Cast Me Gently (30 page)

“Teresa, you don’t have to do that,” Mrs. Schiavo said as Teresa paused her sweeping of the sidewalk in front of the store to help distribute the bread.

“I don’t mind.” Teresa took the leftover loaves and broke them in half. She kept glancing over the heads of the people gathered there, hoping to catch a glimpse of Dogman and Lucy, but she suspected she would never see them again. She gave out the last of the bread and returned the tray to Mrs. Schiavo.

“Come inside.” Mrs. Schiavo led the way into the bakery and poured two cups of strong coffee. She joined Teresa at a table, setting a doughnut down in front of her. “How are you doing?”

Teresa tore off a bite of doughnut and dunked it in her coffee before eating it. “I’m doing okay.”

Mrs. Schiavo peered into her face. “Just okay?”

Teresa nodded. “Just okay. But okay is better than it has been.”

Mrs. Schiavo thought about this as she sipped her coffee. “What would make it better than okay? Is it your mama?”

“No, surprisingly.” Teresa gave a tight-lipped smile. “It isn’t my mother.”

“Then it’s love,” Mrs. Schiavo said. “Love, she doesn’t always go smooth, does she?”

Teresa opened her mouth and closed it. “No. She doesn’t always go smooth.”

“How old are you?”

Teresa blinked. “Thirty-five next week.”

“So young.” Mrs. Schiavo clucked her tongue. “So much life ahead of you. Are you better? From the hospital?”

“Yes.” Teresa kept her gaze on her doughnut. “I’m better.”

“But still afraid?”

Teresa looked up sharply. “Yes, sometimes.”

“And angry.” Mrs. Schiavo nodded. “Fear and anger, they go like this.” She clasped her gnarled hands together. “When the fear, she goes away, the anger, she will go, also.”

“I’d better get back to the store,” Teresa said. “Thanks, Mrs. Schiavo.”

The drugstore was still empty when she got back inside. Her mother had been coming in a bit later than she used to. It wasn’t exactly angry between them anymore. It was just strained. They talked about the store and inventory; they talked about Francesca and the kids; they talked about the aunts, but Sylvia never mentioned Ellie or asked how Teresa was doing in her house. Teresa brought her own dinner; Sylvia didn’t come back with a plate in the evenings.

“I always wished she would stop being so nosy, butting into my life all the time,” Teresa had confided to Bernie a couple of days ago. “But now that she has, it’s really weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?”

“More good than bad,” Teresa said. “Makes it hard to think of things to say sometimes, so we just don’t talk for long periods of time.”

“Jesus, that would be weird,” Bernie said. “I can’t picture your mother keeping her mouth shut. What do you want to do for your birthday?”

“That was an abrupt change of topic,” Teresa said, narrowing her eyes. “Why? What do you have in mind?”

Bernie grinned with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Want to go dancing? I kind of miss going out to Wild Sisters. It was fun. And it’s not like the asshole will ever take me dancing. Too afraid someone will see us and tell his fucking wife.”

“I’ll think about it,” Teresa said, but privately, she knew she had no intention of going near that place again. To be there without Ellie would feel as if she were cheating. That made no sense, but she couldn’t imagine being with another woman, even if it was just dancing. “In the meantime, I need you and your mom to come to dinner on Sunday. I don’t know if I can stand them celebrating my birthday without some backup.”

CHAPTER 31

Teresa knocked on the
door and opened it. “Anyone home?”

“Come on in,” Karen called from the kitchen. “Rob should be home any minute.”

Teresa took off her jacket and hung it in the foyer closet. “What can I help with?”

“Pour us some wine, and then you can take over with the fettuccini.” Karen moved over to chop up some carrots for a salad.

“Fettuccini?” Teresa went to the pot where the water was boiling. “Y’uns don’t usually eat this heavy.”

Karen shrugged. “We are tonight.”

Teresa’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up?”

Her question was answered immediately by Rob’s entrance, accompanied by Anita. Teresa gave Karen an “I should have known” kind of look. Robbie, taking Anita’s coat for her, looked a little embarrassed.

“What can I do?” Anita asked. She hurried into the kitchen where Karen set her to work on the salad while she went to finish setting the table.

“So how are you, Nita?” Teresa asked, stirring the fettuccini noodles.

“Same old things,” Anita said. She waved her knife, sending a bit of celery flying through the air. “Everything hurts. I don’t know how long I’m going to last.”

Teresa smiled and picked up the celery. She lifted the cover on the alfredo sauce, giving it a stir and then raised the spoon to her lips. She sprinkled a little more salt into the sauce. “You’d better be here a good, long time. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Anita scoffed. “You never come to see us. When you come to Sunday dinner, you don’t say two words. You’re like a ghost of the old Teresa.”

Teresa didn’t respond. She could feel Anita’s eyes boring into her back, but she busied herself stirring the sauce again.

“Smells great,” Robbie said. He rolled his shirtsleeves and washed up.

