Francesca's Kitchen (25 page)

“W
hat do you mean you couldn't get it started?” said a displeased Francesca later that afternoon. “What did your father and I send you to college for anyway?”

“Chemical engineering,” Joey reminded her. He was once again sitting at a dinner table, this time in his mother's kitchen, looking over the front page of the Sunday newspaper. “Believe it or not, automotive repair wasn't part of the curriculum.”

Francesca was notoriously frugal and thus loathed to spend money on certain things, automobiles among them, unless absolutely necessary. “Well, you think you would have at least learned a thing or two from your father after all those years he spent repairing cars,” she griped.

“I did,” her son replied, turning the page. “I learned enough to know when I can't do something by myself.”

Francesca let out a grumble and sat down across the table from him. “So now what do I do?” she asked him.

“Don't worry about it,” said Joey. “I'll get somebody to tow it tomorrow morning, and we'll get it fixed, that's all.”

“That's not what I meant,” said Francesca, shaking her head in annoyance. “What I want to know is, how am I supposed to get around the next few days without a car?”

“Oh, I get it,” said Joey, his eyes still scanning the headlines.

“You're worried about how you're going to get back and forth to babysit every day.”

“Among other things,” said Francesca testily, for he had read her mind precisely. “Are you finally going to start on me about that now?”

Joey shook his head. “Nope,” he replied. “I was just going to say that, if you want, I can take a late lunch for the next few days and drop you off there, and then come back after work to take you home.”

This suggestion was eminently suitable to Francesca. “Are you sure you'll be able to do that?” she said, her tone softening a bit, for she now regretted getting so snippy with him.

“No problem,” her son assured her. “Just tell me what time to pick you up.”

“Great,” said Francesca, feeling much relieved. “You're a good boy, Giuseppe, I don't care what they say.”

“Eh, I try,” he said with a shrug.

Pleased to have her transportation arrangements settled for the next few days, Francesca slapped her hand down amiably on the table and got to her feet. “So, what do you want to eat,
figlio mio
?” she asked him. “I've got a couple of steaks in the fridge I can cook for you. Maybe a little risotto and a salad?”

Joey gave a nervous cough. “No thanks, Mom,” he told her. “I'm really not that hungry right now.”

Concerned for her son, Francesca came to his side and put her hand on his forehead. “Not hungry?” she said worriedly. “It's almost five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and you don't want to eat? What's the matter? You feeling sick or something?”

“No, I'm fine,” said Joey, gently nudging her hand away. Then, in a faltering voice, “It's just that—what I mean to say is that I already had something to eat a little while ago.”

“Where did you eat?” said Francesca, incredulous. She had been looking forward to cooking for him and was keenly disappointed.

“At her house,” her son admitted after a moment's hesitation.

“Her? Who her?”

“Loretta,” said Joey, hiding himself once more behind the newspaper.

Francesca cocked her head to one side, as if she hadn't heard him quite clearly.

“
Where?
” she asked again.

“Loretta's house.”

Francesca stood there, gaping at him. Something about this admission gave her a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach. Very slowly, Francesca backed away and lowered herself once more into her chair.

“I see,” she said quietly. “I suppose that's why it took you so long to get here.”

“Yeah, I guess,” murmured Joey. “Plus her son wanted to show me his video game.”

“But I don't understand,” said Francesca, her brow furrowed. “What made her cook dinner for you?”

“She didn't cook dinner for
me,
” Joey tried to explain. “She just happened to have dinner on the table when I walked in to say good-bye.”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Francesca thoughtfully. “So, tell me,” she asked him, “just what exactly did she cook for you?”

“Oh, nothing special,” said Joey, sinking lower in his chair. “You know, the usual thing. Some ravioli, and pork chops, and stuff…”

Had he thought to look over the newspaper, Joey would have seen his mother's eyebrows meet her hairline.

Now, Francesca was inclined to believe that a man—or a woman, for that matter—should be considered innocent until proven guilty, and she was certain that nothing untoward had yet taken place between her employer and her son. Just the same, as she sat there brooding, the sudden silence between them growing steadily more deafening, she could not help but be seized by the conviction that there was something not quite right going on in the state of Denmark.

“So let me get this right,” she said, her mind whirring. “The first thing she did when you came into the house was to sit you down and give you something to eat?”

Joey's only response was to turn to the next page.

