Love Walked In Read online

  A PLUME BOOK

  LOVE WALKED IN

  “[An] intelligent, warmhearted fairy tale for grown-ups.”

  —The Washington Post

  “At the heart of Marisa de los Santos’s debut novel is the improbable and touching relationship that develops between an eleven-year-old girl and the woman her estranged father is dating. Love indeed walks in, and with it, a breath of fresh air.”

  —Marie Claire (chosen for the “10 best to do”)

  “A heartwarming, original, old-soul romance.”

  —New York Post

  “Smart, funny writing about the risks we take for love.”

  —Redbook

  “Cornelia as narrator is insightful, witty, and fun…[and] Love Walked In is a sassy, modern love story, with passages of beautiful human wisdom.”

  —The Portland Oregonian

  “Charismatic language and a compelling Philadelphia setting are two of the delights of this joyously real novel…. Constructed with a loving touch that doesn’t feel deliberate so much as exactly right, this novel will make readers believe in love in all its permutations. Cornelia describes the young girl, Clare, as ‘brave and loving and smart and full of hope.’ Those words also describe this novel.”

  —Romantic Times Book Club

  “An impossibly warm, acute, romantic spree, with room in its heart for all of us. Marisa de los Santos offers us two fine young heroines, Cornelia and Clare, and she trains a rich, brimming, silver-screen light on their sorrows and elations. Since Love Walked In borrows so magically from the spirit of a certain Frank Capra film, I’ll second the motion: It’s a Wonderful Novel.”

  —David Schickler, author of Sweet and Vicious and Kissing in Manhattan

  “Love Walked In is a brilliant novel—beautiful, hilarious, rich in detail and cultural commentary. While an exposé of our desires for old-world romance, elegant leading men, and the perfect shoes, this novel is also a bone-deep examination of inner lives, the bonds between women, and the prospects of borderline madness.”

  —Julianna Baggott, author of Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, and The Madam

  “De los Santos has done an amazing job fully fleshing out these people so that you can’t help but love them…. Love Walked In is full of beautiful turns of phrase, funny banter that works, and sweeping emotional situations.”

  —gwendabond.typepad.com

  “Not only a winning love story, but an homage to classic films as well.”

  —Pages

  “Two heroines, Clare Hobbes and Cornelia Brown, discover the power of friendship and the meaning of love in this remarkable tale…. Delos Santos’s writing engages throughout this powerful story. It’s impossible not to cheer for these characters as they search for happiness. A timeless gem.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Poet de los Santos’s debut is a light, sweet read.”

  —Library Journal

  “[Cornelia and Clare] enact a cross-generational, strong-but-vulnerable-and-loving, screenplay-ready femininity.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  An award-winning poet with a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing, MARISA DE LOS SANTOS lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her husband and their two small children. Love Walked In is her first novel.

  Love Walked In

  a novel

  Marisa de los Santos

  A PLUME BOOK

  PLUME

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  Copyright © Marisa de los Santos, 2005

  All rights reserved

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the following song lyrics:

  BUT NOT FOR ME, By: George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin © 1930 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications Inc., Miami FL 33014

  EMBRACEABLE YOU, By: George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin © 1930 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications Inc., Miami FL 33014

  HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?, By: George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin © 1927 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications Inc., Miami FL 33014

  LET’S DO IT (LET’S FALL IN LOVE), By: Cole Porter © 1928 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications Inc., Miami FL 33014

  YOU’RE THE TOP, By: Cole Porter © 1934 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications Inc., Miami FL 33014

  THREE IS A MAGIC NUMBER, by Robert Dorough. Used by permission of ABC Music Publishing.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

  De los Santos, Marisa, 1966–

  Love walked in: a novel / by Marisa de los Santos.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4295-8759-8

  1. Motion pictures—Appreciation—Fiction. 2. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Custody of children—Fiction. 4. Philadelphia (Pa.)—Fiction. 5. Restaurants—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.E1228L68 2006

