Summer by the Sea

by Susan Wiggs

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Would I make this up?”

  “No one would make this up. You’re really something, Rosa.”

  She pulled the lever to force the water through the heat exchanger, and a loud hiss of steam interrupted the conversation. The espresso trickled into two white demitasses; then she added a bit of Frangelico to give the coffee a hint of hazelnut. Lord knows, after getting socked in the jaw, he’d earned it. She put the cups on a tray, laid a crescent-shaped pignoli cookie on each saucer and joined him in the living room. The couch or the chair? she wondered with a sudden flutter of nerves. The simple matter seemed a critical decision.

  Alex took the tray from her and set it on the white-painted coffee table. Then he took her hand and brought her to the sofa, smoothing over the awkward moment with ease.

  “Thank you.” He smiled, though not without pain. His jaw was visibly swollen.

  “You’re welcome. How’s your face?”

  “I’ll live.” He sampled the coffee and a look of delight came over him. “This is fantastic.”

  Relax, she told herself. It’s just coffee. “Thanks,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for loaning Joey that telescope.”

  “It’s not a loan. I want him to have it.”

  “It’s a valuable antique.”

  “How can something have value if it’s not being used for its purpose? He found his passion and it’s a good one. Nurture it.”

  “He’s also a kid. What if he breaks it, pawns it, sells it on Ebay?”

  “It’s up to him. No strings attached.”

  “Thank you. Pop says he’s got it all taken apart with the parts labeled. It’ll be a good summer project.”

  A comfortable silence settled over them. Surprisingly comfortable. So his next question caught her unawares. “What’s on your mind, Rosa?”

  She could lie, but she’d never been good at deception. “That I feel comfortable with you. For the moment, that is.”

  “There’s a reason for that. We’ve known each other twenty years.”

  She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she’d invited him here. It was all her brilliant idea. She shut her eyes and felt an old hurt start to throb. He had once held her heart in his hands. Perhaps that was why she’d felt so betrayed by him in the end.

  Bocelli’s voice swelled dramatically into the silence. She opened her eyes and watched Alex over the rim of her cup. He seemed to be listening to “Con te partiro” with deep appreciation. You never knew.

  “Did you study Italian, too?” he asked her. “In your course work, I mean.”

  “Sure.”

  “‘Time to say goodbye,’” he translated the song on the stereo.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You speak Italian?”

  “No,” he said. “I have this album, too.”

  Maybe that was when she started to be afraid. Because she felt herself starting to love him again.

  Panic set in. Love him? Loving this man was the emotional equivalent of stepping off a cliff in the dark. No rational woman would do it.

  But she couldn’t help herself.

  Like a lab rat in one of those horrid experiments, she kept going back to the source of her hurt.

  “Are you all right?” Alex asked her.

  “No.” With unsteady hands, she set her cup and saucer on the table.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I shouldn’t have invited you over. I’m sorry, but I think you should go. You know, con te partiro and all that.”

  “Hey, this was your idea.”

  “It was a bad one. I made a mistake.”

  He took her hand, and his eyes turned soft. “I’m here, and the world hasn’t come to an end.”

  She knew it would look foolish and petty to snatch her hand away. Besides, she didn’t want to. In that moment, she felt utterly mesmerized, still falling off that cliff into the unknown. He was not the one who could save her. Quite the contrary, he was the one who had pushed her.

  With one hand, he gently tipped up her chin so that their lips were nearly touching. Her heart sped up and chills rushed over her.

  Kiss me, she thought wildly. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.

  He didn’t. He couldn’t hear her yearning thoughts and she was too afraid and vulnerable to speak them aloud.

  Sometimes, she thought, a freefall was fun—until she hit the ground.

  She reminded herself of all the reasons that this was impossible. He probably saw nothing wrong with killing a summer pursuing an old girlfriend. He was on the rebound from a broken engagement, grieving for his mother, sorting through a house that had stood unchanged for a decade. Flirting with her was probably a diversion for him.

  “You can stay until we finish our coffee,” she heard herself say.

  “I’m a slow drinker.”

  She looked down at their joined hands. “I simply don’t understand why you think this is a good idea.”

  “Maybe it’s not. But then again, maybe it is.” He let go of her hand and then did something worse. He slid both arms around her. “I have something to tell you, Rosa. I never had a chance the last time we were together.”

  Caffe Frangelico

  Frangelico is a liqueur made from hazelnuts grown in the orchards of Lombardy. It’s clear and sweet and so delicious, it’s said to cause the teeth to sing.

  2 parts Frangelico

  5 parts hot coffee

  Top with whipped cream and crushed hazelnuts.

  part four

  PASTA

  There once was a time in Italy when a traitorous poet named Marinetti claimed that pasta “…induces scepticism, sloth, and pessimism and…its nutritive qualities are deceptive.” In the ensuing pandemonium, one fact rang clear: Italians love their pasta for all its best qualities as a food. It’s abundant, simple to store, delicious to eat and, with no regard for Marinetti’s opinion, nutritious and adaptable. In the summer, use the freshest ingredients in nature and see for yourself.

