Page 88 of Meet Me in Montreal

Suddenly he was in front of his parent’s house on City Island. He had absolutely no recollection of the drive. The last thing he remembered was shuffling down the path from Vanessa’s front door to the car, and here he was. It was a miracle he’d made it in one piece. If he could call anything miraculous at this point.

It was still early in the day. Both his parents’ cars and Gina’s were gone. They’d be at the restaurant now and little Gino would be at Toddler Tyme, a dumb assed spelling for a childcare center that supposedly placed an emphasis on early childhood learning.

Forget the name. He had more things to worry about, like the current implosion happening in his chest. Throwing his bags on the floor of his closet in his old bedroom, his first impulse was to crawl right in that bed and never get out again. The old times beckoned him, offering promises of peace in oblivion.

Nah. The idea of lying there in his own filth for a few weeks wasn’t appealing anymore. The prospect of Lina standing over his bed, cursing and raging against Vanessa for putting him there again, wasn’t something he thought he could tolerate right now either. He might say something to her he’d regret. Besides that, it wouldn’t resolve anything for anyone else who loved him. He’d already put them through enough these last few years.

He made a decision. Santino grabbed his things, hauled them back to the car and drove to his own house. Standing in the doorway, the true state of this place struck him for the first time. He took in the dilapidated banister of the stairwell, the various cracks in the ceiling and the warped hardwood floors, the fucked up pitted and torn wallpaper left over from someone’s olive green fixation of 1993.

No more of that. He was going to buy it and fix it up. In between studying and passing that fucking exam, he was going to go full Chip Gaines and make it a fuckingpalace. A palace fit for a new princess —no, a goddamnedqueen, a new woman, someone safe, someone easy, someone who wouldn’t keepripping out his heart and fucking crushing it over and over again like this.

A new queen?The thought of that made him laugh out loud. Who was he kidding? There was only one, could ever be only one queen of his heart, whether it was crushed or not, whether she believed that’s who she was or not.

A deep spasm crossed his face, twisting it into something he was sure he wouldn’t recognize if he’d been looking in a mirror. That chasm, the entrance to the void opened up before him. Santino peered in, looking down into the vast darkness below, then slowly, resolutely stepped away from the edge.

When Gina called him later, when the sun was sinking and leaking crimson, orange and purple on to a weary sky, he answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Tino Bambino. How was Montreal?” She lowered her voice to a playful whisper. “How did it go? Are you with Vanessa right now?”

“No,” he answered. He swallowed hard. “It didn’t work.”

“Oh, Tino,” she breathed. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.” There was a sniffle on the other end as though she was crying, feeling every bit of his pain.

“Me too. I, um…I really thought we would make it this time.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

There was a beat of silence filled only with more sniffling. Then she said, “Okay, no talking. But would you like me and Gino to come spend the night? We can watch someLakefront Bargain Home Renoreruns and eat a ton of shit that’s bad for us. I won’t say anything to anybody.”

Santino’s nose was running, leaking onto his lips. He wiped it with the back of his hand, but his eyes kept overflowing. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

31

WHERE’D IT GO WRONG?

VANESSA

One week later…

The incessant ringing of the doorbell penetrated the house from the front door all the way to the backyard where Vanessa was busy in the garden, watering her vegetables and fruit patches. The strawberries were coming in fabulous, already fat and juicy, but the snap peas weren’t doing so well in this mid-July heat. She plucked a strawberry, not bothering to rinse it off before popping it in her mouth.

Everything looked great and smelled even better. The dark earth was rich and moist in her hands. But there was no flavor in that berry. None. All the food in this garden, everything she baked, broiled or sauteed, all were utterly tasteless.

She’d experienced this before, the first time she and Santino had split. It was one of the first things she’d mentioned to her spanking brand-new therapist, Charmaine Drayton-Chang. Charmaine had been recommended by Dani. She was Jamaican-American, married to a Jamaican-Chinese man who was acouples’ therapist. Vanessa could only wonder if two married therapists ever fought or just talked circles around each other until they were tired out.

During their first session, Charmaine had asked her, “Have you ever the expression ‘mothers love their sons but raise their daughters’?”

Lightbulbs started going off when she’d described what that meant. Nadine had lavished affection and praise on Bobby but had raised Vanessa to be strong and independent. It would take more time to figure out exactly why it had happened in her family specifically, but Vanessa’s needs and feelings were always put last. This had not been good for the sense of self-esteem.

Second session: her communication style sucked. That had been a tough one. They’d uncovered the ugly little truth that Vanessa had never been taught how to have a healthy disagreement.

“What do you mean? I argue for a living,” Vanessa had exclaimed.

But at home, being told to never complain, to push through her discomforts or outright pain in stoic silence, meant she hadn’t known how to clearly and calmly articulate when something was troubling her. Of course, she’d turned around and married a natural-born button-pusher. Instead of sitting Santino down and expressing her feelings, they boiled and bubbled inside until they suddenly erupted.

It wasn’t that he was never wrong. He was headstrong and maybe he had been immature when they’d married. But Charmaine said it sounded like in Montreal, they’d both made progress, progress she should feel proud of.

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