Delicious! (19 page)

“He wouldn’t go somewhere else,” I said, somehow knowing it was true. Then I remembered the blonde he’d been with the last time, and I wondered if he was embarrassed. Had he caught Sal’s look of disappointment? I hoped not; Sundays seemed longer without him.

New Year’s Eve was always the busiest day of the year, and when we closed the door at seven, customers were still trying to push in, desperate for one last item that would make their party perfect. Sal was such an easy touch, until Rosalie finally put her foot down.

“This is our night,” she said, firmly locking the door. “We’ve got resolutions to make! Coming, Theresa?” She herded us all up the stairs.

Sal and Rosalie were the only people I’d met in New York who occupied a real house. The shop was on the ground floor, the bedrooms on the top, but in between was one enormous room. Part kitchen, part living room, part dining room, it was filled with sisters, aunts, grandchildren, and cousins, all talking, gesticulating, kissing. More people kept arriving, trying to find room on the long table to set yet another platter.

Sal tipped his wineglass toward the table. “We do the traditional seven fishes on New Year’s instead of Christmas.” He handed me a glass of wine. “What does your family do for New Year’s Eve?”

“Nothing much.” Dad, Aunt Melba, and I always tried to stay up to watch the ball drop in Times Square, but I don’t remember ever making it. Genie always had a date.

Sal frowned. “But what about the resolutions?” He took me around the room, introducing me to a bewildering number of relatives until his daughter, Toni, came to my rescue.

“Dad! Stop! Billie doesn’t need to know how every one of these people is related to us.” Grabbing my hand, she pulled me to a sofa. “You think this is bad?” She sat down next to me. “Imagine what it was like when I brought boyfriends home. I married the only date I ever had who could talk my father to a standstill.”

I nodded, which was all she expected from me; in this maelstrom of words, silence was acceptable, and I was content to watch and listen. Sal clinked a spoon against a glass, and Toni pulled me to the table and sat down next to me. When Sal sat on my other side, my night was made; sitting between them, I felt anchored, safe.

Rosalie stayed on her feet, setting down platter after platter of food. The meal began with pickled squid, oyster shooters, marinated anchovies, and scungilli salad. Then Rosalie set an enormous bowl of pasta con le vongole in front of Sal, who ladled it out, talking the entire time. The pasta was followed by huge platters of scampi, which we passed around. It was almost eleven when Rosalie set three enormous stuffed turbots on the table, and it was near midnight when she appeared with a plate of warm sugar-dusted sfinge.

“So our first taste of the New Year will be sweet,” Sal whispered in my ear. He grabbed my left hand and Toni grabbed my right, and we were linked around the table, joined together, all of us, facing whatever the coming year might bring. Sal leaned over to whisper, “Italian families always welcome the New Year like this.” He gave my hand a squeeze and shouted, “Ten!”

I thought about Richard and wondered if he was with his family, holding hands and counting down the seconds to the future. Sal shouted, “Nine!,” and I joined in, shouting, “Eight! Seven! Six!” along with them.

As the seconds ticked away, I looked around the table. It was comforting to think of them sitting here, year in, year out, playing out this ritual. I thought again of Richard. Was he with his grandmother, the one who was still so bitter about the war? There was another thought, right behind that, nagging at me.

“Five!” we shouted. “Four!”

If Richard’s nonna was alive, then why not Lulu?

“Three!”

How old would she be? I began to do the calculations. She was twelve in 194? …

“Two!”

 … so she was born in 1930. That would make her …

“Happy New Year!”

Next to me, Toni blew her party horn. Lulu would be only eighty-one. She might still be alive.

LIKE A SONG
you can’t forget, the words “enemy food” repeated themselves over and over in my head. They even took on a rhythm, that old song “Mother-in-Law,” so that before long I was humming them. I could hardly wait to get back to the library and find out if that was the next clue.

January second fell on Monday, so I didn’t have long to wait. When I got to the mansion, the mail was filled with tales of holiday disasters: dry turkeys, exploded hams, melting icing. I flicked quickly through the emails and letters. Calamity could wait.

In the library, I found a single card titled “Enemy Food,” wedged between “Egyptian Cuisine” and “Escargots.” I picked it up and peered at the peacock-blue ink. “During the Second World War, there was such a deep prejudice against all things Italian that, in some parts of the United States, spaghetti, lasagna, and all forms of pasta were considered ‘enemy food.’ There are some very interesting letters on the subject filed under ‘Italian Recipes,’ 1943.”

Pleased that my intuition had been correct, I went into the secret room, pulled down “Italian Recipes,” sat with my back against the wall, and opened the file.

I tried to imagine what Lulu would look like as an old woman, but in my head she remained stubbornly thirteen. How did you locate someone when you didn’t know her married name, where she lived, or what she had been doing for the past seventy years?

Maybe she had married Tommy. That might be a place to start. I
could search for her father’s army records. Maybe I could even find an old Akron phone book.

The Goodyear Aircraft Corporation! There might be some record of Mrs. Swan’s employment at the Airdock.

I
FOUND THE MURROW BROADCAST ONLINE. IT WAS CALLED “ORCHESTRATED HELL,”
and after I had listened to it twice, I went to the computer and ordered five books on World War II. Imagining a still-living Lulu changed everything; what had once been ancient history had come charging into the present.

The end of 1943 was terrible. The British were bombing Berlin, but the cost was enormous. The war was spreading across the globe, and no matter where you landed, something dreadful was going on. In the Pacific, the Americans were slogging through the Gilbert Islands and raiding Rangoon. The British were having awful adventures in Italy, and the Americans were on their way to join them. Just after Christmas, Eisenhower took on Operation Overlord, which would become the Normandy invasion.

How could they bear it? Soldiers left for years, some without ever coming home. No Internet, no Skype, and the letters were all censored. When someone died, it could be months before the family even found out. It seemed like another world, like the dark ages, as if the people who lived in it were a different, tougher race.

That night I dreamed of bodies falling from the sky. Even in my sleep I recognized the images from 9/11—that man with his leg bent, boots out before him, as he plunged from the glass tower. It made everything seem more immediate. Lulu’s war had become my own.

But the next morning I realized there was something more. It was not only Lulu who worried me. I pictured the glass building and saw
that it wasn’t the World Trade Center; it was where Sammy lived. Where was he? If he’d been off doing holiday research, he should be back by now. I kept calling his apartment, but there was still no answer. It had been five weeks since anyone had heard from him.

I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, trying to wash the dream away. When I got to the mansion, I sat down at my desk and dialed Sammy’s number. No answer. This wasn’t right; he’d been gone too long. I was starting to feel truly alarmed when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Cloverly, at her most querulous.

“I made that red salad that was on the cover some time back, thinking it would be perfect for Christmas. Well, it was no such thing! It was vile, absolutely vile!”

“Happy New Year to you too, Mrs. Cloverly,” I replied.

“Oh.” She seemed surprised by her own rudeness. “I hope your holidays were very pleasant, dear.” And then, as if she had been sitting by the phone for weeks, clutching this complaint to her chest, she rushed on. “My holiday was ruined by that despicable salad!”

I was starting to apologize when Richard texted that he was on his way up. “What a coincidence, Mrs. Cloverly. The man who invented that particular dish will be here any minute. Perhaps you’d like to discuss the recipe with him?”

“Oh, no, dear,” she said quickly. “A man? I couldn’t do that! In fact, I must be on my way.”

“So odd,” I said to Richard when he appeared. “The idea of talking to a man seemed to terrify her. I wonder why.”