Page 81 of The Moon & His Tides
“We have enough money to get you both out of here,” I told her as we worked side by side in the kitchen makingorecchiettepasta, folding the little ears of dough with our thumbs before placing them to dry on the trays. “I wanted to take you to dinner and tell you, but Elena’s bitterness stole my thunder.”
“Patatino,” she said with a cluck of her tongue that told me I was in for a mild scolding. “Be kind to Elena. She’s been very down lately. I think she and Christopher are having a rough time.”
Christopher was Elena’s much older boyfriend, a man she’d met through our father because they worked together at the university. I’d never liked him, nor had Cosima or Mama, which might have explained why Elena stayed with him when he was so obviously not good enough for her.
My sister was whip smart, tall, and gorgeous, with a great sense of style even on a budget, and a secret tenderheartedness that showed itself infrequently but gorgeously like a green streak at sunset. She deserved theworld, not somestronzo.
“Why does she stay with him then?” I muttered, watching our hands moving in tandem as we pressed pasta dough between our fingers. It soothed me, the routine of it, the custom of making pasta with Mama since I was just a tiny boy.
Mama sighed. “I’m not sure I set good examples for you all, hmm?”
I winced because there was no way to refute that. Seamus was the worst kind of father and husband, but she’d put up with him for years. I understood that he was the primarybreadwinner––even if he gambled it all away too often to count––and that our culture encouraged marriage until the end, no matter what.
But the truth was, when Seamus disappeared without a trace soon after Cosima left for Milan, we’d all felt acutely relieved to have him gone.
“Do you miss him?” I dared to ask. We never spoke about him, now. Honestly, we’d barely spoken about him when he still lived with us.
Caprice Lombardi was gorgeous in the way of old-school Hollywood starlets like Sofia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, all steep curves and sultry femininity. The only reason she didn’t have suitors knocking down the door now that Seamus had gone for good was because she had zero interest in men and a bad reputation for cutting them into very small pieces with her sharp tongue if they pressed too hard.
Elena had got that skill from her.
“I miss the man I fell in love with,” she told me baldly. “He was this intensely handsome man with charisma and mystery. I fell in love with the idea of him more than the real him.” She shrugged, opening her semolina-coated hands to the heavens. “I was just a girl.”
“That doesn’t invalidate your love,” I said, maybe a little too quickly.
It was hard not to imagine what she might think of my affair with a married couple. Mama was surprisingly unjudgmental, but she would be disappointed in me for disrupting the sanctity of marriage. Even if I told her I was actually helping their marriage by sewing together their jagged edges like so many stitches.
“No,” she agreed. “But I thought I was so worldly because I was dating a foreigner. I thought he loved me because heenjoyed my beauty and my authenticity. When they grew old, his attentions grew stale.”
My thumb rent the little sphere of pasta in two.
Because Mama’s words hit just a little too close to home.
What would happen when, inevitably, my novelty wore off?
I’d been living with the Meyerses for months now, but things were still fresh and exciting. There were so many ways to touch and be touched, so many questions to ask and answer to get to the hearts of two very different people. Both Adam and Savannah lived for work, and they were knee-deep inBlood Oathwith me, excited to launch my career the way she had once launched his.
But…
What happened when I was launched?
What happened in another six months or two years?
They were already married, and based on Savannah’s rhetoric, they didn’t seem to want children.
So would I live in the carriage house forever? Their good mate who spent a little bit too much time with them?
The loneliness that grew like weeds in the fertile ground of my belly deepened its roots and reached its limbs up into my throat so I felt like I might choke.
Alone, but not alone, forever.
Like I was in this family of broken spirits held together by blood and hope.
“If you could go back in time and do things differently, would you?” I asked, an edge of desperation in the question.
The relief I felt when she immediately said, “No,” was so acute, I had to grip the counter to regain my balance.
“No,” she repeated, twisting to face me and cup my face in her hands. “Never,patatino. Regrets are inevitable in life. There will always be weeds in the garden, but not all of them are ugly.Without Seamus, I would not have my babies who give reason to my whole existence.”
