Angelina's Bachelors

by Brian O'Reilly

Dottie was plump and kindly, a bit older, as evidenced by the white that flecked her strawberry-blond hair. She was a widow, had no children, and was generally thought of as a good-hearted soul who never gossiped and would give you the shirt off her back if you asked. I’m a widow, too, thought Angelina. Two widows standing in a doorway.

  “No, I’m not busy, Dottie, come on in.”

  Dottie bustled in across the threshold and indicated the pot with a shrug. “Can I bring this into the kitchen? It’s still a little hot.”

  “Sure, go right in.”

  In the kitchen, Dottie put the pot on the stove and turned the burner on low, so that the blue flame barely flickered. Angelina slid onto a chair noiselessly.

  “I’m just going to leave it on low, so’s you have it warm for later.”

  Dottie joined Angelina at the table and pulled her chair close. Angelina was looking at the picture again, which was still in her hand, and turned it facedown when Dottie sat down because she didn’t really want to have to talk about it.

  Dottie reached over and touched her arm gently. “How you feeling, hon?”

  For five full seconds, nothing.

  Then the dam burst, and Angelina started sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Oh, my God, you poor thing, come here.” Dottie came up halfway out of her chair and pulled Angelina’s head onto her shoulder, then pulled her chair even closer and sat back down, knee to knee. Dottie pulled a crumpled hankie out of her pocket and handed it to Angelina.

  “You go ahead and cry. Let it all out. That’s it.”

  Dottie was talking to her the way you would talk to a little girl, but that was just what Angelina needed right now and she was thankful for it, and she cried and cried.

  “Oh, Dottie, I’m just so sad. I’m so sad! I can’t even miss him yet, ’cause I think he’s going to come in the door any minute.” The words came out of Angelina in spurts in between tearful gasps. “Am I going to be this sad for the rest of my life? Because I don’t feel like … it’s ever going to stop. I’m just saying … if I have to feel like this forever, I’m gonna take the bridge …”

  “Aw, jeez.”

  “I might as well walk into the ocean …”

  “Oh, my goodness.”

  “I’ll just stick my head in the oven …”

  “Blow,” said Dottie. She took the handkerchief out of Angelina’s hands and pinched it on her nose. Angelina honked into it loudly, then had to laugh as they both sat there trying to figure out what to do with it next.

  Angelina started crying again, but softer, without all of the racking sobs. “Oh, God.”

  Dottie fetched a handful of tissues. Angelina took them and mopped her eyes.

  “There you go,” said Dottie. “Do you feel a little better now?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Dottie took her by the hand and led her back toward the front room.

  “Listen, sweetie,” said Dottie. “I’m going to give you three aspirins and a warm washcloth for your eyes, and you’re going to lay down on the sofa.”

  Angelina shuffled after her compliantly and nodded.

  “I’m going to stay here until you fall asleep. I’ll leave the soup on the stove with the lid on, and when you wake up, you can have some and you won’t have to cook.”

  “Okay.”

  Dottie arranged Angelina on the sofa, found an afghan, and wrapped her up tight. Dottie drew the front curtains, gave Angelina the aspirins and the wet cloth, and waited while she swallowed the pills and drank her water.

  “I know it’s hard, but don’t you worry about a thing, you’ll be back on your feet in no time.” Dottie fluffed a pillow under Angelina’s head and placed the cloth over her eyes.

  “What kind is it?” asked Angelina.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “The soup. What kind of soup did you bring?”

  “Escarole.”

  “Thanks, Dottie.”

  In a few short minutes, Angelina was out like a light. Dottie quietly put down her Good Housekeeping and picked the washcloth up off the floor where it had dropped when Angelina had rolled over. Dottie turned on the small lamp on the table in the little hall that led to the kitchen, so there was no chance that Angelina would wake up alone in the dark. A good cry and a good sleep were just what she needed.

  Dottie snuck on her tiptoes to the front door, turned the lock on the knob so it locked behind her, and left Angelina slumbering soundly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the Wee Hours of the Mourning

  BY THE TIME Angelina awoke, night had fallen. Her blanket was tucked tightly under her chin and her feet were cold. She came out of her exhausted sleep slowly, piecing together the events that had led her to the couch. It was nighttime. It was Saturday. Had she slept the whole day away? She was hungry. What was she making for dinner again? Where was Frank?

