Page 21 of A Winter in New York

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“I think that’s theclosest yet,” Gio says, after testing this morning’s batch of gelato. We’ve followed a recipe from an old cookbook he found in a secondhand bookstore at the weekend, and it’s turned out well.

“Too sweet,” Sophia says, when we take it out front for her to test.

I look across at Bella, who’s doing a bad job of pretending she isn’t more interested in the gelato than the piano. She’s been practicing for the last couple of hours on and off. I found myself keeping an ear on her progress to see if she made it to the end of the piece without faltering or skimming her hands up the keys in frustration.

“Come on, then, you earned a break,” Gio says, and she shoots across and grabs a spoon.

She tries it, screwing her nose up while she deliberates. “Not the same as Nonno’s,” she says, looking at her father. “It’s nice, though. Can I finish it?”

“Will you practice some more if I say yes?”

She grins, knowing she’s won, and takes the cup of gelato to add toppings. Belotti’s might offer just one flavor, but they have an impressive collection of toppings arranged in glass jars behind the counter. Sprinkles, chocolate curls, sherbets, fudge cubes, pistachios, and amaretti biscuits sit alongside chocolate spreads and fruit sauces. Bella reaches down a big blue-and-white-patterned can, peeling off the plastic lid before lifting it to her face to inhale the scent.

“Amarena cherries,” Gio tells me.

“Food of the gods,” Sophia says, taking the can from her niece.

I watch Bella heap whipped cream and chocolate curls on top of her heavy-handed shake of cherries, noticing how she flicks a look beneath her dark lashes at Gio every now and then to see if he’s going to stop her.

“I expect you to be note perfect after all that,” he says, and she just nods, her eyes on the prize.

“Baby Leo’s gonna be so excited when he can eat a sundae like this,” she mutters, reaching for a long spoon.

It’s disconcerting seeing Gio in his role as a father. I’ve become accustomed to him as a son and brother, someone his family stand alongside, rely on, and royally take the piss out of. As a father, he’s subtly different. His daughter’s eyes seek him out constantly, and in turn he keeps an eye and an ear on her too, gossamer-fine love threads between them, invisible to the human eye. I guess it comes from being a single-parent family—even with the cushion of the wider Belotti clan, it would inevitably have tightened the nuts and bolts of their unit in the same way I experienced myself. It must be tough as a parent trying to be all things for your child, no one to lean on or look to, and growing up I sometimes felt the weight of it too, exacerbated by being an only child.

I sit at the counter and watch Sophia and Gio wait on a couple of customers who’ve just ordered takeout, Gio at the coffee machine, Sophia sliding sugared pastries into green-striped paper Belotti bags. I know she bakes many of the shop’s pastries herself; we’ve talked recipes over coffee most mornings I’ve been here. She’s self-taught—or Maria-taught, to be more accurate—and full of ideas and ambition. I see herflinch as Bella falters with her piano piece at the exact same place as the last three run-throughs, and after a moment she takes a cannoli from the display case and passes it my way, the diamond stud in her nose glinting as she winks.

“It’s a blatant bribe,” she whispers. “Any chance you could help Bells out? I love her but if I have to listen to this for much longer…” Her eyes finish the sentence and I turn to look at Gio, but he’s disappeared through to the kitchens.

“I can try?” I say, doubtful. I haven’t felt like playing since my mother died, but I find myself sliding off my chair regardless.

I feel oddly nervous as I rest my arms on top of the piano. “You know, I used to find that playing something completely different helped me if I got stuck in a loop.”

Bella raises her eyes and looks at me, miserable. “I’m going to fail the evaluation.”

I chew the inside of my lip, thinking back. “What’s your favorite piece to play?”

She teenage shrugs, not biting.

“Shall I show you mine?”

She flexes her fingers, probably aching from tension, and then shuffles across on the stool with a tiny nod. I round the piano and sit beside her, trying not to feel panicked by the run of black and white keys in front of me.

“It’s been a while, I’m going to be rusty,” I say, coughing as I rest my hands in place, hoping muscle memory kicks in. I’m crossing my fingers it’s a piece she knows; it’s a pupil staple back in the UK so there’s a fair chance. I pick out the famous opening bars of “The Entertainer” with two fingers and glance at Bella, gaining myself the slightest eyebrow flick of recognition. Encouraged, I start to play, hesitant and thennot so, elation glittering from my fingertips to my elbows to my shoulders to my heart as my body remembers this feeling, this joy. I’ve played the piano forever, beside my mother as a child watching her long, gold-ringed fingers, and this raucous gallop of a tune was always a beloved part of our repertoire.

I look at Bella and find she’s smiling, and I nod toward the keys for her to join me. She bites her bottom lip, hovers her hands for a second then finds her place in the music with me.

I notice how slight her hands are, the span of her fragile fingers as she reaches for the notes, and I wonder if my mother noticed those same things about me on the countless occasions I joined her on the stool as a teenager. I can almost smell the stale smokiness of the working men’s clubs and backstreet pubs we more often than not practiced in—any piano would do for us. She’d sing sometimes too, entertaining the handful of afternoon drinkers in there too early for her proper set later in the evening. Powerful memories kaleidoscope in my head as Bella and I play together, getting faster and faster, our hands racing to keep up with each other. Sophia claps in time as Bella gasps with laughter, and joy bursts behind my ribs as if the door of a birdcage full of songbirds has just flung open on its springs. I’d forgotten how good this feels, wild and magical music. I’m exhilarated, I’m free, I’m on top of the world.

“What’s going on?”

Gio appears over the piano, staring at us, his tone harsher than I’ve ever heard it before. Sophia stops clapping, Bella hits all the wrong notes, and my fingers slow to nothing as I meet his dark, unreadable eyes.

“We were just messing around,” Bella says, defensive.

“It was my fault,” I say automatically, although I’m not quite sure what I’ve done wrong. “I thought it might help Bella to loosen up a bit, have some fun with a different piece.”

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