Invitation to Italian

by Tracy Kelleher

  By which Sebastiano took it to mean that Iris thought she was indeed an expert.

  “But,” Iris continued, “I would think that in her line of work that kind of passion—or should I say compassion—often goes missing after the first year or so on the job.”

  Sebastiano picked up his pen. “There’s merit in what you say. But I would also argue that sometimes one’s strength is also one’s weakness.”

  Iris touched her chin and laughed softly. “You put a lot of stock in logic and order, don’t you?” she asked.

  “For someone in my position, they are traits to be expected, I suppose.”

  Iris studied him closely. Then she picked up the leather-bound folder resting on the corner of the desk and flipped it open. She slipped on a pair of reading glasses. “You have the agenda that I sent over?”

  Sebastiano slid his copy out from under the blotter. Whatever he might think about Iris Phox—and unfortunately, there seemed to be way too much spare time in his evenings to ponder such questions—she was impeccably organized.

  “Now,” she said, “as you will note, there are several items for discussion.” She paused, lifted her head and blinked in his direction. “However, I’d like to deviate from the usual protocol, take a moment to digress. That won’t prove inconvenient for you, I trust?”

  Only several other pressing appointments and meetings, not to mention the rest of my life, Sebastiano thought.

  But since he really had no choice in the matter, he smiled graciously. “For you, Iris, I have all the time in the world.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monday, noon

  “I DON’T KNOW WHO was the bigger ass—him or me,” Julie confessed. She rested her head in her hands and rubbed her tired eyes. It was lunchtime, and even though she’d showered and changed, and downed several cups of black coffee, she still felt like crap. Whatever. She would just have to deal with it. Besides, it was her day off, and here she was with her best friend, Katarina. The two of them were sitting at the kitchen table at Katarina’s grandmother’s house. She should count her blessings.

  Which was hard when she’d just been relating what a fool she’d been.

  Katarina settled in against the pillows in the window seat. “Hey, watch your language. Babika may be upstairs checking on the baby, but, trust me, she has ears more sensitive than the latest CIA listening device.” Babika was Slovak for “Grandmother” and harked back to Lena Zemanova’s Eastern European origins.

  “Sorry,” Julie said, nodding. “Anyway, what can I say? As usual I flew off the handle—not that it wasn’t a matter of urgency. But he got all officious, with that ‘I’m in charge’ attitude.” She gingerly felt her bruised cheek. She’d applied massive amounts of concealer, hoping to cover the worst.

  “Just please tell me that bruise isn’t his fault. I can put up with temper in a man—God knows I’m living with a teenage son. But violence is completely unacceptable.”

  Julie waved off her concerns. “Not to worry. Il Dottore had nothing to do with my shiner. I have my own klutziness to thank for that. Then, there was the glass vase I also chipped today.” She left out the part about it belonging to Sebastiano Fonterra in her own defense.

  “I don’t understand how you can be so coordinated at sports, and the next minute trip over your own feet. My God, I remember during the summers as kids how you were the star of the swimming and softball teams. Didn’t they even recruit you to play in the men’s basketball summer league when you were in high school and college?”

  “No, by college I’d called it quits. Anyway, I might be coordinated when it comes to sports, but in real life—forget it.”

  Katarina studied her childhood friend.

  Did she know? The reason I’d quit? Julie wondered. She had never talked about it with Katarina, and she still couldn’t now. Only her family knew why she’d given up a full basketball scholarship to the University of Connecticut, and even they’d never discussed it with her. Ever.

  Not that Katarina was the type of person to dwell on the past. After all, she had her own issues growing up with a single mother, who was always moving. From what Julie had gleaned, the only source of stability in Katarina’s life had been her grandmother Lena.

  Maybe that’s what drew them together: a refusal to dwell on the past. Or maybe it was because they both loved red wine and sappy movies, and that despite the unspoken vagaries of childhood and young adulthood, they were still there for each other.

