Letters to the Baumgarters Read online

  “Let me think about it.” I accepted his help onto shore, glancing up at him. He looked so hopeful—but I knew I shouldn’t. Cara Lucia had invited me to her family’s Carnavale celebration but I had begged off, planning to just snuggle up with Jezebel and read the whole day away. “I need to post this before they shut their doors.”

  It was nearly noon, and I barely made it in before they closed for the holiday. The postal workers were all in costume, chatting about Carnavale. They were headed down to the Piazza as soon as they were done and seemed annoyed to have to deal with my little package, but I was glad I’d made it.

  I glanced out the window and saw the gondolier chatting with another man, a little bit older, not in costume. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, a strange sight during Carnavale, when masks and make-up were the norm.

  The men laughed together and then hugged—something unheard of on the streets of America, but very common in Italy—but when the man in the suit kissed the gondolier on the lips, I nearly dropped my bag in surprise.

  Hugging, yes. Even kissing each other on each cheek, or—strange to Americans—patting each other on the behind, all of those things I’d seen. But a full kiss on the lips between two men? That could only mean one thing.

  The encounter was over by the time I went outside, the man with the briefcase gone, but I couldn’t help voicing my curiosity.

  “Who was that?” I asked as Nico offered me a hand and I stepped onto the boat.

  He glanced at me in surprise as I settled myself on a seat. “Just a friend.”

  “Looked like a very good friend,” I remarked, hiding a knowing smile.

  “He is, still.” The gondolier untied and pushed off, and we were on our way again. “He lives in Sicily now. I see him very rarely. It was a coincidence to run into him here.”

  He was so cavalier about it, not embarrassed at all, but it was clear to me—Nico was gay. Which, I had to admit, relieved me of some of my trepidation, and I began to look back over our conversation with a different lens.

  “So are you ready for a real Italian Shrove Tuesday?” he asked as we maneuvered back down the little canal. “My mother has been cooking all week for today. If we get there early enough, we can eat all the Zeppole before my sisters arrive. What do you say?”

  I’d denied myself the revelry and masked silliness in the streets, but I had to admit, I’d been longing for some company, a little good food and wine and conversation. Who could turn down homemade Italian cooking on Carnavale? Why not?

  Smiling, I accepted. “Si, signor! You’ve convinced me.”

  Nico smiled as we headed into the more open water of the Grand Canal, steering us toward his home.

  * * * *

  “Nico brought a girl home!” Nico’s mother—“Call me Mama Dorotea!”—stage-whispered into the phone to one of his sisters, glancing over at me perched on the edge of the sofa. I got the feeling Nico didn’t bring girls home often—go figure—and they were all trying to be casual but I’d heard the phrase, “Nico brought a girl home!” at least ten times since I’d arrived.

  “No, a girl.” Mama Dorotea cupped the mouthpiece with her hand as she spoke, as if it might make sound travel slower in my direction. “Are you coming soon?”

  That was the third daughter on the phone, I deduced—the other two were already present and accounted for. The oldest, Anna, was married and had two children, a boy and a girl, who ran straight to the kitchen when they arrived to “help” grandma with the food. Helping, of course, involved a great deal of tasting. The youngest daughter, Caprice, still a teenager, seemed intent on beating her older—and only—brother at Scrabble. Nico was sprawled out with her on the floor. Out of his gondolier uniform, wearing jeans and a gray pullover, he was even more handsome. It never failed—the cute ones were always gay.

  “Another glass of wine, Daniella?”

  “It’s Dani,” I corrected her again, accepting the glass from Anna, the oldest daughter. Her husband had parked himself in front of the television for a football game—which, in Italy, meant soccer—and hadn’t said a word to anyone. His wife, on the other hand, had attached herself to me, talking almost non-stop since I arrived.

  She paid no attention to my words, going on about the issues they were having with their flat, the landlord refusing to fix things. Nico, from the floor, offered to help repair the leaky sink, but Anna didn’t listen to him either. She seemed more focused on complaining about her problems than she was on actually solving any of them.

