by Cora Brent
It was only later, when the lights were off, the doors were locked, and I was climbing back into the driver’s seat of my truck that I realized I hadn’t had a chance to give her the cookbook.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MELANIE
Insomnia was my sporadic companion since I’d been a kid, coming and going in spells. Sometimes I’d spend months without any trouble, and then there’d come a night when, for no particular reason, my eyes would snap open like window shades, and I’d stare at the ceiling until daybreak.
This was one of those nights. I turned on the sound machine. I squeezed drops of lavender on my pillow. I swallowed two Benadryl. None of it made the slightest impact. I tossed. I turned. I kicked the covers off. I visited the bathroom four times. I played Minecraft on my iPad, even though staring at electronics makes things worse.
Interestingly, I’d never had trouble falling asleep on any of the nights Dominic stayed over. Maybe because we wore each other out so vigorously that sleep was inevitable. But Dominic wasn’t here tonight.
We hadn’t fought, not exactly. He’d lost his beloved grandmother only a few hours before he returned to the restaurant yesterday, and he was still reeling. I just wanted to comfort him, hold him, tell him I understood the hollow agony of losing someone you loved. Whatever he needed in that moment, I was ready to give to him. But he wouldn’t let me. Then the fire gave him an excuse to escape into the kitchen, and I didn’t see much of him for the rest of the night. And I couldn’t compete with the needs of the restaurant. I didn’t even want to try.
With a groan I sat up and irritably fluffed my pillows for the tenth time. Dwelling on the complex actions of Dominic Esposito certainly wouldn’t help me relax, so I flopped back down and returned to my staring contest with the dark, impassive ceiling. Hours passed, and it was four a.m. when I last took an unhappy look at the clock. After that I finally closed my eyes, knew nothing else for a while until an insistent bee started buzzing. It hovered over my ear and then stopped and started again with a regular rhythm. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see light peeking out from the edges of the window blinds. Four a.m. had felt like only a moment ago. Thankfully the bee wasn’t real after all. My phone had wound up under my pillow, and someone had been texting me.
The text was from Patsy, with a link to an article on the Sun Republic site. I’d forgotten that this was the day the piece on Esposito’s was being published.
My fuzzy brain didn’t want to tackle anything challenging right away, so I padded into the kitchen in search of coffee. While the Keurig hummed, I leaned on the counter and yawned, lamenting the bitchy karma that had yanked me awake after I had finally managed to drift off to sleep. Today was Sunday, and the restaurant didn’t open until one, so I could have just tossed the phone aside and returned to sleep, but now that I was conscious, I wanted to read Becky Baller’s article. Originally she’d promised to email me the final copy before it went to print, but I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t follow up.
I carried my coffee and my phone over to the couch and let the cats climb in my lap as I started to read. I frowned. Then I read a few more paragraphs and frowned harder. I used my thumb to scan all the way to the end and realized this was no short puff piece on a local restaurant.
Esposito’s Authentic Pizzeria was a landmark on Manhattan’s Spring Street for over eighty years. The food was so legendary that it was a place where presidents dined, movie stars caroused and, during the gritty era of 1970s cinema, scenes from four mafia-themed motion pictures were filmed in its interior.
Originally owned by Italian immigrant Giuseppe Esposito when the Roaring Twenties were in full swing, the eatery, famous for its distinct wood-fired pizza, was passed through the hands of four generations of Espositos. New Yorkers assumed the fabled pizzeria would always be there. But ten years ago, scandal and bankruptcy doomed the old restaurant. The once tight-knit family lost their legacy along with their livelihoods. And rumors of a shocking affair between a wild teenager and his older cousin’s wife would divide the Espositos forever.
Now, a decade later there is a brand-new Esposito’s restaurant in a different city. Two brothers, the great-grandsons of Giuseppe Esposito, have just opened their newest establishment in downtown Phoenix. But will the sordid shadows of the past catch up to the new generation and doom the Esposito name once more?
