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⬅️ Previous chapter
June 12, 2009
“I could write a cookbook.” Francesca settles the plate in front of her daughter, Grace. “Ravioli with ricotta, spinach and pecorino filling.” Her light Sardinian accent renders ravioli, ricotta, and pecorino with mouth-watering authenticity.
“Go bigger. A restaurant,” Grace says, scooping up a forkful. Saffron and cinnamon sweeten the current of warmth rising from undertones of beef, pork, and tomato.
Her mother’s white damask cloth is perfect after what must be years of Italian meals. Silver candlesticks and cutlery gleam. Red wine glows in crystal glasses. Gold rims the cream bone china plates.
The leftovers will feed Grace for days. She’ll return the containers for refills next time.
When her mother had invited Grace to dinner on a Friday night, she agreed without thinking. Sunday was their usual day, but whatever, she was busy. When she realized it would be her birthday, she canceled. Her mother wouldn’t listen. Grace canceled again. Francesca said, “I have news that can’t wait.” During their recent thawing of relations, her mother had never been so insistent.
June 12, 1982 must have been the worst day of Francesca’s life. Grace herself avoids marking it. The one exception was her eighth birthday while living with her grandparents on Holland Island. They celebrated with the whole church congregation. Grace still remembers it: a steamed crab feast on the grass beside the church, with onion rings and coleslaw made by church ladies, everything spread out on long tables covered in newspapers. Sweet tea and songs, cake and candles, laughter and love. To this day, the piquant salty heat of Old Bay on steamed crabs takes her right back there.
Her father had been reliably hit or miss with her birthday, which suited her fine. Her mother did manage to send yearly cards with cash corresponding to Grace’s age. She used her eighteenth-birthday money to buy her own copy of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black CD after wearing out a borrowed one. That was the final card.
Francesca raises her wine glass. “A toast. To my firstborn, my one and only. My pride: Margherita Grace Evans.”
Grace nearly drops her glass. What the hell? Is her mother’s news a dementia diagnosis? “Who?”
Francesca smiles sweetly, sips, and replaces her glass. “You, dear.”
“That’s not my name and you know it.” What is she pulling?
Her mother’s cheeks flush pink behind dime store blusher. “It is. I should know. I named you. It’s on your birth certificate.”
“You’re nuts. My driver’s license, my social security card, my voter registration—”
She holds her hands up. “Okay. Okay. Basta cosí.” She sits back, deflated. Closes her eyes, shakes her head. “Your father. Madonna mia.”
Grace takes a long swallow of wine. Normally she doesn’t touch the stuff, but this goes down easily.
“He changed your name, the spiteful bastard. . .” Francesca trails off.
“At least that bastard bothered to parent me.” True, he was lousy at it.
Francesca dabs a tear with her white damask napkin. Mascara smudges a black streak, which they both study. She folds and replaces the napkin on her lap. Smooths it into place.
“When you were born, I was so happy—”
“No you weren’t.”
She frowns. “What do you know of my heart?”
“Oh, stop lying. You’re terrible at it.”
Francesca tilts her head, listening for memory with half-closed eyes. “You were perfect. A perfect, tiny, beautiful baby.” She gazes far off over Grace’s shoulder. “June 12 was Margherita Hack’s exact birthday. I knew it was a sign.” A red-lipped smile animates her whole face.
“Who the hell is that?”
Anger flashes in Francesca’s dark eyes, a dying star. “Only the most important, brilliant astrophysicist in Italy, ever. The world, really. You needed a namesake worthy of you. . . a reminder of your potential.” Her voice shakes. “Oh, I worship her. Did you know they named an asteroid after her?”
“How would I know that? I’ve never heard of her.” Grace stabs a strand of broccoli rabe.
“You did know her. You used to talk to her all the time. In Italian.”
“What?”
“Margherita Hack. When you were four and five. It was adorable.”
“You mean, like an invisible friend?” Grace’s laugh doesn’t clear her unease. “I have no memory of that.”
“Yes. And it wasn’t only her. You had whole conversations with . . .” She waves a hand as if to sweep dust off neglected memory. “Animals. Insects. Clouds. Birds. You named a dragonfly Shimmer and carried it everywhere. So dear.”