  From upstairs in the small clapboard house, a fierce cry could be heard. Katarina immediately tuned in. “Ah, it sounds like my son and heir is awake. I knew it was too good to last. Thank goodness Babika was able to watch him while I met with Rufus.” She slanted her head to listen to her grandmother’s sturdy footsteps descending the stairs. Then she leaned toward Julie. “I was there to help him evaluate his financial situation if he decides to sell the bar—”

  “He’s going to sell the Nighttime Bar? It’s a Grantham institution. He can’t just sell it!” Julie protested. The Nighttime Bar might have been a hole in the wall off Route 206, but it was a hole in the wall that had attracted some of the top names in jazz over the years, musicians who sought an intimate, knowledgeable crowd and Rufus’s easy bonhomie.

  “We’ll see. But let me finish, would you!”

  Julie sat back against the cushions and crossed her arms. “I’m waiting.”

  “Okay. While Rufus and I were talking, somehow the conversation got sidetracked onto the hospital expansion.”

  Katarina looked up when her grandmother came into the kitchen holding her son. “Ah, my favorite little boy,” she cooed and clapped her hands. “Hello, Rad. Did you miss your mommy?”

  The three-month-old baby boy was named for Lena’s late husband, Radko, who had died before Katarina was born. His still sleepy eyes were red from crying, but they lit up as soon as he saw Katarina. She held out her arms, and he immediately cuddled close, his mouth rooting around her breasts.

  “Men, they’re all alike,” Katarina complained as she unbuttoned the front of her loose blouse and undid the snaps on her nursing bra.

  Lena looked on, smiling. “He slept the whole time you were gone, I’ll have you know, so he deserves a reward. And it’s a gift to nurse your child.”

  The baby latched on and started to suck with a steady determination.

  “Oh, my goodness, your cheek, Julie!” Lena exclaimed. “What happened? Do you need something? Calamine lotion? I have a bag of frozen peas in the freezer.”

  “It’s nothing, really,” Julie assured her. “Just a little bump.” She needed more concealer, clearly.

  Rad’s voracious eating produced a smacking noise.

  Julie laughed and leaned across the table to stroke his tiny fingers. Julie’s touch made him quiver, and he shifted to grip the skin above Katarina’s nipple and feather it with his tiny fingers.

  “What little starfish hands,” she marveled. “I’m always amazed the way they come out with all the little wrinkles at the knuckles and tiny little nails.”

  Katarina glanced her way. “All the better to scratch me with.”

  “And you wouldn’t give it up for a moment,” Julie replied. She heard Lena clattering pots and pans behind her and swiveled around. “Can I help you with anything there, Mrs. Zemanova?”

  “How sweet of you to offer.” Lena turned on a stove burner and placed a frying pan on it. She cut a generous hunk of butter and dropped it into the pan to melt. “I’m just frying up some onions to go with the pirohy,” she said, referring to the Slovakian stuffed dumplings. “Just a little something light, you know.”

  A little something light? Julie mouthed to Katarina behind Lena’s back.

  “But if you really want to do something, you can get the container of sour cream out of the fridge and put it in a bowl.” Lena nodded toward an overhead cabinet to indicate where the bowls were kept.

  Julie slid across the window seat, got up and headed for the refrigerator.

/>   “If you think we need more to eat, there’s mushroom soup that I made in a Rubbermaid container on the left,” Lena said in a raised voice as she fried the chopped onion.

  Julie chewed her lower lip. “It’s tempting. What do you think, Katarina?” She turned to her friend.

  Katarina moaned as she shifted Rad from one breast to the other. “Please, I’m trying to lose weight after the baby. Not all of us can eat anything and everything and still look like a long toothpick.”

  “I guess no soup then.” Julie finished dishing the sour cream into a blue-and-white pottery bowl. “I’ll put this on the table, okay?” she said on her way to the dining room.

  “Yes, that’s good,” Lena called out. “Put it next to the silver serving spoon. Meanwhile I’ll start to put up the pirohy because it looks like our little man is just about finished.” She removed a clean dishcloth covering a cookie sheet and exposed a neat array of crescent-shaped dumplings. She carefully dropped them into the pot of boiling water, and when they floated to the top, she ladled them out and placed them on a large china platter. She had already dished the sautéed onions into a matching bowl. “Who wants to take these in?” she asked.

