Invitation to Italian

by Tracy Kelleher

  She worked hard to gain her patients’ confidence and attend to their needs, and she was proud that she’d never lost one. But the possibility always loomed in her mind, and it made her more obsessed than ever—with work, and when she wasn’t working, needlepoint. A lot of needlepoint. In fact, if she had ever had the inclination to plot her productivity—and, okay, her manic impulses—on some sort of graph, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find that it peaked every year around this time. Her birthday. Duh…

  She glanced at her watch. She had a patient in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

  Julie got up and headed toward the revolving door. She waited while an aid pushed a patient in a wheelchair. The middle-aged woman was dressed in a loosely fitting top and pants, and had a windbreaker draped over her shoulders to ward off the early fall chill. A bunch of gaily-colored balloons was tied to the arm of the chair. Whatever she’d been in for clearly had a happy ending. Julie could hear her tell the hospital volunteer that she’d spotted her husband in their Subaru station wagon pulling up to the curb.

  Julie smiled. That’s what she wanted in the world—happy endings.

  The sound of electronic marimbas erupted from the pocket of her jacket, a knitted asymmetrical cardigan that she’d bought just last weekend. It was wildly expensive, but she hadn’t been able to resist. And it’s not a birthday present to myself, she’d told herself at the table. She never celebrated that occasion, not after what happened with the car crash.

  Julie didn’t have any patients in labor right now, but that didn’t mean problems couldn’t arise anyway. She looked at the caller ID—her parents’ home phone. Normally, her father and mother would be at the garage during the day, and her grandmother never called. She answered immediately, not knowing what to make of it.

  “Giulietta,” her father spoke rapidly. “I’m sorry to bother you at work.”

  “No problem, Dad. I don’t see any patients for about another hour. What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “It’s Nonna. She’s complaining about pains in her chest.”

  Julie stepped away from the door. “Get her to the E.R. right away.”

  “Impossible. You know Nonna. She refuses to budge from her chair in the living room.”

  Julie nodded along with his narrative. Her heartbeat raced. “Okay, okay, just give me a few minutes because I biked to worked today. On top of which, I’m at the hospital now, so I’ll need to pop across the road and grab my bag from the office before I head over.” Most of the doctors had their offices in a building that faced the entrance to the hospital on the other side of the circular drive.

  “Grazie, Giulietta. I knew I could count on you,” he said anxiously before hanging up.

  Julie sprinted to the revolving door, ready to barge ahead of the elderly and infirm if necessary.

  “Dr. Antonelli,” a voice came from directly behind her.

  Julie pretended not to hear and slipped into the first segment of the revolving door that opened up before her. She stared straight ahead and shuffled impatiently as the automatic turning mechanism advanced at a glacial pace.

  “Excuse me.” The words accompanied the sound of light, audible breathing next to her shoulder. Someone else was in the door along with her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WITHOUT TURNING SHE knew who it was.

  Sebastiano leaned his head toward her as they shuffled forward onto the sidewalk. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were purposely avoiding me,” he said. “Hold on…I do know better. You were trying to avoid me.”

  Julie frowned. “Listen, I don’t have time to argue one way or the other.”

  “Wait a minute.” Sebastiano held up his hand. “I need to mark this down on my calendar.” He pulled out his BlackBerry. “On September twenty-second, Julie Antonelli did not argue a point.” He tapped in quickly and expertly.

  Julie gave him a withering stare. “If you stopped me to tell me about your meeting with Rufus, he already talked to me about doing something more for the neighborhood, so you don’t need to go into that.”

  “Actually, I’m glad he talked to you about that, but that’s not why I stopped you.” He appeared annoyingly upbeat.

  Julie crossed her arms. “Can it wait? I’m really in a rush here.”

  “Actually, it can’t really. I can walk with you if that works?”

  “It doesn’t. Unless you think you can fit on my bicycle handlebars!”

  SEBASTIANO HAD HAD strange offers before, but this was a first. “How big is your bike?” he asked.

