Eating With the Angels (14 page)

‘I think is turkey,’ Signora Marinello said doubtfully. ‘They say no to scramble eggs.’

She and Fleur watched as I opened the sandwich to check for mustard: a fruitless search as it turned out, the whole collection was the same shade of dreary off-white but nonetheless I seasoned the
limp-looking
turkey with salt and pepper and hesitantly took a bite. The bread was fresh in the way that only white sliced bread can be when it’s a week or more out of a commercial oven, but other than that the experience was deeply depressing. I rolled the first bite around in my mouth, chewing it down to the smallest amount so I could swallow it. It tasted of nothing — hardly surprising, I don’t know what I was expecting — and I gave up halfway, washing it down with the bland juice of some completely made-up composite fruit and sinking back down into my bed, suddenly hopelessly exhausted.

‘I’ll go,’ said Fleur, seeing this.

I smiled at her, happy that sleep, my escape from tasteless turkey and terrible truths, was close at hand.

‘What about Tom?’ I had to ask. ‘I know it’s weird, Fleur, but I really need to talk to him. I have to find a way to get my head around the whole pre-pretzel thing. Would that be okay? Would you ask him to come see me?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Whatever you want.’ But her eyes were unhappy as she turned and left the room.

Ashlee, the bubbly flight attendant from my flight to Italy, came the next morning to take me to the gym for rehabilitation therapy. Actually, I had gotten used to imagined fragments from my unconsciousness turning up in my real life by then. The squat balding waiter from Alla Madonna turned out to be a wry orderly by the name of George who flirted outrageously with Signora Marinello using only monosyllables and a series of quite impressive eyebrow manoeuvres. The Pucci-clad mushroom vendor from the Rialto markets worked in the hospital kitchen and pushed the stack of meal trays from room to room. And I had seen one of the nasty grandfathers from the Giudecca pushing a toddler past my doorway, a regular visitor to a woman my age down the hall — his daughter, who had suffered a stroke and would be in the ward for a while to come.

Hunger still gnawing at me, I had attempted oatmeal for breakfast but given up after just a few spoonfuls, much to my nurse’s disgust. It was grey and lumpy and approximately one million miles away from that creamy elixir poured from the silver tureen at the Hotel Gritti Palace. Plus it sure as hell was not followed by
piping-hot
freshly baked pastries the way I liked it to be.

Anyway, when Ashlee showed up and introduced herself as my physical therapist I was hardly surprised at all and immediately checked out her ring finger, which indeed sported a giant engagement ring. She took me down to the hospital gym and to my horror produced a big rubber ball from a collection of equipment at one end of the room.

‘This is not a good idea,’ I told her. ‘This could end in disaster.’

‘Just relax and take your time, Connie,’ she said in a decidedly
return-your-seat-to-its-upright-position voice. ‘You are in a safe environment. Nothing can happen to you but I need to assess your physical ability and see how you are doing, so we can plan your future treatment. Okay? Can you do that for me?’

The problem was that there were things about my physical ability Ashlee didn’t know. Namely, I didn’t have any. Throughout my entire schooling I had been plagued by a combination of excessive height and extreme uncoordination. I was always the last person chosen for any game at gym class and could not even walk onto a basketball court as a spectator without falling over my own feet and landing on my ass. I had a permanent bruise on my hip from banging into desks and doorknobs and still bore scars on both of my knees from tripping over for no apparent reason on any hard surface, preferably asphalt, something I continued to do on a regular basis well into my … well, my current surroundings spoke for themselves.

So when Ashlee lined me up and started throwing that big red ball at me, my life flashed in front of my eyes. It was pretty much like a scene from
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
If they were going to judge my recovery on my sporting prowess, I was in big trouble. Predictably, I failed to catch the ball even once. I just couldn’t stop closing my eyes whenever she threw it at me.

‘I’ve always been like this,’ I told her as I flailed around trying to pick the stupid thing up off the floor and throw it back. Even when it wasn’t in the air I couldn’t get a hold of it. ‘It’s nothing to do with the pretzel.’

