I’ve never experienced quite such an elaborate dinner.
Okay, for starters, we have placecards with our names on them. Placecards! And I can’t help but notice the placecards have assigned Suzette to sit on one side of the table with Enzo, and me on the other side with Jonathan. Moreover, our kids aren’t even at the same table! There’s easily enough room for two more people at this massive mahogany wood table, but instead, another smaller table has been set up across the entire room. We practically need binoculars to see them.
“I assumed the children would want their privacy,” Suzette says.
In my experience, children never want privacy. Ever. It’s only recently that going to the bathroom has ceased to be a family experience. Not only that, but the children’s table is far too small. It looks like it would be better suited for the living room of a dollhouse. I can see from the expression on the kids’ faces that they are not pleased.
“That’s a table for babies,” Nico grumbles. “I don’t want to sit there!” “Fai silenzio,” Enzo hisses.
Our children, of course, both speak perfect Italian because he spoke it to them all the time when they were little so they’d grow up bilingual. He says they both have terrible American accents, but they sound pretty good to me. In any case, the warning quiets them down, and they reluctantly take their seats at the comically tiny table. I sort of want to snap a picture of them at that little table with their identical miserable faces, but I suspect that will enrage them.
Enzo looks just as perplexed by the place setting in front of him. He plops down in the chair assigned to him and picks up one of the forks that have been laid out. “Why is there three forks?” he wants to know.
“Well,” Suzette explains patiently, “one is a dinner fork of course, then there’s the salad fork, and then you have a spaghetti fork.”
“How is a spaghetti fork different from a dinner fork?” I ask.
“Oh, Millie,” she laughs. And she doesn’t answer, even though I thought it was a very good question.
“So how are you liking the neighborhood so far?” Jonathan asks us as he settles into his own high-backed wooden chair and carefully lays a napkin on his lap.
I squirm in my own chair. The chairs look painfully expensive, constructed from solid wood, but they are surprisingly uncomfortable. “We love it.”
Suzette leans her chin on her fist. “Have you met Janice?” “I have.”
“She’s a trip, isn’t she?” she cackles. “That woman is afraid of her own shadow. And she’s so nosy! Isn’t she, Jonathan?”
Jonathan takes a sip from his water glass and smiles vaguely at his wife but doesn’t say anything. I appreciate that he doesn’t immediately jump to bad-mouth his neighbor, even if it might be deserved. Suzette, on the other hand
“She did have her son on a leash,” I recall. “It was coming off his backpack.”
Suzette giggles. “She’s hilariously overprotective. She thinks there are gremlins waiting to snatch her child at every corner.”
“She was paranoid about some boy a few towns over that she was saying was kidnapped.”
“Right.” She bobs her head. “It was a custody battle between the parents, and the father drove him over the border to Canada. They got him back. It was in the news at the time, but she acts like the boogeyman is out there! And that’s not even the worst thing about living next door to her. You should hear some of the crap she’s pulled.”
I wince. “What else?”
“So we had the grill going in the backyard once,” she says, “and we were hardly even cooking anything. Only some crayfish and a filet. We
only had a few guests over, right, Jonathan?” “I don’t really remember, dear,” he says.
“Anyway,” she continues, “right in the middle of our little barbecue, the police show up! Janice called the police and told them we had started a fire in the backyard! Can you imagine?”
“You have a grill in the backyard?” Enzo asks with interest. “You should get one,” Jonathan says.
“Or try ours out,” Suzette offers. “You’re welcome to come over and give it a whirl if you want.”
“Could I?” he asks excitedly.
It’s funny because when I first met Enzo, nearly two decades ago now, he seemed so much more exciting than any man I have ever met. He was practically dashing. Now I realize the cold, hard truth: this man’s biggest fantasy in life is grilling burgers in the backyard. Or that’s what you would think as he quizzes Suzette about the ins and outs of grilling. I would be able to get more on board if, while Suzette is talking to him, she didn’t feel the need to touch his arm the whole time.
Like, you can talk to somebody without touching their arm. It’s possible.
Thankfully, the conversation about grills is interrupted when Martha emerges from the kitchen, carrying plates of salad for the four of us. I don’t know what’s in it, but it smells like raspberries and there are little lumps of cheese in it.
“Thank you, Martha,” I say when I notice Suzette didn’t bother to thank her.
I wait for her to say “you’re welcome,” but instead she just stares at me again until I have to look away.
I can’t eat with Martha’s gaze on me, but as soon as she leaves the room, I dig into the salad. I’m not much of a salad person, but wow. I mean, wow. If all salad tasted this way, I might be a salad person. I had no idea it was possible for salad to be this delicious.
“Millie,” Suzette giggles. “You’re using your spaghetti fork to eat the salad!”
