Chapter 24: A Tuesday

I told him on Monday night, while he was burning the soup.

"Tuesday," I said.

He turned from the stove with the spoon in his hand.

"Tuesday what?"

"Ten o'clock. The town hall. Nothing special, and no cars."

He put the spoon down very slowly.

"No deadline," he said.

"No deadline. It's just a Tuesday."

He stood there with soup on his shirt and his face doing three things at once.

"You told me to wait until you said," he managed.

"I'm saying."

Then he crossed the kitchen in two strides and lifted me off my feet.

The soup burned the rest of the way.

On Tuesday I wore the dress I had altered myself for the rehearsal dinner.

I had let out the hem that Ilaria fixed, and put it back exactly as she had sewn it.

Teresa did my curls with a hot comb and a lot of swearing.

The old woman with the rolls arrived at nine, in a black hat, with thirty grandmothers behind her.

Each one carried a loaf.

"Where is the wedding?" asked one.

"The town hall."

"Then we'll stand outside," said the old woman. "Wedding bread goes to the street."

The piazza was a long stone rectangle with the town hall at one end and a fountain in the middle.

The yellow building had its flag out.

I stood at the top of the steps with Teresa beside me.

The grandmothers lined both sides of the piazza with their bread in their arms.

I looked down the whole length of the square.

At the far end, by the fountain, a tall man in a dark suit got out of a car.

He shut the door.

He sent the car away.

He stood alone on the paving with his hands at his sides.

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