To Tuscany with Love (19 page)

The tapping stopped. “What do you need to let me have this?”

“I direct and Sunny has a part. A speaking part.”

“She’ll get a screen test. If she has anything, she gets a part. No promises, though, on whether we see her face or hear her voice on-screen.”

Sunny had expected this. All he had hoped for was to get her a screen test; the rest was up to her. Rune’s eyes narrowed. He went for the deal. “And I direct. With a piece of the action, of course.”

Frankie’s guffaw split the air between them. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Steven Spielberg? Here’s the deal. You direct the first month of production. If the takes don’t look good, you’re out. If they’re good, you get to keep going. You get a quarter of a million. Period. No percentage. If the movie tears up the box office, you’ll have press worth millions.”

Rune threw back his shoulders. “I found the script. I get a piece.”

“You get jack shit.” Frankie leaned into him. His sneer uncovered two gold crowns. “I’m willing, for the next two minutes, to give you a shot at directing. After that, I’ll wait until Sunny comes on her knees to me with the script between her bare breasts. Then I’ll get the script and a piece of ass without you as part of the deal.”

Rune had only one choice. He extended his right hand. A one-month test? No problem, man.

21

New York, New York

B
ella, who at forty-one still garnered wolf whistles when she passed construction sites, straightened the faded linen table runner for the fourth time. She thought of all the nights her son David had sat here, eager to tell her about his day. This was where they ate, he did homework, and she’d clean and bandage his scrapes and cuts from the neighborhood bullies.

David and his girlfriend—
the
girl, he said—were due any minute.

Now a college junior, David had said he’d pop for a taxi from the train station with money saved from tutoring freshmen at Tufts. Three loud raps from a fist hitting the wooden door startled Bella. They were here.

Bella opened the door and smiled.

David rushed in and raised her off her feet in a waist-cinching bear hug. Bella closed her eyes; she drank in the smell of him—clean soap with hints of cedar. Her arms crossed around his neck. His height struck her first.

His arms dropped and she pulled back to study his face. “I haven’t seen you for two months, and you grew again.”

She tweaked his chin, a gesture she’d picked up from Nonna Maria.

“Mom.” His voice chastised her.

She took the hint and dropped her hand. Bella then turned and pulled the tiny blonde to her in a breast-flattening hug. And the girl had a lot to flatten. Definitely a boob job—too firm and too perfect. Bella’s smile stiffened. She had to say something. Something nice. “I’m delighted to finally meet you, Crystal.”

The girl’s eyes flickered. One deliberate, practiced eye blink, and Crystal smiled.

She’s good. I bet she spent hours in front of the mirror practicing her expressions, Bella thought.

“It’s great to meet you, too, Mrs. Rossini.” Crystal’s perky smile and fluttering eyes suited her baby doll pink cashmere sweater.

“It’s Ms. Rossini, not Mrs.”

“Oh, of course.” Crystal tucked her matching pink fingernails into the crook of David’s arm. “My apologies. Davie told me you hadn’t been married. I just said ‘Mrs.’ out of habit.”

Davie?

David circled the waists of the two women with his strong, wiry arms. Black hairs, thicker now than two months earlier, curled over the wide band of his watch.

“Your dinner smells outta-sight, Mom. It was a siren call coming up the stairs.” David propelled them all forward, closer to the kitchen table, only a few feet in from the door. “Put us to work. You know I love helping you cook.”

Bella laughed. “That’s only because you snitch food the entire time you help.” She reached out and grabbed her apron, a faded, threadbare, flowered cotton print, with ruffles on the shoulders.

She’d kept all of Nonna Maria’s aprons after she died. Maria, a tiny, generous Italian grandmother to the world, had lived next door to Bella and David for eighteen years. Bella had cleaned Maria’s apartment and run her errands. When he was too young to be alone and Bella couldn’t bring him to work, David had stayed with Maria. Maria had taught them both Italian and shamed them into relentless practice.

They had become each other’s family. Maria had lost her two sons and husband in World War II. After the war, she had immigrated to the United States in a moment of defiance.

Bella eyed Crystal’s expensive clothes. “I’ll get you an apron, Crystal.”

Crystal shook her honey blond hair over her shoulders. “Oh, I don’t cook.” She giggled. “But I’m a pro at making reservations.”

Bella nodded. The words that begged to come out lodged like a jagged potato chip in the back of her throat.

“By the looks of it,” David said, rushing to his girlfriend’s defense, “there’s not much left to do, anyway. Right, Mom?” His eyes pleaded with her.

He always could melt her. “All that’s left is setting the table, mashing the potatoes, and making the gravy. You’re my masher, buddy.”

“Always.” He smiled at Bella.

“Crystal.” Bella touched the girl’s pink sleeve and nodded at the antique sideboard. “Would you mind setting the table? Today there’s just the three of us. I’d like to use our good dishes, in honor of you joining us today.”

“Now that,” Crystal giggled, “I can do.”

Bella tackled the gravy while David smashed the potatoes with the same aggression he had used against the Puerto Ricans he grew up fighting, two streets over. Bella heard the sideboard doors opening and closing. A quick glance told her that only the silverware had found its way to the table.

Crystal wrapped her arms around David’s waist from the back. Bella couldn’t help but notice she was curving her pelvis against his backside.

“I’m such a goof, Davie. I can’t even set the table. I couldn’t find the good dishes, just old cracked ones.”

A scarlet flush raced up David’s cheeks to his hairline and down into the crew neck of his T-shirt.

Bella couldn’t stand it. “Those are the good dishes. We inherited them from the kindest woman in the world. They’re irreplaceable. Nonna Maria brought only the clothes she wore and her dishes when she emigrated from Italy.”

“Oh.” Even Crystal could see the faux pas she had committed.

