Invitation to Italian

by Tracy Kelleher

  “I’d be delighted, Angela,” Sebastiano said, “as long as I’m not putting you out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lou said, putting his cup on the tray. “It’s not like my wife isn’t used to cooking for men. Julie has three brothers, you know.”

  Julie closed her eyes. “Tell me that Dom, Frank, Joey and their families are not coming, as well?”

  Angela clapped her hands. “What a good idea! I hadn’t thought of that.”

  If only she were eating a pignoli nut cookie. She could have had an excuse to gag.

  Julie felt a pat on her knee. She stole a glance over at Sebastiano. He was busy responding to a question by her father about his BMW. She peeked down and recognized the veined hand immediately.

  Nonna. She should have known. She squared her shoulders and smiled at her grandmother.

  Carmella patted again, then leaned back in stately fashion against her golden upholstered throne. “Senti il mio canarino?—do you hear my canary?” She cupped her hand to her ear. “Ti parla, dicendoti di ascoltare—it’s speaking to you, telling you to listen.”

  True enough, Nonna’s pet bird, Caruso, could be heard warbling away from his cage upstairs in her bedroom. Her grandmother had always ascribed special powers to Caruso. The superstitions of Italian women always seemed to include birds.

  Julie patted her grandmother’s hand. “Whatever you say, Nonna.” Julie wasn’t born yesterday. She knew not to disagree. “But to tell you the truth, I have a hard enough time keeping up with the rest of the family, let alone a bird.”

  WHAT WAS LEFT TO DO? Accept the invitation and leave quickly, saying she had patients waiting. It was true! And they made it, held up only by a few minutes when her mother raced off to get Sebastiano a container filled with the remaining cookies. “Men, they don’t think of having things like this,” Angela had insisted, pressing the container into his hands.

  Julie slipped into the passenger seat and snapped her seat belt. She dipped her hands in her jacket pockets, searching for something more than her phone. “I would kill for a Three Musketeers bar right now.”

  He started the engine and turned around to back out the car. “You can have some of my pignoli biscuits if you’re hungry.”

  “They’re not junky enough, and right now I need real junk food. It’s a girl thing.” Julie glanced out the side window of the car. “Wave goodbye before leaving. They’re all standing at the window.” It was true. Like the three bears they stood in the bowed picture window. A scrupulously trimmed hedge reached the lower edge. In the corner, her father had already wrapped his prize fig tree for the winter.

  They drove in silence, with Julie replaying the morning’s events over in her mind. When they were a few blocks from the hospital, she looked down at her watch. Good. She’d make her first appointment without too much fuss.

  “I want to thank you for…you know…helping with my grandmother.”

  “There’s nothing to thank me for. Surely, you knew I would help—you.”

  Julie tried hard not to read too much into his words.

  Sebastiano put on his turn signal, and pulled into the parking garage. On one side of the street were the older buildings of the hospital that now served as administrative offices and auxiliary services. On the other were one-story public housing buildings, their white-painted brick separated by patches of grass and individual gardens.

  He reached for his parking card. “Actually, there is something you can do for me. It’s why I was trying to stop you earlier at work.”

  “Oh, my God, that’s right. I completely forgot about that. So what is it?” Despite all logic, all rational thought, Julie felt herself getting a little excited that he actually was asking her to—

  “It has nothing to do with work,” he went on, slipping the card under his visor as the gate raised.

  Her heart skipped a beat. You are so lame. You don’t even like him. You argue all the time, she told herself. Another beat went missing.

  He pulled into his space and cut the engine. He slipped off his seat belt and turned to face her. An eternity of silence followed until finally he spoke. “It was about the Italian class. I wanted to ask you about a few suggestions for articles that I read online. Get your opinion, since I’ve never done this before, you know.”

  And like that, Julie knew that despite Nonna’s prognostications, her grandmother’s bird wasn’t playing her tune. “Oh” was all she could say.

  He frowned. “You were expecting something else?”

