Rococo

by Adriana Trigiani

  “I saw.”

  “I’m doing a whole round of meals for Nicky and Ondine for when the baby comes. Have you eaten?”

  “I’m not hungry.” Toot proceeds to make me a salami, provolone, and turkey hero. “How is Ondine?” I ask.

  “She’s a falloon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A combination of a float and a balloon. Poor thing. I went over and helped her with the layette today.”

  “Wasn’t the baby due around Christmas?”

  “Oh please! There’s more mystery surrounding this baby’s due date than there was for the Annunciation. Ondine wasn’t diligent about dates. Would she have gotten herself in trouble if she were familiar with her personal calendar?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But you know, she’s not half bad. She’s scared to death, which is endearing in a girl who was the most popular date in the county.”

  I hear footsteps on the porch. “Are you expecting someone?” I ask, getting up and peering out the back door. Lonnie, wearing a ski jacket and hunter’s cap, is carrying two paper cups of coffee toward the house. “It’s your boyfriend.”

  Lonnie almost turns to go back to his car when he sees me. I wave and open the door.

  “Hey, B,” he says, shaking the snow off his boots. “I thought I’d better check Toot’s boiler, with the bad storm and all.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “I brought you coffee,” Lonnie says to Toot. “I’ll check the boiler and get on my way.”

  “He knows about us, Lon,” Toot says quietly.

  “Knows what?” Lonnie asks innocently.

  “You know, that we’re . . . friends.”

  “Oh.” Lonnie sits down and takes the cap off his cup. He removes his coat and hat and puts them on the chair.

  “Lonnie, what the hell is going on?” Eleven years as his brother-in-law entitles me to be terse.

  “What do you mean?” Lonnie’s bushy eyebrows snap up like window shades.

  “What are you doing?” I hope he doesn’t answer “your sister,” but with these two you never know.

  “Don’t start with him, B.” It’s like the old days when we’d find a pair of panties in Lonnie’s new Lincoln and Toot would jump to his defense, saying they must’ve been left by Chrysler when it was on the conveyor belt in the plant in Detroit. Oh, how we can delude ourselves.

  “No, no, I’m not looking for a fight. I just want to know your intentions.”

  “Intentions?” Lonnie peels the plastic top off of Toot’s coffee cup and hands it to her gently.

  “Why are you seeing my sister when you have a third wife at home?”

  Toot pours half the coffee he brought her into a mug and gives it to me. Lonnie sits back in the chair and holds his cup between his hands like a chalice. “Well, I think about it a lot.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not sure.”

  “I’m not sure I like that answer,” Toot says with some indignation.

  “No, no, don’t get bent out of shape. I’m not unsure about you, honey.” Toot smiles at the endearment. Lonnie looks at me. “When I get what I want, I mess it up. So I make things complicated to make happiness stay.” Lonnie sips his coffee. “Does that make sense?”

  “It’s sick.”

  Lonnie smiles and shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand, B. You haven’t been married. When you’re married, you’re under contract. And I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like to be under contract. It brings out the worst in me.”

  “It didn’t do a thing for me either,” Toot says, patting Lonnie’s hand.

  “So you two are just going to have an affair?”

  They look at each other and nod. “We ain’t hurting nobody.” Lonnie shrugs. “Long as nobody finds out.”

  “You’ll have to be very discreet,” I insist, realizing nothing I say will burst the bubble of their adulterous bliss.

  “Oh, he knows how to do that,” Toot says with a smile. “He had me buffaloed for fifteen years. I think we can make this work.”

  Eydie and I hail a cab on Fifty-seventh and Third, where the snow is piled in black mounds to our waists. I could hardly wait for Eydie to return from Paris. She has become my guru—professional and spiritual. Since Rufus walked away from Fatima Church, I’ve met with every artisan in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to help renovate the church, and not one has impressed me. I called Eydie in a panic and she ordered me into the city.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do.” Eydie closes her eyes and concentrates as the cab races toward Bay Ridge. She wears a black mink swing coat and pink velvet gloves, and she smells like peppermint and cocoa, which makes me want to curl up in her lap. “You’re going to tell him that you want to collaborate. That you’ve come to a place in your life where that is more important than your singular vision.”