  She pulled the blanket tighter. Her head was throbbing, her eyes felt swollen, and her mouth was dry. Nothing to do but get up. She wrapped the afghan around her shoulders and dragged herself into the kitchen.

  Dottie’s soup was still on the stove. Angelina turned up the heat, filled herself a big glass of water out of the tap, then went upstairs and brushed her teeth. She threw on an old sweater and sweatpants and turned up the thermostat when she got back downstairs. When the soup was ready, Angelina filled her bowl and sat down. She took a sip.

  “Oh.”

  Angelina bent low over the bowl and sniffed. She took the pepper shaker in hand and doused the soup liberally. She tried it again. If possible, the pepper made it even worse. She had a sudden urge to scrape her tongue with the spoon.

  “Oh, Dottie. Bless your heart, but, oh, my God.”

  She rinsed out her bowl in the sink. The remains of the soup in the pot followed close behind. Angelina built herself a sandwich instead—rye bread, thin slices of soppressata, tomato, and a little mayonnaise. It was the most silent supper she could ever remember.

  She spent a long time in the shower; the hot water, as hot as she could possibly stand it, felt good pounding down on the back of her neck. When the water heater finally ran out, she shut the knobs off with a squeak, climbed out of the old cast-iron, claw-foot tub, and wrapped herself in a big white cotton towel.

  Sometimes, if Frank was taking a shower after her, she would draw a smiley face on the mirror in the steam. She ran her finger across the mirror as she left the bathroom, just a slash for no one to see.

  She felt weak but warm and relaxed as she sat in her robe brushing her hair on the bench at the foot of the bed. She was completely aware that this was her first real night in the house alone and was preparing herself to face the fact that everything she looked at or touched or thought about tonight was going to remind her of him.

  Angelina turned off the lamp and got fully under the covers. As she lay there with her eyes open, nothing came to her. Not sleep, not tears, not sadness, not relief, not memories of her childhood or of her life with Frank, no ideas for getting a new job or worries about when the money would run out, not even an idea for a new dish or recipe.

  She listened to the alarm clock tick, then got up and drew the curtains closed to block the moonlight. After another round of straightening covers that hardly needed it, she tried closing her eyes.

  Ticking. Ticking.

  She grabbed the alarm clock and marched it into the bathroom, where she left it under a stack of towels on top of the hamper. Back in bed, even with the bathroom door closed, she could still hear it. Angelina threw off the covers and sat up. Then it came to her.

  She jumped out of bed, went down to the kitchen without her slippers, flicked on the lights, and there it was. It had been moved to the counter but was still sitting there, glistening around the edges, listing and abandoned, with an ugly gash in its side. That stupid, beautiful, treacherous cake, for which she’d had such big plans. She removed the glass cover and picked up the cake stand by the base.

  She kicked open the back screen door and marched
angrily out to the concrete slab where they kept the trash cans. She yanked the metal lid off of the first one she came to. The unhappy remains of that Frangelico Chocolate Dream, minus one big fingerful of cake and frosting, plummeted to the bottom of the can. Angelina slammed the lid into place with all of the force she could bring to bear and stormed back through the screen door.

  She looked around. The back of her neck was blazing hot.

  It was starting to come into focus for her now, the sheer weight of all of the food in the house: the peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, prosciutto, the chicken, baccalà, fresh produce, the greens, the cheeses—all for the party, the party that wasn’t ever going to happen now.

  Canceled. No more parties. It was all going in the garbage.

  Angelina raided the fridge. She grabbed a packet of fish, fresh cod, and slammed it down on the table. She rolled five eggplants onto the table, catching the last one as it nearly tumbled off the edge. They were followed by packages of beef, pork, and sausages, a whole roasting chicken, all wrapped in crisp white butcher paper. She slammed each one down as hard as she could. She pulled out both crisper drawers and upended their contents. An avalanche of bell peppers, onions, carrots with their fluffy greens still attached, zucchini, tomatoes, celery, pinkish-white cloves of garlic, bunches of parsley—all spilled out in a colorful cascade.