“What the fuck?” I muttered, and set the phone down for a moment to collect my thoughts.
I already knew there’d been some sort of nasty mess involving Dominic’s uncle and cousin. They’d botched the restaurant’s financial affairs, and there were hints they’d been mixed up in something illegal. But I’d never heard a word about any “shocking affair” that splintered the family. The wild teenager had to be Dominic. He’d been just around eighteen when the restaurant closed, and he’d moved cross-country with his brother and grandmother. Gio would have only been sixteen and had never struck me as the wild type.
I picked up my phone as if it were a snapping reptile, and kept reading. Becky Baller had done her research. She’d dug up neighbors and friends and school teachers who were happy enough to repeat whatever gossip had been rattling around in their heads for the last decade. The nefarious uncle, Frank, had been dead for years, which I already knew. His son, Steven, had to be the older cousin referred to, but I couldn’t remember Dominic saying much about him, let alone his wife. Anyway, Becky Baller evidently hadn’t managed to get in touch with Steven himself. However, one distressing paragraph stood out from all the rest.
Beth Esposito’s death certificate was issued by New York’s Nassau County in June of this year. She was thirty-five years old. A former neighbor confirmed that Beth had lost her battle with stomach cancer, and that Steven and their two daughters moved away only weeks after she passed.
I knew nothing of Beth Esposito, had never seen a picture of her, or even heard her name before. I only knew the barest of details about Steven Esposito. Yet my heart ached for the young family as I read about their heartbreak.
After that the article resumed its purple-prose tone and musings of ghosts from the past. All in all, the writing was rather vague with titillating hints of some tawdry love triangle that resulted in the severing of family ties, but there were no outright accusations. If Becky Baller was in the hunt for a career as a tabloid reporter, she was off to a fine start. Even though the article was in the Food and Entertainment section, little was said about the actual food until the last paragraph where she awarded five out of five stars and declared that Esposito’s was “the best New York pizza in Phoenix.” There was a picture of Dominic and Gio standing beneath the Esposito’s sign. They both had their arms crossed over red-and-white Esposito’s logo T-shirts. They wore happy, unsuspecting grins.
At this point even after the late compliment about the food, the article didn’t seem like it could be spun into a positive thing. I shuddered to think what Dominic and Gio would say when they saw it. Perhaps they could sue Becky Baller for the value of her Louis Vuitton accessories.
Can’t sue for slander if it’s the truth.
The idea was disquieting. After all, how well did I really know Dominic? He’d spoken of his family; Gio and his grandparents. But he’d never talked about exes or lost loves or regretted affairs, not even when I’d asked. He just made some offhand joke about still being crushed by the cute redhead who’d dumped him for the varsity hockey captain in tenth grade. Then he slyly reached between my legs and started working his magic. All other questions galloped right out of my head. After all, I hadn’t spoken of James and our doomed marriage very much either.
In any case, mooning on the couch in a pile of cat hair would solve nothing. I jumped up so quickly that Luke yelped. Twenty minutes later my hair was still damp from the shower, but I was dressed. With keys in hand I left the cats to amuse themselves, so I could pay Dominic a long overdue visit at his condo.
Along the way I impulsively stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts’ drive-thro
ugh and ordered a dozen donuts. I shoved a Boston Kreme into my mouth even before I’d left the parking lot. Regardless of burning questions about the past, present, and future, a girl still had to eat.
The closer I got to Dominic’s condo, the more worried I felt. This whole shitty article business was a bullshit thing to have to deal with just one day after Donna’s death. Dom and Gio still had a funeral to plan. They sure as hell didn’t need this garbage. I couldn’t do anything about some of the embarrassing details that were now in the hands of the entire Phoenix metro area, but I wanted to be there for Dominic when he read it. I was furious on his behalf. Frankly if I’d found out tomorrow that Becky Baller got her lower lip caught in a paper shredder, I wouldn’t have been upset at all.
