Ready for You (A San Francisco Brides Book)
Page 7
“He’s so much like his father at that age,” Mrs. Buffone said. Her eyes unfocused and she sighed, almost imperceptibly.
“Did you notice the photo of my dad in his uniform?” Sabrina asked.
“Yes,” Chiara replied. Oh God, she saw me. I kissed this girl’s father not even an hour ago. Chiara took a bite of her salad.
“I wish I could’ve seen him play,” Sabrina said.
“Didn’t he when you were young?”
“Not really. He was in a local league for awhile. I don’t remember much.”
“How old were you when your parents divorced?”
“Seven.”
The same age as Danny would be. “It must have been hard on you.”
“Yeah, but I think it was worse for my dad and brother. I had my mom and grandparents.” Sabrina smiled at her grandma, who patted her hand.
“Yes, Rocco and Shawn went through some hard times, but they’re better now,” Mrs. Buffone said.
“I’m sorry. The divorce wasn’t his choice?”
“No,” Sabrina said as Mrs. Buffone ate. “But they’re both happier now. My mom’s been dating a great guy. He’s divorced and has two adult children too.”
“What about your dad?” Chiara asked.
“He’s not seeing anyone.” Sabrina and her grandma exchanged dissatisfied looks. “I worry about him sometimes, but he insists he likes his life the way it is.”
Chiara set her fork on her plate and dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “He mentioned you’re going to SDSU in August?”
“Uh-huh. I’m looking forward to it.”
“We’ll miss you,” Mrs. Buffone said.
“I went to college in San Diego,” Chiara said. “It’s a fun city. Have you been there before?”
“A few times. My first trip there was on our last family vacation with my parents. I’m hoping to talk my dad into taking my best friend and me down next month. I didn’t get to see much last time I went. I want to get a feel for things before school starts. Maybe he’ll meet someone nice while we’re there.” She shot her grandma a sly smile.
“What good would that do?” Mrs. Buffone said. “He just bought his house.”
Chiara rubbed her thighs and tried to keep a smile plastered on her face.
“What good?” Sabrina said. “You know, Grandma. Men need women more than we need them. He needs someone.”
“True, but listen to you. Eighteen and knows everything.” Mrs. Buffone laughed.
“Sometimes we know ourselves better when we’re young,” Chiara said in a quiet voice. “We forget…I wish I’d stayed true to my eighteen year old self.” If she had, she would never have married Phil. Or stayed married to him.
“See, Grandma, she agrees with me. Too bad you don’t have a single twin.” Sabrina smiled.
Chiara took a sip of tea. She glanced at Mrs. Buffone but quickly stared at her plate. In that brief look, Chiara felt as though Mrs. Buffone could read her mind, could see how she longed to be the one for Rocco. She believed Mrs. Buffone studied her, her knowing, wise eyes considering every twitch of Chiara’s mouth, every dart of her eyes, every nervous movement of her hands.
“Now,” Mrs. Buffone said, “Will you get that recipe for me, Sabrina?
Sabrina rose, put her plate in the sink, and took a paper off the counter. “Here,” she said, handing it to Chiara.
“Thanks.”
Sabrina cleared the table and started on the dishes.
“Do you want some help?” Chiara said.
“No thanks,” Sabrina said.
“I spoke to your mother the other day,” Mrs. Buffone said. Chiara nodded. She hadn’t talked to her mom since the boys’ last day of school, almost a week ago. “I invited her to my birthday party this Saturday. I hope you and your family will be able to join us.”
“Thank you, I’ll need to ask my husband.” Mrs. Buffone inclined her head. “It’s kind of you to include us.”
“It’s Grandma’s sixty-fifth. Grandpa wants her to fill the house, old friends and new, the whole family,” Sabrina said as she dried her hands on a dishtowel.
Chiara smiled. There was no way she could go, definitely not with Phil, and not with her parents there either. Too risky. “I should go. I need to pick up the boys.”
She rose and returned Mrs. Buffone’s and Sabrina’s hugs. She tugged at the bottom of her tee. How much she wished for in-laws like this, caring and inclusive. “Thanks again for lunch,” she said as they walked her out. She tucked the recipe in her purse.
“We enjoyed your company,” Mrs. Buffone said. “We’ll hope to see you Saturday.”
Chiara smiled and went to her car. On the way to pick up the boys, her mind wandered. She even missed the street for the nature park where their camp was and had to turn around. The Buffones were good people. She shouldn’t be meeting Rocco. He must know it wasn’t right. But then so did she and she kept seeing him. Was he feeling the same irresistible pull? Or did he not have the same moral code as his family? Surely he didn’t kiss every woman the way he had her. She tried to listen as the boys told her about their day as they drove home, but sometimes she had to ask them to repeat themselves because the idea to call Rocco blipped in her mind like a smoke detector when the batteries get low.
