Invitation to Italian

by Tracy Kelleher

  Julie pulled the loose blazer tightly across her dress and her eyes met his. She strode over to him and shifted her focus, studying the baked goods on display.

  “I think I’ll have a brownie, two even. This moment definitely requires chocolate.”

  Sebastiano shrugged. Who was he to judge a woman possessed? He turned to the barista, a young woman with a pierced eyebrow and a tattoo of a dragon on her left shoulder. “We’ll have two brownies for here.”

  “Two plates?” the barista asked, her eyebrows raised provocatively. She looked solely at Sebastiano.

  Julie angled her shoulder in front. “That’s one, just one.”

  The barista backed off. “Anything to drink?” she asked, her tone shifting to neutral.

  Sebastiano turned to Julie. She was disquietingly near. “Herbal tea?”

  She blinked. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Of course. Foolish me. Two double-shot espressos. Also for here.” He pulled out his wallet.

  Julie placed a twenty and a Bean World frequent buyer card on the counter. “Let’s agree this one’s on me. My gesture of goodwill.”

  “You really think it will be enough?” His tone was skeptical.

  Julie took the plate and started to nibble. “Frankly, I hope not.”

  Sebastiano indicated a table in the corner all the way in the back. “Why don’t you take a seat, and I’ll bring over the coffees.” For once she didn’t argue, and Sebastiano supposed he should feel lucky. He didn’t.

  He was right.

  “How come you’ve led everybody to believe you’re single?” she asked, cross-examining him before he had even sat down.

  He rested the tiny cups and saucers on the small round table and fished out two packets of sugar and a stir stick from his coat pocket. “I couldn’t remember whether you took sugar.” He pulled out his chair and sat down, resting one hand on the tabletop. The wood was sticky.

  He rubbed his skin, and before she could pounce again, he answered her question. “I’ve never discussed my private life with anyone. What people presumed about my marital status was what they chose to believe.” He drank the espresso in one gulp. The strong brew burned a hole in his already irritated stomach. He crossed his legs. It was impossible to get comfortable in the small bentwood chair.

  “Why did I even assume that we could have a straight forward discussion?” She threw up her hands, then rested her elbows on the table.

  “You might not want to do that,” he cautioned.

  She held up her hands as if to silence him.

  Good. He really preferred to say nothing.

  “Okay, let me start all over.” She took a bite of a brownie and chewed thoughtfully. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

  He recrossed his legs and sat forward. “You have things about your past. I have things about mine—things we’d all rather forget.” His voice was discreetly low.

  “Excuse me, less than twenty-four hours ago you were encouraging me to open up about my past, if I remember correctly.”

  “I remember a number of things about last night,” he responded. He wasn’t about to make this conversation easy on her, either.

  “Yes…well…there is that.” She polished off her brownie. “For the moment I’d rather forget about those other things.”

  “I think I’ll retain the memories nonetheless.”

  “Yes, well, you’re you, and I’m me.” Julie set her jaw. “Listen, you talk about wanting to forget your past, but I find it impossible to believe that it’s easy to forget you have a wife, not to mention a child.”

  “As for my wife, I haven’t seen her for more than seven years. Besides, she’s already moved on, and is living with someone else.”

  Julie picked up the second brownie and bit into it. She put it back on the plate. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to order that, as well.” She still took another bite before pushing the plate away. “So let me get this straight. You claim you don’t think about your wife anymore, but you’d still rather not talk about her. Does that mean that you’re still not over her? I mean, I presume she left you, right?”

  Sebastiano shook his head. He opened his hands, palm sides up. “No, you don’t understand.” His expression was obscure. “She didn’t leave me. I left her.”

  Julie frowned. “Now I really don’t get it.”

  Sebastiano looked at the wall over her shoulder. There was an exhibition of artwork by students from the local Quaker school, and he found himself staring at the painting of a cat. Its head and whiskers occupied most of the picture. He noticed the card next to it, identifying the artist as an eight-year-old girl. The age Violetta would have been if she had lived.

  He turned back to Julie. “Why don’t we just leave it as one of those unexplained mysteries of life?”

  She frowned. “I don’t think so. Besides, I think you owe me.”

  “Why? Because we almost had sex?” He could tell immediately that his words had stung. “Sorry. That was nasty. When I feel put upon I have a bad habit of lashing out.”

  Julie looked like she was doing her best to put a lid on her temper. “Okay, do I need to spell out to you why I think you should tell me?”

  Sebastiano swallowed. “If you’re implying that we have more than a mutual physical attraction, that we appear to be laying the groundwork for something deeper, more emotionally rewarding, I’m not sure that’s possible. In any case, once you hear what I have to tell you, you may not want to.” He stared, not blinking into her eyes.

  She wet her lips, as if digesting his words, but still held his gaze, unwilling to back down.

  In a clear voice without any inflection he explained, “Even though I was a trained physician, I willingly allowed my baby girl to die a painful death. In fact, I orchestrated it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JULIE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING.

  Sebastiano had hoped she would have gotten up and left after what he’d said. That would have been easy.

  She rested her head in her hand and waited.

  Once more, life wasn’t easy.

