Eating With the Angels (22 page)

Signora Marinello took a slurp out of her soda. ‘MC Conlan,’ she said, nodding at me.

‘That so?’ Luca nodded. ‘And you’ve lost your sense of taste? Too bad. Was it injury to the cribriform plate or olfactory nerve damage?’

‘What are you, a brain surgeon?’

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘I’m a doctor. We’re two different species.’

Snatches of my gondola-building dream scenario kept floating
by like puffy summer clouds, changing shape as soon as I tried to latch on to them. What he was saying had some sort of relevance, I knew that, but I couldn’t work out what it was.

‘You don’t like surgeons?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. My son is a surgeon. A very good one too.’

‘But you don’t approve.’

‘I’d like him to spend a bit more time with the living,’ Luca said, finishing his burger and pushing the plate away.

‘But if it weren’t for him there wouldn’t be so many living,’ I argued, patting my pocket where Marco’s phone number sat although not feeling so inclined to call it as I had before. ‘He saved my life,’ I said. ‘He saved my life.’

I heard the tremor in my voice before I felt it and to my enormous embarrassment, I exploded into tears. I hoped it wasn’t a developing pattern, this crying uncontrollably in restaurants, because all the hats in the world would not be able to disguise my identity if it was going to be a regular thing.

Signora Marinello did not stop attacking her fries but used her free hand to pull a bunch of napkins out of the dispenser and thrust them at me.

‘Is better out than in, Constanzia,’ she said matter of factly. Then with the use of just one eye, she attracted the grouchy waiter again. ‘I think we need pie.’

‘I think I still love Tom even though he’s had a baby with Fleur,’ I sobbed. ‘But I’m engaged to a man who wears pony-skin shoes. I’ve written a horrible book and I sound like a bitch plus I have no sense of taste but I’m supposed to be the best restaurant critic in the world.’ I blew my nose wetly on a napkin and tried to regain some control. ‘I hate living at home; I’m too old. My dad’s glued to the TV, my brother is into his 20th year of experimenting with drugs, my mother is vacuuming the oxygen out of the air, and,’ I wailed this bit, ‘I have nowhere else to go.’

‘Aw, come on,’ Luca said soothingly. ‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘I stole Woody Allen’s pretzel,’ I cried. ‘And everybody knows about it except me.’ Strangely, though, blurting out my woes proved quite therapeutic and the tidal wave of emotion that had engulfed me started to recede until eventually I was down to just a basic snivel.

‘People have done worse for a good pretzel, you know,’ Luca said, and the kindness of that notion floored me.

‘Cherry pie,’ Signora said appreciatively as hers approached the table. ‘Now there’s something people do crazy things for. My cousin Cleber, he marry a woman because of her cherry pie even though he is gay. Now that’s plenty more crazy than stealing Woody Allen’s pretzel.’

She had me there, I had to admit, as I admired her pie: the crust was indeed crisp and golden, the brilliant red fruit spilled out onto the plate like a homemade filling would.

‘Why you got nowhere else to go?’ Signora Marinello asked between mouthfuls. ‘What happen to the man in the white suit?’

‘He has Italian decorating magazines on his coffee table and he doesn’t even read Italian,’ I said. ‘We sleep in separate rooms. Everything is beige. I tried going home to my old apartment but unfortunately my husband lives there with his new girlfriend and their baby.’

‘You’re divorced?’ Luca asked.

I nodded. ‘Nearly.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I didn’t go on our second honeymoon. Tom ended up in Venice on his own and I ended up engaged to Ty Wheatley.’

‘You passed on Venice? Well, that explains the divorce.’ Even his gruffness was sort of nice.

‘You like Venice?’ I was curious about that, of course.

‘My grandparents were from there,’ Luca said. ‘Little island called Mazzorbo out in the lagoon, famous for its duck.’

My heart was in my mouth. What did this mean? ‘Your grandfather wasn’t a gondola-builder, was he?’ I held my breath waiting for him to answer.

