On What Grounds

God, this was infuriating. My ex-husband knew my kitchen better than I did—and wasn’t shy about making sure I knew it. Well, I reminded myself, he had lived here as a boy with his mother before Pierre had moved them up to Fifth Avenue. Resentment rose in me anyway. I checked my watch. For Joy’s sake, I reminded myself yet again, I wasn’t going to start any battles with her father. Not before dinner anyway.

“So what’s on the menu?” I said, changing the subject to one that was nice, safe, and neutral: Food.

“I’m going with the fettuccini carbonara,” he said. “It’s rich—especially when I make it with fettuccini instead of thin spaghetti—but Joy always loved it when I cooked it for her. And it’s probably the only dish I can still cook better than my soon-to-be-chef daughter. She’s probably a real pro now that she’s been formally trained.”

“Matt, she just started culinary school. She’s years from graduation,” I said. “In fact, she confessed to me that she’s having a little trouble in one class. Apparently a hollandaise broke and the guest instructor humiliated her in front of the rest of the class.”

“Maybe she needs a few pointers from her dad.”

“You think you could help her?” I asked hopefully.

“Sure. And this should cheer her up, too.” Matt reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, square box. “Check this out,” he said.

I opened the box.

“I picked it up in Mexico,” said Matt.

I looked down and almost winced. Not again.

When Joy was nine, Matt brought a bracelet back from one of his endless trips and gave it to her. The bracelet was lovely, its delicate links made of pure, fourteen-karat rose gold. Since then, Matteo had presented her with various charms, distinctive little items he found over the years in foreign lands on his never-ending quests for the richest coffees, the bluest waves, the tallest mountains—and (I’m sure) other sorts of stimulation as well (cocaine and women).

For a lot of years, those seemingly thoughtful little baubles from Dad, transported from faraway lands, delighted Joy. In grade school she wore the bracelet constantly. In junior high less so, and by high school…Well, the truth was, Joy hadn’t worn that charm bracelet in public since the junior high school prom—not that Matt was ever around enough to notice.

“It’s a charm,” Matt explained. “For Joy’s bracelet. Think she’ll be wearing it tonight?”

“I don’t know…”

“Like it?”

“It’s…interesting,” I said diplomatically. What I was looking at was a little nugget of gold shaped like an incredibly stout woman wearing a bowler hat and holding an ear of corn over her prodigious breasts.

“It’s supposed to be Centeotl, the Aztec goddess of corn,” Matt explained, after noting my puzzled expression. I nodded, not quite up on my religions of Mesoamerica.

“And the significance is?” I asked.

“Corn was central to the Aztec diet. Their corn goddess was a harvest god. And since Joy is going to be a chef, I figured, you know…food, harvest…” Matt’s voice trailed off, and he shrugged his broad shoulders.

“How very Joseph Campbell of you,” I said, trying to be positive. I handed the box back to him and laughed as I added, “as long as it’s not some sort of fertility goddess.”

Matt stared down at it. His brow wrinkled. “Actually I think it is.”

We were interrupted by another rhythmic knock—the identical one Matt had used.

“Joy!” I said.

She’d finally arrived. The two of us ran a sort of short foot race (which looked about as embarrassing as it sounds) to see who would be the first to greet her.

I won—by virtue of being short enough to duck under Matt’s arms, just as he was pulling open the door.

“Hello!” I said, reaching up to hug my daughter, who either had grown another two inches since the last time I saw her or was wearing stacked heels.

“Mom,” she cried, hugging me back. “I saw Tucker downstairs and he told me about Anabelle. How terrible!”

“Hi, kiddo!” Matt said. Joy rushed into his arms.

“I missed you so much, Daddy,” she said, squeezing him tightly.

I was about to close the door when the shadow of another figure fell across the threshold.

“Mom. Dad,” Joy said, bursting with excitement. “Here’s my surprise! I want you to meet Mario Forte.”

A young man stepped into the room. He was tall for an Italian. That’s the first thing I noticed. Taller even than Matteo. (Now I knew why Joy was wearing stacked heels!) His hair was black and long and tied back in a loose ponytail. His lips were curled into a slight smirk which, to my mind, marred his otherwise good features. He wore black slacks and a long-sleeved black shirt, unbuttoned far enough from the neck to show a gold chain dangling between sculpted pecs. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled up and I glimpsed some sort of tattoo around his bicep—it looked like barbed wire.

Joy looked up at the young man with something akin to hero worship. Uh-oh, I thought. She was smitten. And my ex-husband tensed the moment he realized it.

So much for a relaxing evening.

“Mrs. Allegro,” said the young man, taking my hand. “It is a pleasure to meet with you at last. Joy has told me so much about you.”

Is that right? I thought, then why didn’t she mention I’m “Ms. Cosi,” and no longer “Mrs. Allegro”?

“And you must be Mr. Allegro,” Mario said, stepping up to Matteo and reaching out to shake his hand. “I did not expect to meet you so soon—”

“I’ll just bet you didn’t,” Matt muttered, his jaw muscles working. They shook hands, but neither seemed to put much enthusiasm in the gesture.

“Joy told me that her father was a mystery man,” Mario said with a little chuckle. “The ‘mystery’ was when you were going to finally make an appearance at home.”

Matt looked like a pressure cooker ready to blow. Thank goodness Joy was canny enough to step between the two men.

“Something smells good,” she said, her voice a little too high-pitched. “What’s for dinner?”

“Carbonara,” Matt said through clenched teeth.

“And my cappuccino walnut cheesecake!” I added in a pitch even higher than my daughter’s. My god, in an effort to cut through the tension, I was actually chirping like Doris Day.

Joy looked at me. “Surprise!” she said feebly.

“Not the surprise we expected,” I said with a look that told her: You should have warned me. “Well, I’d better set another place at the table. Why don’t you both make yourselves comfortable.”

Though I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, as I set a new place at the dining room table, I cursed Centeotl, the Aztec goddess of corn and fertility, along with my ex-husband for bringing that golden witch under my roof.

Sixteen

I returned to the kitchen to find Mario and Matteo having a little disagreement about something. Matt clutched a meat cleaver in one white-knuckled fist—not a good sign.

“Fettuccini carbonara should be prepared with pancetta,” Mario was saying. “Never with American bacon.”

“Carbonara is a Depression-era dish created by Italian-Americans,” Matt stated. “How many of them had pancetta? Anyway, Joy likes carbonara prepared with bacon.” He turned to Joy for some support. “Don’t you, kiddo?”

Joy turned to me, her eyes pleading.