by Sarah Jio
I walk toward her and set my bag down behind the counter. “What?”
“I’ve never loved this deeply,” she says. “And I know he feels the same. This love is bigger than anything either of us has experienced. So I’m trying to figure out how he could walk away from that.” She shakes her head in a sort of disbelief. “And then how do I walk away from that? How do I wake up every day, go on dates, knowing that I may never love this way again?”
I wish I could tell her that she will, that love is around every corner, that true love can be replicated, repeated, found again. And for some, I suppose it can. But when you’ve had big, bold love the way Lo has felt with Grant, can you find that again? I only know what I see, and I saw love between Grant and Lo. I saw intense love. And, like my friend, I wonder how the heart goes on when its match goes unmet.
“It’s such a big risk, this love business,” I say. “You love and you hope, but there are never any guarantees. You build your castle together, in your hearts, and it may all come crashing down at a moment’s notice.” I nod to myself. “I’m afraid of that too.”
Lo looks up. “With Cam, you mean?”
“Yes,” I say. “He invited me to meet his parents. They were going to come out a few months ago, but there was an issue with his dad’s health, and, well”—I pause to let out a big sigh—“Lo, meeting the parents . . . isn’t that kind of a big deal?”
“It is.”
“But I can’t tell if he’s introducing me as a romantic prospect, or if he wants me along as some kind of research assistant. He’s unusually fascinated by my brain. And maybe I’m being paranoid, but I don’t want any part of his investigative reporting.”
Lo shifts uncomfortably. “Jane, I wasn’t going to say anything; in fact, I promised myself I wouldn’t meddle.” She sighs. “But what you just said, about being cautious, well . . . listen, I saw some messages on Cam’s phone the night of Katie’s wedding. He left it on the table. Even though I was in a state that day, I couldn’t help but notice the text notifications popping up on the screen. There was some sort of all-caps text war in progress.”
I think back to our romantic turn on the dance floor. Did I imagine that he only had eyes for me? “Did you read them?”
“I could only get bits and pieces,” she says with a sigh. “But, Jane, he seems to be in some kind of trouble at work.”
I’m too shaken to answer, so I change the subject. “I have an appointment to get these roots done in a few. Mind looking after the shop for the rest of today? I may go see my brother afterward.”
Lo nods. “Totally fine. Tell Flynn I said hi.”
“I will,” I say. “And please, try not to worry too much about the Grant situation.” I think of the old book Colette gave me, with the names of lovers from centuries past, examples of true love, fleeting love, all kinds of love. Lo and Grant will find their names in this book; I’ve known that from the day I first saw them together, even if I don’t know the type of love they share or how their story will end—or not. And as hard as she wants their love to stand the test of time, to push past barriers, to be the seed that grows—flourishes, even—in a crack in the concrete, it isn’t in her control, or Grant’s.
“Look at you!” I exclaim, marveling at Mary’s pregnant belly when I walk into the salon.
She smiles and rubs her stomach. “I know, I’m huge,” she says. “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if I’m having twins, well . . .” Mary tucks a long strand of auburn hair behind her ear and sighs.
I squeeze her arm. “I know it’s been so very hard, with Eli gone and all.”
She nods. “I won’t lie—it’s been absolute hell. To be pregnant, and alone.” She sighs. “Thank God for Luca.”
“Luca?”
“You remember, my contractor,” she says, as I sit down in the chair. “I never expected it, but he’s become a great friend.” She sighs again. “I’m going to miss him, actually.”
“Miss him?”
She nods, dividing my hair into sections. “The remodel is almost done. Afterward, he plans to return to Italy. He’s been hired by an American millionaire to lead the renovation on some mansion on Lake Como.” She shrugs. “Maybe it’s Clooney.”
I sense hesitation, regret, in Mary’s voice. “Does that make you sad?”
She quickly shakes her head. “No, no, it’s nothing like that.” She runs a comb through an under section of my hair. “It’s just, well, I’ll miss having him around; that’s all.”
