Dolci di Love

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  ‘We hate babies,’ he roared. ‘We hate them.’

  Those babies were now at school. Lily sent cards and gifts (which Pearl shopped for) on birthdays and at Christmas, but that was all.

  Which was why she got such a shock the morning after finding Daniel’s secret family to be woken by the doorman calling to say her sister was in the lobby.

  ‘My sister?’ she croaked, looking at her watch. It was past seven. She should have been up an hour ago.

  ‘Yes, Mrs. Turner. Your sister.’ She heard him ask whomever he had down there for a name. ‘Rose. Rose Rickman. Shall I send her up?’

  ‘Send her up? I guess so. Yes.’

  She couldn’t imagine what had happened to bring Rose to the city after all this time. She must have left home before five.

  Pulling on her robe she looked automatically in the bathroom mirror and was appalled by the face staring back at her. She was a complete mess. Yesterday’s makeup had travelled to bits of her face that really didn’t suit it and her thick blonde hair, which she paid a fortune to have straightened twice a week and which normally sat in a neat twist at the nape of her neck, looked like a joke someone would play using an upturned mop.

  She threw some water on her face and gave it a quick wipe with a washcloth, only partially repairing the damage before Rose rang the buzzer and she went, heart hammering, to let her in.

  ‘Well, thank God, you’re all right!’ Rose blew in, her usual boisterous self, no trace of the years of stony silence between them.

  She had put on more weight, Lily noticed, reeling from the shock of looking at her, listening to her, having her there in the hallway. But the weight suited her. She looked like exactly what she was: a slightly harassed but otherwise happy suburban mother, all flushed naked cheeks, glossy lips, and haphazard clothing. Her hair was loosely fixed in a cascading up-do and she wore boyfriend jeans with flat shoes, a crumpled shirt, and an old pashmina that had seen better days.

  ‘All right?’ Lily was stiff with embarrassment. Was there something she didn’t know? What on earth had happened? ‘Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Rose gave something between a snort and a laugh. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she asked. ‘You called me last night to tell me about Daniel’s little situation in Italy and I couldn’t sleep for worrying about you. Don’t you remember?’

  Lily clutched her robe tighter to her chest. ‘I called you?’

  ‘Yes, about the floozy.’

  ‘The floozy?’

  Rose shook her head in exasperation. ‘Oh for Pete’s sake, Lily, let’s just cut the crap,’ she said, as she snatched off the pashmina that was slipping from her shoulder and stuffed it in her enormous tote bag. ‘And can we get out of the hallway? Come on, I’ve been up half the night, I feel like a horse’s ass and I need coffee.’

  ‘Cut what crap?’ Lily asked, attempting to disguise her mortification as she followed her sister to the kitchen. ‘You can’t just barge your way into my apartment and—’

  But Rose was having none of that. ‘You know, I left Al at home with a bunch of screaming kids,’ she said, rounding on her sister, ‘two who have the raging chicken pox and one who is refusing to leave the house owing to “girl germs”, because I was scared to death my sister who hasn’t spoken to me in however long was going to do something stupid like kill herself.’

  ‘Kill myself?’

  ‘Yes!’ Rose seethed, banging the coffee pot into the holder. ‘You think just because you disappear from my life I don’t still think about you? I don’t still worry about you? I worry like crazy, and believe me, I have enough problems of my own to be getting on with. And I can only imagine what you’ve been going through, Lily, and if we could swap places I probably would, truly I would, today of all days, I fricking would, but I can’t. This is it. This is what we’ve got and we have to get on with it, but just look at you, Lily—you’re a mess. And you were drunk on the phone. Drunk! You sounded just like Mom.’

  Shame ripped the scab from Lily’s open wound and for a split second she considered flying into Rose’s arms and howling with the grief she’d long used her expert composure to conceal.

  She knew her sister would sweep her up without a moment’s hesitation—she’d always been the more forgiving one, the more loving, lovable one—but Lily had taken refuge behind her cool, distant exterior for so long, she didn’t know how to step away from it. She just stood there, tightening her robe at her throat until she was saved by Rose’s cell phone ringing again.

