Invitation to Italian

by Tracy Kelleher

  That was his dad, Paul thought. Supportive to a fault, when he could have easily given up on his son. Not that he had been blind to Paul’s addiction. The one time his late mother and father had flown out to see him in Hollywood, he’d had them stay at his Brentwood mansion. Paul had thought he’d been discreet about his drug and alcohol use, but his father had approached him one afternoon while his mother was lying down.

  “Son,” he’d said, “I’m speaking as a father, as someone who loves you. You’ve got to clean up your act be fore it gets you. I know you can do it.”

  Paul had thought to deny the accusation, but realized it would have been futile. “Yeah, you’re right,” he had said, not really believing it. “I suppose it would kill mom if she knew about it.”

  Carl had shaken his head. “It will kill you. Don’t do it for your mother. Do it for yourself.”

  In the end, Paul had heeded his advice. And he’d come home. Each day was a battle. But at least he had the unqualified support of his father, despite all his past behavior. He might have gotten sober for himself, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still trying to make it up to his father.

  So Paul stretched a tight smile on his lips and replied to Angela’s request. “You know, I’d like to help out, but I can’t make any guarantees where I’ll be then. Could you just pencil me in for now?” he asked.

  “You’re planning on leaving?” Carl asked.

  Paul could see the hurt in his eyes. “No, no plans for the moment,” he tried to reassure him. “It’s just I’ve learned that for now, I don’t make plans too far ahead.”

  The only plans Paul had for the future? To clear up certain matters with Zora Zemanova—sooner rather than later.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT WAS ONLY the Monday after the first Italian class—with just two more days to go until the next, not to mention dinner at Julie’s parents’ house. But Sebastiano was desperate. Julie’s home number and address weren’t in the phone book. No doctor’s were. But that didn’t stop Sebastiano from finding out where she lived. He had access to the hospital data bank after all, and he dipped into it knowing that the motivation for his search was far from professional. At least he could satisfy his conscience by saying that he’d held off using the information all of Friday, and what seemed a long and torturous weekend. Granted, he’d halfway dialed her number several times before stopping. He didn’t want her thinking…wait a minute—maybe he did want her thinking. But about what?

  Finally, Monday rolled around and as Sebastiano sat through a dinner with a prospective donor that had dragged on for hours, he decided that he’d had enough of being discreet, low-key, even properly reserved—when it came to Julie, that is. He could barely contain his impatience as the hedge-fund manager went on and on about his new ski lodge in Utah, all the while indulging in multiple after-dinner brandies. That was the thing about a lot of rich people Sebastiano had come to realize. They knew how to linger—and to make other people pay. On top of which, Sebastiano still had his A.A. meeting to go.

  But at last, he’d fulfilled his obligations. Now he was in the car on his way to Easton. That’s where she lived, a tiny town just outside of Grantham, a hop, skip and a throw past Lake Vanderbilt. It had its share of quaint clapboard storefronts, a café, a tasteful tack shop and rival Methodist and Presbyterian churches.

  Yet, despite its picture-postcard quality, and the usual claim that Washington had slept there, Easton had never achieved the cachet of Grantham. It lacked the Ivy League university for one. It was closer to New Brunswick with its working class neighborhoods for another.

  Still, any town that boasted Lou Antonelli’s ga rage, which Sebastiano drove past as he entered Easton, had a lot going for it—considering Iris Phox’s recommendation.

  He glanced at the GPS and took a right through a small development of 60s ranch houses and split-levels until the road ended at a pair of impressive gates marking the entrance to Haversham Farm. Now that the land had been sold off, the Colonial revival stone mansion was all that what was left of what was once an extensive holding. Even the mansion itself had been divided up into condos.

  Sebastiano buzzed the intercom but didn’t get any response. He should have phoned ahead of time. She could be asleep. She could be out. She could be at the hospital delivering a baby who didn’t know to be cooperative and come at lunchtime. Or still, she could have a visitor.

  He decided to ignore that possibility and pressed the buzzer once more. What the heck? The worst that could happen was for her to yell at him for waking her up. No, that wasn’t the worst that could happen.

  The worst was that a male voice, known or unknown—better unknown, he decided rapidly—would yell at him for disturbing them.

  He had already wrestled his keys out of his jacket pocket when he heard a muffled voice through the intercom.

  “Hello? Is someone there?” It was Julie. She sounded as if she had a bad head cold.

  He bent down and pressed the speaker button. “It’s Sebastiano. I hope I’m not disturbing you.” He lifted his finger.

  “The timing couldn’t be worse, but how come I’m not surprised,” she responded in a less-than-enthusiastic voice.

  Ironically, her caustic tone immediately warmed his heart. “Does that mean I can come up?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Why not? Up the stairs and to the right.”

  Sebastiano heard a loud buzz and pressed down on the brass handle. The door opened. He stepped inside to what must have been the grand entryway to the original mansion. The central lobby furniture was tastefully upholstered in fading chintz. A resplendent chandelier hung from a high ceiling open to the second floor. A spiral staircase ascended, splitting in two directions, allowing the full glory of a stained-glass window to rise from the intermediary landing. Off this central public space, heavy wooden doors with numbers and knockers closed off the wings of the house, forming two condos on each floor.