  I sipped my wine—homemade, according to Mama Dorotea—and watched Nico. Strangely, now that I knew he was gay, I gave myself more freedom to really look at him. His olive skin still retained a bit of a summer tan from working outside all year round. He was my age, probably early-to-mid-twenties, sandwiched somewhere between his younger teenage sister and the next oldest, who had just gotten married the year before. The siblings all had the same dark hair, the girls’ long and thick and wavy, Nico’s short and curly; the same striking, bright blue eyes; even the same full, sensual mouth.

  Nico glanced up at me and winked, putting tiles down on the Scrabble board as his youngest sister protested using “Qi” as a word. I still couldn’t believe I’d said I’d come to dinner, with his family no less. I was clearly more lonely that I wanted to admit. But he was sweet, and more importantly, he was safe. Maybe we could even be friends. I’d been in Italy eight months and didn’t have any real friends to speak of, aside from Cara Lucia.

  “I’m getting a dictionary!” Caprice jumped up, racing for the bookshelf in the corner.

  “Look it up.” Nico rolled to his back, putting his hands behind his head, and grinned. “Fifty-four points, triple letter, double word score. I win!”

  “You’re far too proud of yourself,” I commented, sipping my wine to hide a smile. Beside me, Anna had thankfully been distracted by one of the children, the girl, Maria, coming in to ask her mother a question. Everyone spoke Italian and no one seemed to notice that I wasn’t a native speaker. It was quite a compliment and I was rather proud of myself.

  “You want to play the winner?” Nico asked me.

  “You’re so sure you’re the winner.”

  “I am.” He shrugged. “Qi is a word.”

  “It’s not an Italian word,” I replied. We were all speaking in Italian and I was proud of myself for holding my own. “I don’t even think it’s an English word.”

  “It’s an Oriental word.” Caprice sighed, reading from the dictionary. “Oriental medicine, martial arts, etcetera. The vital energy believed to circulate around the body in currents.”

  “I win!” Nico pumped his fist in the air and his sister stuck her tongue out behind his back.

  “Time to eat!” Mama Dorotea appeared in the doorway wearing an apron, stained and covered in flour. That was a good sign. My stomach was growling and I definitely needed to eat something—I’d had far too much wine on an empty stomach and my head was swimmy.

  “What about Giulia and Will?” Anna herded her kids toward the dining room table.

  “They’re going to be late,” Mama Dorotea announced, using the remote to turn off the television. It was the first time Anna’s husband, Sal, had looked at something other than the screen since he sat down. He grunted, getting up, and followed his nose toward the table. “They said to start without them.”

  The family gathered around the food, practically drooling, as Mama Dorotea said a prayer, mentioning her dead husband at the end, asking the family to remember him. I’d noticed the urn and photo of the mustachioed man on the fireplace mantel when we came in and wondered how this woman had raised four children nearly to adulthood on her own.

  “Ti amo, Padre,” Anna whispered at the end of the prayer, reaching over and squeezing her mother’s hand. Mama Dorotea’s eyes were shiny as she started passing around dishes full of gnocci, tortellini and castagnole. It didn’t stay quiet for long. The two kids fought over who got the biggest and best piece of lasagna while A
nna continued her diatribe about their dilapidated flat, and Caprice interjected with her own teen angst—a girl at school who liked the same boy who refused to speak to her now.

  Nico sat next to me, passing me dish after dish, forcing me to fill my plate. There were frittelle—fritters fried to a perfect golden brown, filled with meat and gravy. The migliaccio di polenta—polenta and sausage—was so aromatic my stomach actually growled as I put some on my plate. I lost count after a while of how many plates were passed piled with all sorts of pastas filled with sweet prosciutto, smoky pancetta, and buttery sopressata.

  “What did I tell you about the food?” Nico asked, nudging me, his mouth half-full. I could only whimper in response, sweet, heavenly pasta melting on my tongue. If there was something I loved almost as much as the Italian language, it was Italian food, and this was the best I’d ever had in nearly a year living in Italy.