  ‘What is it now?’ Rose barked. ‘Well, I don’t know. Tell her you’ll give her a ton of candy if she doesn’t scratch them. Be inventive!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Then tell him that there are probably more girl germs at our house than in the whole of the neighbourhood, including the toilet doors, and he’ll die if he stays inside all day because chicken pox germs are the worst of all and they’re unisex.’

  Resting the phone on her shoulder, she poured two cups of coffee. ‘Jesus, Al, I’m here trying to sort out this mess with Lily and you—No, she’s fine. Same as always.’ She turned to look at Lily, still frozen in the same spot. ‘Al says hi,’ she said briskly but then her face softened. ‘Hey, buddy,’ she said. ‘How ya doing? I know they itch but that’ll stop if you just let them be. Maybe Daddy will read you some Harry Potter if you ask him nicely. Wanna try that? OK, yes, or watch Transformers, sure, whatever. I’ll be home soon.’ She laughed. ‘Yes, I’ll tell her. Bye-bye.’

  She slid the phone back into her bag. ‘Harry says he misses you.’

  Lily said nothing. She was afraid of what would happen if she opened her mouth.

  ‘Although, actually, to be more precise, he “mitheth” you owing to an unfortunate incident involving a baseball bat and a front tooth,’ Rose plonked herself down at the table. ‘Come on, Lily, sit down would you? You’re making the place look untidy.’

  Lily cleared her throat and slowly sat, trying to block out any thoughts of Rose’s messy, noisy house full of itchy lovable children.

  ‘Al’s not at work?’ she asked. Al was a builder, specialising in renovating old colonials, of which there were many where they lived in Connecticut.

  ‘Work? What’s that?’ Rose answered dryly. ‘Half the poor schmucks up our way have lost their life savings in some Ponzi scheme, whatever that is, so houses are staying pretty much unrenovated. There is no work.’

  ‘Al’s unemployed? I thought he was the best in the business.’

  ‘Well, there still has to be business to be the best in, I suppose. And at the moment there isn’t. I’m back teaching fifth grade and Al’s being a househusband, although frankly he sucks at it and what’s worse, there’s no money to work on our own house so it remains a dump. A leaky dump that smells of rotten carpet. You don’t know how lucky you are, Lily, I tell you.’

  As soon as she’d said it, she looked fit to suck the words right back. ‘Oh, crap, I don’t mean it like that,’ she sighed. ‘You know I don’t. It’s just about the money.’

  ‘If you need money, Rose,’ Lily said coldly, ‘I’m sure we can sort something out.’

  ‘I don’t need money, or at least I don’t want any of yours. That’s not what I mean either.’ Rose’s cell phone started ringing again. ‘Oh for Pete’s sake! What does he want now?’

  She answered and listened, fuming. ‘Did you check the linen press? Or the drier? Or the fricking drawers in their fricking room? Well, I don’t know, Al—keep trying. What do you expect me to do from here?’

  She flipped her phone closed and threw it back in her bag.

  ‘It looks to me as though you’re needed more at the rotten-smelling dump than you are here,’ Lily said, rising from the table and taking her still-full coffee cup to the kitchen sink. ‘As you can see, I am perfectly fine and I’m just sorry you wasted your time coming to check on me.’

  ‘OK, Miss High-and-Mighty, so this is how you’re going to play it?’ Rose’s cheeks were starting to redden, a sure sign she wa
s building to blow her top. Lily had seen it a hundred times before. As a child, Rose’s tantrums had been legendary, although it had not usually been Lily who caused them; rather she had been the one to soothe her sister and bring her back to good humour.

  ‘Treat me like some piece of dog dirt on the bottom of your fancy-pants shoe, why don’t you. See if I care! And while we’re at it, let me tell you something. I am not needed more at the rotten-smelling dump than I am here, but I’m going home anyway. And let me tell you something else: You’re wrong about you being fine, Lily. You are not fine. And you know what? I can’t feel sorry for you any longer. I just can’t. I’ve felt so sorry for you for so long, but I’m done with that. Where has it got us? We used to be best friends! So close! And now? Now you’re obviously drinking your way into an early grave just like Mom did, and I’m not going to turn myself inside out trying to stop you the way we tried to stop her. The two of us. Together. Remember?’

