“That must have gone over big. They’ll hear about it, you know. News spreads like wildfire around these small towns.”
“Look, try to stay awake so I can get you discharged as soon as possible.”
“Keep talking to me, Elliott. Just keep talking.”
“That usually puts you to sleep.” He smiled.
“Elliott, maybe I didn’t get tripped. Maybe I just got tired and couldn’t run anymore. Maybe — ” She fought the heaviness of her eyelids. “Maybe I let her go.”
***
As they drove past a field of poppies, she thought about her thawing garden back home. The daffodils would surely be blooming when they returned. Tulips would follow. Perennials were faithful that way. No matter how you neglected them, they never abandoned you. The storm clouds gathered on the horizon, signaling the new tempest Elliott and she were about to enter as they drew nearer to Rome. He could think her mad — they could all think her mad. Wasn’t that a natural consequence of losing a child? And it could pour every day for all she cared; that would keep the treasure she carried from Villa Foresta safe. After all, Paolo had said it: thieves never steal in the rain.
They entered the dark mountain tunnel and her usual feeling of panic washed over her. She gripped Elliott’s thigh; he placed his hand over hers and kept it there until the daylight drew them out. This time he didn’t speak. At the entrance to the autostrada, she went for the bag of trail mix and held it out to him, but he put up his hand like a crossing guard and shook his head.
“Sorry I’m late, honey.” Rosemary was a ball of energy, never coming up for air. “Was this the only seat? Did you ask? I hate sitting in the middle of a restaurant like this. I really don’t feel like seeing anyone tonight. I’d rather hide in our little corner by the kitchen.”
“I didn’t ask for another seat,” Nate said.
“Why not?”
“Because I just didn’t. It wasn’t that important.”
“To you.”
“Look, Rosie, you’re the one with the secret identity. Everyone knows who I am.”
“Lots of people know who I am.”
“Are we going to start counting names?” Nate asked.
“I’m too hungry. Let’s order first.” She opened her menu and scanned the pages.
“I already did.”
She looked up surprised. “How come?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt like it. I’ve been sitting here for some time.”
“I hope you told the waiter not to bring your meal until mine came.”
“He’ll get the idea.”
“What did you order?”
“The usual,” he said. “Two Lovers.”
“I don’t feel like shrimp tonight.”
“You didn’t order it. I did.”
“But we always share, Nate.”
“Well, we don’t have to tonight.”
“What bug’s up your ass?”
The couple across the aisle turned their heads to get a look at the woman with the dirty mouth in the jeans and white pullover sitting across from the man in the gray pinstriped suit, white shirt, and red tie.
“Mind lowering your voice? Nothing like not wanting to be noticed.” Nate took a sip of his margarita.
Rosemary laughed. It was throaty like a smoker’s laugh.
“I don’t know why you insist on drinking margaritas with Thai food,” she said. “Margaritas are for Mexican food.”
“What does it matter? They’re both spicy foods. Would it make you feel better if I called it a loi krathong?”
“Is that Thai for margarita?”
“No, it’s some Buddhist holiday I read about that they celebrate in Thailand.”
“I’ll have a loi krathong, please,” Rosemary told the waiter, who had approached the table pen and pad in hand.
Nate shook his head in disbelief. The waiter furrowed his brow.
“Just kidding. A glass of Chardonnay, please. And a tom yum soup, and the pad thai with chicken. You can bring it all at once.” She closed her menu with the finality of finishing a five-hundred-page novel.
“Did I embarrass you?” she asked Nate.
“I stopped taking responsibility for my wife’s actions a long time ago.”
“That’s a good answer. I should jot that down for my column.”
“I probably got it from your column.”
***
When Nate had phoned that afternoon, Rosemary had been answering her favorite letter of the day, one that would surely make it into her column:
Dear Lydia,
I’m fourteen and would like to be able to talk to my mother about sex, but I can’t bring myself to say anything. She’s never brought up the subject. Do you know what would make it easier for me to open up to her? I have a steady boyfriend and need to make some decisions very soon. Please help before it’s too late.
Too Shy in Torrington
(Of course she wasn’t Lydia. Lydia had choked on the olive in her daily martini ten years before. No one had suspected that she was 82 until the obituary appeared, because she had used the same photograph for 50 years on the column syndicated to 23 small New England newspapers. When Rosemary was asked to become the new Lydia, she was told that she could change neither the picture nor the name.)
Rosemary had suggested that the troubled teenager prepare meatloaf for her tired working mother. Even if the mother didn’t work, she was a bad cook, Rosemary was certain. This was about building courage and self-esteem — confidence. If she could whip up a meatloaf with roasted potatoes, peas, and a salad, she could approach her mother about any subject. Meatloaf was perfect, a comfort food that could be prepared by a novice with relative ease. She attached her recipe for Deluxe Meatloaf to her e-mail response.
