please tell me that bruise isn’t his fault. I can put up with temper in a man—God knows I’m living with a teenage son. But violence is completely unacceptable.”
Julie waved off her concerns. “Not to worry. Il Dottore had nothing to do with my shiner. I have my own klutziness to thank for that. Then, there was the glass vase I also chipped today.” She left out the part about it belonging to Sebastiano Fonterra in her own defense.
“I don’t understand how you can be so coordinated at sports, and the next minute trip over your own feet. My God, I remember during the summers as kids how you were the star of the swimming and softball teams. Didn’t they even recruit you to play in the men’s basketball summer league when you were in high school and college?”
“No, by college I’d called it quits. Anyway, I might be coordinated when it comes to sports, but in real life—forget it.”
Katarina studied her childhood friend.
Did she know? The reason I’d quit? Julie wondered. She had never talked about it with Katarina, and she still couldn’t now. Only her family knew why she’d given up a full basketball scholarship to the University of Connecticut, and even they’d never discussed it with her. Ever.
Not that Katarina was the type of person to dwell on the past. After all, she had her own issues growing up with a single mother, who was always moving. From what Julie had gleaned, the only source of stability in Katarina’s life had been her grandmother Lena.
Maybe that’s what drew them together: a refusal to dwell on the past. Or maybe it was because they both loved red wine and sappy movies, and that despite the unspoken vagaries of childhood and young adulthood, they were still there for each other.
From upstairs in the small clapboard house, a fierce cry could be heard. Katarina immediately tuned in. “Ah, it sounds like my son and heir is awake. I knew it was too good to last. Thank goodness Babi
“He’s going to sell the Nighttime Bar? It’s a Grantham institution. He can’t just sell it!” Julie protested. The Nighttime Bar might have been a hole in the wall off Route 206, but it was a hole in the wall that had attracted some of the top names in jazz over the years, musicians who sought an intimate, knowledgeable crowd and Rufus’s easy bonhomie.
“We’ll see. But let me finish, would you!”
Julie sat back against the cushions and crossed her arms. “I’m waiting.”
“Okay. While Rufus and I were talking, somehow the conversation got sidetracked onto the hospital expansion.”
Katarina looked up when her grandmother came into the kitchen holding her son. “Ah, my favorite little boy,” she cooed and clapped her hands. “Hello, Rad. Did you miss your mommy?”
The three-month-old baby boy was named for Lena’s late husband, Radko, who had died before Katarina was born. His still sleepy eyes were red from crying, but they lit up as soon as he saw Katarina. She held out her arms, and he immediately cuddled close, his mouth rooting around her breasts.
“Men, they’re all alike,” Katarina complained as she unbuttoned the front of her loose blouse and undid the snaps on her nursing bra.
Lena looked on, smiling. “He slept the whole time you were gone, I’ll have you know, so he deserves a reward. And it’s a gift to nurse your child.”
The baby latched on and started to suck with a steady determination.
“Oh, my goodness, your cheek, Julie!” Lena exclaimed. “What happened? Do you need something? Calamine lotion? I have a bag of frozen peas in the freezer.”
“It’s nothing, really,” Julie assured her. “Just a little bump.” She needed more concealer, clearly.
Rad’s voracious eating produced a smacking noise.
Julie laughed and leaned across the table to stroke his tiny fingers. Julie’s touch made him quiver, and he shifted to grip the skin above Katarina’s nipple and feather it with his tiny fingers.
“What little starfish hands,” she marveled. “I’m always amazed the way they come out with all the little wrinkles at the knuckles and tiny little nails.”
Katarina glanced her way. “All the better to scratch me with.”
“And you wouldn’t give it up for a moment,” Julie replied. She heard Lena clattering pots and pans behind her and swiveled around. “Can I help you with anything there, Mrs. Zemanova?”
“How sweet of you to offer.” Lena turned on a stove burner and placed a frying pan on it. She cut a generous hunk of butter and dropped it into the pan to melt. “I’m just frying up some onions to go with the pirohy,” she said, referring to the Slovakian stuffed dumplings. “Just a little something light, you know.”
A little something light? Julie mouthed to Katarina behind Lena’s back.
“But if you really want to do something, you can get the container of sour cream out of the fridge and put it in a bowl.” Lena nodded toward an overhead cabinet to indicate where the bowls were kept.
Julie slid across the window seat, got up and headed for the refrigerator.
“If you think we need more to eat, there’s mushroom soup that I made in a Rubbermaid container on the left,” Lena said in a raised voice as she fried the chopped onion.
Julie chewed her lower lip. “It’s tempting. What do you think, Katarina?” She turned to her friend.
Katarina moaned as she shifted Rad from one breast to the other. “Please, I’m trying to lose weight after the baby. Not all of us can eat anything and everything and still look like a long toothpick.”
“I guess no soup then.” Julie finished dishing the sour cream into a blue-and-white pottery bowl. “I’ll put this on the table, okay?” she said on her way to the dining room.
“Yes, that’s good,” Lena called out. “Put it next to the silver serving spoon. Meanwhile I’ll start to put up the pirohy because it looks like our little man is just about finished.” She removed a clean dishcloth covering a cookie sheet and exposed a neat array of crescent-shaped dumplings. She carefully dropped them into the pot of boiling water, and when they floated to the top, she ladled them out and placed them on a large china platter. She had already dished the sautéed onions into a matching bowl. “Who wants to take these in?” she asked.
“Julie, why don’t you take the baby, and I’ll help with the food,” Katarina said, passing him over and doing up her bra. “He still needs to be burped so take the receiving blanket. Otherwise he’ll upchuck all over your sweater.” She smoothed her long red hair off her shoulder.
“That’s what dry cleaning is for is what I say.” Julie mugged at Rad as she held him up. She confidently maneuvered the baby to her shoulder and patted him repeatedly on his back.
“Okay, Babi
Lena picked up the onions and marched on her Easy Spirit walking shoes to the dining room. She might be in her early seventies, but she was fit as a fiddle from tennis three days a week and tai chi classes at the Adult School.
“I know, I know,” she said, “but I wasn’t sure if Wanda was going to join us with little Natalie. They have music-and-little-tikes class today.” Wanda was a retired high school math teacher who now lived with Lena and took care of the one-year-old daughter