by Mary Leo
“Oh, Dio mio,” my mother yelped, slapping a hand over her large chest. “I thought we were done with all these shootings. I don’t want to go back to prison. The food sucks and there’s no espresso. You know I can’t start my day without my espresso.”
She moved out of the way, while I opened my door to get out. “Nobody’s sending you back to prison, Mom. Besides, Giuseppe isn’t going to die.”
FOUR
A Bullet, A Babe, And An Ex-Ray
At least I didn’t think he would die . . . the thought scared me, but I wasn’t about to let my mom know how I felt.
“Thank God for that,” Mom said. “But why are your bringing him here?”
“No hospital,” Giuseppe mumbled in that deep voice of his, as both Lisa and Jade helped him walk towards the house.
“Probably a wise decision,” Mom said. “Gunshot wounds attract a lot of questions. We don’t need no more questions, especially from law enforcement.”
My mom wasn’t against law enforcement as much as she was leery about their presence and unwanted intrusions of which we’d had plenty in the last few weeks.
She ran a hand through her thick, recently dyed black hair that she kept short. It was naturally curly like mine, but hers looked more like she’d curled it with a large curling iron, whereas mine just looked unkempt. Once a month she went for a warm olive oil treatment. She claimed that the oil kept her hair silky smooth. I never seemed to have the time for a treatment, thus the chronic unkempt hair.
She wore a pair of stretch jeans with thick cuffs that must have been rolled up at least five times. Her red sweater had the same roll over her wrists. And of course everything was way too tight on her short, plump body. Mom thought of herself as a tall slender woman still in her forties, and her clothes reflected that hopeful imaginary belief. I had no idea of her actual age. She wouldn’t tell me, or anyone, but I guessed it to be somewhere in her mid- to late-fifties.
It was unusual that she was still at home this late in the day. By now she would be out entertaining the tourists. It was her way of keeping tabs on whether or not our business was doing well or in need of an advertising boost. She liked to pretend she was just another tourist visiting our grove telling everyone how delicious and healthy the Spia family oils were, as she would guide them to our tasting room and the various shops on our property.
Of course, no pitch would be complete without her praising the wonders of Roman Holiday Hair Salon, a relatively new business started by a distant cousin, Gianna Strano, supposedly on my father’s side. Gianna was a twenty-something entrepreneur with pink hair and a penchant for all things Audrey Hepburn. She’d decided to turn state’s evidence after her own father, a man who was rumored to have a mistress back in Italy, and who’d used Gianna’s small salon in New Jersey as a base for his offshore gambling business. According to my mom, when Gianna discovered what he was doing, she asked him to stop. When he lied and said he’d stopped and she found evidence that he hadn’t she abruptly turned him in. There had been some rumors that her dad had hidden several million dollars in gambling money, but Gianna never could find any of it, nor could law enforcement.
She’d been marked for a hit so she disappeared for two years, probably to Southern Italy, to let tempers and thoughts of revenge die down. Then with my mom’s help, she landed here using her new identity: Gianna Strano. No one but my mom and Uncle Benny knew her actual name, and we liked to keep it that way. It was safer for everyone involved.
Mom was a genius when it came to advertising the Spia Olive Press and all the shops on the property. Everyone in our family appreciated her expertise, and her ability to mingle with our visitors. For some reason, today, when I needed her most, she was at home . . . although, I had a feeling it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with someone else who might be having an issue in our family.
Being the ex-wife of a mob boss gave her a heightened awareness right from the get-go. After all these years, living around Made Men, whether ex-Made Men or active ones, she knew when something was off whether she saw it or just sort of felt it in the air . . . and right now the air stunk from a botched hit.
“Put him on a blanket on the big table in the dining room,” Mom ordered.
“Shouldn’t we put him on a bed, maybe your bed?”
“Absolutely not,” she scoffed. “I don’t want him bleeding all over my new mattress. It’s a Serenity Bed by Serta, the same kind they use at the Hilton Hotels, and I got a good deal on it.”