‘Nope, he grew tomatoes. Came to America to give his sons a better life.’ He looked out the window as if to check that his grandfather had come to the right place and my eyes followed his. I got something of a shock. Last time I had looked out on the intersection of Hudson and Ninth at West 12th there was practically nothing there except jammed up traffic and empty warehouses; now it heaved with restaurants and bars and barely clad bodies.

‘When the hell did all that happen?’ I was aghast. Three years before, the blood of freshly slaughtered cattle beasts could still be found on the cobbled stones of the Meatpacking District. Now it was stilettos as far as the eye could see.

‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Luca. ‘There goes the neighbourhood.’

‘You live here?’ I ventured.

Signora Marinello spluttered.

‘Hell, no,’ Luca answered. ‘Shelter Island. Been there?’

I shook my head. I knew it was between the north and south forks of eastern Long Island but I’d never been there. I’d only ever been to the Hamptons once. Fleur and Roberta and I had got a holiday share with some of Roberta’s friends one summer. I had missed Tom, who’d refused to join us, and was intimidated by all the other people with holiday shares so hadn’t really made the most of it.

‘I think you’d like it there, Connie,’ Signora Marinello said, licking her spoon with great gusto. ‘Sounds nice and only two hours on the bus.’

‘What would you know?’ Luca asked her. ‘I’ve been trying to get you to visit for the past 10 years and you still haven’t.’

‘I’m from Jersey,’ Signora Marinello said as though this explained anything. ‘But Constanzia, she has no place to live and you have a great big empty house so sounds to me like you two should get together.’ She pushed her plate away, replete.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Luca agreed.

Signora Marinello shrugged her shoulders. ‘You need a roof over your head and some peace and quiet,’ she said to me, ‘and you,’ she turned her attention to Luca, ‘you need to stop spending so long on your own or with people in comas. You getting kind of cranky.’ She then extricated herself from behind the diner table and stood up, arching her back and pulling her Starsky and Hutch cardigan around her bulging middle. ‘Me, I have a date with the foot spa and the man who unplugged my cousin Nicola’s drainpipes.’

She gave me a quick hug, leaned across to accept a kiss on each cheek from Luca and was gone, leaving us sitting squashed together in the booth looking at the space she had vacated.

‘Technically, if I need peace and quiet and you need company, it’s not such a great match,’ I said to Luca, who just smiled his comfortable smile. He then pointed his finger at his empty coffee cup as a waitress came by. She was young and pretty and looked at him flirtatiously under her lashes but Luca didn’t seem to notice. He was in pretty good shape for 51. And even better, he didn’t seem to know it. ‘You want some coffee?’ he asked me but there was no point.

We sat there in companionable silence for a while, watching the ebb and flow of the diner as though that’s what we always did on a Monday morning. A foursome of worn-out party boys bitched about someone called Clarence at the next table, a smart tourist couple fed toast to their baby across the aisle. I can hardly find words to explain to you the weirdness of the connection I felt with Luca because it was so low-key, so comfortable, it almost slipped below the radar.

‘So you come and meet Eugenia often?’ I finally asked.

‘As often as I can,’ he said.

‘You used to work with her?’

‘I did. You were lucky to have her on your side. They’re not all like her, you know. Far from it.’

‘They’re not?’ I mean I knew she was special but I’d assumed everyone with a job like hers was.

‘She had a good feeling about you, Connie,’ he said, ‘and
sometimes
that’s all someone in your situation needs, despite what the doctors will tell you. The right person with a good feeling. She had faith in you. Good old-fashioned faith.’

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said to Luca. ‘I don’t know anything.’

He smiled that certain smile of his. ‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘no one knows.’ We looked at each other and then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he slipped his hand across the Formica table and took mine in his. It felt so good, so at home, I just left it right there and kept my eyes on his. I didn’t want anything else but for that moment to keep going forever and ever and ever. It was the weirdest thing and not at all creepy. Just natural. Unbelievably, comfortably, wonderfully natural.

