Tomorrow's Vengeance

FOUR

‘“Most people think that senior food is like cafeteria dining,” said Filomena Buccho, catering services manager at Calvert Colony, Anne Arundel County’s new fifty million dollar waterfront retirement community. ‘We give our residents a true four-star dining experience. We offer menus to suit every taste, from steak and potatoes to carpaccio of smoked beef with marinated aubergine, prepared by Raniero, our master chef, who received his training at the Culinary Institute of America.”’

Annapolis Gazette, July 5, 2013, Section B, p. 1.

In the days of tall ships and iron men, sailors went off to sea carrying hardtack and a jug of rum. When I deposited Paul at the Naval Academy sailing center on Wednesday he had a carton of power bars and two six-packs of designer water crammed into his sea bag. But farewell kisses hadn’t changed much over the centuries. Like wives and sweethearts long years before me, I planted a good one on my husband, holding him close and making it last, until we both had to come up for air.

‘Keep your phone on?’ I said as he hugged me one more time.

‘Promise.’

‘Don’t forget the cooler,’ I nagged cheerfully. ‘I didn’t spend a week freezing casseroles for the mids just to have you leave them thawing on the dock.’

‘Plebe detail!’ he called, waving to a firstie who seemed to be in charge. Seconds later the cooler had been whisked away by an underclassman, vanishing below decks.

As one of the coaches for the Naval Academy’s varsity offshore sailing team, Paul was heading up to New York City aboard Resolute, one of the Navy 44s participating in the annual Around Long Island Regatta. ‘Take care, you,’ I said as he stepped aboard the sailboat.

‘You, too, Hannah. And no dead bodies, OK?’

I shrugged. ‘Naddie is threatening to rope me into volunteering at Blackwalnut Hall. That should keep me out of trouble and off the streets.’

‘Hah! The last time you two were together…’ He let the thought go. ‘Two peas in a pod, if you ask me, but give her my love,’ Paul said as the midshipmen began to untie the lines that secured the vessel to the dock.

I stood by as Resolute eased out of her slip under power and turned, heading east down the Severn River. The crew hoisted the main and sailed from the mouth of the river and into the bay. Depending on the weather, I might not see Paul again for weeks.

He was right about Naddie and me, I thought with some amusement as I watched the young sailors haul up and set the jib, the grinders and tailers working the winches like madmen in the brisk breeze. Before our last little adventure was over, I’d managed to get myself and Naddie locked up in a posh wine cellar by a couple of thugs. Paul had been off sailing when that caper began, too. No wonder he worried.

Resolute’s enormous sails gradually receded into the distance. I waited until they were a speck of white on the horizon before returning to the parking lot where I’d left my car.

I’d arranged to meet my erstwhile partner in crime for an early lunch at Blackwalnut Hall. When I arrived, the lounge was hopping. I’d clearly walked into the middle of a book club discussion. Six women sat in a conversational grouping around a square table littered with coffee cups and plates – licked clean of all but telltale crumbs – three well-thumbed paperback copies of McHenry’s The Kitchen Daughter and two Kindles. A chess game was in progress at a table set into a window nook, and another pair of residents sat in overstuffed chairs that flanked the fireplace, that – in deference to summer – had been filled, not with firewood, but with a pyramid of colorful glass balls.

An elderly couple cuddled on a sofa, a walker parked close by. As I passed, the woman kissed her companion’s cheek. He captured and squeezed her hand, causing the cartoonish Seabee tattooed on his upper arm to flex its wings.

Naddie wasn’t in the lobby, and when I asked, the receptionist hadn’t seen her. I settled into an empty chair between a dozing man and a woman reading the Bible and prepared to wait. I selected an issue of People magazine from the fanned-out array on the coffee table that separated me from the two young lovers. How could I not? ‘Royal Baby Joy!’ screamed the headline, but the article inside was disappointingly slim on facts about the newly arrived successor to the British throne.

Across from me the elderly woman giggled, and I looked up from the Royal Baby Gift Guide I’d been perusing. ‘You go first,’ she said.

‘No, you go,’ the man replied.

Her elbow nudged him playfully in the ribs. ‘If you go, I’ll go.’

He took his time considering the offer. A full minute passed before he said, ‘OK.’ He stood, pulled her to her feet and together they wandered over to the piano bench and sat down.

I watched, an amused smile on my lips, as she rested her fingers lightly on the keys. ‘What do you want me to play?’ she asked her companion.

He shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

‘You choose.’

A shoulder bump. ‘No, you.’

At this rate, any concert was going to be a long time coming.

‘OK,’ the woman said at last, and began to play, singing in a slow, but slightly wobbly soprano: ‘“The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day.”’

