Dolci di Love

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  Lily felt the gelato slide cold and heavy in her stomach. She had assumed that Daniel had betrayed her for an idyllic life, but that was clearly not the case and she couldn’t decide if this was better or worse. She’d imagined him in a love nest here, his adoring mistress draped in clinging wraparound dresses and constantly smiling at him as she cooked his meals and took care of his children. Instead, Daniel himself was missing, the mistress was a train wreck, one child was fobbed off to an aunt and the other one had been kicked out of the house and was roaming the streets. Luckily there were only two of them to roam.

  ‘What do you do for your job in America?’ Francesca asked.

  ‘I’m vice president of Logistics for a big company in New York,’ Lily explained, taking welcome refuge in her Heigelmann’s persona. ‘That means I’m in charge of transporting our product from its factory bases on the Eastern Seaboard all around the rest of the United States. We move more than eighteen million units a month, so it’s very important that everything gets to where it’s going on time so our customers can buy it and we can meet our budget forecasts. That’s up to me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Francesca asked, licking her spoon. ‘What’s a unit?’

  ‘A unit is one of our products. We have more than 185 different products and they’re all coded, contained, and shipped out separately.’

  ‘But what are they?’ Francesca persisted.

  ‘They’re a single item,’ Lily continued. ‘A single product item is what we call in English a unit. If we made spoons like the one you are holding, it wouldn’t be called a spoon in any meetings we had about it, it would be called a unit.’

  ‘Allora, English is complicated,’ the little girl said. ‘I still don’t understand. Capito, Mario? Non capisco.’

  ‘I think she wants to know why you don’t just call it a spoon,’ Mario said.

  ‘I haven’t explained it very well, have I? We don’t actually make spoons so I’m confusing you.’

  ‘But what do you make? That’s what I mean,’ Francesca asked.

  ‘Well, we make a lot of things but they are all basically some sort of premixed or premade consumer comestible,’ Lily explained, losing faith in her Heigelmann’s persona, which was proving to be of little help in present company.

  Francesca stared at her a moment, then turned to Mario.

  ‘Is she speaking a different language?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, but I don’t know what she’s talking about either,’ he said. ‘What’s a comestible?’

  ‘I suppose it is a different language,’ Lily said. ‘A comestible is something you can eat.’

  ‘Oh! What is premix?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘Premixed is where we have done most of the work in the factory, and all you have to do at home is just tip it out of a carton or a package and finish making it. So if you want to make a cake, for example, you buy a packet of our cake mix instead of having to buy all the separate ingredients like flour and sugar and…’ She thought of the painstaking torment Violetta went to in making her cantucci and wondered if perhaps baking mixes hadn’t taken off in Italy.

  ‘Or, you might buy your biscotti, your cantucci dough, premade in a tube and frozen, and all you have to do is slice it up, bake it again, and then you have your cantucci.’

  ‘You make cantucci in America?’ Francesca asked, finally grasping something. ‘Like you do at Violetta’s shop?’

  ‘I’m not making cantucci at Violetta’s shop, sweetie, I’m just staying there, and anyway, at home we call them cookies and they come in all sorts of different flavours like chocolate chip or peanut butter or lemon cranberry—that’s new by the way. But I certainly don’t make them myself there, either.’

  ‘But that’s your work!’

  ‘No, no, no, my work is in an office, really, just organising and arranging things and going to meetings and actually probably not very exciting at all to a little girl like you.’

  ‘But I would like to make the cookies with you, Lillian. That would be exciting! Would we do that? In the Ferretti sisters’ kitchen? Would we?’

  Lily laughed. ‘No, sweetie, I don’t have any of the cookie mix with me and even if I did…’

  She felt that little door in her mind swinging open and closed again. What was behind it?

  ‘But before you had this product of the units with the premix you must have made them with the natural ingredients, no?’ Mario asked. ‘With flour, sugar—you know, all the old-fashioned things?’ He had gone a bit sour on her, Lily thought, which was perhaps not so surprising since everything here was fatto o mano. But at home, well, that was the way the world had gone with Heigelmann’s pushing it every step of the way. Mixes were cheaper and quicker, and statistics had told her, had told everyone, that nothing beat cheaper and quicker.

