Page 65 of Blood Orange Christmas
We work inside the hum that kitchens make when they’re honest—knives steady, hands quick, voices low, laughter small and real. When we sweep the pass between courses, he bumps my hip with his and I give it back. The radio on the shelf is tuned to a station that thinks Dean Martin is still a good idea, and tonight, he is. Marco sings along toVolare, off-key and happy.
A man in a wool coat I recognize from meetings I used to fear slides into the booth by the hearth with his wife and two grown daughters. He keeps his hat in his hands, looks at the menu like it’s a test he wants to pass, and when the zuppa di ceci e cozze arrives, he closes his eyes on the first spoonful. After the second, he relaxes in a way that makes his belt look less like an emblem.He pays cash and leaves more than he should. He does it because he needs to and because this is how we do penance now.
Between the third and fourth courses, Santa Maria in Trastevere’s bells test their throats and then commit—long, rolling, gold. The whole street takes that breath you take before a kiss. In our kitchen, everything pauses a half-second as if someone whisperedlisten. Dante leans in and taps his forehead to mine. “We made it to another one,” he says.
“We did,” I say.
He steals a piece of fried eel off the rack with two fingers and yelps when I snap a towel at his wrist. “This is abuse,” he says, deadpan.
“This is quality control,” I say and look down to hide my smile.
Night falls early and the candlelight fattens up. The long table becomes a family when no one is looking. A college kid translates jokes into English for a Polish couple who translate them back, and somehow, the joke gets funnier in transit. The priest tells a Latin riddle and laughs first. We laugh because he’s laughing.
The last plates go out and the kitchen exhales. I wipe my station, stack my knives in their canvas roll, and wash my hands for the hundredth time until they smell like lemon and soap. Dante slides two small plates onto the pass—slices of the lemon tart he pretends he doesn’t understand and will spend the rest of his life trying to steal from me.
We retreat to the little tasting nook—the sliver of space we carved out behind the bar when we signed the lease, just big enough for two chairs and a shelf of glasses and a view of our life. He sits, and I slide into the chair beside him. The hearth’sglow licks the edges of him and makes his eyes soft. He pours a finger of limoncello into one glass and leaves the second empty. We share the first like a secret. The tart is bright and cool on my tongue. The first bite tastes like the first winter I survived alone. The second tastes like the first winter I didn’t.
“What’s this one called?” he murmurs, thumb brushing a crumb from my bottom lip, then stealing the crumb like he did something heroic.
“Hope,” I say.
He kisses me in the glow and the bells ring midnight proper—big, proud, undeniable. A cheer climbs up from the street and scrapes our window like a friendly cat. Dante leans his forehead to mine and whispers, “Merry Christmas, Chef.”
“Merry Christmas,” I whisper back and feel the word land in the middle of all the years I thought I’d never get another one like this.
The door bounces and I glance up, ready to tell Marco to stop running in the kitchen, but he’s not running in the kitchen—he’s sprinting for the front with his knit hat crooked and his scarf trailing like a flag. “I’ll get it!” he shouts, and Gabriella laughs and pretends she can’t beat him to the handle.
He flings the door open with both hands. Cold air rushes in with a smell like stone and stories. A hush falls over the people near the window, then a small collective gasp. Because it’s happening. Snow. In Rome. Not much—just the light kind that looks like flour when you sift it high and the kitchen holds its breath, just the soft drift that catches in hair and lashes and turns men gentle for a minute—but enough.
Marco turns back to us, eyes blazing, cheeks hot red. “Mamma!” he calls. “It’s sugar!”
“It is,” I say. “Go taste it.”
He bolts into the threshold and sticks his tongue out like he was born for joy. The flakes land and vanish like good secrets. Behind him, Rome shimmers—gold on stone, windows like stars, water muttering in the fountain at the corner, people in coats and scarves letting themselves be children for the length of a snowfall. Imperfect. Alive. Full of second chances.
Dante slides his hand into mine and squeezes once, the exact pressure that sayswe did this. I squeeze back. The room is warm, the street is bright, and the life we built stands up on its own two feet and sayspresentwhen roll is called.
We bank the hearth. We pour coffee for the last table. We save one piece of tart for breakfast and hide it badly so Marco can find it. We lock the door with the key that chose us. And we go home, together, through air that tastes like sugar.
27
EPILOGUE
MARCO ACCARDI
Christmas Eve, four years later
There are rules in the kitchen.
Rule Number One: Don’t touch the knives unless you want to lose a finger and be haunted forever by Signora Teresa’s ghost. (She’s not actually a ghost. She is very alive and very short and can appear behind you without footsteps. She raised Papa when he still had elbows sharper than his manners. She says if I touch Mama’s chef knife before I’m ready, she will make me scrub the grout with a toothbrush until I graduate college. I believe her.)
Rule Number Two: If Mama says taste something, you taste it, even if it looks like squid and smells like the ocean in summer. Even if it’s green and has a name that sounds sad. Mama says taste is about trust. Papa says taste is about proof. I think taste is about love because Mama always looks like she’s giving me a present when she hands me a spoon.
Rule Number Three (very important): Never interrupt Papa when he’s making the red sauce. He says it’s “a sacrament.” Mama says it’s “a superstition.” I think it’s probably both. Hegets a face like a statue and only talks to the spoon. Mama says you can tell a lot about a person by the way they stir. Papa’s stir says he used to be a storm and now he’s a river.
I’m nine. I can reach the spice rack without a stool if I stand up on the balls of my feet and don’t tell Mama. I can crack an egg with one hand (most days). I can roll gnocchi like I was born with the pattern in my fingers. I can throw a dish towel at Zio Luca’s head from across the room and hit him exactly when he’s pretending to steal a meatball, which is always.
I don’t remember a lot from before the trattoria. Mama says that’s normal and good. I remember a little apartment where the floor was cold in the morning and we had to heat milk in a pot with a dent. I remember an old neighbor who smelled like cigarettes and sugar and always saved cookies for me—he taught me to play Scopa and I always cheated the same way and he always let me. I remember hiding once, in a church with a gold ceiling so high you could land a bird on it, and a statue that looked like it was crying, and Papa’s voice saying, “Okay, okay,” over and over like he was trying to tell himself a story he could believe.