‘I can’t believe it,’ the woman on my left muttered, laying the Bible down on the crocheted afghan that covered her knees. ‘That word’s so offensive!’

‘Darkie, you mean?’ I said, although I knew quite well the word to which she was referring.

The singer began the second verse, singing from memory, her voice growing sweeter, stronger and more confident as she went along.

The woman holding the Bible leaned in closer and whispered, ‘It’s racist.’

‘Well, to be fair,’ I whispered back, ‘it’s been over one hundred and fifty years since Stephen Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” so we should probably cut the man a little slack.’

‘They should change it,’ she insisted.

‘They did,’ I told her. ‘In Kentucky nowadays, it’s summer and the people are gay.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘The people are gay? Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement to me.’

The gentleman on my right had apparently overheard our conversation. Just as the singer launched into the chorus, joined by practically everyone in our vicinity, some singing in harmony, he leaned across me. ‘Well, I’m gay, Edith, so stop whining.’

I suppressed a laugh, gave the old guy a mental high five and, in my passable alto, joined in with him and the others: ‘“Weep no more, my lady. Oh, weep no more today. We will sing one song for my old Kentucky home, for my old Kentucky home far away.”’

As the last notes of the hauntingly beautiful and melancholy tune died away the guy leaned over, extended his hand and introduced himself. ‘I’m Chuck,’ he said. ‘I live upstairs.’

‘Hannah,’ I replied.

‘Family?’ he asked, indicating Edith, who glowered disapprovingly like my great aunt Gerty.

I grinned. ‘No, Edith and I just met. I’m waiting for a friend.’

The pianist had a bottomless stock of Stephen Foster in her repertoire. ‘I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,’ was followed by ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and a sensitive performance of ‘Old Black Joe,’ at which point Edith harrumphed, gathered up her Bible and stomped out of the lounge, her afghan trailing like a bridal train along the carpet behind her. Whether the singer noticed her departure or not, she seemed to sense that the mood of the audience needed lifting after singing about lost friends calling us up to heaven, so she launched into a spirited rendition of ‘Camptown Races.’

Rather than prance around the room like several of the book club women were now doing, I checked my watch. Where the heck was Naddie? Thinking I might have gotten my wires crossed and she could be waiting for me in the dining room, I excused myself and headed off to search for her.

Except for the tables and chairs, the dining room was empty.

At the far end, a pair of doors labeled IN and OUT led, I presumed, to the kitchen. The doors were substantial, but not sufficiently padded to muffle the clang of pots, the clink of utensils and the sound of raised voices coming from the kitchen behind them.

‘Idiota! Debo hacer todo yo mismo?’ Something metal clanged to the floor, followed by a string of words so vile that if I’d uttered even one of them my mother would have washed my mouth out with soap and grounded me for a week. Then:

‘Idiota! Tarado! Pelotudo!’

Idiota, I got. But I’d majored in French, so the rest was lost on me, not that they’d teach words like that in Spanish 101 anyway. I didn’t need a translator to know that whoever was on the receiving end of the string of expletive deleteds wafting out of the kitchen like the aroma of sautéed bacon and onions was probably hiding in a cupboard or cowering in a corner, protecting his head with his arms.

I decided to get out while the going was good, but I ran into Naddie coming the other way. She paused, cocked her head and listened. ‘Gosh, I wonder how he really feels?’

‘Raniero?’ I guessed.

Naddie nodded. ‘No doubt. Looks like an angel but has a devil of a temper. Save us from perfectionists with short fuses.’ She glanced at the antique Regulator hanging on the wall behind the hostess station. ‘We’re a bit early, Hannah. Would you like to see my town home before lunch?’

I was about to reply when Raniero yelled, ‘Go! Jump in the oven! Make my life easier!’ followed by the bright, sharp sound of shattering glass.

As if on cue Filomena erupted from the Tidewater Bar into the dining room, linked her arms through both of ours and urged us gently back toward the lounge, safely away from whatever disaster was noisily brewing in the kitchen. ‘The chef, he is temperamental, you know? Have you seen the show on television, Kitchen Nightmares? Raniero, he is like that Gordon Ramsay. Everything must be just so. You wait here. I’ll go see what’s the matter.’

I could think of several television chefs who would be better role models for Raniero than the foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsay – Jamie Oliver, for instance, or Bobby Flay – but decided the suggestion wouldn’t be appreciated.

There was a deafening crash of crockery. Filomena winced. ‘It’s that stupid Korean girl again. We have two kitchens at the colony,’ she explained. ‘One we must keep kosher for our Jewish residents. This girl, she doesn’t understand that the meat dishes and the dairy dishes must be washed separately. There are always mixups.’

‘Once they come out of the dishwasher, how would anybody know the difference?’ I wondered aloud.