They finished dinner preparations and sat, where Anita insisted on saying grace before they ate. Rob passed the bread while Teresa looked suspiciously from one of them to another. They ate for several minutes, but no one said anything and no one made eye contact.

“All right.” Teresa set her fork down. “What’s up? Nita isn’t here by chance. Y’uns are up to something, so out with it.”

Anita suddenly found her salad very interesting while Rob shoveled another forkful of fettuccini into his mouth. Karen gave them a disapproving glance.

“Since these two are turning chicken,” Karen said, “I’ll tell you what’s going on.” She set her fork down as well and placed her elbows on the table. “We’re worried about you.”

Teresa sat back. Conversations like this never happened in this family. It was one thing to yell or squabble, but no one talked about feelings. She waited nervously.

“Let her eat first,” Rob said, but at Karen’s glower, he lowered his fork as well. “She’s right. We are worried about you.”

“You’re not happy,” Anita said.

“I’m fine,” Teresa said. “I’ve just been through a lot.”

“Yes, you have,” Karen said. “I can’t imagine what you went through that night, but this is more than that, and you know it.”

Teresa’s heart hammered in her chest. Except for blurting out to her mother that she loved Ellie, she’d never talked about this to anyone. She didn’t know exactly how much they knew or guessed.

“Resa,” Rob said. “Look, we know this is hard. And it’s not something you can just talk about. But we want to tell you, all of us, that we support you. We’ll be here for you, no matter what.”

Teresa stared at her plate. They still weren’t saying precisely what it was they supported—
do they really know?
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t take the chance that they weren’t talking about the same thing.

“Teresa.” Anita reached over and placed her hand on Teresa’s arm. “I told you about Nikolas. How we let our families keep us apart. How I’ve regretted that decision my whole life. I may not understand loving another girl, but I understand love. If you love Ellie, you need to go to her.”

Teresa couldn’t have been more shocked if Anita had slapped her. She looked up warily, meeting their eyes one at a time, watching for signs of judgment or disgust—the things she’d seen in her mother’s eyes—but there was none of that.

Karen spoke first. “We’ve never seen you as alive as you were with Ellie.”

“And this,” Rob said, waving his hand in her direction, “is bullshit.”

Teresa snorted with laughter, her eyes filling with tears.

Rob pressed his advantage. “We’ll deal with Ma and Pop. Go to her.”

Teresa blinked rapidly. “It’s not that simple. We didn’t—things weren’t good between us when she left.”

Karen reached for Rob’s hand. “Love isn’t always easy. We’ve had our rough patches. But it’s always worth it. Do you love her?”

Do you still love me?

Teresa hadn’t been able to answer that question when Ellie asked it. She hadn’t felt anything except fear and anger then, but, as Mrs. Schiavo had said, when she’d finally been able to let go of the fear, the anger had gone as well. What was left now, was an ache—a terrible, empty ache.

“I… I have to think about it,” was all Teresa could say.

“But—”

Karen started to argue, but Anita cut in.

“That’s enough for now. The food’s getting cold. Let’s eat.”

Teresa shot her godmother a look of gratitude. She knew Teresa well enough to know that more talking was not productive. All her life, the best way to talk Teresa into anything was to plant the seed and leave her alone to think it over.

When dinner was over, Teresa and Anita insisted on helping to clean up.

“Thanks,” Teresa mumbled to Rob and Karen as she said good night. “I’ll take Nita home.”

In the car, Anita talked about nothing important—Luisa’s gout in her big toe, was Gianni ever going to get engaged to Angelina, what a stinker little Rickie was—and Teresa was again grateful to her aunt for not expecting her to talk. She couldn’t have talked right now, not without bursting into tears.

She pulled up at the curb. “I’ll walk you up.” She accompanied Anita up to the front door where Anita turned to her.

“Good night, my angel.”

“You haven’t said that since I was little,” Teresa said, her voice cracking.

Anita laid a loving hand on Teresa’s cheek. “I know.”

She went inside, and Teresa walked slowly back to her VW. As she drove, Teresa felt a slow upwelling of emotion, a tidal wave of things she’d kept in, walled up, ever since the terror of that night in the alley. She stumbled through her front door, dropped into her chair, and wrapped her arms around herself as she sobbed.

It was still dark when Ellie woke. For a moment, she lay there, trying to hold on to her dream… It had been a good one, about the Christmas when she’d been five. She’d crept downstairs first to check out what Santa left and then had run back upstairs to get Daniel, who groggily followed her downstairs.

“This pile is yours,” she said excitedly.

Daniel was fully awake by then and turned on the kitchen light so the illumination wouldn’t reach upstairs and wake their parents. “Hey, I got a new guitar!”

“And I got drawing pencils and new books,” Ellie whispered.

They froze as they heard footsteps upstairs, and, a moment later, their parents came down.

“Merry Christmas,” Michael said.

“Merry Christmas, Daddy,” said Ellie, running to give him a hug.