Dominic’s silver pickup truck was parked prominently in front of his building. I balanced the box of donuts on one hand like it was a serving tray as I crossed the distance to his condo. I didn’t hear the voices until I was just about close enough to knock.
The door was slightly ajar but not enough for me to see inside or for anyone inside to see me. Dominic and Gio were on the other side, and while they weren’t shouting, the tone being tossed back and forth was definitely tense.
“So, it’s true,” Gio said. He sounded miserable.
“Yes, it’s true,” Dominic said, sounding just as miserable.
There was a cough, then Gio’s voice again. “I guess I never really wanted to know. Or maybe I was afraid you’d just lie to my face.”
“Gio, it was a decade ago. Yeah, I had an affair with Beth while she was separated from Steven. I was young and stupid and bitter.” Dominic sounded so weary, so sad. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the fallout from Becky Baller’s stab at journalism had already arrived. The moment that followed was the longest moment of silence I’d ever heard.
“What about the kid?” Gio asked in a low voice.
“Your kid?”
“No, Dom, not my kid. Yours. What about her?”
Suddenly my lungs didn’t work right, and there was something running down my arm. I’d accidentally crushed the box of donuts in my hands and the jelly filling had erupted. I backed away from Dominic’s door at maximum speed, clutching the ruined box as I made a beeline for my car.
I didn’t hear any more of the conversation between the two brothers. I didn’t want to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DOMINIC
Gio was planning on coming with me to meet with the funeral home director about Donna’s service and burial. It would be a small, intimate affair on Tuesday afternoon, and we intended to close both restaurants until 6 p.m. Employees who were scheduled to work would receive full pay but were not expected to attend the service unless they wanted to. Sonoran Acres had offered us their conference room as an informal postfuneral gathering place, and I was happy to take them up on it. Most of Donna’s living friends were there anyway.
When I saw Gio this morning, I also had to tell him that I planned to contact Steven and let him know that our grandmother had passed away. It shouldn’t be that hard in this hyperactive social media age to locate a family member, but after an hour of drinking coffee at my bare kitchen table while scouring search results on my laptop, I wasn’t having any luck. Meanwhile, my phone was overflowing with messages that I didn’t feel like dealing with yet. I did take a quick look to see if any calls or texts had come through from Melanie. They hadn’t. The meeting this morning with the funeral director was at ten, and after that I planned to drop by Melanie’s apartment. I hoped to take her out somewhere and try to have a few hours of a normal relationship. I badly wanted that with her. I just hoped she wanted it too.
The knock on the door came early, just after eight. I was still unshowered and wearing only my boxers. Part of me immediately hoped that Melanie was here, but the knock was too loud and insistent to be the work of her delicate hand. That knock was all Gio.
“You’re early,” I said when I opened the door.
He wasn’t dressed either. In fact he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed in his flannel pajama bottoms. He didn’t have a shirt on, and I noticed the faded scar on his right shoulder. I’d forgotten about that scar and where it came from, but now I had a sudden flashback.
Gio was maybe five at the time—we were at a Fourth of July block party in Uncle Frank’s neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was dark outside, and my grandparents were twenty yards away at Frank’s house when some drunk dickhead ran through the crowd with a pair of Roman candles. A shower of sparks landed on Gio’s shirt and caught fire. I didn’t have time to react, and I didn’t know what to do anyway. But Steven did. Our big teenage cousin grabbed Gio and threw him down on the ground, rolling and smacking him until the fire was out. Gio was screaming, and people were crowding and gasping. I saw Papa Leo sprint our way at a speed that was remarkable for a potbellied gray-haired grandfather. Steven had gathered his little cousin into his arms as he assured him, “It’s okay. Fire’s out. You’re okay.”
More than twenty years later, Gio wordlessly stepped into my apartment and pressed a folded newspaper to my chest.
“What’s this?” I asked.
My brother sat on the couch and glared at me. “Read it.”