  If only he knew, she thought.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AT THE END of the first appointment on Friday morning, Julie accompanied her patient—one of her regulars—out to the hallway and watched the young woman toddle down the carpeted hallway in her Laboutin heels. She was a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue—hence the shoes at “a very good price” Julie had learned. More than the amazing shoes though, the woman was positively glowing in her fourteenth week of pregnancy, her concerns less about water weight than finding an appropriate nanny, preferably French-speaking.

  “It’s never too late to get a leg-up on getting into college,” she had said in all seriousness.

  Julie had smiled. Grantham was a town of notorious overachievers and status-conscious residents. “Knowing any foreign language is enriching,” she had replied, even though she had never thought of growing up and speaking Italian at home as “enriching.”

  Although—come to think of it—Sebastiano’s class was turning out to be very interesting. But was it the subject matter or the teacher? She’d like to say both, but, now, as she thought about her question, she knew she’d be kidding herself.

  Whatever. She turned back to her office, where she compulsively straightened the pillow in one of the armchairs—another one of her needlepoint creations, this one a rabbit leaping in a blueberry patch. The mechanical actions didn’t prevent her thoughts lingering on the discussion, but even more so—Sebastiano. What had brought him to America? Employment? Money? A love interest?

  She really didn’t know. True, in this age of the internet, Skype and cell phones, it wasn’t as if coming to America were akin to trekking through remote Outer Mongolia. But still, to come alone? And the thing of it was, Sebastiano really did seem alone. She couldn’t picture him in the context of a family, let alone children. Or could she? He had seemed more relaxed with her parents and grandmother than she usually felt, but then who didn’t get along better with someone else’s parents than your own?

  The phone buzzed on her desk. She walked back and lifted the receiver. It was Lakshmi, the receptionist, originally from Bangalore.

  “Kelley has already done the preliminaries on your next patient, and she’s waiting in room number two,” Lakshmi said. Kelley was Julie’s nurse.

  “Thanks.” Julie hung up. She squared her shoulders and walked across the hallway, first removing the patient folder from the pocket on the door and peering briefly at the information. A red Post-it signaled that the patient was new. She was middle-aged with slightly elevated blood pressure.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Antonelli,” she announced after knocking. She held out her hand and stopped.

  “Ciao, Dottoressa. Remember me? Katarina’s mom?”

  “Mrs. Zemanova,” Julie said, the surprise evident in her voice. “Somehow I didn’t put two and two together when I glanced at the folder.” She flipped to the front page.

  “Please, call me Zora. Mrs. Zemanova sounds like my mother, God forbid.” Even though she sat on the examining table dressed in nothing but a blue paper gown and a pair of gray Smartwool socks, she exuded confidence.

  Unlike most patients, Julie couldn’t help noticing that Zora hadn’t bothered to use the skinny plastic cord to tie the gown together, nor did she seem at all inclined to clutch the sides together. No, Zora Zemanova proudly sat with her shoulders back and her gown gaping, her slightly overweight middle-aged body with all its bumps proudly on display. Her dark hair was sprinkled gray and pulled back in a thick
braid that hung down her back. Other than a coating of Chapstick on her lips, her face was free of makeup. There was no question that Zora was unique for her natural, healthy look. Of course, given her Eastern European genes, her natural looks had a lot going for it, especially her clear skin. Forget microdermabrasion.

  Julie snagged her rolling stool with the toe of her Ferragamos and sat down. “Gee, this makes three times in less than a week that we’ve seen each other. That must be a record for us,” Julie said as she rested the folder on her lap and unclipped the pen from the top.

  “About as many times as Katarina has seen me in the last five years,” Zora joked. Within the confines of the small examining room and its four white walls, the joke fell flat. Zora winced.

  “Well, many of us wish we could limit our exposure to our mothers for even less time,” Julie admitted, trying to lessen the tension.