  “Nico made the lasagna,” Mama Dorotea said, smiling over at me. “And the Zeppole for dessert. Wait until you taste!”

  “You cook?” I managed, swallowing the perfect bite with a bit of wine.

  His cheeks pinked up as he shoveled another mouthful in, not responding.

  “Our Nico is the best cook in the family.” Mama Dorotea reached over and ruffled his hair, making her son blush a deeper shade of red.

  “Mama!” he protested, waving her away.

  “It’s true,” Caprice piped up. “No one can outcook Nico.”

  “Nona Lara was better,” Nico said, gulping his own wine. “My grandmother,” he said to me. “She’s who taught me how to cook.”

  “Nona Lara watched the children while I worked,” Mama Dorotea explained. “She was here when they came home from school every day.”

  “We made dinner together every night,” Nico said.

  And now I had a clear picture of this family, the single, young widowed mother, a grandmother staying home to take care of the children while she worked. I hadn’t been in the midst of any sort of family for a long time, and it felt good to be in the middle of the chatter, the teasing, the inside jokes I didn’t understand but made me smile anyway. I didn’t know if it was the wine, the food, or the people, but I was far more comfortable than I had expected to feel surrounded by strangers. It probably should have made me nostalgic for my own family, but my mother, although a single mother in her own right, had given me turkey TV-dinners on Thanksgiving and always confused my birthday with her own. It was hard to miss stuff like that.

  “Thanks for inviting me,” I whispered to Nico while the two kids argued with their mother about getting dessert if they hadn’t finished their dinner. I saw his mother smile at us approvingly, saw the look she exchanged with her oldest daughter when Nico leaned in to say “You’re welcome,” into my ear.

  “Mama!” A voice called from the other room and everyone looked up.

  “They’re here!” Mama Dorotea stood, putting her napkin down on the table and rushing toward the doorway. “They’re here! They’re here!”

  “They’re here!” The kids jumped up and followed and so did both Anna and Caprice. Only Sal sat unmoving, shoveling in huge mouthfuls of lasagna.

  “You’d think the messiah had returned,” I murmured, making Nico snort laughter beside me.

  “You could say that,” he replied with a smile. “You see, my sister and her husband—”

  That was as far as he got before the whole lot of them burst into the room, all surrounding a pretty young woman with the same dark hair, hers cut shorter than the rest, curling around her cherubic face, her blue eyes bright with laughter.

  “Let us take a breath!” the young woman—Giulia, I assumed—exclaimed, her gaze falling on her brother. “Can you help me, Nico?”

  He stood, taking two strides toward his sister to take something from her arms. It took me a moment to register what it was, and by the time Nico had reached me, his sisters and mother following, exclaiming all around him, I felt rooted in my chair, trapped and speechless.

  “Meet his highness, the Bianchi messiah, my sister’s son, Luka—the first boy in the family since I was born.” Nico pulled back the blue knitted blanket to show me the tiny face of a very newborn baby. He couldn’t have been more than a week or two old, his little hand drawn up to his mouth, eyes screwed up tight as he sucked on his fingers.

  Everyone was quiet now, focused on me and my reaction. I knew what I was supposed to do and say, but I couldn’t find the words. They were caught in my throat.

  “Give the woman a little room.” It was Sal, Anna’s husband, who spoke up. “You’re overwhelming her.”

  And of course, he was absolutely correct.

  “Excuse me.” I managed to stand, grabbing the back of the chair for support, before bolting down the hall toward the bathroom. I sat on the commode, my head tucked between my knees, my whole body trembling. They were talking again, maybe about me, but it sounded more like they were exclaiming over the baby.

  The baby.

  Oh my god, I’d just run out of the room like an idiot. What must they think?

  But I couldn’t let them see me like this, shaking and holding back sobs and trying to draw breath into my lungs like a fish out of water. Sometimes the pain came out of nowhere and blindsided me. It was like getting hit upside the head by a two by four from behind. It just flattened me.

  “Dani?” Nico knocked gently on the door, calling my name. I thought about not answering him, pretending I was invisible. That was ridiculous, of course. I was going to have to face him—face all of them.