As she sets the first few foils in my hair, I think about how love can either hit you like a ton of bricks or simply brush your face like a feather.
“Looking good, sis,” Flynn says when I meet him at Beecher’s in the market for a late lunch.
I run my hand through my newly foiled hair and grin. “Oh, thanks.”
We both order crab melt sandwiches and walk to a bench overlooking Elliott Bay. Seagulls peck around our feet while we sink our teeth into lunch: sweet Dungeness crabmeat, roasted red peppers, and dill aioli sandwiched between two perfectly grilled pieces of bread. In other words, heaven.
“Remember how Mom used to like to sit here in the mornings with her coffee?” Flynn says, wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
“Yeah,” I say, pointing to the bench ahead, which is occupied by a young family. A toddler in Hawaiian print shorts is squealing as he tosses bits of bread at a group of eager seagulls. “She’d just sit there and look out at the bay.” I crumple the sandwich wrapper and set it beside me. “You know, I don’t think she ever got over our dad.”
Flynn nods. “I don’t think she did either.”
“Even when she was happy,” I say, “there was a sad quality to her eyes, as if she was always carrying the memory of him.”
Flynn looks out at the bay, then turns back to me. “I know the feeling.”
“What do you mean?”
“The woman, in the apartment across the street,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “Jane, I don’t know how to describe it. And it makes no sense. I still haven’t even met her. I don’t even know her name, and yet she’s the reason I wake up in the morning.” He smiles. “We have this unspoken language. We wave, we smile, we point and gesture. The other day I wrote on some butcher paper, ‘What’s your favorite flower?’ She wrote on the back of a cardboard box, ‘Orange roses.’ And so I got a big vase of them and set them by the window, for her.”
I smile. “That’s right—Lo said you stopped in and asked for orange roses.”
“She loved them,” Flynn says. “It made her smile, and that’s all I wanted. She doesn’t smile enough. She carries some sort of incredible burden with her. And this man who continues to come see her. I think he’s an ex-boyfriend. His visits leave her in tears. I see her crying, and I so desperately want to go to her. I want to take her pain away. I want to comfort her like I’ve wanted to comfort no other woman.” He turns to me with wide eyes. “Jane, it makes no sense, but I think this is love.”
“Or some form of it,” I say with a grin. “Flynn, how can you know you love her if you’ve never spoken to her? If you’ve never even touched her?”
“I just know,” he says simply.
And I know that Flynn and this mysterious woman will also end up in the ancient book. Theirs is a rapturous, rare, and intense sort of love.
“Ask her what her name is,” I say. “I mean, make a sign asking her.”
“I will.”
Cam picks me up at four, and we board a ferry to Bainbridge Island to meet his parents for dinner at Hitchcock, a restaurant in the sleepy town of Winslow, where they are visiting a local relative.
“You look beautiful,” he says with a grin as we step out of the car and walk hand in hand. It’s a perfect late-summer evening—warm breeze, hazy cerulean sky overhead, couples strolling along the sidewalk, children licking ice-cream cone
s. “My parents are eager to meet you,” he continues.
I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the windows of a storefront and eye my pale blue sundress and sandals. Should I have dressed up a little more?
“My mom grew up on Bainbridge Island,” I tell him.
“What was she like?” Cam asks.
“She was the loveliest person you’d ever meet,” I say. “Gracious, kind, a bit impractical.” I smile to myself. “She once helped one of the fishmongers in the market with a proposal to his girlfriend. Her favorite flower was this rare, and out-of-season, variety of lily. Of course, Mom shipped them in from Peru, at least two hundred stems, and didn’t charge him a dime.” I nod. “She did that kind of thing for people. She loved love.”
“And you loved her,” he says.
“I did, so very much,” I reply.
We approach the restaurant, and I follow him into the dimly lit dining room. A gray-haired couple waves at us from across the room, and Cam smiles. “Mom, Dad,” he says as we near the table. “This is Jane.”
“So nice to meet you, Mrs. Collins,” I say, setting my bag down by my chair.