‘For crissakes, Dad, don’t you ever get sick of this Good Samaritan shit?’ The sound of Marco’s voice pretty much sucked the comfort and wonder out of the scenario and I snatched my hand away again.

‘Marco,’ I cried with forced jollity. My, he was good-looking when he was angry but the guy seriously needed to sound an alarm on approach.

‘Sit down, son,’ Luca said, indicating Signora Marinello’s empty side of the booth. ‘Take a load off.’

Marco shook his head. ‘Jesus, give it up, Dad.’

Luca shrugged. ‘Just having a cup of coffee and catching up with old friends. What brings you here?’

‘You can hardly call Connie an old friend, Dad. And I came to give you this. I won’t be needing it.’ He threw a manila envelope on the table and turned to me. ‘You got my message?’ I nodded. ‘Good.’ And he swivelled on those hips and strode out of the restaurant. Most people would have found this unsettling or embarrassing, but not Luca, he just calmly soaked it up.

‘Why is he so angry with you?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, many reasons,’ he said. ‘Too many to mention and most of
them perfectly legitimate. But lately,’ he held up the envelope, ‘it’s because I want him to give up surgery and come back to Shelter Island, to help me run the medical centre. My partner’s retired to Florida and I want Marc to replace him.’

I laughed. ‘But he’s in a different league, isn’t he?’

‘He certainly is,’ agreed Luca. ‘That’s why I want him to come home. Boy needs to spend more time with the upright and talking folk.’

‘If the patients at your medical centre are all upright and talking then do you need two doctors?’ I pointed out, quite cleverly, I thought.

‘Well, they’re more upright and talking than the patients he deals with over the road there,’ Luca said gruffly. ‘Present company excluded.’

‘Oh, he didn’t really deal with me as a patient,’ I said. ‘He just did the operation. That whole recovery thing is not really his field.’

Luca drained his coffee. ‘My point entirely,’ he said, then looked at his watch. ‘So, anyway, I have a train to catch.’

I forced a smile and looked out the window at the swarming crowd.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

I was asking myself that same question but finding the options all still sadly lacking. Perhaps I would get a hotel. I had not checked my bank balance yet but surely it could cope with a hotel room for a few nights while I got my head together (ha ha). But if it took more than a few nights for that to happen?

‘Connie?’ Luca said. ‘Do you have someplace to go?’

‘Not entirely.’ I answered.

He cleared his throat. ‘Because, Eugenia is right. I guess I do have a big empty house. So if you’re in a spot and you want to come and stay I guess it would be okay.’

‘You don’t think it would be weird?’

‘A little, maybe. But every suggestion Eugenia Marinello has
ever made to me has been right on the money so if she thinks you need peace and quiet and I need company, I’m willing to agree.’

‘It’s still weird.’

‘Well, there are a hell of a lot worse places to go, Connie. You’d have your own space, you could eat, sleep, walk on the beach, help me out with my senior citizens. They’ve been giving me a giant pain in the ass since Herb moved to Boca, excuse my French.’

But I don’t even know you, I wanted to say, and besides people don’t just take off with perfect strangers. Even if they’ve met those strangers before in their dreams and those perfect strangers have kept them company while they were unconscious.

‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

Actually, I couldn’t think of a reason apart from natural caution, which I appeared to have ceased practising.

‘Okay then,’ I said.

And that was that.

‘You’re going where?’ my mother asked me, incredulous, when I revealed my plan to recuperate at the seaside home of a perfect stranger. ‘Your own home isn’t good enough for you? You have to take up with a man you only met one time? Why would you do this?’ She was looking at my father for back-up. ‘By the ocean of all places. She doesn’t know how dangerous that is? What can happen out there?’

‘He’s a doctor, Mom,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘All of a sudden you care if I’m pleased?’