“Play us some music,” Ellen said.

Daniel lifted the guitar out of its case, adjusted the tuning, and played “Silent Night”.

Ellie smiled now, remembering how he had loved that guitar. It had broken her heart to have to let it be sold when her mom died, but she could only take a few things with her to foster care. She rolled over and hugged KC. The holidays were edging closer. This had been one thing she hadn’t been looking forward to. She still hadn’t made any friends here in Baltimore.
Hard to meet people when you’re always working.

Last year at this time, she and Teresa had been dancing around their attraction to each other, neither confident enough to say or do anything… until that magical New Year’s Eve.

Has it really been a year since I met her?
She tried to think back. It had been fall, just before the holidays because she helped decorate the store window.
How could so much good and bad happen in one year?

She felt homesick for Pittsburgh, for Louise, for Teresa. Getting to spend Christmas with Teresa last year had felt so special. For a little while, she had thought she might never have to spend another holiday alone.
Stupid you.

She got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. She had a rare day off and had booked a spot on a lunch cruise of the harbor. She glanced out the window. The sky was cloudless. It looked as if it was going to be a gorgeous day.

She showered, and then she and KC had breakfast. “What do you think about this cruise, little one?” Ellie asked as she ate her Shredded Wheat. “On a boat for three hours with a bunch of strangers.” KC looked up and gave a tiny meow. “But if I don’t do things like this, I’ll never meet people, will I?” KC meowed again. Ellie nodded. “That’s exactly what I thought. Thanks.”

She gave KC’s head a pat and carried her bowl to the sink.

An hour later, she was on a dock at the Inner Harbor, lining up with about twenty other people to board a boat. A group of three women a few places in front of her in line caught her attention, all of them stocky with short hair and baseball caps. They had to be family. She smiled to herself as the crewmembers started letting people board. Ellie found a place on the upper deck that gave her an unobstructed view. The sun was warm, but the air was still chilly, and she zipped her jacket as she stood at the rail. She heard voices and turned to see the three women climbing the metal steps to the upper deck. They said hello, and Ellie nodded in return before turning her attention to the crew making preparations to begin the cruise. Someone’s amplified voice came over a loudspeaker, explaining their route and inviting them to wander the boat freely.

Ellie put on her sunglasses and settled in a chair, her face lifted to the sun, enjoying the rolling motion of the boat as it moved away from the dock. She could feel the vibration of the boat’s engines as they rumbled. Over the rumble, she became aware of the women’s voices off to her side. Two of them were telling the third she was better off without her cheating girlfriend, but the third woman, Darlene, was apparently still lamenting the breakup. Ellie rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses. It had never occurred to her that she’d had no one to confide in when she and Teresa broke up. Louise seemed to know, but they’d never talked about it. She probably could have talked to Bernie, but she was Teresa’s friend. And Sullivan was just…Sullivan.
I never even thought of it as a breakup,
she realized.
It was just another thing ending. Like everything else in my life.

The amplified voice returned, pointing out landmarks as they traveled south through the harbor. Ellie sat up, ignoring the continued conversation near her, taking in the views as the boat churned along at a leisurely pace. Before long, the crew was inviting people to head toward the dining room.

Now, for the awkward part.
Ellie took a deep breath, reminding herself that she’d chosen this cruise to meet people. She followed the other women down the stairs to the main deck and inside to the dining room, where most of the passengers were already seated at tables. She stood there for a moment, looking around.

“Won’t you join us?”

She turned to find one of the three women from the upper deck standing near her, indicating their table. “Thank you.”

“I’m Olivia,” said the woman who had invited her. “This is Sue, and this is Darlene.”

Ellie nodded to each of them, introducing herself. “Are y’uns from Baltimore?” she asked as she placed her napkin in her lap.

They glanced at each other. “Sorry, what?” said Sue.

Ellie smiled. “I forgot. That’s Pittsburgh. Are you guys all from Baltimore?”

“We are,” Olivia said, indicating herself and Darlene. “Sue is from Frederick.”

Ellie had no idea where that was, but she nodded politely.

The crew began serving lunches. The four women chatted through lunch, and Ellie told them about the job that had brought her to Baltimore. She learned that Sue and Darlene were guidance counselors for Baltimore schools, and Olivia was a legal assistant.

The boat made a wide, sweeping turn and began the return trip to the dock. They finished lunch and went back to the upper deck, where the day had warmed enough to take their jackets off.

“Would you mind giving us your phone number?” Olivia asked, pulling a business card from her wallet. She asked a crewmember for a pen and jotted a couple of numbers down. “This is us, and that’s Darlene,” she said. “We’ve never been to your restaurant. Maybe we can come by some night. Are you allowed to join us?”

“Probably not,” Ellie said. “But I’ll make sure you have a great dinner.”

The boat docked and all the passengers got off. Ellie stood there for a moment.

“It was nice to meet all of you,” she said.