  “Do you think I can get him back?”

  “I don’t know what his schedule is. Pedro was abrupt with me on the phone, which is why I think we should just go out there in person and beg.”

  Brooklyn seems depressed, like a steel town in the dead of winter; the murky slush on the ground against the gray buildings makes the place seem like a prison hemmed by a black moat, the East River. The only shots of color are the occasional bright coats and hats in the herds of pedestrians. Despite the rust-belt ambience, a backdrop of gray splashed with primary colors is exciting. I’ll remember this when I do the new rec room for the Cartegnas in Wall Township.

  We weave through the streets of Bay Ridge, and the driver leaves us in the middle of the street outside Rufus’s building, since the curbs are piled with snow. I lift Eydie over the drifts, and she laughs as I set her down on the sidewalk. There’s a handwritten note on the door: Buzzer broken. Come on up. At the top of the stairs, I push the door open, guiding Eydie inside. My heart is thumping in my chest. I’m terrible at apologies and worse at groveling, so I’m afraid I will blow this meeting.

  “Hi!” Eydie calls out, her voice echoing through the vast warehouse. I see a woman across the room with her back to us. When she turns slightly to answer Eydie, my heart stops. I know that profile.

  Capri Mandelbaum is sitting cross-legged on a broken-down easy chair near the scaffolding, wearing a pair of men’s flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. Her hair is tousled, and she looks like a teenager. When she sees us, she is stunned, then suddenly modest, pulling the sleeves of the sweatshirt down around her hands and folding her arms across her chest. “Capri, what are you doing here?” I ask.

  Before she can answer, Pedro comes out of the kitchen with two mugs of coffee. He stops and looks at us. “Oh,” he says.

  A few terribly awkward moments pass until Eydie, God bless her, says something. “Any more coffee?”

  “In the kitchen,” Pedro mumbles. I follow Eydie into the kitchen without looking at Capri.

  “What’s that all about?” she whispers while I pour.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “We can’t hide in here.” Eydie gives me a mug of coffee. “It will look strange.”

  “My ex-fiancée in another man’s pajamas isn’t strange?”

  “Hello,” a man’s voice says from the door.

  Rufus McSherry stands in the doorway, looking three feet taller than he did the last time I saw him. “How have you been, Eydie?” He kisses her on the cheek, then extends his hand to me. “Bartolomeo?” We shake hands. The warmth of his big paw does something to me, and I find I don’t want to let go.

  Forgoing my rehearsed speech, I blurt, “Rufus, I’m sorry and I wish you would reconsider doing the church. I’ve done a lot of thinking. I’m ready to put aside my ego and work with you.”

  Rufus looks at my face as though he is studying a map. “There’s nothing wrong with your ego.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “No. It’s your fear.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m not afraid of anything. I’m the guy who put an ind
oor pond in a Stanford White knockoff in Deal and did a fleur-de-lis design in cobblestone on the entry drive of the Salesian convent in North Haledon. I’m not afraid to color outside the lines.

  Pedro joins us in the kitchen and looks at me. “Capri would like to speak to you.”

  “Sure.” I give Eydie my coffee cup and go out into the warehouse. Capri has changed into her clothes and combed her hair.

  “I’m sorry, B,” she says quietly.

  “For what?”

  “For keeping this from you. After Christmas I took a ride with Christina to bring Amalia to the Martinellis’, and we came over here and Pedro and I got to talking.”

  “Okay.” I feel for Capri, she seems so vulnerable. I take her in my arms and hold her close. It’s funny when you take a girl into your arms for old times’ sake, but you realize you had no old times.