  813'.54—dc22 2005003281

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For David Teague

  You’re the Nile

  You’re the Tower of Pisa

  Love Walked In

  Contents

  1 Cornelia

  2 Clare

  3 Cornelia

  4 Clare

  5 Cornelia

  6 Clare

  7 Cornelia

  8 Clare

  9 Cornelia

  10 Clare

  11 Cornelia

  12 Clare

  13 Cornelia

  14 Clare

  15 Cornelia
>
  16 Clare

  17 Cornelia

  18 Clare

  19 Cornelia

  20 Clare

  21 Cornelia

  22 Clare

  23 Cornelia

  24 Clare

  25 Cornelia

  26 Clare

  27 Cornelia

  28 Clare

  29 Cornelia

  30 Clare

  31 Cornelia

  32 Clare

  33 Cornelia

  Acknowledgments

  1

  Cornelia

  My life—my real life—started when a man walked into it, a handsome stranger in a perfectly cut suit, and, yes, I know how that sounds. My friend Linny would snort and convey the kind of multi-pronged disgust I rely on her to convey. One prong of feminist disgust at the whole idea of a man changing a woman’s life, even though, as things turned out, the man himself was more the harbinger of change than the change itself. Another prong of disgust for the inaccuracy of saying my life began after thirty-one years of living it. And the final prong being a kind of general disgust for the way people turn moments in their lives into movie moments.

  I do this more than I should, I’ll give her that, but there was something backlit and sudden about his walking through the door of the café I managed. If the floor had been bare and not covered with tables, chairs, people, and dogs, the autumnal late-morning sun would have slung his narrow shadow dramatically across the floor in a real Orson Welles shot. But Linny can jab me with her three-pronged disgust fork all she wants, and I’d still say that my life started on that October morning when a man walked through the door.

  It was an ordinary day—palpably ordinary, if that makes any sense, like it was asserting its smooth usualness. A Saturday, loud, smoke already piling up and hovering like weather over me and the customers in Café Dora. I sat where I always sat when I wasn’t waiting on someone—on a high stool behind the counter—and I watched Hayes and Jose play chess. Everyone said they were good players. They themselves said they were. “Not prodigy good,” said Hayes. “Not Russian, Deep-freakin’-Blue-playing good. But hell.” Hayes was from Texas and wrote the wine column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He liked to swear in offbeat ways, liked to walk in, turn a chair around backward with a bang, and straddle it.

  As I watched, Jose lifted his shaggy head, gave Hayes a liquid-eyed, sorrowful look, and moved a chess piece from one square to another. I don’t know the game well, but whatever Jose had done, it must have been something, because Hayes tossed back his head and hooted, “Hot damn, boy! You pulled that one right out of your ass!” Hayes looked at me with a wry smile and a genial cowboy twinkle in his eye, and I lifted one corner of my mouth in a kind of rueful facial shrug. “What can you do?” my face said.

  But don’t get attached to Hayes. As he was already in the room, he’s obviously not the man who walked into it bearing the new life on his shoulders, and he doesn’t finally figure into this story much. Not sure why I started with Hayes, except that in lots of ways he’s a neat little embodiment of the old life: a self-invented, smartish, semialluring wine snob disguised as a cowboy, not un-nice, with fairly amusing comments tripping off his tongue and probably a real person under there somewhere, but possibly not. In college, I read Piers Plowman in which this man Will goes on a journey and runs into characters like Holy Church and Gluttony. Think of Hayes as a character like that: Typical-Denizen-of-Cornelia’s-Old-Life. I’ve always found allegories kind of comforting. When you encounter people named Liar and Abstinence, you might not be crazy about them, but you know exactly what you’re getting into.

  Another regular, Phaedra, made her entrance, all blowsy auburn curls, leather pants, and nursing-mother breasts, and tugging a giant black pram behind her—one of those English nanny prams with high, white rubber tires. Five people jumped up and nearly cracked one another’s skulls trying to hold the door open for her. Phaedra directed a beseeching look at the couple sitting at the table nearest the door, a look that turned out to be unnecessary. The man and woman were already hustling up their cappuccinos, jackets, camera bags, and backpacks on metal frames, not minding a bit.

  “Cornelia!” Phaedra sang at me across the room in just the sort of musical voice you’d expect to come out of her mouth. “Could you? Café au lait? Loads of sugar? And something sinful!” We don’t have table service. Phaedra made a helpless, sighing gesture with her shoulders and her long hands, indicating her child, her exhaustion, the whole ancient weight of motherhood. Phaedra was a pain. But Allegra was a different story. Bearing the coffee and a croissant, I came out from behind my counter and made my zigzag way around tables and dogs for the sake of Phaedra’s baby, Allegra.

