14
Marinate: To impart the flavor of a marinade into food, typically requiring a few hours to allow the flavors to develop.
It can also be used to tenderize a cut of meat.
2004
Bova.
It is everything Queenie B remembers.
Rustic charm.
Spotty electricity. Gorgeous views of the blue Ionian Sea and the green Aspromonte mountains. The Greko spoken by the locals will take some getting used to, but she and Osvaldo get by with the little Greek they both know, and the Italian they speak fluently. Julian speaks only English, of course. If they stay long enough, he might pick up a few words and phrases. He’s still young, even if his learning disabilities will make it harder. The child is too happy to have both his parents to himself to worry about being able to communicate with his peers.
The first week is bliss.
Matrimonial.
Maternal.
They swim in the sea, walk in the hills, play and cook and eat. Julian’s mood swings are difficult, often violent, but Osvaldo knows how to handle them. Queenie will learn. They’re her fault, after all. When he hits her, fists clenched so tight his knuckles are white, she tamps down the urge to hit back. She remembers what it was like. The humiliation. The pain. The betrayal. Big hands hurt way worse than small ones. Big hands have to know better.
The second week is less blissful.
Julian, used to having his parents to himself now, is bored.
Osvaldo is always on the phone.
Queenie can only do so much shopping, sunbathing, and cooking. Instead of ignoring her phone when it rings, she answers it.
It’s just a local—if Rome can be considered local—appearance, judging an up-and-coming chef contest.
Massimo will be there.
She hasn’t seen him in ages.
How can she refuse?
Queenie tells herself it’s just one night away from her boys.
Two, tops.
Because Osvaldo is angry and won’t go with her.
She knows he’s only angry because he hasn’t been asked to judge as well. Their love affair began in competition they both thrive on—he never had a chance of winning—and he remains entrenched in it. Sometimes, she thinks, he is so good with Julian because she is not. Queenie quells that thought before it can travel too far. Osvaldo is the good parent.
She travels to Rome the day prior to the event.
It’s been a while since her last visit, and then she’d been too drunk most of the time to enjoy more than being drunk.
The city, its antiquity, imbues every molecule in her body.
This is the way to see Rome—clear-eyed, clearheaded. Queenie wishes Osvaldo had come. Maybe not Julian, though. Meandering through the sites, the streets, on her husband’s arm takes on a pall when she includes their son in the wishing and she chastises herself; a good mother would never have such thoughts.
The festivities start early the next day, with a brunch for the organizers, judges, and contestants.
Queenie sits with Massimo, and they catch up.
The man’s frenetic energy puts her own frenzy to shame.
By the time brunch is through, she’s had to have a mimosa, just to take the edge off. Just the one. It’ll be fine. She’s been sober almost a year and a half and it’s only champagne. A tiny bit at that; it’s mostly orange juice.
The afternoon brings a series of interviews with the contestants, with television crews from all over Italy, with the local newspapers covering this small but prestigious event bringing the likes of Queenie B to judge.
She feels bad that the focus is mostly on her.
Falling into the attention, though, is what she does best.
The smile flashes. The cameras zoom in on her. She is flirting with camera crews and contestants and the other judges without even meaning to. It’s just the way things go, with Queenie B.
And she has to admit, she’s missed it.
Even though it has only been a few weeks since handing the final episodes of both her shows to guest hosts, claiming her mental health and her family have to take priority.
Since turning down or canceling the endorsements, appearances, and engagements with television executives and committees always wooing.
It had felt so good. Cathartic. Ditching every and all responsibility. Landing in Bova with her husband and son. In the house that needs more attention than they’ve given it in the years since its purchase. Queenie had, then, fully intended to spend at least a year getting the place in good order. Efficient. Classy. Nothing over the top. Fully intended.
“Buona sera, Oz,”
she purrs into the phone.
“How are my boys this evening?”
“Missing you,”
Osvaldo tells her.
“How is it?”
“Insane.
But fun, I guess.
I haven’t missed this,”
she lies.
“The final judging is in an hour.
I have to get back down.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
“Or the next day,”
Queenie tells him.
