Across the Table

by Linda Cardillo

  When the kids were in bed I painted the apartment, made curtains, refinished old dressers and, as summer neared its end, organized my lesson plans and arranged field trips for the fall.

  Now that I was living in Boston, I decided to meet with the educational program directors of the museums in person and coax them into special tours and behind-the-scenes visits for my students.

  I asked Mom to watch the kids the day I scheduled appointments along the Fenway at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The last time I’d been at either one I’d been shepherding a raucous group of students who saw the trip as a day off from the classroom. Very few had appreciated what they’d seen. The rest had only paid enough attention to fill out the worksheet I’d distributed on the bus.

  I’d given myself time when scheduling the appointments to wander through my favorite galleries. When I was done, my mission at both museums accomplished, I came out the side door of the MFA. Across the street was the Museum School. I hadn’t been back since I’d graduated. It wasn’t the sort of place that invited alumni back for reunions.

  I was curious enough to make my way into the building. I told myself I was gathering information from the admissions office for my few serious students who were thinking about applying to art school.

  But if I’d been honest, I’d have realized that I was looking for a lost part of myself. I felt like an interloper, an impostor, when I walked into the building. The school had a summer session and was swarming with students—intense, paint spattered, arrayed in a wild panoply of colorful, mismatched, funky clothing.

  I was so out of place. I’d dressed as the suburban mother of three and schoolteacher that I was for the meetings at the museums. The Toni who’d once roamed these halls cringed at the Toni now stepping carefully into the lobby. And not just because of how I looked.

  I almost turned around and left. But I followed my nose and my memories down the stairs to the print studio, not quite sure what I was seeking. I hesitated before opening the door.

  You don’t belong here anymore, a voice inside my head scolded. You gave this up a long time ago. You can’t go back. You can’t undo that decision. Stop before you make a fool of yourself.

  I took my hand off the doorknob, ready to listen to the cautionary voice. But someone on the other side of the door pushed it open and rushed through, knapsack flying. She didn’t close the door behind her and I found myself standing in the hallway looking into my past.

  The late-afternoon light slanted across the floor through windows as dirty as they had been years before. The few people in the room were bent over workbenches and didn’t bother to glance up at the stranger in their midst. I took a deep breath and crossed over the threshold into the studio.

  “Excuse me.” I addressed no one in particular. “Do you mind if I look around? I’m an alum, an art teacher.”

  The student nearest me shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  I started moving around the room. Prints were hanging from wires strung across the middle of the space above the worktables. Many of the pieces were striking. Dramatic abstract images. Nothing at all like the work I had done, which had been very personal—figures revealing stories. All that work had been packed away in portfolios for years.

  I could hear voices coming from the pressroom beyond the studio and the sound of one of the larger presses being cranked. Not wanting to disturb what was under way, I began to walk back to the entrance of the studio. Then I heard my name.

  “Toni?” The questioner’s tone was a combination of surprise and disbelief.

  I turned in response to see Peter Ricci standing by the pressroom and felt his eyes sweep over me in appraisal and instant judgment. I expected that he was congratulating himself on his accurate prediction. The talent he’d once recognized and tried to nurture had been diluted by years in a suburban high school. I stood there in my gray linen suit and my Capezio pumps, my hair pulled neatly in a ponytail, and regretted that I’d even gone into the building.

  Peter moved toward me, his hand outstretched in greeting, formal and without warmth.

  “What a surprise! What brings you back? In town for a day of the arts?”

  I couldn’t blame him for thinking I was a “lady who lunched.” Someone who came into Boston for a few hours to do some shopping in Copley Square, have lunch at the Ritz and take in the latest exhibit at the MFA. “I live in Boston now. I had appointments to set up field trips for my students and I thought I’d stop at the school to pick up admissions information. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke my head in and see the state of the art. Despite the age-old methods, your students are doing some very modern stuff.”

  “It never gets old to me. These kids continually find new ways to express themselves. So you’re still teaching? Did you continue your printmaking?”

  I shook my head. “Life took over after I graduated.”

  “That’s a shame. A waste, actually. You were one of the most remarkable artists to come through here.”

  “Thanks, I’m honored that you thought so, but what I see here today is far beyond what I was doing back then.”

  “If you’d continued, who knows where you’d be today.”

  The longer we talked, the more uncomfortable I became. I wasn’t willing to have my choices questioned or to be reminded of lost opportunities. I had a family to support. My father had been right; art was a gamble, one I couldn’t afford.

  I looked at my watch and made my apologies.

  “I’m so sorry. I’ve got to get back to my family. It’s been good to see you.”

  “Come again, Toni. Bring your class next time.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure they’d love it.”

  And I escaped. I felt claustrophobic. Riding back to Government Center on the Green Line I wished I hadn’t gone down to the print studio. It had unsettled me and raised painful questions about how much I’d changed. The talented artist Peter had recognized no longer existed. We both knew that, and I didn’t know which one of us regretted it more.

  School started, and in October I brought my seniors into town for their field trip to the MFA. I decided not to take Peter up on his invitation to his class. The last place I wanted to be was the studio.