Just repeat that conversation pretty much verbatim for six or eight hours and you will understand why it was with some enthusiasm that I left the house the next morning, headed for Shelter Island. Emmet, bless his heart, walked me to the Hamptons Jitney stop on 69th Street and told me to take care of myself, as though he meant it even, and suggested that perhaps once I had sussed out the scene I could call for him. He could move out there too, especially if there was a wide-screen TV, and I shouldn’t worry about the 20 grand, he was okay with me letting him down.

I sat on the bus staring out the window as the dreary clutter of the city gave way to the gentle open spaces off the Long Island Expressway. Even though I loved the city with all my heart, at that moment it felt good to be getting away from it.

I tried not to but I liked Sag Harbor, my drop-off point. Tom had always been so scathing of the Hamptons but the shingle houses with their leafy green gardens appealed to me in a storybook sort of way. It looked like the sort of place where nothing bad could happen. Where people were nice to each other. Where the water of the harbour sparkled at the end of a neat main street with no Starbucks or T-Mobile franchises. Stepping off the bus at the firehouse, though, I grew wary. On closer inspection every second car was a Mercedes; there were too many antique stores; all the women wore white capri pants. But then the Jitney pulled away and I saw Luca across the road waiting for me, leaning against the side of an old green Chevy
pick-up
looking like something out of a James Dean movie. He was just the sort of guy who looked at home wherever he was and there was something infectiously comforting about that. He smiled and walked toward me, grabbing my bag and throwing it in the back of his truck, then opening the passenger-side door for me to get in.

A big fat marmalade cat with only one ear sat in a superior fashion in my seat, staring straight ahead and not even bothering to turn its big fat head to look at me.

‘What is it with cats?’ I asked Luca. ‘Did something happen when I was gone? It’s like they’re setting themselves up to rule the world.’

‘Meet Gertrude,’ Luca said, coming over to my side and pushing the cat into the middle of the bench seat as if she were a statue. ‘She’s a little eccentric.’

‘She’s the size of a freakin’ horse,’ I said. ‘And what’s with all that staring straight ahead?’ Actually, as long as she didn’t try to have sex with me, I was okay with it.

‘Oh, you’ll get used to her,’ Luca said, climbing into the driver’s side and following the signs to the Shelter Island ferry. It was good to be out in the open surrounded by so much greenery. I felt slightly better straightaway. And as we crossed on the boat from North Haven to Shelter Island, I felt a further physical unclenching that seemed to
loosen every cell in my body. It was only a five-minute trip but I got out of the truck and stood at the back of the ferry all the same, watching the mainland get smaller and smaller as the smooth silvery sea spread itself out in front of me. I closed my eyes and breathed in the sea air, the sun beating on my face. It was the best I could remember feeling since I had been in Venice, which was a dream. But that was a good thing, I told myself. I knew now what was a dream and what wasn’t; to be feeling good in real life was progress.

Gertrude had moved back into my space when I returned to the truck and for the life of me I couldn’t push the darn creature over. Luca had to pull on her from his side.

‘Thank you for the welcome, Gertrude,’ I said sarcastically. ‘It is much appreciated.’ She kept staring ahead, unimpressed, in a particularly cat-like way and emitted an audible fart that made my jaw drop to my chest. The audacity of it!

‘Welcome to Shelter Island,’ Luca said and we both laughed as we bumped off the ferry and onto dry land. Gertrude licked a paw with a self-satisfied smirk. She had attitude, that cat. In spades.

Shelter Island was the opposite of Manhattan. A wide road stretched ahead, lush forest on either side, houses with acres
in-between
each other hidden by huge trees and well-kept gardens. About a mile past the ferry landing we turned off into a sleepy
tree-lined
street, which took us over the brow of the hill and back down toward a stunning open cove. I wondered how anyone could think that the seashore was a dangerous place; it felt like the safest place I had ever been to: the perfect antidote to the noisy high-rise city, all flat and serene and sparkly and pure. I was transfixed. Near the bottom of the hill, when we were almost at the beach, Luca turned into a leafy driveway. I found myself, and Gertrude, staring at a big rustic wooden house, bathed in sunlight and facing the sea. It had a porch that ran across the front and a big stone chimney that straddled both floors. It was the sort of place I imagined Daniel Boone would have lived in if he’d been around in the 21st century.