Francesca's disquiet only grew over the next few days. Each afternoon, Joey insisted on coming to the door, ostensibly to walk her to the car, when he arrived at the Simmons house to take her home. He invariably lingered on the porch, stopping to exchange a few pleasant words with Loretta, who seemed only too eager to delay their departure. As Francesca observed the pair, she perceived a sort of nervous tension hanging in the air between them like a rain cloud waiting to burst. The signs weren't hard to read, and she fretted all the more about the slow pace of repairs being made to her car.

Had one asked her, Francesca would have been at great pains to explain why the nascent amity between Loretta and her son troubled her so. Nonetheless, it was for her a source of deep and abiding distress. It was not until Wednesday evening, when Joey came to take her home, that Francesca's apprehensions began to abate.

As usual, Joey had come to the door to walk Francesca to the car. At Loretta's invitation, he had stepped into the hall. The two stood there, exchanging glances, while Francesca put on her coat.

“Good news,” Joey finally announced in a voice that sounded more glum than happy. “I got a call from the mechanic this afternoon. He said your car should be ready tomorrow.”

“Hey, that is good news,” said Francesca. “See, now you won't have to be bothered coming here every day to pick me up.” This she said more to Loretta than to her son.

“Oh, how nice,” said Loretta softly, her eyes downcast.

Wasting no time, Francesca gave Joey's arm a tug.

“Well, come on now, Joey,” she told him. “I want to get to mass. It's Ash Wednesday, you know.”

“That's right,” said Loretta, all at once perking up. “I'd forgotten that it was Ash Wednesday.” Then, turning to Joey, she added, “My boss, Mister Pace—he's a lawyer downtown—he went to mass at
lunch
today and came back with ashes.”

The word “lunch” Loretta said with odd emphasis, but for what reason, Francesca could not discern. For his part, Joey only gave a knowing nod in reply to the statement, before taking Francesca gently by the arm.

Unable to make anything of the exchange, Francesca dismissed it from her mind. In any case, it mattered little to her. The stress of the past three days, worrying about her son and Loretta, had left her insides feeling twisted in a knot. She was content to bid Loretta and the children a good night and finally be on her way. As she climbed into Joey's car and he drove her away to mass, Francesca settled back and finally relaxed, relieved as she was by the thought that, at least for now, Loretta and Joey had seen the last of each other.

Things, she reflected happily, would soon be back to just the way they had been.

T
he flowers arrived a little after ten the next morning.

Loretta had been at her desk, busy as always, during the early part of the day, when she received the call telling her that a delivery had just come for her out front. Her curiosity thoroughly aroused, Loretta dropped what she was doing and hastened out to the lobby, where a lovely floral arrangement was waiting for her. The young receptionist, at the moment occupied with a telephone call, could only mouth the word “beautiful” and gesture to the flowers with an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Hurrying back to her cubicle, carrying the flowers before her, Loretta endured the playful oohs and aahs of her coworkers along the way before setting the arrangement down on the corner of her desk. Wasting no time, she ripped open the little envelope and tugged out the card inside, which read simply:



How about lunch?

J.

Smiling from ear to ear, Loretta sat there, gazing at the card, while an inquisitive Shirley sauntered over to her desk.

“My, my,” her friend said, a bit green-eyed. “Who's your secret admirer?”

Before Loretta could reply, her telephone rang.

“There's a call for you from a Mister Campanile on line three,” the receptionist informed her. “Do you want to take it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Loretta, shooing Shirley away. “I'll definitely take it…”



“So, Loretta Simmons,” said Joey, “at long last, tell me about yourself.”

They were sitting in the restaurant, leaning across the table toward one another, their hands touching ever so slightly. Theirs was a small table for two, nestled amongst many others in the busy establishment. The room was abuzz with conversation, and the waiters bustled about, taking orders from the patrons, most of whom were businessmen and women who worked downtown. It was not the most intimate of places Joey might have taken Loretta to on their first date, but with only one precious hour for lunch, it had the distinct advantage of being situated just a few steps down the street and around the corner from her office. Not that it mattered much to Loretta. Off in their own little world together, as she felt they were, she would have been just as content sitting outside on the front steps with him, watching the cars go by. Despite the crowd, they were finally alone together for the first time.

“What would you like to know, Joey Campanile?” said Loretta.

“Everything,” he said with a smile.

“Well, for starters, I really like getting flowers,” she told him sweetly.

“Ayyy, I bet you get them every other day,” said Joey with a playful nod.

“Uh-uh,” said Loretta, shaking her head. “Not in a very, very long time.”

Joey looked straight into her eyes. There was something irresistible about the way he looked at her, an honesty and warmth she saw in his gaze that melted her. She could not have looked away at that moment even if she had wanted to.