  Rose and Lily did not talk about their mother. The painful experience of being Carmel Watson’s daughters was something they shared at DNA level but rarely out loud, and never since she had died, slowly and with very little dignity, when the sisters were in their early twenties.

  For Rose to exhume her now, and to compare Lily to her—a bitter, angry woman who died of cirrhosis after a miserable life spent shrivelled in rage and resentment—was unforgivable.

  ‘You really should go now,’ Lily said. ‘And as you think so little of me, I think it’s best that you never come back.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, I’m going,’ Rose answered, snatching up her bag. ‘And don’t you worry a second time because I’m not coming back—not until you call me stone-cold sober and beg me to.’

  ‘Thanks for the feedback, I’ll take that on board,’ Lily said, knowing how much Rose hated business jargon and ushering her stiffly up the hall like an unwanted client.

  Furious, Rose pulled open the door but paused and blew out a lungful of air before she walked through it. ‘You’re my sister and I love you,’ she said, turning to Lily, the colour in her cheeks softening. ‘I don’t think so little of you. I think so much of you. That’s the trouble. You have looked out for me my whole life and I probably wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you, but don’t stay this cold, lonely person you’ve turned into, Lily. It’s not the real you. I know it isn’t. Please, go find Daniel. For God’s sake, work it out with him. Sure, it’s Tipsy Tourism, but it’s not a bad idea. Just please, please, I beg you, don’t sweep this one under the carpet, Lil.’

  ‘Goodbye, Rose,’ Lily said and shut the door in her face. Tipsy Tourism? What the hell was she talking about?

  Chapter 4

  Violetta and Luciana shuffled sideways out of their cramped living quarters and through the swinging door into the adjoining pasticceria like a pair of crippled crabs.

  Their family, the Ferrettis, had been making and selling their famous cantucci for hundreds of years, and very little had changed in the pastry shop in all that time.

  Their cantucci—a mouthwateringly delicious Italian cookie that could be dipped in sweet wine, dunked in coffee, or eaten for no particular reason at any time of the day or night—was made strictly to the traditional family recipe.

  They used only the finest flour, the best sugar, the freshest eggs, the plumpest hazelnuts and their secret ingredient: Ferretti fingers to hand-shape the morsels into the perfect bite-sized mouthfuls.

  The Ferretti cantucci may have been a little plain to look at but all the love and history that went into each tiny crumb made it taste like a beacon of artisan integrity and after all these years it still enjoyed the best reputation in Tuscany.

  This was something to which the sisters clung fiercely, not just because it was their birthright but because the Borsolini brothers down the hill were now selling cantucci too.

  They didn’t make it themselves, they brought it in from Milano, and it tasted like cacca according to Violetta. But the vast Borsolini family, which now extended much further than the original brothers, did a roaring trade in their store selling truckloads of this commercial confection in a variety of different flavours and colours. Green cherry and white chocolate? Crystallised ginger and pistachio? Black forest? The Borsolini cantucci might have looked dazzling but it had all the artisan integrity of an iPod. Worse, one of the younger sons had quite a flair for window dressing and displayed the family’s multicoloured wares with significant drama, changing it at least once a week.

  The Ferretti sisters did their best to ignore this, continuing to make their authentic Tuscan morning, afternoon or evening treat by hand, themselves, although in small, and getting smaller, amounts.

  Their store’s single marble counter bore a sparse collection of large fluted glass bowls inside of which were heaped piles of their homemade cookies. They had no confirmed-bachelor offspring to throw together any eye-catching displays: their window had an empty table and a single chair in it.

  On this particular morning, the morning of the ache but not the itch, Violetta pushed one of the fluted bowls aside as she leaned on the counter to catch her breath. The sisters were running late but getting anywhere seemed to take twice as long these days. Even bending over to pick up a tea towel could take half an hour if the shoulders, hips, and knees refused to line up and cooperate. Sometimes, a tea towel just had to stay on the ground until someone with better-oiled parts visited and could more easily return it to its rightful position.

