Carmela had come to watch Zoe so that everyone else could “have a meal in peace.”
She called me Magdalena. But she did not know what to make of Zoe or Cody’s names. Whenever she heard them, she clucked her tongue and shook her head. She didn’t even try to pronounce them in her broken English. I liked to stare at Carmela. Her hair was stark white and long, pulled back in a complicated twist, held in place by long dark bobby pins. But I liked to imagine it free, billowing around her head in its snowy grandeur. The blue color of her eyes reminded me of ice, and she had a way of turning them onto something or someone as if they could bore through the surface and discover something important.
Reluctantly, I left Carmela behind, rocking Zoe easily to sleep so we could go eat dinner together.
“Amazing,” Ava said as we started to leave, “she’s been so fussy.”
Carmela gave Ava a penetrating stare. “Yes,” she said. She continued humming her seemingly random song, rocking and pressing her fingertips on the center of Zoe’s forehead.
At the restaurant Ava said, “That woman gives me the creeps. It was like she put a spell on Zoe. Did you see her?”
“Who cares?” my father said, leaning back in his chair, drinking his red wine. “It’s the first time she’s slept in weeks.”
At this restaurant, a small crowded place with picnic-type tables, there were no menus. Instead, the waiter delivered whatever food the chef was cooking. He watched everyone who came in, made sure they were eating, shouted to them in Italian.
But when we came in he shouted, “Hey! Americanos? Want some Coca-Cola? Want some Pizza Hut?”
Even though he smiled when he said it, showing two shiny gold teeth, I felt embarrassed. Other families looked at us and laughed. “Americano,” someone at the next table whispered. I wished I looked interesting, like Carmela. I played with my hair, pulling it back and twisting it this way and that.
“Scott,” Ava said, “tell her not to do that at the dinner table.”
“Madeline?” Dad said obediently.
I didn’t stop. I twisted my hair and thought about how Ava always did that. Scott, she’d say, tell Madeline we have to leave. Scott, ask Madeline if she likes oysters.
The waiter brought us two large, thin-crusted pizza margheritas.
“Scott,” Ava said. “Her hair.”
“Daddy,” I said to my father, “tell Ava I’m done fixing my hair.”
Cody sighed. “I love Italy,” he said. “I want to live here forever.” He leaned forward. “Have you ever noticed the cars here don’t have airbags?” He leaned back again and took a big bite of pizza. “Yup,” he said dreamily, “I could live here forever.”
“It takes some getting used to,” Ava said carefully to Dad. She saw me watching her and forced a smile. “Of course, I traveled through Asia a few years ago and loved it. Now, that was difficult. No roads to speak of, and you had to be so careful about what you ate. Not like Rome, where you can even drink the water from the tap.”
The waiter brought the next course, spaghetti carbonara.
“Hey!” the chef called. “Americanos! Some Chef Boyardee, eh?”
“If only they made pasta this good,” Dad answered him cheerfully.
“What is this?” Cody asked, leaning over his plate to sniff the spaghetti.
“Remember Mom made it once?” I said, breaking an unspoken rule to not speak of my mother in front of Dad and Ava. I didn’t care. “It was a Friday night dinner and she called it bacon and egg spaghetti.”
That same feeling of longing swept over me. If I could just hug my mother, I might feel better.
“Maybe we could call Mom tonight?” I asked my father.
“Sure,” he said, keeping his attention on the spaghetti he was twirling around his fork. He kept twirling, absently, even after the strands were tightly wound.
“It’s good,” Cody said. “Better than Mom’s.”
“She probably didn’t use pancetta,” Ava said.
I looked at Ava sharply. “By the way,” I said, “I was thinking about something.”
“Shoot,” Dad said.
“I was thinking about how I don’t know the story of how you guys met. You know how I love romantic stories.”
“Not so romantic,” he said. “We met at a bar.”
“It was romantic,” Ava said, hurt.
“Well.”
“But when?” I said, thinking about what Ava had said that morning: We just didn’t know then.
“Well,” he said again, “I had a meeting with an editor that ran late, so I was staying overnight and, luckily for me, I decided to have a drink.”
Pleased with the “luckily for me” part, Ava smiled. “Lucky for both of us,” she said.
“So this is a love story?” Cody said as he sucked spaghetti into his mouth.
“Of course it is, Cody,” Ava said. “Now how would they say it in Italian? La grande passione?”
“I mean,” I said, “when was this?”