She hugs me warmly. “Call me Claudia, please,” she says. “And this is Gerald.”
“Very nice to meet you, Jane,” Cam’s father says.
A waiter approaches and hands us all menus. Claudia opens hers and turns to Gerald. “Honey, they have gnocchi here; you love gnocchi.”
“I do not love gnocchi,” he says, grimacing.
“You do; you’ve just forgotten.” She gives me a knowing smile. “He’d forget his head if it weren’t attached.”
Gerald frowns and sets his menu down. “Since you know so well what I like, why don’t you order for me, then?”
Claudia nods confidently. “I will.”
Cam fidgets in his chair. I can tell he’s embarrassed by his parents’ awkward exchange, and I realize he was right. His parents obviously aren’t in love. I look back at Claudia and Gerald. And then it happens. My vision begins to cloud. I blink hard and grip the edge of the table to steady myself.
“You OK?” Cam whispers to me. “This can’t mean that—”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Dear, I hope you’re not feeling ill,” Claudia says, reaching across the table to pat my arm.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’m just—”
“Jane gets migraines,” Cam interjects.
I keep my eyes closed for a bit until the fog lifts. I’ll be left with a dull headache through dinner, and I’ll feel pressure behind my eyes, but I know that I won’t have another episode in their presence for the rest of the night. They never strike twice in the same interaction.
“You poor thing,” Claudia says. “Gerald gets them too. He won’t give up cheese. They bring the headaches on. He’s also lactose intolerant.” She shakes her head. “You’d think he’d give up dairy, but he absolutely will not see reason.”
Gerald frowns. “Cheese,” he says, shaking his head. “She wants me to give up cheese.”
I look at Cam and smile. They love each other deeply, his parents. Through the years. Through the fights. Through the grumblings about life, and cheese. This is love.
Cam invites me back to his apartment, and as we settle in on the couch with two glasses of wine, he runs his hand through my hair. “You know, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe what you saw at dinner between my parents.”
“Why not?”
He swirls the wine in his glass. “I was sure that any love they shared had evaporated over the years. They’re always bickering.”
I nod. “I heard that every love affair ends in pots and pans.”
Cam grins. “Pots and pans.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But your parents show that there is still love in the pots and pans. Deep love.”
He smiles as if he’s somewhat astonished. “Even in a forty-five-year marriage where all that’s left to talk about is my father’s lactose intolerance?”
I return his smile. “Love supersedes lactose intolerance, yes.”
He leans in closer to me. “Do you think we could find love?” he whispers. “Do you think someone with your gift could see it in us?”
He’s so close, I can smell his skin, his breath, sweet and intoxicating. My heart beats faster as I weave my fingers through his. I think of Colette and wonder if she’d see love between us. I both want to know and don’t want to know. Mostly, I just want to lose myself in this moment. And as I press my lips against his, I do. Completely.
Chapter 17
4572 Sunnyside Avenue
Mary pulls her car into the driveway. She’s happy to see Luca’s truck parked on the street in front of her house; in fact, the sight makes her heart beat a little faster. It’s late September. Because she decided to preserve the fireplace, the kitchen remodel and breakfast nook expansion are taking longer than expected, but she’s secretly grateful for the delay. It means Luca will linger longer. And now that it’s nearing the end, she’s worried. She so despises being alone, though her child is soon to join her.
Mary hears the hum of a saw in the backyard and smiles to herself. Luca. His friendship has come to mean more to her than she could have ever expected. He helped her assemble the baby’s crib and paint the nursery. In turn, she cooked for him, once the new stove was installed, or sometimes ordered takeout, and they’d linger over a meal, exchanging stories with tangled words and elaborate hand gestures. Mary sighs contentedly, remembering their dinner last night.