  “It turns out we have a lot in common. So I came back. The past three weekends. Pedro is a wonderful person.”

  “The fiancé is always the last to know,” I joke.

  “No, you’re not. I haven’t told anyone.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “I think this could be something for me. I think it’s true love.”

  “Well, don’t rush.”

  “I knew it when I met him at your house the first time,” she explains. “I had a feeling.”

  Capri has the calm countenance of a woman who is certain of her heart’s desire. Gone is the dry eye-blinking and self-doubt. In their wake is a new Capri, quietly content.

  “Whatever makes you happy, Capri,” I tell her sincerely. “That’s all I care about.”

  She takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “I want you to find someone too.”

  “Let’s take things one step at a time. I have a church to rebuild, then I can address my love life.”

  Capri laughs. I take a look inside Pedro’s room. It’s like a monk’s cell, with a bed, a chair, a table, and a lamp. Neat but dreary.

  “I know. It’s rustic,” Capri says.

  “We can fix that,” I promise her.

  I am relieved to finally give up my status as the only “bachelor of a certain age” in OLOF. Rufus and Pedro each took a studio apartment in the Windsor Arms, one of Aurelia’s investment properties. February 21 is our first official day of work in the church.

  Rufus and I have spent time discussing our goals for the new church and then implementing those ideas into a design. Over the course of the last month we met with the architect and planned the steps. My team, Christina and Two, and Rufus’s crew, led by Pedro and including a group of local construction workers he found through the parish council, have met and set the work schedule. Occasionally Father Porp comes by the empty church and glares at me. Obviously we are not going fast enough for him. I remind him that it’s Aurelia’s donation and not church dough financing the project, so he backs off.

  “I have the notes from the last meeting,” Christina says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a stack of papers.

  “I’ll set up the sketches.” I place a large drawing pad on the easel.

  “I’ll pour the coffee,” Two offers.

  Rufus and Pedro enter from the back of the church. A crew follows them with a hand truck loaded with equipment, which they stack neatly near the side altar.

  “The final load of supplies will arrive today,” Pedro tells us. I ask everyone to take a seat. The crew sits on the floor and the altar steps, gathering in closely.

  “Rufus, I’m going to turn the meeting over to you to explain our process in the coming weeks and months.”

  “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Rufus begins. “The engineer gave us some structural fixes that need to happen, mostly in the walls, as we plan on redoing the electrical wiring. Now, if you’ll all look up, you’ll see the vaulted ceiling and the catwalk beneath it. We’re going to lift off the old roof and replace it with a series of broad skylights that can be opened from the catwalk level. If you don’t mind, let’s walk around and I’ll show you the rest.”

  Rufus takes us on a tour of the church, showing us how he will implement our design to open up the seating and replace the stained-glass windows featuring eerie scenes from the lives of saints with designs depicting our local trades: scissors of the sewing trade, the hammer and nails of construction, books depicting education, the Greek symbols of the healing arts, and fishing boats.

  We will create a grotto of local fieldstone for the Lady of Fatima shrine, like the one I saw in the Cathedral of Santa Margherita in Italy. I have written to Asher Anderson to send the statues of the children of Fatima.

  Rufus thinks the altar should be oval, and that the tabernacle should have a clear glass door instead of brass, so that people can see the Blessed Sacrament. Rufus’s eloquent explanation sold Father Porp on the idea.

  As a backdrop, we are going to create Rufus’s inspired Wall of Water. He assured us that we can have the wall dry when we wish it so, but that the water flowing over the rocks will be dynamic and fresh. This wall alone will take the crew two months to build.

  Christina is in charge of ordering and delivering of supplies, as well as the business side of the renovation. She does the budgets, payments, and payroll. When he’s not tending to my clients, Two will act as Pedro’s apprentice as he designs the stained-glass windows and oversees the installation of the skylights. Rufus will paint the frescoes himself and supervise the construction of the Wall of Water. I will oversee each element of the project and provide help wherever I can.

