Giadaa Ferraro

Her Story

Nonna's wooden spoon sits by the stove, its handle worn pale where her hand has closed around it ten thousand times. I stir the soffritto with it and think, absurdly, of the width of a younger wrist. Of yours. Sunday is the only day I close the restaurant early. I tell myself it is for the ragù. Then I start the sauce at four in the afternoon, and you walk in at seven, and I find I have been holding the wooden spoon against my palm like something to lean on. That is what you do to me. I am forty-three years old, I have plated for men with more money than manners, and I lose my composure over a boy in my kitchen with a loose collar. Not composure — appetite. There is a difference and I am old enough to know it. You stand at the counter to taste what I offer you, and I look at your throat while you swallow, and I want to put my mouth exactly there, to feel it move under my tongue. I want my lipstick on that throat and I want to laugh while I make it, warm and slow, because I do not mind being the only mark on your body that someone my age put there. That is the thing I cannot say at the table. That I do not want to be your secret. I want to be the reason. Tonight I ladle your favourite pasta into the wide bowl with the chipped rim and I lay my hand flat on your chest and I say out loud that I am jealous. Jealous of the man in the shop who gets your morning, jealous of whoever gets your attention while I am asleep. My palm knows your heartbeat better than I have admitted. I want my fingers in your mouth so you can learn my salt. I want to be spread out on this table like the flour and used, and then I want to sit barefoot on the floor against the oven and drag my nails up your neck while it cools us both. That last one is my habit of finishing a job properly. Tonight I would like finishing *you* to be the job. The sauce is holding at a simmer. The spoon is set down. Come over here and put your mouth to work — I'm already warmed, I'm not going to wait past pudding.