By the time Luca had shown me around and deposited me in my room I was in love with the house, the cove, the island; even Gertrude was starting to grow on me. She walked in front of me wherever I went, with her tail straight up in the air; and when it came to making right turns, she instead did a haughty little circle to her left.

‘What the hell is that about?’ I asked Luca the first time she did it and I nearly tripped over her.

‘Like I said, she’s eccentric.’

She certainly was. The moment I opened my bag and started to unpack she climbed into it, lay down on top of my clothes and would not get off. The great lard-ass weighed a ton and turned herself as stiff as a board. There was no way I could shift her without putting my back out so in the end I just left her there and went downstairs.

Luca had gone to work, telling me to make myself at home, which left me free to poke about his house. Turned out he had good taste as well. The interior was kind of woody with Mexican-looking rugs and big squashy chairs and lots of lamps and bookcases. The kitchen was outdated but adequate and the refrigerator was well stocked, which led me to think that Luca probably cooked rather than ate take-out. I just hoped he wasn’t going to torture me with perfectly spiced culinary miracles because I had gone a whole half-hour without thinking about the state of my olfactory bulbs and the quiver in my stomach where fear lurked had, for that time, been quelled.

After wandering aimlessly around the living room, picking up books and magazines and other clues as to the nature of the man with whom I was living (boy, that was a weird thought), I pulled open the sliding glass doors out on to the porch and stepped outside.

There was nothing between Luca’s house and the beach but the rest of the road we had come down, which led to a couple more houses further down the beach. It finished at an inlet, the
glassy-looking
water of which was interspersed with tidy wooden jetties. I’d seen movies where people lived in places like this. It was a bit like
On Golden Pond
and made me want to go fishing, which was pretty
strange as up until that moment I had never before even considered such a thing. There was no sound at all but for the birds. The Shelter Island shoreline attracted a whole bunch of protected species, Luca had told me: piping plover, least tern and osprey. I certainly couldn’t tell which was which — when it came to birds I knew my squab from my Cornish game hen though neither of them said much if you know what I mean — but those live birds were a musical bunch. It was such a different sound from the cacophony of the city. There were no layers of noise like I was used to. No rumbling traffic beneath clanking garbage trucks, no tooting horns atop whining sirens, no babies crying and hammers banging: just quiet and birdsong. I settled myself in one of the porch chairs and the sea twinkled out in front of me. It was the most peaceful place I had ever been in my whole life.

I sat there staring out at that beautiful sea for a while, then went for a long walk on the beach. Actually, that had been Gertrude’s idea. On my way back from the bathroom I had absent-mindedly followed her until before I knew it I was across the road and walking along the warm sand of Smith Cove. I wore a short khaki skirt and a tank top I had found in my closet at Ty’s place (the only concessions to the casual life I could find even though they were both Ralph Lauren); my skinny white arms and legs were dazzlingly pale against the blue of the sky, the green of the trees and the silvery shimmer of the water. I could feel my skin drinking in the sunshine, my batteries being charged. It felt good.

When I got back I made myself a late lunch of a peanut butter, celery and cottage-cheese sandwich, which satisfied as many of my senses as I could manage, then took a long, dreamless nap in my upstairs room, which looked out over the water. When I woke up, dusk was falling, painting pinks and purples on the mill-pond seascape outside. I pulled on a sweater and went downstairs. There were signs of activity in the kitchen. The food processor was out and ready to be used. A pot of honey sat beside it and a bottle of rice wine vinegar. I picked up a knob of gnarled ginger root and scratched at the skin, missing smell like a lost limb, then went to find Luca.