“I’ll know better after tonight.
Any chance you’ll join me?”
“Just me?”
“Julian too, of course.”
Another lie.
“That’s a given.”
“Just come home tomorrow, and we’ll be together here.
I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise? For me? What is it?”
Osvaldo laughs.
Oh, that sound.
“It won’t be a surprise if I tell you.”
“Fine, be that way.”
Queenie kisses the phone.
“I love you, Oz.”
“Love you too, Regina.
Julian? You want to say hello to Mama?”
Excited shrieking rises in the background.
A muffling of words and a phone being grabbed, and—“Mama?”
“Hello, darling.
How’s my boy?”
“When do you come back?”
“Tomorrow, love.”
“I want you now.”
“I can’t come now, sweetheart.
I have to work.
But I’ll be back to—”
“You always say that! Always! I hate you!”
A loud clunk.
Queenie imagines he’s thrown the phone.
A moment later, Osvaldo’s tired voice says, “Bad idea to talk to him.
My fault. I should have known better. He was fine, I promise. And he will be by the time you get here.”
“All right.
I’m sorry, Oz.”
“It’ll be fine.
I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Queenie taps out of the call, tucks the phone into her tiny beaded handbag.
Julian has unsettled her.
He is nothing if not brutally honest.
Osvaldo tells her it’s not her he hates, but her actions. Her being away from him. Julian doesn’t handle transition well or process his emotions easily. It’s part of his condition, along with his facial deformities and the learning disabilities. The child needs more than she can give him. He always has, even before birth. She is selfish. Putting her own needs first and foremost. Of course Julian hates her. Sometimes, she’s not overly fond of him either.
It’s only a minibar bottle of vodka.
Two shots, at the most.
Just to soothe her nerves.
She downs it in two gulps, then reapplies her lipstick, adjusts her tight-fitting black dress over her famous curves, smooths her hair. She looks beautiful. In control. Queenie B is ready for whatever the evening brings. Good food, she hopes. And some fun.
Where has a week gone?
Queenie puts her suitcase down in the foyer of the Bova home.
They’re not here.
She knows it already.
Osvaldo left her a short but clear voicemail. He and Julian are back in New York. They do not want to see her. Ever again. Divorce papers were already being drawn by the time she sobered up enough to listen to the message.
She doesn’t know what happened.
All Queenie remembers is the final contest, the judging, the champagne fizzing and flying all over the place.
She might remember kissing the winner—a lovely young man from Milan or Berlin whose bed she woke up in late yesterday afternoon.
Three days. Four. No, five days unaccounted for aside from flashes of what she could have passed off as a fantasy if not for the pictorial evidence in rags like Pettegolezzi, feeding on her like she is actual news.
She’s seen the video footage of her with that lovely young man from Milan or Berlin, the two of them still in their formalwear, drinking champagne in a hotel pool.
Photos snapped of them together on a poolside lounge chair, her bare breasts pixilated.
And she hadn’t even been looking.
There were others. And reports. Of a hotel room trashed. A pair of bouncers escorting a disheveled, shoeless Queenie B from a bar someplace in Monza. Oz saw them all, heard every detail. He has staff on retainer for the sole purpose of discovering her scandal before it explodes on him. On Julian. Queenie has kept them busy for the last several days.
Walking through the empty house, Queenie picks up a toy here, a stray jacket there.
Left behind.
Like her.
They had to have left in a hurry. What did Osvaldo tell their son? This time, she was close to certain, he will not temper it with promises that Mama will be with them soon. Better he told Julian she is dead, let it all be done with. Because she will never change, never stay the good wife and mother. She will only have flashes of Regina Benuzzi/Balcazar that shine brightly, but burn out in the enormous solar flare that is Queenie B.
In the bedroom, she slips out of her clothes and into the silk kimono-style robe Osvaldo gave her for Valentine’s Day.
Red, the color of passion in most every culture on the globe.
It had been a beautiful day, just the two of them ice skating in Central Park, bundled against the cold.
