I set my bag in front of the grillwork gate, pressed the buzzer, looked through the just-below-street-level window. Inside, a Tiffany table lamp glowed in the midday pallor. Ribbons of light fell to the floor through a jungle of foliage. In lieu of paying rent to David and me, Rico has been restoring the three-level brownstone to its original Victorian glory. He calls the jungle room “the conservatory.” Shades of Colonel Mustard. The room was empty.
The tips of my fingers curled toward my palms in an attempt to get warm. The cold bit at my toes through the thin leather of my pumps, which had been fine for the 71 degrees I’d left in California.
Then Rico’s face appeared in the window, his expression leaping from wariness to surprise and finally settling into a broad smile. I hoped he would still be smiling in fifteen minutes.
I hugged him; his face felt good against my chilled cheek. He smelled good. When he pulled back, I noticed a scrap of toilet paper stanching a shaving cut on his jaw.
I suppressed a shudder and began. “I tried to call last night but you weren’t home and Riffs was closed. I didn’t decide I was coming until late. About nine. California time.” So much for urbane patter.
He set my suitcase beside the hall table, a spindly-legged affair sporting a drop cloth covered with plaster dust. “You could have had Dad call me or something. I know this is your house, but you said you’d give me some notice. I didn’t expect you until Thursday.”
It was a lame excuse. Clearly, I had lost some ground in the struggle to let go. “I’m sorry for the lack of warning.”
On cue, a rumpled little redhead wrapped in a wrinkled terry-cloth robe appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Mom, this is Laura. She plays keyboards for the Rompettes. Laura, this is my mom, Gina Capobella.”
Laura smiled and said hello and disappeared. Another of his women-we’d discussed safe sex since he was fifteen but maybe we needed a little brushup talk about safe relationships.
He hung my coat on a brass hook in the hall and we went into the kitchen. His mouth was tight, his shoulders up around his ears. He lit a burner on the stove and set a teakettle over the flame, In the tense silence, I heard my own breathing and the pounding water filling the upstairs bathtub.
“I hope Laura’s not in any hot water,” I said, emphasizing the key phrase as I pointed at the ceiling, in the general direction of the bathroom.
Rico’s face was blank, his silence stony. He was turning down the invitation to our old game.
“I hope she’s not in too deep,” I said, giving it one last try.
The corners of his mouth edged into a smile. “She’s prepared to sink or swim on her own,” he said. “She’ll talk about it when she’s ready to come clean.”
We both grinned, but I knew that punning our way to familiar ground was only a start. Rico had lived in this house on his own since his twentieth birthday, two years ago. It was peremptory to claim territorial prerogatives on such short notice; I really should have tried harder to call. “Maybe you could think of my being here as a double-reverse empty-nest syndrome,” I offered.
“You’ve been reading Good Housekeeping again. That’s dangerous.” He lifted a serrated knife out of its slot and cut a French bread in half.
“Very funny. Listen, I’m quiet in the mornings and I might even be persuaded to make you some bracciola,” I smiled sweetly.
“Home cooking and word games can’t make everything all right, Mom.”
It’s good when your kid keeps you honest. Reminds you that you’ve done a decent job of it. Knife in hand, he hugged me and then set to piling turkey, cheese, lettuce, mustard, and mayo on the bread. He sawed through the huge tower with a knife, then scooped the sandwiches onto plates and carried them to the table. “Does this visit have anything to do with Catherine? She’s seemed a little weird or something the past couple of days.”
“She desperately wants the gallery to be a success. I thought it would put her at ease if I was here.” Every word true, but sins of omission would surely be my undoing. They felt too much like getting away with something.
“She’s more anxious about the gallery than I thought.” Concern for my friend-his friend, too-creased his brow.
What a face. Not only a mother could love it.
“It’s been so hard on her, trying to make it as a painter. She’s giving up her dreams. Don’t you think”-What? That he should give up before he’s given it a try? What are you trying to tell your child?-“that she’s entitled to be a little weird?”
Rico didn’t answer.
“Enough water for me to have some tea?” Rico’s friend, her face scrubbed and sparkling but her hair still a wiry auburn tangle, stood in the doorway. The terry-cloth robe had been traded for jeans, a citrus-green turtleneck, and a tattered purple sweater that looked big enough for her to hold a party in.
Rico wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, then disappeared into the pantry and emerged with a teabag dangling between two fingers. “Almond Sunset for you, my lovely.”
“You two look just like each other.” The girl made a circle of her thumb and forefinger and held it up to her right eye, closing her left eye as though she were looking through a lens. “I’d recognize you anywhere. Not just from the pictures but because your mouth is so much like Rico’s and your eyes. It’s neat.” She put one hand in her lap, propped her head on the other fist, and watched Rico prepare the tea.
“What kind of music do the Rompers play?” I envisioned a band for the Sesame Street set. Somehow this pretty, sleepy woman didn’t seem the type, but maybe the small ruby stud in her left nostril gave the wrong impression.
“Rompettes. Ska.” Laura smiled benignly at my blank look. “You know, kind of like world beat or reggae. We’re not very good, but my boyfriend is making a documentary about us. He’s studying filmmaking. NYU, graduate level.”
Rico’s back was to me; this was a little confusing. Her boyfriend?
“Interesting,” I said. Rico looked over his shoulder and smiled. Interesting was a long-shared code for judgment temporarily deferred.
“He got very intense a couple of weeks ago. Watching me like he was framing every action for a scene-it made me nuts. So I came here and got my mother to promise not to tell him where I was. With the unlisted phone here, I don’t even have to talk to him unless I want to. The quiet feels… healing, I guess you’d say in California. Rico was terrific to offer me a place.” She got up and stood behind Rico, massaging his shoulders.
So she was another of his strays, not a romantic relationship at all.
“I never met her boyfriend,” Rico said as he set the teapot on the table, “but she swears he’s handsomer than me.”
“Well, he is. Anyway, you can’t compare dark and dashing with blond and brooding.” Laura stared at her crimson-tipped nails and then arranged her face in a smile. “Are you staying long?” she asked me.
I told her I would be in Brooklyn until the day after the gallery opening. The three of us sipped our tea and talked about friends and school, the art scene, and old neighbors. Rico showed me the five paintings he’d be exhibiting at Porterfield’s. They were abstract, with the suggestion of a face serving as the focal point for each. “This one’s a self-portrait,” he said pointing to the largest canvas.
I balanced my swelling pride with the desire to shield him from the frustrations of being a painter. Catherine and Patrick were doing things right with the gallery, Rico said, except that Patrick got stuck in traditional thinking sometimes-but what else could you expect from someone whose family had lived in the Hudson Valley since Rip Van Winkle went to sleep? She needed someone like that, I said, to gaze at her fondly while she explored her place in the arts.