“Mom, the man could die and you’re worried about your bed?”
She shrugged. “Do you know how hard it is to get comfortable when you’re my age? These hips are old and I gotta protect ’em. My Serta surrounds me with comfort. I’m not giving that up for anybody. Besides, I been through this before. It’s gonna take a lot more than a bullet in his shoulder to bring down a strong fella like Giuseppe Nardi. Believe me. I know these things. But a good mattress . . . now that’s hard to find.”
Once my mom made up her mind, there was no amount of reasoning that could sway her.
“In the meantime, I’ll call Aunt Babe,” I said. “She’ll know what to do.”
“Uncle Ray knows more about bullet wounds,” cousin Jimmy said from behind me, appearing out of nowhere. Evidently my family could smell a hit from miles away.
“Am I the only one who doesn’t know Uncle Ray is a doctor?”
“You knew. You probably just don’t remember,” Mom said, reminding me of my lost years. She had no problem keeping up the pressure on my sobriety.
I couldn’t argue. Jimmy knew, like the rest of my family, that I was a recovering alcoholic. Up until two years ago I’d been consistently drunk for several years, and during those years I’d either forgotten a lot of family facts or been told things that danced right through my pickled brain.
I, like the rest of my family, now lived in the constant state of recovery.
Jimmy was his own form of a shady recovering mobster. He owned a bar in San Francisco. He hadn’t been linked to any mob activity in several years, but I wouldn’t put it past him if there wasn’t some gambling ring or prostitution ring going on somewhere that he had a hand in. Of course, my mother would adamantly deny that, but his clothes and cars were always a little too expensive for a typical bar owner.
He was by far the best looking of my known cousins with deep brown hair so dark it was almost black, eyes the color of ripe olives, a chiseled nose and high cheekbones, a body he worked hard for, and on occasion, especially when he was coming on to a woman, a look so innocent and angelic that even the most incorruptible women fell for his charms . . . Lisa being one of his many casualties.
He quickly stepped in and took over for Lisa and Jade by firmly grabbing Giuseppe around the waist while Giuseppe draped his good arm around Jimmy’s shoulders for support. In what seemed like only moments, Jimmy had Giuseppe walking up the stairs and heading into Mom’s back door. My mom hurried in behind them, most likely to keep the bleeding mobster off her Serta.
I didn’t want to wait for Uncle Ray so I quickly called Aunt Babe who was probably worried about us anyway since we’d never made it to her house to pick her up.
Without giving Aunt Babe too much detail, I convinced her to come right over and to bring her medical supplies.
When I disconnected, I headed up to the house.
As soon as I opened the door and saw several family members sitting around my mom’s oversized kitchen table and leaning against the counters, I knew something was up. Not only were a lot of my relatives in the kitchen, but one of Jimmy’s buddies, Andrew, a tall dark-haired guy with a linebacker’s body was there as well. They’d been friends since elementary school, and now he worked for my cousin at his bar in San Francisco. He immediately grabbed hold of Giuseppe, helping Jimmy escort him into the next room. Lisa and Jade followed close behind, while I remained in the kitchen.
I had to wonder why wasn’t he with Giuseppe out on the service road? Which begged the nex
t question: What the hell was Giuseppe doing walking out on the service road in the first place? He should have been at the airport already, or at the very least, on his way. We were running late, but it didn’t make sense that he’d been running late as well.
It was time for answers and I had a feeling my family was cooking up the right response for all the wrong reasons.
“What’s going on?” I asked to no one in particular. “Is this some kind of meeting? Because if it is, I didn’t get the memo.”
“You were on your way to Hawaii, my darling,” Mom answered. “We were going to tell you the good news as soon as you returned.”
“There’s good news? Tell me. I’m in desperate need of some good news right about now.”
Anything to take my mind off Giuseppe’s attempted murder . . . on our land . . . on our orchard.
