“It wasn’t what I pictured either, Andrew.”
An uncomfortable silence opened up between them.
“So how are you?” she asked.
“I’m okay.”
She leaned forward, waited for more.
“I’m starting senior year. In about ten minutes I’m going to start having four hours of homework a night at least, swim practice three times a week, and eleven college applications to fill out. I would say that I’m the picture of calm, a regular Buddha.”
“That bad?”
“Some of my friends are applying to twenty schools.”
They stood staring at each other for a moment.
“What about you?”
“I’m—I think I should just come out and say it. Your father and I appear to be—”
“Together.”
“Figuring things out.”
“I’m glad for you—both of you,” Andrew said opaquely.
“It also means you’ll be in my life. That’s a bonus, to me.”
Andrew didn’t say anything to this.
“There’s something else.”
“You’re going to marry Henry?” he blurted.
Her face flushed. “Well, no. I’m just getting to know him, after all.”
“I’m sorry.” Andrew crossed his arms. “That sounded like something a little kid would say.”
“Your father—he has offered to let me stay here. Just temporarily. Until I—get my bearings.”
Andrew looked away from her.
“He’s helping me out. My situation at the moment—”
“I really don’t need to know any more. All this is between you guys.”
“Actually this part is about me. But you’re right. I just wanted you to know.”
Andrew looked up. “Does Justin?”
“It was decided only this morning. An hour ago.”
“Justin’s coming home this afternoon. I haven’t seen him, or talked to him, since June.”
She nodded.
“It’s been a long summer. He’s completely opted out around here. And there.” There meant their mother’s apartment on the West Side, indicated with a tilt of Andrew’s head in that direction.
Costanza nodded again. The two of them fell silent. Kitchens, when they were silent, always felt more silent than other rooms, probably because they were such tightly wound places, always ready to spring into action.
“I’m heading home now to pick up some things. Would you like to walk me there?”
Andrew shrugged. But the shrug said yes more than no.
* * *
He struck her as altered in other ways too. It wasn’t just that he seemed more open in Florence; he was more original, she couldn’t help but feel. In New York he seemed gloomy or hidden; maybe it was merely hidden, and she was inventing all the rest. Or maybe he was simply mulling over the news she had just shared with him.
The two apartments were fifteen blocks, but many worlds, away. As they walked, Costanza tried to distract Andrew, and herself, by asking him what classes he was taking, which schools he was applying to, what kinds of pictures he’d been shooting.
The usual, too many to remember, only mediocre ones since summer ended.
That was about how it went. She was relieved when Fifth Avenue swung into sight.
“Swank,” he said, looking over the building. “I’ve been reading some of Sarnoff’s books. The older ones, about the young guy, Leiberman, growing up in Jersey.”
“What do you think?”
“Somebody’s pretty angry. I can’t tell if it’s Sarnoff or his character. But angry in a way you believe. At least I do.”
“The character mellows later on.”
“They say that happens to young people.” This, at least, he offered with a curl of a smile.
Costanza’s least favorite doorman was on duty. She glanced at him, then at Andrew. “Would you like to come up?” she asked—hopefully, as it would be so much easier not to have to go into the apartment alone.
He shook his head. “I’m supposed to meet my stepfather for breakfast. He wants to have a Talk. Everyone wants to have a Talk with me. This whole senior-year thing. Everyone has an opinion about how I should present myself, describe myself, write about myself. To me it’s just the next thing really.”
“That’s one way to think about it. A good way—if you believe it.”
“I half believe it.” There he was. More like the Andrew she knew. “I’ll be seeing you for dinner then.”
“Do you like pesto?”
“Basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmigiano, oil. What’s not to like?”
“You’re forgetting the salt. It can be a little flat without the salt. You can help me make it if you have time.”
“My dad sends out. Don’t expect to find any fancy equipment in our kitchen.”
“No worries. I’ll bring my own.”
* * *
As soon as she stepped into the elevator, Costanza began mentally packing. Clothes, jewelry and cosmetics, several key notebooks. Her laptop. Her address book, dictionaries, a few books. From the kitchen a cheese grater, a pasta pot, the mini-Cuisinart if she was going to make pesto. A garlic press; a knife or two. Her mother’s olive oil. To be safe she’d take a colander too. It didn’t matter that she might only end up staying a few days; she would revel in being in charge of a kitchen again, however briefly.
She had it all organized before she even had her keys out of her purse. But she didn’t need her keys. She had Ivan. He was standing by the open door when she stepped off the elevator, ever his immaculate waxworks self.
Costanza decided to dive in. It was like accepting Henry’s offer. She was going to ride the wave as far as it would carry her before it crashed—or she did.
“When I left for Italy six months ago, Ivan,” she said right there in the foyer, “I warned you that this way of life here, in the apartment, would have to come to an end. I realize it may feel abrupt to you, but six months is a very long advance notice of change.”
He nodded somberly.
“I told you then that the time would come when the apartment would be put on the market to be sold.”
“And I would become homeless.”