She wrote something down on her chart.

I prayed to God to help me say something that wouldn’t make me seem more incapacitated than I was. ‘Look!’ I said brightly and attempted a string of star jumps, the one athletic feat I’d always been able to handle as long as I got into the rhythm. Unfortunately, rhythm eluded me on this occasion. The left side of my body seemed to be working on a slightly different time frame from the right side, leaving my star jumps lop-sided to say the least. Ashlee rather
predictably looked unconvinced and with a your-nearest-exit-
is-over
-here sign indicated that I should follow her to the opposite corner of the room where, much to my horror, she revealed a treadmill.

Now, I might have woken up with muscly thighs and been told I was a runner. But as far as I knew I had barely been able to master putting one foot in front of the other at a slow pace let alone a fast one and I baulked at trying to do so now, especially as it was on a machine and even more especially as it was some sort of a test.

‘Just stand on the sides and I’ll start it slowly,’ Ashlee said, guiding me onto the stupid contraption and pressing the buttons with her long lacquered nails, that engagement ring picking up the fluorescent light and glowing like something out of an old
Star Trek
episode.

‘When you are ready, step onto the belt and start walking.’

In the flash of an eye I was lying in a crumpled heap on the felty carpet behind the machine. It did not smell good. I was not the first person to land there and those before me had not necessarily enjoyed my level of bladder control. It did not strike me as a very rehabilitating experience.

Ashlee scribbled something else down on her clipboard before coming to help me up.

‘I’ve always been like this,’ I told her. ‘You’d better put that on your chart or people will get the wrong idea.’

She smiled at me in a tolerant fashion — as though I’d just handed her a leaking bag full of vomit — and I slumped into a wheelchair. I could have walked back to my room but all that humiliation had taken it out of me.

‘How was that, Constanzia?’ Signora Marinello wanted to know as she helped me back into my bed.

‘It’s hard to say,’ I told her.

‘Connie has some balance and coordination issues,’ Ashlee reported. ‘We might want to let Dr Scarpa know about her progress. He has asked to be kept informed.’

So, Marco was taking an interest in me after all. This cheered me up significantly, as you can imagine, despite the fact that even though Ashlee was obviously engaged she got a real goofy look on her face when she said the words, ‘Dr Scarpa’. An awful thought crossed my mind at that and as soon as she left the room I asked Signora Marinello to help me dispel it.

‘Marco’s not engaged is he?’ Well everyone else was, including myself, so maybe Ashlee had every right to look goofy when she said Marco’s name. She was exceptionally pretty after all, surely just the sort he would be attracted to.

‘Engaged? To be married? Dr Scarpa?’ Signora Marinello thought that was hilarious. ‘He has too much fun being not engaged, I think.’

I felt unreasonably relieved at hearing this. I was still having trouble separating my coma feelings from my actual feelings as far as Marco was concerned. The thought of his hands on my ribs, his thighs against mine, the minty warmth of his breath on my neck, all seemed too real to leave me feeling like just another patient. I shuddered in my bed at the memory of him groaning in ecstasy as his gondola rocked vigorously in that darkened basement. But when I turned to look wistfully out the window and fantasise some more, I found my alleged fiancé, Ty Wheatley, standing there looking at me. I shuddered again. But in a different way.

‘MC, darling,’ my alleged fiancé drawled in his Prince Charles accent, ‘at last I get a quiet moment alone with you.’ He was holding an extravagant bunch of lilies, which I hate. ‘For you,’ he said, waving them at me with a dramatic flourish. ‘Your favourites.’

Oh brother.

‘I leave you to it,’ Signora Marinello said quickly, making as if to leave. I no longer needed full-time care so I was sharing her with three other patients.

‘No, don’t go!’ I didn’t want to be left there with Ty. ‘I might need a …’ Of course, I couldn’t for the life of me think what it was I might need. A new identity? A sawn-off shotgun?

‘Yes?’ Signora Marinello was not exactly helping me. In fact, I think she was trying to wean me off her. ‘Might need which, Constanzia?’