“She didn’t know.” The chill in David’s tone hit Bella smack in the gut.

Bella fumed inside and busied herself with setting food on the table. Hoping to redeem herself with her son, she enlisted David and Crystal in selecting a record album to put on the stereo. Thank goodness, vinyl records were slowly resurging in popularity, or she suspected that Crystal would have commented on that as well.

At the simple wooden table, Bella crossed herself and bowed her head. David bowed his head but kept his folded hands in his lap. She resisted the temptation to pop the side of his head with her knuckles. He’d done this before—abandoned the visible practice of Catholicism in favor of the Protestant habits of his friends. He’s an adult now, she told herself. No head pops allowed.

“So what do you do?” Crystal’s smile broadcast her desire to win Bella’s approval in spite of the rocky start.

“I clean houses for a living. I started it when David was born. I didn’t have enough money for rent, food, and a babysitter. It was work I could do and bring him with me when he was first born.”

“You’re a maid?” The words burst from Crystal’s mouth as if she had spewed vomit in a sudden attack of explosive flu.

Bella watched her son—handsome as a Greek god—cast his eyes down, away from his mother and his girlfriend.

Bella met the girl’s wide-eyed stare head on. “Yes.”

Crystal’s palms pressed against the table. “Davie, is this true? Your mother’s a ... a maid? And you never told me?”

David grabbed Crystal’s hand. “It’s not what you think.” His eyes glared at Bella.

Shocked by her son’s disloyalty, Bella’s eyes darted from David to Crystal and back to David. Their faces hid no secrets. They were all on some cockeyed carousel run amok. How could they all feel betrayed? This couldn’t be happening. David, looking at her that way, like she’d done something wrong. Bella had always held him first in her priorities. Always.

Crystal forced her wooden chair back; it crashed to the floor when she stood.

David slid out from the table, moved to face her, and put his hands on her shoulders.

Crystal’s face flushed crimson. Her voice trembled. “You never told me.”

Bella couldn’t help herself. She had fought down all the ugliness she wanted to fling at this shallow leech of a girl. Now, she kept her voice calm and soft, the voice of reason. David needed to see the truth about his little girlfriend. “It shouldn’t matter.”

David’s voice, frigid with anger, shocked Bella. “It’s not your business, so keep out of this.”

“David—” Bella said.

“Shut up.”

His words struck her with the force of a slap to the face. Bella pushed herself up from the table. “Don’t speak to me that way.”

His soft, enunciated words cut like a dagger. “Be glad I didn’t tell you to fuck off.”

“David.” Crystal’s whining voice brought his full attention back to her. “I ... I can’t.” She shook her head. “I can’t be with someone whose mother is a maid.”

“I’m not my mother.”

Crystal’s eyes darted around the room. Then, with an apparent sudden moment of clarity, she stomped to her calf-length cashmere coat and proceeded to bundle herself up. She ignored Bella as if she were no more important than the twenty-five-year-old stove.

“Can you imagine our wedding? Dear Mrs. Gates, this is my mother-in-law, Bella Rossini, whom you may have run into cleaning someone’s toilet?” She flung her matching scarf around her neck. “Not on your life. I’m out of here. And you can forget I ever knew you.” She tromped over to the phone, picked it up as if she feared catching a debilitating disease, and called a cab. She looked at David only to ask the apartment address.

“Crystal.” David’s hand stroked the back of her shoulder. “Take five. You’re overreacting. Just chill a minute, will you? Let’s not go somewhere we can’t return from.”

Crystal spun to face him. An evil sneer erased her beauty.

“Oh. We’ve already gone way too far. And believe me, I will never, ever, be here again.” She stormed out, slamming the door behind her so hard the cups in the sideboard clinked together.

David moved to the door.

“Let ... her ... go.” Bella’s voice left no room for negotiation or discussion.

David stood facing the door, at a crossroads.

Bella couldn’t allow the attack that was boiling inside her to spill out. Count to ten, a slow ten, she thought. “I’m sorry.”

David rested his forehead against the door. When he righted it, he faced the door, his back to her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“After I started school, why didn’t you get another job? I could have stayed with Nonna Maria after school until you got home.”

Bella studied how the hair at the back of his head curled over his collar. His hair always had a wave to it. He got it from his father. She wanted to run her fingers up his head, from the nape to the crown, and then kiss his forehead, like she’d done when he was a little boy.

He turned to face her. His eyebrows knitted together. “You’re smart and witty and work harder than anyone I know. Didn’t you ever want to be more than a maid?”

Pain creased his face.

“Is it my fault? Did being out of the workforce because of me hinder your job prospects? Was being a maid more lucrative than your other alternatives?”

Not shame, but a lack of understanding tinged his questions.

Bella pulled out a chair for him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing is your fault. Don’t ever think that.” She stared at David. The pain on his face seared her. She knew it was now or never. “I’m a writer.”

Bella inhaled deeply, then let the flood waters loose. “Books. Two action/adventure series, plus children’s books. I started writing before you were even born. Got lucky by meeting someone in publishing very early.” She nodded. “She initially was one of my housekeeping clients, and later my editor.” The relief of finally spilling her secret washed over her.

He sat down. His face broadcast his confusion.

“I didn’t tell you at first because you were so little.” Bella reached out her hand to rest it on his arm. “Then it seemed a fluke, not something that would ever support us.”

The reason she had kept this all a secret stemmed from the devastation she had felt long before, when Phillip chose to marry another woman. He had married for money, and for an easy ticket up the corporate ladder. Bella wanted David to learn that money can’t create happiness, only love can. More than anything, she
needed
him to understand this.

“How successful are you?” With his stony expression and flat tone, he could have been asking directions from someone in the train station.

With a smile, Bella said, “I passed the million books in print mark when you were twelve.”