  Francesca was next to Lily now, fairy wings trembling slightly as she pleaded at her elbow. ‘Please, please, please, Lillian Watson, can we make the American cookies together?’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ she told Francesca. ‘I just don’t know how.’

  ‘You never made them when you were a little girl like me?’ Francesca asked.

  Lily looked into the little face turned up at her now and saw that it might have borne Daniel’s features, but it wore Lily’s own girlhood longing; for love, for attention, for everything to just be normal.

  Francesca’s mother was locked in her house popping pills and crying over a doomed romance with the wrong man. Wasn’t that Lily’s own history? Her mother slapping, cursing, crying…there it was again—that unexpected pleasant sensation wafting into her consciousness, the same one she got from the ceiling in her room and the smell of the Ferrettis’ kitchen.

  A glimmer of light shone through the door in her memory. Could it be…?

  ‘Yes, I think I maybe did make them when I was a little girl like you,’ she said gently, unable to keep herself from reaching out and stroking the smooth brown skin on Francesca’s cheek. ‘Oatmeal cookies. They were my sister’s favourite.’

  ‘I wanted Ernesto to be a sister,’ Francesca said. ‘But he turned out a boy.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you will love him anyway, just like I love my sister,’ Lily said, and she had never felt more like a coward and a fake.

  ‘Maybe does your sister know how to make the oatmeal cookies?’ Francesca asked. ‘We could get her to show us.’

  ‘She doesn’t live here, honey. She’s in America.’

  ‘But you could call her,’ Francesca insisted. ‘Or you could e-mail her or SMS her.’

  ‘I could,’ Lily said, softly. The modern world made it very difficult to not get in touch with people. You just had to want to.

  ‘Well?’ Francesca asked. ‘Can you? Ask her? Pleeeease? Can we make the cookies together? Pretty please?’

  Making cookies was the last thing Lily felt willing or able to do, but the truth was that a woman could not spend half a lifetime dreaming of having a small child beg for her company and then, when she found one, turn her down.

  ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘Of course we can. I’ll find the recipe somehow, and then you and I will make oatmeal cookies.’

  The smile on Francesca’s face was worth all the mess she could ever make in the Ferrettis’ kitchen—and even a medium-size but perhaps controllable fire.

  A less controllable fire was the one she was in danger of igniting by getting so close to Francesca’s mother and aunt.

  ‘You want me to check with someone that it’s OK for you to come by?’ she asked.

  ‘I can do that,’ Mario said, to Lily’s relief. ‘With Carlotta I mean. She will appreciate the help, I am sure. You know when you can do this?’

  ‘Let’s say eleven, tomorrow, unless I let you know otherwise. Carlotta won’t be worried that she doesn’t know me, that I’m a stranger?’

  ‘You are not that strange, signora. You should see some of the other people who have stayed at the pasticceria. And you’re good with her,’ Mario said, nodding at Fran
cesca. ‘That’s all Carlotta will care about.’

  He was a little sweet on Carlotta, Lily thought, trying not to swell with pride at being ‘good’ with this child who was so close to being hers—yet also so far away.

  ‘I’m going to make cookies!’ Francesca hooted. ‘American oatmeal cookies!’ And she danced out the door and up the street.

  Chapter 29

  With every step Violetta took across the pasticceria in the direction of the next meeting of the Secret League of Widowed Darners she felt her confidence drain and collect at her swollen ankles like wrinkles in her stockings.

  The League had given her so much to live for over the past decades; all those broken hearts patched up and sent on their way. So many futures! So much hope! And now, this spectacular failure with Alessandro was going to bring her to her knees—the very ones currently clicking and clattering like the useless giant knuckle bones they were.

  Lily was not the one for Alessandro, that was now painfully plain as day. Violetta should have confessed when Luciana’s toe first throbbed that her itch was nowhere to be found. She should have admitted there was no orange blossom.

