“Hi, Mrs. Dante. Nice to meet you.”
“Good to meet you, too, Bobby. Stop by the restaurant with Toni sometime and have dinner with us. In fact, if you two are going to the neighborhood, join us tonight.”
“Can’t, Mom. Sorry. My print class is throwing a birthday party for our instructor. I’m bringing the pastries.”
“Are you in Toni’s class, Bobby?”
“Who, me? No, I’m not an artist. I’m an engineer.”
“Where do you go to school, then?”
“I’m out of school. I work over in Kendall Square in Cambridge.”
“Shouldn’t you be at work now?”
“I’m on my lunch break. Just volunteered to help Toni pick everything up. She seems to think the only place worthy of her patronage is on Hanover Street.”
He shot her a wide grin, obviously humoring her. I don’t know who I expected Toni to fall in love with, but in my wildest dreams, it wasn’t somebody like Bobby Templeton. He was, let me put it bluntly, not like us. To begin with, he stood well over six feet, with blond hair and blue eyes. At least he wasn’t one of those long-haired, guitar-playing, skinny artists sprawled all over the steps at the Museum School when we went to see Toni’s exhibits. He was clean-cut; he had a job. He wasn’t Italian, which was probably going to be a little difficult for Al. But the world was changing and, of all of us, Toni was the one out in front, finding her place in it.
I had mixed feelings, of course. On the one hand, I was excited to see her starting to figure out how talented she was. She’d begun to really blossom at the Museum School, bursting out of the narrow ideas the nuns had about art. I was no expert. Most of what I knew on the subject came from a book on Italian masterpieces Toni had given me one Christmas. But I did know that what she was painting came right out of her heart and stopped you dead in your tracks. The summer after her second year in art school, she’d painted a mural of the Bay of Naples on a wall in the restaurant. One of her classmates had sent her a postcard with a view from a hillside overlooking the harbor with Vesuvius in the distance. She studied that photograph and turned it into a work of love that brought tears to the eyes of the old-timers in the neighborhood. They’d probably stood on that very hillside—maybe just before they left Italy forever. I watched people at her exhibits at the Museum School get lost in her portraits, faces staring back at you and pulling you into their secrets.
I regretted that we’d sent her to Catholic high school. It was different for the boys with the Jesuits. They taught them to think on their own. But the nuns at Sacred Heart cared more about the length of the girls’ skirts than the depth of their ideas. I hadn’t realized how tightly they’d contained Toni until she started to paint in college. Also, putting her in an all-girl school meant she hadn’t had a chance to get to know boys.
I think Bobby Templeton was the first boy to pay attention to her, and he swept her off her feet. He was the kind of person everyone stared at when he walked into a room. He commanded attention. Part of it was those all-American good looks. Not to my taste, mind you, but he had a quality like James Dean or Steve McQueen that made people, especially women, notice. So I guess Toni was flattered that somebody who was wanted by everyone else wanted her.
At first, like any mother, I worried that he’d hurt her. She was so crazy about him, although she wouldn’t admit that to me for a minute.
Between her studio classes and the academic courses she was taking to get the teaching degree Al and I had insisted on, she wasn’t home much. It made me nervous that she was often out late, but she spent every night at home. Other than school, Bobby Templeton was her whole life.
One night, I decided we needed to talk. They’d been going out for about a year. Their generation was starting to disregard the taboos ours had respected about sex. Couples were moving in with each other, setting up house, without a ring and the blessing of the priest. In my opinion, that was a recipe for disaster, especially for the girl. I didn’t want that for my daughter.
So when I heard her key in the door, I was waiting in the kitchen with a pot of tea, which is what she’s always liked to drink.
“Toni, have a cup with me. I don’t get to see you enough, and this seems like the only time we’re both home.”
She set down her knapsack. I could see she was about to protest, beg off because she was tired. We’d never done well at this mother-daughter thing. Somehow, no matter how much I loved her, no matter how thrilled I was with the wonderful woman I saw her becoming, I managed to garble the message. She must have seen something in my face—a longing or a resistance to being put off—and she thought better of saying no.
She slipped reluctantly into a seat at the kitchen table and I poured her a cup of tea. We got through the “how was your day?” part of the conversation pretty quickly. Then I said what was on my mind.
“Toni, I know you and Bobby are getting serious—at least, that’s how it appears to me. I need to talk to you, woman to woman. You know I’m not an openly religious person. I don’t make a big show of going to Mass every day or lighting banks of candles. But I have to tell you, every night I pray to Jesus, Mary and Joseph that you are not having an affair with Bobby Templeton.”
She almost spit out the tea she’d just sipped.
“Ma! An affair? An affair is something your generation has, something between two people who shouldn’t be together—usually because one of them’s married to someone else. It’s sordid and secretive and bound to hurt somebody. I’m not having an affair.” She didn’t have to say out loud that her definition of an affair came straight out of her father’s life.