  Angelina searched in the pantry until she found a big green plastic trash bag. It snapped like a whip crack when she shook it open with a flick of her wrist. She began furiously shoving food into the bag; she wanted it all out of her life forever.

  She heard a soft bump. A big sack of flour in the pantry had been jostled and it slumped over tiredly. The lazy, insolent way it had fallen over irritated her. She grabbed it and hefted it onto the table with the rest of the food. The flap at the top of the bag was slightly open, and when she slammed it down, a great powdery, white puff exploded into her eyes, face, and hair.

  Surprised, she coughed and waved until the cloud of flour dispersed.

  Angelina caught sight of herself in the shiny stainless-steel door of the refrigerator, which she kept meticulously polished to a high gloss shine.

  And she laughed.

  Laughing that laugh was like pulling the rip cord on a parachute. She laughed down deep, down in her belly and her back, a laugh that shook her shoulders and filled her up till tears formed in her eyes and she slumped over in gentle surrender on the countertop. She’d forgotten she knew how.

  She picked up a clean dish towel, dabbed her eyes and dusted herself off as best she could. Still laughing, she emptied the food from the plastic bag carefully back onto the counter.

  It was going on midnight, but Angelina knew one thing. She wasn’t going back to bed.

  She wanted to cook.

  She fetched a big metal mixing bowl and an oversize Pyrex measuring cup, used it to pour warm water into the bowl, then added a scoop of sugar and stirred in a packet of yeast.

  Minutes later, Angelina returned to the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, sleeves pushed up, sneakers on, hair pulled back, ready to go to work. She dipped her finger into the yeasty mixture in the bowl and tasted. Satisfied, she weighed out a large measure of flour from the bag with a metal scoop and combined it with a bit of salt and the yeast and water. She started mixing with both hands, reveling in the warm, bready scent of the dough as it came together. She kneaded it, pounded it with that familiar satisfying rhythm she’d learned as a child, until a slight glistening of sweat formed on her forehead.

  Every time she squeezed the dough, she used all of her strength to push away the memories of Frank that pressed in on her. She would remember them all and cherish them all later, but right now they were just too painful.

  Soon, she had shaped a softball-size round of dough, which she nestled back into the bowl. She draped a dry dish towel over the top of it and set it aside. Angelina stood back and coolly appraised the stove, walking through the steps in her mind that would fill up the six burners and dual ovens.

  Down came the big gravy pot. Out came the knives. Stove flame on.

  She called her massive stove “Old Reliable.” Her father, Ralph, had found and installed this mammoth, cast-iron-and-white-ceramic creation of the Reliable Stove Company in her mother’s kitchen thirty some years ago, just before Angelina was born, when he and Emmaline had first moved into their house to begin their married life together. It had six powerful gas burners, two full-size ovens, a grill, a stand-alone broiler, and a separate warming oven. The Reliable Stove Company stopped making cooking equipment in the thirties, but the ones they built, they built to last. Old Reliable never failed. It inspired confidence.

  The stove, the only real legacy left to her when her parents died, had moved into this house from storage when she and Frank had. If only her parents had had the chance to know Frank. He was so wonderful, the way he had brought her into his family, the way he’d made sure that they knew how much he loved her and respected her, the way he’d given her the chance to get to know them on her own terms. She remembered the first time she’d cooked for them and how nervous she’d been, making the red gravy for an Italian man’s Italian mother …

  Focus.

  The red gravy was the starting point—sauce tomate to her mom, the mother sauce. She grabbed a big yellow onion, two ribs of celery, a fat carrot, and a handful of parsley, the quattro evangelistas, the “four saints,” of Italian cooking.

  She diced the onion, celery, and carrot first, then cut a sweet red pepper and parsley even finer, like grains of wet sand, running the knife through them again and again. She picked off five cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and gave them a rough dice, so that they’d flavor the sauce but not overwhelm it.

