A Day in June

by Marisa Labozzetta

  But even by then things had begun to change: Her father was always in a hurry to go back to Long Island to mow the lawn, or paint the trim on the house, or clean the garage; her aunt had to catch a big sale at the mall.

  “We never did this kind of work when I was a boy,” her father would say. “We sat at the table for hours and in nice weather in the driveway with coffee and pastries. Sundays and holidays were days of rest. They were for family.”

  “Then why do you do it now?” Ryan asked.

  “Times have changed. There’s so little of it.”

  She remembers being unable to comprehend that. Time was time. There were still twenty-four hours in a day. Today she longs to go back even farther, to Faye’s youth, when women in long dresses and big sun hats sat in one end of a boat while a gentleman in a suit rowed them along the river. Well, that was an exaggeration: She didn’t want to be rowed, and she didn’t want to wear a long, restrictive outfit, but she did want to take a boat out and row and row until her arms ached and the city became nothing but landscape, a study in stillness bordering peaceful waters. She longed for a time when meditation class wasn’t the only way to find uninterrupted solitude.

  “Let’s watch the marathon for awhile. I really want to support the runners this year. And then go out on the Charles if the police let us.” She has barely finished saying this to Jason when her cell plays its familiar tune.

  “Ryan, darling, I hate to bother you so early, but can you take Harold to the ER?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He can’t keep anything down.”

  “Harold can’t eat,” she tells Jason. “Faye wants us to take him to the ER.”

  “Can’t the nursing home send him in an ambulance?”

  “Apparently he won’t let them.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Ryan hears Harold say.

  “If he doesn’t want to go, he can’t feel that bad, Faye. Why don’t you give it until tomorrow?”

  “Because tomorrow you have to work.”

  Maybe her mother was right about Faye. “Jason doesn’t. Listen, Faye, we can’t force him to go. He probably ate too much yesterday and with all the excitement—”

  “All right, bubeleh. I’ll wait. As long as Jason can take him if need be.”

  “If he wants to go, Jason will take him.” To which Jason nods in assent. “But I’m sure he’ll be better later today.”

  “Listen to me, darling. Do something fun today, since you’re not going to the ER. That’s an order.”

  “We plan to, Faye. We’re going rowing on the Charles.”

  Chapter 20

  Monday, April 14

  WHEN ERIC SAW Danni’s text the night before Ryan and Jason’s visit, he didn’t answer it. Call me. We need to talk. It had been his experience that when a woman said that, she was about to come down hard on him about his shortcomings, to pummel him with demands and ultimatums, to chastise him for his lack of sensitivity, and to stick him wherever it hurt for being a coward in the face of commitment. It didn’t matter that they each viewed the relationship differently. What mattered was how she desired things to be, regardless of what had or had not been expressed: They were not friends, not even friends with benefits; they were a couple. His initial pursuit had been enough to sanction it and any sharing of good times to solidify it.

  That the words came from Danni could not have annoyed him more. He had heard them from her over the course of their friendship, and they were the reason he held her at bay. He tried—really tried—not to lead her on after their encounter at Baby’s so long ago, but Danni had just kept coming back for more. The round was over; the bell had rung. Yet there she was, justified by their having spent so much time together during the past year collaborating on the contest, coming up for the punch, demanding to go the distance—or so he imagined.

  Shame on egotistical you, Eric Boulanger. You are the misogynist you pride yourself on not being, Satan in the flesh. This is what he thinks of himself for ignoring the text, for waiting for Ryan and Jason in his car outside Licks and Relics so he wouldn’t have to spend an extra moment with Danni, who, he must admit, in her leadership role, has matured in his eyes. She’s become more self-assured, conducting the Chamber meetings with decisiveness and competence, which is no small feat in the face of members like Hank and the crotchety repairman. She looks less often to Eric for support, and when she must seek him out, the longing stares are gone.

  Danni might actually be happy, and Eric has had nothing to do with it. She’s over him, like previous girlfriends. Everyone is over him. Everyone except him. That Danni has come close to being annoyed at Eric is not surprising: The entire Chamber is fed up with his excuses about the couple and their lack of enthusiasm, with their downright absence, for that matter. So much time has been spent by the Chamber, so much effort expended, so many hopes are hinging on this ungrateful couple’s big day.

  “It’s not as though Brackton is going to implode if this plan doesn’t live up to your expectations,” Michael has told him. “Go easy on yourself, man. You tried.”

  Yeah, he’d tried. But at the moment, he’s tired of trying—to be a good son, a good photographer, a good friend, a good citizen, a man women find attractive. He’s tired of driving around in search of Bicycle Girl when she doesn’t go home nights. Tired of being beholden to so many. Tired of being alone. Tired of listening to the whining of his fucking mind. Tired.

