by Cleo Coyle
“I love this thing,” he said with a smile.
It was a sporty self-winding duograph chronometer from Breitling (list price new: $5,000; “gently” used price at Torneau’s resale shop: $1,500). I had scrimped and saved during our first year of marriage and even borrowed some money from Madame so I could surprise Matt on our first anniversary. It moved from time zone to time zone with ease and even displayed the correct time in two zones at the same time—the perfect timepiece for a globe-trotter traveler like Matt.
“Wow, it’s late! I’d better start cooking,” he said.
“Well, don’t open the oven,” I warned. “You’ll ruin dessert.”
While I prepared the items for the cheesecake topping, Matt went to work behind me, bumping and elbowing me the entire time. God, he was annoying in the kitchen!
First he set a pot of water on the stove and lit the fire under it. A moment later I heard the crinkle of shopping bags as he dumped his plunder onto the counter.
“They had Maytag Blue Cheese—for once,” Matt said as he tossed a blue-marbled brick of soft cheese into the refrigerator.
I arched my eyebrow. “‘Essentials,’ you said. Frightfully expensive blue cheese is an essential?”
“It is—in my house,” he said.
Just let it go, I chanted to myself. Don’t take the bait. Just let it go.
“And here,” he added. “Look at this!”
Matt proudly displayed a slab of bacon the size of Rhode Island.
“So you’ve brought home the bacon at last,” I blurted. Whoops.
“Very funny.”
Matt loaded the crisp green leaves of Romaine lettuce into the vegetable bin, and plastic containers of grated cheese onto the refrigerator shelf next to a pint of heavy cream.
“So,” he said, “speaking of, uh, ‘bringing home the bacon’—is that why you came back here from New Jersey to manage the Blend? Are you having money problems?”
“No.” I bristled. “I was doing just fine, thank you very much.”
“So what’s the reason then? Why did you come back?”
Matt leaned a hand on the counter. With his rolled-up shirtsleeves, his muscular forearm caught my eye. Tanned by the Peruvian sun and slightly dusted with fine black hair, it reminded me of the first time we’d met on a brilliant June day along the Mediterranean.
I was a college student at the time, spending the summer with my great-uncle’s family while studying Italian art history. He was backpacking across France and Italy, heading for Greece. I’d thought he was a Michaelangelo statue come to life. Stop it, Clare. I warned myself. Stop it.
His dark brown eyes locked onto my green ones—he was waiting for an answer.
“I, uh…I guess I wanted a change,” I told him, attempting to change something else in that moment—my focus. I forced my eyes to shift away from his forearm and over to a two-pound bag of Carbone’s homemade fettuccini. “The suburbs were nice enough, don’t get me wrong. I mean, New Jersey has its charms—”
Matt snorted.
“It does. And it’s a good place to raise a child. I was happy there, at least in the beginning. But now that Joy’s gone away to school—never to live with Mom again—I thought I should try making a change, take Madame up on her offer to start again.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you mean, ‘That’s it’? Gail Sheehy created an entirely revised version of her book Passages based on that premise alone.”
Matt stared blankly.
“You know,” I said, “New Passages?”
Matt continued to stare blankly.
“Longer life spans,” I explained. “Second Adulthoods that begin after children leave the nest? You’ve never heard of this?”
Matt shook his head.
“Well, you’re older now, too,” I reminded him. His eyebrow rose, as if to say duh. “What I mean is: Haven’t you thought about the changes that come with reaching middle age?”
Matt dismissively waved his hand. “I never think about that stuff.”
Of course you don’t, I thought, because you’re another type that Sheehy writes about—the man who wakes up one morning on the Dark Side of Forty and realizes his bright future full of possibilities has dimmed and narrowed. That he’s too old to be a young…Well, a young anything.
Matt would never admit it, but I was pretty sure his sprint to Parasol Insurance earlier today was evidence he was reaching that Dark Side of Forty stage. The old Matt never thought ahead, never took responsibility, and never, ever took cash out of his own pocket to help clean up a mess.