Maybe tonight Rosemary would make meatloaf herself, she had thought. Nate loved meatloaf — hers, that is. His mother’s meatloaf had been one giant burnt hamburger. That had been Thursday’s meal. The other days of the week she had turned out something equally bland and overcooked: gristly steak on Sunday, spaghetti with ketchup on Monday, broiled-to-death chicken on Tuesday, salt-encrusted cod on Wednesday, and cold pizza delivered on Friday. The chicken reappeared on Saturday. The same menu was repeated every week. She considered fresh vegetables too much trouble, so she boiled canned peas for twenty minutes to feel, Rosemary guessed, as though she was really cooking. Yes, today would have been a good cold day to turn on the oven and bake a meatloaf, but then Nate called to suggest dining out.
“It was going to be meatloaf — one of your favorites,” she had told him.
“It’s all my favorite.”
“With mashed potatoes.”
“I’d really like to go out.”
“Got a yen for something?”
“Anything. I don’t really care.”
“So why do we have to go out?”
“You know, most women would love for their husbands to take them out.”
“Okay. Okay.”
“Let’s meet at The King of Siam,” he suggested.
She had read a few more pleas for advice that would not appear in the column but to whose authors she provided swift and logical plans of action nevertheless: A happens and you do B; B happens and you do C. You cut yourself; you bleed. You commit certain actions; you take responsibility for them. To quote her mother, it was all bel e chiaro — nice and clear, neat and tidy. People made messes of their lives because they couldn’t simplify; they couldn’t see what was coming next. Blanch off the skin, trim the fat, skim the grease, clarify the stock, boil it down — reduce!
If people only lived their lives the way they cooked, they would find their burdens much lighter. But that was another problem: people didn’t cook anymore, couldn’t even follow a recipe, and the majority of counselors were telling them that it was okay in this busy w
orld; in fact, it was necessary for survival. Boy, did they have it wrong. Family mealtime had become as archaic as tea aprons wrapped around shirtwaist dresses.
She had been covering the police log at the local paper, where she was notorious for giving advice to lovelorn young reporters, when she was recruited for the column. Her instant success came as no surprise to her friends and family. As far back as college, Rosemary had been the Dr. Joyce Brothers of Lyndon Hall — the guru of heartbreak, of parental discord, of misunderstandings between roommates. But Rosemary remained convinced that her secret lay in the fact that she provided a recipe in many of her responses. The volume of pleas for help was so great that she couldn’t give a recipe with every answer, so it became a lottery of sorts. It was like having the discount gold coin drop from the cash register into the cashier’s hand at the grocery store, or like being the millionth customer to walk into the car dealership and be rewarded with a new SUV. Since everyone wanted a recipe, readers competed to pose the week’s most desperate, saddest or complicated problem. In truth, Rosemary had no system for selection; she merely had an instinct about the neediest cases — a gut response. It was, she believed, the act of nurturing that was missing in their lives.
Most of the recipes had been handed down from her grandmother and mother, while some dishes Rosemary concocted herself. She never ran out, since friends and family were always sending her ones they thought fit for a grieving widower or a wife with a gay husband. What really mattered was the act of preparation: the chopping, the sautéing, the stirring, the inhaling, and above all the caring, and the satisfaction of fulfillment.
“You are an artist,” she told her readers.
The idea to include a recipe came from her Aunt Vita who had worked in a women’s clothing store and who on one occasion had deftly handled a most difficult customer. A woman who had been scorned by her husband enjoyed unleashing her rage on the staff and the shop owner. Aunt Vita convinced the woman that her husband left her after she had stopped cooking gourmet meals in a misguided weight-loss program. In denying her husband good food, she had denied him love itself. Aunt Vita ended her lecture by writing down a recipe for osso buco for the woman to lure her husband back. The woman left the store high as a kite, and Vita’s boss gave her a promotion. Rosemary had concluded that her Aunt Vita was a genius.
Then there was Nate, who thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he was invited to spend Christmas Eve with the Ficolas. He’d heard about the seven fishes Italians ate on The Eve, as they called it, but he’d never imagined the feast that would be set before him. Never mind seven fishes — there must have been 70, each prepared a different way. He proposed to Rosemary on Christmas morning.
He was a man with appetites, and Rosemary knew how to satisfy them. Though a clean and beautiful home, good conversation and a weekly paycheck were all very nice, sex and food was the glue that held their marriage together, the staples Nate couldn’t live without. And while middle age had dulled the frequency of the former, the certainty of a healthy and creative meal every day, she knew, sustained him now more than ever. Providing good food to those one loved was, perhaps, the greatest gift of self.
When early in their marriage, Nate used to work late hours, Rosemary never failed to eat with her children at the normal dinner time and discuss the day’s happenings. A colorful plateful (indicative of a balanced meal) covered with waxed paper and ready for the microwave awaited Nate upon his return home. In fact a dish still waited for him these days, when he couldn’t finish his paperwork or avoid evening meetings.
***
“Julia called me today. She has another exam tomorrow. That makes 25, and she’s not even midway through the semester.”
Rosemary took a sip of her Chardonnay.
“Med school’s not like college,” Nate said. “I got a text from Thomas today.”
“What’s new?”