  Julie made a sour face and charged across the pavement to her office building. She put her hand on the entrance door. “Look, my father called, saying that my grandmother seemed to be in some kind of distress, her heart possibly.”

  Sebastiano pulled up next to her. “She’s coming to the hospital?”

  “No, Nonna has a mind of her own.”

  “Is she far?”

  “Not far. Over by the shopping center. She lives with my parents. It should take me ten, fifteen minutes to bike.”

  “My car’s quicker. It’s in the hospital garage and my bag’s right in it.”

  Julie shook her head. “Really, there’s no need.”

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “I am, too.”

  “My field is cardiology.”

  “True, but…”

  Sebastiano held up his hand. “Do you really want to waste more time arguing?”

  “No,” Julie admitted.

  Sebastiano led the way. As CEO, he had a plum parking spot right up front.

  Julie stood by the front passenger door of his BMW 3 Series sedan, her lips pursed as he used his key fob to unlock the doors.

  “What?” Sebastiano opened his door and gazed at her over the roof of the car.

  She shook her head. “Never mind, nothing.” She got in and fastened her seat belt.

  Sebastiano slipped into his seat and started up the engine. He glanced across and saw Julie still frowning. “What now?”

  “Your seat belt?”

  “I’m going to do it. I just wanted to get the car started.”

  “Sorry. I’m just a little touchy when it comes to automobile safety,” Julie said. She rubbed her fingers together nervously.

  He studied her before backing out of the space, then asked, “So where exactly does your family live?”

  Julie rattled off the name of the street. “It’s between North Henderson and Southerland.”

  “I think I know it. It’s a cut-through below the shopping center, right?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Sebastiano looked for oncoming traffic before taking a left into the road. They zipped soundlessly past the high school where a few students were hanging around outside. Then it was a right at the light before turning left into her parents’ street.

  Julie held her hand up. “It’s four houses down on the left. The white split level with the red shutters.”

  Sebastiano pulled into the double driveway behind a Ford Explorer. A maroon Honda Accord was parked to the right. He turned off the engine and nodded toward the house. There was a middle-aged man standing at the front door. The familial resemblance was unmistakable, Sebastiano thought, minus red highlights, of course.

  Julie didn’t wait. She unsnapped her seat belt and reached for the door handle.

  Sebastiano touched her arm, holding her up.

  “What? You and I both know that quick action might be necessary,” she snapped impatiently.

  “Yes, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to take a deep breath.”

  “I don’t understand?” She reached for the door handle again.

  “At the moment, my concern is for the doctor.”

  JULIE DIDN’T BOTHER TO analyze his words let alone grace them with a response. She hurried up the concrete path that her father and second brother, Frank, had redone a few years ago. “Dad, where’s Nonna? Is she all right?” She planted a quick peck on his cheek.

  �
��She’s fine. Sitting in the living room, probably watching out the window as we speak.” Luigi “Lou” Antonelli arched his neck to the side to see around Julie. In his mid-fifties, he still had a powerful, fireplug build. But at barely five foot six, his only daughter towered over him. Not that his shorter height diminished in any way the capable authority that his body seemed to radiate. He could be quite intimidating to all—except his immediate family, who knew he was just a pussycat.

  Lou nodded toward Sebastiano, who stood down from the front stoop. “You decided to bring in reinforcements?”

  “No…yes…” Julie shook her head. “Dad, this is Dr. Fonterra, the head of the hospital. He offered to help out.”

  “Not the same one you…ah…had little disputa with?”

  Julie rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe it! Everyone seems to know everything in this town! Can we just forget about that and let me see Nonna?”

  Julie’s father stepped back and let her pass through the door.

  Sebastiano stepped up to the stoop and nodded. “Signore, con piace,” he said, acknowledging him politely.

  “Dottore Fonterra,” Lou said formally.

  “Sebastiano, please. My field was cardiology and I thought perhaps…” He held up his doctor’s bag.