The old Matt would have taken the first plane out of town—waved aloha to me and Madame and let us pull out the buckets and mops while he made a deal at a luau for five hundred bags of Kona.
Sure, I could chalk up the change to Madame’s ownership deal. Even experiments in public housing (according to one of my customers who worked for the City of New York) have suggested that if you give people a way to own a thing, they suddenly find the time, energy, and money to invest in protecting and improving it.
And yet…that ownership theory didn’t really hold water when it came to Matt. For one thing, I was sure Matt had already assumed he’d inherit the Blend anyway—yet his actions had always been aloof where the Blend’s business was concerned. All he ever seemed to care about was the freedom to come and go as he pleased.
And—in terms of ownership theories—what about me? I found myself thinking. When I was his exclusively, he took me for granted. Just like the Blend.
Whether it was the new part-ownership status or the Dark Side of Forty change-in-perspective thing, I didn’t know. All I knew was that Matteo Allegro was showing positive signs of change.
Change is (usually) good. And ten years ago, I would have rejoiced at it. But I couldn’t rejoice now. Now our child was grown—and I wanted my freedom. After all the years of pining away for the man, I had finally reached an emotional point in my life where I wanted to be free of Matteo Allegro and all of his heartbreaking patterns.
Madame wouldn’t understand or accept my decision, but that was just too bad. Even with her cancer scare, I’d find a way to gently tell her. A tricky scheme (even one as well meaning as Madame’s) wasn’t going to erase years of pain, frustration, and resentment. Not for me anyway.
“Heads up,” Matt said, tossing me a bundle of fresh garlic. I caught it.
“It goes in the hanging basket behind you,” he said with a wink.
God, this was infuriating. My ex-husband knew my kitchen better than I did—and wasn’t shy about making sure I knew it. Well, I reminded myself, he had lived here as a boy with his mother before Pierre had moved them up to Fifth Avenue
. Resentment rose in me anyway. I checked my watch. For Joy’s sake, I reminded myself yet again, I wasn’t going to start any battles with her father. Not before dinner anyway.
“So what’s on the menu?” I said, changing the subject to one that was nice, safe, and neutral: Food.
“I’m going with the fettuccini carbonara,” he said. “It’s rich—especially when I make it with fettuccini instead of thin spaghetti—but Joy always loved it when I cooked it for her. And it’s probably the only dish I can still cook better than my soon-to-be-chef daughter. She’s probably a real pro now that she’s been formally trained.”
“Matt, she just started culinary school. She’s years from graduation,” I said. “In fact, she confessed to me that she’s having a little trouble in one class. Apparently a hollandaise broke and the guest instructor humiliated her in front of the rest of the class.”
“Maybe she needs a few pointers from her dad.”
“You think you could help her?” I asked hopefully.
“Sure. And this should cheer her up, too.” Matt reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, square box. “Check this out,” he said.
I opened the box.
“I picked it up in Mexico,” said Matt.
I looked down and almost winced. Not again.
When Joy was nine, Matt brought a bracelet back from one of his endless trips and gave it to her. The bracelet was lovely, its delicate links made of pure, fourteen-karat rose gold. Since then, Matteo had presented her with various charms, distinctive little items he found over the years in foreign lands on his never-ending quests for the richest coffees, the bluest waves, the tallest mountains—and (I’m sure) other sorts of stimulation as well (cocaine and women).
For a lot of years, those seemingly thoughtful little baubles from Dad, transported from faraway lands, delighted Joy. In grade school she wore the bracelet constantly. In junior high less so, and by high school…Well, the truth was, Joy hadn’t worn that charm bracelet in public since the junior high school prom—not that Matt was ever around enough to notice.
“It’s a charm,” Matt explained. “For Joy’s bracelet. Think she’ll be wearing it tonight?”
“I don’t know…”
“Like it?”
“It’s…interesting,” I said diplomatically. What I was looking at was a little nugget of gold shaped like an incredibly stout woman wearing a bowler hat and holding an ear of corn over her prodigious breasts.
