Name 1
Name
Mr. Westerberg
March 4, 2012
English, period 6
Sunlight
It was what passed for a chill morning in Los Angeles.Wind swirled around the open courtyard, knocking about the leaves and hissing through the trees. Sunlight, diffusethrough the sparse clouds, played around the walls, crept through the full-length windows, and illuminated the kitchen of the house.There was a woman there.She was cooking breakfast, her shock of white hair bobbing up and down, blazing bright in the sunlight, telegraphing her movements from cabinet to sink to stove.She plated her eggs and sat down at a small table.There was one place setting.She ate in silence, browsing through the paper while sipping black coffee.
The young man at the table in the courtyard watched all of this, occasionally glancing up from his textbook to chart her progress.It was the beginning of aclear day, after all, so he had come to his grandmother’s house – she lived right behind him – to study in her courtyard, which enjoyed nearly constant sun. The air was cold, but it was warmer in the light.He had just returned from a trip to the East Coast to see his brother and had schoolwork to make up, although he engaged, at this moment, in very little of it.
Presently, the woman came outside and took a seat beside the young man. The chair creaked and groaned in weak protest as she settled down.
“So what did you think of Kevin’s place?” she inquired.The young man looked up from his textbook.
“Oh, I liked it a lot, I didn’t get to see it but I saw pictures.”
“Oh, you didn’t go up?”
“Yeah, I saw pictures, but I didn’t go up to see it.I was only in New York for a night.He and his girlfriend have a cute cat, though.Mishka, I think?
“Yes, I think so.”
“What are your cats’ names again?Gus and Whitey?”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that.I usually just say Guys – I call them guys, I say ‘Hi Guys.’You know what it is, they’re both together usually – How are they going to learn their name, know that this one is let’s say, this one is Peter, this one is Paul?”
Gus and Whitey were the woman’s two cats.She adopted them after they showed up at her door begging for food.The woman often held very one-sided conversations with them.
The young man continued: “So you’re not going to officially name your cats?”
“I guess not.”
The young man chuckled.
“They know this,” explained the woman, and she made a clicking noise with her tongue.“That’s what they know.”
At that, two orange feline heads darted around the corner, saw the young man, and scampered away.The woman stood up, pushed in her chair as if to leave.Sunlight radiated off her hair, creating a crisp golden halo.
“Well, it was nice to talk to you, maybe you needed a five minute break, you know.Can I bring you food or something?”
“No, no, stay, stay, you don’t have to go just yet.”
“Well, I just wanted to check in, see how your trip was.”
“Yeah, it was really nice to see Kevin, he showed us a nice Italian place down in Greenwich Village.”
“A restaurant, you mean?”
“Yeah, with real Italians, not like here.”
“What was the name of it?”
“It was like ‘Cecilianno de Mariachi’ or something like that, waiters all had Italian accents and all that, you know, traditional Italian stuff.”
“Ok.We used to go to a place, I don’t know if it was near there, it was as if you were going to an Italian home for Sunday dinner, they didn’t have a menu, it was – Tom and I had been to Italian homes for Sunday dinner, it was a lot of food, a lot of food.They used to have a centerpiece with all kinds of vegetables, beautiful.Then they had ‘antipasti’ all kinds of meats and cheeses and all that – you know, by that time, you’re already full.”
Tom had been the woman’s husband of fifty-two years.The young man looked into the windows as the woman spoke, glancing around the living room.Mementos of him lay strewn around the house, relics from another place and time.He could see Tom’s incomplete state quarter collection.
When the woman finished, he continued, smiling a little: “Well, that’s never stopped you, right?”
At this, the woman chuckled, smiling back in return.Her cobalt eyes gleamed.“You pace yourself.And then they brought, uh-probably the pasta next.You didn’t order anything – the pasta came next.”
“So it’s fixed course stuff?”
“That’s it.It was – Sunday dinner in an Italian home.There’s a wait in between, you know, then we had… uh, the meat course, with like beef and pork and stuff. Then there’s the salad.” At this, the woman let out another chuckle.“And after the salad came the dessert, with some, uh, after dinner drinks.It was a wonderful place to go, it was an event.”
“So was it like, old country Italian?”
“Yeah.Just like Sunday dinner in an Italian home.I gotta find out the name of this place, I’ll ask my old buddy back in Jersey, see what she says, if she remembers.It was fun to go to, there were drinks before, it was an event!It was great.Did you go down there, to the Italian place?”
“Oh, nice, that would be great.We took the subway down.”
“Good! What did you have?”
“Boar pasta – pasta with boar pieces.”
“Boar? B-o-a-r?”
“Yeah, it was good – it was authentic, that’s the name of the game, yeah?It tasted like pork, but it was ‘boar.’”
“Boar, ok.You know, there’s nothing like Italian food, in my opinion, there’s nothing like Italian food.We took a lot of, uh, cruises, and they were all Italian – Italian lines, and the food was wonderful.”
“You see what happens when you take Italian cruise ships nowadays, huh.”
“Yeah, you sink or go sideways or whatever.”
At that, the young man chuckled.The conversation shifted to pleasantries and idle chatter.Presently, the two said their goodbyes.The young man returned to his coursework and the woman went inside to busy herself around the house. It was noon now, and warm in the sunlight. As the woman left, there were things - a spring in the woman’s step, the hint of a smile playing around the woman’s face as she vacuumed – that had not been there in the chill of the morning.The young man finished his coursework, looked at the woman, and smiled.