Page 15 of Blood Orange Christmas
“How old?”
“Four. He’s well-behaved. He plays with cars and he eats more fruit than is reasonable.”
“We can accommodate,” Gabriella says without missing a beat, which means the villa has staff and rooms and a budget. “One double room for you both. Ground floor if you prefer.”
“What about security?” The word comes out before I can smooth it. It’s the only time I let my voice go sharp.
There’s a breath on the other end that tells me the villa is used to talking around things. “We’re remote,” she says. “There’s a gate and a caretaker. It’s calm.”
Calm means nothing and everything. Calm means they want me to come. Calm means I’ve learned enough not to ask for the kind of details that don’t matter once you’re already there. I look at Marco’s door again. I do the math in my head. Triple rate covers two months’ rent and the higher deposit on a better school, more if I keep my costs down and don’t buy new knives.
“I’ll come,” I say and write down the address with a pen that’s running out of ink. “I’ll bring my own fishmonger’s contacts in Rome. If your local supplier has good baccalà, I’ll take it. If not, I’ll soak my own. I need citrus. A lot of it. And ice. And a pot big enough to bathe a medium-sized dog.”
Gabriella laughs like she appreciates cooks who tell the truth. “Send your list. There’s a driver if you need one. Or you can bring a van and we’ll open the service gate.”
“I’ll drive,” I say, because control is cheaper than fear.
After I hang up, I stand still in my small kitchen while the city moves outside my window and feel two opposite things at once, relief big enough to make me sway and a thread of dread that runs from my throat to my ribs. Umbria is vineyards and light on the hills and lakes that look like waiting. It is also country that sometimes keeps its guests a little too quiet. I close my eyes andcount backward from twenty-four, the way I taught myself on nights when I needed to fall asleep without dreaming.
In the morning I tell Marco we’re going on an adventure. He claps like seals do and asks if adventures include gelato even when it’s cold. I explain that gelato is a year-round obligation, not a treat. He puts Lightning McQueen, his favorite little red car, in his small backpack along with a book about fish we got at the Sunday market for one euro. He chooses two cars to ride in his pockets and plans surgeries for the others when we’re back. He stands on his chair while I pack the crates—lemons, blood oranges, bergamots, parsley and mint and fennel fronds, garlic with skins as thin as paper, anchovies packed in salt, tins of olive oil I would marry if laws were different, sea salt that crunches between your teeth if you don’t respect it, flour, semolina, capers in brine, canned San Marzano tomatoes for comfort, a jar of chilies that make me honest. I leave space for fish because I’ll pick that up last.
We swing by the market at dawn. My fishmonger, Carlo, pushes a crate toward me without my asking. “For your seven,” he says, proud. “Tell whoever hired you that they’re lucky. Take extra vongole. They sing louder than mussels if you treat them right.”
“I always treat them right,” I say, and he kisses the air by my ear.
The drive out of Rome is a slow lesson in patience and then a mercy once the ring road falls behind us. The highway opens into hills, the olive trees shivering tightly in their rows like a choir. Marco counts tunnels. He counts cows. He asks me to play the fishermen story but the real one, not the one with talking boats. I give him the clean version, seven dishes because the sea is generous, anchovies because they are brave, shrimp because they are sweet, calamari because they can be tender if you are.
“Like people,” he says from the back, already sleepy.
“Like people,” I agree.
We pass Orte, then Terni, then take a smaller road that winds up and up. My GPS insists we’ve reached our destination twice before the road decides to stop arguing and brings us to a high stone wall with a cypress-lined drive and a gate that looks old enough to be married to the land. A camera watches us with reasonable suspicion. I press the button and say my name, and a woman’s voice tells me to come ahead. The gate opens like a mouth that has remembered how to smile.
The villa sits on a slope that faces the kind of view people write postcards about. Rows of vines terrace down and then flatten into a field that holds winter like a blanket. The house is stone, learned, softened by time. There’s a chapel tucked to one side and an olive press shed that has been retired but keeps its shape like an old boxer. The kitchen door is off the courtyard, close to the old well. I like that someone thought about cooks when they built this place.
A woman meets us at the door in a navy sweater with her sleeves rolled and a short gold chain at her neck. Gabriella, I guess. She takes in me, then Marco, then the crates, and nods once like she can carry everything if she has to.
“Benvenuti,” she says. “I’m Gabriella. We’ve put you in the corner room near the kitchen. It’s warm. There’s a radiator you can kick if it misbehaves. I can help with your crates. Andpiccolo” —she bends to Marco’s level— “we have a dog who thinks he’s a cat. Would you like to meet him after we put your cars somewhere safe?”
Marco nods solemnly. “I have a red car who is brave and a blue car who is tired.”
“Tired cars go on radiators,” Gabriella says gravely. “They like heat.”
This seals their friendship. She leads us to our room, where a bed with a quilt like a garden waits and a narrow dresser smells like cedar. There’s a little window with a ledge deep enough for Marco’s fleet. I set him up with the brave red car and a bowl of clementine segments, and he makes immediate peace with our new life. I wash my hands and tie my hair and roll my sleeves, because kitchens don’t care about your personal history. They care whether you respect their knives.
The villa kitchen is a room that knows what it’s for. Long tables. An oven with a mouth like a church door. Copper pots that have been polished and knocked around and loved. The kind of sink that makes you think about baptisms. Someone has left me space on the far table and a stack of freshly ironed towels that makes me want to cry for no reason at all. I line up my knives. I take a breath in and out that tastes like stone and warmth.
I start with citrus because citrus wakes a room up. I set a crate by the prep table and lift a blood orange to my nose. It smells like the right kind of winter. I pull a micro plane from my bag and the first curls of zest fall like red snow. I show Gabriella how to stack trays so air can move and how to keep the peels for oils. She watches me like she used to cook and misses it.
“What time do they eat?” I ask.
“Late,” she says. “They talk. They make toasts. It will be after nine before anyone is truly hungry and then very hungry all at once.”
“Good,” I say. “I like an honest appetite.”
I set anchovies to soak. I salt shrimp and leave them in a sieve so they become clean and sweet. I cut squid bodies into ribbons and score them lightly so they curl like they want to please you. I soak clams in salted water until they spit sand and good manners. I smell the baccalà and decide the villa’s supplier has done well. I’ll still give it one more long bath.
I’m unpacking the second crate of lemons when the air changes. You live with a person long enough and you learn their weather. Even after years, the pressure in the room shifts and you know a storm is near. I keep my hands moving because stopping would be confession. I lift another lemon. I draw the zester down its skin in clean strokes. My heart starts a drumline in my ribs that has nothing to do with work. Footsteps cross the threshold behind me and stop. They are unhurried steps, measured without the performance that men use when they want to make rooms notice. I keep my eyes on my hands. Zest piles in soft red-gold curls. My knuckles brush the rind and come away fragrant. The copper pots on the far wall show me a long smear of a figure where there should be stone. “Still cooking with lemon, I see,” he says, the voice I have told myself a thousand times I invented and a thousand times I knew I hadn’t.