  Sebastiano let his hand glide along the gleaming mahogany banister as he walked silently up the carpeted stairway. He could imagine sinking into it in his bare feet. At the top of the staircase he hesitated.

  A door opened on his right. A familiar head of black shiny hair stuck out. “Come in,” she said, holding open the door.

  He followed her in and made a quick survey as she closed the door behind him. The room, which must have one time been the parlor, still had its original moldings. Tasteful, simple furnishings à la Pottery Barn were grouped around an oriental rug and a large coffee table. There were pillows everywhere, and a needlepointed footstool was positioned in front of a bentwood rocking chair. A fire was blazing in the fireplace, and on the couch a photo album lay open.

  “I was worried you might be asleep when I buzzed, but I see that you were up.” He looked over his shoulder to address her.

  Her back was to him. She closed the door and turned. Her head was down as she ran her hand nervously through her short hair. She was casually dressed in sweat pants and an oversize T-shirt. Her feet were bare. Her burgundy-colored nail polish stood out against the gleaming hardwood floors.

  Sebastiano felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He breathed in slowly. He wasn’t some inexperienced adolescent who couldn’t control himself. But he was also man enough to know it was time to stop pretending. He took a step toward her.

  She raised her face.

  And he saw that her eyes were swollen and red and her cheeks blotchy where tracks from tears had formed down her face.

  He rushed to her side. “What’s wrong? It’s not your grand mother? Nothing has happened since her episode this morning?”

  Julie avoided his embrace and walked across the room, stopping in front of the coffee table. She hugged her sides and smiled too brightly. “No, she’s fine. Everyone’s fine. I’m the only one who’s messed up at the moment. But that, too, shall pass. This is so embarrassing. I can’t tell you.” She made a wavy motion to dismiss her worries.

  Sebastiano wasn’t going to be p
ut off. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. For someone who normally towered over most of the world, she seemed suddenly small and vulnerable. “What’s wrong?” he asked again.

  She attempted to separate herself.

  He only held on tighter. “It’s okay,” he said, even softer. “You can tell me. I won’t bite.”

  Julie looked up. Her eyes welled with tears, but she sniffed them back. “And here I went and got a rabies shot for nothing.”

  He squeezed her upper arm. “You see, already I must be helping. You’ve managed to insult me within minutes of my arrival.”

  She glanced sideways and wet her lips. “It’s complicated.”

  “What isn’t?”

  She looked down, but she didn’t pull away from his embrace. “It’s something that happened a long time ago, around this time of year. So, stupid me, I get upset when the date rolls around.”

  Sebastiano cupped her chin in his hand and raised her face so that they stood eye-to-eye. “No one would ever call you stupid, least of all me.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Tell me, tell me, Julie. Does it have something to do with the photos that are spread all over the sofa?” He glanced over at the couch.

  She nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, kind of.”

  Still holding on, he guided her over to the couch. He pushed the scrapbook to the side and sat her next to him in the middle. He reached over and spread the photo album on their laps. “So tell me about the pictures,” he said, his voice coaxing. He flipped a page over and back. “They look a bit old. Wait a minute, is that you?” He pointed to a formal photo of Julie’s college basketball team. He peered closely, raised his head and narrowed his eyes to study Julie, then went back to viewing the photo again. “Did you have blond hair at one point?”

  Julie shrugged. “Just streaks. It was a phase I was going through.”

  He glanced at her pixie cut and red highlights. “You seem to go through many phases.”

  Julie studied the photo, too. “Well, that was probably not one of my better ones. I can’t tell you how much the peroxide wrecked my hair—for months.”

  Sebastiano waited, waited for her to say what she really meant.

  She fingered the faces in the team photo lightly. “Betsy, Chris, Mollie, Ann—though we called her ‘Push.’ Don’t ask me why. I don’t remember. That one at the end, that’s Winn.”

  “They seem like a nice group. You played a sport together?”

  “Yup. The women’s basketball team—at the University of Connecticut.”

  “I see,” he said, examining the picture closely. “Going by the size of your team members I assumed you weren’t the gymnastics squad.”

  She angled her chin toward him. “Do you always think you’re so witty?”

  “Almost always.” He smiled apologetically.

  She still had the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look to her eyes, but some of the hollowness had diminished. Thank God. He guided her attention back gently toward the photos. “And this was taken when?” he asked.

  Julie glanced at the page. “Sixteen years ago.” She turned and gazed into the fire. “A lifetime ago. For the two on the right, especially. Ann, the second one from the end, is dead. And the one in the end? Winn?” She pointed. “She will always walk with a limp.”

  “The death, the limp? They’re related?”

  “They happened sixteen years ago on September twenty-sixth.”

  A date that fell tomorrow, on Tuesday, Sebastiano realized. “And you remember this so well because…?”

  She screwed her mouth up. “Because it’s my birthday. And it was my birthday. The three of us went out to celebrate. I was driving.”

  Sebastiano felt an immense pain in his chest.

  “I came to a traffic intersection. There was a light. It was green. I didn’t even think to look. I didn’t even see the truck coming on the right—the truck that hadn’t bothered to stop.”