The boys wanted to go to the park, which distracted her. She always kept a close eye on them at the busy community park, with its four playgrounds, water feature, picnic areas, and three different levels. They soon found some friends from school and Chiara chatted with their moms. Before, she used to imagine how happy everyone else was, what great sex they probably had, guilty over how patient they were with their kids. Now those thoughts still swirled in her mind but with the added debris of guilt over wanting Rocco. No, it wasn’t just the wanting, she admitted as she drove home, the boys whining in the back. It was the meetings, the kissing, the giddy hope she’d felt a few hours before.
“If I hear one more word of whining,” Chiara snapped as she hastily unbuckled the boys from their seats, “you will both be on time out until dinner.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Max said in his quietest voice while Danny glared at her and stomped to the door.
She let them watch a video while she made dinner. Phil would eat reluctantly. He liked curried chicken thighs or Kung Pao chicken, not boneless skinless chicken breast lightly breaded with a delicate lemon flavor. Nor was he much for salad and roasted potatoes. He didn’t like Italian food, either. When they first dated, Chiara was intrigued by his exotic tastes and tales of his travels in Asia. But as the years passed, so did the novelty. Now she realized she wanted someone more like her favorite uncle, Max, a man who was kind, dependable, fun, and masculine. Even a comfortable irritation like her father or brother Tomaso seemed better than what she had with Phil.
While she washed the dishes, she glanced out the window. Rocco paced across the street. She stared. It was really him. The plate she held clattered into the sink. She opened her mouth to call to him, but Phil’s Dodger blue Prius whipped a turn into the driveway. She turned off the water then stood motionless. Rocco stopped too, staring at where Phil’s car was.
“Daddy!” the boys shouted. They usually heard his car pull in and watched from the living room window as Phil came into the house.
Rocco started to walk across the street. Chiara gripped the edge of the counter and pressed her stomach into the unyielding tile. The front door opened and Rocco stopped. He watched for a moment before he turned and walked away, down the street, as the boys clamored for Phil’s attention, like they did every evening. She let out her breath. She hadn’t been able to see Rocco’s expression clearly but she believed he looked determined. Oh God.
“How was your day?” Phil said when he came into the kitchen, the boys following. Phil kissed her cheek.
“Fine, thanks, and you? Boys, set the table, please.”
“Good. Suzy and I had lunch. We made progress on how to tackle those new accounts.”
New accounts? She wen
t into a stupor whenever Phil talked business. “That’s nice,” she said. Rocco was right. She twisted the dishtowel in her hand. Except she doubted Phil and Suzy had kissed, much less pawed each other like two teenagers. Chiara licked her lips then pressed them together.
“Do I have time to change before dinner?” Phil said.
“Sure,” she said. For a second, she imagined some magical change, transforming him into Rocco. Lust, that’s all it was. Lust was clouding her judgement. “Thanks boys,” she said as Max and Danny finished putting out the silverware. She peeked in the oven. Everything was ready.
An hour later, Chiara scrubbed the pans in the sink, plenty of sudsy too-hot water scorching her hands through her blue rubber gloves. She gritted her teeth, remembering how Phil reacted just as she thought he would at dinner. Now he ate a snack of spicy nuts and beer in his leather recliner while the boys watched “Where the Wild Things Are.” Chiara hated that chair. She hated looking at the bald spot on Phil’s head as he bent over his dinner. She hated his protruding gut pooching over his belt as he stretched. She hated his false thanks for dinner. She hated being married to him.
She tried to look out the window, but she couldn’t see anything. A light breeze ruffled the edge of the curtain, as gently as the way Rocco had touched her cheek after dinner at his house that night. She inhaled. She was grateful someone wanted her. She was grateful for her boys. She was grateful for her health. She was grateful Phil was a decent man, a good father. She blew the breath slowly out. Time to get the boys ready for bed.
Danny was cranky and it took twice as long as usual to get them settled into their bunk beds. She brushed back her hair and trudged into the living room. Phil glanced up from his computer and unplugged an earphone.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You watching something?”
“A movie. You want to join me?”
She shook her head and plopped into the chair at her desk, an old oak roll top. She pulled out a notebook and pen and wrote.
Two hours later, Phil snapped shut his computer. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”
“Not yet, goodnight.”
He raised his hand and walked into the hall. She closed her notebook and stowed it in a drawer. She stood and stretched. She probably should keep those notebooks locked up. If her mom came over, she might find them. Sometimes her mom pretended to help clean when really she was being nosy.
Her purse hung on the hook. She rifled in it to find her phone. She often forgot to turn it off. It rang and she searched frantically, hope swelling that it was Rocco. It was.
“I saw you,” she said without any polite preamble. She jogged into the laundry room and closed the door with her foot. Nothing. “Outside my house earlier.”
“Yeah.” His voice was raspy and harsh. “Are you coming to my mom’s party?”
“I doubt it, unless you want me to.” Please say yes.
