I asked who owned the floor.
He didn’t answer that either.”
No signature.
I put it in the folder.
And the restaurant.
It’s called Marchetti’s now.
Not Costa’s.
The half that’s mine and the half that’s Priya’s, with Rosalie in the bakery next door — the wall came out in June, so it’s one room again, the way the building was in 1998 — and a menu that is, page for page, my mother’s school notebook.
We put the notebook in a case by the door.
Under glass.
Open to page four.
The gnocchi.
1961.
Halvorsen’s correction ran in May.
It was short.
“In a 2011 review, this column stated that the chef of Costa’s had developed its menu through international travel.
The menu was developed by Antonia Marchetti Costa at her mother’s kitchen table from a family notebook dating to 1961.
The column regrets the error and the fifteen years.”
He framed it.
It’s on the wall by the case.