  When he called her from Licks & Relics on learning of her accident, Danni hadn’t been the least bit angry with him for not having responded to her text, as though for the first time she understood why he might not have wanted to. In the deliberate speech of one pumped up on drugs yet still in discomfort, she explained that she hadn’t broken her leg (it didn’t take long for news to get distorted in Brackton), nor had she undergone surgery yet. She had shattered her kneecap—slipped while standing perfectly still at the bottom of the run when she turned to see if her friend was behind her, her knee coming down hard on a large chunk of ice hidden beneath a thin layer of powder. There’d been a hard smack, then the sickening feeling that washed over her as she heard the nasty crunching sound when she tried to move, saw the concavity and felt the bony lump where there had been the protective cap.

  “You need anything? I’ll come and visit,” he said. He would make it up to her for not calling sooner. He’s a Monday morning quarterback, always backpedaling, working overtime to right the wrongs.

  “Don’t bother. I’m fine, Eric. My sister, Linda, is here, and a friend. I just want to get this surgery over with Monday morning. They have to wait for the swelling to subside. The doctor said it could have been much worse and won’t need too many screws and wire to put the knee back together. He said I’m young enough to heal quicker than a lot of people it happens to. Isn’t that good?”

  But I’m your friend, is all he wanted to say.

  “I’ll be home in a few days, have to stay with my parents for awhile. I feel so bad about not being there for Ryan and Jason. I’m really sorry for leaving you to deal with today by yourself.”

  “No worries. We’ll be fine. You hurting much?”

  “Enough. Morphine helps.”

  He could see her wincing, waiting for nurses to come with that legal high, and afterward thanking them and laughing her Danni laugh.

  “Just get better.” As though she would choose to do otherwise. “Is there anything I can do at your house? Feed the cats?”

  “Thanks, Eric. My dad has it covered. Say hello to Ryan for me.”

  She had asked him to pass along the greeting, but he hadn’t. Damn him. He never did that. Why not? He didn’t know. Maybe he saw it as a formality, something people just said but didn’t expect you to carry out because it usually took away from the situation at hand and obliged him to reveal when and where he had seen the person who extended the greeting and under what circumstances. He’ll do it from now on, he swears. Michael does it: Becca says hi. So does his mother when she tells him Ma
isie Billings or Lisa Anderson sends regards. He’s certain Jason McDermott does it; he’s that kind of guy who wouldn’t let anyone down, and after all, isn’t someone entrusting you to pass something on? Isn’t it your responsibility to follow through? Ryan is lucky to have a guy like Jason and was stupid to risk losing him by being indiscreet with Eric. But wasn’t it he who had come on to her first? He can’t remember the sequencing. Still, it had been up to him to take responsibility.

  He thinks she handled it well yesterday during the visit. He thinks he did too. And despite finding her a bit of an enigma, he still finds her hot. Jason is lucky.

  He’ll phone Danni this afternoon to find out how the surgery went this morning. Then he’ll go over to Heavenly Baked Goods and Plantasia: He wants to have flowers and something yummy waiting for her at her parents’ house when she goes home.

  Chapter 21

  Tuesday, April 15th

  JASON HAS BEEN inside a church. Ryan can tell this by his smell. It’s how she used to know that her uncle Vincent, the dentist, had just come from his office: Uncle Vincent smelled of tiny particles of amalgam mixed with eugenol that flew out of mouths when he excavated old fillings. When her carpenter grandfather Toscano returned from work, he smelled of sawdust. Artists like her mother smell of oils and turpentine, landscapers of manure and cut grass, mechanics of grease and gasoline. Lawyers and accountants like her father have no occupational odor other than their own heavy daily dose of aftershave and the occasional breath that reeks of Scotch from a long business lunch. With priests it’s the spicy scent of frankincense and myrrh, the clouds of smoke that get shaken out of a little golden canister so often that they never disappear. Not only has Jason been in a church, but been there a long time—probably at Mass—because the scent is so strong she can almost hear the bells beckoning the faithful to bow their heads and pound their breasts—once, twice, three times—out of respect for the consecrated host being raised for all to see.

  She cannot help but feel she’s been betrayed. When he embraces her, it’s like inhaling the perfume of another woman. But it’s not another woman. They live in a free country with freedom of worship. Still she asks: “What did you do today?”

  And so he tells her, as she chops parsley and garlic on a cutting board, and sets a large pot of water to boil, and sautés garlic until it’s crispy in the olive oil she’s poured into a small frying pan. She’s chosen to make aglio e olio because it’s easy and needs few ingredients, because she has the desire, or voglia, for it, as her father would say, because the intensity of its aroma will fill up the kitchen and living room of the small apartment and obliterate any trace of religious adoration.

  He unscrews the twist cap of a bottle of California Chianti (watching his purse strings has already taken precedence over impressing her) and pours them both a glass. She dumps a handful of salt into the turbulent rolling water. He sets the table with large shallow bowls her family has trained him to use for pasta and asks if Tiffany will be joining them. She doesn’t know. She hasn’t seen her in several days.

  “Should I text her?” he says, taking out his phone.

  “You have her number?” She’s surprised.

  “I’m in that thread you sent about donating to your mailman’s retirement.”

  “Right.”

  His phone signals a text, but not Ryan’s, which sits on the counter. Tiffany has made the effort to respond only to Jason, which really disturbs her.

  “She’s not sure when she’ll be back. Says to start without her.”

