Summer by the Sea

by Susan Wiggs

“I live in an ark. I’m drifting.”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to do when you take time off. Oh, that’s right. You wouldn’t know what that’s like.”

  “I’m not so sure I’m cut out for a life of leisure,” he said, wondering if he should admit that he’d spent the past eight hours painting the fascia boards with nothing but a transistor radio for company. Since joining the family firm six years before, he had never taken time off. He wasn’t sure why this was the case. There were plenty of places for him to go. In addition to the beach house, the Montgomerys had a ski lodge in Killington and a cabin in the Catskills. He could travel to Monte Carlo or Rome or anywhere in the world if he felt like it.

  He didn’t ever feel like it. Usually he just worked. When he worked, he was in his right place, doing something that mattered. “How is Don?” he asked.

  “Fine. We’re both fine. I can’t wait to get him to Newport. I’m so glad we’re making this move, Alex.”

  His associate was as capable and trusted as Alex’s own left brain. It was coincidence, pure coincidence, that she happened to have a name like Gina Colombo, dark curly hair and olive-toned skin, and that she was short and compact, with perfect breasts and a sexy mouth. The attitude was all her own, however. As was her degree from the Wharton School of Business.

  Alex’s mother had called her the Bride of Frankenstein when she first met her, “Because you’re trying to build a substitute Rosa.”

  The memory made him wince. His mother had always seen him too clearly; he only wished he’d understood her heart half as well.

  Despite his mother’s skepticism, he forged a deeply intimate partnership with Gina. She knew what he thought, could anticipate his desires in any situation. In practically every way, she was the perfect woman for him. Except she happened to be in love with her husband, a freelance photographer.

  Gina embraced the challenge of opening the Newport office. She was on track to earning a promotion to partner in the fall.

  “Tidying up an abandoned ark after your mother passes away hardly qualifies as a leisure activity,” Gina pointed out with her typical bluntness. “You’ve lost weight. You look like shit, by the way.”

  “I feel like shit. How would you expect me to feel after my mother’s death? Which I’m not ready to talk about, so don’t even start.”

  “All right,” she said easily, heading for the front door. “Let’s talk business instead. I’ll take equity risk premiums and p/e ratios over depression and suicide any day.”

  Alex thought it was curious that she had thrown in depression. No one else had mentioned it, but that was Gina. There were no roadblocks between her heart and her mouth. She was only voicing something Alex had been thinking about ever since the phone had rung that morning. If his mother was in treatment for depression, why wasn’t it working? And why that particular day of all days?

  “So,” Gina said, stepping through the door and heading straight for the parlor, “this is the Montgomery family compound.”

  “Once upon a time. Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.” She sighed, gazing out the bay window. She made a leisurely stroll through the downstairs, oohing and ahhing at the tall Carpenter Gothic windows, the antique woodwork. “I could live forever on this view. Boy, Alex. This is some place.”

  In the kitchen, she laid a thick legal-sized envelope on the window seat. “Earnings reports, forecasts, meeting minutes. Nothing urgent. I was feeling nosy, so I used this as an excuse to spy on you.” She folded her arms across her middle and stared at him.

  “What?”

  “You look different as well as skinny.”

  He grazed his fingers through his hair. “I need a haircut.”

  She frowned and tilted her head to one side. “It’s not that. It’s—”

  “Alex? It’s me, Rosa,” called a voice from the porch.

  Gina raised one eyebrow.

  Great, thought Alex, excusing himself and heading for the door. The two of them together should be interesting. Ever since making that scene in the beauty parlor, he’d been hoping Rosa would break down and stop by, and finally something had prodded her to come. But her timing was unfortunate. Still, Rosa at the wrong time was better than no Rosa at all.

  He opened the door and she stepped inside, holding a foil-wrapped parcel like a holy offering.

  “I brought you something to eat,” she announced.