  He rubbed the side of his jaw and glanced down into his empty coffee cup. The remains of the espresso coated the white china surface. He spoke, and as he stared into the murky depths, he found himself transported back to the past. He was still sitting in Bean World, but the images were as fresh as if he were experiencing them for the first time.

  “I was at university, getting my medical degree. I had been married for two years. Raffaela and I had known each other since we were children. We grew up on the same street in Milano, went to school together. Our families were best friends. It had been so natural to marry.”

  He looked but didn’t look at Julie. He was hardly aware of her nodding.

  “She was studying law when we realized she was pregnant. We were happy but nervous, unsure of how we could afford a family. We were living in a studio apartment that was attached to her family’s house. But she decided to quit school until the baby came, work in a law office as a clerk, make money to put away with the idea of going back to school later. We had it all planned.”

  He could feel his throat get tighter. “The pregnancy had been uneventful. Raffaela blossomed. I had never seen her so happy. Then the baby was born.” He stopped. In his eyes, he witnessed himself holding Violetta in his arms. A shiver ran up and down his skin as he relived all the hope and pride that a new father feels.

  “Then what happened?” Julie prompted quietly.

  He heard her as if from far away.

  “At first, everything seemed to be fine. The baby nursed well and was alert. I went to classes and was absorbed in my studies. Too absorbed. One night I came home to find Raffaela crying. She had had an appointment with the pediatrician because the baby seemed to be losing weight. Appeared listless, at times cranky.

  “I said that probably she was just teething and the pediatrician was unnecessarily concerned. He was like that. I had never liked him. I thought he was too old
-fashioned. He had been the choice of my mother-in-law.”

  Sebastiano raised his head. He seemed to see Julie for the first time. “I was wrong. We went back to the doctor. Had tests run. Violetta had a tumor in her stomach.”

  “Oh, no, you must have been beside yourself.” Julie reached out and laid her hand atop his.

  He looked down, confused to feel her touch. Then he lifted his chin to make eye contact. “No, on the contrary, I felt sure that I could cure her. When others tried to suggest that perhaps it was time to let nature take its course, I belittled them as uninformed and having no faith in the power of medicine. I sought out further specialists, put my child through numerous surgeries, rounds of chemotherapy and months of living in hospitals.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Julie said.

  “Neither can I now, not really. But I was convinced that if I spent more time learning about cancer, I could cure her. Meanwhile, my wife moved into the hospital. She was essentially living there while I still went to classes. She bore the brunt of the agony, not me,” he confessed.

  “But you thought you were doing the right thing, everything that was in your power as a physician to help,” Julie argued.

  “Was I?” Sebastiano asked, the agony cracking his voice. “Oh, there were times when she rallied, when we thought she was going to pull through. I was sure I was vindicated in my obsession. What a fool! Those times turned out to be short-lived. Violetta died nine months later, never having left the hospital, with tubes and machines tied to her emaciated, shriveled body. I felt destroyed.”

  “As any parent would be,” Julie said, empathizing.

  Sebastiano blinked. He noticed she had tears streaming down her face. His own eyes were dry. He hadn’t cried since the day Violetta died. “But would any parent have chosen to abandon his wife without a word, leaving no address, refusing to communicate in any way?”

  JULIE RUBBED her forehead. The story Sebastiano had told was almost too much to comprehend. As an obstetrician she had seen her fair share of things go wrong, unexplained miscarriages, complicated births, stillborn babies and babies born with severe physical challenges. But it was another to hear it voiced in such a personal and heart-rending way.

  But not to reach out to his wife in such a time of distress? When as a new mother, she must have been suffering from an agony almost unheard of?

  It was so easy to dismiss him as having acted cruelly. Of being selfish. But could she truly say that she would have acted differently? The only person close to her who had died had been her grandfather. After Babbo’s death, she remembered hiding in her closet until her mother had found her the next morning. Still, she had been a child. She played over Sebastiano’s words in her mind. “How long did you run away for?”

  “Forever,” he said simply.

  “I don’t understand. I mean, I might complain about my parents and my brothers… Okay, I do complain, a lot. But bottom line, I could never imagine cutting all ties.”

  “Just another instance where we disagree,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  There was a silence between them.

  “You mean, you haven’t spoken to Raffaela or your parents since your daughter’s death?”

  He shook his head. “Not really, no. At first, I wandered, traveled to Sicily, then North Africa. I finally decided to go back to school, switched my specialty from oncology to cardiology. I couldn’t deal with the first. I transferred to Rome, away from home, some place where I was anonymous. I finished my degree, but even that wasn’t enough. I decided I didn’t want any contact with patients. Even that was too much.

  “I switched to hospital administration and went to France, getting an MBA from INSEAD, in Fontaine-bleau. Then I came to America, first to a job in Houston, then to Providence, Rhode Island. I did well, but I wanted to shape a hospital the way I envisioned it should run. Create something from scratch. Then came the opportunity in Grantham. I grabbed it.”

  “And all this time you haven’t gone back to Italy?”

  “Not once,” he said with a single shake of his head. “It was too difficult.”