‘I had thought to bring some champagne,’ Ty drawled, ‘but I wasn’t sure it would be allowed. You’re looking so much better today, darling. More like your old self.’

He’d obviously forgotten that my old self looked nothing like that.

‘I leave you to it,’ Signora Marinello said again and this time she did.

‘I do have something else for you, though,’ Ty said, and he pulled a neatly wrapped blue box out of his pocket.

It was from Tiffany. Can you believe that?

‘Darling,’ he said, handing it over. ‘I do hope you like it.’

Well, what would you do? It was from Tiffany! I stared at him, then at it, then opened it, pulling greedily on the white satin ribbon and gasping like a ’50s actress when I saw what lay nestled inside the box. It was a bracelet; not that I was big on bracelets but this one was a beauty. It was a delicate circle of linked gold crosses with tiny diamonds set in between. It looked like the world’s most beautiful daisy chain. I didn’t know what to say. People like me just didn’t get given things like that.

‘It’s to go with the earrings I got you for your birthday,’ Ty said.

Okay, so people like me were wrong.

‘It’s fabulous,’ I murmured weakly.

Encouraged, he slipped it onto my wrist where I have to say it looked spectacular. How strange it was, though, to be accepting such a gift from a man about whom I could remember nothing more than sharing a few monosyllables over bite-size buckwheat pancakes. And now we were getting married! I supposed I should bring up this subject but while I knew I should tread delicately, I couldn’t quite remember how treading delicately went.

‘So, I hear we’re getting hitched,’ I ventured, sounding a little more like Katharine Hepburn than I meant to.

Ty pulled his collar away from his neck somewhat nervously. ‘When your divorce comes through,’ he said, ‘which should be any time soon, my dear. I’ve spoken to Thomas Keller and made a tentative date for the spring. It took quite some cajoling but I think he will do a wonderful job and the space is gorgeous. Perfect.’

‘Thomas Keller?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘The French Laundry Thomas Keller?’ His Yountville, California, restaurant was world famous. I had dreamed of going there but never had the balls to dream of getting married there. Mind you, why would I when I was already married?

‘Darling, yes, of course,’ Ty answered me, ‘but he’s here now, in
New York, at the Time Warner Center. Per Se, you loved it. Four stars, my sweet. Trust me, it’s divine.’

I was getting married to a man who said ‘divine’? In the spring? I was speechless. In fact, I just about gave myself another subdural haematoma trying to think of something to say that didn’t express disbelief at finding myself betrothed to a well-heeled balding businessman who I had actually assumed was gay. Even if he did have superb taste in jewellery and the muscle to have our wedding reception catered for by one of America’s undisputed top chefs.

‘Oh, you didn’t tell me,’ Ty said then, breaking the silence with a quiver of excitement, ‘Paris brought you the book! You must be thrilled, darling. What do you think?’

I had no idea what he was talking about but he was reaching for the Kate Spade shopping bag that Paris had left in my room after her last visit. He opened it and pulled out a paperback, a publisher’s proof copy, his cheeks reddening in a way I could not believe anyone would ever find attractive, especially me.

As he turned it over, I saw on the jacket a sexy-looking woman sitting in a restaurant wearing a busty short-skirted suit, her face hidden behind a big white hat, her slender legs clad in spiky heels and crossed delicately beneath the table.
Stars something
, the title read, with
something something something
in smaller letters below it. I squinted at it, not sure that I was seeing correctly. The author’s name, in big red letters, was MC Conlan. MC Conlan? Lord in heaven. That was me.

‘Give,’ I croaked to Ty, stretching out my arms, my fingers wiggling, diamonds twinkling, the correct words not quite on the tip of my tongue. ‘Give, give, give.’

Mistaking my horror for delight, he only too quickly handed the book over.

‘You know Jeffrey Steingarten thinks you could well be the next best thing,’ he said smugly. ‘We’ll have to get him over for cocktails when you’re up to it. He’s promised to review you in
Vogue
and I
think we might just make Hot Type in
Vanity Fair
. Fingers crossed for the
Times
bestseller list, MC. You’re a shoo-in, so they say.’

