Matteo loved his father Jack, and Jack loved his son. Jack saved all his pennies and bought a Dodge Viper the year after he left Matteo’s mother. Jack found a new, younger wife soon after. Jack’s son spends most of the year with his mother.
“You want to drive Matt when we get there?” Jack asks Matteo as they sit in Jack’s cherry red Viper with the top down. The ferry Sankaty bobs this way and that in grey upset seas. The Viper sits on the deck nestled between a black Cadillac Escalade to the rear and a Chevy van in the front occupied by ten latte-skinned day laborers.
Jack interprets that look in Matteo’s eyes, that look that springs from a mind wading through deceit. Jack wonders if his son has reached that age when parents fall from heroic pedestals and all that grown-ups seem to say are lies. Matteo is also turning a tinge of green as the ferry deck tosses back and forth. Each time one of the swarthy landscape workers pops out of the back of the van and leans over the steel railing of the Sankaty, Jack feels his own bile rising up his throat.
“Just keep your eyes on the horizon Matt like I told you,” Jack says, laughing at both his son’s discomfort and his valiant own attempt at keeping up manly appearances.
Matteo, having weathered enough of his father’s influence, just wants to get back to his grandfather’s Nantucket beach house. His grandmother will be baking the Ferrari lasagne in the kitchen and his mother will be packing up his things now in the upstairs guestroom. He is eager to return to a place where those things beneath you do not move according to the wind, or tide, or vanity or youth. Matteo believes this place is called Manhattan.
To Matteo’s surprise, Jack throws the keys into his lap after he parks his Viper behind the A&P on Candle Street. Matteo forgets his seasickness as his finger rubs along the ridges of the gleaming keys.
“You’re nearly a man now Matt. Next week is your twelfth birthday you know. In a few years you’ll be legal,” says Jack as he walks around the back of the convertible and opens the passenger door. Matteo gets up and walks around the shark-like hood, his knees wobbly from both weak nerves and the last remnants of seasickness from the ferry passage. Jack is not kidding his son. “Now, you know what I’ve taught you?”
Matteo had remembered these lectures on the finer points of handling a manual transmission, but these lessons had remained abstract, fluid and vague. Success would require a touch that Matteo does not believe he possesses. He had driven a friend’s brother’s VW Bug before and had handled the four speed without problem. He had only shifted six gears in his mind.
Still, it all comes easy. Matteo turns the key in the ignition then presses the fat red button to start the engine. He slips it easily into first and rolls out tentatively onto Candle. The ferry traffic has already gone by on its way to other corners of the island. Matteo is happy to find the roads devoid of cars just one week before the start of tourist season. They roll down Old South Road past the rotary circle, Matteo driving in second gear most of the way, the eight cylinders whining in protest at the high revs.
“Put it in third,” Jack commands.
“But we’re getting near the turn-off for grandpa’s house,” Matteo answers, fearing the coming downshift before the turn.
“We’ll take the long way down by the airport.”
Matteo doesn’t make the turn and instead drives south along the long route. Oncoming cars begin switching on their headlights in the dusk. The May air chills as the sun sinks under the horizon. The gearbox objects to the clumsy foot on the clutch as the driver shifts into third.
“Matteo, you need to help your mom now. She’s changing her job. It’s a big jump. I think you’re going to have to move, but it’s hard to move in the city you know, so I think she wants you to stay here with grandma and grandpa until things get settled down.”
It is difficult for Matteo to concentrate both on the driving and the words his father is saying. His fingernails dig deep dimples into the leather steering wheel. The Viper is now in measurable excess of the island-wide speed limit.
Three minutes later, Matteo drives the Viper into his grandparent’s driveway, nearly missing the same van of Mexican landscape workers that had rocked back and forth on the ferry. Spanish curses followed after them as Matteo, trying to evade the van’s bumper, narrowly misses a mailbox.
“Shit, Matt! You’ve got to slow down ”.
Matteo doesn’t answer, putting the car into park, the gears grinding. He slams the car door and walks down to the beach then turns back toward his father, but his last offending words are lost in the breeze rounding the dunes.
So how would Jane break the news? Three generations of Ferraris sit around the dinner table passing around a bowl of tossed greens. Jane decides to make an announcement after she has finished her salad.
The sun had fallen over the edge of the sea and the wind had begun to howl around the eaves of the old beach house. Perhaps these evening winds were blowing from a gale to the east.
“I have a new job,” she says after popping a final cherry tomato into her mouth.