  “You’d been drinking?” he asked.

  “No, we were still underage. We were trying to be good. We didn’t want any hassles from the coach,” she said, her eyes on the photo.

  “So you had the right of way. The truck was at fault.”

  “What difference does it make? One of my best friends died because she was in my car that night. If I hadn’t wanted to celebrate my stupid birthday so badly…” She gave him a steely-eyed glare. “It was my fault that Ann died and that Winn was permanently injured. No one can tell me otherwise.”

  “Well, I hope they at least tried.”

  “Oh, please, let’s not talk about the college counselors and their touchy-feely approach to life. You would have thought Mr. Rogers had entered the room!”

  “I don’t know this Mr. Rogers, but what about your family? Surely they helped you?”

  “An Italian-American family talk about something like that? That’s the last place they would have wanted to go. Better to talk to the parish priest and sweep the shame under the rug.”

  “I don’t care where your family comes from or what they believe, it’s ridiculous that you’re still feeling this guilt—guilt that you lived and your friend died. Besides, how old were you when this all happened? Nineteen? Twenty?” His frustration came out in his raised voice.

  “Twenty,” Julie concurred, looking into the fire again.

  He placed his thumb and forefinger on her chin and gently guided it to look her straight in the eye. “And what did you do after the accident? Did you drop out of school? Run away from your memories like some people would?”

  “Of course not. I gave up basketball, switched majors to premed and studied my ass off. I wanted to do something for women. So I could help them bring life into the world instead of snuffing it out.”

  “Then you’re better than most. Better than me. But somehow, that’s what I would have expected,” he said, his voice a bit melancholy. It was his turn to gaze at the fire now. Then he snapped out of it. This was about her, not him.

  “So now I understand why you charge into battle the way you do. As someone who’s seen you in action, may I say you make a formidable opponent?”

  “It wasn’t you so much,” Julie protested. She stopped. “All right, it was you, or rather what you represented. Or what I thought you represented. Sometimes…sometimes—” she shook her head “—it’s just so hard, and I get so frustrated trying to help all those women who are not able to help themselves.”

  Before she could protest, he pulled her close and whispered against the side of her head, the wisps of her hair tickling his lips. “I think you’re incredible.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She started to pull away.

  He held her tight, refusing to back down. “For once, don’t argue with me, all right?” He squeezed her harder, only relaxing his grip as she stopped trying to squirm away. “This is what I have to say,” he said, his voice gentle again. “I think you are incredibly brave. I think the world needs more people like you. But I also think you don’t need to go it alone. You can’t control fate or some careless truck driver all those years ago. Sometimes things happen and you can’t do anything about them—that, indeed, you weren’t meant to do anything about them. Then you have to forgive yourself, and overcome the guilt and the pain.”

  She listened, then brought her head up again. “And you know all this because?”

  “Because that’s what they teach you in A.A. That’s right, Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m an alcoholic. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in six years, but I’m still an alcoholic.”

  She blinked. “I had no idea.” She paused. “Is that why you hold yourself in, act so disciplined and cautious?”

  “It’s nice to know you think I’m totally uptight.”

  “That’s not what I think. Well…maybe I did think it, but I didn’t know…”

  “That’s all right. You don’t need to apologize. We are who we are. You charge unannounced into people’s offices. I take extra starch in my shirt collars. But in any cas
e, this is not about me. Tonight we deal with your problems.” He lightly touched her cheek. “Will you try forgiving yourself—if not for yourself, for me?” He cocked his head and tried to look adorable.

  As the only son of doting Italian parents, he’d had much practice in his youth making himself look adorable. But then it hadn’t taken much to get his way. Maybe it would have been better all around if it had been harder? he reflected, but pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Not tonight. Not with her.

  Julie sputtered a laugh. “You’re incorrigible, do you know that? What am I saying? Of course you know that.” She paused. “All right, I’ll try. My worthy adversary.”

  “I like that you consider me worthy.” He leaned forward. His idea was to kiss her playfully on the nose.

  Only, at that moment she chose to tip her head up. Instead of brushing her nose, his lips grazed her parted lips. And then they did more than graze.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  JULIE RESPONDED IMMEDIATELY. Her lips sought his and nipped and tasted. When he opened his mouth, she didn’t need any encouragement, and they mutually plundered at will. He leaned back and took her with him. She straddled his hips and plunged her hands in his hair. His moved up her sides, first molding her sweatshirt then sliding to the bottom ribbing and sneaking underneath. His fingers spanned her rib cage, heat against heat. His thumbs moved upward, teasing her breasts through her bra.

  And then he stopped. His mouth stilled against hers, and it took a fraction of a beat for Julie to realize that the action had come to an abrupt stop. She disentangled her body from his and sat upright, one hand on the back of the couch. She steadied herself against the vibrations tingling her whole body.

  She coughed. “Well, that was unexpected—but clearly enjoyable. Why did you stop?”

  Sebastiano maneuvered her body from beneath her weight. She accommodated by lifting up from her knees and letting him slide to the side. He sat up, cleared his throat and smoothed back the side of his hair, not realizing the top was still mussed.