“Let me see,” my father said.
“I mean, it had to be after the avalanche. Because remember right before you left for Idaho, you and Mom and Cody came to see me in The Nutcracker and then we had dinner in Chinatown and you made a toast. You said, ‘To the most wonderful family in the world. My funny son. My dancing daughter. And my wife, the woman I love.’”
My father cleared his throat.
“Then,” I continued, “you went to Idaho and when you came home, you and Mom got a divorce.”
“And you disappeared,” Cody added softly.
“But later, Ava and I got married and we had Zoe and everything turned out fine.”
Cody and I both stared at him.
“And now,” our father said, “we have a different, wonderful family.”
“I remember Boston,” Cody said. “How we all used to stay in bed together on Sunday mornings and I could watch cartoons and I would squeeze in right between you and Mommy. You used to call it a Cody sandwich, remember?”
Dad nodded, but he looked kind of nervous.
“I liked the bottom,” I said. “I liked to lay longways across the foot of the bed.”
The waiter appeared again, with a platter of veal.
“Look at this,” Ava said with more cheerfulness than anybody felt. “Now would this be a piccata?”
Under the table, I felt my brother’s hand reach for mine. I took it. Sometimes I forgot Cody was really just a little kid. His hands felt so small and smooth.
Instead of eating the veal, which you weren’t supposed to eat, anyway, because it was a baby calf who had been killed in some very horrible way, I stared at Ava. My stepmother. The more they didn’t say, the clearer it became: My father had supposedly loved my mother. All of that was fake. I watched as Ava put a piece of veal in her mouth and pronounced it delicioso. Our mother would have cut some for Cody first, into bite-sized pieces. Our mother would have asked me why I wasn’t eating any. She would have respected my knowledge about the whole veal thing.
I watched as Ava chewed and talked and smiled away.
“It’s a baby, you know,” I said. “A calf. And they chained it up and everything.”
“Not here,” Ava said. “They do everything differently here.”
I didn’t think that was true. Ava was smooth, the way she came up with the answers so easily. She had an answer for everything. I just kept watching her. I was, maybe, starting to hate Ava a little.
Carmela poured hot water in a bowl, added a few drops of olive oil, then waited, peering into the bowl.
“I think you maybe got the mal occhio, no? The Evil Eye?” Carmela said to Ava.
“No, really, it’s just a headache. Too much wine, perhaps,” Ava said.
“No,” Carmela said, pointing to the bowl. “You got the mal occhio. I fix. No problem.”
She took Ava’s hand—which Ava gave her reluctantly—and made circles on the palm with her fingers, muttering to herself.
“Really,” Ava said nervously. “It’s just a headache. I have some ibuprofen.”
“Someone maybe no like you?” Carmela said. “Or maybe you cross somebody?”
“Cross somebody?” Ava said, laughing. She rubbed her palm where Carmela had held it. “I don’t think so. Of course, people are always offending others without meaning to.”
“Offending?” Carmela asked.
Ava looked around for my father to come in the kitchen and rescue her, but he was on the telephone in the bedroom, with the door closed. When she caught my eye, I glared, trying to make an evil eye.
“You know, hurting someone’s feelings,” Ava explained.
“Ah. You do this?”
“I don’t know,” Ava said. “Maybe. Without meaning to.”
“And now your headache, it’s all gone?”
Ava’s hand touched her temple lightly. “It is. Yes.”
Carmela stood. She was a large woman, and she got to her feet slowly. She put on her handkerchief, a black silk one with red poppies on it, and picked up her black purse, its gold clasp gleaming in the light.
“So. You maybe be careful, eh? About who you offend?”
Ava laughed the same nervous laugh. “Really. It was more likely the cheap wine we had with dinner.”
“Hmmm,” Carmela said. “Good night, Magdalena.” She pressed my cheeks with her fingers. “You a smart girl, eh? A good girl?”
I looked at Carmela’s ice blue eyes. I thought of mountain tops, cool lakes.
Carmela nodded. Muttering, she walked out.
“God,” Ava said, emptying the water and olive oil from the bowl and running hot water into it. “She gives me the creeps.”
But she didn’t give me the creeps at all. You know who was starting to give me the creeps? Ava Pomme.
Chapter Ten
HOME
A postcard arrived for me from my mother: a picture of Saint Catherine of Siena’s head in its reliquary at the church of Saint Dominic in Siena.
“How ghoulish,” Ava said, leaning over my shoulder to peek.
I slapped my hand over the postcard, hiding it from Ava. “Excuse me?” I said.