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Over a year ago, Joe had gotten a girl in trouble at Northfield Mount Hermon. Because his father was famous-for a writer, Da
“Smart boy,” Ketchum said to Joe, when Da
They’d driven to an abortion clinic in Vermont together. Ketchum and the cook sat up front, in the cook’s car; Joe and the sad, frightened girl were in the backseat. It had been an awkward situation because the couple were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend. They’d broken up almost a month before the girl discovered she was pregnant, but they both knew Joe was the baby’s father; they were doing the right thing (in the cook and Ketchum’s opinion), but it was difficult for them.
Ketchum tried to console them, but-Ketchum being Ketchum-it came out a little clumsily. The logger said more than he meant to. “There’s one thing to be happy about,” he told the miserable-looking couple in the backseat. “When the same thing happened to your dad and a girl he knew, Joe, abortion wasn’t legal-and it wasn’t necessarily safe.”
Had the old woodsman forgotten the cook was in the car?
“So that’s why you took Da
Ketchum and the cook had argued the whole way to the abortion clinic, where there’d been picketers; Joe had been right not to involve his famous father with the protesters. And all the way home-the ex-girlfriend and Joe were spending the weekend in Brattleboro with the boy’s grandfather-Joe had held the girl in the backseat, where she sobbed and sobbed. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen-seventeen, tops. “You’re going to be all right,” Joe, who was not yet seventeen, kept saying to the poor kid. Ketchum and the cook hoped so.
And now the two older men had stopped themselves in the last chapter of East of Bangor -Da
The book was dedicated to those two chefs Da
Tony Angel still drove periodically to the North End to do a little shopping. He would meet Molinari and Paul at the Caffè Vittoria for some espresso. They always assured him that Carmella was doing well; she seemed reasonably content with another fella. It came as no surprise to the cook that Carmella would end up with someone; she was both beautiful and lovable.
East of Bangor might be a difficult novel for young Joe to read, whenever he got around to it; Joe had no time to read his father’s novels when he was at Northfield Mount Hermon. To the cook’s knowledge, his grandson had read only one of his dad’s books: The Ke
WELL, HERE I AM-back to worrying about young Joe again, and all that that leads to-the cook was thinking. He looked under the damp dish towels covering his pizza dough; the dough was ready to punch down, which the cook did. Tony Angel wet the dishcloths once more; he wrung them only partially dry before re-covering the bowls for his pizza dough’s second rise.
He thought his next letter to Ketchum might begin, “There’s so much to worry about, I can’t seem to stop myself from doing it. And you’d laugh at me, Ketchum, because I’ve even been praying!” But the cook didn’t begin that letter. He felt strangely exhausted, and he’d shot the whole morning doing almost nothing-just starting his pizza dough and limping to the bookstore and back. It was already time to go shopping. Avellino wasn’t open for lunch-just di
As for worrying, the cook wasn’t alone; Da
The fu
The cook should have been more worried about Carl, because Ketchum was right. Vermont was next door to New Hampshire -too close for comfort. And the deputy sheriff, who was sixty-six, had retired; he had lots of time on his hands, and that cowboy was still looking for the little cripple who’d stolen his Injun Jane.