Luca had to turn the water off, temporarily, while the plumber installed the new faucet, so Mary suggested they walk to Julia’s, a little restaurant down the street. It was a warm night, and birds chirped from the maple trees along the sidewalk as they rounded the block. “Careful,” Luca said, taking Mary’s hand when she nearly stepped into an open manhole cover. Her belly was bigger than ever now, and on warm days like this, she often wondered how she would make it to her due date in December. As it was, most people stopped her on the street with the familiar question: “Are you having twins?”
It was the second time Luca had touched her. The first was an accident. They’d been hovering over the stove, inspecting the newly installed tile mosaic under the range hood. Their arms had brushed, and Mary’s skin had erupted in a thousand goose bumps. Luca had stepped back and rubbed his forehead nervously.
Mary sets her keys on the side table, still thinking about last night. At the restaurant, the hostess led them to a little table in the back, where a fish tank housed two plump goldfish.
“I always wanted a goldfish as a child,” she said to Luca. “But my mother never let me have one, though they’re the easiest pets on earth.”
Luca smiled and pointed to the smaller of the two goldfish. “That one is you,” he said. “And the larger one is me.”
“Look at them,” Mary said. “They look so happy, even in that tiny tank.”
Luca nodded. “You can be happy anyplace when there is love.”
It was the most perfect English sentence he’d ever uttered to her, and she loved the way his eyes sparkled when he said it. He was right, of course. Since Eli had left, the beautiful home she used to take so much pride in didn’t mean much to her at all now. Love was gone. But with love, she could live in a shack, a trailer . . . an aquarium made for two.
She peers into the kitchen, where Luca is hunched over a lower cabinet installing the knobs she purchased at Restoration Hardware. She went back and forth between the pewter and the brushed nickel, but opted for the latter, and they look perfect on the distressed white cabinetry.
The old fireplace, the one that Eli loathed, stayed. And Mary is grateful for it now, like an old friend.
“Funny,” she says, looking around. “At the start, a remodel and a pregnancy each seems like a never-ending project, and yet, it’s all gone so . . . fast.” She feels a pang o
f regret then, both because Luca will soon be leaving and because Eli will never see the kitchen she intended to share with him, this gourmet kitchen they planned together. She had imagined all the Sunday mornings they’d spend, the two of them sipping coffee at the island, trading sections of the New York Times, with bacon sizzling in a pan on the stove and blueberry muffins baking in the oven. Newsprint, bacon, and muffins. The smell of happiness.
But there’s another tinge of emotion swirling in Mary’s gut as she runs her hand along the butcher block island, sanded by Luca to smooth perfection. As soon as he finishes the trim on the doorway, he’ll be gone, off to his next project, and that thought frightens her, deeply.
Over these months, and through her pregnancy, he’s been a constant figure in her life, perhaps the only sure thing. She’d come home from a long day at the salon, and there he’d be—hammering, sawing, painting, nailing. Like the old chandelier in the entryway, he became a fixture in her home, and in her life, and she isn’t quite ready to say good-bye.
Luca stands to face her and smiles. Mary loves his smile, so boyish, so joyful, so completely present. Eli never smiled that way. He never looked at her so expectantly, the way Luca does.
“There you are, my red fish,” he says, taking a step toward her.
Mary can’t help but laugh. “You mean, goldfish?”
Luca smiles as he runs his hand through his dark hair. “Oh,” he says with a laugh. “Yes, I meant goldfish. My English.”
“No, no,” she says, through laughter. “Red fish is better. So much better.”
Their eyes meet and lock for a long moment. “Then you will always be my red fish,” he says slowly.
A week later, Mary stands in her beautiful kitchen, in her perfect home. Luca is gone now. Her KitchenAid mixer, a wedding gift from one of Eli’s aunts, whose name now escapes her, sits on the countertop where Luca’s circular saw was before. And instead of the metal toolbox with its rusty hinges, the island is now home to a white bowl of shiny Granny Smith apples. Luca did a beautiful job, and Mary’s architect, Stuart, even talked about sending in photos to Architectural Digest for their annual kitchen remodel feature. But as beautiful as the space is, she feels lost and lonely in it. Love does not live in her kitchen, or in her house.