  Aha, he thought. This was the key to Rosa—she couldn’t resist a starving man. He couldn’t help it; he laughed. “You really want to feed me?”

  She sniffed at the question and headed for the kitchen. Alex felt like a deer in the headlights, but she didn’t seem to notice as she breezed through the house. “You’re clearly not doing it for yourself. You have to promise to eat this while the sun is still up. My mother used to say a well-made lasagne keeps away regrets and bad dreams if—oh.” She stopped in the doorway and stared at Gina. “Hello.”

  Standing across from each other, they looked eerily similar—dark, rounded, so very female. The two of them together were a men’s magazine fantasy.

  “Rosa, this is Gina Colombo, my associate at the firm. Gina, Rosa Capoletti. She runs—”

  “Celesta’s-by-the-Sea,” Gina finished for him. “I read that profile of you in Entrepreneur.”

  “Really?” Rosa’s smile shone with pride. “Thanks. You have a good memory.” She indicated her parcel. “So I’ll just drop this off and—”

  “I was on my way out,” said Gina, swishing past Rosa. “I need to get over to Newport to look at the rentals. It was nice to meet you, Rosa. I hope to see you again sometime.”

  Alex escorted Gina outside, saying to Rosa over his shoulder, “Be right back.”

  As he held open Gina’s car door, he tried to avoid her gaze, but couldn’t. “All right,” she said. “Spill.”

  “Go away, Gina. Go to Newport. Call me next week.”

  “I want to know—”

  “There’s nothing to know, okay?”

  “Oh, right. She’s wearing red, she’s bringing lasagne, she can’t take her eyes off you...I wouldn’t call that nothing.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Hello?” She playfully knocked on his head. “I might even approve of this one, Al.” She twitched her skirt out of the way of the door. Lowering her voice an octave, she said, “I’ll be back.”

  “You’re not invited.”

  “Like that’s going to stop me.” She gave him a quick hug and got into the car. With the stereo blaring an Eva Cassidy tune, she pulled out of the driveway.

  When he went back inside, Rosa was in the kitchen. She stood in the pale light of the sun, looking out the window at the lawn her father had cultivated and groomed over the course of decades. Her father. Alex considered asking her how Pete was doing. He didn’t, of course.

  Rosa turned to face him, hands on hips, and he could picture her in this house years ago, a dark, wiry little girl with bright eyes and a brighter smile. There had been magic in their friendship, but he couldn’t sense it now. She was no more than a lovely stranger, standing in his mother’s empty house.

  “Gina really was just leaving,” he said.

  “Look, I came because I thought you might need something decent to eat,” she explained. “And I suppose because, under the circumstances, I thought you shouldn’t be alone. Both times, you weren’t.”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Never apologize for having friends and family around when you need them.”

  He searched for hidden meaning in her words. Did she intend to remind him of how alone she’d been at the end of their last summer together? He could still taste his guilt over that even now, all these years later. “Look, about Gina—”

  “I don’t need an ex
planation.”

  “Just so you know. She works with me. That’s all.”

  “Fine. I really don’t... It’s none of my business, Alex.” She indicated the covered dish on the counter. “All I’m doing is bringing you a lasagne.”

  She turned on her heel and headed out through the nearest exit—the back door. He followed her out into the yard and noticed the way she studied the pond, the lawn, the big gnarled tree where she’d once hung a rope swing. He wondered if she, too, felt that bittersweet pang of memory. Their lives—their love—had been so simple then.

  “Thank you for bringing the lasagne.” He didn’t know what else to say. “I promise I’ll eat every bite.”

  “It’s a lot of food.”

  “Then stay and help me eat it.” He stood in her way, blocking the path to the front drive. They stood very close, staring at each other. The rose-tinted sheen on her lips would give him something to think about for the rest of the day, he thought.