“Well, my definition of an affair is sleeping with someone who isn’t your husband. I don’t care what the rest of the world is doing right now, casually jumping into bed with one another. You give up something precious, a part of yourself, when you make love to a man—and I’m not talking about your virginity. If you find out later he’s not the man you want to marry—or he decides he’s had what he wanted and moves on—you’re setting yourself up for a terrible loss. I don’t want you hurt, Toni.”
She was bristling. But she pulled back whatever argument she’d planned to throw in my face.
“I know you want to protect me. Look, I’m twenty-one years old. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m not going to get myself pregnant, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh, that’s only part of it. I’m thinking more about you, not the family’s reputation. I trusted your father, body and soul, when I put myself in his arms. I just want you to be sure that you can trust Bobby in the same way.”
“I do, Ma, no less than you did when you placed your trust in Daddy.”
I should’ve known that when she fell in love, she’d measure her experience against her memory of her father’s betrayal.
“We’re all imperfect, Toni. But I knew, because of what we’d been through together, that even when he stumbled, your father was a good man. If you can ask yourself and know in your heart that at the core of Bobby’s imperfections, he’s a good man, that’s all I want for you. It’s your life, honey, and I want you to have a happy one.”
I didn’t ask her straight out, Are you sleeping with Bobby? Because what was I going to do if she said yes? She’d move in with him if I tried to stop her. I wanted her to understand what the consequences were. Not to say “I told you so” if she got hurt in the end. Just to make her think about it and maybe get through the next part of her life with a little wisdom.
“Be careful,” I said softly.
When Bobby asked her to meet his mother over Thanksgiving, I sensed it wouldn’t be long before I wouldn’t have to worry anymore about her having sex outside of marriage. And I was right.
She came into the restaurant kitchen one night just before Easter, breathless with laughter, Bobby at her side.
“Mom! Dad! Bobby asked me to marry him!”
She took her left hand out of her coat pocket and showed us the ring.
&nb
sp; Al came up beside me and slid his arm around my waist.
We hugged and kissed her and let her bask in the excitement. Her face was flushed, not just from the heat of the stove but also from the emotion. I don’t think I’d ever seen her in such an agitated state.
“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she said as she whirled from one station to the next, receiving the congratulations of one after another of us. Manny teased her, humming the wedding march. Papa retrieved a bottle of champagne and poured glasses all around.
Then Al, pulling Toni and Bobby with him, went into the dining room, turned off the music and made an announcement to the guests sitting over various stages of their dinners. For a few minutes, forks went down and veal scallopine, chicken francese and spinach fettuccine with porcini sat idle.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please share in the good news with my family. My daughter, my princess, has just gotten engaged. Drinks all around, on the house!”
Glasses went up and “Salute!” echoed across the room. People clapped, and someone tapped a spoon against a water glass. Toni, even more red-faced than before, uttered in exasperation, “Daddy!”
Bobby looked like a deer in the headlights, standing in the doorway and facing the raucous tumult.
“They’re waiting for you to kiss her,” I murmured to him, and he finally got the message.
A roar went up when he took her in his arms. Then Manny, as if to rescue his sister, put the Frank Sinatra album back on and people returned to their dinners.
“You should make the rounds,” I told her. “A lot of people here tonight will want to congratulate you.”
She took Bobby by the hand and moved from table to table, initiating him into the family business. He needed to know he was going to be on display for a few months, at least until the wedding was over.
The wedding, even I have to say, was an extravaganza. The restaurant was fine for an engagement party, which we threw for them a month after their announcement. The wedding itself we held elsewhere.
But we almost didn’t make it to the wedding at all, or not in the way we’d expected.
I was surprised by Al’s exuberance that night in the restaurant. The little time we’d spent with Bobby up to that point hadn’t given us much comfort that we knew who our future son-in-law was. Later that night in bed, Al and I talked about it.
“You got carried away with your announcement tonight. What got into you?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her so happy. If marrying this guy is what she wants, and it can lift her so high, then I do feel like celebrating. We’re only going to get to do this once, so why not shout it from the rooftops—or at least from the kitchen door? Why? Did I embarrass you or something?”
“No, of course not! I think it’s sweet that you got so excited for her. Some fathers might feel they were about to lose their daughters. It was kind of like the old days, watching you order drinks all around and make such a big deal. It’s been ages since we’ve had reason to celebrate. I feel I’ve been too skeptical. You did the right thing tonight, Al. Thank you!”
“You know, it’s a pretty important moment in our lives, too—the first of our kids to get married. It made me remember that Christmas I proposed to you.”
“I thought of that, too. What kids we were! What did we know? I wanted to marry you so much.”
“We’ve done okay, Rose, despite how blindly we went into it.” He drew me close and kissed me.
“I only hope Toni and Bobby are as blessed as we were.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“Oh, Al, I’m not trying to put a damper on things. I may just be reading into the situation something that isn’t there.”
“Like what? What am I missing?”
“He’s not like you, Al. I want to know she’s with someone who loves her for who she is, not who she might be someday. Someone who’ll stand by her when they hit bumps in the road.”
“You worry too much, Rose. We have to trust her that this is the guy who makes her happy. Did you see her looking at him tonight? The light in her eyes?”
“You’re right. I should know by now we can’t be sure of anything in this life. We have to take a leap of faith sometimes.”