  Father Porporino enters from the sacristy, pushing back the canvas tarp where the door used to be. He carries a gold cup filled with holy water and the distribution wand, which rests in it like a spoon.

  “Do you need something, Father?” I ask.

  “It’s customary on the day the ground is broken on a project for the priest to show up and give a blessing. Would you all like one?”

  “Sure, Father,” Rufus says, smiling. “It couldn’t hurt, right?”

  Father asks us to bow our heads. Pedro kneels. Father sprinkles us with the holy-water wand. Rufus gets pelted in the eye and smiles at me. Despite Father Porp’s gruff demeanor and chronic impatience, all in all, it’s an excellent start to the most ambitious undertaking of my career.

  I’ve always enjoyed the solitary nature of my work. As a decorator, I’ve had plenty of human contact with the craftsmen I employ to cover furniture, build closets, and construct draperies. I spend time in the city at the D&D Building discussing selections and options with clients. But I’ve never enjoyed a project more than Fatima Church. I look forward to the morning and having a cup of coffee with Rufus as we go over the plans for the day. He’s even become a part of the social fabric of OLOF, joining me for dinner at Aurelia’s. When I asked Aurelia to include Pedro, she said, “Fine, if you insist.” Evidently Capri hasn’t bothered to tell her mother about her new inamorata. Maybe tonight, over dinner, Capri will share her news.

  Rufus has had dinner out at least three nights a week since he arrived, all made with loving care by the women of OLOF. He’s been wined and dined by the officers of the sodality and various parishioners who heard him speak after Mass about the renovation. When they’re not hosting him for dinner, the ladies compete by leaving Rufus Tupperware containers of their best dishes on his doorstep. The cult of Rufus McSherry has replaced Roman Catholicism as the inspiration to love one another in our community.

  “Do you have a girl, Rufus?” I ask as he’s suspended overhead on a scaffold, stripping layers of paint from a section of rib vaulting.

  “Do you?” he asks me.

  “I asked you first.”

  He climbs down the scaffolding, and it reminds me of King Kong swinging off the Empire State Building. Anything this man touches seems smaller in proximity to him.

  “No one in particular.” He fishes a bandana from the back pocket of his jeans.

  “You know you’re the local catnip now.”

  He throws his h
ead back and laughs. “I guess the parade of homemade pies is proof, right?”

  “Let me tell you something. The women around here like tall and they like Irish. And in OLOF there are very few tall and just a couple of Irishmen, so you’re now officially Mr. Delish.”

  “Thank you for boiling my attributes down to two characteristics that I have no control over. But what’s your story, B? A good-looking Italian guy like you. Why aren’t you with someone?”

  “Who said I wasn’t?”

  “Good point. Maybe you’re just discreet. Of course, I understand you were engaged once. For what, about twenty years?” He chuckles.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call that the real thing, Rufus. It was an arrangement made without my consent when I was a baby.”

  “Oh, I get it. Like royalty. You were promised.”

  “Exactly!”

  Rufus replaces the lids on various cans of dry pigment that will make paint when he paints the fresco. Today he tested colors on the wall, making streaks of blue, from the palest aqua to the deepest azure. “I had it once, B.”

  “You were married?”

  “No, in love.”

  “How did you know?”

  “That’s easy. I would have done anything for her.” He fishes in his pocket for his cigarettes and hands me one. He lights his own and then throws me the matches while he steps back and squints at the stripes of color on the wall.

  “What happened?” I ask gently.

  “She died.”

  I take a breath. “How?”

  “She got sick. And there was nothing they could do.”

  “What was her name?”

  He takes a moment to answer. “Ann.”

  “What was she like?”

  “You know, it’s funny. I don’t think of her face. I think of how I felt around her. But she was pretty. A brunette. Tall.”

  “Tall people should go together. The same with short. I don’t like those Jack Sprat couples where the man is over six feet and he marries a four-foot door knocker. It’s ridiculous.”