,” Eileen says. “But, you know, I’m grateful to have a job and an apartment, and to live in a place where I can just
be.
And to work with books. I find that words help. But it’s been hard, not having anybody I could talk to about my life. It’s felt so lonely. I wasn’t sure about this, but it’s a relief to talk about it now.”

Lance pours red wine into our glasses, seltzer into his, then raises his glass in the air. “To Eileen.”

“To Eileen,” we repeat. We sip in silence. Eileen is wiping her eyes, and Tom has his arm around her shoulders. I can sense
that, like me, people have questions, but this is not the time to ask. There’s something about the nature of this group, the ritual gathering, which allows for a slow unfolding. We know that, one way or another, there will be a time and place for more.

“Well, if Eileen is going to be that brave, I guess I can, too,” Rebecca says finally.

“Lord, you haven’t killed somebody, have you?” Flynn asks.

We all laugh a little.

Rebecca puts up a finger—
wait
—and goes to the hallway, cocking her head. “Josh is still doing PlayStation,” she says, coming back to the table. She smiles at me. Then she eases into her chair with a heavy sigh. “I’m just going to say it. We moved here because my husband was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. He was in the north tower; he worked for Bear Stearns. We lived in Gramercy Park, and Josh had just turned two.” She shifts in her chair, tucks her leg under her. “I don’t really talk about it because—that’s part of why I came here, to get away from having to talk about it.”

“Blimey,” Flynn says. “You don’t have to do this, Rebecca.”

“No, I want to. I do.” She takes a deep breath. “It was, as you know, September. I was taking him in his stroller to nursery school, a few blocks from our apartment, when suddenly there was this sound. Like nothing I’d ever heard before. A—boom, up in the sky. I looked up…” Her voice trails off.

“Jesus,” Tom says. Eileen reaches for Rebecca’s hand.

“It was such a sunny day,” she says. “Ever since then, I’ve been a little nervous about beautiful days. I saw the smoke rise into this clear blue sky, and it didn’t make sense. You know?” Rebecca’s eyes are dry; her voice is quiet and steady. But her hands, I notice, tremble.

“They never found his body,” she continues. “He was just—
gone. Over the next few months I tried to keep going, for Josh, if nothing else. Every normal day we got through felt like a small victory. I wanted to remain in New York, to prove that life would go on, that I wasn’t scared. But something inside me had shifted. I had always been fearless and open, and I became fearful and self-protective. I was always looking around, startled by sudden noise. Those attacks had come from out of nowhere, and they could come from out of nowhere again.

“After a few months, I decided to leave. For my sanity, and for Josh’s—so I could be a good mother to Josh. We had this place, so we came.”

The room is quiet. Finally Lance says, “I can’t imagine how devastating…” He stops, shakes his head.

“It was,” she says pensively. “And it was even harder for me because that morning, before John left for work, we had an argument. It wasn’t anything major; I wanted him to go to a silly meet-the-teacher thing at Josh’s preschool, and John said he had a meeting with a client he couldn’t get out of—but the last words I said to him were, ‘If you can’t put your son first once in a while, there’s something seriously wrong.’ And then—he was gone.”

She pauses a moment, as if unsure whether to say more. “I still replay those words. But the truth is, we were going through a difficult time, and I don’t want to—sentimentalize our relationship in hindsight. Things weren’t perfect between us. I sometimes wonder if—if we’d have stayed together had he lived. That’s something I’ll never know.

“At any rate, I’m sure I wouldn’t be here, now, on my own like this, with Josh. But I’m glad I’m here. John loved this place—he built this house; we planned every square foot of it together. He wanted us to use it. He would be so happy that we’re here.
I think of all the things he loved about this island—the hiking, the water, the trees. And I love it all the more because he loved it so much.”

She shakes her head, as if to say she’s ready to move on. I can tell that she feels exposed, probably having revealed more than she intended.

I remember 9/11. I was on the subway when the first plane hit; as soon as I got to work, I was told to go home. Lindsay and I spent the next twelve hours together walking around my Upper West Side neighborhood and watching TV in my apartment. Three people from our hometown died in the towers, two acquaintances from college, a business-school friend of my brother’s. For months afterward any reminder of the attacks—an American flag outside a fire station on Fifty-ninth Street, the rows and rows of faces of the dead in the
Times
—moved me to tears.

Rebecca turns to Tom, sitting beside her, and nudges him. “I think you’re next.”

“Oh, shit,” Tom says, startled, and we all laugh. “I think I should wait until next time.”

“But this is it,” I say. “There isn’t a next time.”

“Well, maybe there should be,” Flynn says.

“Or maybe—we could just keep meeting. Not call it a class,” says Rebecca. “There are a few things I know how to make. There’s a great recipe called Chicken Marbella in the
Silver Palate Cookbook
that I always made for friends in New York.”

“I remember that,” Tom says. “Chicken and prunes, right?”

“Maybe we could all bring what we have,” Eileen says. “You know—stone soup.”

Taking a bite of biscotti, a sip of wine, I am reminded of the rituals of worship, of strangers gathered in reflection. No one in my family goes to church any longer except Nonna, who
makes her way several times a week to the eight-thirty mass at the Church of St. Agnes. Its massive carved wooden doors and stained-glass windows, peopled with sharp-featured saints and angels floating toward heaven, remind her, she says, of Italy. The church is a refuge from all that is confusing and overwhelming about America—the Latin words the same as they were in her village, the rituals and songs familiar. I think of Nonna walking slowly to the altar rail for Communion, kneeling to accept the body and the blood of Christ, with outstretched hands, eyes closed, head bent in prayer.
Thanks be to God.
I think of confession, the words of penance and solace.

Something akin to that feeling, a feeling I’ve never had anywhere else, is what I’m experiencing now.

Perhaps it is simply this: the bread, the wine; the Hanukkah candles; community and ritual. A sharing of experience, of stories, the facts of each person’s life distinct and yet inseparable from the whole. Each one might be a saga told around a campfire or chanted in an epic poem, seemingly improbable, colored by emotion and hindsight, and yet utterly believable. These are the chronicles of legend, the tales we tell over and over, the stories that remind us we are not alone.

CHAPTER 24

My cell phone, ringing urgently on its charger, jars me from sleep. I
reach a hand from under the covers and grope for it. The clock says 5:47 A.M. The air in my room is so chilly that I can see my breath.

“Angela, your grandmother is—not well.”

At the sound of my father’s voice, I am wide awake. I sit up, pull my comforter cover around me. “What?”

“We’re at the hospital.”

“Oh God. What happened?”

“They think she had a stroke. She fell out of bed early this morning, around two thirty. I heard her cry out and found her lying on the floor; she was incoherent, didn’t even know where she was. I called 911 and an ambulance came. Sharon and I followed in the car.”

A rushed trip through a maze of streets, the fluorescent blur of the emergency room, the trouble finding a vein in Nonna’s arm, doctors conferring in a corner, the transfer to intensive care. Nonna mumbling in Italian; then praying. Sharon had thought to bring Nonna’s rosary. On the other end of the phone, my father’s voice is so shaky I can barely make out what he’s saying. It occurs to me that he must feel very alone. I can guess what Sharon is saying under her breath:
Eighty-eight years is a long time to live.
But Nonna is my father’s only mother, his one remaining parent. He does not want her to die.

He tells me that he doesn’t know what will happen next; he doesn’t want to tell me what to do. I should come home if I want, but Sharon and Paul are standing by and Nonna seems stable now.