Chapter 23: Not for the Chair

Six weeks after the Table, Taylor Street still smelled of wet plaster.

The new front wall of Sabatini's stood in raw brick behind a skin of scaffolding.

Inside, there were no tables yet, only sawhorses and a cement mixer and a stove under a tarp.

I found Cesare in the dining room with a tape measure in his good hand.

His arm had healed pink and tight, and the dog lay on a folded drop cloth beside his boots.

"Your mother's recipe wall goes there," I said.

"That's the plan."

"I want to ask you something first."

He lowered the tape.

I stood in the middle of the bare floor in my work boots, and I did not have a speech.

"I didn't need a husband to hold the chair," I said. "I held it. You watched me."

"I did."

"So I'm not asking for the chair."

I took a breath.

"I'm asking because I want you in my house every morning and in my bed every night."

I held his eyes.

"And next to me at every Table for the rest of my life."

He said nothing.

"Cesare Sabatini," I said. "Will you marry me?"

He crossed the floor in three strides and picked me up off my feet.

The dog barked.

"Yes," he said into my hair. "God, yes. Ask me again."

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes."

"Again."

"Renata," he said, laughing, "the answer is going to be the same."

We were married the next Sunday in the oldest wife's garden, under an apple tree.

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