“He’s about to take another group rafting down the Colorado. Maybe someday he’ll get a real job.”
“He has a real job. It makes him happy.”
The waiter delivered their meals, and Rosemary wasted no time digging in. Nate, on the other hand, pushed the food around with his fork.
“I really wish they had chopsticks here,” he said.
“They don’t usually use chopsticks in Thailand.”
“We’re not in Thailand. Besides, some Thai restaurants have chopsticks.”
“Only for the culturally confused like you, Nate.”
“And what about us? Are we confused?”
Nate asked that question with such regularity that Rosemary accepted the tedious dialogue that usually lifted him out of his doldrums as dutifully as the discomfort of her annual mammogram. It was always his needs that weren’t being met. Poor frustrated Nate. After they’d gone around in circles and she’d either convinced him that he was too demanding or promised to make a few changes, she usually steered the conversation in the direction of their retirement or vacation plans and ended it on a more upbeat note.
Tonight, however, she was a little surprised, since they had made love that morning, and lovemaking usually put him in a good mood for a few days. He worked too hard, and he was getting older and wearier. Just a few more years until Julia graduated, and then he could stop. And her? Maybe she’d take on an assistant. Yes, that would be the way to go, because she wasn’t ready to kick the bucket like dear old Lydia, even figuratively. She was kind of tired herself tonight, so she skipped over the messy stuff and headed straight for the happy ending.
“I know you want to go to Australia this spring, but I was thinking we could extend the vacation and go to Italy too. My cousin Joanna discovered a great villa.”
“I couldn’t take that kind of time.” He put down his fork and took a large gulp of his margarita.
“You’ve worked so hard to bring the company to where it is, and it’s only made more work for you.”
“That’s why it’d be nice if Thomas came into the business.”
“You had no interest in your father’s business.”
“That’s because my father was a pain in the ass. You know I couldn’t work with him.”
“What makes you so sure Thomas could work with you?”
The hurt look on his face brought her up short.
“I’m kidding. Look, he just needs to do his own thing. Who knows? Maybe in time he’ll want to sell insurance. You can hang on for a few more years, can’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well?”
“Rosemary, there’s something I have to tell you.” He stared down at the table.
“Sounds serious.” She put a forkful of pad thai into her mouth. Her attempt to lighten the heavy part hadn’t worked.
“I’ve been seeing someone else,” he said in a low voice.
She stopped chewing. She wanted to spit the noodles out but opted to swallow them fast. She had to get rid of them.
“Another woman?”
“I feel terrible about it, but I’ve been warning you for years.”
“You’ve been seeing her for years?”
“No, no. Only about five months. But I want to move in with her.”
“What?”
“I’m in love with her.”
“Who?”
“Just a woman I met at Dunkin’ Donuts, believe it or not.” He laughed at the absurdity of it. “She’s a teacher. Not in our school system.”
“I’m so relieved,” she said sarcastically. “You let things get this far without saying anything to me? No marriage counselor?”
“Oh please, Rose. I’ve suggested seeing someone a million times but you always say we don’t need one. You think you can fix everything with meatloaf.”
“We’ll go to counseling.”
“I don’t want to anymore.”
“Nate, I don’t understand. We’ve always tal
ked.”
“I’m tired of talking, Rose. I’m tired of saying the same things. I’m all talked out. And I know I can’t spend another 27 years like this.”
“Like what? What’s so awful about your life?”
“I need someone who wants to be with me.”
“And what do you think I’ve been doing all these years? Killing time until someone else came along? I guess you were.”
“Of course I wasn’t. But I need more. I’ve always needed more.”
“Fuck you! How old is she?”
“Thirty-two,” he mumbled.
“Married?”
“Never been.”
“Fuck you!”
“I understand that you’re angry.”
“Oh, do you? And what about the kids?”
“They’re not kids anymore. They’ll handle it.”
“Then you tell them. You tell them everything.”
There were beads of sweat on her upper lip; her underarms were soaked. Heat rose until her whole face felt on fire. An emotional reaction often triggered this these days, but she wouldn’t, she would not, pick up the napkin and fan herself the way she usually did. Nate always said it didn’t help to do that. How did he know? When was the last time he had a hot flash? She would not give him the satisfaction now; she would not show him her vulnerability.
He was talking, but his voice faded into the background as other voices took over. Rosemary Ficola Jasinsky, this is your life, and it has just been erased, a man said. You didn’t want to marry an Italian? You didn’t want a mama’s boy? her mother chimed in. Well mamas’ boys stick around home. Then Do over! Her childhood voice called, pleading for a second chance, as though she had been cheated in a game of hopscotch. Her stomach muscles tightened, and she fought the pad thai’s desire to find its way back up her throat. Every day she dished out advice, confident that she possessed the recipe for holding everything together. For the first time in her life, she was speechless.
“I know how you must feel, turning 50 and all. But you’ll be okay. You’re a strong woman, Rosemary. I’ve always admired you for that. Though I have to admit I was afraid you’d throw a glass of water in my face.”
Thieves Never Steal in the Rain Page 4