  Then Alessandro would have talked to Lily at the side of the road without the slightest thing being made of it, and this poor wretched woman could have proceeded to find her cheating husband and sort out whatever mess she was in.

  Instead, Violetta’s foolish pride had placed Lily in the way of the widows’ favourite prospect, and when they found out, they would skin Violetta alive and make garter belts out of her for it would look to them as though she herself had broken Alessandro’s heart all over again.

  ‘You have the face of a fish that’s been passed up on market day,’ Luciana said as they approached the secret shelf and worked together to push it aside.

  ‘Will you shut up and leave me alone!’ exploded Violetta. ‘You have no idea how much I have to worry about right now. There’s Alessandro, there’s the cantucci, there’s your bones and my chest and everyone’s ears and eyes and Santa Ana di Chisa knows what else! You’re all very happy to leave everything up to me, but when there’s a problem I’m on my own and I’m sick of it. I’m thoroughly sick of it.’

  With this, the shelf slid open and she stepped into the darkened recess, shaking with rage and fear.

  Luciana, startled at her sister’s outburst, was slow to follow, so Violetta grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled at her, but on stepping over the threshold Luciana stumbled, her foot twisted sideways on the narrow top step, and her weak wrist did not have the strength to hold on to the slippery handrail or keep her upright against the wall.

  In front of Violetta’s eyes she toppled silently like a sack full of soft potatoes to the landing six steps beneath them.

  ‘No, no, no!’ cried Violetta, scrabbling down as quickly as she was able behind her. ‘Oh, no, no, no!’

  Luciana lay in a still heap. She looked so small. They were disappearing, the two of them, but Violetta wasn’t ready to disappear yet, and she was even less ready for Luciana to.

  She creakily lowered herself to the landing floor, sat beside her crumpled sister, and with trembling fingers, turned her face. Luciana’s eyes were closed, her face motionless. It was impossible to tell if she was breathing.

  ‘Please don’t die, Lulu,’ she begged, stroking the papery skin on her face. ‘Please don’t shut up and leave me alone. I can’t do it without you. I just can’t.’

  Her sister lay unmoving, no rising of her lumpy little chest, no flicker in her wrinkled eyelids.

  ‘We’re in this together, Lulu,’ Violetta said, taking Luciana’s warm, limp hand. ‘We always have been. And we’ve lived through worse, my dear little sister. We’ve lived through much worse. We lived through our darlings being taken away from us. And before that we lived through me getting our darlings mixed up, which you let me fix, my little sweetheart, and which you forgave me for all those years ago. So many years ago! We decided then that sticking together was more important than anything else in the whole wide world and I’m sorry about the cantucci. I’m sorry if I’ve been stubborn. I’m sorry if I haven’t been listening to you. I’m scared, that’s all. I’m scared of what’s happening to me, of what I’m losing, of the life that seems to be draining out of me with every breath I take. I’m scared of not being wanted, of not being useful, of not being here. But more than any of that, I’m scared of not having you, Lulu. Of not having you. So please, please, please wake up. Please.’

  And Luciana, who even when she was unconscious really did just want to please her big sister, obligingly woke up.

  ‘We need help, Violetta,’ she croaked. ‘We need help.’

  Chapter 30

  Despite the recent embarrassment in Pienza and the bowlful of triple chocolate gelato, the lure of Poliziano proved too strong. Lily slid into the light-filled café, avoiding the romantic table, and ordered a glass of prosecco.

  Daniel, Eugenia, Francesca, Rose—the complications of her life sat around the table with her like ghosts, their backs to the green, fertile valley falling into the distance behind them.

  She drained her drink so quickly, she barely tasted it. Baking cookies? What hat was she going to pull that out of? She blinked away her invisible unwanted guests and looked around.

  The café was all but empty, just a couple of tourists sitting in a far corner looking through the photos on their camera and one fidgety old lady at the next table.

  ‘Another prosecco, per favoure,’ Lily ordered when the waitress came to fill her water glass, but when she returned, it was not with a drink but, to Lily’s horror, with a glass dish full of tiramisu.