  Penne Pasta With Fresh Arugula,

  Tomato and Mozzarella

  Success depends on fresh tomatoes and arugula and basil. And don’t even think about using anything but the freshest mozzarella. You don’t need much, so go ahead and splurge on the good stuff.

  1/2 pound penne pasta

  4 ripe tomatoes, diced

  about 10 ounces fresh mozzarella, drained and diced

  5 ounces arugula, torn into bite-sized pieces

  a few fresh basil leaves

  1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

  salt and red pepper flakes to taste

  Cook the pasta. Put the tomatoes, arugula, basil, mozzarella, olive oil, salt and pepper in a large bowl. When the pasta is ready, toss it with the tomato mixture and serve.

  twenty-two

  Summer 1992

  “So how’d the interview go, kiddo?” asked Mario Costa. “Did you get the scholarship?”

  Rosa tied on her apron, emblazoned with a whimsical winged pizza, the Mario’s logo. “All right, I guess,” she said. “It’s up to the committee now.” The mere thought of the whole intimidating process made her queasy with nerves. She was on the brink of going to college. And not just any college. Brown University in Providence, that three-hundred-year-old, ivy-covered bastion of higher learning. She’d been accepted and offered a financial aid package that was adequate, though not generous. If she won the coveted Charlotte Boyle Prize, a large grant for which she’d just interviewed, the burden would be lightened considerably. All through spring she’d dreamed of going away to college, wondering which classes she would take, which professors would teach and guide her.

  Her brothers had urged her to join the navy as they had. Rob was married with two boys and twin daughters, S
al was a chaplain, and their lives were filled with adventure. But Rosa couldn’t see herself in the service. She intended to fight for her education, too, but she was no warrior. Still, it would be wonderful, she thought, not to saddle Pop with more bills than he already had.

  He’d hidden his financial situation from her for years. As she grew older and took on more responsibility, she traced the problem to its source, and the source did not surprise her. Her mother’s three-year ordeal, with all the attendant surgeries and treatments, had wiped him out when Rosa was nine. Lacking medical insurance, he was obliged to pay for every penny of her treatment.

  Rosa had discovered all that and more when she took over the bookkeeping for her father. She’d come across records of three clients who never paid a cent for the work Pop did. At first, he had resisted her questioning. But finally, he admitted the clients were Mamma’s doctors—an oncologist, an anesthesiologist and a surgeon. He repaid them by maintaining their property and would probably do so for many years to come.

  She wondered if it made Pop bitter to keep working for them long after Mamma was gone.

  In the spring when the college letters had arrived, she’d offered to attend the state college in Kingston to save money, but Pop wouldn’t hear of it. He proudly insisted that she attend Brown, that it would be worth the sacrifices they’d both make.

  She scrubbed her hands at the big stainless steel sink and pushed her nerve-racked doubts away. Then she stood before a small mirror and checked her hair, which was pulled ruthlessly into a bun and covered with a regulation net. Since that summer five years ago, when Alex Montgomery had cut it all off, she’d let her untamable curls grow down to the middle of her back.

  “You ready for the lunch rush?” Mario asked her.

  “You bet.”

  They still had a half-hour before the place opened. The ovens were roaring, the giant steel mixers churning out smooth, pale mounds of pizza dough.

  “I wanted to show you this,” she said, reaching into her pocket. “Two things, actually.”

  Mario put on his reading glasses. “What’s that?”

  “A new seating grid for summer. If you arrange the tables in this layout, you’ll increase your capacity by eighteen. Twenty-four, if you add two tables to the deck. It will help move the summer crowds faster, not to mention increase the till.”

  He studied the sheet of graph paper with deep absorption. Rosa had stayed up late last night, figuring out the arrangement. Mario always encouraged her to make suggestions for improvements around the place. Over the years, she offered her opinion here and there, ways to improve efficiency or cut costs, maybe save on expenses or overage. A glass front for the self-serve soft drink case had increased sales by fifty percent. The addition of a salad bar raised the average tab by three dollars. Plastic number tents for each table increased accurate orders.

  The minor adjustments were all obvious to Rosa, but Mario always acted as though they were revelations. He was, she had come to realize, a wonderful person but a mediocre businessman.

  Fortunately, because of the summer crowds and the prime location of the restaurant, mediocre was good enough for Mario.

  “Perfect,” he said. “I’ll tell Vince and Leo to come in after closing time tonight and do a reset.”

  “Vince hates doing resets,” she said. “Don’t tell him it was my idea.”

  Mario tacked the grid to the bulletin board over the clock. “Rosina, cara ragazza,” he said. “Don’t be so modest about being good at this. It’s a gift.”

  Big deal. Who wanted to be good at running a hot, greasy kitchen and feeding people who were often rude to you? What the heck kind of a gift was that? She longed to be good at calculus or philosophy or nuclear physics, not feeding people.

  She handed him a computer printout. “Take a look at this. I was talking to one of the vendors about our paper goods order. If we increase our quantity of pizza boxes by just two hundred, they’ll give you a price break.”

  He gestured at the already busy, overheated kitchen. Stainless steel shelves were stuffed to the ceiling with supplies, some of them years old. “I got no more space.”

