Invitation to Italian

by Tracy Kelleher

  She turned to say something under her breath to Zora, but Katarina’s mother continued to appear as if she’d gone into anaphylactic shock. “Zora?” she asked, concerned.

  “Zora?” Mr. Bomber Jacket asked a beat later. He stopped in the aisle and stared at Zora.

  “Paul?” Zora shook her head. “I never expected to see you here.”

  “I could say the same,” he said, still standing.

  For an awkward moment the two just studied each other. The only movement was a whole lot of rapid blinking. Finally, Julie spoke up. “There’s a free seat over there if you want it.” She pointed to the empty desk next to Zora.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks.” He swallowed and slipped into the vacant seat.

  Julie stared at Zora, and when she finally looked up from straightening out her index cards and uncapping her pen, Zora acknowledged Julie’s wide-eyed inquiring expression.

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you didn’t know each other. Julie Antonelli, Paul Bedecker. Paul and I went to Grantham High School together.” She held up a hand in his direction.

  Paul waved a discreet hello. “That’s right. Zora and I also went to Cornell together for a while.”

  “Before I transferred to Rutgers after my freshman year,” she said, setting the record straight.

  Another tense beat of silence followed.

  “If you’re Paul Bedecker, is that like Bedecker’s Garden Center?” Julie asked, narrowing her eyes as she dredged up distant memories. “My dad always bought his tomato plants there, and I think you used to help out at the nursery a long time ago.”

  “That’s right. I remember you now. Tall, skinny kid. Your father used to call you Giuli—”

  The door opened with a start, catching Paul mid-word.

  “Buona sera, tutti. Scusatemi per essere in ritardo. Sono il vostro supplente.”

  There was a barely stifled collective groan from the in-crowd at the news. A substitute teacher!

  Julie slumped as low as possible in her chair and covered her face with her hand.

  It was Sebastiano Fonterra.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AT THE SOUND OF the muffled groans, Sebastiano doubted yet again the wisdom of his agreeing to teach the class. Perhaps agreeing was not really the appropriate word. Railroaded. Yes, railroaded. He liked the sound of that. The image was almost—not quite—as painful as what he was experiencing now.

  One thing was for sure. Iris Phox owed him big-time.

  “Hello, everyone,” he started again and reintroduced himself, this time in English, hoping against hope that this language would bring him a better response. “I’m Sebastiano Fonterra, and I will be substituting for Gabriella. I know you all were expecting to have her as your teacher, but unfortunately at the last minute she had to return to Italy because her father needed to have emergency heart surgery.”

  Immediately there were gasps.

  “Is he all right?” “Do you have an address?” “Will she be checking her email?” “When will she be able to return?” “Soon?”

  Not soon enough, Sebastiano thought. He forced a smile. “I don’t have all the details, and I don’t personally know Gabriella except through email. I’m just jumping in at the last minute as a favor to the Adult School, and I presume she will be able to come back in a matter of weeks.”

  This last remark elicited an audible sigh.

  “In the meantime, she explained the scope of the class, and how she normally emails around an article from the Corriere della Sera or another Italian newspaper, and then uses that as a starting point for discussion. She was kind enough to suggest an article for the first class, which I photocopied and brought with me.” He slid his briefcase on top of the teacher’s desk and unbuckled it.

  He’d come directly from the office, having eaten half a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich from the cafeteria at his desk. He couldn’t make it through the second half. He still wore a suit and tie, which he now realized was much too formal. The few men seated in the front seemed to favor khaki pants and sweaters. In the back? He couldn’t be sure but he thought he caught sight of Paul or at least his leather jacket.

  He lifted the lid of his briefcase and fished out the material. “So, my thought was that I would pass around a pad and pen. You can sign your names and give me your email addresses.” He leaned forward and passed them to the woman in the front row. “I also have the handouts, and I thought we could pass those around at the same time.” Sebastiano circled the desk and gave the sheets to another woman.

  “Grazie,” she said, thanking him, with a confident American accent. She had a gravelly voice.

  “And lastly, I have here a class list that I’ll read off, so I can see who’s here and also put some names to faces. But since you all are so busy writing, why don’t I first tell you a little about myself? In italiano addesso?” he asked, switching to Italian.

  He undid the button of his gray suit jacket and swung one leg over the desk, propping himself up on the corner. “Mi chiamo Sebastiano Fonterra. Sono medico ed administratore dell’ospedale.” Sebastiano explained he was a doctor and hospital administrator.

  There were a few murmured remarks of recognition in response, and he soldiered on in Italian. “I was born in Milano and spent most of my childhood there, but also a number of years in the States when my father was transferred by the pharmaceutical company he worked for. I got my degree in medicine, but I became increasingly interested in how to provide medical care to a community, and switched to hospital management. I’ve been in Grantham a little less than a year, but I am very excited about the community and the future of the hospital. So that’s all about me, and certainly enough of me talking.”

  He reached back and picked the class list off his desk. He began with the first name listed in alphabetical order. “Antonelli? Giulietta?” He raised his head and looked around.