  Hazel wrote, asking me to bring the kids to Belle Arbor for Thanksgiving. I suspected she might be trying to bring Bobby and me together. I’d heard from Sandra that her mother had been distraught about the divorce. What she didn’t tell me seeped back to me from friends of mine who also knew Sandra. Hazel found it incomprehensible that Bobby would leave his family. She was convinced I’d done something so unforgivable he had no choice but to leave. More than likely, she thought, Vanessa wasn’t his daughter.

  I was hurt and outraged that she’d even entertain such a thought. Throughout my marriage I’d tried to be a good daughter-in-law.

  “She’s an old woman whose faith in her son has been shattered. She’s grasping at any explanation to feel better about him. Let it go. But don’t go to Indiana.” This was the advice from my brother Mike, who, in the months since we’d moved back to the neighborhood, had become my confidant.

  I sent a letter and pictures of the kids, the subtle message of their blond hair and blue eyes underscoring that they were decidedly Templetons. Even though it had been more than a year since Bobby left, I still felt raw and vulnerable.

  A few days after Thanksgiving, just before Paradiso was booked solid for office Christmas parties, Mom tripped on the cellar stairs and broke her ankle. She was effectively off her feet until Christmas.

  “Toni, I’ve got a deal for you,” she told me that afternoon when I got home from school. Her foot was propped up on a kitchen chair. “I’ll watch the kids in the evenings if you’ll take over hostessing downstairs.”

  I wanted to ask who would do my lesson plans and grading, but I knew I’d fit them in somehow.

  Considering everything my mother had done for me, I could spell her for a few weeks in the restaurant.

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nbsp; “Put some makeup on and find something a little softer to wear than those suits of yours.”

  I’d grown up watching my mother open boxes from my father every year on her birthday and Christmas, boxes filled with gorgeous dresses, cashmere sweaters, diamond bracelets. I thought that’s what all men did, but I’d learned otherwise. I didn’t have a thing in my closet that would meet my mother’s requirement for how the Paradiso hostess should dress.

  I enlisted my cousin Annette to go shopping with me.

  “How tarty do you want to look?”

  “My mother doesn’t dress like a tart!”

  “She dresses like a movie star from the 1960s. Think Sophia Loren. Gina Lollobrigida. Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8.”

  “Do you think I can pull it off?”

  “Toni! You’ve got my uncle Al’s smoldering bedroom eyes and jet-black hair, and my aunt Rose’s figure. We are not talking Audrey Hepburn here, although the black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s wouldn’t be a bad start.”

  Annette poked through racks and threw things over the dressing room door. In the end, I settled on a short black skirt and a couple of sweaters, “sexy but elegant” in Annette’s assessment, and a red dress for the catered parties.

  “You’re a ‘winter,’” she told me, based on some Cosmo article that categorized flattering colors by the season. She also made me buy a pair of stiletto heels.

  “I wore nurses’ shoes when I waitressed during college,” I protested.

  “You’re not a waitress anymore. You’re the woman with the power to banish someone to the hell of a table near the restrooms or bestow upon them the gift of a seat by the window, where anyone walking by can see how favored they are. You may not be the queen Aunt Rose is, but you are the princess and you should look the part. Besides, you never know who might walk into Paradiso tomorrow night and be struck dumb by your beauty.”

  “I’m not ready for that.”

  “You never will be if you continue to dress like you’re going to a PTA meeting. Our next stop is the lingerie department. You need sheer black stockings and a push-up bra. You know, Toni, I don’t remember you dressing so conservatively when we were kids. You were a lot more of a free spirit. It’s good to have you back in the neighborhood, cuz.”

  She put her arm around me, guided me through intimate apparel and then marched me to the cosmetics department.

  “My friend Elaine works for Lancôme. She’ll set us up with what you need.”

  The next afternoon, after getting home from school, giving the boys a snack and making sure they’d done their homework, I got dressed in the new clothes. I herded the kids downstairs to my mother’s apartment at four-thirty.

  “Turn around—I want the whole effect,” she said when I walked into the kitchen. Vanessa, who’d been with my mother all day, was clamoring for a hug and a kiss. I scooped her up, nuzzled her and then let her squirm out of my arms to toddle over to her brothers, who were on their way to the TV.

  “Don’t let them watch too much,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. Manny is sending up some ziti in about an hour and then we’ll play cards. Let me see you! Nice. Very nice. Eventually a haircut would be a good idea. Enough with the hippie folksinger look. But on the whole, you look enticing.”

  “Gee, thanks, Ma. Glad you approve.”

  “Now go downstairs before your father starts getting agita that there’s nobody in the front of the house.”

  And so began my new role as the hostess of Paradiso. I’d like to say my performance that first night was as successful as my appearance, but it took me a while to learn how to balance the flow and recognize who should get the best tables. It had always looked so effortless when Mom had done it. I was exhausted by the time I got upstairs.

  The kids were sound asleep. Mom and I had already talked about having them spend the nights with her and Daddy, so I slipped off my heels and padded up the stairs to my own place alone. I washed off the unfamiliar makeup and went to bed.