  ‘When did we get so old?’ Violetta asked her sister.

  ‘I think it was the eighties,’ Luciana replied. ‘But who can remember?’

  They laughed, a noise which, at their age, generally sounded a lot like two desert animals fighting over a squeaky toy, but today Violetta’s chortle hit a feeble note.

  She felt her age—not far short of a century—and she was scared, yes, there it was, scared, of what lay around the corner. Ageing was not for the fainthearted. It hurt and it took a lot of time and in the end what did you get? A hole in the ground and a headstone if you were lucky. And there was still so much to be done!

  The sisters’ slow progress around the counter was interrupted by a rattle on the pasticceria door.

  ‘Here we go,’ Violetta grumbled as two Danish backpackers clattered into the store and headed for the cantucci bowls.

  The two sisters immediately started hissing like busted steam pipes as Luciana flapped her apron at the surprised tourists while Violetta shook her head and, muttering angrily into her chest, hobbled over to the giant Danes and gave them a shove back in the direction of the door they had just come through.

  They pretty quickly got the idea and stumbled back out onto the street where they stood for a moment, stunned, while Violetta continued to shoo them away through the glass door as though sick to death of large, good-looking, blond people trying to buy cantucci, of all things, in a cantucci shop, of all places, in their lovely hilltop town of Montevedova. Ridicolo!

  ‘I guess we could always put the CLOSED sign up,’ suggested Luciana.

  ‘I don’t think so! We don’t want our cantucci to be as easy to come by as that Borsolini cacca. As long as people want to buy it and we don’t let them, we have the upper hand.’

  Violetta checked that the sign still said OPEN, turned the lock so no one else could get in, then the two of them shuffled over to a set of dusty shelves at the back of the store.

  With quite some effort, they pushed and pulled at one of the shoulder-height ledges until finally the whole thing slid away, revealing a hidden stairwell behind the wall.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Violetta asked. Luciana nodded and they started their descent, resting on each of three separate landings, then working their way along a narrow passage until they found themselves outside a large wooden door upon which Violetta performed a complicated knock before pushing it open.

  The two old ladies stepped into the warm, welcoming lamp-lit comfort of a large cozy room. Medieval tapestries hung from the dark oak walls, half-re
stored frescoes lurking beneath them, while at the far end of the room three lava lamps glooped and burped inside the enormous open fireplace. A table beneath one of the frescoes, remarkable only in that everyone in it—even the lambs and donkeys—had red hair, bore a carafe of sweet vin santo and a dozen small crystal glasses.

  This was the headquarters of La Lega Segreta de Rammendatrici Vedove—the Secret League of Widowed Darners.

  The sisters had initially started the League to fill the void left by the deaths of their twin husbands, Salvatore and Silvio, killed far from home in East Africa during World War II.

  As they mourned the men they had adored, they filled hole after hole in the toes and heels of various socks, and within a few months had attracted dozens of other widowed members.

  At that stage, the surviving men of Montevedova tried to muscle in on the action, turning up to meetings to get pie-eyed on grappa and telling long-winded stories about things they probably had not done on the battlefields.

  This made the widows sad that the men they had lost had been such good sorts while the men that were left behind were such a pain in the rear. They disbanded the open league, annexed the basement beneath the cathedral while the parish was briefly between priests, and re-formed the secret league.

  They also decided that darning hose was perhaps a tiny bit boring and not worth having a league for, but that the pursuit of true love—the likes of which they had all been lucky enough to have and still treasured—was far more philanthropic. In other words, they decided to mend hearts instead of socks.

  When Violetta’s nose tingled, Luciana’s toe throbbed, and orange blossom perfume filled the air, it meant a new calzino rotto—secret code for a broken heart—was about to come their way. The trick was to identify the calzino rotto as soon as possible and get mending.

  The widows believed in love with all their hearts, and no one more than Violetta, but in recent years it seemed that happy endings were harder to come by and added to this, League numbers—thanks to natural attrition—had dwindled to an even dozen.