night I tried to make a call and I couldn’t even get a signal.”
“Who’s in the ICU, Clare? What friend?”
“Lorenzo Testa.”
“Aw, no . . .”
We came to our usual little corner table, which stood next to the line of tall French doors. On days like this I expected a drafty chill, but our old hearth was close by; and even though the fire wasn’t what it used to be, the heat was still there for Matt and I, providing just enough warmth to keep us comfortable.
I sat with my back to the smoldering embers and pointed to the chair opposing mine. “Sit. I’ll tell you the whole story . . .”
Matt dropped heavily and I talked . . . and talked. Finally, I ran out of words.
“Sorry I blew up,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
Tucker brought over our double espressos. Matt thanked him and bolted his. I sipped mine slowly.
With an agitated hand, he rubbed the back of his short, dark Caesar. Then (at last) my ex relaxed, stretching out his wrinkled khakis until they extended well beyond the tabletop’s disc of coral-colored marble. His shoes—black high-top sneakers with white laces—were purposefully urban hip. In New York they ran over a hundred dollars. Matt had purchased his in a South American market stall for under two bucks.
Strapped to his right wrist was a glittering Breitling chronometer. Encircling his left was a multicolored tribal bracelet made from braided strips of Ecuadorian leather—and that pretty much summed up the paradox that was Matteo Allegro: one part slick international coffee buyer and one part fearless java trekker, lightly folded together in a larger-than-life concoction that I once couldn’t get enough of and now sometimes found hard to swallow.
“How’s our daughter?” I asked, still savoring my double. (Replacing the grinder had fixed all issues. Tuck’s shots were now spot on, the nutty-earthy sweetness of the crema drenching my tongue in the liquefied aroma of my freshly roasted beans.)
“Joy’s doing great,” Matt said. “I have pictures to show you once I get this piece of crap recharged.”
He threw his latest electronic device onto the cold slab of marble between us—PDA, phone, camera, calculator, microwave oven. I’m not sure what tasks it was supposed to multi.
“Why didn’t you just use a camera?” I said.
“Joy did. She’s going to e-mail you photos of my visit when she can find the time. She’s been working extremely hard, but she says she’s still loving it.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. And does she have a new boyfriend?”
“None that she mentioned. But I think she’s too busy. Which is more than fine with me.” Matt rubbed his eyes. “Frankly, if my baby throws in the towel on this chef thing and decides to join a convent in Lourdes, I’ll breathe a whole lot easier.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. Nothing against the good French sisters, but I want to be a grandmother.”
“Bite your tongue!”
“Give it up, Matt. One of these days, Joy is going to settle on a guy, get married, and have kids—and then you’ll have to hear it—”
“Don’t say it—”
“Grandpa.”
Matt visibly cringed.
“Or would you prefer the cheekier ‘Gramps’?”
Ribbing the man was just too easy. I’d married him at nineteen. He’d been twenty-two at the time, although in matters sexual he’d been a virtual Methuselah. We’d met one summer in Italy (I’d been staying with relatives while studying art history), and when I’d ended up pregnant, after a blindly blissful summer of love, his mother had pressed him to the altar.
Back then, she was the one who’d wanted a grandchild—a legitimate one. So we never looked back, which is why he was far from the age of your average granddaddy.
Needless to say, our wedding hadn’t been the wished-for, dreamed-for event of most young couples, planned down to the last flower petal and Jordan almond. It just happened. And for years I thought that was the reason Matt had gone through such difficulty accepting the ring and the vows and that forsaking-of-all-others-in-short-skirts thing.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Matt’s occupation was partly to blame. I was a needy bride, an uncertain new mother, infatuated with her young handsome groom whose job of sourcing coffee beans took him all over the world, all year long.
Matt had lived for it.
I died a thousand deaths.
Now that we were partners in coffee (instead of matrimony), my feelings about the man’s peripatetic gene were completely upended. So go the astonishing ironies of middle age. Live long enough and you come to love the thing you loathed, embrace the thing you dreaded.
These