“Madame,” a white-gloved waiter pulled a cappuccino from the tray, and then a dessert platter.
“I didn’t order this,” I said.
“They are with the compliments of the gentleman over there,” he pointed in the direction of a dark-haired man who tipped his glass toward me as his lips parted in a slow-forming smile.
A second waiter brought a platter of prosciutto, melons, fresh figs and other antipasti.
“I didn’t think you had dishes like this on the menu.”
“We don’t, madame. These were a special request.”
“Grazie,” I said.
When the waiters left, I took another look at the man and mouthed, ‘Grazie’. He smiled and raised his glass toward me. The lantern light cast a soft shadow on his face where his sideburns led to a strong jawline and a dimpled chin.
Strange, I thought, that I would run into someone at the end of my day. I had wandered around the cafe, admiring the antique mirrors and chandeliers, the rooms painted with original frescos. I had run my fingers along one of the mirrors, pondering how many women such as me had looked at themselves, questioning what their future held. How many faces could be staring back at me, and what stories would they tell, what secrets would they hold. Centuries ago, women didn’t grapple with the thoughts of double mastectomies or genetic markers. They lived their lives unaware of a disease until it riddled their bodies. It was a blessing, I thought, not to know the future. Since finding out about the future health risks of my BRCA 1 and 2 gene mutations, I grappled with my options daily.
In my heart, I would rather lose my breasts than die of cancer in the future. I knew life would go on, and with a good partner, even love would continue, but that wasn’t the case with my ex. To him, a mastectomy was an amputation, a disfigurement, a fearful action; whereas I saw it as embracing life. I would feel safer and calmer, but he saw it as false reassurance. He advocated a lifestyle change that wouldn’t allow cancer cells to proliferate. The problem was that included reducing stress, something I couldn’t avoid in my demanding job as a professor. My reputation as a thorough researcher left little time for anything but work.
At times I wondered if my former relationship had been equally as stressful. Thing is, I seemed to choose men who were challenging. One of the things I loved about Roger, was our healthy debates. I had built a wall against opening myself up to criticism, but ever since our philosophy class, he was the one person who could actually win an argument with me. But a double mastectomy was different. Genetic markers were personal, and whatever I chose to do with my body was not up for discussion. It was an area of our life where Roger strongly disagreed, and coupled with other issues, he walked away from our relationship when I needed him most.
As I had stared into the ancient mirror, thoughts of the past, especially my own, had unnerved me and I hurried to the outside patio to find a table, and pull out a book as a distraction. I’d leaned back in the chair, knowing the evening would unfold for the quintessential but canned St. Mark’s experience, with the dueling bands and tourists dancing. A gorgeous Italian flirting with me, however, was beyond what I had imagined.
Then he got up from his chair, and I felt like I was in a movie scene. He was tall and muscular and even the way he walked was mesmerizing - there was an energetic vibe to his movement, and by the time he arrived at my table, I wasn’t thinking about my past at all.
We talked, and when he said, “May I call you Cassandra?”, my name flowing off of his tongue, I was smitten. And when he asked me to dance, the moment he held me, his fingers guiding me with the gentlest pressure on my back, I nestled my chin on his shoulder and felt at peace for the first time in a long time.
Without a beat, the orchestra started the next song and we kept dancing, our feet in sync as if they’d been moving this way for years. He intertwined his fingers with mine and when I accepted this with a slight squeeze, he pulled me even closer. He stroked the outside of my hand softly with his fingers, and every so often I felt his breath against my cheek. I closed my eyes in the moonlit piazza and listened to the violin strings, felt his warm body move with mine, and felt love.
It was you.
Tears filled Harry’s eyes and the page became a blur. Cassandra had vividly described the first night they met, with such detail as if he was right there beside her.
He leafed through pages and pages of Cassandra’s handwriting, stopping to read passages, all from their first week together - the port visits, their evenings on the cruise ship Aqua, their most intimate moments and conversations.
He held the book close to his chest. How silly had he been the night before? He knew she was tense with her father’s visit and it seemed that all of the sensitive issues in her life were raised in that one afternoon - her mother’s death, their own children. He had been pitted in a corner by her father and forgot about who really mattered - Cassandra. Whether they had children or not wasn’t a problem, whether he put up with her grumbly father a few times a year wasn’t a dilemma. What mattered was that they were side by side, each and every day for the rest of their lives. In that togetherness, the magic of their first week would thrive.
ALL NIGHT, Casey lay awake and feared the worst. She sat up in bed at one point, receiver in hand, and thought of calling Harry. Then she shook her head and placed it back down. She wandered into the kitchen, nibbled on some cookies, wrote some thoughts in a book and then stared out the window.
Leading the way to her front door were pine boughs with glimmering white lights twisted through the railings. Inside was the evergreen she and Harry had carried back to the brownstone, decorated with angel ornaments and silver balls that glistened in the tree lights. In every corner of the house, they had tucked bright red or crisp cream poinsettias, and each window had tall taper candles that they lit every evening together. It was the first night that they weren’t glowing, the candles standing like big question marks against a dark window.