  Three big glugs of olive oil went into the heated pot, followed by the evangelistas, salt and pepper, and only then by the garlic, so it wouldn’t burn. She folded in a dollop of tomato paste. While they simmered, she stripped a handful of dried herbs from the collection she kept hanging—rosemary, basil, thyme, oregano—then rubbed her hands together over the pot and watched the flecks drift down like tiny green snowflakes.

  She inhaled the perfume they left behind on her fingers. The smell reminded her of her parents: helping her mom with the sauce when she was a little girl, hugging her daddy when he walked in from work, the scent of the fresh herbs mingled with his aftershave.

  Angelina splashed in red wine, which made a satisfying sizzle when it hit the pot, added a tomatoey waterfall of crushed pomodoros, reseasoned, brought the sauce up to a near boil, then lowered it way down to a simmer.

  Her grandmother Nonna, her father’s mother, used to preserve her own tomatoes straight off the vines in her garden. She used to bring jars and jars of them to Emmaline, and they would sit together for hours eating cornichons with Edam cheese and drinking beer. Nonna was the only person Emmaline would ever drink beer with.

  Angelina was getting loose. She started a pot of cannellini for her classic Tuscan white bean soup, then grabbed the red and green peppers, halved them, deseeded and lightly oiled them, then set them into the oven to roast. She could have blackened them right on the gas burners, but slow-roasting coaxed out every last ounce of flavor, and she felt as if she had all the time in the world.

  Might as well cook the chicken now, too. She had a big, fat roaster that she had gone all the way up to the Amish market to buy. She carefully worked butter cubes dusted with pulverized parsley, sage, thyme and peppercorns under the chicken skin. As the bird cooked, the butter would baste and infuse the meat, allowing the essences of the herbs to penetrate deeply to the bone. She rinsed the cavity of the chicken with white vermouth and spilled some into the roasting pan.

  When Emmaline had taught Angelina the mysteries of how to roast a chicken that was achingly moist and tender inside with skin as brown as a walnut shell and crisp as a potato chip, she had, only half-jokingly, said, “A good roasted chicken, no man can resist. When you grow up, if you decide you want a husband, you can
get one with a good chicken.” Sure enough, three weeks after the first time Angelina made a roast chicken for Frank, he proposed.

  Once the bird was in the oven, Angelina poured herself a glass of wine.

  “It’s too quiet in here,” she said out loud, just to hear her own voice. “Too quiet!” she shouted.

  She shoved open the swinging dining-room door and marched into the corner where the old hi-fi stood. She rummaged and pulled out an LP in a tattered sleeve, an old favorite of her father’s, the one he used to love to dance to with her when she was knee-high: Louis Prima’s Collected Hits.

  She put the record on the turntable, set the needle in the groove, and turned it up loud so she could hear it in the kitchen.

  “Angelina, I adore you … ,” crooned Louis. Then the New Orleans Gang picked up the beat and King Louis sang, “I eat antipasto twice, just because she is so nice, Angelina …”

  Fresh pasta time. Angelina cracked three eggs into the center of a mound of 00 flour, in time to the music, and began teasing the flour into the sticky center. With a hand-cranked pasta maker, she rolled out the dough into long, silky-thin sheets, laid them out until they covered the entire table, then used a mezza luna to carefully slice wide strips of pasta for a new dish she wanted to try that she called Lasagna Provençal, a combination of Italian and French cheeses, Roma and sun-dried tomatoes, Herbes de Provence, and fresh basil. It was a recipe for which she had very high hopes.

  Angelina started assembling her lasagna. She mixed creamy Neufchâtel, ricotta, and a sharp, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano in with a whole egg to bind it together. She layered fresh pasta sheets in a lasagna dish, coated them with the cheesy mixture, ripped in some fresh basil and oregano and sun-dried tomatoes. She worked quickly, but with iron concentration.

  “I’m-a just a gigolo, everywhere I go … ,” sang King Louie.

  For the second layer, she used more pasta topped with Gruyère and herbed Boursin cheese. The third layer was the same as the first. For the fourth layer, she used the rest of the Boursin and dollops of crème fraîche, then ladled the thick, rich tomato sauce from the stove on top and finished it with a sprinkling of shredded Gruyère. She set it aside for baking later and felt a flush of craftswomanly pride in the way it had all come together.