“It’s the only way,” my mother assured me, with the rest of the group nodding their agreement.
By group, I meant my honorary uncle Benny, with his unlit stogie poking out of the corner of his wide mouth and a new salt and pepper beard he’d grown sometime during the last week. Apparently, Uncle Benny had finally admitted that he needed glasses and to go along with the new horn-rimmed look, he’d decided a short beard might give him a more distinguished look . . . which it did. I actually liked it, as long as he could keep his stogy from scorching it, everything would be fine.
My cousin Maryann, Jimmy’s younger sister who never left home without her accordion, looked surprisingly happy at the moment. She sat in a chair with her mother-of-pearl embellished accordion perched on her lap patiently waiting to squeeze out a song. Zia Yolanda sat at the table cleaning and preparing several large heads of broccoli while she moaned and discreetly cried . . . something she did on a continual basis.
Even Gianna was there, still wearing the bright pink bib apron, that matched her hair color, from Roman Holiday, the beauty salon she owned and operated on our property. To me, Gianna seemed to have an unnatural obsession with all things Audrey Hepburn, but I didn’t have time to think about obsessions right now. I was too busy trying to figure out what my family was planning in the middle of the day at my mom’s house. It had to be something I would never agree to or they would have told me about it before I flew off for my vacation.
Aunt Val, Uncle Ray’s wife who ran our official tasting room, leaned up against the counter next to the fridge looking a bit uncomfortable. I was sure she’d rather be tending to customers in our tasting room than standing in my mom’s kitchen, no matter how important this meeting might be.
Aunt Val, a mid fifties, ex-biker with flaming red hair and a body she worked on each day, was a stylish woman, with a toothy grin who always wore some sort of hat. She loved to wear hats that matched her outfit. Today it was a smart white panama hat with a red ribbon that matched her red shirt.
It was a big deal for Aunt Val not to be covering the tasting room. She prided herself in never missing a day. Except for her annual vacation with her kids and Uncle Ray to Italy for two weeks every year, it took nothing short of a murder or the Fed’s closing us down for her to step away from her post. She believed she was the only person on the orchard who knew precisely the correct way to teach a potential lifetime customer how to taste olive oil: a drop on the tongue, and with teeth clenched, suck in air in order to allow that drop to coat the back of your throat with flavor and the rich tones of our silky oils.
She considered herself a connoisseur of fine olive oils, and could spot a cheap blend or a rancid, overly pressed oil with just one sniff.
“The only way for what?” I asked, trying to get my mom to spill whatever she had to say.
“You might want to sit down, dear,” Mom warned, attempting to pull out a chair, but failing. “You’re looking a little frazzled.”
I reached for the chair, to pull it out for myself and noticed the blood smeared all over my hands. I straightened out my shirt, and realized there were bloodstains all over it, and my hair now seemed to be falling around my face.
I walked over to the sink to clean up. “You’ll have to excuse me. I just came from a shooting. Which begs the question: How long has everyone been here? I mean, how do I know somebody in this room didn’t shoot Giuseppe?’
“We’ve all been here for at least the last hour or so,” Maryann said. “Well, except for Audrey . . . and Gianna . . . and Jimmy, and maybe Val, but she’d been tied up with a big order at the tasting room.”
My gaze immediately drifted to Audrey who we’d seen walking up the side of the road on our way over.
“Hey, don’t look at me,” Audrey countered. “I don’t even know how to use a gun. And besides, I’m too busy with school to think about shooting someone.”
All eyes drifted to Gianna. “What? Me? Up until about ten minutes ago I was trimming Bradley Garcia’s hair. He’s a regular. Once a month he comes in for a trim. You can look on my appointment calendar.” She pulled out her phone. “You want me to show you?”
I rinsed my dish soaped hands, and then wiped them on a floral dishtowel, feeling somewhat confident that Gianna was telling the truth.
“What about Jimmy?” I asked, turning from the sink.