Filomena stared, wide-eyed, as if I’d suggested she cut the grated parmesan with sawdust. ‘Raniero would!’

My eyes made a sweep of the dining room. I estimated it could seat one hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred diners. ‘How many Jewish residents do you have?’

‘Around twenty,’ Filomena said.

‘There’ll be several more in a month or two,’ Naddie added. ‘Having a kosher kitchen is a big selling point for Orthodox Jewish seniors. We’re also one of the very few communities of this type that caters to the dietary requirements of Muslims.’

‘And vegetarians,’ Filomena cut in. ‘Low salt, low fat, dairy-free, gluten-free – we do whatever our residents require.’

Just thinking about a day in the life of the resident dietician made my head spin. It would be worse than planning the menu when Emily brought friends home from college for Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t nearly so accommodating as Calvert Colony appeared to be. I drew the line at serving Tofurkys or vegan pumpkin pie made with tofu instead of eggs.

‘What do Muslims require?’ I asked, genuinely curious.

‘Food must be certified halal,’ Filomena said. ‘This means “lawful” or “permissible.” Pork is a no-no, just like it is for the Jews. In general, what is kosher is also halal, as long as the correct words are said over it at the time the animal is slaughtered.’

‘We’re very careful about the Circle U and the Crescent M at Calvert Colony,’ Naddie explained.

Filomena nodded. ‘There are other symbols for kosher and for halal, but those two are the most common.’

‘Tomorrow is Italian night,’ Naddie said, changing the subject. She snagged a menu from a wooden rack near the hostess station and handed it to me. ‘Why don’t you join me? You won’t be disappointed.’

I quickly scanned the page – Antipasto, Il Primo, Il Secondo, Contorno. ‘Very proper,’ I said with a smile. ‘You’d think you were in Rome.’

‘The Bucchos come from a long line of restaurateurs,’ Naddie informed me. ‘Raniero brought a great deal of experience with him from Argentina.’

Filomena beamed. ‘My brother and I, it is our dream to have a restaurant one day. It will be asado, how do you say? Steak house.’

‘Asado? Is that anything like churrascaria? Where they bring grilled meat to your table on skewers?’

Filomena nodded. ‘Exactly. Twelve different kinds. And a salad bar, very fancy.’

I glanced back at the menu again, puzzled. Bruschetta alla Napoletana. Tortellini alla panna. Capelli d’Angelo alla chef. It didn’t sound Spanish to me. Paul and I often dined at Jaleo, a tapas restaurant in D.C. Setas al ajilio con la serena. Camarones en salsa verde. Arroz con pollo. Now that was Spanish.

‘This menu is so Italian,’ I observed as I slipped it back into its holder. ‘And you’re from Argentina. I was expecting Spanish, I guess.’

‘My brother and I, we are Italo-Argentino,’ Filomena explained. ‘During the Second World War, many of our countrymen went to Argentina. Our grandfather, too. In Italy, he was avvocato, a lawyer, but he dreamed always to own a restaurant. Argentina was, how do you say, land of opportunity?’

I was quiet for a moment, letting that information sink in.

As if reading my thoughts, Filomena raised a hand and said, ‘I know! Nazis. You are thinking Nazis.’ She shook her head so vigorously that I thought the pearl studs might drop off her earlobes. ‘Nonno, he was not Nazi. After the war, Italy was all ruins. Foreign armies taking over everywhere. There was no work, so he goes to Argentina like so many people.’

‘I read somewhere that Italians began immigrating to Argentina in the middle of the nineteenth century,’ Naddie explained. ‘Today, sixty percent of the Argentinian population has Italian roots.’

Filomena was nodding. ‘Si, si. If you want a good Italian meal you go to Buenos Aires.’

‘Where do you come up with those statistics, Naddie?’ I asked, impressed, as always, with her seemingly bottomless reservoir of obscure facts.

My friend shrugged. ‘Jorge Mario Bergoglio?’

I blanked. ‘Who?’

Naddie punched my arm. ‘The new Pope, silly. Don’t you read the newspapers? Until becoming Pope Francis, he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Born and raised in Argentina but his parents were Italian.’

‘Exactamente!’ Filomena’s eyes sparkled with pride, I imagined, for the incredible success of one of her countrymen.

‘Go, now,’ she said after a moment, making shooing motions with her hands. ‘Lunch in twenty minutes. You come back then. I’ll save the best dessert for you – crème brûlée.’

‘Ah…’ I breathed as Naddie and I left the dining room together with the sound of smashing crockery still ringing in our ears. ‘Filomena said the C.B. words. I will be putty in that young woman’s hands.’

‘Yes,’ Naddie replied. ‘But if Raniero can’t get it together in the kitchen, they’ll be serving it to you on a paper plate.’