  She wrinkled her forehead. “Wait a minute. You must have been in touch in some way. Otherwise, how would you know about your wife? You filed for separation, even divorce?”

  Sebastiano nodded wearily. “That’s the problem with talking to people who actually listen. They have a way of asking questions.” He sighed. “I’d like to say that after a period of recovery I took the initiative and called her. Unfortunately, it was more that my mother tracked me down. Don’t ask how—Italian mothers have ways. Anyway, to make a long story short, my mother took it upon herself to visit me in France. The first thing she did was to throw her arms around me. The second thing she did after she smelled my breath, was to ask me why I’d been drinking when it was only eight in the morning?”

  “So that’s how you became an alcoholic?”

  “I was always an alcoholic,” Sebastiano corrected her. “Alcoholism isn’t something that happens overnight. You’re born with an addictive personality. In my case, my drinking was all part of my running away, my denial of reality. And like most alcoholics, I was convinced that I had it all under control. I reasoned that if anyone deserved a drink, it was me.”

  “But at the same time you hated yourself for your dependency, and what you saw as another act of cowardice,” Julie added, assessing the situation.

  Sebastiano held up his index finger. “Are you sure your specialty wasn’t psychiatry?”

  Julie ignored his question. “So what did you mother do?”

  “She cleaned up my apartment, cooked me enough food to last several weeks and put Raffaela’s phone number on the refrigerator door. Then she put on her coat, gave me a big hug and told me to call, but only after I’d started attending Alcoholics Anonymous. My mother can be a very forceful person.”

  “I think I like your mother,” Julie said.

  Sebastiano ruminated a moment. “You two would probably get along well.”

  Julie took a second to study what was left of her remaining brownie. “So did you follow her advice?”

  He shook his head. “Not right away. It took until I was in Houston that I was ready to confront my addiction. It’s been over six years since I had a drink.”

  “And during that time you never spoke to your wife?”

  “My mother would call every couple of months. No pressure, just chitchat—about the family, news that Raffaela had gone back to school, had moved into an apartment on her own.”

  “And then you finally called her?”

  He breathed in slowly. “Yes, I finally swallowed my guilt and called. It was a difficult conversation, probably the most difficult one I’ve had—up until now.”

  “And what was her reaction? Did she want to see you? Get back together?” Julie couldn’t imagine the myriad emotions the woman must have been feeling.

  “I’m not sure. To see me? Perhaps? To get back together? I didn’t think so. Not that she spelled it out in so many words. But before she could even broach the subject, I told her I thought it was time for both of us to move on, to make new lives for ourselves. I said that my mother had told me she had already gone back to school, so she seemed to be on that track anyway.”

  “And that was it? No argument?” Julie was astounded.

  “She asked if I intended to come back to Italy, and I told her no. She didn’t say anything more. I think all the feelings we had for each other had gotten used up years before.”

  Julie ran a fingernail against her bottom teeth. “Are you saying that you didn’t love her anymore?”

  Sebastiano hesitated. “It was more that I didn’t have any more love to give. I still cared for her in the sense that I wanted to see her happy. And when she called me some months later to let me know she had met someone, I was genuinely glad. To move to an official separation seemed the logical step.”

  Julie opened her mouth as she parsed his words. “Let me get this straight. You didn’t have a
ny more love to give to her or to give period?”

  Sebastiano hunched forward and steepled his hands, letting his fingertips bounce against his lips. “You must understand.” He held his hands toward her. “The way I’ve learned to function is to lead an orderly life. No big emotional highs. And no big emotional lows. That way I keep everything in its place. And don’t give me that look.”

  Julie tipped her chair on its back legs. “Did I say anything?”

  “You didn’t have to. I know what you’re thinking, and however you might object, this way of living allows me to put one step ahead of the next with little drama and great care. You see, you’re not the only control freak. I just manifest it differently.” He started to gather up their cups, stacking the saucers on top of each other and balancing one cup within the other.

  Julie pitched her weight forward, and the chair legs thumped to the ground. “Hold on a minute. You didn’t think you could lay this all on me and not hear from me?”

  “I suppose that was too much to ask for.” He rose to put the dishes in a rubber tub by the wall.

  “Just leave those dishes, would you?”

  He sat.

  She touched her breastbone and spoke from the heart. “I feel for you. I really do. No one should have to go through what you suffered. On the other hand, your solution to this terrible, horrible, agonizing experience? I just don’t understand it.”

  She held out her hands, palms up, as if weighing her thoughts. “Yes, you let down people you loved and who loved you—people who were hurting just as much as you. What you did was horrible, but we all do stupid, sometimes awful things under stress. Did you go beyond the boundaries? I’m not sure. I’m certainly not one to judge.”

  She scrunched up her mouth. “On the other hand, I look at what you’ve become. I hear you talk about creating a hospital from scratch, which some might say is an act of ambition—not that all ambition is bad. But I think it’s more, a part of who you are.”

  Julie reached across the table to Sebastiano. A sticky surface was the last thing on her mind. “I think your professional ambition reflects your personal plan. I think it’s all part of coming to America to recreate yourself, build a new you—one without a past.” She squeezed his hands and let go.