  He caught her scent and was shocked to discover that he recognized it even after all these years. It was some kind of fruity shampoo or skin cream, and on Rosa it was as heady as a shot of whiskey. He could feel the warmth of her even though they weren’t touching, and he imagined the smoothness of her skin under his hands. For a moment, the urge to touch her crackled like lightning between them. Recognition flashed in her eyes, and he knew she felt that unseen current of heat, too.

  “Rosa,” he said.

  “I have to go.”

  “It’s kind of inconsistent for you to show up and then say you don’t want to see me.” He risked pointing out the obvious. “You came to my house, not the other way around. The casserole’s nice, but it’s just an excuse. You do want to see me.”

  “I wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she insisted. “You’ve had a terrible loss and you’re all alone out here. In that sense, I suppose I came to see you, but not in the way you mean.”

  Out here at night, lit only by the stars and the moon, with the wind soughing through the reeds and the waves swishing up from the sea, he discovered the true meaning of being alone. And each night, he searched for some way to make sense of what his mother had done, but the answers eluded him. The only thing that made sense was what he was feeling for Rosa.

  “You want to stay.” He took another chance and said it.

  “That’s bull—”

  “Then why are you still here?”

  That ticked her off. She shook back her curls and glared up at him. “Because you won’t stop talking. Ah, but now you have. So if you’ll excuse me...”

  “I’ll call you,” he said. “You can handle that, can’t you?”

  She yanked a cluster of keys from her purse. “I’m busy.”

  “I know. At the restaurant, surrounded by guys who want to break my kneecaps.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Look, all I want to do is talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything.” Then he told the truth. “About our last summer together.” He’d tried that once before. It hadn’t worked then; why would it work now?

  Her cheeks turned bright red, and he should have felt gratified that she remembered. Instead he felt like a heel. “I shouldn’t have left you like that, Rosa,” he said. “I was young and stupid, and I handled it badly. I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve always wanted to explain it to you.”

  “We were both young,” she said, pointedly not calling herself stupid right along with him. “Everybody knows that relationships like that never work out.”

  “Everybody but the young.” A silence, heightened by the sound of the wind and the waves, rolled out between them. “Anyway,” he said, “we’re different people now.”

  “So?”

  “So, we should get to know each other again—as adults.”

  “Why?”

  “Because...we might be good together, Rosa.”

  “We might be a disaster.”

  “Are you afraid of that?”

  She studied his face for a long moment. “Yes,” she admitted. “Maybe I am.”

  Lasagne Magro

  In the old country, if you can afford meat, you don’t hide it in a lasagne. The original recipe is meatless. This delicious lasagne is commonly found in southern Italy.

  Ingredients:

  At least a quart of good tomato sauce, preferably homemade

  1 large carton full-fat ricotta cheese

  1 cup grated parmesano reggiano cheese

  1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

  1 large fresh egg

  1/2 onion, chopped

  1/4 cup chopped parsley

  1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

  1/2 pound chopped fresh spinach

  8 ounces additional mozzarella cheese, sliced thin

  4 ounces additional grated parmesan cheese

  1 package dry lasagne noodles

  Mix the ricotta and grated cheeses together with egg, onion, spinach and herbs. Cover the bottom of a large lasagne pan with olive oil and then sauce. Add a little water and mix. Make an overlapping layer of the dry noodles across the bottom of the pan. Spread sauce on top, making sure the pasta is covered. Add a layer of the ricotta mixture and mozzarella slices. Continue in this manner until you run out of pasta. Top with sauce, add another layer of mozzarella, then sprinkle on the parmesan. Cover with foil and bake at 375° F for about forty minutes. Check occasionally, and add boiling water around the edges if the pasta seems too dry. Remove the foil and cook another 10 minutes. Let rest an additional 10 minutes. Serve in squares, topped with a basil sprig.

  seventeen

  Rosa fumed as she drove over to her father’s house. What kind of idiot was she, anyway? Are you afraid? Maybe I am. What in God’s name was she thinking, talking to him like that?