After circumnavigating the house I eventually found him out front, on the slope that ran from his lawn to the road by the beach. I hadn’t noticed before but the bank was terraced and vibrantly packed to the gunnels with a jaw-dropping herb and vegetable garden. There were zucchinis and summer squash, lettuce, green beans, new potatoes, basil, borage and sorrel. Halfway down the slope Luca was hidden in a patch of blossoming sage, his grey T-shirt and brown skin perfectly in tune with the tiny purple flowers. He was tilling the soil with a small hand-trowel and as I watched him stretch out at work, the sinews in his arms bulging, his ribs showing through his
well-worn
Yankees T-shirt, it just about took my breath away. I had seen it all before. In the squero of my dreams. What did it mean?

He spied me, finally, and sat back on his haunches, wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘Well hello you,’ he said. ‘Good day?’

I nodded dumbly and moved closer to him, sitting down on the grass of the terraced bank, knees pulled up to my chest. I reached out to pluck some sage blossoms, rubbing them between my fingers, holding them up to my nose even though I knew nothing would, nothing could come of it.

‘And you?’

‘So-so. Our receptionist is missing in action so there’s more chaos than usual.’

He got back on his knees and leaned into the sage patch again. ‘Long Island glacial soil,’ he said, ‘richest in the whole country almost. You a gardener?’

I shook my head. ‘In Manhattan, are you crazy? Besides I have the Greenmarket just around the corner.’

‘I suppose,’ Luca said. ‘Although there’s nothing like eating something you grew yourself.’

‘Wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to me right now I guess.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing to do with taste,’ he disagreed.

‘Luca, all food is to do with taste!’

‘The flavour’s only part of it,’ he said without stopping what he was doing. ‘It’s not the be-all and end-all. I just prefer my beans to anyone else’s.’

‘Because you grow them?’

‘Because I like growing them. Because it’s nice out here and there’s no bullshit. There is compost though,’ he said, sitting back again and indicating the barrow full of rich garden manure next to him. ‘Don’t suppose you feel like giving me a hand?’

It would have been churlish not to and anyway he was right: it was nice out there. I was nursing something warm and fuzzy inside of me at just sitting there in the evening heat among the herbs and vegetables with Luca. He didn’t spark that embarrassing overwhelming lustiness that Marco did but something about him struck a chord in me that felt like I had swallowed a great big fat piece of warm apple pie.

‘Just take a trowel full and dig it into the soil like this,’ he said, showing me how to do just that. I clumsily copied him and we worked our way along the row, me doing the front half and him stretching over to do the back. It was quiet, apart from the birds and the distant lapping of the sea and the odd yowl from Gertrude, who lay upside-down on the front lawn, fighting off an imaginary Doberman with her paws, then running around in crazy left circles.

I was trying to figure out a connection between the lost art of gondola-building and composting and it was not exactly coming to me in a rush. It was something to do with basics, I thought, but further than that and my mind turned to mush. And it was something to do with fathers and sons. ‘Why do you think Marco has to spend more time with the living?’ I asked him after we’d been working in silence for 10 minutes or so. ‘Isn’t he, like, a genius or something? He’s only 29 and people are filming him and writing articles about him. Aren’t you proud?’

‘Course I’m proud,’ Luca kept trowelling the earth.

Still, there was a ‘but’ hanging in the air.

‘But what?’ I prompted.

‘But nothing.’

‘But something,’ I argued, dragging my trowel through the soil.

Luca laughed, loosened a little. ‘I guess it worries me,’ he said, ‘that he goes into that hospital every day and holds all those futures in his hands, literally. Takes the brains out of those skulls, works his magic; then scrubs out and walks away like he’s 10 feet tall and nothing can touch him.’

‘I don’t get what’s wrong with that.’ It was hard work, gardening: my arm was getting sore and I had a little cramp in my thigh, but Gertrude had finished playing with her imaginary enemy and had me under strict scrutiny so I didn’t think I could let up.

‘Well, it’s not that there’s something wrong with it but …’ he pulled out a weed and threw it up onto the terrace above, where little piles of them peppered the even grass. ‘You know, you are probably the first patient all year that Marc has spoken to, actually spoken to.