Stars Struck
, the title read:
In Search of the Sublime New York Dining Experience.
I felt the breath disappear from my lungs. Surely to God I had not written a food memoir? Seriously, no one but Ruth Reichl should ever have bothered. No one but her had enough to say or could say it without sounding like a tight-ass nincompoop. Especially not me. I particularly had nothing to say. It was inconceivable I would write a book. Yet, on close inspection, the woman on the front cover was definitely me. She just looked so much more sophisticated than me, so much more confident and aware of her allure, so grown-up and sort of pleased with herself. In short, so unlike how I saw myself that I had to keep checking her right hand, perfectly poised to cut into a piece of prime rib, to make sure it had the same freckle on it that mine did. What’s more, according to the blurb on the inside back jacket, this woman on the cover who was apparently me lived on the Upper East Side with her publisher partner and their two cats. Cats? And there was me thinking I would rather eat a cat than own one as a pet. In fact, hadn’t I been mildly famous (in the Village, or a pocket of it) for saying that somewhere?

‘I don’t,’ I said to Ty. ‘I can’t. It’s too …’

‘Thrilling, yes, I know,’ he agreed, even though whatever I had been going to say was not anything he was likely to agree with. ‘As soon as you’re on your feet we’ll get together with Paris and reschedule the book tour. I know it’s a setback, MC, but with a small amount of rearranging we can get right back on track, I know we can. And of course there’s that much more interest in you now that you’ve triumphed over, well, tragedy, I suppose. I don’t think media coverage will be a problem somehow. Not at all. Paris is delighted about that much.’

My mouth was opening and closing like the last of the Chilean sea bass. ‘Have I? Do I?’ I was close to making some sense, I knew I was. If I could just line the words up and get them out maybe I could
get somewhere. ‘Did I do something really bad?’ I finally asked him. I just could not believe that a nice girl like myself had woken up in the middle of such a nightmare. ‘I think I must have done something really bad.’

‘No, no, no,’ soothed Ty. ‘The timing wasn’t brilliant but for goodness’ sake it was an accident. And I hold myself to blame to a certain extent,’ he said — and get ready for this because here comes the high note on the sad-o-meter — ‘over that whole Atkins business.’

Oh yes. You read it right. Atkins. More specifically, the Atkins Diet, the low-carb high-protein regime of which I had long been an enthusiastic adversary. It was the curse of the complex carbohydrate, I had firmly believed, the enemy of all serious food lovers. A swizz, a gyp, a wicked waste of eating hours. Yet it turned out that the reason I had pillaged Woody Allen for his pretzel was because, in a bid to starve off enough pounds to slither into a Vera Wang wedding gown that Ty had chosen and for which I was already being fitted, I had resorted to the Atkins Diet. The conclusion that had been drawn was that after a couple of months of low or no carbs, something inside me had snapped, making me lunge for the forbidden snack. If it hadn’t been so sad it would have been funny. But it was sad. So sad that I started to cry and could not stop, despite my husband-to-be ineffectually patting me on the shoulder like I was some precious Burmese feline or something.

‘Please,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m having a bad day. You should go.’

I think Ty was relieved at this suggestion. He stepped back and straightened his jacket, which was crumpled, of course, it being linen and everything.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow, my dear,’ he said. ‘Try to get some rest. I’m dining at Le Bernadin with Eric tonight. He was asking after you, you know. And Mario Batali sent the most exquisite bouquet to the apartment. I had them in the jardinière Jean-Georges gave us as an engagement present. You were unconscious, my darling, there
didn’t seem any point in bringing them in here. Oh, I’m meeting with your editor at the
Times
tomorrow — he’s insistent on an update, MC, and I didn’t think you’d want him to see you like this so I thought it best if I handled it myself. You don’t mind, do you? Anyway, I must dash. Take care and I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I found everything about him so astonishing it gave me a stomach-ache just thinking about it. He was such a name-dropper! Tom and I had always laughed at people like that. ‘Oh, Emeril this and Alain that and Jeremiah yada yada yada.’ Didn’t he know you only showed off about people like that when they weren’t your real friends? When I thought about it, though, he always was a bit of a second-hand rose, hanging around on the edges of the in-crowd. He obviously didn’t know that he would never naturally be hip, some people simply weren’t — me included. But the ones with money like Ty could at least get a foot in the door … even if it was never properly opened to them.