  “Katarina might not agree, but I like to think I’ve instilled in her a sense of adventure and self-worth, even if I wasn’t there for many of the day-to-day things—going to school plays, teaching her to swim, helping her with college applications.”

  Julie rolled the chair closer. “Seeing as Katarina got into Stanford, I think she did just fine anyway. And watching her go through the anxieties of Matt applying to college, I’m becoming more and more convinced that being far, far away from the process might be better for all concerned. Funny, I was just talking about the same thing to another patient.”

  “Well, whatever our choices, it’s not as if we can change our past, can we?” Zora remarked.

  “I guess not,” Julie said, her voice trailing off. She cleared her throat. “But enough of that. What brings you here today?” She cocked her head in anticipation.

  “It’s time for my gynecological checkup. I haven’t had one for a while, so I probably need all the usual bells and whistles. As a scientist, I fully appreciate the benefits of preventive medicine and having a proper baseline from which to evaluate further data,” Zora said as if she were clinically evaluating some geological substrata. She paused. And swallowed.

  Julie smiled. “Anything else?”

  “Oh, yes, there is something. Since I no longer get my periods, birth control is not an issue. And while I haven’t been sexually active for a number of years, I’d like to get checked out for the possibility of any infections that I may have become exposed to.”

  “Are you showing any symptoms of STDs? Any reason to think you may have contracted the HIV virus?” Julie asked, her voice professional.

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve met someone….” Zora glanced down and flattened the paper material of her gown against her thigh. Then she looked up, leading with her chin. “The long and short of it is, I plan to become sexually active. Soon. In fact, I had next Wednesday—class night—in mind.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JULIE WAS STILL standing in the examination room, trying to digest Zora’s loaded statement while one flight up, in the same medical office building, Paul was doing his best to control his temper.

  “Listen, Dad, I said I was happy to come with you to the doctor, so don’t keep asking me if I’d rather be some place else,” Paul said, the irritation evident in his voice.

  Clearly, dealing with old people was not his strength. He’d nearly lost it when his father had had problems finding his Medicare card in his wallet when they’d first checked in at the cardiologist. And did he have to go on and on about the wonderful free pen the receptionist gave him to sign for his co-pay?

  “I have the best collection from all my doctors,” Carl Bedecker had told her with a twinkle in his eye. “But I have to tell you, the urologist has the best. Those Viagra pens are nice and big, easy to grip.”

  The receptionist had smiled politely, even chuckled. But there was no way she really wanted to hear all the details, especially when she had someone on hold on the telephone the whole time.

  Paul steered his father toward the chairs in the reception area. Two rows of upholstered armchairs faced each other across the beige carpet. In the center was a coffee table with pamphlets about blood thinners and plaque buildup and back issues of Popular Mechanics. “You want a magazine, Dad?” Paul asked, trying to make amends.

  “No, I’m fine. You never have to wait here long anyway,” Carl said. He unzipped his golf jacket and placed his cap on his lap. “You know, I could have come by myself.”

  “We all agreed that two sets of ears are better than one,” Paul said. Carl had suffered a heart attack over a year ago, and while the bypass surgery had been a success and Carl was watching his diet and exercising regularly, he still needed regular checkups to monitor his condition.

  “In which case, Norm could have come. He never objects.”

  “Norm’s busy running the garden center. He’s the one earning the money that pays the bills and supports his family—and me, at the moment, I might add. Norm’s the responsible son, Dad. We all know that. I’m the screwup.”

  “No, you’re not. You just went down the wrong path for a while. But you’re home now. You’ve got your priorities straight,” Carl said, his baldpate gleaming under the overhead lights. For some reason, Carl insisted on combing over a few strands of gray hair. He’d done that as far back as Paul could remember. Once, it had been a source of embarrassment. Now? Now it was just something his dad did.

  “Let me tell you, son. Your mother would be proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together,” Carl went on. Then he coughed and reached for the white handkerchief in his pants pocket.

