The Way Life Should Be (28 page)

She carries the bowl to the sink and drops it in the soapy water, washes her hands and dries them on the damp striped dish towel, then turns to face me. “There was a priest who came to our village from Rome.”

“I know,” I say. “You cooked for him.”

She nods. “I was helping my aunt. But my aunt was busy, working for other people. More and more she left me alone with him.” Nonna turns and drapes the dish towel over the edge of the counter to dry. “Well, things happened,” she says slowly, looking away. “I was sixteen. He was older. We developed a friendship. He was a gentle soul. Pious and devout. But with a sense of humor, too. And
intelligente.
I had never met anyone like him. He gave me books to read. Led me to make dishes from other regions that I had never heard of.”

“The white Bolognese.”

“Yes, the white Bolognese,” she nods. “But most of all…he was the first person who ever saw me. Who thought I was special. It was—
eccitante.
You know?”

I dig in my mind for the word. “Thrilling.”

“Thrilling,” she says. “Yes, it was thrilling. I wanted to be with him, spend all my time with him. I dreamed that we might
somehow have a future together. I suppose—I was in love with him. And then…” She pauses.

“And then…”

“I am pregnant.” She looks at me, studying my face. “And my dreams crumble.”

“Oh, Nonna,” I say.

“The day I tell him, he says that he can never see me again. He tells me never to come back.”

I reach for her hand.

“I understand. It is impossible. But I have never felt such pain,” she says, clutching her chest. “I cry for a week. And then—
il signore e buono,
” the Lord is good, “I lose the baby.”

For a moment both of us are silent. Then I ask, “Did you tell anyone? Your mother?”

“Never.
Ringraziato a dio.
Thank god,” she whispers. “The shame would kill her. My family knew something was wrong, very wrong, with me, but they thought it was a mood, or a girlish dream.”

As she speaks, I picture Nonna, for the first time, as a sixteen-year-old.

Rising, she opens the cabinet above the counter, and takes out the
olio,
half olive and half canola. She pours it unsteadily in a large skillet and turns on the blue flame. When the oil is hot, she drops in the meatballs, each a sizzle. Standing at the stove with the long-handled flat spatula, she rolls the balls over as they brown, talking with her back to me.

“I thought my life was over. And into my misery came a man with strong opinions. A kind man.
Il tuo nonno.
Your grandfather. I don’t know what he saw in me. Well…his own mother had been sick when he was a boy, and he knew how to take care of a woman. When he told me of his wish to leave Matera, and
asked me to marry him, I accepted. Nothing was left for me there.”

As each meatball cooks, Nonna lifts it onto a plate covered with a paper towel. The window above the counter fogs with the heat.

“Did you…,” I venture. I’m not sure if I should ask, but I want to know. “Did you love him?”

She struggles with both hands to lift a large pot from below the counter to the sink, and I hurry to help. I set the pot in the sink, and she faces me. “I am being honest? Then I did not love him. But love had gotten me nowhere. I didn’t want to be in love. I wanted to be—content.”

“Did he ever know about any of this?”

“Angela,
la mia cara,
no one knows. No one but you.”

“Why? Why have you never told anyone?”

“It was long ago. It had nothing to do with what came after. Telling would only have caused hurt. And, you see, there was no proof; what happened might as well have been my imagination. It existed only inside me, and maybe inside the man I loved. I don’t know—I’ll never know.”

“But…you think of him.”

“I think of him,” she says. “I can’t deny it. How old am I, eighty-eight years? And that man—
il mio dio,
a priest—was the love of my life. A cruel trick life can play, eh?”

“Well,” I say striving for lightness, “I’m glad you came to America. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

“No,” she says matter-of-factly, “you wouldn’t. Nor would I. I would be in Italy, probably poor as dirt and worked to the bone. But you know, despite it all, I miss that life. My family. I miss the sun on my back in the market square.” Nonna fills the pot with water and tosses in a handful of salt. She ignites the large burner and sets the water to boil. “I didn’t follow my heart, Angela. I
followed my head. And when it comes down to it, the longing in the heart lingers. Do you want to know the truth?”