I was extremely tired and emotional after his visit but Signora Marinello assured me that being extremely tired and emotional was probably the best I could hope for in the next while. She said a lot of people in my position went on to be treated for depression and that I should not consider it a failing if it was felt I would benefit from antidepressants.

‘Will little white pills bring my old husband back?’ I asked her.

‘Nice bangle,’ she said instead, checking out my wrist. ‘Mister White Pants give that to you? Good taste, Constanzia. Lucky you.’

Lucky indeed. I looked at the bracelet again but the diamonds no longer sparkled quite so glitteringly. I slipped it off my wrist, pushed it under my pillow then turned over in my bed and closed my eyes.

‘Well, hello you,’ a gentle voice roused me out of a deep dreamless sleep sometime in the early evening. As always when I woke up these days, a row of pretzels tormented me by dancing in front of my eyes until I remembered why I was where I was and blinked hard to get
rid of the little bastards. Tom, my supposedly soon-to-be ex-husband, was standing in the doorway with that same uncertain look on his face that Fleur had had in the exact same spot the day before. He was holding a bunch of red gladioli, my real favourites. Tom knew me. How he knew me.

‘God, Connie,’ he said and his voice, so familiar, sent shivers up my spine. ‘Do you have to look so beautiful?’

Well, what can you say to something like that? Tom had never been one to say anything other than exactly what he felt: he was known for being overly frank, for want of a better word, and while at times that could be hurtful or annoying or, worse, embarrassing, it meant you were never in any doubt about how he felt. So I knew, then and there, that he really did think I was beautiful and I knew he always had thought that. So why the hell, I asked myself, sitting up in my hospital bed, was he schtupping my best friend and not me?

‘You think?’ I asked, then threw back the bedclothes. ‘That’s not the half of it. Turns out I’m a size six.’ I won’t say it felt entirely right exposing myself to the man who was happily ensconced with my best friend, but then it didn’t feel entirely wrong either. He would always have been the first person to whom I’d crow about waking up thin. Besides, a tiny little part of me that I was actually trying very hard to ignore was quietly pointing out that no one had actually said they were happily ensconced. Fleur hadn’t. And neither had Tom. Of course, he was only just getting started but I couldn’t have said he looked happy. He looked … like Tom. My Tom. My little buddy since I was four and my husband for the past — however many, I kept getting confused — years. He didn’t look like the father of Fleur’s baby at all.

He seemed a little stunned at the sight of my much-diminished body but I think it actually perked him up. His face relaxed and he strode over to me, bending down to kiss me on the forehead, further checking out my slim hips and runner’s legs as he did so. And why wouldn’t he? I could barely keep my eyes off them myself. There was
actually a gap between the tops of my thighs. A gap. Can you believe that? Just like Elle Macpherson. I thought of all the times I had promised God that if he gave me thin thighs I would go to church/give up chocolate/join a gym, never for a moment thinking that I just might one day get my wish. And I hadn’t even had to go to church or give up chocolate; or if I had, I didn’t remember so in some respects it didn’t seem like such a high price to pay.

‘Earth to Connie,’ Tom said. ‘Hello. Anybody there?’

I snatched up the bedclothes. I would stare at my legs again later when he was gone I told myself, turning my attention back to him. He was sitting bolt upright in his chair, his face white and panicked, the flowers splayed across his legs. ‘Jesus, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean anything by that.’

I suppose ‘Anybody there?’ was probably not the best question to ask someone barely out of a coma but he looked so darn wretched I decided not to take it further. Before I started an argument I wanted to find out why we were no longer together.