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.
(It occurred to me in that moment that the first young man my daughter chose to introduce to her elusive father was a tall-dark-and-handsome Italian cook with an arrogant attitude. Even their names were similar. My, my, how Freudian.)
My heart went out to my daughter. But it was her mess. And she was a big girl. (Even bigger with those heels.) I shook my head and showed her my empty palms. No tricks up my sleeve for this one, honey.
“So what sort of bacon then?” Mario asked, the smirk defining his level of sincerity. “Sugar cured, hickory smoked, or do you prefer those bits you find in the supermarket jars?”
“Don’t be a jackass,” said Matt.
Joy was about to jump in, but I stopped her.
“Well, you must admit,” said Mario, “the dish does sound like something you get at the House of the International Pancake.”
“It’s IHOP—the International House of Pancakes,” said Matt. “You obviously don’t know everything.”
I sighed, considering the scene. Here I was in New York City, an international center for art, commerce, intellect, and culture. A prime symbol of Western Civilization. And what was I doing? Watching two alpha males argue over a greasy slab of pork fat.
As the barbs continued, I pulled Joy aside. “Your first lesson in understanding men,” I whispered. “There will often be times like these—when they act as if they’ve been evolution-proof for the last fifty thousand years.”
The baking timer went off, startling everyone into silence.
“Saved by the bell,” I whispered to Joy. She smiled with grateful relief as I announced: “Mario, Joy, it’s time to clear out! I have to make the cheesecake topping, and your father has to make dinner.”
I reached into the wine cooler and clutched the first bottle I could feel.
“Here!” I said, thrusting it into Joy’s hand. “Why don’t you go into the dining room with Mario and open this.”
“Wow! Mom!” Joy shrieked at seeing the label on the bottle. “Proseco, 1992. What’s the occasion?”
Ohhhhh, nooooo, not the Venetian champagne. That was a mistake. But too late now.
“Just happy to see you,” I chirped, still channeling Doris Day. “And of course—your bringing Mario is an occasion,” I managed to choke out for Joy’s sake.
I heard a disgusted grunt from behind me. A loud slam came next, as Matteo crushed a half-dozen whole cloves of garlic with one flat-sided blow from his meat cleaver. Chunks of the powerful-smelling herb bounced off the walls.
Mario leaned close and took my hand again. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Allegro.”
It’s Cosi, you idiot!
With a wet slam, Matteo slapped his slab of good old American bacon onto the thick wooden chopping block near the sink. With quick, angry jabs, he began mincing the smoked pork into tiny shards.
“Let’s go into the dining room,” Joy said, seeing the flash of disgust cross Mario’s face.
After they’d quickly retreated, I turned to Matteo.
“You!” I hissed in my most grating ex-wife voice (a harridan tone so annoying I actually annoy myself when I use it). “Make your damn pasta and keep your mouth shut. Your one and only daughter has brought a man home to meet her parents, and you are not going to ruin this night for her!”
Matt stared at the garlic scattered across the cutting board. I took his silence for defiance.
“You are going to behave yourself or leave right now,” I added.
Matteo crushed another clove of garlic—this one with his fist.
“The pasta will be ready in half an hour,” he said, turning up the fire under a large pot of boiling water. “When you’re finished with your cheesecake, you can make the Caesar salad.”
“Oh, I’ll get right on it,” I replied tersely. As I knew already, there was no kitchen large enough!
Fortunately, things went somewhat better from then on. During dinner, Joy talked about school, and about how she aced her last saucier project—with Mario’s help.
Mario, it turned out, was from Milan, but had spent the last three years in New York City, joining a cousin who had emigrated years before to work in the restaurant business here. Mario himself had worked in a series of restaurants in both Italy and France—first as a dishwasher, then a waiter, then as a sous-chef. He was twenty-five years old and had landed a full-time kitchen staff position at Balthazar, one of the top restaurants in Soho.
I asked how he’d met Joy. Apparently, he’d been friends with the guest saucier instructor who’d balled Joy out for ruining her hollandaise sauce. Mario had been observing the class in support of his friend, and after the class, he’d approached Joy.
“My heart went out to this pretty little girl. She looked as though she was going to cry—and I remembered how stupido I felt when I had made a mistake at my first job in a four-star restaurant. I was hired the day I applied because the chef was on the spot. He handed me the house recipe for cream of mushroom soup and told me to prepare it for Sunday brunch. I went to work, and when it was done, the chef tried some.”
“He didn’t like it?” I asked.
“No, no,” Mario replied. “The soup was superb, and for a very good reason. Along with the cultivated mushrooms, I had diced a thousand dollars’ worth of truffles. I felt so like an ass because I had made the most expensive pot of soup in history! I explained to the head chef that I had never taken classes, that I always learned on the job. But the little restaurants I had worked in…Well, they didn’t serve truffles. I got fired anyway. Of course, that was a long time ago.”