  Lou held out his hand toward the living room, which was separated from the entryway by a half wall.

  “Nonna, ecco il dottore Fonterra, il primario dell’ ospedale e un cardiologo,” Luigi repeated Sebastiano’s professional pedigree to his mother.

  Carmella Antonelli was seated stiffly in a high-backed chair upholstered in gold velvet. Her hands clutched the arms. Her small slippers barely reached the floor. She wore an immaculate dark-gray skirt and white short-sleeved blouse.

  Carmella lifted her discerning chin. The bifocal lenses of her glasses with their plastic pale pink frames covered her face from eyebrows to cheekbones. Her short salt-and-pepper hair was combed in the same bob she’d worn since the fifties. “Un esperto nelle malattia del cuore?” An expert in illnesses of the heart? she asked.

  Julie knelt down and took her grandmother’s wrist. She felt for a pulse. “So, dimmi, Nonna. Ch’è succeso? Tell me, Grandma, what happened?”

  Carmella shrugged with weariness and reluctance. “Just some pains… In my chest… But they have passed now,” she explained in the Abruzzese dialect of her home in Italy. She turned to Sebastiano, who walked in his socks across the cream-colored wall-to-wall carpet. He had left his shoes by the front entryway. Then she eyed Julie critically. “He not only had time to see me, but he had the good manners to take off his shoes.”

  “See, I bring you only the best, Nonna,” Julie said in a good-humored tone.

  Sebastiano rested his medical bag on the coffee table. Its flared legs and rounded corners had gilded detailing worked into the wooden carving. “Signora, if we could examine you, with all discretion, of course,” Sebastiano said in Italian. “We could go to your bedroom, if that would make you feel more comfortable?”

  Carmella held up her hand. “No, here is fine.”

  Just then, Julie’s mother walked into the room from the dining room. She wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t hear you come in. I was in the kitchen. Nonna insisted it was nothing, but naturally we were worried. So of course we called you, Giulietta.” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know we had company. I could put some coffee on, if you think that would be good? I even have some pignoli biscuits from the Trenton Farmer’s Market. They’re not as good as the ones I make, but they will do.”

  Julie looked up. “That’s all right, Mom. Don’t worry about the coffee and stuff. This is Dr. Fonterra from the hospital. He’s here for Nonna, too.”

  Sebastiano glanced over long enough to smile. “How do you do, Mrs. Antonelli. You know, if you get a chance, coffee would be wonderful, thank you.” He turned to Julie and whispered, “One fewer worried family member, don’t you think?”

  She nodded when she realized he was actually trying to help.

  Sebastiano smiled at Nonna and spoke Italian in a calming voice. “Now tell me, what type of pain was it?” He discreetly unbuttoned Nonna’s top shirt button and applied the stethoscope. He and Julie asked questions and worked together.

  “I guess I’ll get the coffee then?” Julie’s mother scrunched the tea towel between her hands. “Espresso for everyone?”

  Lou shrugged. “Why not?”

  “None for Nonna, Mom,” Julie insisted. “I don’t want her eating or drinking anything until we know what’s going on.” Her mother nodded and marched back to the kitchen, still working the hand towel as she went.

  “Only for you would I give up coffee,” Nonna complained, speaking in heavily accented English, a language she rarely admitted to knowing.

  “You will have many opportunities for coffee,” Sebastiano said, placating her. “Just this once, humor us—especially Julie.” He winked at the older woman.

  “I don’t need humoring,” Julie retorted. “Just cooperation from everybody.” She shot Sebastiano a lethal glare, then reached in his bag for the blood pressure cuff.

  Sebastiano appeared not to hear. He stood up and asked Nonna to lean forward so he could listen to her heart from behind.

  “Voi siete Bastion contrari,” chuckled Nonna.

  Lou laughed.

  Sebastiano pressed his finger to his ears.

  “Mi scusi—excuse me,” Nonna said, now being quiet.