  Paul looked away. The door next to the receptionist opened. He expected a nurse to emerge, calling his father back to the examination rooms. But it wasn’t a nurse. It was a middle-aged woman, chubby. Her hair was short, brown. She wore khaki pants and a boiled wool jacket. She looked vaguely familiar. She was holding on to the arm of an older woman dressed in a gray skirt and black cardigan sweater buttoned primly over a white shirt. With her Roman nose, black-and-white clothing and curved back, she looked like something out of central casting for a post-war Italian film.

  “Paul? Paul Bedecker?” The middle-aged woman dragged the older woman along with her. “It’s good to see you. It’s Angela, Angela Marcesano. Actually, now it’s Angela Antonelli. I married Lou Antonelli. We all went to Grantham High together?”

  “Oh, yeah, Angela. You look great,” Paul said even though the words didn’t carry any real weight. He and Angela had never run in the same crowd. He was more the AP Calculus type. She played on the softball team. Truth was, he had probably thought he was too good for her. Now he complained about the snobs in Grantham to Sebastiano, but when he had been young, he’d been one of the biggest intellectual snobs of all. He’d been embarrassed that his father owned a garden center. What was worse, his father probably knew it.

  “Well, you look great. Still nice and trim. I wish I could say the same thing about me.” Angela patted her round tummy beneath her jacket. She briefly chatted with Carl, an old acquaintance, made the introductions of Nonna to Paul.

  “I hope everything’s okay,” Carl spoke to Nonna. He knew the woman’s English was limited.

  “Oh, she’s fine, aren’t you, Nonna?” Angela said.

  “Si, si, yes.” Nonna nodded. “Just…just—” she pressed her stomach “—lo stomaco.”

  “A bad case of indigestion,” Angela clarified. “She had us worried this morning though. Luckily Julie, that’s my daughter—”

  “Yes, I’ve met her. In Italian class at the Adult School,” Paul interrupted.

  “Oh, good, then you know she’s a doctor. Anyway she and Dr. Fonterra rushed over to help out, and while they said it didn’t appear to be anything serious, they got her an appointment this afternoon, just to make sure. The good news is, the EKG and the stress test were normal, and even though we still have to wait for the results from the blood tests, the cardiologist is pretty sure that my attempt to make this dish I’d seen on the Food Network was to blame. You were right, Nonna. Cr
eam sauces are never a good idea for pasta.” Angela laughed.

  “In the old days, I loved cream with anything—pasta included. Now they won’t let me touch the stuff,” Carl said. “It’s miserable. We’re supposed to watch our diet, how much we drink, not smoke. I tell you, what kind of fun is left for an old man anymore?”

  Paul smiled nervously. “Who said life was supposed to be fun?”

  “You know, I heard you were back in town,” Angela said, changing the subject, for which Paul was eternally grateful.

  On the other hand, he could only guess what she had heard.

  “Actually, I was hoping you could help out,” Angela said.

  “Help out? I’m not quite sure I know what you mean?”

  “It’s our thirty-fifth reunion from high school, and seeing as you were always such a leader in school—gee, I remember you as editor-in-chief of the newspaper, right?”

  Paul nodded.

  “And then you went to Hollywood and all. Well, we’d be so honored if you’d consider being a speaker, talk about your career, things you’ve done.”

  “I don’t know if I’d be such a good person for that. As I’m sure you know, my career peaked a long time ago, followed by a long downhill spiral,” Paul said, trying to back out nicely.

  “But I hear you’re writing a book. That’s so exciting. We don’t have any other authors in the class. You could talk about where you get your inspiration,” Angela suggested.

  Paul figured that Angela Antonelli would be shocked if he told her his latest chapter sprang from an incident where he’d woken up after an all-night bender with two hookers in his bed and a loaded revolver under his pillow. “Someone told you I was writing a book?” he asked instead. He looked over his eyebrows at his father.

  “I might have mentioned something to Lou when he came in to get fertilizer for his grass,” Carl admitted. “And why shouldn’t I? I’m a proud father. I got a right to brag.”