“A dragonfly? Come on.” But the name Shimmer prickles her skin. An image alights, a blue-green iridescent dragonfly resting on her small open palm. Impossible. Was it?
“Here’s what I think,” Grace says. “You had this crazy idea to name me for a dead Italian astrophysicist—”
“She’s not dead. She’s very much alive and still as feisty as ever, writing books.” Her mother blinks. “He took that from you. Stole your legacy.”
Grace huffs. What legacy? “Dad vetoed it, wouldn’t give in to your whims. You resented him, so you left.”
“How dare you belittle me. That’s just what he . . .” Her mother swallows, lets her head droop. Hair obscures her expression. She pats her mouth with the ruined napkin. Grace catches a flash of lipstick added to the mascara smudge. How on earth will she launder that?
The food in Grace’s mouth turns to sawdust. She’s ten years old again, the year she had a recurring dream of baking a cake for her father’s birthday. In one version, he yells at her for failing to honor her mother’s legacy as a great scientist. In another, he’s crying inconsolably. Which is freaky because she never saw him cry in real life. Also, she didn’t bake. She’s not even sure when his birthday was.
“He was pretty awful, wasn’t he?” Grace says.
“He wasn’t awful to you, surely?”
“Don’t call me Shirley.”
“Cosa?”
“Never mind. He had his moments.” Grace thinks of their garage weekends. He was always so light then.
“Mi dispiace. I never knew—”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Grace tears a piece of bread and dunks it into the dish of deep green olive oil. Two drips land on the cloth on the way to her mouth. “At least he was there,” she forces out around the bread.
Francesca nods. “Yes. Leaving was the worst mistake of my life.”
“And here I was thinking I was the worst mistake of your life.”
Francesca gasps. “How can you say such a horrible thing? You are precious to me.”
Grace helps herself to salad. “You are so out to lunch.”
“You have no right to speak to me that way. And on your birthday. I made this special meal just for you—”
“Oh, that’s supposed to make it all better, is it? Ravioli will smooth right over those decades of abandonment.”
Francesca’s eyes widen. She slams her open palm on the table. The cutlery jumps. Grace startles. “Well okay, then. Lascialo uscire. What else do you want to say? Vai avanti. Clear the air. I can take it.”
“Okay. Why?” Grace asks.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Never mind. I can’t do this. I’ve got too much else going on. Let’s just eat in peace.”
“You’d rather go on resenting me a while longer?”
Grace fixes her mother with a hard stare. “Or maybe the rest of my life.”
“Or mine at least. That’s less time to keep it all bottled up.”
Grace waves the words away. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? Statistically—”
“It’s morbid.” Grace doesn’t know why she said that. She doesn’t believe it. She never thinks about death; she can’t spare brain space for it. Her gliding friend, Sam, once said he always talks to Death before launching. To let Death know if his time is up today, he’s okay with it. He’d rather die doing something he loves. Now, whenever she launches, Grace thinks of that. Thanks, Sam. As if we had a choice. Death doesn’t take requests, she’d said to him then.
“You could make this ravioli,” her mother says. “You have the recipe.”
Francesca had sent a small plastic file box to Grace as a college graduation gift. Color-coded divider tabs organized appetizers, soups, main dishes, vegetables, desserts. She’d typed three-by-five cards detailing recipes for fried zucchini flowers; minestrone and stracciatella soups; chicken baked with citrus, fennel and white wine; lamb with artichokes; broccoli in aglio olio; pastries of honey, orange peel, and almonds. Tonight’s ravioli recipe runs to six cards and begins: “Day 1, roast the pork.”
Grace’s recipe cards are stained and dogeared, but not from use. Her friends and roommates over the years staged dramatic readings while they gorged on Ramen and greasy pizza and Chinese carry-out. It’s easy to grow your own Italian parsley and zucchini flowers on a sunny windowsill, was a favorite during her basement-dwelling years. For some reason, Buy only Toritto almonds and roast them yourself, always got a laugh. Grace still keeps, Only extra virgin olive oil from Italy, not from Greece, Spain, or Portugal, taped above her hotplate.