  “Julie, why don’t you take the baby, and I’ll help with the food,” Katarina said, passing him over and doing up her bra. “He still needs to be burped so take the receiving blanket. Otherwise he’ll upchuck all over your sweater.” She smoothed her long red hair off her shoulder.

  “That’s what dry cleaning is for is what I say.” Julie mugged at Rad as she held him up. She confidently maneuvered the baby to her shoulder and patted him repeatedly on his back.

  “Okay, Babika, now I’m all yours. Give it here.” Katarina nudged Lena aside and lifted the platter. “My God, you’ve got enough to feed an army.”

  Lena picked up the onions and marched on her Easy Spirit walking shoes to the dining room. She might be in her early seventies, but she was fit as a fiddle from tennis three days a week and tai chi classes at the Adult School.

  “I know, I know,” she said, “but I wasn’t sure if Wanda was going to join us with little Natalie. They have music-and-little-tikes class today.” Wanda was a retired high school math teacher who now lived with Lena and took care of the one-year-old daughter of Julie’s other friend, Sarah. Sarah was a physiotherapist and her husband, Hunt, Iris Phox’s son, was in med school.

  “You have enough here to invite the whole class,” Katarina joked. She rested the platter on the corner of the dining room table. For the occasion, Lena had set the table with a white damask tablecloth. The silver shone and the Bohemian crystal sparkled. A round glass bowl in the center held an informal arrangement of purple lobelia and feathery pink asters from her small garden.

  Lena took her place at the head of the table. “Here, Julie, you can sit on this side while Katarina can sit next to the bouncy baby chair.”

  “No way I’m giving up this cutie,” Julie said as she followed everyone else in. She continued to pat the baby on his back until he emitted a loud burp. “Good one, Rad.” She let him snuggle into her shoulder and breathed in deeply. “Don’t you just love the smell of babies?”

  “Julie, you’re so good with babies. I’m still terrified I’m going to drop him.” Katarina pulled out her chair and sat.

  “Just be the oldest daughter in a large Italian family and you’d be good with babies, too. Trust me, it doesn’t take any special gifts, just a lot—and I mean—a lot of practice. Anyway, my brother Dom hit the floor a few times, and he seems to have survived intact.” She deftly switched Rad to her other shoulder and raised her plate to Babika so she could dish up her dumplings.

  “You should have children of your own. It’s much more fun than minding little brothers,” Lena said as she passed Julie back her plate. A succulent aroma filled the room.

  “Have you been talking to my mother, Mrs. Zemanova? Or maybe my grandmother? Sometimes I think I see her staring at me, visualizing the size of my ovaries. She tells me she has powers, you know? Supposedly even the evil eye,” Julie said with a laugh. “Hey, come to think of it, maybe that’s what’s been keeping all those eligible bachelors away.”

  “She would never do that!” Lena looked aghast, as if she had taken Julie seriously. “Here, have some sour cream. It will make you feel better.”

  Julie took the bowl. “It can’t hurt.” She plopped a generous amount on her plate, then passed the dish to Katarina.

  Katarina studied it and frowned. “Oh, all right. But that means an extra thirty minutes on the stationary bike tonight.” She added a modest dollop of sour cream to her dumplings, paused and added a speck more. “You know, let me just throw this thought out, knowing full well that you’ll probably shoot it down immediately. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t your grandmother, but you. I mean, you never get out at all.” She took a bite of dumpling with sour cream and onion and smiled. “Oh, bliss!”

  Julie stopped patting Rad’s diaper-covered bottom. “I do so get out. I’m here today, aren’t I? I see my folks. And what about the girls’ nights out with you and Sarah?” Actually, since Katarina and Sarah had gotten married and had children, the sad truth was the three of them rarely had time to get together. If they did find the time, they were usually so tired that they tended to lie around Julie’s condo, watch DVDs and eat too many chips and salsa.

  “Somehow I don’t hear the mention of any men, outside of family members, in that scenario,” Katarina said. The baby started to fuss on Julie’s shoulder. “Here, let me take the squirt. You haven’t even touched your food.”

