The Friday night dinners have added four chapters to Julia’s Learning Italian. While she cooks all afternoon, she sets her laptop on the counter and chats with Chris. She chops, scoops onions and garlic into the pan to sauté, thinking he’s so close he can smell them sizzling. He tells her about the progress of this year’s pinot noir. The barrel tastings promise a super product. A few splats of olive oil pop out and she swabs off the screen. There—the big smile of Chris at his office in Napa. She likes his desk, two wine barrels topped with an irregular slab of redwood. He sits in a twirly bar chair of cowhide and horns. In a denim shirt, unlike the fitted clothes he wears in Italy, he looks western. His smile transmits across cyberspace the energy she knows well. He’s cooking with her as she tells him about the semolina gnocchi with parmigiano she’s sliding into the oven, about the duck breasts with balsamic reduction and orange peel she has ready to serve.
Twelve at table tonight. Susan has arranged small pots of white cyclamen down the middle, white plates, and a green cloth. She’s excited that Nicolà and Brian are coming. Camille has invited Chiara Bevilacqua, the bookstore owner, and her female partner, name yet unknown, plus Rowan, Annetta and Leo, Colin and Kit. Camille has been closed away all day, emerging at lunch to warm up a serving of leftover lasagne, which she took back to her room, promising she’d be on hand to open the wines and arrange the antipasti platter. Julia and Susan are excited for Camille. She’s working! After weeks of wheeling around in the air, dipping and circling and flying higher and swooping again, the silence in her room sounds like music to them.
“It’s full winter,” Julia tells Chris. “Fall was still hanging on when you left, but there’s been a distinct turn. We hear owls all night.” Julia pauses to look for a hot pad. “You should be here. Come back!” The just-braised broccolini mixed with the onions, garlic, and a couple of anchovies smells bitter, good bitter. Chris watches as she starts prepping, for tomorrow, a rolled turkey breast that Gilda at Hotel Santa Caterina demonstrated in the cooking class Julia attends two mornings a week. She slices the big breast almost through on opposite sides and flattens it out. “Gilda says stuff it with anything you want and I’m going to try various combinations but right now, I’m copying what she did, spreading a layer of ground veal, a layer of coarse bread crumbs, and some chopped pistachios.” She rolls it the long way and ties it with string in four places.
“You’re killing me, you know that.” Chris leans in close. “I’ll have pasta with jarred tomato sauce for dinner tonight. How will you write about this rolled thing for your book?”
“There’s a lot to say about turkey here. Tacchino. They are huge, if you buy a whole one. Twice the normal size. This breast alone looks like a whole turkey! And—I promise, you would not know you are eating turkey. It’s juicy and savory. I thought it was veal. Turkey sandwiches? Forget that! This is the best. And pistachios. I didn’t know they are used a lot in Tuscan recipes. I’m researching that. Why pistachios?”
“I don’t know. I thought they were just for breaking your fingernail on when they bring out a bowl with a Campari Soda. I’m missing you. You’re the only one I could discuss pistachios with for hours.” He hesitates. “Julia, I was wondering. Say no right away if I’m off base. Would you like for me to look up Lizzie in San Francisco, if she’s still there? I know you haven’t heard anything in months and I know you want to have time to get your life back, but you must ache about this.”
Julia put down her spoon. She didn’t answer.
“Hey, you there? Just an idea. I could go to her last address—didn’t you ask me if I knew the Scott and Sutter Street area?—and as quietly as possible see if I can find out anything.”
“Chris, Chris. Thank you. I do push back my worry, I have to, but I’m afraid of choosing to fall on my sword again.”
“Think about it.”
“Thank you. It’s wonderful that you offer. She’d think we sent a spy. You’re too sweet to think of it. But don’t…”
“What if I just case the hood?” How to read this? He heard her hesitate. “You’ve been through too many wringers. I don’t want to meddle.”
“Oh, here are the kittens. Can you see Ragazzo? Look how they’ve grown so fast.”
“Ah, subject over. Cue the kittens! Cute!”
Julia laughed. “Right. Let’s get back to our subjects. When I talk to you, when I’m with you, I’m just me, not a part of a zombie squad in Savannah! Speaking of, you know my daddy is coming for Christmas. We decided to stay here a few days, then go to Rome. Rome! I can’t wait. He wants to go to Naples, too.”
“You’re killing me again. What I’d give to spend the holidays in Rome with you. Does he know how lucky he is?”
“He does! Lizzie was the light of his life but now it’s back to me. You’ll meet him. He’s special, not just that he’s my father either. You’ll be with your boy for Christmas?” Lizzie at Christmas, salt packed in the gaping wound. Ghosts of Christmas past, indeed.
“Part of the time. He’s going up to Tahoe afterward, and I’m going to catch up on work so when I get to Italy in late March, I won’t have to worry.” They’ve finished their final polishing of the Friuli tour, which happens in April. It’s already fully booked.
“I’ve got to get moving on the dessert. Talk tomorrow?”
“I’m already waiting.”