  And there she was, wrapped in a leopard-print blanket, just waking up. A blue-eyed, translucent, bewitching witch of a baby, fresh as new bread in that smoky room. Allegra resembled Phaedra, same white skin, same glorious Carole Lombard forehead, but with carrot-orange hair that flew out in all directions. I waited for the pang; the pang came. I never saw Allegra without wanting to touch her, specifically to sleep with her in the crook of my right arm. I put the croissant and the coffee in front of Phaedra, then cradled my elbows with my hands. Allegra was asleep and making nursing motions with her mouth because what else would babies dream about?

  “Face it. You want one,” said Phaedra. With effort, I shifted my gaze from gorgeous child to gorgeous pain-in-the-ass mother. “See that?” said Phaedra. “You had to literally drag your eyes away from her.” Ouch, I thought, and then sat down to talk for a minute, Phaedra’s misuse of the word “literally” having created a warm spot in my heart, tiny but large enough to prompt a five-minute conversation.

  “How’s business?” I asked. Phaedra was a jewelry designer.

  “Not good. I’m starting to think people just don’t get it,” said Phaedra. Her signature pieces, or what would be her signature pieces if anyone bought and wore them, were made out of sea glass and platinum, a juxtaposition of the ordinary and extraordinary, Phaedra claimed, that forced one to rethink one’s perceptions of “value” and “preciousness.” Maybe people didn’t get it. Or maybe they got it but didn’t feel sufficiently moved to shell out eight hundred dollars for a bracelet made of old Heineken bottles.

  Phaedra lifted her coffee to her lips, eyeing me brightly through the steam. “Cornelia, what if you wore some of the pieces in the café, just to generate in-ter-est?” Her tone suggested the idea had just popped into her head. In fact, this was the third time she’d asked.

  “I can’t wear jewelry at work,” I said, not elaborating but rolling my eyes in a way I hoped suggested some unseen powers-that-be who hovered over me, forbidding jewelry. The truth was that I never wore jewelry anywhere, ever. I’m five feet tall and built like a preteen, eighty-five pounds soaking wet, as my father says, and my fear is that, given my smallness, jewelry will make me look like a geegaw or doodad, a spangly ornament to hang on a tree. It’s a shame, too, because I adore it. Not so much Phaedra’s kind—cool, angular objects—but serious jewels: diamonds, cuffs and chokers, brooches like shooting stars, tiaras. Jean Harlow jewels, Irene Dunne on the ship in Love Affair.

  Allegra stirred in her leopard-print nest, yawned, and shot out a fist. Phaedra lifted her onto her lap, instantly dipping her swan neck, dropping her face into the orange hair, breathing in her child’s scent. An authentic gesture, automatic, unstudied. I felt prickles shoot down my arms. I touched a finger to Allegra’s hand, and she gripped it hard and hung on.

  “You should have one, you know,” said Phaedra, harping, and this instantly got my hackles up, until I saw her face, which was something like kind. Phaedra was always a better person with Allegra in her arms. So I just trilled a little laugh and said, breezily, “Me with a baby. Can you imagine?”

  “Of course, I can. Perfectly,” said Phaedra. “And so can you.”

  While I resented her smug smile, and while I’d have died before admitting it to her, I had to admit to myself that she
was at least partly right: I couldn’t imagine it perfectly, but I could imagine it. Had imagined it, in fact, more than once. But, every time, what brought me to my senses was my conviction that before a person dropped a new life into this world, she should probably get a real one herself.

  The truth was, I was treading water and had been for some time. If you’re wondering why a thirty-something woman who had gone to all the trouble of attending a university and slogging through medieval allegorical texts had risen no higher on the career food chain than café manager, I don’t blame you. I wondered myself. And the best answer I’d come up with was that I hadn’t figured out anything better—not yet. If I were to ever have a full-fledged vocation, as opposed to a half-assed avocation, I needed to love it and, in my experience, it isn’t always easy to figure out what you love. You’d think it would be, but it isn’t. Also, if you stay in it for any length of time, like anyplace else, a café becomes a world.