  “Giulietta?” he asked again, thinking the name was remarkably familiar even if he couldn’t quite place it. He saw a hand tentatively rise from the back of the class.

  “Mi chiama Giulietta.” A woman’s voice belonging to the hand identified itself softly in an excellent Italian accent.

  Sebastiano stood up and peered over the carefully coiffed heads in the front row to get a better look. Which he did.

  And nearly gagged.

  And learned one very important lesson: never have even half a turkey sandwich before fulfilling a promise to Iris Phox.

  JULIE WAITED UNTIL most of the students had filed out of the classroom to get up from her seat. She watched Zora fanatically pack each of her items into specific compartments of her knapsack. Paul, in the meantime, waited. He looked like he had every intention of leaving with Zora—something that seemed to have escaped her. Instead, Zora glanced at Julie. “I was wondering if you’d like to get a cup of coffee?”

  Julie shook her head. “Sorry. I just need to talk to the teacher a moment. Maybe another time?”

  “I’m free,” Paul volunteered.

  Zora barely acknowledged his offer. “Well, I guess we could always get something to go,” she suggested without too much enthusiasm.

  Julie could empathize with her lack of interest. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was confront Sebastiano, but that’s just what she knew she had to do to clear things up. She gathered the sides of her loose-fitting jacket tightly about her body and trudged to the front of the room.

  She waited while Sebastiano talked with Paul, their joking ending abruptly when Zora began making noises about having to leave. Paul signaled goodbye, and Sebastiano looked up to see who was next. His relaxed expression vanished.

  Julie hesitantly sidled up. “Look, it’s not like I really want to hang around after class, but I think we need to talk.”

  Sebastiano slipped the pads and handouts into his briefcase and snapped it shut. He tilted his head and waited.

  Julie didn’t get the impression that he was overjoyed to have this little student-teacher conference. On the other hand,
she couldn’t help noticing that after his enthusiastic teaching for an hour and a half—including all the requisite arm motions one associates with Italians—his normally buttoned-up attire was now rumpled in an all-too appealing way. His tie was loosened and yanked to the side. The top two buttons of his dress shirt were undone. A lock of his ruthlessly barbered hair flopped roguishly over his forehead.

  If he weren’t he, and she weren’t she, Julie couldn’t help feeling…

  “There was something that you wanted to say?” he prompted her.

  Julie covered her mouth as she cleared her throat. “Listen, it’s just that I didn’t want you to get the impression I had anything to do with this…you…me…the class.” She pointed rapidly between the two of them. “Because, in point of fact, all the blame rests with Iris Phox.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to realize that woman works in strange and mysterious ways.”

  “You’re only beginning to think that?”

  Sebastiano shrugged a laugh.

  A very nice laugh, she couldn’t help noting.

  “When Iris lectured me on the wisdom of having you take a course at the Adult School as a way of saying you were sorry, I was imagining something more along the lines of…ah…” Sebastiano paused in thought.

  “Anger management?” Julie suggested.

  “I was trying to be more diplomatic. Perhaps, conflict resolution,” he said with a smile.

  She noticed how he wet his lips. “I guess advanced Italian conversation was the closest thing Iris could find,” she said, enjoying the teasing undercurrents of the conversation.

  “And you speak it very well,” he complimented her. “You studied in school?”

  “No, at home. We always spoke Italian. And my grandmother—Nonna—never really mastered English. I guess Iris Phox, being Iris Phox, realized all this before she enrolled me.” Julie frowned. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me that your last-minute substitute teacher gig came about because—”

  “Because Iris Phox recruited me? How else? She said they were desperate, and it wasn’t as if I could say no.”

  Julie nodded. “So if I understand this right—she got me to take this class. Then she got you to teach it. So—”

  “So she devised her own version of conflict resolution, all to the benefit of the Adult School,” he said, finishing her sentence.

  “Naturally, I would have said it all far more caustically, but then you are you, and—”

  “You are you,” he ended for her.

  All very synergistic, one might even say simpatico, Julie thought. Which should have made her feel relaxed but somehow just heightened her discomfort. Or was it something else?

  She rubbed her nose. “Whatever the ulterior motivations involved—” let alone the internal jitters she was feeling “—I just want to let you know that you did a really good job in class tonight.”

  Sebastiano lifted his briefcase off the desk and started to walk to the door. “Mostly it’s just keeping out of the way to let people talk.”

  “No, it was more than that. You were very encouraging and made everybody feel comfortable.” Except me, she could have added but didn’t.

  He stopped with his hand on the door. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure how much people wanted me to correct them. I didn’t want to make them self-conscious about their speaking.” He seemed genuinely concerned.

  She joined him to leave. “I think you could correct people more. They all want to improve. And I think people liked that you encouraged them to contact you with suggestions for discussion topics.”

  A smile crossed Sebastiano lips. “Yes, I gathered quite quickly that politics is probably a no-no. Too many strong opinions.” He turned toward the light switch. “By the way, your bruise is looking better.”