“It’s supposed to be Centeotl, the Aztec goddess of corn,” Matt explained, after noting my puzzled expression. I nodded, not quite up on my religions of Mesoamerica.
“And the significance is?” I asked.
“Corn was central to the Aztec diet. Their corn goddess was a harvest god. And since Joy is going to be a chef, I figured, you know…food, harvest…” Matt’s voice trailed off, and he shrugged his broad shoulders.
“How very Joseph Campbell of you,” I said, trying to be positive. I handed the box back to him and laughed as I added, “as long as it’s not some sort of fertility goddess.”
Matt stared down at it. His brow wrinkled. “Actually I think it is.”
We were interrupted by another rhythmic knock—the identical one Matt had used.
“Joy!” I said.
She’d finally arrived. The two of us ran a sort of short foot race (which looked about as embarrassing as it sounds) to see who would be the first to greet her.
I won—by virtue of being short enough to duck under Matt’s arms, just as he was pulling open the door.
“Hello!” I said, reaching up to hug my daughter, who either had grown another two inches since the last time I saw her or was wearing stacked heels.
“Mom,” she cried, hugging me back. “I saw Tucker downstairs and he told me about Anabelle. How terrible!”
“Hi, kiddo!” Matt said. Joy rushed into his arms.
“I missed you so much, Daddy,” she said, squeezing him tightly.
I was about to close the door when the shadow of another figure fell across the threshold.
“Mom. Dad,” Joy said, bursting with excitement. “Here’s my surprise! I want you to meet Mario Forte.”
A young man stepped into the room. He was tall for an Italian. That’s the first thing I noticed. Taller even than Matteo. (Now I knew why Joy was wearing stacked heels!) His hair was black and long and tied back in a loose ponytail. His lips were curled into a slight smirk which, to my mind, marred his otherwise good features. He wore black slacks and a long-sleeved black shirt, unbuttoned far enough from the neck to show a gold chain dangling between sculpted pecs. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled up and I glimpsed some sort of tattoo around his bicep—it looked like barbed wire.
Joy looked up at the young man with something akin to hero worship. Uh-oh, I thought. She was smitten. And my ex-husband tensed the moment he realized it.
So much for a relaxing evening.
“Mrs. Allegro,” said the young man, taking my hand. “It is a pleasure to meet with you at last. Joy has told me so much about you.”
Is that right? I thought, then why didn’t she mention I’m “Ms. Cosi,” and no longer “Mrs. Allegro”?
“And you must be Mr. Allegro,” Mario said, stepping up to Matteo and reaching out to shake his hand. “I did not expect to meet you so soon—”
“I’ll just bet you didn’t,” Matt muttered, his jaw muscles working. They shook hands, but neither seemed to put much enthusiasm in the gesture.
“Joy told me that her father was a mystery man,” Mario said with a little chuckle. “The ‘mystery’ was when you were going to finally make an appearance at home.”
Matt looked like a pressure cooker ready to blow. Thank goodness Joy was canny enough to step between the two men.
“Something smells good,” she said, her voice a little too high-pitched. “What’s for dinner?”
“Carbonara,” Matt said through clenched teeth.
“And my cappuccino walnut cheesecake!” I added in a pitch even higher than my daughter’s. My god, in an effort to cut through the tension, I was actually chirping like Doris Day.
Joy looked at me. “Surprise!” she said feebly.
“Not the surprise we expected,” I said with a look that told her: You should have warned me. “Well, I’d better set another place at the table. Why don’t you both make yourselves comfortable.”
Though I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, as I set a new place at the dining room table, I cursed Centeotl, the Aztec goddess of corn and fertility, along with my ex-husband for bringing that golden witch under my roof.
SIXTEEN
I returned to the kitchen to find Mario and Matteo having a little disagreement about something. Matt clutched a meat cleaver in one white-knuckled fist—not a good sign.
“Fettuccini carbonara should be prepared with pancetta,” Mario was saying. “Never with American bacon.”
“Carbonara is a Depression-era dish created by Italian-Americans,” Matt stated. “How many of them had pancetta? Anyway, Joy likes carbonara prepared with bacon.” He turned to Joy for some support. “Don’t you, kiddo?”