I nod, though I’m not sure I do.

“I wish I had not left. I did what I thought would save me from heartache, but in many ways it kept me from living.” She motions with her hand. “This stove here, this window. This is my world. It did not have to be, but I made it so. And now—
maledizione il Dio,
I regret it.”

“You don’t mean that, Nonna,” I protest, but as I utter these words, they sound hollow and desultory. Of course she means it. She is weary and sick; she has had a stroke and might have died. I find it deeply unsettling that she should view the past sixty years with such regret, that for her entire adult life she has carried this secret of a man she loved who could not love her back, of a priest who took advantage of a young girl and changed the course of her life. But I also understand why Nonna laments what she left behind—her family and friends, the love affair that has lingered and expanded in memory, in secrecy, for all these years, the place that, to this day, she calls home.

CHAPTER 27

“Are you crazy? You can’t drive to Maine on New Year’s Eve!” my
father says when I tell him my plans.

“It’s not really New Year’s
Eve,
” I say. “I’ll be home before dark.”

“So it’s home now?”

I smile and give him a hug. “Thanks for putting up with me.”

“I have a choice?” he says, but I feel his arm tight around my shoulder.

In the morning, Sam refuses to budge from the front passenger seat of the Honda, fearful that I will leave him behind. He sat at my feet as I packed my duffel, followed me into the garage as I went through the boxes I had taped up nearly three months ago, and now sits anxiously as I fill the backseat with clothes and books, photo albums and candlesticks.

One last time, I return to the kitchen. As I pour a cup of coffee, Nonna disappears into another room, then emerges holding what looks like a very large pelt—the rabbit-fur coat my grandfather gave her those many years ago.

“I want you to have this,” she says. “I have no use for it now. And the weather in Maine is very cold, is it not?”

I have never aspired to a fur coat. But I think of what this
coat means to Nonna, how she wore it as a symbol of all she’d left behind. Inside the coat, the embroidered label sewn into the satin lining says: “Handmade in Italy.”

Nonna holds up the coat with both hands, and I slip it on, one sleeve and then the other. Its bulky weight surprises me.

I grasp her hand. “Thank you.”

“Prego,”
she says.

Pulling the coat around me, I feel protected, brave. “Nonna, I’ve been thinking. The other day you said something like…you feel that your world is no bigger than this kitchen.”

She flaps her hand. “That was—a moment.”

“I know. I know. But…” I don’t know what I’m trying to say, only that I want to give something to Nonna, who has given so much to me. “You know how you tell me that I have ‘the gift’?
Il regalo
?”

She nods.

“Nonna, you gave me that gift.”

“No. You made your own path,
la mia cara.
”

“But—I’m finally beginning to figure out what I want to do with my life because of what you taught me. Did you know—did I tell you—that I plan to open a restaurant someday, in Maine?” I surprise myself as I hear the words come out. “I want to call it ‘Matera.’ And serve the food you showed me how to make.”

“In Maine?” she echoes.

I have not been sure of this, was not even thinking seriously about it, but as I talk, my certainty grows. “In Maine.”

“I may have to come.”

“You will come.”

She adjusts the coat on my shoulders. “I’m glad that I could teach you something. And that it matters to you,” she says, stroking the coat like a pet. “Maybe we will someday go to Italy. If I live a little longer. You would like that?”

As I say good-bye I feel her cheek against mine, the rabbity quickness of her breath. For a moment she holds my face in her cool hands, and when I raise my hands to cover hers, she squeezes them and closes her eyes.

All the way up the East Coast,
through New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts, I am caught in slow traffic. My father was right: Driving to Maine on New Year’s Eve wasn’t such a bright idea. Close to Worcester I hit rush hour near I-495, but by the time I get to New Hampshire, the traffic has thinned. Sam, secure in the knowledge that he has not been abandoned, sleeps on the passenger seat most of the way.