  Luckily, Julie wasn’t prone to blushing. Not that she would have, but…

  He switched off the lights. And the two stood in the darkness of the classroom, shadowy figures, as light filtered in from the hallway fluorescents. Without the harsh overhead light, Julie’s other senses were instantly more alert—to the sound of his breathing, the light, citrusy smell of his cologne.

  “So, I guess next week then?” he said.

  She concentrated on forming one word at a time. “You bet. Iris already warned me that attendance would be taken regularly. So I guess if I want to stay out of the doghouse, I’d better show.”

  “Her doghouse or mine?” he asked.

  She tasted her shallow breaths. “I’m not sure. They’re both pretty scary.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I’M GLAD YOU MADE IT to the meeting tonight,” Sebastiano said to Paul. It was Thursday, A.A. night.

  The two men sat at an impossibly small table at Bean World, the local coffee shop that was beyond cool. And even though it was nine-thirty at night, the café was still packed—students and graduate students from the university taking study breaks and young singles discreetly trying to hit on each other over their iPhones and laptops. The moms-with-strollers demographic was safely tucked in bed or watching some PBS documentary on the plight of the rain forest. Or so they liked to think. Sebastiano was sure that astutely fed the right questions, they’d confess to being addicts of Dancing with the Stars.

  “Yeah, the writing’s suddenly going well, more than well. So I thought I’d take a break and come to the meeting,” Paul replied. He nursed his cup of decaf.

  Sebastiano finished his double-shot espresso in one gulp, yet another in a long line of coffees he’d drunk all day. He didn’t do decaf. He also didn’t do sleep.

  “Something inspired you?” he asked, crossing his legs to the side. The tip of his brown suede shoe touched the messenger bag of a young woman. Her dyed black hair was cut to brush her shoulders and a severe layer of bangs followed the line of her eyebrows. The black tresses matched her tight sleeveless top and hip-hugging skirt, its hem stopping just short of a pair of laced-up boots.

  She looked at the foot, annoyed, then glanced at its owner. Her frown turned to a welcoming smile.

  Sebastiano shifted his foot and looked away. He was usually attracted to women with long hair. Yet somehow in the past week, that had changed. Now short, spiky hair captured his fancy. He had even awakened from one of his typically light sleeps after dreaming of watching a woman retreat from his car, only to be enveloped by a thick low-lying mist so that only the top of her head was visible, her short dark hair getting smaller and smaller as she retreated into the distance. He didn’t have the faintest idea what the dream meant, but he had a pretty good idea whose hair it had been. And yes, if memory served him correctly, he’d also woken with something else besides an image.

  “It wasn’t so much a something as a someone who inspired me,” Paul said in answer to Sebastiano’s question. He nervously tapped his fingertips on the rim of his coffee cup. “You know how I told you that coming home raised some issues for me that I needed to address? That I thought they’d be the key to this book I’m writing?”

  Sebastiano nodded. “So tell me, who is this someone who has proved so inspiring?”

  “Zora Zemanova.”

  “The woman in the class who sat in the back?” Across from Julie, he could have added, but didn’t.

  “That’s right.” There was a long pause. “We used to be an item.”

  Sebastiano lowered his chin. “When was that?”

  Paul waved his hand. His nails were bitten to the quick. He wore a braided leather-and-aluminum bracelet on his wrist, all very high-tech, Japanese-looking. “We were classmates here in high school, and then we went away to college. That’s when things started to happen. The God’s honest truth? She was my first. And you know what they say? You always remember your first.”

  “Do they now?” Sebastiano recalled his first. Raffaela. How she had smiled nervously as they lay together in the long grass in a valley near her parents’ rustic country retreat. Another lifetime ago.

  “So you’re thinking of seeing her again?” Sebastiano
asked.

  “Kind of. I tried to have coffee with her after class yesterday, but she begged off. She said she needed time to think about it. It’s complicated. Our breakup wasn’t exactly amicable. Needless to say, I was the one who screwed up. Typical idiot male.”

  Sebastiano could identify. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, after all this time to suddenly see her in class. It was like…pow!…a sudden jolt to the old solar plexus. And the weird thing is, over the weekend, while I’m sitting with my dad drinking a cup of warm milk and honey—his version of chicken soup for the soul, which to tell you the truth, I’m kind of growing fond of—my dad starts telling me about her kid, a daughter, Zora’s daughter, coming into the nursery to buy some holly bushes for their yard. I don’t know why, but it takes me a while to realize that this ‘daughter’ is a woman, a young woman…say thirty, early thirties.”

  Paul hurriedly drank the rest of his by now tepid coffee. “So, that got me wondering. Have you met her?”

  “Who? The daughter?” Sebastiano asked.

  “Yeah, her name is Katarina.”

  Sebastiano narrowed his eyes and ran through the extensive list of names he kept mentally ever at the ready. “Oh, of course. Katarina Zemanova and her husband, Ben Brown, a former investment guru who now runs his own charity. And I believe she’s a financial advisor of some sort to senior citizens. I’ve talked with them several times. Very nice couple.” What he didn’t say was that he’d been courting them for a large donation for the new hospital. He just needed to find the right project to excite them.