“I am settled.”
“You look after me. That’s not how a young woman should be spending her time.”
“I have a say in the matter, and this is where I want to be.”
“Helen said I could go and live with them.”
“Helen? You’d last two days over there.”
“I’d barely get through an afternoon.” Sam chuckled.
“Nice of her to offer.”
“I have three good daughters. Portia said she’d have me too. But I would never move to New York. Not at this age.”
“You should live here in the house you love until the day you die.”
“It doesn’t always work like that, Calla.”
“It will as long as I’m on the job.”
“Why are you so determined? Who put you in charge of the happy ending of my life story?”
“I think you should have what you want. You’ve worked your whole life. Really hard too. And you didn’t have a job where you went in and punched a clock, worked your time, and took a paycheck and went home. You had a job where you stuck your neck out—you had to create something that entertained people, that lifted their spirits or made them think. You made something that took them away from the drudgery of their jobs and made them feel like something more was possible. You never knew if there’d be enough left over to pay you and provide for your family. That had to be difficult. On top of that, you had to endure criticism in public. You had to take the beating from the critics, hold your head high, and go back into the theater the next night and pretend that the terrible things written about your best efforts didn’t bother you. That’s why I want you to live in this house until the end. You should, at long last, do what you want to do. You should choose.”
“I did choose, Calla. And your mother let me. She wanted me to be happy at work, even if that meant a year or two would go by where she wouldn’t have a new dress or go to the shore, or do the things women enjoy. She never made me feel like I was wasting time or squandering our future on a dream that couldn’t sustain us. She just let me work. She just let me be. I hope there’s an afterlife, because I want to see her to thank her. I didn’t thank her. She gave up everything for me and for you girls, and it was as if we expected it. I had my purpose, and she had hers. It may have worked, but only one of us was selfless.”
“When Ma was dying, she asked me to look out for you. She said that you would probably remarry. She thought that Monica Spadoni had an eye on you.”
“She ended up with a wallpaper man from Metuchen.”
“So Ma was wrong about that. But you’re wrong about her. She loved you and admired your work and supported the theater. I almost think she enjoyed Shakespeare more than you do. So you are not to feel badly about what you did or didn’t do. You did plenty, and it was enough. You gave up a lot too. And that’s why you don’t have to live with Helen and her husband and her noisy kids, or with Portia in New York. You will remain right here in your home where you have peace and a kitchen and a garden that doesn’t exactly look good but grows in its fashion, the best it can. Okay?”
Sam Borelli nodded because he couldn’t speak. He was afraid he would cry, and the last thing he wanted was for Calla to feel sorry for him.
“I’m going to do the dishes.” She gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “You need anything?”
“Nope. Thank you.”
Calla went inside the old house. The streetlights pulled on, pink beams streaked through the twilight as if to set a scene. Sam sipped his espresso and imagined what might play in the light.
Sam was reading Lear and Richard and the Henrys again, seeking the counsel of kings. He returned to the plays he had tackled in his youth, but now that history was tangible to him, he found wisdom in the verse, phrases that pinpointed his pain and identified his longing in the final act of his life. The monologues and speeches, once his greatest challenges to stage, were now literature to him, and he could read them solely for insight. Sam had always found clarity in the Shakespeare canon, but now he also found solace.
Lear tested his daughters, so Sam never did. Richard chose favorites on the court, which led to his ruin, so Sam was careful to treat all the members of his troupe equally. Henry IV convinced Sam to surrender the theater to Calla, to the next generation, so it might become hers and reflect a new vision. But there was nothing in all of Shakespeare, so familiar to Sam, the text having been his constant companion over many years, that could prepare him for the finale of his own life.
Sam Borelli was suspended in a state of disbelief that he had arrived at the destination. He never thought he would get old, but he had. He never thought he would outlive his wife, and he had. He hadn’t foreseen a time when he wouldn’t be working, directing a play, running the business of the theater, but now he wasn’t. So he filled the moments reading the plays that had brought him pleasure and attempting, through them, to make sense of the experience of living in the context of leaving.
He doubted he would master the mystery in time.
It had been a Sam Borelli choice, and eventually a signature of his process, to stage the final scene of any play he directed on the first day of rehearsal. The actors never liked it, but it gave Sam a framework to build to the playwright’s intention. And just as in life, if a man imagines himself on his deathbed and then works back through the years of his life, he will make better decisions along the way, knowing the end. Or at the very least, he’ll spend his time more wisely.
*
The night sky over Bella Vista was violet, embroidered with ribbons of gray clouds obscuring the stars and the moon. From the Palazzinis’ rooftop garden, the neighborhood twinkled below, with strings of lights crisscrossed over gardens and orange embers glistening in the hibachis like buckets of gold.
Alone on the roof, Elsa reveled in the cool night air as she watered the tomato plants. Nicky pushed the door to the roof open.
“Sorry, Elsa.” Nicky turned to go back down the stairs.
“No, no, come up. No clouds today, so they got a lot of sun. They need more water.”
“Looks like it could rain tonight, though,” Nicky said, looking up.
“It could.”
“Good batch?”
“There will be enough tomatoes for two winters.”
“Here, let me help.” Nicky took the hose from her.
Elsa sat down in the chaise longue and put her feet up.
“Is the baby asleep?” Nicky asked.
“Always asleep by eight o’clock.”
“You know my aunt Jo is in awe of you.”
“Why?”
“Your boy is on a schedule.”
“I remember my mother and how she ran our home, and that’s how I do it.”
Nicky nodded.
“Everyone is worried about you,” Elsa said. “Are you sure about ending your engagement?”
“I’m more sure than I was when I asked her to marry me.”
“Don’t let anyone pressure you into doing something you don’t want to do.”
“It’s not easy.”