“A new job? What happened to the old?” This comes from Edward Ferrari, Jane’s father, while dropping a heaping helping of lasagne onto his plate.
“Macy’s is downsizing. The marketing department is on the butcher’s block. We all could see it. I decided to test the waters before it was time to go.”
“You think you would have been laid off?” Wrinkles of concern deepen along the eyes of Josie Ferrari, Jane’s mother. She had previously believed that only Detroit auto workers were ever truly laid off. She wondered if they actually did that to white collar types also.
“Five in my department already have been.”
“So who are you working for now?” asks Edward. “I hope it’s a step up.”
Jane raises a glass of Pinot Noir to her lips, decides not to drink, and declares her new role in the work world.
“I’m the new merchandising manager for Penthouse Media Group.”
Jane’s mother moves to directly face her daughter so that all shadows and lines disappear. The wrinkles vanish. She appears much younger than her fifty-eight years.
“I’m sorry,” her father says. “Who?”
This time, Jane decides to take that sip of wine. She takes an ample swig.
“I’m the merchandising manager for Penthouse Media Group.”
She sticks to her script, distributing stress along the whole line so that no one part is more significant than the other. Is Penthouse more important than manager? No. Is merchandising more stressed than media? No. The announcement flows out of her like water, the beginning no more wet in judgement than the end.
“Penthouse? Isn’t that a magazine?”
Oh dad, why must you go there Jane thinks to herself.
“Yes, and the website, and the video library, and the merchandising channel which I am responsible for.”
Mother Josie looks down upon her second gin and tonic of the evening, then over to Matteo poking at his green beans and bacon. The red flush in his cheeks betrays what she thinks must be shame. Jane realizes something she had never thought before. Children are the only ones who blush.
Edward remains silent. He thoughtfully conspires to support his daughter in a way that will not appear insincere. For a loving father, his mind on the cusp of acute Alzheimer’s, such plans evolve very slowly.
“You’re not planning to model for them are you?”
“Why must you go there?” Jane thinks this aloud.
“Matteo?”“
“Yes, mom.”
“Do you remember when grandpa had to first start taking care of himself?”
Wind howled among the ridges of Matteo’s ears. Its force was enough to blow sand up and sting naked shins. The wind was too powerful now for kites tethered to boyish hands by hopelessly weak strings.
“When he was twelve. His father and mother died in an accident at sea. I’ve heard the story a million times.”
“Well, it’s time we both think about helping grandma take care of him.”
The phone rings once.
Jane is running ten minutes late to a rendevous in the Village. She plans tonight to enjoy some dinner at Baptiste’s then afterwards wine at the Cloister Café. Any other late night developments will occur at her new East Side apartment on Third Avenue.
The phone rings twice.
She knows it is not Juan calling to cancel. He only has her cell number. She looks for a very specific pair of Kenneth Cole’s at the bottom of a closet in the second bedroom that Matteo will eventually inhabit after all Jane’s planning is done.
The phone rings three times.
Finding the sandals, she is released to other tasks of the night.
“Hello?”
“Jane? How’s it going?”
Jane takes a call once a day on average from her father. On bad days, he may call two or three times, any memory of previous phone exchanges having been erased from his mind by the dying of nerve cells. This was a bad day again.
“Dad? I can’t talk right now. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour and I’m running late.”
“You’ll never guess.”
“What dad?” Jane could guess.
“They found Mallory on Everest! His body looks like a Greek statue! You should see it! His name was written inside his shirt collar. They found him on the Tibet side of the mountain half frozen in the snow!”
Of course she knows that Mallory had been discovered on Everest - has known since 1999 when the find was reported in National Geographic. She imagines that her father, in a state of boredom, scraping around the attic, looking through old piles of magazines. Each magazine delivers fresh news regardless of publication date. In Edward Ferrari’s fouled mind a crew of diligent mountain climbers, much like him in another day when he attempted the same peak, has just solved the greatest mystery in Himalayan death zone climbing.
“Yes dad - that’s good that they found Mallory. Did they find Irvine?”
“No, but they’re looking.”
“Dad, any other news? Anything I just got to know?”
“They found Mallory!”
“Thanks dad. Love you.”
The line goes dead as Jane rushes out the front door leaving the cordless atop the credenza.
Edward Ferrari, retired alpine climber and insurance broker, looks out upon the beach, out upon his grandson sitting on a dune watching off-islanders fly kites, drive all-terrain vehicles and get drunk on wine sold in boxes. In his trembling hand he covets evidence that life is just to die, a photo in a dog-eared glossy magazine.