“You’re the only guy I know who still gets the damn newspaper delivered to his door every day,” I muttered as I leaned against the wall and unfolded the paper. According to the headlines the congressman who’d been on trial for running a prostitution ring out of a sporting goods store was going to prison.
“So what?” I looked up to find Gio was still grimly watching me.
“Section D,” he said.
I was drawing a blank until I sorted through the pieces of newspaper and saw that section D was the Food and Entertainment section. I’d forgotten all about the fact that the article was coming out today, the one written by the annoying reporter who came to the friends and family event and cornered Gio with a bunch of weird questions that didn’t have anything to do with food. I still didn’t know why Gio was slumped on the couch looking like I’d just run over his puppy. Maybe that reporter, Becky Baller, had given us a bad review. Maybe she hated pizza.
I was expecting a few paragraphs on one of the inner pages, but “Brothers Haunted by Family Failures” took up four columns on the first page, then continued for another half page on page four.
Gio rose from the couch while I scanned the article. He walked into the kitchen and stood at the window, staring at the gray morning. “Read the whole thing, Dom. Read every fucking word.”
I did what he said. I read every fucking word. Gio didn’t make a sound the entire time. He just stood there beside the window, a silent moral custodian. During the fifteen minutes or so that it took me to read and absorb the article in its entirety, I half forgot he was even there.
I was startled to read that Frank had done prison time years ago. He served nine months for tax evasion and racketeering. There was no mention of whether Steven had gone to prison as well.
“Can’t believe Uncle Frank was in prison,” I said to Gio.
“Keep reading,” was his curt answer.
As I continued to read, at first I was furious with the writer, then sadness filled me for the broken family described in these paragraphs. My broken family. All that history, came to this. I’d pictured my grandfather’s lonely death a million times, yet seeing it described in a couple of stark print sentences brought fresh waves of pain.
But the worst of the heartbreak was news to me; “death certificate . . . thirty-five years old.”
My throat tightened. I read those sentences again to make sure I understood them. Something heavy squeezed my chest and wouldn’t let go.
Beth, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
I never hated her. I hoped she didn’t hate me. She was lonely and sad, and I knew exactly what I was doing the first time I got her on her back and eased my way inside. She and Steven had been separated for six months when I started coming by to fix things around the ho
use. She was grateful and pleased. She fed me plates of spaghetti. She asked me questions about school and life and really listened to the answers.
Beth was sweet with a delicate Snow White kind of beauty, but that wasn’t why I wanted her. Honestly, I wasn’t lacking for options. There were even prettier girls my own age that followed me everywhere in the hopes I’d give them a few minutes of my time. I liked being in her house, my cousin’s house. I liked knowing that she was eagerly waiting for me to come over after she tucked her daughter in for the night. Most of all, in my fucked up teenage head, I liked the idea that I was taking something important from the man who’d taken something important from me. Later on I was ashamed of that. But it didn’t change anything.
With care, I folded the newspaper along its original creases. The final paragraph had said positive things about the food and awarded a five-star rating, but that hardly seemed to matter.
Gio turned around, and I didn’t like what I saw in his face. He’d never asked me about it, never. I knew he watched me every time Beth’s name came up, but as the years passed that happened less and less. I could almost pretend history was different.
Donna knew. Maybe she’d suspected all along, but she guessed the truth for sure when Steven and I sported matching black eyes after brawling in the middle of his living room. He’d stopped by to talk to his estranged wife and found her with her head bobbing between my knees. Donna talked to me about it only once. She’d grabbed my hand and begged, “Dominic, let her go. Please.” It was the only thing she had ever asked of me, but it didn’t matter. Beth had already informed me she was reconciling with Steven. I didn’t even realize I’d fallen for her until I heard that crushing news. But it wasn’t the last blow to be dealt. The restaurant was officially lost, thanks to Frank and Steven, and so were Gio’s and my future hopes. All of a sudden there didn’t seem to be anything left for us in New York. Impulsively our grandmother called a moving van, packed us up, and shuttled us across the country. At that point I was glad to go.