  “I’ll make space. I promise.” Rosa knew she was creating extra work for herself, but inefficiency drove her nuts. “And also, if you order the supplies on the internet, they’ll ship from out of state and you won’t owe sales tax.”

  “The inter-what?” Mario frowned.

  “The internet. It’s...an electronic network.” Rosa had no clue how to explain it. “Sort of like ordering from a catalog, but it’s through the computer.”

  “And this is legal?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Mario beamed at her. “Such a smart girl. That scholarship committee will give you anything you want. You’ll see. Did you show them my letter of reference, eh?”

  “If I was five years dead, they’d think you were trying to canonize me.”

  “Nah. I just told the truth.”

  Rosa smiled, but her stomach was churning. She had prepared carefully for the interview. She’d borrowed a perfect outfit from her friend Ariel, whose mother had an alterations shop. She had reviewed her qualifications and practiced in front of a mirror, trying to figure out the proper way to sit. She wrote a list of talking points on index cards and memorized each one.

  Despite all the preparations, the interview had been singularly intimidating, particularly since Mrs. Emily Montgomery sat on the committee. Both Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery were alumni of Brown. It was strange to see her sitting there, judging Rosa, knowing all she knew. Not that she knew anything bad about Rosa, or good for that matter. It would have been nice if Mrs. Montgomery would vouch for her, but that would be the day.

  Maybe she honestly didn’t know the first thing about the gardener’s daughter. The two of them were linked by a single tenuous common thread. Alex. And Rosa hadn’t seen him in ages.

  Alex didn’t come to Winslow in the summer anymore. Not since junior high, although she thought of him more often than she probably should. After the first time he’d kissed her, they had done a lot more kissing that summer. Then he had gone away to boarding school, because the doctor said his asthma was so much better that he could live in a school dorm.

  Rosa thought it surprising that Mrs. Montgomery would let him out of her sight. She was normally so overprotective. Maybe he’d rebelled, told her to quit hovering. Rosa could picture that. Alex was a scrawny kid, but when he made up his mind, he could be really stubborn.

  He’d written to her a couple of times in the beginning. He liked school, but more than that, he loved the freedom of being away from home. She wrote back that she’d started a part-time job at Mario’s and was saving her money for college. Despite their best intentions, the correspondence quickly dwindled along with the autumn leaves that year. And Alex never again came back to the beach house.

  After her fourteenth summer had come and gone, Rosa made herself stop hoping he’d return. Still, whenever she saw Mrs. Montgomery, who came to Winslow by herself and had garden parties and cocktail hour for her friends, Rosa couldn’t resist asking from time to time: Is Alex coming this summer?

  He had other things to do, his mother reported. There was summer camp, one that seemed to last for three whole months. He stayed with friends from boarding school. One year he went on a trip to Europe—a study trip, Mrs. Montgomery called it, but Rosa pictured Alex goofing off on a train or drinking pastis and smoking Gauloises somewhere on the Riviera. Then there was a Wall Street internship, which sounded really important, though Rosa imagined him standing around a Xerox machine, bored out of his gourd. Finally she forced herself to stop asking. She didn’t want to seem too transparent or, God forbid, pathetic.

  She wondered if he was enjoying all the travel, the summer camp, the visits with friends. She wished he’d send just one or two postcards from plac
es like the Isle of Man or Mykonos, but that was dumb. What would he say to her on a postcard? What would she say to him?

  As kids, when they were together, they never ran out of things to talk about. Even their silences were filled with wordless exchanges and shared feelings they both understood.

  But that, she reasoned, was the nature of summer friendships. Now that she was older, she understood. A summer friendship flourished lavishly but temporarily under the extravagant brightness of the summer sun. At the season’s end, the relationship simply stopped. Like a beach umbrella, it was folded up and stored away until the next summer returned.

  She smiled a little at her own thoughts as she inventoried the supply of takeout boxes. Maybe she’d study things like this in college—the psychology of friendship. There was probably a course on that alone. If she was honest with herself, she’d admit she was pretty daunted by the phone-book-sized course catalog. College was going to be hard, that was for sure. Still, it was necessary to her success. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her days hanging around Winslow.

  Humming along with the radio while she worked, she reorganized the supply shelves. The phone started ringing as requests for deliveries came in. Mario’s wood-burning oven, which he’d built himself brick by brick, was modeled after the one in his father’s trattoria in Naples. It exuded a fragrant heat that would, by midafternoon, make the kitchen an unbearable hell. The two cooks, Vince and Leo, would take turns stepping out back to cool off with a wet towel and a Newport cigarette, littering the ground around the Dumpster with butts.

  Note to self, she thought. Put out a bucket of sand for an ashtray. She kept meaning to do that.

  As the first pizzas of the day went into the ovens, she shut her eyes and inhaled. This, she thought, was why she worked at Mario’s year after year. Lots of local girls worked in boutiques or as lifeguards at Town Beach. Some went all the way to Newport to be waitresses or hotel clerks. Rosa, with her reliable reputation, could have landed a more challenging job, maybe even an internship at a radio station.