Joy turned to me, her eyes pleading.
(It occurred to me in that moment that the first young man my daughter chose to introduce to her elusive father was a tall-dark-and-handsome Italian cook with an arrogant attitude. Even their names were similar. My, my, how Freudian.)
My heart went out to my daughter. But it was her mess. And she was a big girl. (Even bigger with those heels.) I shook my head and showed her my empty palms. No tricks up my sleeve for this one, honey.
“So what sort of bacon then?” Mario asked, the smirk defining his level of sincerity. “Sugar cured, hickory smoked, or do you prefer those bits you find in the supermarket jars?”
“Don’t be a jackass,” said Matt.
Joy was about to jump in, but I stopped her.
“Well, you must admit,” said Mario, “the dish does sound like something you get at the House of the International Pancake.”
“It’s IHOP—the International House of Pancakes,” said Matt. “You obviously don’t know everything.”
I sighed, considering the scene. Here I was in New York City, an international center for art, commerce, intellect, and culture. A prime symbol of Western Civilization. And what was I doing? Watching two alpha males argue over a greasy slab of pork fat.
As the barbs continued, I pulled Joy aside. “Your first lesson in understanding men,” I whispered. “There will often be times like these—when they act as if they’ve been evolution-proof for the last fifty thousand years.”
The baking timer went off, startling everyone into silence.
“Saved by the bell,” I whispered to Joy. She smiled with grateful relief as I announced: “Mario, Joy, it’s time to clear out! I have to make the cheesecake topping, and your father has to make dinner.”
I reached into the wine cooler and clutched the first bottle I could feel.
“Here!” I said, thrusting it into Joy’s hand. “Why don’t you go into the dining room with Mario and open this.”
“Wow! Mom!” Joy shrieked at seeing the label on the bottle. “Proseco, 1992. What’s the occasion?”
Ohhhhh, nooooo, not the Venetian champagne. That was a mistake. But to
o late now.
“Just happy to see you,” I chirped, still channeling Doris Day. “And of course—your bringing Mario is an occasion,” I managed to choke out for Joy’s sake.
I heard a disgusted grunt from behind me. A loud slam came next, as Matteo crushed a half-dozen whole cloves of garlic with one flat-sided blow from his meat cleaver. Chunks of the powerful-smelling herb bounced off the walls.
Mario leaned close and took my hand again. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Allegro.”
It’s Cosi, you idiot!
With a wet slam, Matteo slapped his slab of good old American bacon onto the thick wooden chopping block near the sink. With quick, angry jabs, he began mincing the smoked pork into tiny shards.
“Let’s go into the dining room,” Joy said, seeing the flash of disgust cross Mario’s face.
After they’d quickly retreated, I turned to Matteo.
“You!” I hissed in my most grating ex-wife voice (a harridan tone so annoying I actually annoy myself when I use it). “Make your damn pasta and keep your mouth shut. Your one and only daughter has brought a man home to meet her parents, and you are not going to ruin this night for her!”
Matt stared at the garlic scattered across the cutting board. I took his silence for defiance.
“You are going to behave yourself or leave right now,” I added.
Matteo crushed another clove of garlic—this one with his fist.
“The pasta will be ready in half an hour,” he said, turning up the fire under a large pot of boiling water. “When you’re finished with your cheesecake, you can make the Caesar salad.”
“Oh, I’ll get right on it,” I replied tersely. As I knew already, there was no kitchen large enough!
Fortunately, things went somewhat better from then on. During dinner, Joy talked about school, and about how she aced her last saucier project—with Mario’s help.
Mario, it turned out, was from Milan, but had spent the last three years in New York City, joining a cousin who had emigrated years before to work in the restaurant business here. Mario himself had worked in a series of restaurants in both Italy and France—first as a dishwasher, then a waiter, then as a sous-chef. He was twenty-five years old and had landed a full-time kitchen staff position at Balthazar, one of the top restaurants in Soho.