  “What was that you said, Nonna? Something about us being opposing Bastion? I don’t know that expression.” Julie noted the blood pressure readings. Then she took the flashlight from his bag and checked her grandmother’s eyes. “Okay, look this way,” she ordered, pointing to the side.

  “It means you’re always arguing. Bastion, Sebastiano—they’re the same. A good play on words, don’t you think?” Lou said from across the room. He didn’t bother to hide his amusement.

  “Terrific. Two doctors make a house call and you can make jokes?” Julie exclaimed. She pointed in the opposite direction, and Nonna alertly followed with her eyes. “I don’t know what that says about the medical profession.”

  “Maybe I am not talking about the medical profession?” Nonna said under her breath. Her eyes flicked toward Sebastiano.

  Julie narrowed her vision. “I think Nonna is just fine.” She leaned close to her grandmother and whispered, “You planned this somehow, didn’t you?”

  Her grandmother looked away, leaving Julie wondering.

  Sebastiano knelt in front of her and spoke in Italian. “Your vital signs all appear normal now, and you say it’s been more than an hour since you experienced chest pains. I don’t think there is any reason for immediate concern, but I want to be on the safe side. I’d like you to come in for some tests as soon as possible, this afternoon, in fact. When was the last time you had a physical?”

  Nonna shook her head. “My doctor, he doesn’t know anything. I want you,” she said emphatically.

  “I’m not currently practicing because I now spend all my time as an administrator,” he said.

  “I can give you the name of the best cardiologist in town,” Julie said.

  Sebastiano pulled out his cell phone. “I know the one. I’ll call him right now.”

  Nonna nodded wisely to Julie. “Tu vedi. A man of action.”

  “I was happy to call, too, you know.”

  Sebastian waited for the connection. “You don’t always have to do everything.”

  “Excuse me. Was I asking for help?” Julie snapped back.

  Sebastiano held up his hand and turned away to talk in the phone.

  His lack of confrontation galled her even more. “Why did I let him talk me into driving me here?” she grumbled.

  Lou laughed. “Hai ragione, Nonna—you’re right, Nonna. They’re always arguing.”

  “SO, YOU’RE COMING FOR dinner on Wednesday, right?” Julie’s mother, Angela, asked her. This was after Julie had called to push back her fi
rst appointment by a half hour and her mother had managed to ply everyone with strong espresso and cookies. Her mother had used the painted Deruta demitasse cups and matching tray that was usually reserved for holidays and special occasions, a fact that Lou had mentioned out loud, much to Julie’s embarrassment.

  That had been after Nonna had eaten the cookie that Sebastiano had not-so-discreetly slipped to her.

  Julie shook her head. “I’m not sure I can make it, Mom.” Wednesday was the day after her birthday. Even though she figured the invitation was for nothing more than a simple family meal—if there was such a thing as a simple family meal as far as her mother was concerned—she didn’t want to take any chances that it might be a surprise party. She didn’t want to go there. Couldn’t. Time did not heal all wounds. Not for her at least.

  “Thanks, Mom, but I don’t think I can. You see…you see…I have Italian at the Adult School.” Never would she have thought of a standing appointment with Sebastiano Fonterra as a gift from heaven. “That’s right. And Dr. Fonterra here is the teacher. So, I couldn’t possibly skip out.”

  “We eat late anyway. Surely you could come after class? And Sebastiano, of course, too,” her mother persisted. After the first espresso they had switched to a first-name basis, and Julie had noticed that she repeatedly patted her hair.

  In truth, Julie had always thought her parents were still a very handsome couple, and her mother looked much better since she’d started buying her clothes at Tyrell’s, the fancy women’s clothing shop in town—on sale, of course.

  “If you don’t mind having simple Italian food, that is,” Angela added shyly.

  “E le mie polpettine in brodo—and my little meatballs in broth,” Nonna announced in a voice that brooked no compromise.

  Julie moaned inwardly. You’d have thought the Pope had come for a visit the way everyone was carrying on.