Chapter 24: The Cake

I baked the cake myself, in my father's kitchen, at four in the morning on the day of the anniversary.

Three layers, vanilla, with the lemon curd only in the middle where a person could skip it.

The cook stood at my elbow in her apron with her arms folded and pretended not to watch.

"You're over-beating the eggs," she said.

"I'm not."

"You are. Your mother over-beat them too."

I put down the whisk.

"Tell me more about my mother."

She smiled, and wiped her hands, and did.

By noon the cake was cooling on its rack, and the hall was ready.

It was our own hall this year, the long one on the docks, with the crates pushed back and the tables laid in white.

Two hundred people sat down in it at seven.

The Orsini men wore their dark suits, and for the first time their wives sat beside them.

The old captain by the window had his hat on his knee.

The five captains from the street were there, and the young dockhand in a suit that fit this time.

The bellhop ran the night crew now, and he had shaved without cutting himself.

Fiora's father sat at the Greco table with his arms crossed, as always, and beside him sat Fiora.

She had a baby on her lap.

He was seven months old, round and furious, in a tiny blue jacket.

He had grabbed the edge of the tablecloth in both fists and would not let go.

"He's a Greco," Fiora said when I came by. "He's already difficult."

"He's perfect."

"He hates lemon," she said, and I laughed out loud, and so did half the table.

The Falcones were not there.

The cook told me Aurelio was in Florida, in a small house by a canal.

He paid the table by the quarter and complained about the weather.

Cesare ran a loading dock in New Jersey.

Every month he sent an envelope to the Greco house, and every month it came back unopened.

I did not ask for more news.

My father sat at the head of the table in his good black suit, with a blanket over his knees.

He had outlived the doctor's estimate by eleven months.

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