  I was into my second week when Peter Ricci came in for dinner. I don’t think he recognized me at first, especially since I’d taken the plunge and had my hair styled, again with Annette by my side. We went to a salon on Newberry Street, where I paid a fortune, but came out with a look that was all tumbling waves.

  Both Manny and Mike gave me the thumbs-up sign, which was a relief. Mom thought it was a little too tousled. “Bed hair,” she called it. But she agreed it was better than the Joan Baez look. I’d never had so much attention paid to my appearance.

  It finally dawned on Peter who I was as I handed him his menu.

  “Toni? What are you doing here? I thought you were teaching.”

  “I am. This is my family’s place. I’m helping out for a few weeks. Enjoy your meal.”

  I sent over a small antipasto on the house for him and his date.

  I wasn’t crazy about seeing Peter Ricci again. It was too much of a reminder of how sharp a turn my life had taken. Unfortunately Peter didn’t realize how unwelcome his presence was, and he actually got up from his table and asked me to come over and meet the woman he was dining with.

  “I’ve been telling her about you.”

  Great, I thought. A cautionary tale of unfulfilled potential. Watch out, or you, too, could become a lapsed artist, fallen away from your calling to show slides of the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s David to bored teenagers.

  “Maybe you know her work,” he said as we walked back to their table. “She’s Diane Rocheleau.”

  Of course I knew her work. She’d emerged in the late sixties and had several shows in New York that had garnered critical acclaim. The last I’d heard, the Whitney had held an exhibition of her work. She was a printmaker.

  “What’s she doing in Boston?” I’d begun to wish I’d seated them at a better table.

  “She’s a guest lecturer at the school for a couple of weeks. Why don’t you come down to one of the evening classes next week? That is, if you can get away.”

  Good. He’d given me an out. “It’s hard to do. This is a busy season for us. I’ll try to make it, but no promises. Thanks for the invite.”

  Diane was gracious, and even though I tried to detect a note of condescension, she was genuine and down-to-earth. I was grateful that neither one of them asked me what I was currently working on. How would I have answered? Finding the right shade of yellow for my daughter’s bedroom?

  “The meal was wonderful,” Diane said. “Our compliments to the chef.”

  “Thanks, I’ll let him know. My brother’s cooking tonight. It’s always a little spicier when he’s in the kitchen.”

  After they left I tried to brush away the glimmer of reawakening longing that had surfaced. Now, more than ever, I told myself, I don’t have what it takes to be an artist. I picked up a stack of menus and turned up the wattage on my smile as I saw the mayor’s chief of staff walk in the door.

  Peter Ricci’s invitation wasn’t an idle one. He stopped by the restaurant two days later, not to eat but to give me the schedule of Diane’s demonstration classes.

  “You look great, by the way. Different than you did this summer. City life seems to be agreeing with you.”

  “My mother’s influence. She thinks the sizzle shouldn’t just be in the frying pan if you’re going to run a successful restaurant.”

  He laughed. “You know, I’ve eaten here many times and never realized this was your family’s place. I bought a loft down on Union Wharf a few years ago and have adopted this neighborhood. It reminds me so much of where my grandparents lived in New York.” He paused. “I just had a thought. I started a neighborhood art program last year at the community center. I scrounge whatever supplies I can for the kids, and I’ve twisted a few arms among the faculty at the Museum School to get them to come down here and teach a class or two. You’ve probably got your hands full with your own teaching load and the restaurant, but if you were interested, I could use someone with your talent and experience.”

&nb
sp; It was my turn to laugh.

  “Besides my teaching and the restaurant, I also have three children I occasionally try to see, Peter. I wish I could help you, and I’m flattered that you asked. I think it’s wonderful of you to be doing this. But at this point in my life, it would be impossible. For the same reasons, I know I can’t make it to one of Diane’s classes. But thank you.”

  I hoped that the wall I was erecting around me was high enough not to be breached. I wanted to say to him, Stop trying to reclaim the Toni who was your star pupil. She doesn’t exist anymore.

  “Okay. I understand. I didn’t realize you had kids. But if you change your mind, give me a call. Here’s my card.”

  I stuck the card in my pocket, but I didn’t intend to use it.

  I had spent too many years allowing someone else to define who I was. My parents. The nuns at Sacred Heart. Bobby. Even Peter, who thought he knew who I was when I’d been his student. I’d returned to the neighborhood for the sake of my children, so they could grow up surrounded by love. But I was determined not to go back to the old definitions of myself. I was trying to shed masks I’d accumulated over the years, masks that had come at great cost to the original Toni, whoever she was.

  In the final year of my marriage to Bobby I’d been in hell, caretaker to his disintegrating personality as my own identity disappeared. After he left I found myself in a kind of limbo. Neither pain nor joy made its way onto that neutral shore. The weekend my plane to Colorado was canceled, I’d abandoned the ridiculous notion that Bobby and I might reconcile, eliminating the opportunity to even open the discussion. Mike had been at the airport with me and Vanessa, and rather than read me the riot act, he was very quiet and thoughtful. His comforting presence forced me to think through what I really wanted, and I knew it wasn’t resuming my life with Bobby, in Colorado or anywhere.