Dinner in their own restaurant, the three Michelin Star Cucuzza, tucked away in a corner that did not succeed in sparing them surreptitious pics snapped and shared on social media. Then a night of making love without Julian—spending quality time with his extremely competent nanny—in the next room. A celebration of her sobriety, of their reunion. Neither of which would ever last long enough.
Passing from room to room, she finds more evidence of their hurried departure.
A juice box left on the side table.
The remote on the floor.
Dishes in the sink, rinsed, but not washed. Osvaldo, fastidious as he is, never leaves a mess. Well, no mess but her. He has no intention of ever returning to Bova, and the memory of bliss so quickly turned to despair. To betrayal. To yet another failure to be a family.
Queenie looks up the number for a local realty office, leaning on the new marble counter they’d only recently installed.
“Hello, English? Italian? Good, thanks.
I have a house I want to put on the market.
I know it’s not the best time of year but .
. . no, I don’t . . . look, can you just come look at it? Fine. Tomorrow. I’ll—”
Queenie catches sight of the La Cornue oven, a work of art in and of itself, that had not been in her kitchen when she left for Rome.
“I’ll call you back.”
She taps out of the call, runs her hand over the smooth surface as red as the lipstick she wears.
I have a surprise for you . . .
Queenie bites down on her lip; the tears come nonetheless.
The stove costs several times more than the house is worth.
Osvaldo bought it and had it installed for her.
For them. For this home that was to be their new beginning.
Instead of calling the realtor back, Queenie calls the housecleaning service they’ve been using since arriving in Bova.
She arranges a deep cleaning.
She can’t sell the house.
She won’t. But maybe she’ll be back one day. Until then, she’ll hire a caretaker.
Packing what’s left of her things, she weeps.
Openly and intensely.
She weeps for her failed marriage, for her son, for what she did to both.
Julian and Osvaldo are truly better off without her. There’s not a soul in existence who will disagree.
Her restaurants, her personal franchise, her celebrity all hinge upon her volatile, chaotic reputation.
Without it, she’s just another chef, because the old saying is true—there’s no such thing as bad press.
Every personal disaster causes an uptick in her finances, even as it hammers another nail in her personal coffin.
Because people love a bad girl, especially a bad girl who hurts no one as much as she hurts herself.
Zipping her case closed—they really hadn’t brought much with them to Bova—she catches sight of herself in the bureau mirror.
Breath catches in her throat.
She is forty-five, and beautiful.
She is famous and rich and the envy of her peers. She is the idol of every young chef with dreams of her kind of success, of every woman who longs to behave badly and get away with it. She is the desire of men who wish to bask in her brand of wild.
She is Queenie B.
But the woman in the mirror is not Queenie B.
Not really.
She is Regina Benuzzi.
Older. No wiser than she’d been when she walked with the rolled-in shoulders of a young woman afraid of the world. Strange, no matter where life takes her, Queenie B cannot shake Regina Benuzzi, no matter how hard she tries. She is always there. Waiting to remind her how unwanted she’d been. Waiting to be seen.
Unpacking her bag, Queenie doesn’t think.
Or she thinks so much there’s no way to catch a single thought.
Her mind unravels and winds itself back up again, almost without her noticing.
But it’s there. All of it.
In the bathroom so recently renovated it still smells like new paint and grout, Queenie scrubs her face clean.
She braids her hair—two, not her signature one—and winds the plaits around her crown as the old women in town do.
Putting on a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt, she talks to herself in Greko until she can ask for the items she needs like a local.
She won’t stay in Bova long; too many know who owns this humble little house decked out in the sort of luxury Queenie B and Osvaldo Balcazar are accustomed to. She’ll stay only long enough to gain whatever equilibrium she can.
She’s not even sure what that means, in fact.
Maybe Regina Benuzzi won’t die, but neither will—apparently—Queenie B.
One of them has to give.
Or both of them do. Outside of the spotlight that made it all possible. Somehow. Now, in this moment, she’s heading down the hill to the market. Tonight, she’s cooking. Elaborately. Simply. Deliciously. Tomorrow doesn’t exist. Only the next meals needing to be created. Food is all. It is everything. On this Queenie and Regina can agree. Wherever they end up, they will get there. One meal at a time.