Casey lifted one of the stockings from the fireplace mantle, ran her finger over the letters that spelled ‘Casey’ and held the fuzzy top against her cheek. They were a gift from Harry on the second day of Christmas. Her mom had sewn a similar stocking for her when she was first born and it hung by the fireplace each Christmas until her father threw them out with the rest of the decorations. Harry had the stockings replicated from a childhood photo Casey had shown him, only he had given her four. The second stocking had Harry written on the front and Arrigo on the flipside. The other two stockings were left blank.
Nothing else needed to be said. They had talked about having two children, a boy and a girl. The stockings were one of the many subtle ways that the issue was infiltrating her life. It was a decision that had to be made but she didn’t want to rush it, and any suggestion became a pressure when she had enough concerns and worries already.
Dawn cast the first strands of light into the room but it still felt empty without Harry. She had no desire to do anything they had planned if he wasn’t with her; not bake the Pandoro, a sweet star-shaped Christmas bread like his mother used to do, or make her traditional vine-bound Christmas wreath as Casey used to do with her mother. They were to be heading to Trish’s farm in a few days to cut down the vines. Would it still happen?
She picked up the phone again and this time dialed his number, but she hesitated at pressing the call button and hung up. She tapped her fingers on the coffee table, then picked up the phone again and just listened to the dial tone. The sound represented a possibility, a chance at reconciliation if her fingers could move on the keypad.
She stared at eleven gifts still underneath the tree. Harry had disguised them in different shapes so she had no clue what she was opening. One gift box he had wrapped in gauze so it looked like a ball, another was suspended from the ceiling in a translucent heart.
She picked up a gift that was wrapped in a hexagon shape, opened the flap and read Harry’s few words over and over again. ‘For our thirteenth day of Christmas.’ Our.
How could she let her father get between the two of them? Casey sighed. It wasn’t fair to blame her father. He was simply a catalyst, a convenient scapegoat for anything that went wrong in her life. She could always dig deep into the past and blame him.
If she were to be honest with herself, he represented the fear of having a child. As unwarranted as it was, her father represented everything that could go wrong with parenting.
It wasn’t that Casey thought either she or Harry wouldn’t be good parents. The contrary. Harry was a patient man, and caring. It more had to do with her notion of being a mother. A mother without breasts. It was irrational but it meant she wasn’t perfect for her children and she wanted to be. She would bring a child into this world without breastfeeding.
“Some women would be grateful for that,” her longtime friend, Trish, had told her. “You won’t have your breasts hanging halfway down to your stomach.”
“But there’s that connection when you breastfeed, right?”
“That’s an evolutionary purpose. We can nourish infants in other ways, and the connection is just there if you hold them.”
“Then I’ll be the mother who’s a freak without breasts.”
“You’re a gorgeous woman no matter what.”
Casey burst into tears.
“It’s natural, Cass.”
All Casey could do was sob.
“Want me to come over?”
“No.”
Trish waited till she caught her breath. “I just don’t know how it will be.”
“I know.” Her gentle voice soothed. “What does Harry say?”
“I told him he should get someone on the side.”
“That’s ridiculous, Cass.”
“That’s what he said.”
“So he’s good about it?”
“Yeah, but who knows how he’ll react. I’m going to look Frankenstein-ish with a big scar across my chest.”
“He’s not Roger! It’ll be fine with Harry.”
“But I’ll be different.”
“Your body will be. That’s it.” Trish hesitated. “Look, we’ve been through this but if you’re worried about the feminine aspect or how your kids would react, then get breast reconstruction.”
“But there can be ongoing issues with pain, nerve damage, scar tissue buildup and-”
“Millions of women go through it.”
“But the implants go under the pectoral muscles. That’s like a rope wound tightly your chest all the time.” She circled her fingers around the base of her breast as she talked. “It’ll be like a suction cup.”
“You’re being a professor now. Cass, stop researching this and reading up on it. Just think, you could have bigger breasts. You always complained yours were too small.”
Casey forced a short laugh. “But they’re cold to touch. There’s no blood flowing through there, you know. I mean, I wouldn’t feel anything.”
“Just trust in the doctors and whatever happens will happen. Harry will be there by your side and that’s what counts.”
Harry. He would be there. Casey toggled the flap on her gift back and forth between her fingers. Our.
She peeled back the paper to reveal a painting on an easel. It was a replica of the one Harry had done with melted chocolate on their outdoor balcony on the Aqua, when he used her naked body as a canvas. She closed her eyes and remembered how he had reached for a chocolate-covered fig from the tray and held it against her wrist. The cool penetrated her skin and after a moment, he had swiped his finger on her wrist and brushed it along her stomach. He then reached for another chocolate-covered fig, rolled it along her skin in broad strokes for the marble floor, the balcony above the arches. Her body had quivered from the coolness on her ribs, the way every part of her stomach was being touched.