Crossing the now familiar green bridge that links New Hampshire to Maine, I feel not a cleaving but a joining, my disparate selves linking up. Three months ago, I was drawn to Maine by a fantasy, unconnected to real life. On this return journey, I am bringing my past along—my grandmother’s blessing, a throw blanket of many colors, the rabbit-fur coat.

I wonder if Nonna and I will ever get to Italy. In some ways I feel that she has taken me there already—but even as this thought flits through my mind I am aware that it is sentimental, and not exactly true. I don’t really feel that I’ve been to Italy, only that I finally understand what it meant for her to leave it behind.

Up ahead on the right, a green-and-white road sign proclaims WELCOME TO MAINE—THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE. I missed it the first time I drove past. As I think about it now, it’s a strange thing to say about a place. Is it a smug admonition to people who don’t live in this state about what they’re missing? A marketer’s vision of a land of lobsters and blueberries that never has, and never will, exist? Regardless, the slogan is clearly aimed at tourists, since for people who live in this state, Maine is just the way life is.

I think of the tattered picture tacked to my long-ago bulletin board, the man of my fantasies on Blueberry Cove Lane, the mirage of a perfect life that brought me to Maine in the first place. Fairy tales end happily ever after because children crave certainty and resolution; they need to know how things turn out. But if my experiences in the past three months have shown me anything, it’s that I am comfortable living with more questions than answers. My own story will always be a work in progress.

When I reach Mount Desert Island, it will still be winter. I will still be living in a shack. I will make muffins and soups for the shop, I may teach more cooking classes, and perhaps I will think seriously about that restaurant. Truthfully, I may not belong in that small harbor town. It is everything I am not: spare, spiritual, contemplative, quiet. But the island, within its boundaries, offers a kind of freedom that I have come to appreciate. I look forward to making fires in the woodstove and watching the embers burn, cooking and reading books and taking hikes, growing hardy rugosa roses in my backyard. Perhaps these things, after all, are enough, the ingredients of a life well lived.

Perhaps. And yet—I want to find out how I feel about this man who urges me to hurry back, who tells me that he wants to help make my dreams come true. Might he be my soul mate? I’m still not sure that such a thing exists. What I do know is that I don’t want to end up feeling like Nonna, that my life has been a series of circumscribed choices, each cutting off other options; that my memories are tinged with regret. Nonna made one mistake that irrevocably altered her life; I have made dozens. But I live in a different time, and I can start over. I can be open to change, to chance—to the possibility of happiness.

I am far from the island, still, and the sky is dark. I need to stop for gas. Snow sits thickly on the black pine trees that line
the road, which is covered in a light dusting, freshly plowed. It’s starting to snow again, and driving is slow. But I’m not worried. Sooner or later I’ll get there, and make a fire, and feed my dog, and take up right where I left off, in the blessed middle of nowhere.

RECIPES

The following recipes comprise a selection of the soups, salads,
appetizers, main courses, and desserts that appear in the pages of this book. The recipes are eclectic, ranging from Nonna’s trove of favorites—from Basilicata, from her time with the Roman priest, and from the Italian American enclave of Nutley, New Jersey—to Angela’s experience baking for the coffee shop and devising cooking-class menus. The dishes that already appear in recipe form in the novel (some quite loosely) are listed with page numbers.

If you have thoughts or questions or would like another recipe from this novel that I haven’t included here, you can contact me through my website, www.christinabakerkline.com.

Classic Antipasto Platter, 164

Butternut Squash Soup, 203

Risotto with Seafood, 204

Stracciatella alla Romana, 192

Basic Chicken Stock, 191

Basil Marinara, 196

Fra Diavola Marinara, 197

Pasta with White Bolognese, 214

Fennel and Parmesan Salad with Lemon, 215

Marinated Beets and Goat Cheese, 204

Pasta e Fagioli

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 (14-ounce) cans stewed tomatoes with Italian seasoning, or a scoop of marinara

6 cups chicken broth

2½ cups cannellini beans, drained and rinsed