Out of politeness she waited a moment before continuing. “Well, that day is coming—has come. It’s today. I’m going to get in touch with Mr. Sarnoff’s lawyer in a few minutes. Of course I don’t expect you to leave today just because I’ve decided to. I think three weeks, four if you need them, is reasonable, don’t you?”
“Three weeks, until the end.”
“Actually I would say that the end came when Mr. Sarnoff died, wouldn’t you? All the rest of this, prolonged though it has been, has been posthumous.”
Ivan blinked at her. “But writers never really die, do they, Mrs. Sarnoff? With a stroke of the pen they can force back the clock, many times over.”
“They live on in their work. Not in furniture. Not in places.”
“Of course. But at the same time, don’t you believe that a man’s spirit continues on after him? Don’t you feel Mr. Sarnoff’s presence here with us now?”
In fact she did. And that was a large part of the problem. Though she chose to answer Ivan differently. “I think that the dead, when they continue, continue in the living, Ivan.”
Ivan listened. Ivan nodded. “Do you mind if I ask about Mr. Sarnoff’s papers? His manuscripts and so on. What will happen to them?”
“His executor will take good care of them, I am sure.”
“There’s a lot of material that a biographer might one day like to review. It’s a job for someone with an archival … bent. I might be able to help with that.”
“I’ll be happy to speak to Mr. Wexler.”
“But he takes his guidance from you, doesn’t he? And Mr. Sarnoff’s brother.”
“Believe it or not, I have very little say in these matters. As for Howard, you’re free to speak to him directly. He’s far better informed than I am about the
state of Morton’s papers.”
Ivan sniffed, just slightly. The sniff told her that he likely knew about the diaries.
In keeping with her decision about the day, she continued with a frontal approach. “I’m referring to Mr. Sarnoff’s diaries, naturally.”
“They will be widely read, I believe, when they’re published.” So Ivan knew about their publication too. “There are many readers who will be very curious to know him as we did.”
“And you believe the diaries show him as we knew him?” Costanza asked, she thought slyly.
But Ivan wasn’t biting. “As a reader, I’m always eager to know how the writers I admire think and live. How they write, when they write for themselves. And besides, Mr. Sarnoff had many fans who would be interested in reading anything he wrote.”
“That’s what Howard feels.”
“And you, if I may ask? What do you feel?”
“I feel, quite honestly, that it’s a little soon to be putting them into the world.”
Costanza was determined for their conversation to end on a civilized note. As warmly as she could under the circumstances, she added, “I know Mr. Sarnoff meant a lot to you. I’ve told you before how much you meant to him. He often said to me that he would never have recovered from his first illness without you. Even the money he left you cannot repay that kindness. Only there’s nowhere to go from here but forward. For both of us, Ivan, it’s time.”
* * *
Costanza went upstairs, left a message for Howard, and e-mailed Morton’s lawyer. She committed to a new translating job. She assembled a stack of the books that she knew she would need in the coming weeks. She sorted through her clothes, packing half of them in a large box she would eventually take to her studio downtown.
When she went to pack the other half in her large suitcase, she found Morton’s diary, still there where she had stashed it all those months ago in Florence. It had followed her to Liguria and back to New York. She had not once felt like looking at it again. She didn’t feel much—at all—like looking at it now either. Yet it seemed almost to vibrate with the pent-up energy of words unread, a voice unacknowledged, a command, Morton’s command, unheeded. Not EAT ME, not DRINK ME, but HEAR ME; only Costanza was determined not to go down this rabbit hole, not on this morning of all mornings. She tucked the package into the box that was earmarked for downtown and kept moving forward.
By noon she had left her suitcase and a canvas bag with kitchen implements on Sixty-Ninth Street, with Henry’s doorman. Then she headed off to Union Square—on foot.
* * *
It had been surprisingly easy to leave her country behind, but its food was another matter. For Henry and his sons Costanza was determined to make a simple but accurate pesto, or a pesto as accurate as she could make it given that, in America, basil was grown until it was large, leggy, and bitter, whereas in Liguria it was picked young, tender, and sweet. She was lucky. She found two youngish bunches at the farmers’ market that were surprisingly vital given the midday sunlight. She bought garlic there too, and bread, and greens for salad, and apples for a tart.
Walking through Union Square on market day gave Costanza the greatest happiness. The profusion of the American harvest was at its most impressive in these stalls, with their mounds of carrots and beets in yellow, orange, and purple, their stalks of tightly whorled brussels sprouts, their lettuces in every tint of green, their apples, turnips, onions, eggplants, mushrooms, pumpkins, gourds, radishes, and squash. She delighted in the beautiful incongruity of all that was delicious and perishable being laid out in a rare open space in the midst of so much stone and cement.
Her happiness accompanied her all the way to her old neighborhood, where from an Italian grocer she bought pine nuts, Parmigiano, and several bags of good pasta. For antipasto she decided on prosciutto and olives. When she finished, her bags were heavy and her stamina was beginning to flag.