  “Just a moment,” I called, hearing the quiver in my voice and cursing it. I stood, checking my face in the mirror—tear-streaked, nose red, mascara running. I was a mess.

  “Come out,” he called, knocking again. “Whatever it is, we don’t have to talk about it.”

  How did he know just the right thing to say? I gravitated toward the door and unlocked it, peeking out. He must have seen my face, known I’d been crying. I hadn’t washed it or tried to cover it up.

  “I have something to show you.” He extended his hand. “Come with me.”

  “I can’t,” I croaked, shrinking back. “You don’t understand.”

  “Trust me.”

  “I hardly know you.” I sniffed.

  “Trust me anyway.”

  I took his offered hand and followed.

  Chapter Two

  Dear Carrie and Doc,

  You’re not going to believe

  Remember how I said I wasn’t interested in

  Carnavale turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected…

  * * * *

  “Carnavale.” He whispered the word into my ear. The city was laid out before us like brightly colored jewels on velvet. The lights of the parade and shows going on below in the Piazza lit up all of Venice. Each costumed dancer glittered like a piece of shiny candy we could have plucked up and eaten. I watched, enthralled, feeling Nico’s warm breath against my cheek. Even in my desperate attempt to avoid the festivities, I couldn’t help but be a part of them. Italy had a way of drawing you in, whether you liked it or not.

  It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “This is your place?” I asked, hugging myself as I looked down through the little window of the attic room.

  “Yes.” He peered over my shoulder and I felt him pressed against me, long and lean. “This way, I can have my own space, but also be near my family.”

  “You’re close with them?”

  He shrugged. “They’re my family. I take care of them since my mother, she can’t work anymore.”

  “She was a seamstress?” I remembered her talking about it.

  “Her arthritis is too bad now for her to work.”

  “Thank you for showing me this.” I turned slightly to look at him, his eyes gleaming silver in the darkness. “Thank you for inviting me today. About what happened… I’m sorry…”

  “Come. Sit.” He led me over to his bed and we perched on the edge, side
by side. If I hadn’t known he was gay, and if I hadn’t had so much wine to drink, I wouldn’t have followed him. I would have been on my guard and tense when he put his arm around me and held me close. But I felt safe with him, safer than I had with a single man in a long time, so I let him comfort me, settling in as we reclined on his bed, tucking my head under his chin.

  “Do you want to talk about it, bella?”

  Bella. He was just using a common Italian endearment, the word for beautiful. He couldn’t have known the memories it triggered for me.

  “No.” I shook my head and held on, closing my eyes. “Can we just… not talk.”

  “Si.” His lips brushed my forehead and I sighed in relief. If I’d had to explain, I would have broken down completely, shattered into a million little pieces that poor Nico would have had to pick up and somehow put back together before we went down to face his family.

  Instead we held each other, the music of Carnavale playing below like the soundtrack of a distant dream. It was probably the wine coursing through me, making me far too warm in the chilly attic room. I hadn’t had that much to drink in a long time, and even all the food we’d consumed hadn’t dampened the buzzing in my head.

  It was the wine—that’s what I told myself when Nico began stroking my hair, sending little shivers through me. I reminded myself that this was impossible, that he was simply comforting a crazy woman he’d had the misfortune to invite into his home. That I was lucky he hadn’t kicked me out at the first sign of insanity. And maybe we were both a little drunk and lonely and looking for comfort that night.

  “Your family,” I reminded him after a while, although I didn’t want to move. I was sleepy and it felt so good to be held in a man’s arms again, even if nothing was going to come of it. Maybe because nothing was going to come of it.

  “Shhh.” He kissed my forehead, tightening his arms around me. “Don’t remind me.”

  I smiled. “We can’t stay here forever.”

  “What happened to not talking?”

  “But—”

  I gasped in surprise when he silenced me with a kiss—and not a brotherly little kiss either, this was a full, hard sort of kiss that deepened the longer it went on. I felt faint when we broke apart, my limbs trembling.