One Italian Summer(51)

It’s a meal I’ve had many times before, at a very different kitchen table, thousands of miles away. I never learned how to make it, though. Not until now. Did she ever offer? Or did I just never sit down, listen, and watch?

I take a sip of wine.

Carol puts on music, some old Frank Sinatra, and I am immediately transported to my parents’ house in Brentwood. Tony Bennett on the stereo, my father pouring wine, and my mother cooking. The smells of garlic and basil and lavender.

A peace washes over me that’s so heavy I feel like I can see it.

“Are you a good chopper?” Carol asks me.

“I’m decent.”

She smiles and shakes her head. “I’ll do the onion if you slice the tomato.” She hands me a cutting board, a small, serrated knife, and a bowl full of freshly rinsed vine-ripened tomatoes. “The key is a serrated knife and to tuck your knuckles in.” She demonstrates.

“I love this music,” I say.

Carol closes her eyes briefly and hums. “Moon River” is playing.

“Me too. When I was younger, my father only listened to Frank.”

“Pop liked Frank Sinatra?” I say without thinking. I remember him as a stoic guy. The idea of him listening to anything romantic feels impossible.

Carol looks at me curiously.

“I mean my pop did, so it makes sense yours likes him, too.”

She nods. “I think he used music as a way for the house to feel full, to give it life after she was gone.”

“I understand that,” I say.

She continues looking at me, and I see something familiar in her eyes. It’s sorrow, the pain of being a motherless daughter. She never let me see it before, but here, I am not her daughter. I am just her friend.

“Tell me more about her,” I say.

I never asked about her mother. I never asked her to tell me stories about what kind of parent she had been, what she had meant to her. It seems impossible, now, that I never did. And I recognize how selfish it was. How much she probably wanted to talk about it. How I could have offered her a space to share.

Carol takes out an onion and begins peeling. “She was very funny.” She laughs, recalling something. “She loved playing pranks on people. She’d hide cream cheese in my dad’s medicine cabinet and make him think it was toothpaste or shaving cream.”

“Was she strict?”

“No!” Carol says, practically yelling. “No, she was the opposite. She never raised her voice, never got angry, even though she was spunky. She’d let me have chocolate chips in the morning. She believed in play. She was fun.”

Carol Silver would never serve chocolate in the morning, and yet—

I remember homemade banana frosties on birthdays with a tray full of toppings. Chocolate chips were always an option.

“It must have been hard to lose her,” I say. “You were so young.”

She looks up from the onion, thoughtful. “It was,” she says. “I still miss her every day.”

“I understand.”

We chop for a moment, in silence. And then it’s there, right in front of me. And I have to share it, I have to tell her.

“My mother died,” I say. “Recently. Very recently, actually. A few weeks ago.”

Carol keeps chopping with perfect precision. “I’m really very sorry to hear that,” she says. “You told me you lost someone close to you. I didn’t realize you meant your mother.”

I nod.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“We were supposed to come together.”

Carol swipes the chopped onion off the knife, wipes the side of one eye with her sleeve, and places the entirety in a saucepan with olive oil.

“She was the best,” I say. “She was my everything. She was good at whatever she did. Just a real, true mother. She was a decorator, too.”

Carol begins grating a lemon, collecting the zest in a small wooden bowl.

“What did she like?”

“Cooking,” I say, “to start.”

Carol laughs. She takes a sip of her wine.

“She could do anything. Roast a chicken to perfection, make a lemon meringue pie. She rarely used a recipe. She loved a good white button-down and a solid brimmed hat and a well-planned trip.”

“She sounds wonderful.”

“She was.”

Carol fills a pot with water, turns over a palmful of salt, and sets it to boil. She turns back to me. “What did she think about your marriage?”

She keeps looking at me. I drop my gaze down to the uncut tomatoes. “I don’t know,” I say. “I made the mistake of never asking. Maybe because I knew what she’d say.”

Carol sets her elbows down on the counter. She leans forward toward me. “I think you still know.”

I think about Eric in my parents’ living room all those years ago, asking for my hand.

“I think she thought I wasn’t ready,” I say. “She thought it was too big of a commitment for someone to make at twenty-five.”

“To get married?”

I nod.

“But what did she think about your husband?”

I look at Carol now. She looks so much like her. Her concerned expression, her eyebrows knit together in a show of solidarity, support.