The next few weeks—as Toni and Bobby planned their wedding—tested both of us. Even Al, convinced as he was of Toni’s happiness, had to fight with himself to accept some things he’d never imagined.
We knew we were on unfamiliar territory because Bobby wasn’t Italian. Toni was the first of the cousins to marry someone who hadn’t grown up with the same traditions, the same sense of family. When Bobby’s mother, a widow, came east from Indiana for the engagement party, she put her best face on a situation we could see was not to her liking.
From what Toni had told me of her visit at Thanksgiving, Bobby lived in a fancy suburb. They were country-club people, who kept crystal decanters of bourbon and Scotch on a tray in the living room and served cocktails every evening before dinner. For all I knew, they had a black maid in a uniform who did the cooking and cleaning. Hazel Templeton struck me as the kind of woman who wasn’t used to getting down on her hands and knees and scrubbing her own floors.
I’m proud of my home. I keep it spotless myself, just like I learned from Mama. And everything in it Al and I worked for. I suppose we could’ve moved the family to a house up the North Shore, to Lynn or Swampscott, but it would’ve meant running the business differently if we didn’t live above the restaurant the way we always have. So, even after we were successful, we stayed put. Close to family. Close to the business. My kids never suffered for living in an old section of the city. They got good educations, understood the value of hard work to get where you wanted in life and looked out for one another and those who had less than they did.
But Hazel Templeton was clearly pained when she set foot in my home, wondering what her son was marrying into. She barely ate anything, drank only martinis and asked pointed questions of Toni about how she planned to decorate the home she and Bobby were buying.
That was actually the first time Al and I heard they were going to buy a house. Bobby had a new job out in Concord, so, without discussing it with us, they decided to look in the suburbs for a place to live rather than stay in Bobby’s apartment in Cambridge. Instead of a fifteen-minute T ride from the North End, they’d be almost an hour away by car.
I know—Al and I went all the way to Trinidad when we got married. But we came back, as we always knew we would. Toni wasn’t coming back. Along with the Templeton name she was going to be taking on a whole lot of other ideas that felt at odds with who we were.
It hurt. I can’t deny it. And Al couldn’t understand why they hadn’t told us.
“Is she ashamed of us, of the home she grew up in, that she’s taking off for Bedford without even telling us?” This was after Bobby and Hazel had left and we were getting ready for bed.
“I think she’s seeing us through Bobby’s eyes, not her own,” I said, saddened that she was putting such distance between us.
The house was only the beginning. When they started talking about where they were going to be married, both Al and I hit the roof. Arlington Street Church. So many things about that choice felt like a slap in the face to us. To begin with, it wasn’t Catholic. It wasn’t even in the neighborhood. Back Bay instead of the North End. You have to understand, the North End is not simply a collection of streets. It’s a village, just like all the ones our parents came from in Italy. And on top of everything, the Arlington Street Church was at the heart of the antiwar protests. A few years before, it was where young men had burned their draft cards.
I didn’t think Al would even set foot in that church.
“What the hell is going on, Rose? Why can’t they be married at St. Leonard’s—where we got married, where she was baptized and made her first communion?”
We felt we had to get everything out in the open with them. No more surprises. I told Toni we would all sit down across t
he table and have dinner together on Sunday. Command performance. No excuses.
I did what I always do when we have something important to discuss. I put care into what we were going to eat. For the pasta course I made orecchiette with peas and ham in a cream sauce. It was one of Toni’s favorites. For the main course I did a rolled breast of turkey, stuffing it with spinach and ricotta, and on the side, artichoke hearts sautéed with garlic and then baked with bread crumbs and Parmigiano. For dessert, I whipped up a frothy zabaione.
I wanted Bobby to see that Italian food is more than smothering everything in tomato sauce and melted mozzarella.
A wedding’s supposed to be a time of joy for a family, not a reason for agita. Every day it seemed Al and I were tossing on a very stormy sea in a gondola designed to float on the Venice canals. Some days he had the oars, some days I did. We were taking turns calming each other down and trying to find our way.
“I want her to be happy, you know I do, Rose. But has she lost her mind? That night in the restaurant when she came bursting in with the ring, I breathed such a sigh of relief. She’s always been a loner and an intellectual, and I worried she’d never find the kind of love you and I were lucky enough to have. I know she’s different, not like her cousins. But not to get married in the Catholic church? That’s going too far for me. As far as I’m concerned, they can call the wedding off. I’m not walking her down the aisle of a Protestant church.”
“You know if you tell her that, they’ll just go off and have their wedding without us. Neither of us wants that. We need a compromise.”
I was asking a lot of Al to try to meet Toni halfway. When he seizes on something, he doesn’t often let go. Most of the time, that’s been a good thing. His passion for me, for instance, hasn’t cooled in all these years, and he never once wanted to throw in the towel on the restaurant, even in those early years when he was learning to do things he hadn’t imagined would ever be part of his life.
“We can figure this out, Al, because we love her and want her to be happy. I’m not going to have her start her married life estranged from us.”
Across the Table Page 12