“I find that hard to believe,” he told her.

“Oh, it's not so hard,” said Loretta softly. She gave a shrug. “Such is the life of a single mom.”

“I'm guessing that's gotta be tough sometimes,” he said gently. “I'm not complaining,” said Loretta. “Things just work out the way they do. I'd like to think that everything happens for a reason, although
that's
hard to believe sometimes. Trust me.”

“I know what you mean,” smiled Joey. “But if you could do it all over again, where do you think you'd like to be right now?”

“You know, I ask myself that question all the time,” she said.

“And what answer do you give yourself?”

“Well, at the moment, I'm kind of happy right where I am,” she said, returning his warm gaze. Then, pursing her lips, she added, “I haven't felt that way in a long time.”

“I haven't either,” said Joey. He let out a long breath and settled back in his chair. “I was almost married once a few years ago,” he told her. He rolled his eyes and gave a shrug of his own. “I just figured I'd get that skeleton out of my closet right away, while I had the chance.”

“What happened?” said Loretta, even though she already knew.

“It's a long story,” he said. “Let's just say that, at the last minute, right before the wedding, things just kind of fell apart. And that was that.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “That must have been painful for you.”

“It was,” admitted Joey. “It hurt for a long time, and it just wouldn't go away, no matter what I did or where I went. It was always there, pulling me down on the inside like a lead weight, you know?”

Loretta nodded, because she understood all too well.

“Anyway,” he went on, “then a funny thing happened.”

“What?” asked Loretta.

“My mother's car broke down,” he told her. “All of a sudden, ever since that night, it just doesn't bother me anymore. As a matter of fact, almost nothing does.”

“It's funny about that night,” said Loretta, giving him a knowing look as she gently rested her hand on his, “but ever since then, I feel the exact same way.”

O
ver the weeks that followed, Joey came to the house almost every day—after his mother had gone home, of course—to have dinner with Loretta and the children and spend some time with them before going home again at night. On the weekends, he arrived in the mornings and stayed the entire day, helping Loretta around the house and horsing around with Will and Penny out in the backyard. It thrilled Loretta to see how happy he made her children. Will, she could see, already looked up to Joey like a father, and Penny adored him.

It was wonderful.

Circumstances being what they were, however, Joey and Loretta decided that, at least for the time being, the best thing to do was to say nothing to Francesca. Both had an inkling that she would be less than pleased by their blossoming affair. It was not the most rational course of action, and completely without merit as a long-term strategy. But like all lovers, Loretta and Joey were far too consumed by the present moment and their incessant need to be with one another to think much further beyond it. The future would have to take care of itself.

It weighed heavily on Loretta's mind, though, that she had burdened Penny and Will with keeping secret from Francesca her son's visits to their home. “Let's just keep it to ourselves,” she had confided in them, “and we'll all surprise her and tell her one day soon.” It was a rather thin cover to give them, and really not fair. They were only kids, after all, and it was just a matter of time before one of them slipped and said the wrong thing.

Loretta herself suffered from occasional pangs of guilt. She had come to care deeply for Francesca, and the thought that she might do something to hurt the older woman filled her with anguish. There were many days when Loretta came home from work, determined to confess all to her nanny, but in the end, her courage always failed her.

Nonetheless, as nerve-racking a situation as it might have been for all of them, it was also one of the most joyous times of Loretta's life. No matter what might have gone wrong in her day, when Joey walked through the door, she felt whole again, as if she had at last found a piece of herself that had been missing for the longest time. And though their private moments together were always stolen and brief—how could they have been otherwise, with two adolescent children around—she felt their love for each other deepen with every embrace. At night, after the children had gone to bed, Loretta and Joey would lie together on the couch, nestled in one another's arms, until the hour grew late and it was time for him to go home. Both of them yearned, of course, with all their hearts for the time when they could stay together the entire night, and were indeed growing impatient for it, but that longed-for moment had not yet come. Deep in her soul, Loretta knew that her bitter disappointments in love were a thing of the past. But she also knew that what was happening between her and Joey was a miraculous gift, one that she longed to keep forever, and she was determined this time to do everything right.

Given enough time, however, all conspiracies of silence, no matter how benevolent, are destined to fail. The truth always finds a way to show itself.

Francesca was not blind. She was too astute an observer of human nature not to recognize the signs that something was amiss at the Simmons house. More to the point, as the days went by and April drew nearer, Francesca got the distinct impression that somehow, she herself was at the root of it. She had hoped that, with her son and Loretta having seen the last of each other, everything would fall back into the happy routine she had come to enjoy so much. On the surface, at least, such seemed to be the case. She came to the house every afternoon, as always, and the children always seemed pleased to see her. Loretta was as pleasant as ever—vibrant, in fact.