  Lily reared back from it. ‘No, no, no, this is not mine,’ she said, pointing to the old woman sitting near her. ‘It must be hers.’

  The waitress looked confused, then rattled off something in Italian to the old lady.

  ‘She says you can have it if you want it,’ the waitress said, but Lily was on her feet already, moving toward the door.

  ‘No, thank you, I’m good,’ she insisted, not waiting for her check but flinging money on the counter next to the cash register. ‘I’m good.’

  Another tiramisu incident she did not need, so it was with some relief that she soon pushed open the door of the pasticceria and stopped for a moment in the quiet coolness of the dark sweet-smelling room.

  The familiar bowls of old, silent cantucci sat on their thrones, soaking up the light through the store front window.

  ‘Eeeooooh,’ the big blue bowl directly facing her said. ‘Eeeeeeooooh.’

  Lily jumped back, heart thumping. She had only one glass of wine. How could this be happening again?

  ‘Eeeoooh,’ she heard again. And again. And yet again. But that was it. No admonishment, nothing she recognised as a life instruction, just a distant call. She took a step closer to the bowl. The noise continued, but it wasn’t coming from the cantucci itself, it was coming from behind the counter.

  Gingerly, she stepped farther forward and peered over it. There was nothing there.

  ‘Eeeeeoooh,’ she heard again, but now that she was closer, she realised it seemed to be coming from the dusty shelves against the back wall.

  She slipped around the counter and inspected them more closely.

  ‘Eeeeeooooh! Eeeeeooooh!’ It was coming from behind the dusty shelves.

  Lily took stock: she had little time for hauntings or Hogwarts and it had only been one glass. There would be a logical explanation. She was not making this up. It was really happening. ‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Hello!’

  ‘Lily!’ came the reply. It sounded like Violetta. Stuck behind the shelves?

  ‘Yes, it’s Lily,’ she shouted at the wall. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Slide! Slide!’

  ‘Slide?’ Lily repeated, wondering what that meant in English. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Slide! Slide the shelves. Across.’

  Lily pushed her shoulder against the dusty shelves and with hardly any effort, s
ure enough they slid across and revealed a tiny dark stairway.

  ‘You speak English?’ Lily asked as her eyes got used to the dark. ‘All this time you’ve been able to…’

  Violetta was sitting on the landing below, gently patting what looked like a pile of rags.

  ‘She is hurt,’ the old woman said. ‘Luciana is hurt.’

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Lily said, turning away.

  ‘No! We must lift her,’ Violetta said. ‘Upstairs. To the bed.’

  ‘Seriously, you shouldn’t move her. It could make her worse.’

  ‘She does not want ambulance. She wants the bed.’

  ‘I really think I should—’

  ‘Please! Help me,’ Violetta pleaded. ‘Lift.’

  There seemed no point in arguing further, and once she’d negotiated the awkward task of picking up the crumpled old woman in the tight space, it was easy to carry her up to the kitchen and put her carefully on the bed.

  ‘She weighs next to nothing,’ Lily said. ‘I think I should call the ambulance now, Violetta, really.’

  ‘I will take care of her,’ Violetta insisted.

  ‘You might not be enough. She needs expert help.’

  ‘I am enough!’ Violetta argued angrily, but as she picked up Luciana’s limp hand and rubbed it, tears fell down her crinkled cheeks. ‘Please, please wake up, Lulu,’ she said in Italian. ‘Please, please, wake up again.’

  Lily did not need to understand what she was saying to get the picture. She put her hand on Violetta’s small, shaking shoulder.

  ‘I can see you love your sister very much,’ she said gently. ‘And I know you want what’s best for her so I’m going to call an ambulance now.’

  Violetta opened her mouth to protest—ambulances only went to the microwave and that was more often than not a one-way trip—but as she started to speak she felt Luciana squeeze her hand, feebly at first but then more firmly.

  ‘You promised me,’ her sister croaked, eyes still closed. ‘You promised.’