For a while Harry was lost in his art, the painting, the curves of her body, two passions blending into one. He placed another fig onto her bellybutton, the depression becoming his paint well, the palette for his canvas. He drew the stage, a waiter carrying a tray, then scooped into her bellybutton for more cocoa paint. He brushed in tables, his fingers swirling on her stomach so that when he reached the tip of her pubic bone and stopped, her body wanted more.
He ended up retracing chocolate circles toward her nipples until his lips and their joined bodies smudged the painting. But now it was here, a blending of her body onto the canvas in a unique juxtaposition.
He remembered everything. Harry always did. Everything she ever told him, and he was sensitive to every detail of her life. She should have known that her father would pit him into a corner where he would get defensive, especially when her own parent started lashing out at her. Whether they had children or not wasn’t a problem, whether he put up with her grumbly father a few times a year wasn’t a dilemma. They could deal with all of this. What mattered was that they were side by side, each and every day for the rest of their lives. In that togetherness, the magic of their first week would thrive.
She put on her coat and called a cab. When she opened the door, Harry was standing there, with her book tucked under his arm.
Pandoro
Harry pulled her book and a small white canvas from under his arm. “It’s the fourteenth day of Christmas a day early.” He turned it over to reveal a small scale version of the painting that hung above the bed. It was the scene from Venice, Caffè Florian, the marble arches, the band, and at one of the tables was Harry looking at Casey. The scene was painted in soft pastels, a dreamy scene, and Harry had placed a vapor trail, a band of soft golden light that rippled between their two tables and settled upon the two of them like fairy dust.
“It’s our painting,” Harry swept his finger along the vapor trail in the painting. Whatever happens along the pathway of our life, that’s what I embrace. Children or no children. Sickness or health. I just want you in my life. Everything else is a bonus and we will write it together, if, you still want that.”
Casey nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
He handed her the book.
"You should publish this,” Harry said.
“It’s our personal story.”
“Fictionalize it a bit. The writing is so good, it should be read by more people.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“You will next year, post-surgery.”
Casey pulled off her coat and the bobble hat, then flattened the static in her hair. She reached inside her purse and pulled out a leather-bound book, identical to the one Harry held in his arm. “It’s the fourteenth day of Christmas a day early.”
It was the same leather-bound book as Volume I, with the hand-written title: Volume II: Our First Year Together.
“When did you-”
“I wrote it last night. I couldn’t sleep.”
“When I did my painting.”
They fell into each other’s arms.
BY THE light from the city, Harry watched Cassandra writing on her laptop. Over coffee, he had encouraged her to fictionalize the book she wrote for him and she had started soon after he cut into the Pandoro he had brought over.
“I thought panettone was the Italian Christmas bread,” Cassandra dipped her finger into powdered sugar that dusted the top of the bread.
“It is, but in Venice and Verona, this is our tradition.”
“I’ll have to write that into our book.”
“Put it into your book.” She shrugged but Harry continued as he cut a thick slice of the sweet bread. “I’m serious.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Open the book just like you did with how we met.”
“I thought about it. I’ll give you a different name. Like Luigi.”
“He’s got to be as sexy though!”
She laughed. “I have to change him enough from you.”
“Make him a professor.”
She scrunched up her nose. “A street artist.”
“Who will be doing caricatures on the cruise ship much to his dismay.”
&n
bsp; She considered this and placed the last piece of the pandoro and let it slowly dissolve in her mouth. She reached for another slice.
“My grandmother always cut a hole cut in the pandoro and filled it with gelato. Want some?”
Cassandra nodded. “So what does the name mean?”
“It’s pan d’oro. Bread of gold.”
“For the color?”
“Only the wealthy ate white bread in the Middle Ages so it was a luxury most people had to save money for.”
“Maybe I’ll make him a baker.”
Harry continued to watch Cassandra as dusk fell, the blue glow from her screen, lighting up her chin and the tip of her nose. The rest of her had faded. It would make a beautiful painting, he thought, and in the other room he pulled out his canvas and started a sketch.
Their homes had grown into creative studios where each of them became lost in their world for hours, together under one roof, yet in a separate zone. Harry liked these times, where he could disappear into his own space but still feel Cassandra’s energy nearby. She had taken on the role of muse for him, not only in her encouragement of his work but in her own creative energy that was contagious at times.
During the school term, when he was busy with assignments and Cassandra was occupied with her lectures and her new Chair role at Locknore University, it seemed that evenings and weekends were spent catching up with each other. There weren’t long spaces of uninterrupted time for creativity, especially for Cassandra.
As much as Harry was concerned about her upcoming mastectomy, the year she was taking off for recovery would be like this once she had healed, days on end of quiet creativity that they both could enjoy.
Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) Page 4