  “I was being honest,” she said, taking the turn onto Prospect Street a little too fast. “As if that ever did me any good. I don’t know any other way to be. I never should have taken him that stupid lasagne.”

  She let herself in, flicking the lights to alert her father. “Let’s go, Pop,” she yelled, mainly for her own benefit. After seeing Alex, she definitely needed to yell. “Come on.” She paced back and forth, eyeing the ancient school photographs that hadn’t been changed in years, the boot tray with her father’s mud-encrusted boots and a tiny holy water font with a frieze of St. Francis installed by the door.

  The moment her father appeared in the front hall, she felt guilty about her impatience. Eager to see his grandson, Pop had dressed up in his good Cordovan leather shoes and his one perfectly tailored suit. The white shirt was as clean and crisp as newfallen snow. His salt-and-pepper hair bore the furrows of aggressive combing, and he’d done a precision job trimming his mustache.

  “You look wonderful, Pop,” she said, signing as she spoke, for emphasis.

  “I’m gonna get all messed up in your convertible,” he grumbled.

  “We’re not taking the convertible. It’s only got two seats.”

  “I knew that.” He took his hat from a peg by the door.

  “I borrowed Vince’s Camry.”

  At Green Airport in the baggage claim area, they sat on a padded bench, nervously flipping through Rosa’s purse-sized photo album, something she always carried. The pictures of Rob’s kids had come enclosed in Christmas cards over the years. Her nephew, Joseph Peter Capoletti, had started out with that special angelic quality small children seemed to possess in abundance. As the youngest of four, he had been an adored little boy with a charming smile.

  Around Joey’s twelfth year, it seemed the novelty of him had worn off, because the pictures dwindled. Rob and Gloria had both been promoted and were busier than ever, living overseas. Rosa remembered Joey’s shy smile, dreamy brown eyes with lashes so long they were wasted on a bo
y, and an acute fear of spiders.

  The flight from Detroit, where he’d connected from L.A., landed. A wave of passengers emerged from the concourse. Rosa sensed her father tensing up as he scanned the crowd. There were business people with sleek luggage, young families juggling strollers and diaper bags, students and foreigners. She saw a couple reunited, radiating happiness and oblivious to the world as they embraced. From where she sat, Rosa could see the woman’s eyes close as though to keep in the joy. Rosa looked away, burying a pang of sentiment.

  The flood of passengers became a trickle, and she consulted Joey’s hellacious-looking trans-Pacific itinerary. With a feeling of foreboding, she turned to her father. “He didn’t make the flight.”

  Pop merely sat there, unmoving, watching the exit at the end of the concourse. His face betrayed nothing, and she looked again. The only passenger walking toward them was a lanky stranger with a pink Mohawk, dark glasses and a variety of uncomfortable-looking facial piercings. Under his breath, Pop emitted a string of curses in Italian, and Rosa nudged him to get him to behave. Really, she didn’t blame her father. His adorable young grandson had morphed into a stranger.

  Rosa prayed he hadn’t seen her quickly rearrange her face from shock to delight. “Joey! You’re a foot taller!” She opened her arms. He permitted her a hug that was brief and awkward, nothing like the exuberant embraces of his youth when he’d clung, monkeylike, as if he would never let her go.

  “Hey, Aunt Rosa,” he muttered, keeping his head down as though he’d dropped something. “Hey, Grandpop.”

  “Pop doesn’t know what you’re saying unless he can read your lips,” she reminded him.

  Joey tossed back his head and slowly, deliberately peeled off his shades. “Hiya, Grandpop,” he said.

  Rosa was grateful her father couldn’t hear the sarcastic inflection in Joey’s voice. Pop grabbed the boy by the shoulders and stood on tiptoe to give him two resounding kisses, one on each cheek, Italian style. Then he said, “You look like a freak.”

  Joey glared at him, his face burning with a blush from the kisses. “You got a problem with that?”