  But she’s coming. He puts out a third place setting. He uses paper napkins and puts the fork on top of the plate instead of to the left, something that irritates Ryan, but she says nothing because she knows it’ll irritate Tiffany even more. She puts a pinch of red pepper into the sizzling garlic, followed by the parsley, lets it sauté for a very short time, adds a little water, and turns off the gas. He produces a loaf of crusty bread—a bastone—he picked up in Davis Square from an Italian deli and searches among Tiffany’s set of expensive knives for the long serrated one. He begins to slice.

  “Not too many,” she says. “Trying to cut down on carbs.”

  He removes a butter dish from inside the door of the fridge. She grimaces: Her father’s family never used butter at the dinner table; it was reserved for breakfast. Even her mother had gotten on board with that one. He used to know this, and yet it was as though his year and a half in the novitiate had cleansed his memory of such things and he was starting all over again.

  He nods and stops sawing.

  “What were you doing in Somerville?” she asks, eyeing the address on the empty white paper bag the bread came in that now sits on the counter in a mess of crumbs. Oftentimes, as now, her speech is guided by her emotions and she forgets to preface her statements the way the shrink she saw when Jason left her advised her to do. She is like her mother in that respect and envies women—and men—who have the restraint to count to ten before they open their mouths. She pours the oil mixture into a shallow pasta bowl, gives the spaghetti she has dumped into a colander a few shakes to dislodge any water, and adds the spaghetti to the bowl. She mixes it quickly with two forks so as not to let it get cold, and sprinkles it with parmesan cheese. They sit down to eat.

  “It’s kind of a long story.” He butters a slice of bread. “I went over to Driscoll to see Larry Wolfson at the outreach program. To check out volunteering, maybe with refugees. When we were in school, I tutored kids from Somalia. He told me about this St. Gerard’s parish and high school in Medford that’s was looking for a sub in computer science for the rest of the term. The teacher’s out on early maternity leave. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk from the train station at Davis Square, so I stopped in at this great Italian food shop on my way home. You should have seen it: hanging dried salamis and sausages that you like, little pizzas, oils, pastries, just like in the North End. You’d love it. Had no idea Davis Square has gotten so trendy—lots of cafés and shops. Unfortunately, the downside to that is the neighborhood is full of young singles. The parish had to close the elementary school. Not enough families there anymore.”

  “You’re digressing, Jase.”

  “Sorry, but it was so lucky. A paying job until June twentieth.”

  “You can teach computer science?”

  “At this level I can handle it. Three classes. Two preps. Fifty-eight students.”

  “When would you start?”

  “Monday.” He dips a chunk of the buttered bread into the oil that’s collected at the bottom of his plate. Watching him mix the butter with the olive oil would normally disgust her, but his words have trumped his actions.

  “Whoa!” She holds a forkful of spaghetti bound for her mouth in mid air.

  “I love kids that age. Won’t be a problem. The pastor, Father Coluccio, is from Rome. They’ve got a priest from Colombia.” He is full of enthusiasm. “So I went over to the school—did I tell you it’s junior high and high school? Great faculty. Small but dedicated. This order is only about thirty years old, founded in Rome, a really small order but they’re all around the world. After I met with the director of the school—a guy named Todd Neisman—”

  “Also a priest?”

  “No. After I talked with Neisman, Father Coluccio let me into the church, which is next door. Beautiful modern stone church. You’d like it.”

  Does it matter whether or not she likes any of what he’s describing?

  “I couldn’t stay for Mass because it was too late, six thirty, or even the Adoration of the Eucharist at five thirty, so he said I could just sit there for awhile. I needed some self-reflection.”

  “You can’t do your soul-searching in a park or an empty apartment?”

  “You never know when Tiffany’s going to show up here—besides, it’s not the same. I guess I’m used to the ambiance of a church. I won’t lie. It settles me. We can’t go rowing on the Charles every day. You said it yourself: We have to find our places of solitude.”

/>   “Yup. And I guess a church is yours.”

  “Come on, Ryan. Don’t be that way. I’m not sitting in some dark watering hole in the middle of the day. The religious community will always be a part of my life, but just not the way I was thinking. More wine?”

  He is so pleased with himself, as if he’s just discovered the passwords to all his online accounts he thought he’d lost, as if he can eat all the chocolate desserts in the world and never gain an ounce.

  “It’s hard to raise kids, be active in their lives, work two jobs, keep your relationship on track, besides being tied to a group of priests,” she says as he refills her glass.

  “Less demanding than being a Jesuit.” He smiles.

  “What are these priests called?”

  “Missionary Fraternity of St. Charles Barromeo. They’re Italian. I thought you’d like that.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “Listen, Ryan. I’m not going to be one of them. There are quite a few lay instructors at the school. I told you I think I might like to teach.”

  “Philosophy.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll teach high school. Or maybe I’ll finish up law school and teach law.”

  “Maybe I’ll enter a convent.”

  He laughs. “I’m just trying to find my way back into the work world and see where I fit.”

  “You’re right. It is a paying job. Good for you. You just should have told me sooner.”

  “I was going to tell you during dinner—”