The customer nods, already moving on to a different conversation with her colleague.
A temporary glitch. His words knock around inside my head as we pack and stack the order to go. It’s a good summary of us, we are a temporary glitch in each other’s timeline.
It feels unnaturally quiet when they leave. The woman at the table has gone too, leaving just the guy behind his newspaper over by the window.
“I think we should —” I begin quietly and stop again, because Sophia returns, her arms full of milk cartons.
“Managed to bum these from Priscilla,” she says, leaning forward over the counter to put them all down at once. “She said you can pay her back with lunch sometime.”
I conjure Priscilla from memory, the woman in the gelateria across the street, and swallow down unnecessary needles of jealousy. Gio can have lunch with whoever he wants. As can I, of course. I layer the cartons in the fridge beneath the counter as Gio restocks the display case and Sophia hangs her coat.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says. “About the gelato situation.”
“Join the club,” Gio says.
She pauses and squares her shoulders. “Hear me out here? I know you’re working on the recipe, and I’ve every faith in you both, I do. But those machines back there are standing idle when they could be making us a profit, you know? How about if we schedule some guest flavors, make a big splash about it with publicity?”
“This again.” Gio looks absolutely unconvinced. “Vanilla for—”
“Forever, I know,” she cuts in. “But at the moment we’ve got nothing forever, and the way I see it, it’s a chance to be creative.”
“We’ll get the recipe right, we’re closer than ever,” he says, stubborn.
I stay low and rearrange the milk cartons in order to keep myself out of the conversation, because I can see both sides. Gio is dead set on keeping things exactly as they are, Sophia is full of fire and ambition and ideas for change. We’ve had many conversations about flavors and pastry recipes—she’s a self-taught cook who loves to experiment and she regularly tries out new twists on old pastry classics for Belotti’s customers. And she’s good. Really good. I can see so much merit in what she’s saying.
“Say you’ll think about it, at least? Small batches, unusual flavors, put the story out there that we’ve misplaced our recipe and, while we hunt it down, come try out our exciting guest flavors?” She ends with jazz hands and a wide smile.
“So you want to announce to our competitors that we’ve lost our family recipe, let them all know Papa can’t remember it? Have you stopped for even one minute to think how that would make him feel?” Gio throws his hands out to the sides and glares at his sister.
“Well, let’s just let New York forget we make gelato altogether then,” Sophia spits back, slapping her hand down hard on the counter. “How do you think Papa would feel about that?”
They stare each other down, at an impasse, and the guy with the newspaper closes it and shoots me a rather-you-than-me look as he exits.
Gio breaks first, huffing as he turns on his heel and disappears into the kitchen.
“Talk to him for me? He might listen to you,” Sophia says, rolling her eyes. “He’s just so freakin’ set in his ways.”
I think about his comment last night, that his sisters all see him as locked in behind this counter, and I can understand how they all find security in playing their designated roles.
“Well, I can try,” I say, non-committal.
“I don’t get why he always has to be so damn stubborn,” she says, and I wonder if she realizes she’s just the same way. “I mean, I love him and everything, but his unbendability drives me up the wall sometimes.”
“There are worse things he could be,” I say, trying to soothe things.
“Are there? Because right now it doesn’t feel that way.”
“You’re just going to have to trust me on that one, then,” I say. “I guess he’s grown used to having to hold things together on his own and it’s a hard habit to break.”
Sophia’s expression softens. “I know,” she says with a sigh. “But he isn’t on his own. He never has been, even when Pen died. We’ve all been here beside him the whole time.”
“And he’s incredibly lucky to have that,” I say. “But you can have all the support in the world and still feel alone when you turn the lights out at night and there’s just you trying to work out how to get through tomorrow.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry, Iris, I’ve put my foot in it without engaging my brain,” Sophia says, her dark eyes full of concern as she puts her arm around my shoulders. It catches me by surprise, this sisterly tenderness, something that comes easy to her and that I’ve never known before. “You can tell me to shut up if you like, but I’m always here if you need to talk about stuff. About your husband, I mean. Gio told me.”
I swallow hard, blindsided.
“Because I read about how to talk about grief after Penny died, about mentioning her loads, how it’s good to know other people remember the person you’ve lost too,” she says, rushing her words out in an even faster jumble than usual. “And I know you don’t have that kind of support here, people who knew him, so if you want to talk about him, you can to me, okay?”
She turns to look at me, and I nod as my eyes well with tears at her kindness. She’s referring to Adam, of course, but I feel her sentiment about the profound loss of my mother.
“What was he like?”
My insides go very still. “He…it…our relationship was complicated,” I say. “I…I was frightened of him sometimes.” The words leave me before I have a chance to think about them, because Sophia’s arm around my shoulders has lowered my defenses.
Sophia’s eyes scour my face, her brows low. “Shit, did he hurt you?”
I close my eyes and look away, wishing I could unburden the whole truth. “Not physically,” I say, and she squeezes my shoulder, her grip firm and reassuring, “but he made me realize there are a lot of other ways a person can hurt you.”
“Fuck,” she says, under her breath.
I dash the back of my hand over my eyes. “Yeah,” I say. “Like I say, complicated.”
“Maybe stubborn isn’t the worst thing Gio could be,” she says after a few moments, and I lean into her and laugh softly, because the tension is broken.
“Definitely not the worst thing,” I say. “Will you be okay if I go on through?”
She looks around the empty gelateria. “I think I can cope with things out here.”
* * *
—
I FIND GIO STACKING ingredients on the kitchen workbench, tension emanating from his precise movements and set jaw.
“Are you okay?” I say, trying to meet his eyes.
“Absolutely fine,” he says, turning to get something from a drawer behind him.
Not absolutely fine at all, then. I wait for him to stop busying himself and look at me.
“Shall we begin?” he says, clipped.
This is awful. Not like our usual mornings at all, and I don’t know if it’s what happened between us last night or what happened with Sophia just now. Either way, it’s not what I expected and I’m on the backfoot as to how to handle it.