Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
NAOMI
Inever booked Lucca.
By the time I sat down to call on Monday, there was already a reservation for the Hale party on the tenth, seven o'clock, corner table, five guests.
"Under what name?" I asked the hostess.
"Bennett," she said. "Graham Bennett."
When I asked him about it that night, he said Lila had asked him to handle it. "You had the Fishtown deadline. She didn't want to pile on."
"She could've asked me if I minded."
"Do you mind?"
I minded. I couldn't have told him exactly what about it I minded.
"No," I said.
On Saturday we picked up my mother in Havertown. She had on her good camel coat and a silk scarf with horses on it. She got into the front seat without asking, the way she always did, so I sat in the back behind her like I was fifteen again.
"Where's Lila?" she said, before we'd even pulled out.
"Meeting us there," Graham said.
"With Daniel?"
Graham glanced in the rearview mirror, not at my mother but at me.
"I think Daniel's traveling," he said.
Osteria Lucca was on a corner in Queen Village, candlelit and loud, with crooked framed photographs of somebody's grandparents on every wall. The manager, a heavy man named Enzo, hugged Graham at the door and kissed my mother's hand. He didn't hug me. He'd never met me.
He walked us to the corner table, where a bottle of white wine was already sweating in a bucket.
"The Sancerre," Enzo said to Graham. "Like you asked."
My mother clapped. "Oh, how festive."
"It's for Li," Graham said, pulling out my mother's chair. "It's her favorite. I figured she's had a week."
"Lila loves a Sancerre," my mother agreed, as if this were a well-known fact about the world.
I'd been drinking red since I was twenty-two. I ordered a glass of the Montepulciano from the waiter, who looked faintly disappointed.
Lila came in alone at 7:20, in a long-sleeved black dress, her hair down for once, her lipstick very red. From across the room she looked beautiful. Up close she looked like someone holding very still.
"Happy birthday, Mama." She kissed our mother on both cheeks and squeezed my shoulder without meeting my eyes, then sat down next to Graham.
"Where's that husband of yours?" my mother asked.
"Chicago. Work."
"Again? He was just in Chicago."
"They love him in Chicago," Lila said.
She reached for the Sancerre, but Graham was already pouring it. Their eyes met over the glass, a quick, sharp look, pulled tight as a stitch. I didn't know what it meant. I only knew I wasn't in it.
When the waiter came, Lila ordered the branzino without opening her menu. "And the truffle tagliatelle to split. Mama, you'll split it with me."
"Of course," my mother said.
I ordered the pappardelle with lamb, and my mother ordered the veal. Graham pointed at something on the menu without reading it.
The smell of the tagliatelle got to the table before the plate did, that thick, fake mushroom smell that climbs into the back of your throat.
I leaned toward Graham. "Gas station," I murmured.
It was an old joke. Truffle oil smelled like a gas station bathroom; he'd said it first, years ago, at a wedding in New Hope where every dish had been drowned in the stuff. For a decade, whenever we smelled it, one of us said gas station and the other one faked a gag.
Graham didn't hear me. He was watching Lila's bag.
Something inside the black leather tote was buzzing. Lila heard it too, and her face went white under the red lipstick. She pulled out a phone I'd never seen before, a cheap black one in a rubber case.
"Sorry," she said. "Sorry, Mama. I have to take this."
She went out the front door. Through the window I could see her on the sidewalk in the cold, the phone pressed to her ear, one arm wrapped around her ribs.
Graham watched her through the glass without touching his food. After two minutes, he put his napkin down.
"I'm going to check on the parking," he said, and he was gone before anyone could ask what that meant.
My mother took a bite of veal and dabbed her mouth.
"Isn't it wonderful," she said, "how Graham looks out for your sister?"
I put down my fork.
"With Daniel traveling so much. She gets lonely in that big house. Graham's always been so good with her." She patted my hand on the tablecloth. "You're lucky, Naomi. You never needed looking after. You were always my easy one."
"I was always your easy one," I repeated.
"You were! You practically raised yourself." She smiled at me fondly, like it was a compliment, like she hadn't said the exact same thing at my high school graduation, my college graduation, my wedding. "Lila needed so much more."
Out on the sidewalk, Graham had reached Lila. He was standing close to her with his back to the restaurant, head bent, blocking the wind for her, and she had her hand over her mouth.
When the waiter came to clear our plates, my mother waved him back.
"We'll do dessert," she said. "One tiramisu for the table. With a candle." She turned to me, beaming. "It was always your birthday cake, Naomi. Remember? Every single year."
"That was Lila's."
"No, sweetheart. It was both of yours."
"I asked for lemon cake," I said. "Every year. Grandma Ruth made it for me once, when I was eight, and after that I asked for lemon every single year. You made tiramisu."
My mother laughed. "You loved tiramisu."
"I scraped the cocoa off. I ate the ladyfingers so you'd stop asking."
"Well." She sipped her water. "Lila couldn't have lemon. It gave her that rash. And you never minded."
I looked at her across the candle. She was already looking past me toward the door, where Lila and Graham were coming back in with their cheeks red from the cold.
"You never minded," I said.
"You didn't!" My mother reached over to fix Lila's hair as she sat down. "There she is. Everything all right, honey?"
"Fine. Work."
Enzo brought out the tiramisu himself, with a single tall candle flickering in the middle. The waiters sang. My mother blew out the candle, then fed the first bite to Lila off her own fork.
Lila ate it. Mascarpone, heavy cream. I watched my sister, who hadn't been able to have dairy since March, swallow a mouthful of it for our mother and then quietly reach for her water.
Graham saw it too. He slid her water glass closer to her hand.
When the check came, he paid it before I could get to my wallet. As we stood up to put our coats on, he bent his head toward Lila.
"Thursday at ten," he said, low. "I'll pick you up at nine-fifteen. Don't drive yourself."
"I know. It's in my phone."
"Which phone?"
"The right one, Graham."
He almost smiled, a tired, private almost-smile I'd seen on his face a thousand times. I'd thought it was only for me.
My mother took my arm on the way to the car and leaned her weight on me over the cobblestones the way she always did, because I was the steady one.
"What a lovely night," she said. "I'm so glad we're all so close."
In the car she sat up front. Graham turned the heat up for her, and she talked about the veal all the way to Havertown. I sat in the back watching the black river slide past the window and thought about Thursday at ten.