  “I’m fine,” Julie protested.

  “No, you’re not.” Katarina stood up and walked around.

  “Here you go, lover boy.” Julie reluctantly let Katarina take the baby. “I think you might find he needs his diaper changed.”

  Katarina sniffed the baby’s bottom. “Oooh! You are stinky. It never fails after I feed him. I’ll just go change him and be right down.”

  Lena winked at her great-grandson and made kissy noises. Then she addressed Julie with perfect sincerity. “Maybe what is necessary is for you to go some place where you can find single men?”

  “Listen, I am not about to start hanging out at bars, looking for a pickup,” Julie said circumspectly.

  Lena rested her fork on her plate. “I would never suggest that!”

  Katarina stopped at the doorway to the hall. “How about at the hospital? Didn’t you just tell me you ran into an eligible doctor this morning?” She laughed and headed up to the bedrooms.

  Lena pressed her hand on the table. “You don’t mean you bumped into Sebastiano Fonterra? Now I understand the cause of the bruise.”

  Julie shook her head. “No, Katarina got it all wrong. I just had a run-in, a disagreement. What makes you say it was Sebastiano Fonterra? Don’t tell me you have special powers, too?”

  Lena shook her head. “No, no. I met him a while back at a hospital fundraiser, and since then at my regular physical therapy session with Sarah—my tennis elbow, you know. She talks all about the new hospital administrator.” Lena leaned more closely. “So tell me. Do you think he’s as sexy as Sarah says he is?”

  “Well, it depends on what you mean by sexy,” Julie hedged.

  “Tall, dark and handsome?”

  “Well, he’s tall, but not as tall as me. And I suppose he’s got brown hair, but I wouldn’t call it dark-dark. And I’m pretty sure there’re even a few wisps of gray starting to show.”

  “You noticed that, did you?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t like I noticed-noticed. I mean, between you and me—and probably the whole hospital by now—Sebastiano Fonterra and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye.”

  Lena picked up her fork again. She had a sly smile on her lips, which with her short gray bob and dazzling blue eyes, made her look like some Eastern European pixie up to no good. “So you are taller, but only a bit.”

  Julie could see which way this was headed. “It’s not so much a height
thing. It’s more that we are diametrically opposed to each other,” she clarified.

  Lena shook off her remark, fork in hand. “Good! Forceful opinions are good! That shows passion!”

  There was a loud knock at the front door.

  Lena and Julie looked up.

  “Maybe Wanda made it after all?” Julie asked.

  “No, she has a key.” Lena shook her head. “I’m not expecting anyone that I know of.”

  “Let me get it,” Julie said. It was a good excuse to change the topic of conversation. She started to get up.

  Lena put a wrinkled but firm hand on hers. “No, I’ll get it. You are a guest, and you haven’t even had a chance to have one bite. Please, I insist.”

  The knock repeated.

  “Don’t bother, Babika,” Katarina called out, coming down the stairs. “I’m already on my way.”

  Lena smiled. “She’s a wonderful granddaughter. I am so lucky. Just like your grandmother is lucky to have you,” she added to Julie.

  From the dining room, they heard the wooden front door being opened. There was a sound of muffled voices. Julie tried not to eavesdrop and dug into her food. “Oh, my God, this is like heaven! I can’t tell you the last time I ate, and that was probably a candy bar.”

  Lena looked horrified.

  The footsteps grew louder as they made their way down the central hallway to the dining room. Lena raised her chin and looked over the centerpiece. Her mouth dropped open.

  Julie saw Lena’s startled expression, turned and saw Katarina standing awkwardly in the doorway. She held the baby tightly in her arms as if protecting it from gale-force winds.

  Next to her stood a middle-aged woman. Her thick braid was dark blond with streaks of gray. Her face was tanned and lined from the sun. She wore a fleece vest, jeans and work boots.

  “Lena,” the woman said, offering a tentative smile.

  Julie stared at the woman’s cornflower-blue eyes. She was sure she’d seen ones just like it before. She glanced over at Katarina’s grandmother.