“Maybe, if I had time.” Grace brings a forkful of salad close. “Or the audience.” She enjoys poking that bear. It gives them something to talk about.
“Well, that’s all up to you, dear.”
Grace figured her mother would issue her usual plea for grandchildren, but Francesca is distracted. Has she lost weight? Her cheekbone-to-jawline curve would be the envy of any supermodel. Now it’s deflated. Meticulous makeup fails to conceal brooding circles beneath her eyes. Grace wants to ask, but health isn’t one of their topics. Who puts on makeup to cook and eat dinner with her daughter, birthday or not?
“How’s that Joel in your department?” her mother asks with half-interest.
Joel is a chemist with a specialty in public health. He helped Grace with a few funding connections for her research that never panned out. She lost interest after they slept together a few times. He was too obsessed with tracking pandemics through wastewater.
“He’s fine, Mom. We’re just friends. How’s Gene?” she asks. Gene is the electrician who rents her mother’s basement apartment. A gruff character with a thick Baltimore accent and a reality-TV life.
“His latest misadventure was too much and he fell behind on rent. I asked him to move out. Now, he lives with his mother in Florida.”
“He’s got a mother? She must be over ninety.”
“Everyone has a mother, dear.”
The dark note in her voice twists Grace’s gut. She hasn’t yet made the full shift from being motherless to . . . whatever this is.
“How’s your project?” Francesca asks.
Grace sweeps her eyes over the fully laden table. The feast would easily serve eight. “I’m on the verge of some big discoveries.” All the food and wine has softened her usual reserve.
“That’s wonderful, dear.”
The eagerness in her voice tweaks Grace’s heart. “It would be if I wasn’t also about to run out of funding.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage. You always were resourceful.”
What would she know about it? Grace watches her mother sip water from a heavy crystal glass. Does her hand shake? “I was offered funding that would set me up for years. I could fully equip my lab, hire two or three assistants. At least.” She hasn’t said this much about it to anyone. Certainly not Barbara. She hasn’t even reached out to the Legal Aid office for advice. She’s not seriously considering James’ offer. Is she?
“Hon, that’s fantastic. See? I knew you’d—”
“I can’t take the money.” She sits back with folded arms.
“Perché no?”
Grace is sorry she brought it up. It’s a pointless conversation, but at least it’s passing the time. She finishes her last ravioli. “The guy who . . . The company is . . . The wells are . . .” She can’t bring herself to say it.
“Scusa.” Her mother returns from the kitchen with a plate of pecorino, sausage, pancetta, and candied figs. She places a cream file folder beside Grace’s plate, its corners soft with age. On the tab in block letters, it says, Margherita Grace.
“Some of your school papers, thought you’d like to see.”
Grace opens it, feeling a bit like a character in a fairy tale. There’s her 6th-grade paper on women in science. She remembers reading scientific papers, compiling data by hand on graph paper. Her teacher gushed over it. There’s a bright red A+ in a circle at the top right corner. “How’d you get this?” She lets the folder fall closed.
“You gave it to me, during a visit.”
Grace opens it again, but the paper can’t conjure a single memory of those visits. Her chest aches, her eyes prickle with unfamiliar emotion. Her mother saved this file all that time. Souvenirs of a lost child. When she could’ve had the real one with her all along.
“We grew these figs last summer in our community garden,” Francesca says. “Try; it’s delicious with the cheese.”
Grace is full, but she welcomes the distraction. She dabs some fig on a slice of cheese, savoring the silence. It’s a perfect blend of sweet-rich-crispness.
“You were saying? About this money?” Her mother plops a slice of sausage and a chunk of pancetta on Grace’s plate and fixes her with an expectant gaze.
Grace tries the sausage. She never eats like this.
“Your beneficiary?” Her mother will not let it go.
“Benefactor. The company that owns the wells I’m studying. They offered the funding. Really, a guy who works there offered it. I’m not even sure if it’s legit. He seems, if not delusional, overly optimistic.”
Her mother nods. Sips wine.
What the hell. It’s actually a relief to talk about it. “Even if he is serious and empowered to make this offer, it’s unlikely the company wants my information. The regulations don’t require anything more than what they’re already doing. And even when they do cross the line, the fines are just another expense.”
