Mild dismay—I feel it, for not having thought of this: a popular restaurant on a massive holiday. Of course they’re overrun. But I also feel as though I should be able to talk my way in. I’ve rarely been unable to persuade.
“Surely,” I say, “you might have an out-of-the-way space for an out-of-the-way old lady? A crate or two in the wine cellar, perhaps? It can be tiny. Just big enough to hold a steak.”
“That seems deeply unlikely, ma’am,” she says, theatrically turning the paper over to reveal a back that’s as scrawled with names as the front.
“I had very much hoped—” I say, then pause, brought up short by the complexities of what I had hoped. Clarity! Focus! The keys to any successful appeal! But my message is undercut by all the things I’ve wanted, all the people I’ve been.
“I hate to tell you, ma’am, but it cannot be done,” says the hostess. “We have a wait of three hours at this point, and even then there’s no guarantee.”
“I ate here once before,” I say. “It was terrible. The circumstances were terrible. The food was superb. Or I imagine it was. It’s difficult for me to say. That’s why I’ve come back. I was here with my husband. We’d just divorced. Now he’s dead. This all happened thirty years ago. The divorce, that is. And the dinner. In that case it was lunch, actually.”
The hostess’s face is shading toward desperation; her gaze has grown distant, measuring the crowd as it fills in behind me. One small delay occasioned by a senile woman could breed a calamitous chain reaction on a night like tonight. “Ma’am,” she says, “I’m really very sorry. I hope you’ll visit us again soon.”
I don’t know what else to say—a formerly rare state of affairs, happening these days with increasing frequency. Boxfish in her prime—late twenties, this young woman’s age—would be seated by now, probably drinking on the house. Times have changed. But not times only.
“Well,” I say. “Thank you for trying.”
When I turn, I am facing the face of a woman about Johnny’s age, dark hair with some stately gray at the temples. Her expression says she’s overheard our exchange, witnessed my failure, and I can guess what she’s thinking: I hope I die before I’m old and pathetic. Would that I had, madam! Would that I had.
I feel a rush of heat under the skin of my cheeks, beneath my ridiculous mink, and I turn away, lest these people see me cry. Spoiling everyone’s fun. Behavior I’d expect from Olive, frankly. I work my way back toward the vestibule, stopping for a moment to collect myself, using the glass front of a bookcase to reapply Orange Fire to the mouth of my spectral reflection. Through the front doors, between the twin Pompeiian columns, I can see steam rising from grates and tailpipes in the all-but-unpeopled five-way intersection. I could take a cab back to Grimaldi, I suppose. Or find a hot dog stand. On New Year’s Eve. Somewhere in Lower Manhattan.
A do over. Max’s phrase—a bit vulgar, but charming, like the man himself. Julia was his: Julia who buried him, whom my son will shortly bury in turn. Apparently marriage can be done over, while a steak dinner cannot. And yet steaks are often overdone, which seems like a significant paradox. I have overdone a few in my time, being no master chef. I have overdone any number of things. Don’t overdo it, Ma, Gianino always cautions. But so much of my life was overdoing. Overdoing it at raging dos, quite often. Creating big to-dos, not always on purpose. Doing my best, over and over. Much ado over nothing. In Shakespeare’s day, Helen learned during our brief career as thespians, “nothing” was pronounced the same as “noting,” which, it’s worth noting, vastly increased its punning potential. How sour sweet music is, when time is broke and no proportion kept! With nothing shall I be pleased till I be eased with being nothing.
In what time remains, very little that is broken can be fixed.
A light hand on my shoulder: I barely feel it through my heavy pelt. It’s the dark-haired woman again.
“Forgive me,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to spy, but I couldn’t help overhearing. That’s a shame about them not having room. But, if it’s not too brazen, my family is about to be seated for our 8:30 reservation, and we have an extra spot.”
I track her gesturing hand to a party of four others: a bespectacled man I take to be her husband, another middle-aged couple, and a copper-haired girl of maybe ten or eleven. “My goodness,” I say, “That’s very kind, but you can’t really want an elderly stranger to impose on your holiday.”
“Oh, but we can, though. My name is Kathy,” she says, and she extends a hand to shake.
“Mine is Lillian.”
“Well, there you have it. We’re not strangers anymore.”
The young girl wanders over, friendly and quizzical. “Listen,” Kathy says, “I should probably mention right away—just because I’ll be thinking about it all night—that my mother was supposed to join us tonight. Penny’s grandmother,” she says, squeezing the girl’s shoulder. “But she’s in the hospital with pneumonia and couldn’t make it.”