Letters to the Baumgarters Read Free Page A

Nico.
Strangely, now that I knew he was gay, I gave myself more freedom to really
look at him. His olive skin still retained a bit of a summer tan from working
outside all year round. He was my age, probably early-to-mid-twenties,
sandwiched somewhere between his younger teenage sister and the next oldest,
who had just gotten married the year before. The siblings all had the same dark
hair, the girls’ long and thick and wavy, Nico’s short and curly; the same
striking, bright blue eyes; even the same full, sensual mouth.
    Nico glanced up at me and winked, putting tiles down on the Scrabble
board as his youngest sister protested using “Qi” as a word. I still couldn’t
believe I’d said I’d come to dinner, with his family no less. I was clearly
more lonely that I wanted to admit. But he was sweet, and more importantly, he
was safe. Maybe we could even be friends. I’d been in Italy eight months and
didn’t have any real friends to speak of, aside from Cara Lucia.
    “I’m getting a dictionary!” Caprice jumped up, racing for the bookshelf
in the corner.
    “Look it up.” Nico rolled to his back, putting his hands behind his head,
and grinned. “Fifty-four points, triple letter, double word score. I win!”
    “You’re far too proud of yourself,” I commented, sipping my wine to hide
a smile. Beside me, Anna had thankfully been distracted by one of the children,
the girl, Maria, coming in to ask her mother a question. Everyone spoke Italian
and no one seemed to notice that I wasn’t a native speaker. It was quite a
compliment and I was rather proud of myself.
    “You want to play the winner?” Nico asked me.
    “You’re so sure you’re the winner.”
    “I am.” He shrugged. “Qi is a word.”
    “It’s not an Italian word,” I replied. We were all speaking in Italian
and I was proud of myself for holding my own. “I don’t even think it’s an
English word.”
    “It’s an Oriental word.” Caprice sighed, reading from the dictionary.
“Oriental medicine, martial arts, etcetera. The vital energy believed to
circulate around the body in currents.”
    “I win!” Nico pumped his fist in the air and his sister stuck her tongue
out behind his back.
    “Time to eat!” Mama Dorotea appeared in the doorway wearing an apron,
stained and covered in flour. That was a good sign. My stomach was growling and
I definitely needed to eat something—I’d had far too much wine on an empty
stomach and my head was swimmy.
    “What about Giulia and Will?” Anna herded her kids toward the dining room
table.
    “They’re going to be late,” Mama Dorotea announced, using the remote to
turn off the television. It was the first time Anna’s husband, Sal, had looked
at something other than the screen since he sat down. He grunted, getting up,
and followed his nose toward the table. “They said to start without them.”
    The family gathered around the food, practically drooling, as Mama
Dorotea said a prayer, mentioning her dead husband at the end, asking the
family to remember him. I’d noticed the urn and photo of the mustachioed man on
the fireplace mantel when we came in and wondered how this woman had raised
four children nearly to adulthood on her own.
    “ Ti amo, Padre, ” Anna whispered at the end of the prayer,
reaching over and squeezing her mother’s hand. Mama Dorotea’s eyes were shiny
as she started passing around dishes full of gnocci, tortellini and castagnole.
It didn’t stay quiet for long. The two kids fought over who got the biggest and
best piece of lasagna while Anna continued her diatribe about their dilapidated
flat, and Caprice interjected with her own teen angst—a girl at school who
liked the same boy who refused to speak to her now.
    Nico sat next to me, passing me dish after dish, forcing me to fill my
plate. There were frittelle—fritters fried to a perfect golden brown, filled
with meat and gravy. The migliaccio di polenta —polenta and sausage—was
so aromatic my stomach