“That’s their business. What about you? Surely whoever made this offer was serious. Why else make it?”
Grace had read up on James. With the family name, he’s risen quickly in the company. MIT prodigy in physics and business. He didn’t strike her as a typical nepobaby. She can’t help wondering what a brainiac like him is doing in a legacy energy conglomerate with pre-Civil War origins in Pennsylvania coal country. He should be John Galting it somewhere in a secret mountain lair inventing energy out of thin air. “Good question.”
“A caval donato no si guarda in bocca.”
“Translate.”
“Don’t look a horse in its mouth.”
“A gift horse.” Grace smiles, picturing James’ mouth, the gold crown gleaming when he laughed. “Good one.”
“I’m serious. Take the money. Do whatever you must to succeed. Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
Grace wonders if by mistakes, her mother means her marriage, having a kid, or abandoning her only child. She never considered that it wasn’t Francesca’s first choice to be a middle school math teacher. “It’s not that simple.”
“Certo che si. It is that simple, dear.”
Francesca pats her lipsticked mouth with the white damask napkin. Folds it, presses it into the tablecloth with a manicured hand, and looks up.
“I’m . . . having some tests run.”
Grace’s knife clatters to the plate and rolls off, smearing fig jam across the white tablecloth. She should do something, but she can’t move.
Her mother retrieves club soda from the kitchen and dabs at the stain with a dishtowel. Another laundry challenge; how does she cope? “It’s early yet. My bloodwork was . . . suspicious, the doctor said. More tests tomorrow.” She checks her watch. “In twenty minutes, I have to start fasting.” Her smile is lopsided, as if unwilling to sign on to false cheer.
“What is it?” Grace asks. She doesn’t want to hear the answer.
Her mother waves a hand. “Some type of cancer, they said. Not sure what kind. Lungs maybe.”
Grace’s world rearranges. The mind-jolt conjures a memory of the home invasion senior year of college when she and her roommate sat in mute terror on their sofa while three guys ransacked every room and carted off electronics, appliances, jewelry, and what little cash they had between them. Once Grace thought to shut the splintered door and bar it with their empty TV cabinet, they sat for what felt like hours, relieved that was all they took.
She has no idea what to say. “Geez, Mom. That’s terrible. Want me to go with you tomorrow?” Her schedule is jammed, starting with class at 9:00.
Her mother clears plates. “Absolutely not. You’ve got more important things to do.”
There’s an edge in her voice, but Grace doesn’t know Francesca well enough to parse anger from sarcasm, worry from coercion. It could be a simple statement of fact. Their role in each other’s lives is still gestating. In Grace’s mind normal mothers and daughters share histories and shorthand ways of talking. She and Francesca have food and boyfriends and work. A fragile fledgling friendship at best.
One signal Grace does understand: her mother brings out homemade honey and cheese seada pastries with fresh forks. Her way of changing the subject. “I thought of cake, but these are better.” She lights the single candle stuck into Grace’s pastry.
“Don’t sing.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Her mother’s voice wavers. She clears her throat.
They eat in silence. The filling is bright with lemon zest. Grace’s father despised lemons so much he hated the color yellow. Maybe it was in reaction to her mother’s Sardinian love of all things citrus. Grace downs her half-full glass of wine. The acid heat does not soothe the ache in her throat. She closes her eyes and sees her father’s forlorn living room where she spent so many hours alone, doing homework on the coffee table and waiting for him to return from work.
Her mother chooses that moment to clear more dishes, leaving Grace alone with an avalanche of images and what-nows, fighting a strong urge to bolt. Alone is her default, her zone. But something different is called for now. Something elusive that fills her with dread. She distracts herself by carrying the salad bowl and glasses to the kitchen.
Next chapter ➡️
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Your description of the meal in this one had my mouth watering. Such an interesting dynamic between mother and daughter unfolding here.
I feel there is so much written into this evocative chapter I wasn't expecting... the undertones of warmth despite so much lost life between mother and daughter, the food, I can almost catch the scent of saffron and cinnamon as I read and damn your dialogue is enviable Julie!