“I do.” She smiled, even though his voice didn’t match his words. “But I want you to bring your husband and sons.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why?” She slid down the wall and hugged her knees with one arm.
“I need to see you with them. I remember what it was like. I can’t do this.”
“Sabrina told me your divorce--”
“I know what she told you,” he growled. “I tried to tell myself it was okay. I tried to tell myself we all turned out okay. But you don’t know what we went through, what I put my son through, what he did because I wasn’t there. Maybe it would have been different if--”
“You don’t know that.”
“No one knows. But we both know what we’re doing is wrong.” He almost whispered it, as if he, like she, didn’t really want to hear that.
“We could just…you were right, about Phil and Suzy. They had lunch today. We can be friends, okay? Neighbors?” She gripped her legs tighter.
He blew out a breath, almost a snort. “No.” His phone clicked. He’d hung up.
Chiara looked at the screen of her phone. She slid it shut. The phone thudded onto the sisal rug as she buried her head between her chest and knees. She covered her neck with her arms, like she did during an earthquake. Things had shifted, but no real harm had been done. She just had to put a few items back on their shelves, back into their proper places. Too bad there wasn’t insurance for your heart. She’d have to pay for the damages herself.
Chapter Ten
Chiara didn’t bother mentioning Mrs. Buffone’s party to Phil. She took her walks near the boy’s camp the next two days instead of near home, where she might see Rocco or be tempted to walk by his house and remember.
Her mom phoned but Chiara didn’t return her call, not wanting to admit even to herself that she wouldn’t go to the party, that she would never kiss Rocco again, never even talk to him again. She went through the motions of her days, even more hollow and alone than she had been before they met. Now she knew something else was possible for her, something she had denied the very existence of. She had let hope bang open the door and now it hung, tipsy, off its hinges.
As she shook her head at herself on Friday evening, the boys watching PBS Kids while she threw a frozen pizza from Trader Joes in the oven, the phone rang. She hadn’t been answering it, but she did this time. It was Isabella, sounding glum.
“Matt and I had a fight,” she said.
“Again? Want to talk about it?”
“Same old, same old. Look, I already told Mom and Mrs. Buffone I’d be coming to that party tomorrow. Mom says you won’t return her calls. I take it you’re not going?”
“No.” Chiara hugged herself with her free arm.
“Don’t want to talk, huh?”
“Not so much. Nothing to talk about, anyway.”
“Come to the party with me, So? Pleease? Maybe you can help me keep Mom’s questions to a minimum.”
“Sure, because she loves to grill me more than you.”
“Because you’re easier to break down,” Isabella said. She was infuriatingly right most of the time.
“Shut up.” Chiara paced a few steps before peeking in the oven.
“So, will you? I like the Buffones and it’s good for me to get out, you know, and Faith will be there and maybe I can go over some things with her too. Will you?”
Chiara sighed. “I’ll need to talk to Phil. I doubt it, though.”
“Call me back on my cell, okay?”
“I hear his car now. I’ll call in ten.”
“Kisses, best big sister.” No doubt Isabella had her biggest shit-eating grin on.
“Sure, you little brat.”
Isabella blew a raspberry into the phone and hung up. Chiara smiled, though the little crease in her forehead pushed out.
After greeting the boys, Phil came in and kissed her cheek. She was a nose wrinkler too; she hated his patchouli spice scent. The usual pleasantries exchanged, Phil sniffed.
“Frozen pizza?”
“I thought we’d have a salad.”
“I wish you’d warn me. I could’ve picked something up.”
The only kind of salad Phil liked was Cobb or spicy Asian fusion. “Isabella called. She wants me to go with her to a party tomorrow. I told her probably not. I figured you’d want us to do something with the boys.”
“Actually, and not that you’re not welcome to come, but I’m sure you’d rather go with your sister…Suzy invited the boys to go swimming at her house this weekend. Her nephew, he’s seven, is visiting…” Phil said as he bent over to stare into the refrigerator.
“I see.” Visions of Phil divorcing her, taking the boys, living at Suzy’s spacious upper valley house, herself alone, inhabiting a studio apartment, or maybe at her parents’ flicked through her mind like a movie on fast forward.
She clutched her forehead and squeezed before she started at the faint burning smell. She pulled out the pizza, not burnt, but Danny might complain about the darkened edges.
“I’ll ask them,” Phil said. He grabbed an ale and put a frozen shepherd’s pie in the oven while Chiara chopped apple for her salad. He called the boys to dinner and sat with them at the table.
Chiara listened with one ear to their conversation. Of course, the boys began to chatter excitedly about the day.They loved to go swimming and they’d met Suzy’s nephew at the company picnic. Apparently, they liked Suzy too. Chiara rubbed her stomach before assembling her salad, her favorite mixture of baby lettuce, apple, walnuts, dried cranberries, and a sweet poppy seed dressing. She placed it on the table.