For nearly two hours Costanza had concentrated on the specifics of the meal rather than the circumstances under which she was making it. Now, slowing down for a moment, she began to think about these circumstances, and she was faced with her mother. Often when Costanza moved forward in her life, she was visited by a spectral Maria Rosaria in this way: Twice in a row you dive into the unknown? Twice in a row, and at nearly forty, you conduct yourself like a girl of twenty-two?
And more: You have talent as a writer yourself, yet you turn away from it, because you’re afraid of failing, and so you translate other people’s work instead. Like so many women, too many women, you spend years hiding behind an Important Man. A year after Sarnoff is gone, you’re still hiding. In your place, I would dare myself to write finally. I would find a nice affectionate dog for companionship. I would put myself to a real test.
(Maria Rosaria had said these very sentences, more or less, during Costanza’s recent visit.)
But Mamma, Costanza imagined herself responding, I know what life alone feels like now. It feels empty, and anyway I refuse to become bitter about that marriage. Or: I’m entitled to be attracted to the possibility of love; is it not every human being’s human right? Or: Finding love does not mean the end of work. It might mean the beginning of work, new work, a new phase in my life. It might even—who knows?—mean the beginning of a family of my own.
A family of her own?
Costanza breathed—she tried to breathe. Just as there was no point in arguing with a phantom mother, there was no point in taking on all the most daunting themes in one afternoon.
She continued along First Avenue. Soon she was within two blocks of her apartment. In front of the building she fished in her purse for her keys, let herself in, and climbed up to the fourth floor. She had not entered the place where she had begun her life in New York since just before she left for Italy. The air in the room was stale. She set down her bags and opened a window.
She told herself that she had stopped by to check on the apartment and collect a mortar and pestle, which she thought she might use to prepare the pesto. She had forgotten how heavy it was, though. She could not manage it along with her shopping bags.
It was curious about places that were lived in intermittently: they seemed to hold on to some sense, or sense memory, of where life had been left off within their four walls. One key moment where life had been left off within these four walls, for her, was that grim day some months after she and Morton had separated when her friend Annelie had quite literally had to pull her out of bed. First Maria Rosaria, now Annelie: was that, deep down, why she had come to the apartment—to take a look at herself at one of her lowest moments, to remind herself of the dangers of moving too fast, too carelessly or blindly into something unknown?
Costanza glanced at the old sofa, a thrift-store purchase that dated to her very first month in New York. She had spent a lot of hours on that sofa, reading, working, and thinking. What she found herself thinking about now was why she had told Henry a lie—a white lie—about having sublet the apartment. Her subtenant had, in fact, left at the beginning of the month, but she had not wanted to tell Henry that. She had been untruthful, moderately untruthful, because she had wanted Henry to ask her to stay with him. She knew that pretty clearly. She had wanted that extra bit of assurance, even though the moment she had awakened in his bed she had not wanted to leave.
Certainly it would be more prudent—safer and more honest—if she were to phone Henry and tell him that she had changed her mind, or (better) that her subtenant had turned out to be flexible. He had decided to move in with his girlfriend. She would therefore be able to move back into her own place. She and Henry could see each other regularly. They could come to know each other gradually, the way sensible people did. Yes, that was what they would do. Be careful, sensible.
Only sensible didn’t interest her. It never had.
* * *
Andrew was right about Henry’s kitchen. It was clearly not a place where many meals were prepared. The pots and pans were unmarred by use, and of poor quality. The dishes
and bowls were all white, and matching. The glassware was lined up in two spare soldierlike rows. This told Costanza that Henry’s wife must have emptied out the kitchen cupboards, just as she had taken the paintings off the bedroom walls. Costanza pictured Henry, newly on his own, going into one of those big generic stores and filling up a shopping cart. Perhaps his assistant accompanied him, or a friend. The shopping was done expediently. No one thought through to complicated recipes that needed specialized tools. There were eight of everything. Eight, in this context, was such a forlorn number. Eight said that there would never again in this house be a Thanksgiving, a New Year’s Eve, a large gathering of any kind.
Costanza unpacked the box of kitchenware she had put together before she left the duplex. The one thing she had forgotten was a tart pan, but way back in one of Henry’s cupboards she found an old cookie sheet, bent and in want of a good scrubbing. She would make a free-form tart and shape it with her hands.
She began with the pesto. Within minutes the rich sweet aroma of crushed basil was floating into the room. Preparing the quintessential dish of her place in Henry’s kitchen was the ideal way to make her feel at ease. She felt happiness wash over her for the second time that day.
Also for the second time that day she looked up from a task to find that she was being observed by one of Henry’s sons.
She recognized Justin from a photograph on Henry’s dresser. If by any conventional measure of attractiveness Andrew was an improvement on Henry, Justin was an improvement on Andrew. He had luminous green eyes. His hair, which he wore in untended long curls, was the color of caramel and seemed almost to glow. His thin angular body was poured into a pair of narrow jeans. He wore a grubby T-shirt printed with the name of what she assumed to be a band, a wrist full of woven and leather bracelets, and an unexpected pair of loafers that appeared to be expertly made, if much scuffed.
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