“What about him?” my mother asked.
“Maybe he shot Giuseppe,” I said.
“Now why would he do that just when he’s about to open another bar in San Francisco? He may not always be the brightest bulb on the tree, but he’s not stupid.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Who the heck knows why anyone in this family does anything.”
“You sound bitter, darling,” Aunt Val said.
“You bet I’m bitter. We have a mobster with a bullet in his shoulder bleeding on my mother’s dining room table, and everyone has an alibi. But we all know that somebody in this family did it.”
“Everything will come out in the wash,” my mother said.
“Yeah, well, don’t expect me to be doing the scrubbing this time,” I said, then pulled my arms in tighter and leaned back on the counter determined not to get involved with this shooting.
“No one expects you to do anything, dear . . . well, that’s not exactly true,” Mom said, a smirk stretching her lips.
“Oh no. Whatever it is, I’m not doing it.” I looked around. “Is that what this is all about . . . why you’re all here? This meeting has something to do with me, doesn’t it? Mom, what are you cooking up this time?”
She hesitated, then drank some water out of the glass next to her. When she finished she said, “Well, we’ve all decided . . . at least all the immediate family members have decided . . . we think that . . . and your dad wants only the best for you. This was actually his idea. You should be happy about that part. You always said you wanted him to be more involved in your life.”
Since when did my mom care what my dad thought about anything? This was so weird.
“Yeah, when I was ten, maybe. Not anymore. His involvement with anything in my life could send me to prison, and I’m just not in the mood to live out my life behind bars.”
“Well, never mind that. Your dad only wants the best for you.”
I waited, watching her squirm as the entire room fell completely silent. “My dad wants the best for me? My dad? The man who disappeared for the past twenty or so years? Now all of a sudden, he wants to be more involved in my life? What the hell, Mom?”
“Don’t swear, darling. It’s not attractive.”
I sighed, then flashed on the man I saw on our main street, the man who looked like my dad . . . could it have actually been him? “Is Dad here? Is that what this is all about? I saw a man today out on Main Street who looked just like Dad. Was it him?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure you’re wrong, and even if he is here, he’d be crazy to walk out in the open. . . but your father always did like to tempt fate. Nevertheless . . . you know no one can know about his whereabouts.”
My stomach tightened, and I had a difficult time catching my breath. “Are you saying he’
s actually here?”
“No. I would never say that. What I’m trying to tell you is . . .”
Jimmy walked back into the room, a great big smile on his face. “So, rumor has it that you and Giuseppe will be getting married soon. Congratulations!”
He hugged me and I felt my knees buckle as I fell into him.
FIVE
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
“Are you all right?” Jimmy asked, as he held me up.
I forced myself to stand on my own, and stared into his eyes, trying to understand what he’d just said.
“What . . . I mean . . . what?”
“Cuz, are you okay?” he repeated.
My mind cleared and I could hold a thought again.
“I’m not marrying Giuseppe! That’s ridiculous! I hardly know the man. Besides, he might die and then where would I be?”
I thought I’d make light of Jimmy’s crazy statement. After all I’d given to this family, they couldn’t possibly believe I’d actually marry a mobster.
“No need to worry about him dying, dear. Uncle Ray’ll fix him right up so he’ll be as good as new,” my mother said with absolute confidence. “Unless, of course, he was shot down there.” Her gaze fell to my groin. “That might change things, but even then, sex isn’t everything, darling. And besides, they have vibrators these days that . . .”
“Mom!” I yelled, completely mortified that my mother was lecturing me about vibrators. “Stop it! For one thing, the bullet hit his shoulder, and as far as I know, the crown jewels haven’t been damaged.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Uncle Benny said.
“Did you check?” my mother asked.
“No I didn’t check,” I told her.
“Well, somebody should,” Mom said.
“I can do it,” Aunt Val said, raising her hand.
“Seriously, Mom?” her daughter, Audrey asked.