Just the same, there was an evasiveness about all of them, as if they were reluctant to say too much to her. Very often, for instance, when she tried to start a conversation with the children, they would inevitably hurry off upstairs, using the excuse that they needed to straighten up their bedrooms or do their homework where it was quiet. Had she not known the children as well as she did, she might have been inclined to accept these explanations without question.

As for Loretta, the young mother had suddenly found the energy to keep the house in perfect order. Even more, as of late, she had been trying to expand her culinary repertoire by cooking dinner herself almost every night. This, of course, met with Francesca's approval. What dismayed her, though, was that the young woman always waited until after she had left to start preparing the evening meal. It would have given Francesca no end of pleasure to stay now and then, and to pass on some of her expertise in the kitchen, but Loretta always seemed anxious for her to leave. It was all very distressing, and Francesca puzzled over it, until one afternoon when everything became clear.

That afternoon, Francesca had dutifully looked after the children, not that there was much for her to do. It was a pleasantly warm day, and Will and Penny had rushed outdoors to play in the backyard the moment they had returned home from school. To pass the time, Francesca had sat in the kitchen, leafing through some books she was planning to return to the library that evening. The two children were still frolicking outside when Loretta came home at her usual hour, bustling through the front door with a bag of groceries under her arm.

“Cooking dinner again tonight?” asked Francesca, eager to get a peek at what she had brought home.

“Yes, in a little while,” said Loretta, hurrying into the kitchen. “Nothing special. Just some hamburgers and stuff.”

“It's good to see you cooking so much lately,” Francesca told her. “It's healthier when you eat food that you've cooked yourself, not to mention a lot cheaper.”

Loretta only smiled in reply as she put the groceries away. She went to the back door and called for the children to come in.

“Wash those hands,” Loretta told them when they came through the back door. “And then the two of you can start setting the table for dinner.”

With nothing left to do, Francesca went to the living room to collect her things. When she returned to the kitchen to bid them all good night, she happened to notice that Will and Penny had put out four place settings on the table.

“Hey, put that extra plate and silverware away before they get dirty and your mother has to wash them later,” she told them.

“What extra plate?” said Penny.

“Yeah, we always put out four,” added Will.

“Why would you put out four plates when there are only three of you?” asked Francesca quite sensibly.

The question, simple as it might have been, apparently stumped the siblings, for neither child seemed able to make a response. Instead, the two stood there in awkward silence, exchanging nervous glances, while their cheeks flushed red.

“Mrs. C isn't having dinner with us tonight,” said Loretta, quickly coming to their rescue. “Just do as she said and put the extra plate back in the cupboard. Then the two of you can walk her to the door and say good night, while I start supper.”

It was an odd moment, but Francesca could read nothing into it, and so she went on her way, intending to stop at the library before going home. After leaving the house, she had driven only a minute or two when she realized that, quite stupidly, she had left her book bag on the floor beneath the kitchen table. Library fines were another expense Francesca loathed, so she pulled into the next driveway she came to and turned the car around. As she drove back down the street toward Loretta's house, she was startled to see a familiar car parked out front and an even more familiar person strolling up the front walk. Suddenly, the fourth place setting made sense to her.

It was Joey.

Francesca was thunderstruck, and her first instinct was to drive straight up to the house and catch them all red-handed. Curiosity, however, overcame her, and she brought her car to an abrupt halt a few houses away, just close enough to watch what happened next without herself being seen. To her astonishment, as Joey neared the porch, the front door swung open and out dashed Penny and Will to greet him. The two children talked excitedly, both vying for his attention, the way children do when a parent comes home. A smiling Loretta soon appeared at the door. Stepping out onto the porch, she took Joey's hand and gave him a kiss. Slipping her arm through his, she pulled him toward the door, and the four of them went inside together, laughing and talking the whole way.

Francesca sat there in stunned silence, her stomach churning and her mind racing. It was as plain as the nose on her face what was happening, but any notion she might have had of staging an angry demonstration had already vanished. Of the thousand conflicting emotions besetting her, anger was no longer one of them. Something else had taken its place. Francesca could not quite put a name to it, but when Loretta and Joey went inside the house and the door closed behind them, she felt an ache deep within her, something akin to what a mother feels on that morning when she leaves her child at school for the very first time.

With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, Francesca started the car and slowly drove off toward home.