I am? I look around the table, and everybody is eating, apparently using a different fork than I am, even though the truth is they all look identical to me. And Enzo, who definitely does not have more fork
knowledge than I do, points to the fork farthest from my plate. How did he know that?
Wow, this is weirdly embarrassing. I swap out the forks as quickly as I can.
“So what do you do, Jonathan?” I ask to draw attention away from the fork debacle.
“Finance.”
I offer a smile. “Sounds interesting.”
He shrugs. “It pays the bills. It’s certainly not as exciting as what Suzette does.”
When he says that, he reaches across the table for her hand. She allows him to hold it for only a split second before pulling away. “I love being around people,” she says. “Because of my job, I know everyone in this town. Actually ” Her eyes widen as a thought seems to occur to her. “I could be of help to you, Enzo.”
Enzo frowns. “Me?”
“Yes!” She dabs her lips with her napkin, and I can’t help but notice her lipstick is completely intact. I’m fairly sure mine rubbed off several lettuce leaves ago, but I guess that’s okay since it was the exact same color as my lips. “You’re looking for customers for your landscaping business, aren’t you? Well, I know everyone in all the surrounding towns buying new houses. I can put your name in the welcome package.”
His mouth falls open. “You would do that?”
“Of course, silly!” And then she touches his arm again. Again! Is she trying to go for some sort of world record? “We’re neighbors, aren’t we?”
“You do not know if I am any good.”
Enzo is really good at what he does. Sure, some percentage of the women who hire him only do so because he’s hot, but he keeps clients because his work is stellar, and he knows it. But he also feels strongly that he should prove himself.
“In that case,” she says, “maybe you should give me a private demonstration.”
I don’t like where this is going.
“We desperately need work on our backyard,” Suzette explains. “I would love to do some serious gardening back there, but I’m afraid I don’t have a green thumb. If you could show me what you can do and
give me a little instruction on top of that, I would be happy to recommend you to everyone I know.”
Enzo looks over at me. He opens his mouth, almost certainly about to ask if I’m okay with this arrangement, but then Suzette says, “You know what I love about the two of you? You trust each other, unlike a lot of other couples. Enzo doesn’t have to ask your permission, Millie, for any little silly thing.”
And then he shuts his mouth.
“So what do you say?” she asks him. “Do we have a deal?”
I flash a desperate look at Jonathan, hoping he will intervene and say that he is not okay with this. But he is just sitting there, shoveling bites of that weirdly delicious salad into his mouth, not the slightest bit perturbed. Of course, why should he be upset? All Enzo would be doing is a little yardwork next door. There’s no reason to get jealous.
And let’s face it, it’s not like Suzette is the first woman to hit on my husband. She’s not the first and she won’t be the last.
Except there’s something about Suzette’s flirting that enrages me more than the usual bored housewife who sees my husband as eye candy. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
“Sure,” Enzo says. “I am happy to.”
Martha comes back out of the kitchen, carrying more plates of food. I glance back at the children’s table to see if they’ve made any progress on their salad—usually something eaten only under threat of punishment— and I’m shocked to discover that even Nico has nearly cleaned his plate. I’m also mildly jealous of the fact that the kids only seem to have been given one fork each.
Martha pulls away our salad plates and lays down a dish in front of me that looks like something Italian. Unfortunately, Suzette had no idea that Enzo is so picky about Italian food. Well, she’s about to find out.
Enzo looks down at the plate, inhaling deeply. “Is this pasta alla Norma?”
Suzette bobs her head excitedly. “Yes! Our chef is Italian, and I guessed from your accent that you are Sicilian, so he thought you might enjoy this.”
I hold my breath, waiting for Enzo to push it away or possibly take a few bites to be polite. But instead, he takes a mouthful of spaghetti,
and his eyes almost start tearing up. “Oddio It tastes just like how my
nonna used to make it.”
“I’m so glad you like it!” she gushes. “It does have a wonderful mouthfeel, doesn’t it? Of course, I’m sure it’s not as good as it is when Millie makes it.”
“Millie does not cook this dish,” Enzo says. Suzette’s long eyelashes flutter. “No?”
Everyone at the table is now staring at me, like I am the worst person in the universe because I don’t make my husband pasta a la Norway or whatever the hell it’s called. In my defense, anytime I try to cook something Italian, he acts like I just tried to feed him poison. Who knew he would like this so much that it would make him cry?
I pick up my fork and spear what looks like a piece of eggplant. I shove it in my mouth, and
Wow, that is pretty good. I’m not about to start crying over it, but this is some really good pasta.
“Oh, Millie,” Suzette giggles. “You’re using the dessert fork!”
By the end of this night, if I have not stabbed Suzette with one of these forks, it will only be because I’m not sure which one to use to do it.
